The moment they stepped off the Precinct's elevator, Jodi was dropping her bag off in the nearest corner and was looking over the evidence set up around the bullpen. She followed after Spencer and Gideon, who'd exited first ahead of her, just as she usually did, but branched off from them quickly.

She vaguely heard Hotch introduce them to the Lead Detective — she also heard him introduce himself as Captain Griffith — while simultaneously apologizing for their collective tunnel vision. After taking one look at everything that had been compiled for the case, Jodi dragged a hand down the side of her face, rubbed her eyes, and sighed.

"Captain Griffith," she called, drawing his attention from Hotch and JJ and over to the opposite end of the bullpen towards her. "Would you happen to have any coffee ready?"

After being directed over to the break room, Jodi was quick to get herself exactly what it was she needed to relieve the caffeine withdrawal headache forming behind her right brow. When she'd already downed half of it, she refilled both her cup and to-go mug to the brim, then rejoined the team.

Spencer was standing over at the board with all the Ballad excerpt's typed, printed, and stapled up, analyzing them for any key pieces of information. "Actually, conversations between death and his victims was a fairly popular literary and artistic theme throughout the renaissance," he was explaining as she stepped into the empty space to his right.

But JJ was still staring at him with raised brows, which made her frown, because Spencer stuttered out an awkward, "yeah, creepy," as if he were in agreement with what she must've said.

"I think it's interesting," Jodi hummed, smiling slightly at Spencer from behind her coffee cup as she took a sip. He smiled weakly at her.

After laughing softly, JJ left the two with a pat on the shoulder to go see if she could be more helpful elsewhere.

So Jodi stepped back and analysed the phrases with Spencer. She stumbled over the occasional line because of the medieval wording, but managed to get he gist of it. Even though he'd finished long before she had, Spencer still waited for her to read everything before lightly tugging on the fabric of her shirt sleeve and pulling her lightly towards where Hotch and Elle were standing.

So she followed him without question.

"What kind of rapist is he independent of the homicides?" She heard Hotch ask.

Elle nodded firmly. "I'm on it."

"It looks like what he's written at the scenes are most of the first 3 verses of the same ballad," Spencer announced as he stopped in front of the two of them, having left enough space so Jodi wouldn't be concluded.

Hotch raised his brows curiously. "Most of?"

Jodi took a sip from her coffee, glancing over at her best friend as he cleared his throat.

"It's only one part of the conversation," Spencer explained. "There's no betwixt." There was an awkward pause, because he seemed to be the only one to find that mildly fascinating. Mostly because hew as the only one who knew what betwixt meant. "Death speaks, but the lady never answers."

The way he'd worded it made her sigh. "Maybe he feels like their bodies are answer enough," she murmured while blowing a lock of hair off her forehead.

Not long after that, a detective offered to take Gideon and Morgan to the most recent crime scene to take a look at things first hand, so she said goodbye to them while she left while also snickering quietly at the small piece of icing Morgan had missed on his collarbone. But she didn't mention it, wanting to see how long it would take him to notice.

Within the 20 minutes after that, a call came in that there was a possible seventh attempt just a few blocks away from the station, so Elle and Hotch left to investigate that. In the time they'd been give, Jodi sat and helped Spencer sift through the information the unsub had left behind in his poetic, song-like clues.

He had to explain certain parts of the text to her, because even though she appreciated creative writing as a way to express how she was feeling after a particularly difficult case — something her childhood therapist had suggested she try — English had never been one of her favourite subjects when she was in school.

Particularly the Shakespeare portion of the class.

But she occasionally had so many thoughts racing around in her head that she was left with no choice but to take the bound, worn out brown leather journal and scribble as fast as her hand was capable of going.

By the time Spencer had finished explaining to her what it was that he had found, she had the basic understandings of Shakespearean English. But he wanted to be sure of his findings, so while he went over the texts again, he had Jodi do her best to search up the original copy of the ballad for reference.

It hadn't taken her very long to do, considering it was written four hundred years earlier; only half an hour. After looking at the original he was quite confident in his findings, and darted over to Gideon and Morgan the moment they got back with her close on his heels. "The verses," he blurted out before either of them had the chance to say anything.

"Found something?" Gideon asked rhetorically, but Spencer nodded anyway.

They paused in the middle of the bullpen.

"Not an answer, a question," he delved into further detail. "I found the full text — well, Jodi found it — and he's pretty much following it to a T, at least the death side of the conversation."

Gideon raised his brows. "But?"

"Why didn't he leave them at the first 3 murders?" Jodi frowned, voicing the question she knew Spencer wanted to ask. "The ballad is 10 verses long just on the death side, right Doc?"

"He's got plenty to work with," Spencer confirmed with a nod of his head. "But if it's not part of his signature it isn't something that he has to do for an emotional reason then, I mean, why start?"

There was a short pause for thought, then, "JJ, find out when the press ran the first story on this unsub," Gideon turned to look at the desk she was sitting at, sifting through files on the computer.

She frowned slightly. "When?"

"After which victim," he explained shortly.

"Yeah, you got it."

"What're you thinking?" Morgan frowned as he folded his arms over his chest.

Jodi raised her brows as well.

"He wasn't getting enough attention," Gideon answered simply.

Spencer was the one who put it together the quickest. "The police department sometimes don't even realize they're looking at a pattern," he hummed.

"Yeah, until somebody tells 'em," Jodi sighed drily.

JJ pulled the phone away from her ear — she wasn't even sure when she'd picked it up, but looked over anyway — and raised her brows to grab their attention. "The first story ran the morning after the fourth victim was found."

Morgan immediately sifted through his file. "The increased patrols didn't begin until after the fourth victim, either," he read aloud, closing it again.

"Yeah, the police didn't realize what was happening he writes his verse, and—"

"—and everyone knows that he was there," Spencer finished for Gideon, his eyes briefly landing on Jodi before following her's over to the elevator where she watched Hotch and Elle leave the elevator and walk over to them.

"The offender in this new attempt is a black male," he announced in his normal authoritative tone; it wasn't demanding or cod, just Hotch.

"Black male?" Jodi felt her brows rise in sync with Morgan's. "That's cross racial. That doesn't happen."

"What about Herbert Mullin?" Spencer countered, his voice rising in the way it always did when he was reciting long-stored information. "He killed 14 different people of completely varying ages, races, and creeds."

"But there was no sexual component to his crimes," Elle shook her head softly, and Jodi nodded in agreement.

"And he wore a ski mask," she agreed. But she bumped his elbow, just to prove that she was still on his side.

"This attacker wore a ski mask," Elle huffed pointedly.

Gideon was the one who broke the silence. "Tell 'em we're ready," he spoke calmly.

"For a profile?" Morgan asked carefully, masking his disbelief while raising his brows.

He nodded, and Jodi pursed her lips. "We're gonna make Tommy contact us."

Gideon didn't start the Profile presentation until every chair in the bullpen was filled with expectant agents. "The unsub brought the weapons with him tape, glue, wire," he announced in his calming even voice. The evidence boards were at his back, facing the audience. "He did not leave them at the scene. He took them when he left. He has a kind of killing kit that he carries."

"They way they do in creepy movies," Jodi mumbled tiredly, sipping on her coffee from where she stood slightly off to the left with Spencer right beside her, and Morgan a foot away on the opposite side. He just lightly bumped her arm with his elbow, but didn't say anything to avoid interrupting.

Hotch stepped in to share his portion of information, and Gideon went to sit down in an empty chair. "Organized killers usually have a skilled job, likely technology related which may involve the use of the hands.  The crime scenes are far enough apart that he needs a vehicle. This will be well kept, obsessively clean, as will be his home. He's diurnal, the attacks occurred during the day so the vehicle may be related to his work, possibly a company car or truck.

She nearly jumped at the sound of Morgan's voice piping in from her right side, but hid it well. Must be more tired than I thought. "We believe he watches the victims for a time learns the rhythms of the home, knows his time frame," he explained, using hand gestures to emphasize his points.

"You're not gonna catch him accidentally," Jodi added in, then too a swig from her cup. "He destroys symbols of wealth in the victim's homes, which mean's he's probably feeling inadequate."

"He harbors envy of and hatred toward people of a higher social class," Gideon built on her last point. "He feels invisible around them."

Spencer stepped forward slightly, but stayed close to her side as he spoke up, holding onto his own cup of coffee like it was his lifeline. "Class is the theme of the poem which he left at the various crime scenes. At one point in the poem, the women attempts to bribe death but he doesn't accept it. He says this is the one moment when riches mean nothing when death comes, the poor and the rich are exactly alike.

"So he's poor," Captain Griffith guessed aloud from the desk he was sitting on behind Gideon.

"Probably middle-class," Jodi nodded, then sipped her coffee again. "Someone noticeably lower-class would stick out in a highly patrolled neighborhood."

"This guy appears to belong there," Hotch agreed. "He blends in."

"Why does he glue the eyes open?" Another Detective asked.

Jodi didn't see who it was, but internalized a sigh paired with a grimace.

Elle, who'd just come into the room after looking some more things over, answered the question. "The unsub is an exploitative rapist," she readily explained. "Most rape victims close their eyes during the attack, turn their heads. For this type of rapist, the goal is more related to the victim watching him than the act itself."

"The verses, the staging, the aggressive language I am death, this is a guy who, while being in control of the crime scene almost certainly feels inadequate in the rest of his life," Hotch continued with a nod.

"That's why he couldn't wait for you to figure out what he'd done," Gideon hummed, standing up from his chair. "Why he needed to make sure all his crimes were counted. His victims, they represent whatever it is that's controlling him and he wants that control back. He is under the thumb of a powerful woman who frightens him."

"And a final point?" Jodi concluded with, her brows rising as she allowed both her arms to carefully fall to her sides, right hand holding the top of her coffee cup in her fingers. "He's a white guy."

"We have witnesses that identify him as a black male," Detective Griffith scoffed, as though he automatically assumed she was wrong.

"The attacker was black," Gideon stepped in, knowing Jodi was too tired to refrain from snapping facts like she tended to do when she hadn't gotten enough sleep. "He is not the Tommy killer."