Coffee, Tea // Spencer Reid

Chapter 9 - Tattoo

Spencer

As she unlocked the door, he followed her in.

The place, although home to corpses, had a comforting, clean smell. Everything was so silent, and the walls were so white. Just the kind of environment the young doctor liked.

From the corner of his eye, he spotted Miss Park signalling for him to approach the door.

"In here." She whispered, as if she might bother the corpses.

They were now standing in the operation room.

"Okay, so now what?" She asked.

"Bring out the bodies, please."

Lilith

She observed the young man as he carefully inspected the corpses. She was impressed that he barely flinched when he came in contact with them, but she remembered that he was an FBI agent after all. He didn't touch the corpses, as she had asked, not like other reckless police agents.

"Um... Doctor Park?"

The young woman walked over to the man.

"What's wrong?"

"Could you please look through the hair of the victims? I don't have gloves on."

As soon as he had asked, Lilith realised why Dr Reid had requested this. That was the one place where they didn't look through.

She immediately paced toward the first corpse, and executed herself. As she combed through the hair with her gloved fingers, she saw it. A tiny gasp left her.

The man looked over her shoulder to see what she had uncovered.

"A tattoo." He said.

The doctor didn't seem surprised, as if he had expected it. The pair moved onto the body of the second corpse, and then the third. All three had a tattoo, right on their scalp, hidden underneath their hair. Doctor Reid gave a small victory smile.

"Finally, something." He seemed relieved. It was at that moment that Lilith saw the bags under his eyes, and she realised he probably hadn't slept. She admired the passion he had for his work, and how thorough he was. The young woman turned her back to him, and faced the corpse before saying,

"It looks like Jordan skipped a step."

"I'm not surprised. He was probably so focused on the gunshot wound he didn't think there would be something else on the head. I can't quite tell what the tattoo represents, though."

"I think it's a dove..." she said, squinting.

"You're right. It would make sense, considering the religious connotations of the crime scene, with the Bible extract." He muttered, almost to himself.

"There was a bible extract on the scene?"

"Yeah...handwritten, different in each case." The doctor said, as he mentally scowled himself for disclosing details of the case.

"Well, have you tried analysing the handwriting? Or have you tried to read the extract and link it with each body? It might give clues on what they did to get killed."

"You could really work for the BAU, you know." Doctor Reid said, baffled.

She turned around to smirk at him, forgetting that he was just behind her. Suddenly, there was practically no space between them. The proximity made her pink cheeks go red, as she extracted herself from where she was stuck, between him and the operation table.

He seemed just as flustered as her, averting her gaze.

"We should get going." She said, flinging her bag on her shoulder.

"Yeah."