Jill Moss's car was soon found in a parking lot north of downtown. Jack and Rossi arrived at the scene, where they discovered her shattered phone lying next to the vehicle.
Forensic personnel uncovered drag marks near the car, indicating that the FBI agent had indeed fulfilled her dark desire of becoming a victim to the serial killer.
The death of an FBI agent usually wouldn't make major headlines, but Jill Moss's previous attempts to bring attention to the killer had already attracted significant public interest.
Think back to when serial killer Ted Bundy proposed to a witness during his trial, and it became a massive media sensation. If the media learned that an FBI agent had willingly walked into the arms of a serial killer for a sadomasochistic thrill, it would be even more scandalous.
As a result, the FBI didn't involve the Denver police when searching Moss's car, nor did they rely on local forensic teams. Instead, they used their own resources.
Jack reviewed the parking lot's surveillance footage and identified a suspicious white van. Its license plate was obscured, but the make and model were clearly visible.
Meanwhile, Garcia traced the IP address to an internet café in a small town 30 miles away from Norwood, where the suspect's warehouse had been located. The café was within the circle Reid had previously drawn on the map.
Garcia cross-referenced the suspect list with the vehicle registration database and came up with a name: "Jeremy Andrews, 41, an electrician from Nucla."
The BAU team of six geared up. Hotchner led the way in a suburban vehicle from the local office, while Jack followed in his own F-150 Raptor. They headed toward the small town of Nucla.
Colorado is half plains and half mountains, with the massive Rocky Mountains taking up much of the western portion of the state. Nucla, the killer's hometown, was located on a small plateau in the western mountain range.
By the time they reached the town, it was already evening. To avoid confusion, Hotchner notified the local sheriff's office only half an hour before arriving at their destination.
This raid didn't involve local law enforcement or the FBI's own SWAT team. Jack and Hotchner took the lead with assault rifles, while the others circled around to surround the dilapidated wooden house. They broke through the door.
Although the white van wasn't found outside Jeremy Andrews's house, suggesting he had fled, Jack still thoroughly searched the attic before returning to the living room and shaking his head at Hotchner.
"Nothing here."
"There's a basement," Rossi called from the back of the house.
The two quickly made their way through the back door to a filthy yard, where Reid stood holding his gun, studying something that looked like an ugly, makeshift kiln with a frown.
"What is..." Jack paused, instantly recognizing the object from a blueprint he had once studied with Reid.
"A crematorium!" Jack's heart skipped a beat as he reached out to cautiously touch the outer wall of the "kiln."
"Give us a hand! It's cold. We already checked it. It hasn't been used recently," Rossi shouted as he struggled with a partially buried iron door.
Jack sighed in relief, then moved forward to help pull the door open. A foul stench, a mix of sour sweat and the putrid smell of excrement, wafted out, making everyone gag.
"I'll go down first with Hotch." Jack switched on the tactical flashlight attached to his rifle, signaling the others to stay outside on guard as he and Hotchner descended the creaking wooden stairs into the basement.
The scene was eerily familiar to Jack. Torture devices, just like the ones they had seen in Jeremy Andrews's blueprints, lined the walls, each stained with blood.
In the center of the room was a wire-frame bed without a mattress, with one corner of the bed connected to a pair of electrical wires. A woman, completely naked, was bound to the bed—it was the missing reporter, Katrina Townsley.
Ignoring the filth on the floor, Jack kicked away the electrical clamps and quickly checked her pulse. Thankfully, he found a faint, weak heartbeat.
"She's alive! Call 911!" Jack shouted.
Hotchner pulled a dirty blanket from somewhere and draped it over the reporter, while the two of them carefully untied the wires binding her wrists and ankles.
"I've got her," Jack said, lifting the reporter in his arms. He climbed the stairs quickly, carrying her out of the basement and laying her gently on the ground, silently humming The Most Dazzling Folk Dance in his mind.
This wasn't a joke—The Most Dazzling Folk Dance has a beat of 118 per minute, just within the ideal range of 100-120 compressions per minute for CPR. After humming through the first four lines of the song, Jack performed two rescue breaths and started over again.
After only two cycles, the reporter's breathing stabilized. JJ and Emily found some clean towels and bedsheets from inside the house.
Jack carried the now-conscious reporter back into the house, leaving her in JJ and Emily's care. They were in such a remote location that it would take at least 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team was busy searching for clues. Reid scoured the basement but, apart from some biological and trace evidence, found nothing substantial.
It was clear that Jill Moss had been taken by Jeremy Andrews. What they needed now was information to track where he had fled, but that would have to wait for the crime lab to analyze the evidence—nothing they found here was immediately helpful.
"Maybe this will give us a clue about where to go next," Rossi said, emerging from the bedroom holding a framed photograph.
"Remember that green glass crystal with traces of radiation that scared you and Emily back in Jeremy's warehouse?"
Jack took the frame. The photograph showed two men, one older and one younger. The younger one was likely Jeremy Andrews as a boy, no more than twelve or thirteen years old. The older man, who bore a strong resemblance to Jeremy, was likely his father, around forty years old at the time.
The background of the photo featured a desolate desert landscape, with a small roadside shop, the kind often found at rest stops, complete with a gas station.
"What's the connection? Are you suggesting he might head there?" Jack didn't understand what Rossi was getting at. Besides the distinctive red sandstone formations of Colorado, the photo provided no obvious clues.
Rossi pointed to a blurry black silhouette in the background, at the base of a distant mountain. "Look closely. That's not a power tower—it's an abandoned oil and gas well."
"Clark Testing Grounds?" Hotchner blurted out, while Jack remained confused.
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This story is far from over. Keep reading to see where it leads.
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