“Fine.”
Morgan tilted his head. “Hotch, you’re working too hard.”
Hotchner shrugged. “Lot to do.”
“You can’t work 24-7. Don’t tell me it’s not my place, because I am counting on you to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as our fearless leader.”
Hotchner actually smiled at that.
Morgan smiled, too, bigger.
“Point taken,” Hotchner said. “Did you stop by my office just to play guidance counselor?”
“No. I came in to tell you I got a call this weekend. Remember Tate Lorenzon?”
Hotchner shook his head, but then said, “Wait— he’s a friend of yours, isn’t he? From back home?”
“Sweet home Chicago. Grew up on the same block. He’s a detective in the city now. His father worked with mine.”
“I see.” Hotchner was wondering where this was going. That Morgan’s cop father had been shot before his young son’s eyes was not lost on the team leader.
“Listen, he’s got a case he wants us to look at.”
Hotchner worked at not frowning, without success. They had a protocol for these things, and calling in favors from old friends was not part of it. “All right. And what did you tell him?”
Shrugging, Morgan said, “I told him to go through channels.”
“Good.”
“So he called JJ,” Morgan said.
Hotchner sighed. “Well, that skips a channel or two, but—”
As if she’d been summoned, Jennifer Jareau appeared at the door and knocked on the jamb.
His eyes still on Morgan, Hotchner said, “Yes?”
Jareau came over to the desk, flashed Hotchner a businesslike smile; usually she’d be bearing a sheaf of papers from an impending case, but now she held only a small stack of photos. “I think I’ve found our next case.”
“Wild guess?” Hotchner said, watching Morgan who was looking around the office as if it were a crime scene and he couldn’t be bothered right now. “Chicago?”
“Good guess,” Jareau said, “but not exactly.”
“Where, then?”
“The Chicago suburbs.”
Hotchner nodded to the other chair opposite his desk. "Explain."
Jareau sat and said, “Over the weekend, I got a call from a Chicago detective named Tate Lorenzon.”
Morgan seemed interested in something on the front of his shirt.
“He e-mailed me these three photos.” She reached forward and spread them out on the desk like a grisly hand of cards.
Hotchner took in the crime scene photos, one at a time. “What am I looking at?”
“All three of these were sent to the jurisdictions the crimes were committed in,” she said. “The first one, the car…”
“Wait a minute—these aren’t police crime scene photos?”
“No. They are photos taken atthe scene of crimes, before the police got there. And then sent to the police.”
Interested, Hotchner gave Morgan a wide-eyed look and Morgan lifted an eyebrow and nodded, which was as close to saying “I told you so” to Aaron Hotchner as Derek Morgan ever got.
Jareau picked back up: “The first one? The car…”
She waited until Hotchner shuffled the photos around and looked at the one of a young couple shot to death in a car parked on a rain-soaked blacktop, a crumpled piece of paper on the road near the driver’s door.
Jareau said, “Adrienne Andrews and her boyfriend Benjamin Mendoza were gunned down in a car outside her house around one in the morning on April eighteenth, at the corner of Two-Hundred-and-Seventh Street and Hutchinson Avenue. This photo, almost assuredly taken by the killer, showed up at Chicago Heights PD on the nineteenth.”
“Via the Internet?”
She shook her head. “Snail mail. No prints, no DNA, no nothing. The second crime is the two decomposed bodies.”
Hotchner flipped to a photo of two skulls and several large bones on the ground in a wooded area.
“The bones belong to two women who went missing on June fourteenth from Bangs Lake in Wauconda, a northern suburb in the lake counties. The photos showed up at the Wauconda PD on June sixteenth. Again, snail mail. The bones were found a week later, a few miles away in Lakewood Forest Preserve.”
The third photo showed a fifty-five-gallon blue plastic barrel sitting in the hallway of what appeared to be a vacant apartment.
“This is the only crime that took place in Chicago proper,” Jareau said. “This barrel with a body in it was found in a vacant apartment on Twenty-fifth Street in Chinatown on July twenty-second.”
Hotchner stared up from the photo at Morgan, who finally met his eyes. They both knew what these photos represented, and it was more than just three disparate crime scenes.
“Let’s get Lorenzon on the phone,” Hotchner said.
With an embarrassed smile, Morgan said, “That won’t be necessary. He’ll be here in about ten minutes."
"Here?"
Morgan nodded. “He and an associate flew out. His chief was eager that he do so. And I think we’re past talking about protocol and proper channels, Hotch.”
Hotchner could only agree. He said, “As soon as Detective Lorenzon gets here”—his eyes on Jareau— “I want the team in the conference room.”
Jareau appeared slightly puzzled at the rush, but her nod said she would make it happen and she left the office.
Turning his gaze back to Morgan, Hotchner said, “Why didn’t you call me at home with this?”
“Lorenzon told me about it over the phone on Saturday,” Morgan said. “He and another detective flew in on Sunday—strictly his idea, Hotch—and we didn’t sit down until I got back to the city… since some of us actually know the meaning of R and R… and we had dinner last night. Tate didn’t know what he had.”
“Not at all?”
“Well, he figured they may have a serial killer on their hands. But he didn’t understand these MOs being all over the map. But of course, we have a rough idea.”
Hotchner nodded. “Did you explain it to him?” Morgan shook his head. “Hell, Hotch, I knewwe’d end up taking the case, and it would wait till then. I mean, could anything be more up our alley?”
“No,” Hotchner admitted.
“I figured Tate could find out today and have one last good night’s sleep before we turned his world upside down.”
Hotchner, with no sarcasm whatsoever, said, “Considerate.”
Morgan shrugged.
“How did yousleep?”
Rising from his chair, Morgan said, “You really don’t want to know. You’d send my ass home for an all-day nap.”
By the time the pair marched through the bullpen, two men were exiting the elevator. One was older and Hispanic, maybe Rossi’s age, the other younger and African-American. The Hispanic was shorter, balding, with full cheeks and sleepy brown eyes, dark hair showing signs of gray at the temples. He wore a tan sport coat, blue jeans, a brown button-down shirt open at the collar and brown loafers with no socks.
The African-American had an easy smile, sharp brown eyes, a wispy black mustache and goatee, and close-cropped hair. He wore a black T-shirt under a black suit and had the build of a former athlete, maybe one who still took time out for hoops.
Morgan said, “This is Chicago Detective Tate Lorenzon.”
Hotchner shook hands with the black detective, who had a firm grip and eyes that met Hotchner’s.
“Thanks for seeing us, Agent Hotchner,” Lorenzon said. “I know we’re kind of barging in.”
“Not a problem,” Hotchner said. “My friends call me Hotch.”
“And I’m Tate.” Then, turning to his companion, Lorenzon added, “Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, meet Detective Hilario Tovar, Chicago Heights PD.”
Grinning and extending his hand, Tovar said, “It’s Hilly, and we really do appreciate your time. I mean, we know all about the BAU—you’re the first team, and you don’t waste time on the small stuff.”
“Hilly,” Hotchner said with a nod, shaking the man’s hand. “We’re happy to help, if we can.”