Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.
~ big thank you to mummacass & niagaraweasel ~
One moment she was reading a particularly tediously phrased paragraph of last month's budget review, the next the world exploded.
A crescendo of sounds, all somewhat metallic, but none of them clearly discernible, pierced her ears, numbed her hearing. A giant seemed to be grabbing the car, shaking it and then tossing it away angrily.
Most terrifying, however, was the silence afterwards. It couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, but it seemed to suck all air out of her lungs, making her clutch her chest. The car door had flown open and she stumbled outside with shaking legs.
"Are you okay ma'm? Ma'm? Everything alright?"
Erin Strauss needed a moment to understand the question, then another to process it. Slowly, very slowly, all the shattered pieces of the world around her fell back into place, more or less at least. She nodded. Yes, she was alright.
"My driver?", she asked the EMT. Then she saw him at one of the ambulances. Helping out, not being treated himself. Erin allowed herself a sigh of relief. She didn't know much about him, well yes, of course, the information in his file, but aside from that? Nevertheless, seeing him alive and well significantly eased the tension in her chest.
"We'll arrange transportation for you as soon as possible", the EMT told her and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. "But we're dealing with lots of very severe injuries that we've got to address first…"
She made a curt wave gesture with her hand to indicate that she had understood.
He walked off and for the first time Erin had a chance to take in her environment. A multiple car accident, right under a bridge, at least two trucks involved… The area looked like a war zone. Dozens and dozens of cars, wedged into each other, piled up on each other, some upside down. Smoke was billowing from a couple of them, firemen were walking to and fro to prevent open flames from rising up.
And, in a strange and striking contrast to all this mayhem, roses everywhere… crimson red roses.
What a beginning to Valentine's Day.
... ... ...
She needed to distract herself somehow, needed something to get her mind off things. The upcoming AA meeting tonight was something to think about, of course, since they wanted her to finally say something, at least a little. The budget review, now lost somewhere in the wreckage, was another option. But both stood no chance against the question that had kept worming its way to the surface of her consciousness ever since the crash.
What had caused the accident?
It was early in the morning, yes, but no mist, no rain, no ice on the roads. Maybe a drunk driver? She shivered at the thought of how close she herself had gotten once or twice to causing an accident, until Aaron Hotchner had interfered and made sure a driver would be at her disposal any time. For private tours she paid the costs herself.
A woman was screaming horribly in the distance. Erin turned away, more determined than ever to occupy her mind with something else. She ended up staring at the flowers again.
One was right at her feet. A flower transport must have lost its load during the accident. "What bitter irony...", she couldn't help but think, in a more elaborated version of her earlier impression, "...crimson red roses everywhere on the cars, and that on Valentine's Day." The woman was still crying and somewhere else a hacksaw was screeching.
Erin looked around. Strange. From the two trucks she could still recognize, one was for bakery products and one was for computing equipment. Where were the roses coming from? And why were they spread so oddly? On the cars and only on those in the proximity of the bridge, not on those underneath the bridge or further away…
She got up, walked closer to the center of the accident. A fireman stepped into her way, but she flashed her ID. A man, sitting among the debris, only lightly injured and thus waiting, just like herself, caught her attention.
"Did you see what happened? Did the roses cause the accident?", she asked him. "Were they thrown off the bridge and blocked the drivers' view?"
... ... ...
Gray February morning light was seeping through his curtains as Derek Morgan was woken by a phone call on his free day. When he recognized the number on the display, he was tempted not to answer. Worry that something had happened to Hotch, who normally contacted him, however, made him take it in the end.
"What do you think of when you hear "red roses"?", a very familiar voice on the other end of the line asked him.
He felt inclined to ask back if she had been drinking again, but she was his boss, after all.
"Valentine's Day", he mumbled. "What is this about?"
"Someone threw a significant amount of roses onto a mass accident scene seconds after it happened. Something is wrong here. Nobody carries around this many roses. And they're of a special type, too. Sally's Happy Birthday, if I'm not mistaken. Antique roses. They're not easy to come by."
Even without the unexpected revelation that Strauss was a rose expert, this would have been a rather cryptic statement to still quite drowsy Derek Morgan, and only after an explanation of where she was and what had just happened he began to understand what she was hinting at. "You think someone caused the accident and brought the roses as a signature?"
"It's a possibility. But before I contact the police inspector in charge here, I need more than a couple of trampled flowers to prove my point."
"Then let's inform the others, they'll…"
"No."
Very firm veto.
And Derek wasn't even surprised. Rossi would suspect Strauss was only trying to avoid her next AA meeting tonight. Hotchner was with his son, she knew by firsthand experience how important quality time with children was and how serious a lack thereof. Reid… she didn't really understand Reid. The women? She didn't get along with any of them. Prentiss she had tried to use as a spy… JJ she hadn't protected when she had been called to Washington… Garcia? Could any pair of women be more different than Garcia and Strauss?
Aside from all that, everyone would probably assume she was in shock after having survived a life-threatening situation and was occupying herself with work so she wouldn't have to deal with the accident itself.
He understood.
Did he think she was in shock and thus misinterpreting things, too? It was a very likely possibility. But would pointing that out help in any way? Derek decided to follow his gut feeling.
… … …
Gray February not-so-early morning light was seeping through her curtains as Penelope Garcia was woken by a phone call on her free day. The very special ring tone she had reserved for one particular caller, however, made her take it immediately.
"Babygirl, I need you to check all florists in the state that have a special antique rose, "Sally's Happy Birthday", in their product range."
"Ah, Greek God of chocolate, I like a dozen red roses just as much as the next girl, but don't trouble yourself on my account. Just take another shower in my apartment, use a smaller towel this time and I have everything for Valentine's Day I ever wanted." Garcia quickly activated her computer and typed in the search parameters.
"Sally's Happy Birthday apparently doesn't make it to many birthdays. These flowers are extremely rare. Only two breeders in the state at all… and only one grows them in large quantities… but according to his files he hasn't sold any of them lately. Not a single one."
Derek frowned. Maybe Strauss was really onto something here. "Is there anything unusual in his credit card bills? Did he buy electronic gadgets, tools, something in that direction?" Judging from the way Strauss had described the accident, it was possible that their unsub, if there really was one, had somehow manipulated the electronics of one of the cars passing by under the bridge.
"Nothing of that kind. But he's got a BA in electrical engineering... and he apparently has a sweet tooth... According to his bills, he ordered 800 bottles of chocolate syrup." Derek could tell from Garcia's voice that she was frowning. "Maybe they were on sale...", she mused.
"Nobody needs that many bottles of chocolate syrup, unless he owns a restaurant", Strauss said immediately when Morgan called her back.
"Yes, but we can't even question him on the grounds that he bought too much artery clogging chocolate sludge and sold none of his birthday roses. So far we don't even have an official case." Just then Morgan's cell phone indicated that another call was coming in. "It's Garcia. I can put you on hold or switch to conference mode."
Strauss hesitated. This would mean letting Garcia in. Of all people, Garcia... on the other hand... Strauss hadn't been in the field for a while and she was a bit rusty - as Derek Morgan in particular had let her know on more than one occasion. But she had this gut feeling that time was pressing, that the accident was only half the story. "Conference makes more sense", she said.
Garcia was more than surprised when she suddenly realized Strauss was in this. And a bit thrown... the information she had for them hadn't been obtained through the official channels. In fact she had hacked into the yet unpublished police reports on the accident...
"I'm not going to ask", Strauss said, interpreting Garcia's uncharacteristic silence correctly.
"Katrina Mulligan, the woman whose car most likely caused the accident went to the same high school as our gardener. They even were in the same year. And another woman that was in the same year, too, was reported missing yesterday..."
From that moment onwards there was no holding back anymore. Derek informed the others, Hotch first and then immediately JJ, she needed to talk to the police inspector in charge and somehow smooth over the fact that the FBI had been meddling in his investigation from the very beginning... without telling him... it didn't look good. But if anyone could pull it off, it was JJ.
And pull it off, she did. The afternoon saw a SWAT team storming a market garden plus the gardeners' living-quarters. In his house's cellar they found the missing woman. And a bathtub full of chocolate syrup. Apparently he had been planning to drown her.
"Any idea, why...?" Morgan asked the shaking victim as an EMT wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
"It's so ridiculous... a childish prank back in high school... on Valentine's Day Katrina pretended she was secretly in love with him and set up a date. He came to the meeting place with a dozen red roses. I poured chocolate syrup against his pants so that it looked as if he, well... had not been in control of his..."
"I understand", Morgan said.
"But crossing the line to killing is usually triggered by something, some sort of unsettling event or anniversary. You've all been out of high school for decades, why now?"
For Derek's taste Strauss was questioning the victim a little too harshly, considering she had just gone through 24 hours of hell. He was just about to say something when the woman started sobbing. "We had a reunion last weekend...and Katrina and I thought... we thought it would be a fun to... to do it all again..."
"He fell for the date trick again?" Strauss frowned, and this time Derek didn't feel inclined to stop her. There was something missing in this story.
"Part of the reunion program was a karaoke contest... He performed an Elton John song... Can you feel the love tonight... in a white suit...we just couldn't resist…"
Strauss and Morgan understood... the trigger...
... ... ...
"Today I realized that it's not all gone... I realized that my instincts, my experience, my ability to analyze and interpret, are not gone... I numbed them by drinking too much. But they are still there. Today was the first time I thought and actually believed that I still might have a chance to get them back." Strauss sat down again.
"Thank you, Erin. Thank you for sharing."
The people in attendance murmured words of approval, some applauded.
The AA group leader wrapped up the meeting shortly after and Erin stepped outside. To her utter surprise, someone was waiting for her on the other side of the street.
"I thought you might like dinner", Derek Morgan said.
She couldn't believe it. As she rode shotgun in his car, she was outright astonished and even when they were already sitting at a table in a restaurant, she couldn't get her head around it. "What is this?", she asked him.
"A dinner with a friend. Valentine's Days are supposed to be good days, not ruined by unsubs and victims who never overcame their juvenile phase."
"But it was a good day", she said. And then she told him what she had said at the meeting.
And he listened.