memento vivere - supernatural & criminal minds

chapter 38

Chapter 38
Silence of the Lambs

By midday, the non-believers were the only two in the cramped conference room. The table was littered with evidence that had Morgan sighing heavily and rubbing his temples every few seconds. Jude had been silently writing on her notepad for the better part of an hour. Her handwriting had gotten steadily more cramped the further she hunched over the paper.

"You okay?" Morgan asked by the time her nose was nearly touching the table.

A distinct crack could be heard as Jude sat up to stretch her back. "I'm about as okay as you are right now."

Morgan scoffed. "So no." Jude nodded and propped a leg on her chair, wrapping her arms around it. She yawned loudly while Morgan pulled out his buzzing phone. "It's Garcia. Do you need to step out for a second?"

"No, we're still working on a case. You and I can go cry into our drinks at some shitty bar when this is over."

"Deal." Morgan put their analyst on speaker and set the phone between them. "It's me and Wesson. What have you got for us?"

"I just sent you ten separate IDs belonging to the ten fingers found in Abbey Kelton's stomach. No two fingers belong to the same woman." This left them with eleven victims that they knew of. Jude's stomach turned as she wondered where Abbey's fingers had ended up. "Forty-plus prostitution arrests made them pretty easy to find. They worked truck stops and rest areas in counties surrounding Bridgewater."

Jude jotted this down. "So he started with victims living high-risk lifestyles and once he perfected his signature, he moved on to Abbey."

"Yup. Gotta go, bye."

"Uh uh, hang on," Jude shook her head at the phone. "We're not redoing this morning. What's going on?"

Penelope sighed. "Uh...Colby, that guy from the coffee shop, asked me out."

"Pen, that's great!" Jude smiled even though her friend couldn't see her. "When's the date?"

"I took Morgan's advice and blew him off."

"Oh, um...good," Morgan said. He seemed as shocked by that statement as Jude was. "Smart move. Something was definitely wrong with him."

Jude flicked her pen at him and mouthed, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Wow. You are some profiler. You could tell just how wrong he was from what little I told you."

"Garcia I didn't mean to–" Morgan tried to amend it, but Penelope plowed forward.

"I wonder, was it that he was too handsome or too interested in me that tipped you off on how wrong he was? You know what, Derek, just because you wouldn't cross a crowded room to hit on me doesn't mean that a more perceptive, less superficial guy wouldn't. Jude, I'll call you later."

In the silence following the static of a slammed receiver, Jude glared at Morgan over the table. "You know I didn't mean any of that."

"But you could not have possibly worded it any worse," Jude fired back. Her irritated squint lessened slightly as Prentiss entered the room with a file tucked under her arm. "Profile briefing? Great." Jude stood to go without waiting for an answer. On her way out the door, Prentiss caught her arm.

"Did something happen?" Jude gave her the short version, which ended with Prentiss shooting Morgan the same look he'd just gotten from Jude. "When a woman tells a man about her feelings, she doesn't want him to fix her. She wants him to shut up and listen." She let Jude go and the women left the room, leaving Morgan alone like a toddler in time out to think about what he had done.