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Disclaimers: I don’t own Aaron Hotchner, Jason Gideon, David Rossi, or Derek Morgan. They belong to Eddie Bernero and Mark Gordon. But SSA Jenna Plancini, SSA Alex Sheridan, and the various denizens of my fictional version of Waverly, Iowa do belong to me.
Rating: FRT, due to it being case-fic
Spoilers: 1.17, “A Real Rain” in particular, up to season 4 in background
Genre: General/Pre-Series/Case-Fic/Ep-Related
Characters: Hotch, Gideon, Rossi; one OMC, one OFC, and various townsfolk.
Pairings: None
Notes: a) This is a completed fic, written back in the fall of 2008 and archived originally at FF.net. My crop of WIPs is kicking my ass. And I suddenly recalled I had never reposted this to LJ! So, thus, a chapter a day, until it's finished.
b) Waverly, Iowa does exist, and I have tried for accuracy in detail, but this version is fictional, and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. Especially since I have never been to Iowa.
c) I am completely ignoring the various timeline weirdness and decided to have Rossi, Gideon and Hotch on the team at the same time. If that or the dates bother you, just stop thinking about them. :)

Summary: “Waverly, Iowa, 1999, a man kills two boys, only to walk away free and kill another one.”- Hotch, A Real Rain. Every agent has their own ghosts.

Prologue
Chapter One

Chapter Two

Waverly PD, 111 4^th Street, NE

With only 16 full-time officers serving in the City of Waverly, the Police Department was not expansive. In fact, Gideon mused, it might have been called downright cozy. But one was not likely to find a more devoted force than the one that met their eyes as they walked back in the door. Every single phone lit, every computer whirring with activity. With the murders of Ricky Leeward and Mark Brentano, this unsub had not just killed two boys. He had broached the sacred trust of small town life; a trust that these officers took very seriously.

Unit Chief Dave Rossi and SSA Jenna Plancini looked up from the file folder that had formerly held their attention. “You got a pretty good sense of Ricky Leeward, guys?” asked Rossi. Gideon’s teaching instinct kicked in. “You want to take this one, Hotchner?” Hotch perceptibly stiffened, but proceeded onward; Jason and Dave exchanged a smile.

“Ricky Leeward is…was, what people around here would call average, in the best possible sense. Well-behaved, devoted to football, not great at school, but not bad at it either. Canvassing just supports what was clear from interviewing Janet Leeward. Ricky was shaken by his dad’s death, but it didn’t drive him away from mom and football and town life; if anything, it brought him closer. Well-adjusted, trusting; you may not see many of them, but Ricky Leeward seems to have actually been the very picture of a cornfed Iowa farm boy.”

Plancini smirked. “Well done, baby boy, we may make a profiler of you yet.”

“I do it all for you, Jen.”

“Oh, I know you do, but don’t think you’re off the hook yet, my padawan learner.”

“Of course, Master.”

Padawan? Master? Ah, yes, Sheridan and Plancini had had their annual Star Wars viewing last week. Looks like they had roped Hotch in this time. Good thing, too. While Hotch’s marriage to that nice girl…Hallie? No, Haley, that was her name…while the marriage seemed happy, Gideon didn’t get the sense that Hotch had much of a social life. Haley and the job, utterly devoted to both, and not much in between.

However, if anyone could draw Hotch out of that shell, Jenna Plancini could. She may have made her bones (so to speak) in the notably tough crowd of the Newark PD’s gang unit, but Jenna had a boisterous, Jersey girl ebullience. Countless cold and grueling hours walking the Newark projects, and nearly 5 years in the BAU, had not yet managed to grind that out of her. She seemed to take special pleasure in pushing the buttons of her more sedate colleagues, so the shy Hotchner had been a godsend. Fortunately, Hotch had been revealed to give as good as he got.

“Okay, okay, ‘Cina, Hotch, break it up, settle down.”

“You got it, boss.”

Rossi had the reputation of having been a cowboy back in his older days, and Gideon still got glimpses now and then. But Dave usually managed to achieve some level of supervisory control. When he was assured of the floor, Rossi started in.

“Well, as far as Ricky Leeward may have been to one end of the spectrum, Mark Brentano was at the other.”

“Troublemaker?”

“Farthest from it. Put simply, Mark? Was a nerd. Learned to read at the age of 4 and a half. Got into the town’s Gifted and Talented program in the fourth grade. He got good marks in everything, but especially in math.”

“How good?”

“Well, put it this way, he only started at Waverly-Shell Rock High a month ago, but he’s already taking honors level sophomore classes.”

“Wow. “

“And, like Ricky Leeward, he seems to have been preternaturally well behaved. Played the trumpet, was an altar boy at the 9^th Avenue Episcopal Church, and got along splendidly with his parents.”

Hotch wrinkled his brow. “So, they may have shared the same schools since kindergarten, but other than that they seem to have moved in completely different activities, social circles, spheres of influence.”

“Seems that way, yes.”

“And, even in a town of 9, 000, their acquaintance doesn’t go anywhere past bumping shoulders in the school hallway.”

Of course, some one had to ask the question, and Jenna, with her usual candor and aplomb, did. “So we have two boys, same age, same race, with seemingly nothing in common except spotless attendance records. Where does that leave us with the victimology?”

“Not especially anywhere,” Gideon replied. “ It makes the unsub…most likely male, most probably in his later 30s, early forties.” Jenna jumped in: “Due to the age of the boys, and the fact that it would take more power to subdue them?”

“Not necessarily…age cohort is a unique thing with pedophiles, preference as much as pragmatism.”

“But, 14 is young enough. On the cusp between high school and middle school, it’s likely more about the sexual attraction, versus the power dynamic that would be more at play with an unsub under 30, right? ” She looked to Rossi.

“Right. All pedophiles have preferences. But that preference only takes you so far, and with victims with as little in common as Ricky and Mark, I would usually go with opportunity. But what did the unsub see in both of these kids, other than the fact that they were…there?”

“They were good boys.”

Gideon, Rossi and Plancini all looked over in unison to Hotch, who had been sitting quietly on the outskirts of the conversation.

“That’s what we heard from everybody in the canvass near the Leeward farm. ‘He was such a good kid.’ ‘his mama’s little angel.’ ‘took care of her after his daddy died.’ Not even a ball through a neighbor’s window. ”

The wheels started to obviously turn behind Rossi’s eyes. “ Pretty much what we heard from the Brentano canvass, too. Nothing out of the ordinary, not even now, when you’d expect teenagers of either sex to be at their worst.”

An image popped into Gideon’s mind, bidden or unbidden. “Saint Sebastian.” And though he knew Jenna’s Catholicism had been lapsed for a long time, she apparently remembered enough to finish his thought: “The beautiful young man, martyred to the pagan excesses of the Romans.” They were all silent for a moment, and then Hotch brought it in for a landing: “The crime scenes weren’t dump sites; they were shrines, with these boys as the centerpieces.”

At that moment, the phone did its level best to break their concentration.

“Hey guys. It’s Sheridan, down at the County Coroner. I’ve got something you should see.”

*********