memento vivere - supernatural & criminal minds

chapter 3

Chapter 3
Enter Sandman

Slessman’s wooden bed frame cut into Jude’s back as she sat on the ground against it, scanning his bookshelves for the dozenth time. She wasn’t even sure the rows of titles could help anymore, but there was a comfortable monotony to the repetition of the words. Elle and most of the team had gone with Slessman to the field office, leaving only Jude and Morgan in the house to handle the password. Slessman’s grandmother and sister had been brought in as well after Hotch and Gideon realized that their conflicting profile was caused by a second unsub - they hoped Slessman’s family could guide them to a suspect.

“Anything clicking over there?” Morgan called from across the room.

“Not a damn thing,” Jude grunted, pushing to her feet. “There’s gotta be an easier way to do this. Call Penelope.”

Their technical analyst picked up on the first ring and Morgan put her on speaker. “You’ve reached Penelope Garcia in the FBI’s Office of Supreme Genius,” she chirped.

“Hey, it’s Morgan and Wesson,” Morgan greeted. “We need you to work us some magic here. We’ve got a program called Deadbolt Defense and a girl with only a couple of hours left to live, so what do you know?”

“You’ve got a problem. Deadbolt’s the number one crack-resistant software out there. You’re gonna have to get inside this guy’s head to get the password.”

“Hang on, Pen,” Jude leaned closer to the phone. “I thought this was the Office of Supreme Genius.”

“Sorry, sweetheart. You’ve been rerouted to the Office of Too Friggin’ Bad.”

“Thanks anyway,” Morgan hung up and leaned back over the computer.

“Staring at that number won’t get us anywhere,” Jude said. “We’re gonna have to rummage through Slessman’s stuff. I’ll keep chipping away at the bedroom. We can work our way up to the attic.” 

When Morgan was gone, Jude stood in the doorway to get a full view of the space. She searched for anything identifiably important among the science dioramas and academic medals. Her eyes fell on a stuffed CD rack and the precarious stacks of disks near the CD player on Slessman’s desk. The amount was almost obsessive. 

“Wesson,” Morgan knocked on the doorframe and held up an orange pill bottle. “Insomnia medication, he has trouble sleeping. What’s something he’d do when he’s trying to fall asleep?”

“How about what you do on the jet?” Jude nodded to the collection. “Listen to music.”

Morgan released a low whistle. “That’s a lot of CDs.”

“If we figure out which one is his favorite, it could help. Artists and songs are pretty common passwords.”

Morgan called to the few agents still spread throughout the house. “We’re going through every one of these CDs - scratches, wear and tear. I wanna know which CD he plays the most.”

***

As it turned out, the CD he played the most was all of them. Spencer rejoined them at the house about half an hour into the venture, and now he and Jude were the only two still working on the theory. Morgan had abandoned them to scrounge around in the attic and taken the laptop with him. This left Spencer on Slessman’s bed surrounded by piles of open CD cases and Jude on the ground in a similar position. 

In the meantime, the rest of the team had discovered their second unsub - Timothy Vogel. He was a guard at the prison where Slessman had been incarcerated and had protected him from the other inmates. He also had a set of Datsun Z keys on his belt.