My Own Backyard

Summary: Part of the team is on a routine interview when something goes awry. Now they've discovered a serial killer that no one knew about, and are intent to find who it is.

Legality: I do not own anything Criminal Minds, I am just borrowing the universe and characters to tell a story.

Prologue

The desert sands clung to and insulated the day's heat even after the sun rolled behind the distant hills and the sky faded to dark, lit only by the glow of the white moon.

She stepped tentatively on the soft ground, feeling the warmth of the sand contrast the cold breeze on her wet nose. The smell of food alerted her and she shared a glance with her partner. Together they navigated the hill of a sand dune and beside the bushes lay a red fire that was slowly cooling into coals. A human girl sat hunched in a chair and the two froze. The breeze flitted past her nostrils again, and carried the scent of the human's food, the human's skin, the human's hair, the human's clothes, and the human's death.

The two coyotes crept through the bushes then and nipped up the bits of hot dog, burned by the dying fire, the faint glow of which illuminated the dead human's face. She looked like all the sleeping ones, though her face was not as serene, and she gave no breath.

A rustle in the bushes close to the horizon alerted the two dogs that a rabbit was stirring, and they began the real hunt to feed their young. They abandoned the human and let the desert take her back as eventually it takes all life back into its hot sand and cold night air, washing only the remains in the moon's white glow until the crows pick even those apart.

Such is the way of the desert.

Chapter One

"I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods."

-Wendell Berry

The plane rattled and dipped again, the turbulence shaking the three FBI agents harshly.

"Can we please go over what we're going to do when we get to Folsom Prison one more time?" Emily Prentiss rested the temple of her head on one hand while the other hand held to the arm of the chair tightly.

"We've already been over it twice, Em. Why do it again? Are you really that nervous about meeting him?" Derek Morgan smirked to show he chose to suffer the wrath of the plane with more grace than the other two, putting on his calm façade and allowing his body to move smoothly with the jolting cabin.

"No, I think she just wants to think about something other than the movement of the plane. Concentrating on something else will let her ignore the sea-sick feeling." Spencer Reid pushed his thick black and wire frames back up the bridge of his nose with his knuckle, as he set down his book to chase his sparkling water across the table in front of him again, fizzy bits of carbonation popping over the glass as it moved. "Plus, I kind of think it's a good idea to make sure we're thoroughly prepared. Mr. Dow is really well-known for his, uh, mind games."

"What he said." Emily added before closing her eyes again. "So, again, why am I coming along? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to go somewhere without dead people, but I thought doing interviews of the already convicted was Rossi's game?"

"Yeah, but Rossi is the one who caught Jonathon Dow," Morgan said as he caught Reid's sliding glass for him and handed to the boy genius. "Dow doesn't talk to him, or any men, actually. Something about having mother issues."

"You left that part out before. So, I'm going to get him talking, Reid's going to analyze his riddles and you're going to, what, flash him the grin that says 'I don't have to kill women to get with them'?"

"Oh, c'mon Em, is that really all you think I'm good for? It just so happens I'm also going to be intimidating him with my impressive guns."

"Wait," Spencer jumped in, "they don't let us take firearms into the interrogation room."

Morgan laughed, "Not those guns, kid."

Even Emily cracked a smile at that one, and ruffed up young Spencer's already tousled hair. She opened her mouth to speak, but before her snappy comeback could reach her lips there was a loud popping sound just outside the private airplane, followed by a lurch to the side, and the three agents fell over themselves in their chairs as the cabin bobbed and rolled.

A crackle came over the intercom followed by a soothing man's voice saying, "Ah, this is your pilot speaking. We, ah, have been experiencing a lot of turbulence, as I'm sure you've noticed, and in the grip of it seemed to, ah, caught a bird in one of the engines. We'll be doing a quick emergency landing in the desert now, so, ah, just stay calm, buckle in, and let's get this girl on the ground. Hold on, now." The speaker crackled again and went quiet; a quiet which was missed under the sounds of the rattling and shaking cabin.

All three team members were now holding on to their respective chairs, searching for the seat belts buried below the cushions, lost from lack of use. Derek Morgan held on to his chair with one strong arm, and efficiently dug for the missing belt with the other. Succeeding first at the task, he buckled his belt and leaned over to help a slightly panicked Emily Prentiss clasp her belt together, as she was fairly preoccupied with hanging on to the chair itself.

Across the table from them, Spencer Reid had let go of everything but the belts, and bounced out and back into his chair repeatedly as he used both hands to attempt fastening the puzzle of the buckle, seemingly unaffected by the plane's motions.

The sound of wind rushed past the windows as the plane tilted nose-down quickly, moving all stomachs on board to their body's throat. The plane began to rock, jolt, and thrash again as it leveled back out, before dropping again and repeating the process a few times over.

Instinctively, Prentiss reached for Morgan's hand and clasped it tightly, closing her eyes. In response, Morgan put his other hand over hers as a sign of comfort and reassurance. Reid tried taking a sip of his drink, though most of it ended up on his chin and shirt.

"Would anyone like to hear statistics on emergency landings?" Reid called to the other two over the roaring plane as he wiped his face with the back of his hand. This was a new, polite technique he was trying out, to ask before rambling off facts.

"NO!" They both yelled back.

The plane hit the ground hard and rocked and shook as the wheels searched for their balance in the desert sand. They were losing momentum quickly, trying to make the huge machine stop entirely, the force of which caused the plane to drift sideways. The wing of the plane clipped a boulder that was nestled between a couple of dry bushes, and the metal lost to the rock, getting caught at first and sending the entire plane into a drifting spin.

The spinning slowed and came to a sudden stop. The body of the plane rocked once more with the inertia before rocking back and settling into stillness. At first there was nothing, and then the sound of electrics powering off went in sync with all three agents exhaling the breath they had been collectively holding.

It was over. They were fine.

The intercom cracked again with the soothing voice behind it saying, "So, this is your pilot again. That was, ah…fun. Go ahead and unbuckle those seat belts and I'll be 'round in just a moment to manually open the cabin door." It cracked back off, and footsteps could be heard from the front of the plane.

The door leading to the cockpit opened and a tall man in khaki with a matching cowboy hat and unlit cigarette dangling from his lips stepped out. "Howdy," his now familiar soothing voice said, "I'm your pilot, Jim." Turning to his left and cranking the lever on the door he said, "And this here is your, ah, emergency exit. Let's call her 'Sandy'. We'll need to go out to find help 'cause we, ah, kinda blew the radio. C'mon, now."

He threw the door open and kicked a metal rack out of it, which unfolded and became a set of almost-stable stairs down to the ground below. He clamored down them quickly.

Spencer Reid unbuckled his belt first and hopped up to be second out. Emily Prentiss and Derek Morgan moved a bit more slowly. Once up, Morgan gestured for Emily to exit first. She moved past him whispering, "Sorry. About the hand thing, I mean."

"Hey, it's okay, Prentiss. I may not show it as much as you, but planes freak me out too. Especially when they're going down." Her flashed his perfect white grin at her.

She smiled back at him and adjusted her suit coat as she moved to step off the plane, Morgan pacing right behind her.

The four gathered around the base of the metal steps and looked around the orange ground. An insect nearby filled the air with a buzzing sound, and buzzards circled an area of plain in the middle horizon. The sky was a vibrant blue, and the sun hung low in the blue over the hills and ridges. It would be dusk soon.

Morgan reached into his pocket for his cell phone and found that it had no service. Noticing this, Prentiss did the same, with the same results.

Reid, on the other hand, had gone back into the plane and reemerged with bottles of water.

"Good thinking, kid," the pilot told him. "We got a fair bit of walking to do. I noticed a road of some sort 'bout mile and a half up that way-" (he pointed the direction the nose of the plane faced) "-so let's get walking. Don't want to be out too long after dark."

And so they began to move. The four talked little and they found themselves approaching a sand dune with some bush on the other side, a faint smell of campfire in the air. Morgan led the group into the little ditch and had to stop to catch Reid and keep him from falling over. He then hopped up to the ridge and offered a hand to Reid to pull him up to greet the bush. The pilot did the same for Prentiss.

Stepping around the small brush, the team noticed a brunette girl sitting in a lawn chair.

"Well look at that," Morgan said to them, as the pilot moved around to greet the girl to her face. "Excuse me, miss?" Morgan tried.

"That just ain't right." The pilot said to no one in particular, looking down at the girl. The team moved around to see what he saw. What he saw was a girl whose eyes were missing, her flesh scarred by wild animals, and bruises around her neck.

"We seriously can't go anywhere without dead people, can we?" Prentiss commented.

"Alright, we can't just leave this girl unfound but it's going to be dark soon," Morgan immediately stepped into his management role. "We need to get up to the road and fast, so we'll have to come back for her."

"Do you…do you want me to leave trail markings?" Reid asked.

"What; like the Boy Scouts?" Reid nodded at him. "Sure, kid. Go for it."

"Here, I'll give you a hand." The pilot's voice had resumed its comforting tone, and he moved to break some branches off the bush behind the dead girl.

"Thanks." Reid grinned. "What did you say your name was, again?"

"Jim. Jim McCrae. You'll have to forgive me, but I tend to be the quiet type until somethin' keeps me from being able to hold my tongue anymore."

That was the last he said.

They gathered their sticks and stones and laid their codes before beginning the walk to the road again. Three steps on the trek, Prentiss tripped herself over some loose dirt. Morgan caught her and the two looked back at the ground, and saw a rock the size of a fist had been moved from its resting place, and below the place it had been torn was a face.

"Maybe the dead people just like to follow you, Em." Morgan said to her. She ignored him and bent down while pulling out her make-up compact, opening it to remove a blush brush. "What the hell are you doing, girl?"

Reid answered for him, "Two dead bodies this close to each other? They've got to be linked."

Gently she brushed the dirt from the face. It was decayed a great deal more than the girl in the lawn chair, the skin grey and falling from where it had once lay smooth and pink. The eyes were missing, and as Emily brushed away the dirt revealing the neck, she saw the still-distinct bruises. "We've got a serial," she announced.

"Damn," came Morgan's voice," look, what we've also got is an hour of daylight left and at least another mile to the road."

"Yeah," helped Spencer while looking out onto the plain east of the direction they headed, "and I think I see a few more of the shallow graves." Looking up, he added, "And the victors that take the spoil."

All of them looked up to the circling buzzards overhead.

"If we leave these people," Emily told the team, "those birds could destroy any and all evidence on the fresh body."

"And if we don't," Morgan answered, "it won't be a whole lot longer before we become their meal."

Defeated, she gently brushed the dirt onto the dead face in a meager attempt to hide it from the scavengers, and rose to begin walking again.

They moved steadily across the sand, sipping water sparingly, convincing themselves the heat was not so bad. The sun was moving down, and the heat of the horizon blurred the red ball as it slipped below the hills. The vibrant blue of the sky chased the star as it moved, leaving black velvet and glittering diamonds in its wake.

Dusk had fallen, and the cold came creeping in.

Ahead of the four there was a rise in the land. Down the edge of the rise was a telephone pole with one flickering green lamp growing off its side. The road was just ahead.

In the distance, something louder and more mechanical than the wind began to roar, its pitch increasing as it moved closer.

"Car!" Reid called.

"I got this," Morgan told them and ran up the embankment as distant yellow headlights grew, focused, and intensified on the side of his face. The truck must have seen him because it slowed and pulled to the side.

Reid, Prentiss, and Jim the pilot clambered up the hillside, pulling themselves to the side of the road and moving as quickly as they could to the red pickup.

A man stepped out of the cab, and moved around to greet them. "What the hell are-" he had started to ask them the question, but found himself stopping at the site of the four. He looked into Morgan's eyes, and then Prentiss's, and finally Reid's. "How did you find me?"