Chapter Text
Got tired of writing so TLDR: this takes place in oregon? They discovered thanks to Garcia a few men who used this online viewing system of torture/kidnapping films.
Girls kept disappearing in connection with these films.
She sent out an email loosely advertising a similar thing to the people of interest. Three opened the attachment with one attempting to download it but getting hit with a virus.
They had gone to two other persons of interest in the area of the disappearances but found nothing of note. The third and final house they pulled up to was on a quiet street. The houses were nice, if a little ordinary. No kids were out playing and the sky had grown overcast as if waiting to rain. They made their way up the short driveway to the front porch passing a small weathered motorcycle on its side near the garage.
They knocked at the door and a slight woman no more than 35 opened it. She looked tired but greeted them with a smile. “Hi, how can I help you two?”
“Hey!” Emily started, returning the smile. “We’re with the FBI. We were wondering if Thad was around? We're investigating a string of targeted internet virus attacks.”
“Oh he's not here right now, but please come in.” The woman stepped aside to let Emily and JJ enter. The house was warm and a bit cluttered. She gestured to the couch in the living room.
“I'll ask that you stay in the living room right now.” She said glancing around. “The house is a mess and he'd hate it if he knew there were visitors seeing it like this.”
They chatted for a bit and confirmed that the woman was Thad’s wife, Diane and they’d been married five years. As Emily glanced around for any objects of interest in the room, JJ asked questions about what Thad did for work and as hobbies. They found out he owned a boat at the nearby harbor.
Diane mused, “I’m not sure what it looks like. He keeps saying he's fixing it up and doesn't want to show it to me until it's ready. Oh well.” She sighed, “He’s hardly ever romantic like that anymore.”
Emily's eyebrows raised when she heard this. She knew withdrawal could be a sign of his involvement in the murders. “If you don’t mind me asking, was there a point in time where his behavior shifted?”
“Well come to think of it, it's been a couple–no three years now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Emily reached out to place her hand on top of Diane’s. Glancing outside she turned to JJ. “It looks like it’ll start pouring any second. We’ll get out of your hair.”
All three women stood up, Diane ushering them towards the front door they’d come in just shy of 30 minutes earlier.
“Well Diane, thank you for taking the time to talk with us.” JJ gave her a warm smile. “Please give us a call if you think of anything you want to tell us”. She placed a small white business card in the woman's hand and closed the door behind them.
Both women walked back down the driveway to the car in pensive silence. Upon reaching the car ensuring they were out of earshot of the house, Emily cleared her throat.
“Did you see what she was wearing? That looked like the sweater described that went missing with Claire.”
“Yeah. I also saw what looked like the other missing girl’s pants in that laundry pile in the hallway when we came in.” JJ replied, climbing into the passenger seat.
“I'm suspicious.” Emily turned the key in the ignition. “He could be keeping the girls on the boat if he doesn't want her to see it. I'm no expert but I don't think it takes decades to fix a boat.”
They made their way back to the station and informed the rest of the team on the situation. Right away Hotch asked Morgan to get a warrant after JJ and Emily informed them of the clothing articles they’d seen.
Morgan walked the short block over to the courthouse to get the warrant. It was a small town and he knew the judge would be there at least in his office. He was nervous because he hadn't met this judge before and hoped the process would go smoothly. It didn’t help that all the sheriff’s office had on hand was a controlled substance warrant form. He had filled out an affidavit at the station citing the suspects name and that they wanted to search the house after seeing the clothes down the hallway. The judge skimmed with his pen, saying he’d fix any issues with the warrant. A mere ten minutes later he sent Morgan quickly on his way with the completed document.
Spencer and Hotch went to surveil the house and see when Thad would get home. They also hoped to follow him to the boat. He, Garcia admitted, rather cleverly must have bought the boat in cash so no record remained. They sat there hidden from view watching the driveway as the rain began to come down. They called in to JJ and Emily back at the station intermittently to update. They were working with Garcia to try to find more leads or information on Thad. As they relayed for the second time that nothing interesting had happened, inspiration struck JJ.
“Wait, is the motorcycle still there in the front yard?”
Spencer turned to look at the house. There was light coming from the inside indicating DIane hadn’t left, but the yard was vacant. It was just a knoll of grass and an unassuming one car garage. “What motorcycle?”
“When Emily and I were there earlier today we saw a motorcycle on its side. It could belong to the unsub.”
As if on cue Thad pulled up on the motorcycle laying it on its side in the driveway as it had been before. It seemed to be missing a kickstand, Spencer noted to himself. Perhaps it was stolen.
As Morgan texted saying he was on the way with the warrant, Spencer unmuted the call. “Hey Em, can you link Garcia on this call?”
There was a brief silence on the line and then, “This is she.”
“Hey Garcia, can you run the plates on this motorcycle? He just pulled up to the house,” Spencer asked, listing off the numbers.
“I’m on it!”
“Hey, call if you need back up” JJ interjected. “I got the update from Morgan.”
Morgan and Hotch got out of their respective cars and made their way up the driveway.
Spencer stayed behind under the guise of hearing what Garcia found.
They knocked on the door and Diane opened it tentatively with a strained look on her face. “Hi, can I help you?”
Hotch glanced past her. It didn’t seem like Thad was in earshot. “Hi I’m Agent Hotchner and this is Agent Morgan. We’re with the FBI. We were wondering if we can take a look around.”
“Here. We have a warrant.”
“Come in. I believe I met two of your colleagues earlier today. He’s finishing up a shower. He just got home from work.”
Hotch made his way to the laundry pile picking up the pants JJ had mentioned earlier. “Diane I know this is a strange question but are these new?”
“Oh um. Yes they are. Thad got them for me. He’s always going out shopping. Insists I;; spend money on useless clothing.
As they sorted through the pile, Morgan noticed the shower was still running. As he walked further down the halfway to the bathroom he called out, “THad, when you're done in there we’d like to talk.”
He heard banging and what sounded like shampoo bottles falling over from inside the bathroom.
He pushed (kicked) open the door in time to see Thad slipping out the window.
Morgan climbed up to the window as he called out to Hotch to go around the front. He made his way quickly around the side of the house, on THad’s tail. He worried Thad would make it to the motorcycle before he could catch up to him but that worry quickly vanished as Spencer who had gone to look at the storage compartment on the bike tripped Thad.
Catching up to Thad, Morgan cuffed him. As he patted him down he found a keyring with a boat key on it.
Morgan looked over at Spencer with surprise. “What are you doing out here?”
“Garcia told me the bike had been stolen. He didn't seem to care that much about it so I figured it might be. I found this though.” He produced a magazine and pamphlet with numbers and sites advertising violent kidnapping shit.
Hotch had done a sweep of the house not finding much else. He joined the others outside in the yard with the missing girls’ clothes in evidence bags.
Morgan started guiding a resistant Thad to the back of his car. When he saw Hotch come out with the bags he said, “Hey you can’t take those! Oh who cares you’ll never find them anyways.”
Back at the station Morgan mirandized him and tried to question him about the girl's disappearances. Much to his better judgment he wanted to lawyer up.
As the 48 hours were running out Thad was n’t showing any indication of wanting to talk. The team was worried about finding any of the remaining girls who might be alive. Suddenly there was a call from the harbor. A girl had come up to the boat house disoriented asking for help.
The team met her at the hospital where she waited to be reunited with her family. She had just started at Oregon State and had been missing a week.
When she was medically cleared and lucid, JJ and EMily asked if it was ok to speak with her. She accepted.
“What were you able to see? Did you get a good look at him?”
“There was one time he thought I was asleep and he came downstairs to tinker on some weird torture contraption.” She went on to paint a gruesome picture of the conditions she’d been kept in.
There was one exposed bulb that hung overhead and would rock back and forth with the boat.
During the daytime light could come through the two portholes. He was down there for what must have been 30 minutes. She described him having dark hair with a beard and scar above his eyebrow. I remember at one point he muttered to himself, “where are my glasses?”
“Look I know this might be difficult for you as it's so recent but could you take a look at some of these photos and see if you recognize any of these men as the person that took you?”
“Sure.”
She flipped through the stack of photos pulled off the website. She sorted through quickly, confidently stopping on the photo of one of the suspects. It was Thad.
“That's him. I’m sure of it.” She stated, placing it down on the table in front of Emily and JJ.
Later he would try to argue it was unnecessarily rigged but the photos contained all sorts of men and even some women.
They were able to find the other girls and the boat where he kept them with the key and the use of thermal imaging as they flew over the harbor in a helicopter.