Chapter Text
What does it cost to smile? Nothing. What does it cost not to smile? Everything, if not smiling prevents you from enchanting people. - Guy Kawasaki
Tor would never ignore fashion rules again. Because while she had always considered the rule about white shoes after Labor Day to be elitist bull, she was now looking down at a blood-splattered pair of white sneakers and realizing with a sinking heart that she was a week late on phasing them out of her wardrobe.
"Beauregard! You okay?" the gruff SWAT leader demanded. His tone was the wake-up call she needed, and she quickly arranged her features into a placid smile and put all thoughts of Borax out of her mind.
"Fine, sir," she replied, straightening her posture and rolling her shoulders back.
"You did good work," he admitted begrudgingly.
Your sniper interrupted my work and ruined my shoes, she thought back, still keeping her smile aloft.
"Thank you, sir," she said with a small incline of the head. Deep enough for him to see it, shallow enough for her to not risk her pride. She leaned back nonchalantly against the door of a cruiser and folded her hands at her pelvis rather than crossing them over her chest. Cool, calm, collected. The three C's that kept her in business.
"Shame I had to blast the fucker's head off," the cocky sniper said as he strolled over to them. "I was enjoying the sound of your voice."
Asshole.
"Shame we lost all the intel he could have given us," Tor replied coolly. "And a half dozen people are going to have the memory of his head exploding in their minds forever."
"At least they'll be alive to have it," the sniper said with a shrug. Tor bit her cheek to keep herself from replying. Snipers had it easy. Their targets were too far away for their faces to be the subject of nightmares. Negotiators had the curse of remembering every face until the day they died, like blood that wouldn't wash from their hands.
Or their crisp white sneakers.
"I've got paperwork," Tor said in her preferred neutral tone. She pushed off from the hood of the cruiser and headed towards the mobile command. The crunch of boots on asphalt warned her the sniper had taken her tone as something other than neutral.
"Beauregard!" he called after her. Tor glanced back, acknowledging him without stopping her clipped walk. His long legs caught up with her, and she forced her upper lip to remain uncurled.
"I wouldn't mind hearing your voice some more," he said, falling into step with her.
"I'm sure there will be plenty of meeting about what happened today, you can hear it there," she replied, colder than she meant to. But he was too full of his hot air to notice.
"Or maybe you can say a few words when they give me an award for exceptional bravery," he said with a grin like he had been the one to risk his life that day. She held back a scoff.
Control yourself, Tor. Don't give him your power.
"Wouldn't want to cut into the Director's time," she joked. De-escalate and disengage, she reminded herself. And distance. He was walking one stride to her two, but she increased her pace another half step. He matched her with ease.
"Then maybe I can hear you somewhere else," he practically crooned, leaning down so his hot breath touched her skin. Tor felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand. Felt the breath in her lungs go cold. Felt her nails dig into her palms.
"No, I don't think you will," she snapped, keeping her pace and locking eyes on the mobile command. She had spoken too loudly, and eyes were drawn to them. In an instant, her hands relaxed, and her shoulders lowered.
Don't let them see you crack.
"I saved your life!" the sniper hissed, a red flush coloring his face. Tor shot him a look and felt the right side of her lip curl into a snarl.
"If you had given me ten more minutes, we could have gotten everyone out alive," she replied, keeping her voice low and her gaze leveled at the mobile command fifteen feet away.
Fourteen.
Thirteen.
Breathe.
"Talking takes too long," he said dismissively.
"That man took a dozen people hostage and killed two others thanks to illegal guns and intel he certainly did not collect himself," Tor said harshly. "And now, instead of squeezing him for information about what his militia group is planning next, we've got a dead body and they've got a martyr."
The sniper stopped mid-step and stayed rooted to the ground as Tor continued to march away from him.
She forced air into her lungs and then forced it out again. Seven hours of negotiations. Seven hours of listening to white nationalist bullshit. Seven hours with a gun aimed at her, the sound of crying hostages echoing through the room. Seven hours with the goal of getting everyone out alive and saving future lives because of it. All for it to end with a bullet in a head, and blood on her shoes.
Forget Labor Day, she was never wearing white again.
Five.
Four.
Three.
"Shame what happened," an older woman with blonde hair and clothes too nice for field work said. Tor wiped her face of emotions and turned to face her. "You did excellent work, Agent Beauregard. Despite how it all ended."
"Thank you, ma'am," Tor said calmly, eyes darting to the badge on her chest. A section chief. What the hell was a section chief doing at a hostage situation?
"I'm Section Chief Strauss," the woman said, offering her hand. Tor shook it firmly. "How long have you been a negotiator for, Agent?"
"Four years, ma'am."
"How much longer do you want to be a negotiator?"
Tor paused before she answered. A section chief asking that question, in person, right after Tor had helped to save lives meant one thing: she was up for a promotion.
"I want to do as much good as I can, as efficiently as I can," Tor answered slowly. "If I have the opportunity to do more, I'll take it."
Strauss gave her a tight-lipped smile and nodded, clasping her hands in front of her.
"Have you ever heard of the BAU?"
Is there an agent who hasn't?
"Yes, ma'am."
"Have you considered applying?"
"I didn't know there was an opening."
"I'm making one," Strauss replied. Tor kept her face as neutral as she could considering what she thought was being said. An opening. In the BAU. That she could fill.
Don't let them see you crack.
"I would be interested in the opening, ma'am," Tor said, folding her hands before her and mimicking Strauss's level-footed stance. Anything to hide the fact that she was close to jumping with excitement. In her hundreds of negotiations with guns aimed at her, detonators waved around, even a couple of knives held to her throat, Tor had never wavered in her ability to control herself. Emotions were meant to be felt behind closed doors. But the thought of a promotion to the BAU- it was enough to make her smile, despite her attempts to keep it smothered.
Strauss noticed the quirk of her lip and nodded again.
"The BAU is in Harrisburg advising on a serial killer," she said casually. "I could have you flown out there within the hour. See if you would be a good fit with the team."
The smile nearly broke through again. Tor coughed once, taking the opportunity to cover her mouth and stretch the muscles on her face before snapping them back into neutrality. She was getting this opportunity because she was excellent at controlling both her emotions and others'. She couldn't lose her grip. Not now.
"I'm ready to go where you send me," Tor said, raising her chin, almost in defiance. Strauss approved of her projected confidence and smiled.
"I'll tell SAC Hotchner to expect you."
Forty-five minutes later, Tor was on a jet taxiing down a runway. She stared at the files Strauss had given her, analyzing them all for details. She had two hours to learn everything she could about the victims, the profile, and the team in charge of it all. Lives were on the line. As was her career.
The case was a strange one. The press had dubbed the killer "the Tooth Fairy," a moniker she suspected the BAU had told the police to encourage in hopes of emasculating the killer. But instead of responding with sloppy, rage-fueled kills riddled with mistakes, he picked up the pace of his kills without sacrificing their efficacy. One every week now. For nearly a month straight. Women were taken, and roughly twelve hours later a body was found in various semi-hidden locations around the city smothered to death. All women between the ages of twenty-five to thirty-five. All of them missing several teeth.
The profile was standard. White man, between the ages of thirty and forty-five. Strained relationship with mother. Organized and meticulous. The poor attempts at hiding the bodies suggested a counterintelligence maneuver rather than guilt, meaning he would kill until he was forced to stop. All basic, boring, and not enough to be of much use. The only thing of interest was the odontophilia diagnosis. Which wasn't surprising considering how the missing teeth were the main part of the signature. The other parts were the traces of sedatives in their blood and their pristine dental records. But all the women went to different dentists in different parts of the city. And none of them had appointments in their calendars.
There was something about the profile that bothered Tor. Most serial killers were insecure in their masculinity, killing to compensate for some deficiency. A feminine nickname like "Tooth Fairy" should have made the killer unravel, not improve his game. And the women he had killed... They had left their homes like normal, only to turn up twelve hours later without so much as a skin cell under their fingernails. There hadn't been a struggle from any of them. Which meant the unsub convinced them to go with him. That suggested confidence. Charisma. Someone who could have dealt with his sexual interest in teeth through money and charm, rather than violence. A Ted Bundy, not a Footpath Killer.
So why did he start killing?
She glanced at the date on her phone and felt her body recoil from the numbers. In the chaos of the day she had forgotten what tomorrow was. How could she forget? It came on the same day every year, and yet it caught her off guard every time.
She set her phone down forcefully and turned her attention to the agents' files. She did not have time to process her feelings about tomorrow, today had enough problems as it was.
As she flipped through the papers, she tried to match details to faceless names. The team members were all wildly different from each other when it came to experience. Chicago bomb squad, Interpol, MIT... SAC Hotchner had eclectic taste. Tor scanned their records, searching for what the team needed her to be. If she could fill a need for them, she would fit in.
What the team was missing the most was a suspect. If she could provide that, keep her cracks hidden, and in some way endear herself to the majority of the members in the process, she would be a shoo-in for the position. Simple.
Within minutes of landing in Harrisburg, the word "simple" flew from her vocabulary. While she had been in the air another woman had gone missing. She fit the victimology perfectly. And the early missing person's report had been the final piece to the puzzle in finding their suspect: Doctor Timothy Suffield, a dentist operating out of a strip mall who offered "walk-in cleanings." But according to the anxious rookie who had picked her up from the airport, they barely had enough to charge him. To make their case solid they needed his latest victim, preferably alive. But the police were so desperate that at this point dead would work as well.
Black SUVs were lined up in front of the police station. Press swarmed around the front door, forcing Tor to ask the rookie to walk her in a back way. As she stepped into the building, a sense of dread and anxiety permeated her hard exterior. The police were scrambling. The latest victim's family was screaming in the chief's office. And several members of the BAU were holed up in the basement, trying to form a plan in the eye of the storm.
Tor took a deep breath, straightened her ponytail, and checked her reflection in the elevator door. She looked terrified. The overcorrection of lowering her brow and tightening the corners of her mouth aged her a few years, but she was still young enough for that to be considered a plus. People tended to dismiss her because of her age.
Dark tendrils of doubt snaked through her mind, and she rolled her shoulders back in an attempt to shake them off.
The hell are you doing here? a familiar voice snarled. You aren't a profiler. You are a child, playing dress-up with Mommy's pearls.
"Ma'am?" the rookie escorting her asked. Tor blinked at the open elevator doors he was holding back with his outstretched arm.
"Thank you," she said, flashing a quick but kind smile. He nodded and she followed a half step behind as he led her to the interrogation observation room.
The first thing she thought when she entered the room was that there were too many people in it. SAC, Hotchner, SSA Rossi, and Doctor Reid, as well as the two detectives on the case, were all standing with their arms crossed, glaring at the window to the interrogation room. The rookie closed the door behind her, which was when her second thought clicked. Six to one. She looked at the window, where a well-dressed man was sitting patiently despite the handcuffs keeping him tethered to the table.
Seven if they teamed up.
"Agent Beauregard," SAC Hotchner said, turning to her and offering his hand. She shook it quickly and firmly, letting go before he did and noticing the way his index finger twitched as his hand fell to his side. "Chief Strauss speaks highly of you."
"You as well, sir," she lied, knowing it was the expected response. "Has he said anything?" she asked, turning her body away from him and towards the suspect.
"Nothing," Agent Rossi said bitterly. "Hasn't even asked for a lawyer."
"Patricia Cole was taken three hours ago," one of the detectives exclaimed. He was an older, balding man, and sweating profusely. "Autopsies say he killed them within six hours of taking them."
"So, she might still be alive," the other detective said, a scowl warping his face. "And that bastard knows where she is."
"Suffield won't crack under pressure," Rossi said with resignation. "He's too self-assured. We only caught him because we were able to access Cole's GPS history and traced her to the strip mall he works out of. It's circumstantial at best, and he knows it."
"He fits the profile," Hotchner said with certainty.
"A profile is not enough to convict!" the second detective shouted. He glared at Hotchner with the rage of a man at the end of his rope. Tor glanced around the room. The men were squaring off against each other, their dominant hands twitching from caffeine overuse and anger.
De-escalate, disengage, and distance.
"What's his relationship with his mother like?" Tor asked, careful to keep her tone curious and not doubtful. The men turned their sharp eyes onto her, ready to draw blood with a blink. She forced her shoulders to relax and slightly tilted her head. She took a deep breath. Hotchner took it with her. A moment later the other men inhaled as well.
"She's alive," Hotchner answered slowly. "He lives with her. Nothing in either of their records to suggest a strained relationship."
"And his father?"
"Left when our boy here was eight," Rossi supplied. "'Irreconcilable differences.'"
Tor nodded and turned to look at the suspect. The reminder of her presence combined with the lack of an explanation for her questions deflated the emotions in the room. She caught Hotchner staring at her reflection as she thought. She quickly focused her gaze back on the suspect. The raised hairs on the back of her neck told her Hotchner did not do the same.
"He didn't devolve when the feminine nickname gained popularity," she mused more to herself than to the others. "Which means he is secure in his masculinity, which doesn't always happen in men raised by their mothers. Especially," she glanced at the file, "men raised by their mother who still live with them well into their thirties."
"He's a mama's boy. So what?" the more anxious detective said dismissively.
"No, not a mama's boy," Tor muttered, shaking her head slightly. She looked up in the reflection again. Hotchner nodded when their eyes met. "Did he take repeats of the same teeth from different women? Or were they all from different spots?"
"Different," Reid answered. Tor inhaled. The others did the same.
"History of obsessive-compulsive behavior?"
"He runs his office alone, and I could eat a four-course meal off of his floors," Rossi answered. "Everything was labeled and put where it belonged. Not a string of floss out of place."
Tor closed her eyes, visualizing the details and sorting them into the profiles she had made in the past. As a negotiator, she was used to walking into dangerous situations and having to know everything about the suspect's state of mind to get herself and others to safety. The man on the other side of the glass had two hostages: Patricia Cole, and Tor's career. She couldn't afford to misread him.
Obsessed with cleanliness and order. Close relationship with his mother after his father left them. Confident in his masculinity because he believed his reason for killing made him a "man," even when others mocked him for it... He was a Patriarch. Or trying to be one, at least.
She knew how to deal with those.
"He's trying to provide for someone, which fulfills his masculine fantasy to the point of being able to survive attacks from the media," she said slowly, turning to face the men. She could see their body language shift. They were turning towards her, some more than others. But she had them. And if she could just stick the landing...
"I think Mom needs a new set of teeth," she said softly. The police officers all made faces of disgust. The BAU members did not react. "She turned our suspect into her husband after the divorce, and the emotional incest has been enough to keep him feeling masculine even though he's never had a woman other than her show him even the slightest interest."
She carefully moved her gaze across the men, not resting on any of them for long enough to make them uncomfortable. Out of all of them, Hotchner and Rossi were the only ones to return it with any level of confidence. "Once her teeth started to fall out, and mommy dearest stopped being the 'perfect' mother, he decided to give her what she needed. But plastic is never as good as the real thing." She let a flash of a smile twitch her lip. The rookie blushed. "So, when he couldn't make her dentures, he decided to use what was available to him: pretty women with pretty smiles he examined to make sure that they were worth the effort of drugging them while they were in his chair with their eyes closed."
Hotchner nodded. Rossi raised a single brow. Reid was deep in thought. The rookie was still hung up on the dirty joke. And both the detectives look nauseous.
"I'm never going to the dentist again," one of the detectives muttered.
"How do you prove this?" Hotchner asked her. Only it wasn't a question. It was an expectation. He knew she could prove it. And now he wanted to see her in action.
"Check the mom's dental records," Tor replied. "And the dental records of the women he killed. I bet you the teeth he took from them were perfect. Not even a spot of discoloration. The coroner should find puncture wounds in the mouth where he drugged them while pretending to clean their teeth. And there should be denture-making tools in his home. A project like this would be important enough for him to take work home with him."
"Reid?"
"Calling the others now."
The young doctor gave her a warm smile before leaving the room.
"This is all fine and dandy, but we need a confession. And we need to find Patricia Cole," Rossi said expectantly. "If he were a hostage-taker, how would you get him to let Patricia go?"
"I wouldn't go in hot," she began. "I'd start by talking about things he's comfortable with."
"So, teeth?" one of the detectives asked.
"Teeth and mothers," Tor confirmed. "Whoever goes in there should be eating something. Or even flossing, something to draw attention to their mouths and their teeth. I think the odontophilia diagnosis is still accurate, so it should probably be a woman who talks to him."
There were two women on the team. Neither of them was there. It was an honest coincidence that Tor was their best bet. Honest.
"Once he's distracted, start talking about the case," she continued before anyone could question her motives. "Focus on the mouths of the victims. Which teeth were taken. Dental records, X-Rays, whatever we can use to get him thinking about his fetish and not the fact that he's about to go to prison."
"And then?"
"And then get him to talk about their teeth specifically," Tor said as she kept her smile at bay. She could nail this bastard. She knew it. They knew it. Now she just had to prove it. "You do that, and he will incriminate himself long before the search warrant for his home turns up anything good. Then it's a numbers game. One less dead woman improves the odds of him being put in a lower security prison where he can hug his mommy on visitor's day."
Hotchner exchanged a look with Rossi. Raised eyebrows, a shallow nod from the older man, a lip quirk from the younger, and Tor knew she was in.
"Alright," Hotchner said, turning to face her. "Think you can get the confession out of him?"
Tor waited three seconds before answering. Enough time to give the impression that she thought about his question, without giving them time to doubt her.
"Yes, sir," she answered firmly.
"Then it's time to put your profile to the test."
Thank you for reading this first chapter of "Shadows and Light." This fic has been a story I have wanted to tell for a long time but did not feel ready for until a few weeks ago. I am so excited to share it with you now! Before we go any further, I want to get a few things out of the way:
1. While this story has many painful elements, I promise you there will be a happy ending. Those of you who have read my previous fic, "The Hurt And The Healing," know that I might put my characters through hell, but I will always show them piecing themselves back together again. We cannot appreciate the light if we do not know the dark.
2. This fic deals with many dark themes, including but not limited to: child abuse, sexual assault, violence, serial criminals, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, suicide, domestic violence, and murder. Some of these themes come from the cases that the BAU will solve, others can be found in the personal lives of these characters. I will provide a list of all triggers found within each chapter in a comment at the top. If you are uncomfortable with reading a chapter, please let me know and I am happy to provide a summary in the comments. If I missed a trigger warning, please tell me and I will amend my mistake right away. Tags are subject to change as the story progresses.
3. This story is set around the start of Season 7. Emily is back, JJ and Will are together raising Henry, and Hotch has not met Beth. I am going to try to stick to the canon set down by the original Criminal Minds show, but there will be some deviations. There are continuity issues within the show that I need to resolve for things to make sense. There are also some decisions made by the writers that I disagree with. Hence writing fanfic.
4. My chapters average 7k words, and require time to plan, write, and edit. I am predicting roughly fifty chapters. I work full time and am getting ready to enter grad school for my Master of Social Work degree. If I go on hiatus, I will put something in the summary to let you all know. Please be patient with me. This story is important to me, but so is my life outside of fandom.
5. Please comment, even if the comment is a jumble of words or an emoji. I want to hear from you, and I will respond when I can. I enjoy fandoms because of the communities that come from them. I want to hear your thoughts, ideas, reactions, and polite critiques. You can also follow me on TikTok to get sneak peeks of what's to come and interact with me more directly. All that I ask is that you treat me and each other with respect.
A huge "thank you" to Sami and Cynthia_Cross for being my beta readers/editors and dealing with my tumultuous relationship with commas. Another thank you to Ren, Ali, Astra, Ren's Mom, Sage, and Erica for their help with the HoH representation in this story. And a huge "thank you" to you, dear reader, for giving this story a chance. I hope you enjoy it.
All my love,
The Grey Lady