CHAPTER THREE
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IT HAD ONLY BEEN A MONTH since Hotch was brutally stabbed in his own home, but it seemed as though he couldn't stand to be away from work long. It was supposed to be his first day back.

Ivy held a drink carrier in her hand while she weaved in between people to get to the elevator in time. Instead of heading toward the glass doors that led into the office bullpen, she veered to the left and made her way down the hall to Garcia's office.

     "I get shot in the leg and I don't get any cookies," Reid was saying to Garcia in disbelief as Ivy entered the room with one hand on the door and the other on the drinks. Garcia was quickly putting the lid on a tin that was sitting on the table behind her computer setup. "You know he's gonna hate the attention."

     "It's cookies, not cake," Garcia told him pointedly as she set a small bowl of small lollipops on top of the tin as an alternative. Reid helped himself to one with no hesitation.

     "I come bearing gifts," Ivy interrupted, setting down the drink carrier next to the cookies with a smile. "Exactly as requested." She set aside their drinks before sitting down in between them and helping herself to a sip of her own.

     "You, my dearest, are a lifesaver," Garcia said with a smile, holding her cup up to Ivy like she was holding it up for a toast.

     "Thanks, Ivy," Reid smiled, moving his cup a little bit closer while he continued to lick the lollipop that he had taken from Garcia's stash. He continued with their conversation they were having about Hotch before she arrived. "He's probably gonna pretend like nothing happened, anyway."

     "Well, it doesn't mean we have to," Garcia said.

     "I think maybe we should," Reid suggested, a little quieter.

     "I don't roll that way."

     "I mean, there's nothing we can really do if he doesn't want to talk about it," Ivy pointed out with a shrug and another sip of her coffee. Hotch wasn't exactly the type of guy to want to circle up and share all about his traumatic experience. Or at least, she was pretty sure that if he did she certainly would not be part of that circle.

     "I've been thinking about it," Reid began, taking the lollipop out of his mouth for a moment. "The entire time I've known Hotch, I don't think I've ever seen him blink."

     Ivy raised her eyebrows and then tried searching in her recent memory for a time that she could distinctly remember him blinking. After she couldn't think of it at all, she told herself it had to be because of the fact that she had only been working there a few months and he had been gone for a lot of that time.

     "I know," Garcia agreed, proving Ivy's thoughts utterly wrong. Maybe he didn't blink after all. "It's weird."

     "Classic alpha male behavior," Reid pointed out and Ivy stifled a laugh. Not at his conclusion, but more at the accuracy.

     "I still think he hates me," Ivy admitted, still feeling like she had a lot to prove to him. It didn't help matters that she had just joined the team and then that happened. But she had managed to bond with every single member of the team in some way or another in her time there so far. But she could easily attribute that to Hotch being on leave for a month. He was hard to read.

     "That's just Hotch, though," Reid assured her, but she didn't feel very assured by that. Maybe it was just how he presented himself that had her thinking circles around it. Ivy gave him a questioning look and a shrug, but Garcia was already thinking about something else.

     "Do you think he stared down Foyet?" she ventured, looking a little scared as she said it.

     "Maybe," Reid said casually as he sucked on the lollipop again. "If it would save his life."

     "Do you think he stared the whole time, like with each stab?" she furthered, mimicking a stabbing motion a few times as she finished the sentence.

     "I have no idea," Reid admitted with a sigh, a bit uncomfortable at the thought. It seemed to make Ivy and Penelope uncomfortable as well since the air in the room kind of shifted after she suggested it.

     "God, I sure hope not," Ivy mumbled, a little horrified as she imagined Foyet stabbing Hotch nine times and him never wavering once. It was an intense image.

     "Is he okay?" Garcia then asked, even though nobody but Hotch really had the answer to that one.

     "I wouldn't be, but...I'm a blinker." Reid stared at them both matter of factly after he said this and Ivy shifted in her seat, not really wanting to imagine anything about that for much longer. She couldn't really fathom anyone at all being okay after an experience like that. Luckily, she didn't have to think about it much more as they were interrupted by the door to the office being opened.

     "Spence, Ivy, there you are," JJ said as she entered in a hurry. "Grab your go bags."

     "What's going on?" Reid asked, looking up at where she stopped next to where they were all seated at the table.

     "Turn on the news," JJ answered, gesturing to Garcia's many computers and monitors that lined the back wall.

     "Which one?" she asked, pushing away from the table and rolling over to her desk.

     "Doesn't matter."

     Garcia turned on a national news channel, where the anchor stood outside of a pharmacy, police cars and officers filling up the background of the image. "Just after eight this morning forty-year-old Darrin Call, a lifelong resident of Louisville, assaulted customers at the pharmacy on the corner of Main and Truxton Avenues. Eyewitnesses saw him walking east on mainstreet minutes after the attack. He has not been seen since then," she reported.

     "We're going to Louisville," JJ finally said, tapping Reid on the shoulder and nodding at Ivy before leaving the room. The click of her heels echoed in the hallway while Reid and Ivy bade Garica goodbye.

__________

     "Are you sure you're allowed to fly?" Ivy questioned as she watched Reid balance at the top of the stairs that led to the entrance of the jet. She was halfway up those stairs with his crutches propped in her arms while both of their bags and coffees sat at the bottom.

     "Yeah, it's okay," he told her as he turned around, hands braced against the railing of the stairs so that he could grab the crutches from her. She gave him an unsure look, but passed the crutches up to him and then hurried back down the stairs to grab their bags and coffee.

     When she reached the top of the stairs she set their bags aside and then handed Reid his coffee as she sat down next to him. Rossi leaned up against the wall on her other side and Reid had to extend his leg onto the other side of the couch that they were sitting on. She was still skeptical about the flying. Garcia was already on video chat with them and JJ began briefing them a little bit on the case while they waited for Emily and Hotch to arrive.

     "So our point person in Louisville is Lieutenant Kevin Mitchell," she explained, holding up a mug of coffee as the sound of the jet steps being retracted diverted all of their attention to the other side of the plane.

     "Good morning," Hotch greeted as he entered the plane, Emily right behind him. Everyone adjusted a little bit, even if they didn't realize it, like they were too preoccupied with acting normal.

     "Good to see you," Rossi said with a brief smile.

     "You too."

     "You look well, sir," Garcia told him over the video chat on the computer that was positioned in between JJ and Morgan.

     "Thank you," he said, taking the seat next to JJ. He glanced over at Reid and his leg that was spread across the couch. "How long do you have that?"

     "I'm not really sure," Reid answered, putting his hand on his knee and moving his leg around a little bit. He looked back at Hotch. "Welcome back."

      Emily settled into the seat next to Morgan and Hotch replied, "Thank you. Any other attacks?"

     "Um, no, not yet," JJ replied, the conversation taking a swift turn right into business.

     "Call's proven hard to track," Reid explained. "He's never had a driver's license, so he's most likely still on foot."

     "Or public transportation," JJ added.

     "He's not gonna take the bus. His face is everywhere," Emily pointed out. Ivy listened and nodded as she took a sip of her coffee. It had gone relatively cold at that point, but she didn't really care that much. Coffee is coffee.

     "Has anyone found a stressor?" Hotch inquired, looking around the group.

     "He just lost his job," Garcia answered. "He's worked at a factory since 1990. Made appliances since forever and not a single promotion."

     "That's a long time to be bitter," Morgan commented with raised eyebrows, nodding his head to the side.

     "Or he doesn't care," Reid said.

     "Not if he's got a family to feed," JJ countered, not looking convinced of that take.

     "Actually he's of the hermit variety. As far as I can tell, he's got no one," Garcia told them, shooting down that theory fairly quickly. "No wife, no kids, no parents."

     "So he's got no one in his life, then the job that never appreciated him fires him," Ivy reiterated, leaning toward all of that built up anger being the reasoning behind it. At least it looked like that for now.

     "Nothing to live for," Morgan agreed.

     "Maybe he snapped after he got fired because that was the one thing he did have to live for," she continued, sounding a little unsure as she said the words. Even though it had been a few months, she had only worked a few actual cases.

     "So why hasn't he killed himself yet?" Hotch asked, looking between her and Morgan. "Sprees usually end in suicide. If he's got nothing to live for, why hasn't he ended it?"

     "Because he isn't finished yet. We know he has displaced anger. He took it out on the first victim," Reid answered, glancing between everyone.

     "Well, the stock boy represents someone. We need to know who," Hotch decided, going back to the victim and how that might connect to the reasoning behind it. "Is he military?"

     "Negative."

     "Well, he's lashing out for a reason. This guy's got anger, endless targets, and a gun, and he's just getting started."

__________

     Emily was invaluable as a training agent. Mostly, Ivy was assigned to stick around her, learning as much as she could and applying what she did know. She would be the first to admit that she was extremely lucky to have someone as brilliant as Emily around to learn from. Ivy was walking around Call's living room, adjusting her light blue gloves as she examined the pieces of his life.

     "Call's apartment is five minutes from the pharmacy, but there's no sign that he came here to wash off that blood," Emily told Ivy and Rossi as she exited the bathroom, pointing over her shoulder at the sink.

"How's he still on the street, looking like that?" Rossi inquired as Ivy made her way over to the two from the living room area.

"Maybe he's not," Emily said, taking a step over to enter the bedroom.

"Garcia said he's got nobody. Where would he go?"

Ivy glanced over at the bathroom where Emily had just left and then back toward the kitchen. Everything looked like it was in a normal place, not rummaged through like someone was panicking after just committing a few murders. There wasn't much about it that screamed premeditated.

"Well, he's panicked and on foot, maybe there is no plan," Ivy suggested, eyes drifting to where Emily was looking at the bed in the next room.

"Call gets up, he makes his bed," she narrated as Ivy and Rossi walked over to the doorframe to meet her there.

"Are we sure he isn't military?" Rossi double checked as they stared down at the bed. The sheets were perfectly smooth, all tucked into the corners with neat precision. The average person certainly wasn't that neat, she would give him that.

"It looks like one neat aspect," Emily partially agreed, but there was no record at all of him ever being in the military. "Maybe he was hospitalized. I'll call Garcia."

"Then he's probably got the same routine everyday," Rossi pointed out.

"Except today," Emily replied, pulling her phone out of her pocket. Ivy furrowed her brows. If he had the same routine every single day, why the pharmacy? "He finished his cereal, walked to the pharmacy, and killed three people."

"Why?" Rossi wondered aloud.

It was not long after that when they received a call from Garcia informing them that Call was prescribed antipsychotics, but had been off of them for the last month. A psychotic break certainly changed the game a little and filled in a few of the informational gaps that they had been missing.

"He was unarmed. He didn't mean to hurt anyone. All he wanted was his medication, but he didn't get it," Emily said as she stared over at the wall, focused on her train of thought. "He needs help."

"And where do you go if your pharmacy can't give you any more medication?" Ivy asked rhetorically, understanding exactly where she was going with that. Rossi was also already on top of it, pulling his phone out and dialling Garcia immediately.

"Who's Call's doctor?"

"State appointed psychiatrist Charles Cipolla," Garcia told them. "Hotch and Morgan are on their way." They must have come to the exact same conclusion that they had come to upon finding out about the antipsychotics.

"Where's his office?" Rossi pushed further.

"Camden and Third."

__________

Their race to Camden and Third was one that they ended up losing. When Emily, Rossi, and Ivy arrived on the scene, the police along with Hotch and Morgan had already arrived. But after they got up the stairs into the hallways of the psychiatrist's office, they found two bodies and no Call. They walked quickly and passed a few police officers walking in the opposite direction. The three of them paused at the door, stopping short when they saw Morgan and Hotch standing over the bodies defeatedly.

"We're too late," Hotch said rigidly, shoving past Rossi, Emily, and Ivy.

"Hotch!" Emily called out after him, but if he heard her he simply ignored her and kept moving to exit the building. A police officer squeezed past them through the door and everyone exchanged a somewhat surprised glance at his attitude. This is what they had been concerned about — him not being quite ready to be out on the field just yet. "I'm gonna go talk to him."

     The others nodded at Emily and Ivy shot her a glance that reassured her that she would be fine by herself. Emily turned around and followed where Hotch had disappeared down the hall and Rossi and Ivy both stepped into the room with a few more officers behind them.

     There was no success in searching the perimeter — Call was long gone. Each of them pulled on their pairs of blue gloves and spread out across the room to examine the scene. The police officers began the process of bagging the evidence scattered across the room.

     "He cleaned up, changed his clothes," Lieutenant Mitchell commented as another officer put a bloody shirt into an evidence bag. The psychiatrist was on the ground with no pants or shirt, so that was a fair assumption. "Could have dyed his hair for all I know."

     "Call's suffering from a psychotic break. He's not dodging us on purpose," Rossi explained as he prepared to thumb through the file cabinet in search of Call's patient record.

     Mitchell looked over at him in disbelief. "Oh, come on," he said, tilting his head to the side. Ivy was leaning over to get a better look at how the men were positioned on the ground. The kill was likely frantic, just like the others on the video from the pharmacy had been. But he took the time to change his clothes and move the bodies next to each other.

     "Trust me."

     "He's only looking for one thing right now, and it's not to escape us," Ivy added, Mitchell's disbelieving tone getting on her nerves a bit. In fact, the police and the FBI were probably the last thing on Call's mind right now.

     "If he was psychotic, why did his doctor take him off the drugs?" Mitchell continued, his Kentucky drawl shining through his words.

     "Call has no history of violent behavior," Rossi answered immediately and confidently. "Cipolla couldn't predict this would happen."

     Ivy wandered over to the other side of the room, which was torn apart. This had probably happened after he killed, since he had the time to raid the whole place that violently.

     "Look at this place," Morgan chimed in.

     "Yeah it's a mess," Mitchell agreed.

     "No, it's more than that. Call was looking for something," Morgan elaborated after he finished flipping through a notebook that he had found on the table.

     "Yeah, the drugs."

     "Doctor doesn't keep the drugs here," Morgan pointed out. Mitchell seemed inclined to keep things pretty black and white. "Scrip pad is still on his desk. My guess is he came here for help."

     Ivy nodded and walked over to stand next to Morgan near the desk. "I think your guess is right. Couldn't get any help at the pharmacy, so he came here," she said, reiterating what she had said at the apartment before they had arrived there. They had connected why he had chosen to go to both the pharmacy and the psychiatrist's office, but where he was going next? That was the million dollar question.

     "His file's missing," Rossi announced. That caught Morgan's attention, but he was quickly distracted by the ring of his phone.

     "Yeah, baby girl, what's going on?" he answered, leaning up against the desk.

     Ivy geared her attention back to the couches while Morgan started talking to Garcia over the phone. The victims' things were still on the table, he had caught them by surprise. She was trying to walk herself through what happened, hoping it would give her some sort of gauge as to where he was going next. After that, the patient likely touched him in an effort to escape. His psychiatrist would know better. They had decided that he was attacking defensively when touched after watching the security footage at the pharmacy. The touch had set him off, and then he stabbed him just as he had the stock boy. After that, he killed the psychiatrist and searched the office. Looking for his file?

     Morgan's voice interrupted her train of thought. "Rossi, Correa," he called out, nodding at them to come over. "Say that again. What are you talking about?" He put Garcia on speaker as they joined him at the desk.

     "Darrin Call didn't exist, like from 1969 to 1975," she repeated. "There's no birth certificate, no social security, no identity until he was six years old."

     "Was he abandoned?" Morgan asked, furrowing his brows at the confusing turn of events.

     "My three least favorite words strung together — I don't know," she replied sadly.

     "My guess is neither does he."

__________

     After a little bit of digging, Garcia managed to find out that Call was found on the side of the road when he was six but there was very little information surrounding the situation. Nobody ever claimed him and there was never any missing child fitting his description reported. They entered the police station for the first time since arriving in Louisville to regroup after the most recent murders.

     "Call is wearing Cipolla's clothing," Emily informed Reid and JJ, who had stayed at the police station the whole time while the others split up to visit the scenes.

     "You think he's lucid?" Reid asked from his seat.

     "No, most likely he's just freaked out," she replied as they came to a stop next to the table in front of the boards that they set up.

     "Either way, we should update the public," Morgan said.

     "You should be there, too," JJ suggested, casting a glance over at Lieutenant Mitchell.

     He nodded, but then pointed back at the updated white board with the little information they had on Call. "What is this?" he asked.

     "Call's timeline," JJ replied, despite the dates and events being laid out pretty clearly and in order.

     "He left Louisville?"

     "Three times," JJ confirmed with a nod. "Always came back to the same ten block radius."

     "Why?"

     Ivy stepped forward and observed the timeline a little more closely. "Victims are often drawn to the scene of their first trauma. Part of him wanted to escape, the other part probably struggled to find answers," Reid jumped in, quick to explain.

     Hotch was staring down at a file and asked, "Was he hospitalized?"

     "Uh, 1985 for two years," JJ replied as she referenced the timeline again to double check.

     "Yeah, and again in '95 for a few months, both at the state facility in Fayette County," Garcia added on speaker from the phone that sat on the table. That explained why his bed was made with so much precision when they were in his apartment earlier.

     "You know he doesn't drive," Mitchell said. "You think he'd just walk all the way out there?"

     "He's desperate. He'll find a way," Rossi told him seriously.

     Mitchell looked a little bit put off by that. "Well, then I'll tell the sheriff in Fayette," he said with a sigh, stepping away from the timeline board to go and make the necessary calls.

     JJ followed him, presumably to help him with the media coverage involved and the press conference needed to update the public.

     "When did he start the prescriptions, Garcia?" Hotch inquired, eyes still glued to the file in his hands.

     "In 1977, and it looks like he tried them all," she observed. "I've got a list. Alphabetically, alprazolam, clonazepam, diazepam —"

     "Just send it," Hotch cut off quickly.

     "Yes, sir."

     Everybody was walking on eggshells around Hotch. Ivy was already, since he was so uptight to begin with, but even the people who had been working with him for years were wary of his attitude.

     "His doctor weaned him off the prescription for a reason. Now, that's a big risk, so the reward must have been greater," said Morgan, driving the discussion more toward the mystery of why Call was even off of his medication to begin with.

     "He needs the truth," Emily realized, looking back at Morgan.

     "He took his file. He's got some answers," Rossi said gravely.

     "And a head start," Reid added.

     "Well, we need to catch up," Hotch said tensely, not taking his eyes off of the board he was staring at.

     Ivy and Rossi both took seats at the table, and Ivy reached over and grabbed one of the pens that was sitting on the table out of habit. She clicked it a few times, running over in her mind what they could be missing. Of course, it would get her nowhere since the beginning of his childhood was such a mystery.

     JJ returned and handed them each a copy of a file that they had just received from child services. Mitchell also returned with her after having made the necessary calls to Fayette County. Ivy opened her folder and started to scan through the first few pages to see if there was anything at all on the pages that could be of use.

     "Records from child services have him extremely psychically abused. No signs of sexual assault,"  JJ explained as they all flipped through the records in question.

     "That's a miracle," Garcia remarked.

     "Either way, the trauma was debilitating," Reid said.

     "Was he running from an abusive home or an abduction?" Rossi inquired.

     "Wouldn't there be a paper trail if it were a kidnapping?" Mitchell asked in response to Rossi's question.

     Hotch took this suggestion and ran with it. "Garcia, look for unsolved missing children's cases from the 1970s," he told her as he continued to flip through the records in his hands.

     "Now, there was a case in Hollow Creek. Kids were dead, though. Found them in pieces," Mitchell remembered, looking away at the tabletop absently as he described it.

     "When was this?"

     "'75. Nobody talks about it 'cause they never found the guy. You think Call walked away from that?"

     "It's possible," Hotch confirmed with a slight nod. "Garcia, send me everything."

     "Done," Garcia said.

     Hotch looked up at the lieutenant and asked him, "Can you find the case file?"

     "I'll do what I can," he agreed.

     Ivy clicked her pen a few times and grabbed one of the yellow notepads that was sitting on the table. She began to write down everything she knew about Call. The pharmacy murder, the things they noticed in his apartment, anything. It helped her a little bit to write it down. She was far more used to that since all she had been doing for months was write up profiles for practice.

     A few minutes later, Mitchell returned with two boxes full of files and evidence regarding the case that he had brought up. "Is there a suspect list?" JJ asked as he set the boxes on the table.

     "It's in here somewhere," he replied, taking one box off the top to set next to the other one.

     "He was known as the Hollow Creek Killer. Three bodies were found, some never identified," Reid explained, having done his own light research while Mitchell had gone off to find the case files for them. Ivy jotted down the information on the notepad in front of her on a separate sheet. Her eyes scanned down the pages, trying to make a connection.

     JJ leaned over to look at what Reid was reading off of the computer in front of him and cringed at what she saw. "Oh, god, he used lime to dispose —" she began, shaking her head, but was interrupted by more information.

     "There's a survivor," Reid read off.

     "Call?" Rossi asked, hoping for what would have been the easy answer.

     "No, a twelve-year-old boy named Tommy Phillips," he answered, eyes scanning the webpage at what seemed like an impossible rate. "Parents said he'd been missing for two weeks, came back a different kid."

     "Of course he did."

     "Let's see, the family left Louisville after Tommy told the police where to find the bodies," Reid continued. "He also said the suspect was a white man in his thirties and drove a red pickup truck."

     "We need to find Tommy," Hotch said immediately once Reid was finished reading the information out to everyone.

     "He'd be forty-six now. His parents probably changed his name and got as far away as possible," Rossi pointed out as he grabbed a few files out of the box nearest him to look through.

     Ivy shook her head as she wrote down a few more sentences regarding the murders. "Not only that, but the chances that Tommy wants to revisit all of that trauma...unlikely," she added.

     "Garcia can find him," Hotch countered, already pulling his phone out to call Garcia once again.

     "Don't get your hopes up," Rossi cautioned, exchanging a short glance with Ivy while she looked up from her notepad. They were on the same page, but Hotch clearly didn't want to believe what they were trying to tell him. While Hotch explained to Garcia what kind of information they needed, Reid proceeded to look at what the victims of the Hollow Creek Killer had gone through.

     "The victims had cuts," he explained.

     "The stock boy's blade is what set him off in the pharmacy," JJ pointed out. "If this is what Call's been running from, it's no wonder he's blocked it out."

     "Well it would explain why he wanted his medication so desperately earlier," Ivy said, jotting down a few more things and drawing lines between the things that seemed to have a connection. She leaned back in her chair. "He wanted answers, but what he remembered horrified him instead. Then he gets defensive because he's re-living all these repressed memories."

     "Since he's clean now, there's no medication to block his memories and he wants answers," Reid confirmed, repeating what they had theorized. "Where would he go?"

     Hotch paused and stepped over to the side of the table where most of them were either reading through files or writing things down. "To what he knows," he replied as he fiddled with his phone, presumably not getting much from Garcia in regards to Tommy Phillips as Rossi and Ivy had predicted.

     "He doesn't know anything," Mitchell jumped in. "That's the problem."

     "He's beginning to," Hotch explained. "1975, Sterner Orphanage. It's where he became Darrin Call."

     Ivy stayed back at the station to try and find anything more on Call while Rossi, Hotch, and Emily responded to the orphanage with Mitchell. Not much more than ten minutes later, Ivy received a call from Emily while she was in the middle of piecing together the parts of Call's past that they knew for sure with JJ and Reid.

     "Call got here before us, he's still on the move. But now, he's abducted a kid from the orphanage, called him Tommy," she explained. "Hotch wants us to dig into Call's past while the police search for the kid."

     "Okay, got it. I'll let the others know," Ivy replied quickly, standing up from her seat to look into the boxes with the Hollow Creek Killer files inside. There had to be something more in there.

     "We're on our way back," Emily added quickly, before they both hung up. Time was of the essence now that there was an abduction involved, especially a child abduction.

"Call went to the orphanage and abducted a little boy, but he called him Tommy," Ivy announced to the others as she rifled through the papers. "The police are out looking for the kid, but Hotch wants us digging into Call's past."

"He called him Tommy?" Reid asked, leaning forward on his hand in thought. "That basically confirms what we thought about him being a victim of the Hollow Creek Killer. He knew who Tommy was."

"The question is where would he go now that he's found Tommy? Back to where the killer took them? Somewhere he thinks is safe for the both of them?" Ivy questioned, pacing back at forth as she looked through missing children reports and confirmations of the bodies that they had found because of Tommy.

Before anyone could answer her, Emily, Rossi, and Hotch entered the police station and wasted no time in joining them at the table. Hotch was already all over the files, a new kind of hard determination in his eyes while Emily and Rossi seemed a little unsure of this course of action.

"So what do we know?" Hotch began, figuring that an extensive review would be the most useful to them at that moment.

"There were only four suspects in the Hollow Creek case and they're all dead," Rossi answered as he flipped the page of a file, presumably the suspects list.

"The kids were taken in 1973, '74, and '75," Emily listed as she opened the box next to Ivy and started to go through it.

"And all on the way home from school," Reid added, not glancing up from the file he was looking at. Everything had become spread out among them when they decided to try and just focus on Call's history.

"Different school districts," JJ pointed out from where she was looking at the map on a different board.

"He waited for them to be alone," Hotch concluded, looking up from the file that he had been staring at for the past couple of minutes.

"That takes patience. He must have had time off in the afternoons," Emily added while she thumbed through the files of a new box that the police had provided them with after Hotch notified them that they needed everything they had related to Call and the Hollow Creek case.

"He lived or worked near the schools," Hotch continued.

"That's a lot of doors to knock on," Morgan said, flipping the page of the file in his hand.

"You think Call's going back there?" Rossi questioned, glancing back at Morgan.

"I think there's a good chance," Hotch confirmed.

"It makes sense, like Reid said — victims are more likely to return to the site of their first trauma," Ivy agreed, setting aside the file she had been looking through and shuffling through a few more files to see what they were labelled as.

"I'll tell Mitchell," JJ said, stepping away from the board to let Mitchell know that they had a clearer idea of where Call might be headed.

"Where's the secondary location?" Morgan asked, stepping away from the table where they were going through files and closer to the boards they had set up. "He needed seclusion to do what he did."

The phone on the table interrupted that thought as Hotch pressed the button and said, "Go ahead, Garcia. You're on speaker."

"I found Tommy. He goes by James Thomas Anderson now," she revealed. Everyone's heads perked up at once at those words, even JJ who was on the phone with Mitchell.

"Is he local?" Emily asked.

"One county over. Address and bio are coming...now," she confirmed.

"Thanks Garcia," Hotch said as he hung up the phone. "Prentiss and I will go see Tommy, the rest of you keep working here."

__________

They were hitting a lot of walls, running into the same information. The same information that kept leading them somewhere, only to have just a few missing elements that didn't give them the entire picture. It took a while for Hotch and Emily to get back, but when they did it was exactly the kind of break that they needed.

"His own kid?" Rossi was saying after Hotch and Emily had recounted to them exactly what had happened after they returned from talking to Tommy. Ivy swayed in her chair, eyebrows furrowed. "No wonder he was never claimed."

It did make sense. That was one of the biggest holes in the story — why he never had any records before six years old, why nobody ever reported a missing child, why he was never claimed when he was found on the side of that road.

"How did the father explain that his son just disappeared?" Reid asked as he returned to his seat, maneuvering his crutches around the table.

"Could have said he ran away," Morgan suggested, standing next to the table where most of them were sitting now.

"The mother would have reported him missing," JJ replied, looking up at Morgan from where she was sitting at the edge of the table.

"Maybe he said the boy died," Emily reasoned, fiddling with her hair in thought.

"She'd want a funeral," JJ assured her.

Ivy clicked her pen a few times and shook her head. "Maybe that's the thing," she spoke up, leaning forward to look at her copy of the Hollow Creek file again. "Maybe, there wasn't a mother in the picture. It would definitely give the guy the ability and freedom to carry out the murders."

"Morgan, call Garcia. Ask her to check death records from 1969 to 1975," Hotch said, silently agreeing with her take on the situation. It filled her with slight gratification that she was doing things right.

Morgan was already pulling his phone out of his pocket as he asked, "For who?"

"For the mother," Hotch answered, nodding at Ivy subtly. Morgan stepped to the side and started to talk to Garcia while the rest of them continued through the pile of records. Anything in there could tell them who the Hollow Creek Killer was. And in turn, that could tell them where Call was headed.

A few minutes later, Morgan stepped back to the table where the group was working and held out his phone. "Guys," he alerted.

"Okay, so Doris Jarvis was married to Bill Jarvis. He owned a machine shop just outside the city," Garcia informed them.

"That could be the secondary location," Reid suggested.

"It closed in 1980. He hasn't done anything since," she continued. "I guess he laid low. He had a red pickup until 1976 when he bought a black one. I know that because that's what he was driving when he was arrested for DUIs. He was locked up from '77 to '80. And I'm sending his picture now."

The computer that Reid had been using made a notification sound and Emily leaned over to look at the image that had just arrived. "And that could certainly be Darrin Call's father," she pointed out, based on looks alone. It only added to all of the details that made it seem more and more like he was the Hollow Creek Killer.

"Where's Jarvis now?" Hotch asked, eyebrows pinched into a scowl. He had been tense the entire time, but now that they were close to finding Call it seemed to get worse.

"In the same house. 1457 Hitchens Avenue," Garcia told him.

"Let's go," Hotch ordered, and everyone except for JJ and Reid stood up from their seats and exited the police station quickly.

Ivy had barely been out in the field, and a little bit of nervous energy was coming for her again as they piled into SUVs. As she strapped on her kevlar vest, she thought about how grateful she was to have it at least this time. Last time, an active shooter had every opportunity to gun down both her and Reid. They had notified Mitchell on their way there so that he could deploy his teams in case things went south when they were trying to talk Call down.

They arrived at the address that Garcia had given them and exited the cars. While Ivy was fidgeting with her earpiece, her feet hit the pavement as she witnessed police positioning themselves around the residence. She followed Emily over to Mitchell, assuming that Hotch would want her to follow Emily's lead on this one unless he said otherwise.

"Lieutenant," Emily greeted as she finished putting in her own earpiece.

"The kid's in there. We've got this," he said. "Tactical teams are covering the exits."

"Call needs a distraction," she told him, making a few adjustments to her earpiece while Ivy watched as the tactical team finished positioning themselves.

"He's focused on the old man," the lieutenant said simply.

"For now. But we're gonna have to figure out the safest way to get that kid out," Emily explained. Ivy couldn't help but feel a little exhausted listening to him in that moment. He called them in, she thought, so why wouldn't he listen to what they had to say regarding an unstable situation such as this?

"I've got a team in the back and one on the way. We're gonna infiltrate," he stated confidently.

"You do that and someone else dies," Emily replied bluntly.

"Either Call or a child murderer — flip a coin."

Ivy looked toward him incredulously. "Are you forgetting that there's a child in there? What happens if it's him?" she pointed out before she even realized she was saying it. Emily didn't look like she disapproved of her wording exactly, but she did add on to what Ivy was saying.

"It doesn't have to end like that," Emily said. "We get a confession out of Jarvis and he goes away, and Call gets his answers. No one else has to die."

Before Mitchell could reply to Emily's very sound reasoning, all three of them were distracted by Hotch walking right past them at a brisk pace with no kevlar vest on.

"Hotch," Emily said, trying to get his attention. She was swiftly ignored as he walked right past the tactical teams in front of the house. She stepped forward a few times, but stopped herself once he had passed the teams and continued to ignore her. "Hotch! Hotch!"

"What the hell is he doing?" Morgan burst out from a little ways down the street, quickly stepping forward in means to stop him. Ivy looked between them, unsure of what to do. Rossi put his arms out to stop Morgan despite being in the middle of putting on his own kevlar vest.

"Let him go," Rossi told him, and that made even less sense to Ivy. Hotch had reached the sidewalk to the house and was passing through the gates to get to the porch.

"Rossi, I'm not letting him go in there alone!" Morgan exclaimed, looking at him in utter confusion. Out of everyone, Ivy thought that Morgan was the only one having a proper reaction to this.

"We have to trust him," Rossi said, continuing to hold Morgan back.

Trust him? Sure, Ivy hadn't been on the team long. Sure, she hadn't been in the field much at all. And sure, most of what she knew came more so from training and studying rather than experience. But she was almost certain that this wasn't something that was supposed to be happening. She glanced over at Morgan with raised eyebrows and he shook his head a little.

Hotch had reached the porch and disappeared into the house without any sort of indication to the people inside that he was coming in. Ivy stood there in shock and looked at Emily, who looked just as confused and shocked as she did.

Unfortunately, there was not much for them to do but sit there and wait. It was too late to go in themselves, lest they agitate the situation even further, and Hotch didn't have anything on him that he could use to communicate with them.

"What's he doing?" Emily asked, while they all automatically assumed defensive positions outside along the perimeter just in case something did go wrong.

"Stalling," Rossi replied.

"He's got nothing to lose," Morgan added, his tone tense.

A few minutes later, Hotch appeared in the window that was on the front door of the house. Shortly after, Call appeared right next to him. Mitchell went over the radio to ask if anyone on his team had a good shot, but they couldn't find one. It was mostly because Hotch turned around, blocking Call from their sights.

Moments later, the kidnapped boy slipped through the door and SWAT met him in the yard instantly, ushering him to safety. That, at least, was a relief.

"Let's get Hotch out of there," Emily said over the radios that they had wired to their headsets.

"That's his call," Rossi said.

A few more moments passed and they continued to wait in bated breath for anyone at all to emerge from the house. But suddenly, a few gunshots rang out and everyone sprung into action immediately. Rossi and Morgan were on the heels of a few SWAT officers that were waiting to breach the house. Ivy, Emily, and Mitchell were right behind them with a few SWAT officers as well.

Everyone piled into the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, guns drawn. Hotch was handcuffing Call and Jarvis was dead in a chair that sat in front of the television.

"What happened?" Mitchell demanded.

"I couldn't stop him," Hotch answered simply. The minute he was done putting the handcuffs on Call, he exited the house swiftly. A SWAT officer stood near Call and held his shoulder and Emily was quick to follow Hotch out of the house.

Ivy lowered her gun and slowly put it back in her holster.

"It's over," Rossi said.

"For now," Morgan agreed. Ivy looked between both of them, really just wanting to ask if any of that was even allowed. But she just left the house, not really wanting to stare at Call or a dead Jarvis much longer.

The next couple of hours was filled with crowds of police, finishing out analysis of the crime scene, and then heading back to the police station. Packing everything up and heading to the airport all felt like a blur to her. She couldn't tell if it was just because she was tired, or if it was something else.

She was sitting by one of the windows in the jet, staring out of it while they prepared to take off. Hotch had retreated to a corner silently, and nobody said anything to him about what had happened earlier. Morgan's words reverberated in her mind over and over again. He's got nothing to lose.

Nobody else seemed to be very bothered by anything that had happened, and if they were they certainly weren't showing it. Before she could go further down that train of thought, someone sat down in the seat across from her after the plane took off.

"You're quiet," Morgan observed as he settled into the seat. Maybe she had drawn in a bit since they had wrapped up the case. Ivy simply shrugged at his comment. He leaned in a little bit so his next words couldn't be heard by everyone else so easily. "Look, no matter what Rossi says, Hotch was out of line. I know that you know that, and you aren't crazy for thinking it."

Ivy shifted in her seat a little and met his eyes. It was like he had read her mind, and then she had to remind herself that she was literally working with a group of profilers now. She was a profiler now. Those were words that felt foreign to her.

"I just think we should be looking out for him," she said, not really sure how to sum it all up. If something like that happened again, the outcome might not be something that is as easily dismissible as this. The context might not be as convenient for Hotch. And as much as she felt like he didn't like her, it was clear that the others believed in him.

"And I agree," Morgan said, nodding a little bit as he leaned back in his seat slightly. His eyes scanned her face again. "But, come on, I can tell that something else is going on in that head of yours."

Ivy paused for a moment and sighed. "It's just, these last few cases, I just keep thinking about if I belong here or not," she admitted, a little uncomfortable now that she admitted it out loud. "I mean, maybe the field is too intense for me, maybe I can't handle it."

Morgan shook his head immediately upon hearing her words. "Ivy, you joined the team at a bad time," he said, Ivy furrowing her eyebrows in confusion. "There's a lot going on and none of it is exactly typical. The cases you've been on in the field have not been normal. Not only that, but you had a desk job before this. You're adjusting during an especially stressful time for this team. But believe me when I tell you that you will be just fine. Got me?"

Ivy smiled a little bit at his reassurance and nodded, albeit reluctantly. "Thanks, Morgan."

"Anytime."