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It was true, Dave Rossi thought as he headed straight for the main staircase to the bar, badges did open doors, even for severely under-dressed FBI agents like himself when, strictly speaking, he was off duty (not that the staff at the club had to know that). He'd wanted to come back while the place was open because looking around while it was closed pretty much only gave him the layout. It didn't tell him anything about the people who frequented somewhere like this, how they acted, what they believed in. In short, it gave him nothing to work with and, it had turned out, there was precious little collated data elsewhere to help him either.
Having totally bypassed the mezzanine level, he paused on the bottom step, looking around. It was early so the place wasn't exactly crowded, though judging from the sound effects coming from behind one of the doors on his right there was some serious gaming going on somewhere. He hadn't really thought the bar would be all that busy, but it still wasn't all that simple to pick out the man he was looking for from among the other customers. Dave would have bet good money that the man he'd come here expecting to find hadn't had any trouble with the dress code. The velvet frock coat and cravat that had moved Dave to label the Special Scientific Advisor, who'd been assigned to them earlier in the day, as 'eccentric' were definitely much more in keeping with this place than Dave's more casual jeans and jacket ensemble. Eccentric was as about as far as he'd allowed himself to go though. It was one of the BAU's unwritten rules: Thou shalt not profile the members of your team. And, for better or worse, as far as Dave was concerned, that courtesy had to extend to everyone they worked with, however temporarily.
"Ah, Supervisory Special Agent Rossi; you've caught me," the doctor exclaimed, not sparing him a glance as Dave hooked a bar stool out with a booted foot and cautiously lowered himself onto it. Despite having more angles and curves than any bar stool probably ever should have it was... comfortable. Or at least as comfortable as an article of furniture could be whose sole purpose was to make a grown man 'perch' instead of sit.
"Caught? You say that like you think maybe you did something wrong."
"Or, more to the point, I said it like maybe I think you think I did something wrong."
"Beg pardon?"
"Don't be obtuse, Agent Rossi, I know exactly what you're thinking--"
"You do?"
"--but you're wrong."
"I am?"
"Yes, I'm afraid so."
Dave signaled the bartender. "Go on then, tell me what I'm thinking."
"You're thinking, 'This is the guy that found one of the bodies.'"
"Well you did," Dave pointed out, following it immediately with, "Scotch, neat," to the waiting barman.
"I know; I was there." The doctor dismissed the bartender's silent offer of a refill for him with a shake of his head. "You're also thinking, 'And yet somehow, he's also got in on the act -- become part of the investigation.'"
Dave nodded. "Strike two, as it were."
The doctor turned to look directly at him for the first time since Dave had sat down beside him. "Strike? Now that's something to do with baseball, isn't it?"
Dave nodded.
"You'll have to excuse my ignorance, only... I don't really 'get' ball games, particularly American ones; I never played them as a child myself – always preferred riding for some reason. Possibly it was the feel of the wind in my hair? It's so long ago; I find it difficult to remember. Tell me, if I get three strikes, what happens then? Is there some kind of prize? Or is it a bad thing?"
"It's not really important," Dave responded mildly, nursing his scotch. If the doctor was anything like Reid – and clearly he was, sitting this close Dave could almost feel the pent up energy radiating off the man – they weren't going to get anywhere if Dave let him spiral off topic.
"Only--" began the doctor.
"You were telling me what I was thinking," Dave prompted.
"I was? Yes, I was, wasn't I? What number were we up to again?"
Dave waved three fingers in the air.
"Right. Let's see: I found one of the bodies." The doctor stuck out the index finger of his left hand, tapping it with his right, then extended his middle finger and tapped that. "I've become part of the investigation. What else? Oh! I know... You've just caught me revisiting the scene, without my..." something in his expression flickered, and Dave couldn't be sure whether it was amusement or something else, "uh... 'minder' Miss Pollard, which, granted, doesn't look good. But believe me, I look at Charley as more of a trusted friend and companion than a bodyguard. It's not like I've shaken off my 'watcher' or anything like that."
"So you're a Special Scientific Advisor who dabbles in profiling on the side," Dave acknowledged, taking a sip of his drink and welcoming the familiar burn in the back of his throat.
"Let's just say, when I realized I wasn't going to be able to avoid getting involved in this particular case, I made time to read up a little."
"Now why am I assuming that didn't take you too long...?" Dave said, thinking once again of Reid.
"You'd be surprised," the doctor's mouth twisted into a smile, "not every genius has your hyper-intelligent Doctor Reid's particular skill set. Plus, I had to find the right books first."
Dave set his glass down on the counter. "You forgot one," he said, flatly.
"That whole 'just call me Doctor' thing?" He slid one, neatly shod foot to the floor, tossed back the remains of his drink, and stood up. "Been there. Done that. It's not relevant; trust me. If it helps, think of me purely as an academic – that should help make that pesky capital letter D a lot easier to enunciate, if nothing else."
"You want me to take an awful lot on trust... Doctor."
The Doctor grinned, a touch wildly. "I do, don't I?" He clapped Dave lightly on the shoulder, and leaned in as someone, somewhere chose that precise moment to turn the music up. "So, are you with me, or not?"
Now there was a question. Dave stood up, dropped a bill on the counter, and followed the Doctor away from the bar, and the noise, back toward the stairs.
"See, the thing is, the people you'll find here aren't, really, any more different than you or I are. They aren't vampirists, they don't 'vant to drink your blood'," he finished on a mock snarl, exposing his eye teeth.
A girl passing in the other direction shot the Doctor a filthy look that he deflected with a smile. "Love your goggles," he called after her retreating figure, the sound of it echoing slightly in the stairwell. "And your boots are to die for." Looking back over her shoulder, she flipped him the finger in reply and he turned back to Rossi, frowning. "That is the correct expression isn't it, 'to die for'?"
"Correct, but maybe not necessarily appropriate. Under the circumstances," Dave qualified, hiding a smile. The Doctor might be more suitably dressed than he, but that obviously didn't mean he wasn't quite capable of messing up in other ways.
"I expect you're right. Anyway, my point is these people don't worship blood, they don't make heroes of creatures like Dracula. They revel in the imaginings of my good friend Herbert George, Jules Verne, and... and... Hayao Miyazaki. They create alternate universes in their heads where dirigibles fly the Atlantic; where laptops have valves and are built out of gleaming brass and copper; where there are clockwork robots--"
Dave held up a hand, and the Doctor paused long enough to suck in a breath, his shoulders visibly sagging.
"There's nothing dystopian about them," he said softly.
"I'm beginning to get that," Dave assured him. "But that doesn't change the fact that three people have died here in the last two weeks."
They'd reached one of the many balconies that overlooked the main seating area with its highly polished, long disused boilers, and the Doctor lead him onto it. "Look around," he invited, "what do you see?"
"A whole lot of bustles, and corsets -- mostly on the women; vests and military gear -- mainly on the men."
"And?"
"And??"
"Oh for pity's sake!" the Doctor snapped. "While I do realize that on some level you probably checked your profiling 'head' at the door along with your metaphorical hat once you found me here, if you could just please access that portion of your brain again, I'd be inordinately grateful. Look again."
"Goggles, opera glasses, some incredibly complicated looking bracelets. Lots of people of both sexes smoking cigars, cigar lighters--"
"Anything that looks even remotely like a weapon?"
"No..." Not so much as an empty scabbard hanging from a sword belt. In fact, the closest thing to a weapon that he could see was an item being carried by a young man who was part of the crowd now leaving the gaming room; it reminded him vaguely of Star Wars for some reason. Although, short of strip searching everyone in the place, there was no way he could know for sure, but he didn't think that was something the Doctor would want to hear.
"Which leads you to believe what?"
"That the killer isn't here."
"Or?"
"Isn't here, yet?"
"Or....?" The Doctor was looking at him expectantly, but for once Dave was stumped. He had no clue where it was the Doctor was trying to lead him with this. He shrugged, helplessly.
The Doctor sighed. "You know what your problem is?" he demanded, without waiting for an answer. "You look at everything head on. You should try looking at things sideways for a change."
"Sideways how?"
"Lie down. Tip your head. Stand on it if you have to. All the victims have died here, or right on the doorstep. This place is the only common link the victims have! Outside their love of steampunk of course, but that simply brings us right back to here. All roads do lead to Rome!" He finished triumphantly. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, Dave noted.
"So someone here--"
"NO. Not someone - some ones," the Doctor interrupted, excitedly.
Dave stared at him.
"I can see you're going to need convincing. Fine. I can do that. All the victims' wounds -- the almost cauterized lacerations on their chests and shoulders -- indicate the perpetrator-- sorry, the unsub," the Doctor corrected himself, "toyed with their victims before inflicting the final, as your team believe, coup de grâce that finally put them out of their misery. But there's been no real evolution?"
"Statistically we might expect the kind of unsub we think we are dealing with to have become less hesitant by now, if that's what you mean."
"Okay, now suppose we back into that idea from the other end, and ask ourselves under what circumstances an unsub would never become less hesitant?"
"Never?"
The Doctor waved Dave's query away with a flap of his hand. "Just humor me, please?"
"Okay..."
"Surely then, one of those circumstances would be if the unsub wasn't the same person performing the same act over and over again, but several different people performing the same act?"
"But the signature was the same for all of them," Dave practically howled. "A single puncture wound, straight through the heart: clinical and precise."
"Clinical... yes. That would be right... Of course the person who did that would have to adjust the power settings a little... shift the locus of the beam to compensate for any wavelength problems and... Yes. It's exactly as I began to think earlier -- it's the exact same device both times, just in a different set of hands.
Dave found himself gaping, he didn't know why the suggestion came as such a surprise to him; it wasn't as if they hadn't encountered anything like it before. "Which then only really leaves the question--" he began, only to get interrupted by the Doctor yet again.
"Did the unsubs who inflicted the original wounds know that object they were messing with was capable of actually hurting someone."
"I was going to say, 'Why?'. Anyway, how could they NOT know?" Dave demanded; for a moment there he'd really thought the Doctor was on to something. "Surely they'd have noticed the victim rolling around in agony."
"Addressing those last two first: I don't know! And not necessarily. But 'Why?' is also a good question. Ask it me again."
"Wait. Not necessarily, what kind of answer is that?"
"You've never had someone cut you with a blade and not felt it till much later?" The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Actually, if I'm right then it's not like that at all, but I can assure you that the most they're probably feeling right now is some mild discomfort similar to heartburn." He frowned. "Of course that does rather depend on which major organs have, or have not been hit. And you still haven't asked me, 'Why?'"
"Really?"
The Doctor nodded.
"Okay then. Why?"
The Doctor shrugged. "To be honest?"
Dave held his gaze, he had a nasty feeling he wasn't going to like the answer he got.
"I haven't got that far yet... That's why I was grateful when you showed up. I was half expecting it to be Agent Prentiss by the way – somehow this seemed like it might be her kind of place."
"Which only goes to prove that you can your genres confused as easily as the rest of us," Dave muttered. Wide-eyed innocence was a good look on the Doctor, and once again Dave found himself reminded of Reid.
"Goes to prove," echoed the Doctor, staring intently down at the gamers, who were now clustered round the bar. "Of course. Why didn't I think of that before?" he exclaimed. "What sort of scientist would I be if I never required proof?"
Already fishing in his pocket for his cell phone, Dave followed the Doctor's gaze; the youngster he'd picked out earlier was the center of attention as he twirled something in his hand. "Every new weapon requires field tests..." he said slowly, remembering the racks of similar devices he'd seen inside the game room earlier. There was no real need for anyone bring such a thing with them if they were already provided. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"That someone's trying to perfect a laser sword that can slice a person to pieces inside their clothes a couple of centuries too early, and disguise it as a plaything? Yes."
Dave gasped, his phone -- momentarily forgotten -- clutched in his hand. "Honestly, Doctor! Do you ever listen to yourself?"
"Not often - life's too short," the Doctor retorted. "And if that wasn't what you were thinking, what was?"
David pulled himself back together, punched a number and held it. "That, in all probability, one of those kids down there is currently a dead man walking."
====
It wasn't how profiling was supposed to work. But Dave didn't care.
The unsub -- a huge bear of man, with shaggy red hair, who peered at the world through a pair of thick lensed, horn rimmed glasses -- allowed himself to be arrested, quietly as it turned out. Not that he stayed quiet for long. As expected, as soon as he was in custody he'd started talking, explaining the workings of his invention at great length and detailing exactly who he'd intended to use it against, once it had been perfected.
Dave thought the Doctor would have found the technical specs the prisoner spewed out during his interrogation fascinating to listen to, but somewhere during the organized chaos involved in identifying the latest victim, and the unsub's capture, the man had completely disappeared -- no doubt to some laboratory somewhere -- and he didn't show up again until the next morning.
====
"You want my cell number?" Standing on the sidewalk beside the BAU's SUV, the Doctor gazed, blankly, at Dave for a moment. "Wouldn't I only get one of those after I'd been convicted of some crime or other?"
Rossi scrabbled for the right word. "Mobile phone?" he hazarded.
"Mobile phone, of course! Sorry. As it happens I do have one of those. Not sure what the number is though... You know how it is." Grinning apologetically, the Doctor began rummaging enthusiastically through his pockets. Not that he had Dave fooled, Dave was pretty sure the Doctor wasn't expecting to find one. So it wasn't exactly surprising when – after dragging out the theatricalities for as long as he probably thought he could get away with them – the Doctor looked back up again, still empty handed. "Sorry. I must have left it... somewhere. Tell you what, you give me your number and I'll get back to you." He produced a match book from his pocket along with a fountain pan and waited, pen poised until Rossi began rattling off the numbers. Copying them down, he finished off with Dave's name, 'Agent Rossi' written with a flourish, before blowing on the lettering, flipping the book closed and sliding it back into his pocket. "For next time." He gestured vaguely, the pen still clutched in his hand. "Clichéd I know but I simply couldn't resist. Besides, I like mementoes--"
Dave raised an eyebrow.
"--and I'd be incredibly grateful if you didn't try to read anything into that, Dave. Professional courtesy and all that, even though, now the case is solved, we are no longer working together." The Doctor shook Dave's hand enthusiastically then charged off, down the street.