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Rossi was referring, Reid knew, to notorious spree killer Andrew Cunanan, who killed five people, then himself.

In case any of the others weren’t as familiar, Reid said, “Cunanan threw himself a going away party in San Diego on April 24, 1997. His first two victims were in Minnesota—Jeff Trail in Minneapolis and David Madson in Rush City. Next, Cunanan turned up here in Chicago, where he killed a prominent real estate developer named Lee Miglin. Then he drove Miglin’s car to Pennsville, New Jersey, and killed a cemetery caretaker named William Reese. That was May ninth. He didn’t show up again until he shot the famous designer Gianni Versace in Miami on July fifteenth. The police finally found him in a Miami houseboat on July twenty-third, where he had shot himself to avoid capture. Almost exactly three months after his ‘going away’ party.”

Rossi was smirking at Reid. “You could at least credit me with a footnote.”

“Your spree-killing book isthe standard reference,” Reid said, with a shrug.

Rossi’s eyes widened in the way they sometimes did when Reid made a point.

Then Rossi said, “Well, this guy’s not going to be aroundin three months. At the rate he’s going, he’s not going to last three weeks. I think he’s got the fever, and I think his temperature is still going up.”

Hotch nodded grimly. “No question he’s accelerating. But let’s not get too far out in front. Let’s deal with things as they come.”

Reid glanced back through the glass doors as Jareau snapped her phone shut, then came through the main lobby door and marched toward them, heels firing off like gunshots on the marble lobby floor. Her anger was so extreme it almost cancelled out her prettiness. Almost.

Hotchner asked her. “What did the editor say?”

Jareau took a deep breath, then let it out, and seemed to will herself into a more calm state. “I asked the gentleman how he thought the families of the victims would react to these photos, and he said, ‘Read tomorrow’s edition. We’ll be interviewing them all today.’ ”

Hotchner chuckled but there was no humor in it. “Did he say anything about knowing where the crime scene is, or the name of the victim?”

“If he has that,” Jareau said, “he’s not saying.”

Reid frowned. “He ran the photo of a murder victim, without knowing whether the family had been notified or not?”

Jareau, her eyes hot in her cold face, said, “I don’t think he’s the type to care.”

“All right,” Hotchner said, taking control. “Back to the office—we need to get started. He’s not slowing, so we need to speed up.”

Half an hour later, they entered their conference room to find Lorenzon and Tovar waiting, the older detective talking on the phone, while Lorenzon sat punching keys on a laptop.

Tovar wore loafers with no socks, jeans, a white shirt with a navy blue knit tie, loosened at the neck, and a gray sport coat. Even though he was balding, what little hair he had looked slept on.

Lorenzon, on the other hand, looked like a page out of the Derek Morgan fashion field manual—a black polo with a Chicago police shield over the left breast, black slacks and socks and black loafers with rubber soles and tassels.

“Anything?” Hotchner asked as they entered.

Lorenzon shrugged toward Tovar. “I think Hilly’s got something.”

“Thank you, Chief,” Tovar was saying into the phone. “We’ll have someone out to talk to you ASAP.” He clicked off.

“What?” Hotchner asked.

“That was the Aurora chief of police,” Tovar said. “Far west suburb. The crime scene is in their jurisdiction. Killer shot the victim three times in the chest, and left him in a place called the Aurora West Forest Preserve.”

Tovar rose and went to a map on the wall and stuck a push pin into the area he’d referred to, making it one of five pins, each representing a crime scene.

Reid considered the five pins—one way up north in Wauconda, another way south and east in Chicago Heights, then in Chicago’s Chinatown, on to the Gacy house also on the north side and now, this latest one, far west and on a line halfway between the two easternmost pins. He struggled to divine a pattern, mentally connecting the dots, first this way, then that, going through the various possibilities until he was certain there was no help there.

Hotchner asked, “Anything with geographic profiling?”

Reid shook his head. “This is a huge area. The UnSub’s safety zone could be any of a hundred places without him ever having to hunt in or even near it.”

“What about a pattern with the crimes?”

“None that I can detect,” Reid said. “There’s certainly no geometric pattern evolving. But when Luke John Helder was dropping bombs in rural mailboxes, to make a smiley face on the map of the U.S.? No one saw that pattern until he told them.”

“All right,” Hotchner said. “Prentiss, you and Tovar head to the Aurora PD and talk to the chief.”

“Right,” Prentiss said.

“Morgan, get with Garcia—try to ID the victim if the locals haven’t.”

“Yep,” Morgan said.

“Rossi, you and Reid go with Lorenzon and hit the crime scene. Much as I hate its existence, it’s nice to get a fresh look for a change.”

“Talk about mixed blessing,” Rossi said, getting up.

Reid merely nodded.

“And you, Aaron?” Rossi asked.

“We’ve only got one suspect,” Hotchner said. “Our colleague Detective Denson—I’m going to try to figure out where he’s been lately, without tipping to him we’re looking.”

“Good luck,” Rossi said. “It’s a whole different deal when a suspect is a cop—they have access to the playbook. Be nice if we had a realfriend in the Wauconda PD.”

“Would at that,” Hotchner said.

Even with the majority of rush hour traffic headed into the city, the drive to Aurora took the better part of two hours.

The forest preserve sat on Hankes Road, west of Aurora and just east of a little town called Sugar Grove. The promise of another hot, humid day made a haze of the air as they followed a blue-and-white around a bend to the preserve.

As the FBI Tahoe pulled in, the squad car pulled off to the right and behind another squad. Three more blue-and-whites and a couple of unmarkeds were along the other side of the blacktop drive. A last squad was parked across the entrance, its occupant climbing out as they pulled to a stop a few feet short of the obstruction.

Rossi glanced around. “No ambulance?”

“They took the body away already,” Lorenzon said. “Funny—the victim wasn’t in the car, but in a shallow grave in the woods. They found it pretty easily.”

The uniformed officer came to the driver’s side and Lorenzon showed his ID.

“And these two?” the officer asked.

“FBI,” Rossi said, showing his credentials.

Reid followed suit.

“Park over there,” the officer said, pointing to the unmarked cars. “You’ll have to walk in. It’s not far.”

Lorenzon pulled the car up the road and off onto the shoulder. They walked back, passing the car blocking the entrance and, as they did, three men came walking from the other direction, the first with a camera, the second carrying a crime scene kit, and the third obviously a detective.

The photographer, shorter than the other two, stood maybe five-ten and weighed in at about one-seventy. He had a heart-shaped face, ruddy cheeks and blond hair. The crime scene analyst was an African-American with a shaved head. Maybe forty, he was building a little belly despite an otherwise muscular build; he wore wire-framed glasses and walked with a slight limp. The detective, blond and blue-eyed, tall and wide-shouldered, had walked off a recruiting poster for the Aryan Nation; he wore a navy blue suit and dark glasses.