CHAPTER ONE:
FACE VALUE
( 03x06: about face )

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"I'M GOING TO EAT you," Reid croaked from behind the garish mask.

Morgan, who hadn't heard him creeping up behind him, flinched so hard he lost track of his paperwork. Dallis, sitting opposite him, snickered into her usual drink of choice; green tea (with a smidge of tequila, whenever she isn't in the office, of course.) She caught Emily's gaze at the desk across from her and smirked. Every year, Reid went all out for Halloween. Every year, Morgan gave a reaction worthy of an Oscar.

"Reid," Morgan muttered his name like he was contemplating strangling him.

They could practically hear Reid's smile as he pushed the mask back from his face, "Happy All Hallow's Eve, folks! To paraphrase from Celtic mythology, tomorrow night, all order is suspended and the barriers between the natural and the supernatural are temporarily removed!"

Emily giggled as he yanked a bloody head from a paper bag and threw it down in front of her. She pushed the prop away from her while Morgan glanced between them, clearly unimpressed.

"See, that right there is why Halloween creeps me out."

"You're scared of Halloween?" Reid frowned.

"I didn't say I was scared."

Dallis blinked. "I'm pretty sure you did."

"No, Cohen," Morgan pointed a finger at her. "I said I was creeped out."

"Aw," Dallis cooed, reaching over to pinch his cheek. Morgan slapped her fingers away, glaring, but Dallis was unphased. She leant back in her chair, blowing the steam away from her bumble-bee themed coffee mug (gifted to her by the one and only Penelope Garcia for her first birthday spent with the team. It was special to her.) "Poor baby Morgan's creeped out by all that goes bump in the night."

"Y'know, there's a difference there, youngsters," Morgan huffed. "You should look it up."

"What creeps you out about it?" Emily asked, genuinely curious to know his answer.

Morgan shrugged. "I don't know. People wearing masks? I don't like folks in disguises."

This clearly dismayed Reid. "But that's the best thing about Halloween! You can be anyone you want to be."

"No, I'm pretty good just being me."

Dallis raised an eyebrow. "This is starting to feel like a therapy session."

Emily smiled. "I don't know what therapists you've been to, but mine don't typically wear masks from horror films and tell me they're going to eat me."

"You know what, though?" Dallis had no doubts about what Morgan was going to say next. His shit-eating smirk said it all. "It does provide a pretty good reason to cosy up with a scary flick and a little Halloween honey."

"Ew, Halloween honey, now I'm creeped out," Emily wretched as Dallis snatched up the decapitated prop and chucked it Morgan's way. He threw it back and forth with her until Reid intervened, cradling it in his arms protectively.

"Come on, Reid, I thought you were all about the Halloween spirit," Dallis tried and failed to yank the prop out of his arms.

Reid still managed to hold it out of reach, but he was now staring at something over her head with wide eyes.

"Guys," he whispered. "He's here."

"Who?" Dallis asked, just a little too loud for the sudden silence.

As one, they turned around to witness Erin Strauss -- aka the Devil in a pantsuit -- leading a man up the stairs to Hotch's office. He hung back to look them over on the way past, smiling as a red-faced Reid snatched the Halloween mask off his head and hid it behind his back.

"Careful, Reid," Dallis said once the man was out of earshot. "You've got a little drool on your chin."

"Cohen, you don't understand," he said without missing a beat. He was yet to look away from the stairs, even though Strauss and the newbie were now behind the closed door of Hotch's office. "That's the David Rossi. He's... he's..."

"Kinda hot?" Dallis offered up.

"Whoa there," Morgan arched an eyebrow at her.

"I'm kidding," she said.

She wasn't.

Dallis was typically upfront about speaking her mind. She knew where to draw the line of course, reading people like they were the cheesy romantic novels she pretended not to love, but Dallis Cohen was unapologetically herself. This David Rossi guy was easy on the eye, but she knew nothing about him, just like she knew nothing about the others on the team when she first joined four years ago.

(How time flew when there were serial killers to catch.)

"Don't look now but he's walking towards us," Emily mumbled, rising from her chair to exchange an inevitable greeting.

To the surprise of no one, Reid's head shot around to openly stare as Hotch (thankfully absent of Strauss) led Rossi over to them, closely followed by JJ disappearing to the conference room.

"SSA David Rossi, this is SSA Emily Prentiss--"

"Sir," Emily grinned and shook his hand.

"SSA Derek Morgan--"

"It's an honour, Agent Rossi."

"Please," said Rossi. "Just Dave."

"SSA Dallis Cohen--"

"It's good to meet you, Dave," she said, squeezing his hand with hers.

If her direct use of his name surprised him, he didn't show it. "And you, Dallis."

"And Doctor Spencer Reid," Hotch finished, saving what they all knew would turn out to be the best for last.

"Sir, if I could talk to you later about your work with the Scarsdale Skinner? Psycholinguistics is an incredibly dynamic field and the fact that your profile of his reading habits ultimately lead to his capture is something I find so incredibly..."

"Reid, slow down," Hotch's eyes shone with amusement as Reid finally stopped for air. "He'll be here for a while. Catch up with him later."

"Right... sorry."

"No problem, Doctor," Rossi said politely.

Reid looked ready to pass out.

Their idle conversation continued as Hotch urged them up to the conference room where JJ was laying out paperwork for their newest case. She didn't wait for them to sit down, moving to stand at the head of the table to present to them an in-depth overview.

"Carrollton, Texas is a suburb just outside of Dallas. Four days ago, Michelle Colucci found this flyer on her front door."

A clearly photoshopped picture of a middle-aged blonde woman appeared on the television screen behind her. Printed above the woman's head in block letters were the words 'HAVE YOU SEEN ME?'

"Oh, jeez," Dallis murmured, settling in the chair between Emily and Reid. "Talk about disturbing."

"She found it?" Morgan questioned JJ's wording. "Meaning she wasn't actually missing?"

"She took the flyer to a friend's husband, a Detective Yarbrough at the Carrollton PD, who told her it was probably just a Halloween prank and he sent her home."

"Well, I don't blame him," Morgan coughed, casting a not-so-conspicuous glower at Reid across the table. "Halloween brings out the fool in everyone."

"It's still pretty strange even if it was just a prank," Dallis mumbled.

JJ nodded in agreement with her. "Which is why he still stopped by Michelle's house later to check on her. The door was open and when he went inside, he found this."

A series of photos flicked across the screen, each a close-up of a maroon wall covered in hundreds of the same 'HAVE YOU SEEN ME?' poster.

"He still thought it could be some kind of a prank, until yesterday. Michelle was found floating in a small creek just outside of Carrollton. She had been sexually assaulted and her face had been removed."

"Removed?" Dallis repeated, unsure what that could mean until the next series of photos appeared on the screen.

"And it wasn't animals or fish?" Rossi was the first to speak up.

JJ shook her head. "The Dallas County ME said the edges of the wounds were smooth, not torn. A very sharp instrument had been used. He also found water in her lungs."

Dallis was no stranger to stomach-turning crimes. This had been her life for the better part of seven years after going through the Academy, four of which she'd spent with the Behavioural Analysis Unit. Still, she was only human, and the sight of a woman with no face was not something she could turn a blind eye to. She scanned her co-workers around the table instead, interested to see their reactions. She double-backed to Rossi, intrigued by the blank expression. It might've been his first day but nothing seemed to phase him.

"Oh. My. God." The door had suddenly opened. Just as quick, Garcia stumbled back into the frame, struggling to hide her face behind another stack of papers. "What is that?'

"Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia," Hotch gestured towards her. "This is SSA David Rossi."

"Is it gone, JJ?" Garcia demanded to know.

"Yeah, you're safe."

Once she was confident JJ wasn't lying, Garcia inched further into the room. She was pale, more than usual, from the gory sight she wasn't expected to see from the safety of her computer screens. Dallis gave her a sympathetic smile as she hovered there, shifting through her papers with unsteady fingers.

"Uh... Carrollton, Texas has nearly a hundred and seventeen thousand residents. A diverse population with a... well, it's all in here..." She passed the papers over to Hotch, stopping quickly on the way to shake Rossi's hand before she fled back to the door. "I'm sorry. I'll be in my office. Very happy to meet you, sir."

"She's different," Rossi said, loud enough for everyone to hear but only looking at Hotch.

Hotch grinned. "You have no idea."

"So," Emily redirected the conversation. Time was ticking for them to get going. They needed to focus. "The unsub tells her she's going to go missing to psychologically torture her, then tortures her physically. A textbook sadist."

"Any indication if her face was removed post-mortem?" Dallis asked, more to herself than JJ, who only shrugged in lack of an answer.

"Number one," said Morgan, turning around the photo that had caught his interest. A plain white face mask with the word 'one' written in bright red on the forehead.

"That particular mask is known as a false face," Reid commented. "It's most commonly worn during Halloween and Mardi Gras."

"Creepy," Morgan scoffed, referring to their earlier conversation from downstairs. "I rest my case."

"False face," Hotch murmured.

"Her face?" Emily wondered.

Dallis' mind was racing. "There's a lot going on here. False face as in she was pretending to be someone she wasn't? Or that he's taken her identity by taking away what we all recognise of a person?"

"And the one," continued Morgan. "That's interesting."

"Is it a countdown? Three, two, one. Got you. Or maybe she's the first one he planned to do this to?"

The thought left her skin prickling, as it always did when something uncertain lingered just out of Dallis' reach.

"Oh, and Hotch," JJ grimaced. "Local media has the story. It broke big."

"Okay, tell Carrollton we'll be there first thing in the morning. Let's stop this one at one."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"LET'S GO OVER VICTIMOLOGY," Hotch said bright and early the next morning. "Would you like to join us, Dave?"

The newest recruit was sitting in the corner, lost in thoughts that the rest of the team, who were sitting together in the heart of the jet, weren't privy to. He seemed hesitant but didn't protest to moving a comfortable distance away from Dallis, who had one knee crossed over the other, gazing at a photo of the false face that refused to give anything away. On her other side was Hotch, perched on the armrest, while the others had taken the two two-seaters fencing in the table.

"Reid," Hotch prompted. "What have you got?"

"Well, Michelle Colucci was single, lived alone, no boyfriend and no ex-husband."

"Dating?"

Morgan shook his head. "There's nothing in the reports."

"She was an architect," JJ noted. "Friends and co-workers say she's a classic workaholic. Basically a loner who rarely went out of the house."

"So she's extremely low risk," Emily pointed out.

Rossi paused, raising his eyebrows at Dallis, who made no effort to hide the fact that she was caught watching him. The moment he sat down, he'd taken out a hand-held notebook and started writing. His face was almost as hard to read as the false one left in Michelle Colucci's dining room.

"If it wasn't someone she knew personally, it's possible she was being stalked," Reid suggested.

"Interesting," Rossi mumbled.

"What's that?"

With the sudden weight of everyone's attention on him, a hint of red crept up the side of Rossi's neck, the first visible sign Dallis had picked up on that he was indeed capable of feeling human emotion.

"Oh, uh... I'm just thinking out loud."

"Anything you'd like to share?" Dallis asked, tilting her head in a way that had her long red hair falling over her shoulder.

"No. Sorry to interrupt."

Dallis pursed her lips but eventually looked away.

"Well, she's pretty," Morgan fortunately continued before the silence could grow tense. "Could be that the unsub met her casually and made her part of some kind of fantasy."

"Or it could be one of her clients," Dallis suggested. "Architect, right? If she loves her job as much as her friends and family say, it could be someone she spent a lot of time around unknowingly."

"And he tries to act on it and she rejects him?" Hotch pieced together.

"So, what... he tortures her out of anger?" Emily frowned, nonplussed.

Despite their version of events forming a coherent explanation, something didn't feel quite right.

"Masks often represent a state of mind," said Reid. "This one's blank, expressionless. Doesn't really coincide with anger."

"Reid, it's hard to imagine he did this under anything less than rage," Morgan scoffed, turning around the photo of Michelle Colucci's skinned face.

"And patience," added Dallis. "No torn edges, all smooth lines. He was committed."

Just as she finished talking, the laptop propped under the window lit up with a video call from Garcia. She'd recovered overnight, thankfully, and was focused on the job ahead, getting straight down to business.

"What've you got for us?" Morgan asked.

"A list of Michelle Colucci's clients." This caught Dallis' attention. "She designed office space. Mostly big corporate remodelling plans."

"No private clients?" Dallis pressed.

"Doesn't look like it, no."

"Thanks, baby girl," Morgan hung up.

They kept to themselves for the rest of the plane ride, but Dallis couldn't help turning to Rossi occasionally, lingering on that notebook of his. It seemed that their new agent wasn't prepared to let them in just yet, if at all. He had a way of doing things -- an outdated way, at that. She wondered what it would take to break him out of the past.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

THE CARROLLTON POLICE STATION was a hivemind of activity when the team arrived from the airport at last. They found Detective Yarbrough in the heart of it all, receiving something from the printer. He wasted no time holding the paper up for them to look at once it was established who had entered his station.

"We've gotten another flyer, this time from Metro Dallas," he said in lieu of a formal greeting. "Enid White. Her roommate called Dallas PD this morning. Enid never came home after walking her dog last night."

"So she is missing," Reid said.

Yarbrough sighed. "Well, he wallpapered the neighbourhood with flyers for two-blocks around their apartment."

"Can I get a look at that?" Dallis asked, gesturing to the new flyer.

Enid White already stood out in comparison to Michelle Colucci. They both wore the same easy smile in their stolen photographs, but Michelle's hair was dark where Michelle's was blonde. She didn't live alone, like Michelle did, but with a roommate who would notice her absence sooner rather than later. And this had all happened outside, where anybody could've stumbled onto something that they shouldn't have.

"No one saw him putting these up?" Emily questioned as she peered over Dallis' shoulder.

"Dallas' PD is still canvassing, but nothing so far. They're waiting for you on the new scene."

"Okay, Morgan, you and Prentiss go to Michelle Colucci's house," Hotch started to split them up like usual. "JJ and I will talk to Enid's roommate. Dave, do you mind walking the disposal site with the detective, Cohen and Reid?"

"Whatever you need," Rossi nodded.

"We'll regroup in an hour."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"WE WENT OVER THIS area pretty thoroughly," said Yarbrough as they trekked through the bush where Michelle Colucci was found. "There's no evidence left."

"I just want to stand where she was," Rossi muttered, perfectly composed in his suit jacket, white dress shirt and jeans despite the heat of the mid-morning sun beating down on them without remorse.

Dallis wished she'd thought to pull her hair back before they left Carrollton Station. Sweat beaded on her neck in a light sheen, distracting her enough that she barely noticed Rossi turn to her and Reid, who was right on his heels like a lost puppy.

"Doctor Reid, Dallis, do we still keep all the old files in the fourth-floor store room?" he asked them.

"I think some are up there," Reid answered before Dallis could question Rossi's motive. "But most of our information is on computer now."

"Right."

"Have you had a chance to go through any of our data since you've been back?"

"Not yet."

"Oh, you'll be amazed," Reid exclaimed, failing to notice that Rossi -- now that he'd heard what he needed -- was no longer paying close attention. "The original team -- I mean, you interviewed something like forty-five serial killers, right?"

"Something like."

"Well, today, we've interviewed over a thousand offenders," Reid's chest puffed with a faint hint of pride. Like the rest of them, every case stuck with them, the good and the bad, leaving a mark that carried a lot of weight. "Serial killers, child abductors, sex offenders. I'll go through it with you sometime if you like, answer any questions you--"

"Sounds good," Rossi cut him off, his voice rising with the first obvious sign of impatience.

Yarbrough had come to a stop a little ahead of them, giving the trio an opportunity to spread out. Reid was unable to hide his disappointment about being shunned. He stood a little further away from where Dallis had taken his place behind Rossi.

"You know," she began, keeping her voice deliberately low so that he knew she was only talking to him. "There's this saying my mum loves to preach. I always thought it was a little too 'knitted on a throw-pillow' for my liking, but it actually makes a lot of sense. It goes something like 'first impressions die slowly; bad impressions take even longer.' If you're planning on sticking around, Dave, maybe you should think about what impression you want to leave."

With that, she pushed past him, returning to Reid's side.

"Michelle's body was found right here," Yarbrough pointed forward. "I really thought it was a prank."

His voice was thick with grief and guilt as he hung his head.

"You can't really blame yourself for that," Reid said, offering a pained half-smile.

"She made herself dinner."

Dallis' brows furrowed. "Excuse me?"

"She had time to make herself dinner," he repeated. "That means she was home for a while before he... well, there was time to help her."

For him to help her.

Time and time again, cases like this reminded Dallis of how quickly life could be snatched away from you. Making dinner, sitting down to read a good book, having a bath and brushing your teeth before bed. All things that Dallis did often, things that Michelle Colucci would never do again. Taken from her in a blink without her permission.

"Water," Rossi said. He'd given no reaction to what Dallis had told him in passing. It would've bothered her, but she wasn't typically one to let her feelings betray her when she was working. "Obliterates a body, destroys evidence. But you weren't in the water that long, were you, Michelle?"

"She had rocks tied to her to weigh her down," Yarbrough shared what Dallis and the others had already read in Michelle's file.

"She floated to the surface before there was any other damage," recalled Reid.

"Just what was done to her already."

"The salient point is it was the first thing the unsub wasn't good at."

Dallis knelt at the edge of the creek, grimacing as the heels of her boots sunk into the soft earth where the water met the dirt. She could easily picture the hulking shape of a man kneeling where she was, watching Michelle struggle for the last bits of her life. He'd taken so much time watching her, printing out and putting up the flyers; even after he took her, leaving behind the shrine in her dining room was meticulously done. He tortured her, assaulted her, but he couldn't perform the final killing blow.

Why?

"Green River dumped most of the bodies in water," Rossi's notebook made another infuriating appearance. "But they weren't weighed down."

"Well, yeah, but we know now it's because he didn't care if they were found," Reid said.

"It wasn't personal," Dallis surmised, standing up and dusting off her charcoal dress pants. "This, somehow, is."