The Arrest
The BAU sped along the road in two black SUVs, hoping against hope that they would not be too late. There were ten dead within the space of four days, and none of them wanted to add to the body count.
They arrived at the location in record time, and Morgan burst down the door unapologetically.
"FBI, put your hands where I can see them and step away from the girl!" he shouted, a small part of him wanting any excuse to shoot the son of a bitch. That was not to be, however, as the now rather dishevelled man slowly straightened up and raised his hands by his head. He then began to speak,
"Uhm, hello agent, I … am not sure if I can explain". The sick bastard then had the audacity to smile apologetically as though he were late for a meeting as opposed to having murdered ten, or by the looks of the scene around them, thirteen people.
Rossi snorted "You'll have to do a lot better than that to get out of this, son"
Morgan marched over to the unsub, shoved him aggressively against the fireplace (accidentally knocking a pot of greenish powder onto the floor) and wrenched his hands behind his back one at a time, and cuffed them tightly. He began to pat him down for weapons, ID or anything really, and read him his rights as he did so, the scene around him was so awful that he almost gagged as he began. "You are under arrest, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you. Do you understand and accept these rights?".
The man instead said nothing, and Morgan shook him angrily, as he dragged him out of the house towards the parked SUV.
"I said, do you understand?"
"Well, yes" replied the man, far too smugly for any self-respecting Agent's liking, "But I was under the impression I had the right to stay silent, or did I, in fact, misunderstand Agent?"
Derek practically growled at this, and began thrusting him even more aggressively towards the waiting car.
Hotch opened the car door, a dour look on his face, whilst Agent Morgan shoved the insolent killer inside, with little care, and slammed the door in his wake, trapping the man's cloak in the door. When he then opened it again to rectify this, the stupid man gave a lopsided grin, that Derek met with a sneer, and bundled the ball of robes into the car, and slammed the door once again. He had to take deep breaths to calm down, so he wouldn't give in to his urges and rip the car door off its hinges, and beat the man inside to a bloody pulp. He deserved it. Seriously, he murders 13 people in cold blood and has the audacity to smile and backtalk as if he'd done nothing wrong at all.
"Did you find anything on him?" asked Hotch
"Nothing" replied Morgan, "Literally, not even a stick of gum or a few dollars"
Hotch merely hummed in response, before getting into the driver's seat of the car to keep an eye on their detainee, whilst the others briefly canvassed the scene.
What they found filled each and every one of them with sadness. A set of dead parents and a nine-year-old girl, strewn across the floor, lifeless, with glassy eyes wide open and a look of shock and terror on each of their faces. The only hopeful thing they found was that five people had lived in that house, and there were only three bodies.
"Well, the older two kids weren't here, that probably means that they're still alive somewhere" said Agent Prentiss, solemnly.
"Thank God for small mercies" added Agent Rossi. At this point Morgan rejoined them, and began to look around also.
"It looks like they all have skull-snake symbols pinned to them again, did you manage to find anything about what they could represent, Pretty-Boy?"
"Actually, no" said Spencer, looking up from where he was examining the ash in the old fashioned fireplace, "Whilst both skulls and snakes have quite dark meanings in various cultures, I have found no record of this specific symbol anywhere at all"
"So the guy we just booked and his friend, wherever he is, created this thing to leave at crime scenes? For what, to sign their artwork? To claim what's theirs?" Morgan pressed, he knew this case was bothering him more than normal, but he really wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the distinctive lack of evidence, or just the attitude from their almost-definitely-guilty, caught-red-handed, they-literally-walked-in-on-him-hovering-over-a-murdered-child's-corpse suspect.
"Hey, what's this?" queeried Emily, using her gloved hand to pick up a small amount of green powder off the floor.
"I'm not sure" admitted Morgan "I knocked it over when I cuffed the snarky dude"
"That's so weird, I can't actually tell what its made of, bu-"
"That's a first, Pretty-Boy"
"Haha, Morgan, not funny. But anyway, it is the consistency of sand, colouring of green marble, and it glints in the sun. It hardly seems natural, hey.." Reid paused and took an evidence bag a tech was preemptively holding out to him, "Could you analyse this please? If we're lucky this could be a clue as to how exactly our victims were killed."
The tech did as asked, and the four profilers headed back outside, to make their way back to Quantico.
Morgan sat in the passenger seat beside Hotch, whilst Rossi, Prentiss and Reid piled into the other SUV, and they all began the 40 minute drive back to HQ. Morgan kept shuffling in his seat, and glancing coldly at the man restrained behind him. He seemed so nonchalant, it was insulting. The man just sat there, calmly gazing out of the window, looking to all the world like he was watching the scenery go past on a road trip. He huffed in annoyance, and Hotch glanced over at him in concern, but ultimately said nothing. They were all infuriated with this case; 13 people, several of them children, dead in five days, the brutality was truly unprecedented. If this was how the pair got started, there was no telling how bad the fallout would be when the partner found his friend had been caught. Truthfully, Hotch was concerned, the second unsub was likely to devolve after this, and only time would tell how many innocents would pay the price.
Harry Potter gazed out of the window, watching the world go by. Was he irritated about being arrested? Yes. Would it inconvenience both himself and Neville? Definitely. However, would it allow him to gain intel from the FBI to help the Auror office catch a pair of racist killers? Absolutely. Oh, one more thing, he had a feeling that his own issues with authority would come into play, and make the whole experience exciting, and a perfect little break from life's stresses, and the bodies of dead children. Well, at least for him.
He sighed dejectedly, he had never been fond of cars, he generally associated them with his cruel uncle Vernon, and nearly being killed by magical trees, he did have a soft spot for the freedom-bringing Ford Anglia though… He was brought from his musings by his glasses starting to slip down his nose, they generally fit quite well, but all eyewear needed repositioning from time to time. Harry thought aggressively, and focused the perfect amount of his magic on his wrists, just enough to break the cuffs, but not enough to cause an explosion. Now freed from his bindings, he stretched his arms with a relieved grunt, for his shoulders were becoming quite sore from the strange position they had been forced into, and brought his right hand to his face to reposition his spectacles.
SSA Derek Morgan was just beginning to relax when he heard a peculiar noise, and after a cursory glance behind him he literally did a double take. He fingered his gun instinctively, before alerting his superior to the potentially dangerous situation,
"Hotch"
SSA Aaron Hotchner looked towards his colleague briefly, before returning his full attention to the road ahead.
"What is it Morgan?"
"He got out of the cuffs, I don't even know how! Sir, I will be watching you all the way back to Quantico, and if you try anything even remotely suspicious, I will not hesitate to shoot you, understand?"
The robe-wearing lunatic raised his hands in mock surrender, before opening his mouth to speak,
"All clear Agent, no need to get your knickers in a knot! I'll just sit here quietly like a good little arrestee whilst you take us back to HQ"
Then, the disrespectful bastard put his hands behind his head and his feet on the seats as though in a sun lounger, and began to whistle a tune neither agent had heard before. At a loss for what to do, as whilst incredibly irritating, whistling and dirtying the car's upholstery was in fact not a crime, nor in any way threatening, except perhaps to his eardrums, Agent Morgan settled for sneering and staring at the bastard for the remaining 20 minutes of the journey.
Harry Potter was slightly unnerved by the intensity of the Agent seemingly called 'Morgan', but he refused to let it show. Whilst he did take a rather childish joy out of riling up authority figures, he was rather alarmed by the threat of being shot, as whilst he could easily avoid being seriously injured, it would incur an awful lot of paperwork that he really could not be bothered to do. The rest of the journey passed slowly, a thick tension in the air engulfing all three of the men. Harry could really do with moving around for a bit, Morgan wanted to get their unsub back in handcuffs, and poor Hotch really just wanted an explanation of what had been going on whilst he was preoccupied with driving.
At long last, they pulled up behind the rest of their team, who came over to greet them. Prentiss went to open the door for their detainee, but was quickly stopped by a mildly panicked Morgan.
"Wait! Be careful, he isn't cuffed"
Prentiss raised her eyebrows in question, at which point Hotch got out and explained.
"I'm not entirely sure what happened, but he seemingly got out of them without much difficulty, and then Morgan threatened to shoot him!" He punctuated his sentence with a disapproving glare at Morgan, who in response started muttering about 'not wanting to be attacked by a sick bastard with a weird accent' and then promptly went around to said bastard's door, and went to open it. He pulled out their captive with more force than strictly necessary, and thrust him back against the vehicle, and pulled his hands back behind his back. Rossi silently handed him another pair of handcuffs, and Derek proceeded to secure them around the man's wrists.
"Oh, was I supposed to keep these on?" he asked with a smirk, and Morgan only clenched his jaw, not trusting himself to speak. He pulled him towards the building silently, flanked by Hotch should he need further assistance, or if their prisoner tried to pull a Houdini again.
"British?" Prentiss questioned nobody in particular, looking after the men with concern.
"Seems so" , remarked Rossi.
"Sounds like he's from London, or somewhere near there" began Reid, "it's hard to tell, there sounds like there could be a few other areas in there too, if he is from London, that might explain why he's here"
"How?" queeried Prentiss
"There's a lot of gang activity in London, but as far as I can tell, none of our victims showed any links to any organised crime" explained Rossi.
That seemingly concluded their discussion, and the three profilers made the undiscussed decision to catch up to their colleagues, and follow them inside.
All five profilers piled into the lift with their suspect, and became rather confused as the man merely looked around in mild interest, which did not profile as a murderer, or anyone who had been arrested for that matter. That said, psychopaths and sociopaths often had such a superiority complex they felt that they were immune to the justice system, so maybe he was just overconfident and thus unafraid. They reached their floor and exited, surrounding the suspect entirely, and let him to the interview room. Morgan sat the man down in the cold metal chair and released one hand from the cuffs, only to thread the chain through the bar on the table, and lock it back around the wrist. He then left the room, leaving the man alone, so they could watch him for a while.
"So" said Hotch "Who is going to question him first?".