The Quiet Ones

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A/N: Hullo, all. I seem to be on a "Reid's hidden qualities" kick… not that anyone seems to be complaining. This idea kind of came about as the result of personal experience. I'll explain more at the end, but for now, I'll not delay the story any longer. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything recognizable. Including, but not limited to: Criminal Minds, the characters, or an interrogation room.

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I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused quickly.

~Buckminster Fuller

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The members of the BAU stood just in front of the one-way mirrored window, watching the sick, twisted individual sitting in the interrogation room. Peter Loughlin was once an UnSub, but was now a very known subject who the team was sure was the culprit in a string of kidnappings, rapes and murders of young girls. They had the profile, they had the culprit, now the only thing they needed was a confession.

Loughlin was not what most people thought of when they thought of a pedophile. Most people thought of skinny, creepy men with creepy smiles who crept around in creepy trench coats. In describing this man, though, creepy would not usually come to mind. Intimidating, certainly, but creepy was further down the list. In fact, he looked almost like an eastern European version of Morgan; muscle-bound with fair skin, dark hair and darker eyes. Sinister eyes.

But looks are deceiving and one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, because if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it's probably a pedophile. Peter Loughlin fit the profile to the letter. The crimes told the story of a man with insecurities and poor impulse control. The story of a man so bothered by innocence, he has to rip it from the little girl's bodies. The story of a man who felt remorse for what he had done, but not enough to make him stop committing the same atrocity, over and over and over…

Three girls in, the BAU had been called. Four girls in, the profile was nailed down. Five girls in, Loughlin had been apprehended and seven-year-old Brenda McGuire had been returned to her parents, physically unscathed. But it wasn't soon enough. Soon enough would have been catching Loughlin before he ever committed the crime. But that wasn't possible, everyone knew that. The next best thing was to get a confession out of the sorry excuse for a man so the team could go home to their respective beds and pretend they were happy for having caught another criminal.

It wasn't going very well so far, though. Rossi and Hotch had been at it for nearly an hour, after letting Loughlin sit alone in the interrogation room for three hours. There had been a lot of denial and staring going on, but no confession. Loughlin was alone again, perhaps completely unaware that six of the FBI's best and brightest were glaring at him through a pane of glass.

"Are you going back in there?" Reid, who had almost been looking more pensive than irritated, broke the tense silence.

Hotch sighed. "Well, we'll have to, eventually. Why, what are you thinking?"

"We have to get him to break…" Reid's tone is one of intrigue. The man in interrogation is no longer a man, but puzzle for him to solve.

"No shit, Sherlock." Morgan muttered, leaning against the wall tiredly.

If Reid took offence to, or even heard, the comment, he gave no indication. "I'd like to go in." He directed this assertion at Hotch.

His superior's eyebrows went up. "Why?"

"He's too used to you and Rossi, I think it would be good to switch out interrogators. Also, I think I know how to get him to talk."

After a moment's hesitation, Hotch nods. He doesn't ask what it is Reid knows. He's too used to the mysterious leaps of logic his subordinate's brain makes and too tired to argue in any case. "Take Morgan in with you."

Reid nods and leaves the room without even waiting for his assigned interrogation partner. Morgan doesn't take offense; he recognizes the look on Reid's face. He's seen it on many interrogators' faces; Reid is getting ready to give a performance. The older agent can only hope it's a good one, because it'll take the interrogative equivalent of Shakespeare to make this guy talk.

Reid opens the door and holds it for Morgan before shutting it quietly and taking a seat at the table across from Loughlin. They sit for a moment as Morgan glares at Loughlin and Reid aligns his folders. A satisfied smirk works its way across Loughlin's face as he looks at the two profilers. "So this is all you guys've got left? Good cop, bad cop?" He snorts. "This is just pathetic."

Neither profiler responds. Morgan obviously wants to as he shifts in his seat, but he'll let Reid run the show for now. If nothing else, he trusts the younger man. However, Reid doesn't say a word. He simply stares at Loughlin like he's a Rubik's cube; if you twist in the right places, everything will line up. Just when it looks like Loughlin is growing bored or even complacent, Reid breaks the silence. "Why won't you confess?" He asked in a disinterested tone.

Making a noise that could be misinterpreted as a laugh, Loughlin shakes his head. "Because I didn't do it." He sounds exasperated before his tone turns to anger. "Maybe instead of questioning me, you should be out there looking for the real criminal."

Nodding, Reid continues as though Loughlin had never spoken. "Is it because you know what they'll do to you in prison?" Still not interested. "That must be it. You must be afraid."

Loughlin's face darkens. "Why do you think I'm scared of anything they'll do to me?" Barely controlled anger in his voice.

"Because the inmates watch the news every night. They'll know what you are and they'll make you pay for it. Even other criminals don't like child molesters." Reid says, leaning back in his chair.

When Loughlin merely glares at him, Reid leans forward on the table again and continues speaking. "If you're completely honest with yourself, you don't have any other reason to be holding out on us." He said, looking directly at Loughlin now. "Your wife left you when she found out what kind of sick excuse for a person you are and your daughter is dead. What is there for you to go back to?"

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Lunging forward, Loughlin latched onto one of Reid's forearms with the one had that wasn't shackled to the table.

Morgan jumped up to grab Loughlin, but Reid was faster for once. He twisted his arm out of Loughlin's grip with a move Morgan taught him, the older profiler proudly noted, and reversed the hold, slamming the criminal's hand down on the table. Loughlin was so surprised by the unassuming agent's unexpected reaction, it took him a moment to pull out of Reid's grip. The tension in the small room was tangible in that moment, but Reid sat back down as if nothing had happened and Loughlin relaxed his tense posture slightly. Morgan also sat back down and the interrogation resumed.

"I know what happened to your daughter." Reid said, aware that he had touched a nerve; the nerve he was hoping for.

"So you said." Loughlin replied coldly, attempting to not betray much emotion.

"I know everything that happened to your daughter. Even the things you never told anyone."

Loughlin looked sharply at Reid and then looked away. "You don't know anything." He muttered angrily.

"I do know what I'm talking about, Mr. Loughlin." Reid said.

When this drew no reaction from the criminal across the table, Reid spoke again. "Look at me." The tone of his voice surprised everyone; he didn't raise the volume, but so much force and authority went into the command that it almost made Morgan look at him too.

Now that he had Loughlin's attention, he drew a picture of seven-year-old girl with dark hair and darker eyes. Friendly eyes. "Anna Loughlin. Your daughter was raped and murdered." Loughlin opened his mouth to snarl something angrily, but Reid spoke over him. "Don't deny it, I know it's true. You somehow kept it out of the medical report, but your profile screams having a personal connection. They all look like your daughter. They're all the same age. You can make the connection."

Loughlin didn't look angry anymore, but his face was steadily losing color. "If what you said about… Anna was true… how do you know it's not the same person doing it to all those other girls?" He asked quietly.

Reid's voice was still dead calm. "It is the same person, actually. The same person kidnapped six dark-haired seven-year-old girls and raped and murdered five of them. That person was you.

The change in Loughlin was profound. His eyes were wide, his voice was faltering, he looked as though he was broken. "N-not her… not Anna, not ever! I never laid a hand on Anna!"

"You raped your own daughter and when that wasn't enough for you, you moved on to girls that resembled her…" The other members of the BAU are beginning to wonder how Reid can keep speaking with such dispassion, but it seems to be working.

"No! Someone took her from me, so I took all those others! S-someone took my Anna! Why should anyone else get to have their innocent daughters when someone took mine? I took all the others but I never touched Anna!" Loughlin collapsed on the table and sound escaped his lips that no one expected. He sobbed.

Reid- quiet, geeky Reid- without ever raising his voice, had brought tough, brawny Peter Loughlin to tears. And all Reid did was stand, collect his folders and utter two words. "I know."

Loughlin looked up as Reid and Morgan left the room. "You… you tricked me!" But the rest of his shouts were lost on the two profilers as they shut the door.

When Reid and Morgan rejoined their comrades on the other side of the glass, it was silent. They all stared at their youngest member for a moment before Rossi broke the quiet. "How did you know about his daughter?"

Reid shrugged, seeming tired but almost pleased. "It was the missing piece of the profile. It was his stressor. We figured it was the death of his daughter, but that didn't seem quite right. This fit the profile much better."

It was quiet for a moment longer as each member of the BAU took just a moment to reconcile the image of the cool, confident Reid that had made a muscle-bound UnSub cry with their idea of the quiet, geeky, unassuming Reid. It was JJ who recovered first. "We should let you interrogate people more often, Spence." She said with a small smile.

"Yeah, kid, you can be our secret weapon." Morgan joked, nudging the younger man in the side.

Like that, the tension was broken and the team accepted yet another of Reid's odd quirks, which just about made up for the fact that everyone else in the police station avoided him like that plague for the remainder of the their visit.

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We don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.

~Wendy Wasserstein

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A/N: Hm, I'm rather pleased with how that came out. Okay, to explain my motivation: I am 5 foot nothing and I barely weigh over 100 pounds. In other words, I'm a tiny person. And, yet, I manage to terrify people. I don't know how, because I don't look intimidating and I never yell, but I somehow manage it. Reid seems like he would be in the same boat (except he's a foot taller than me…). I hope I didn't bore you guys too much anyway, I know it was little… description-heavy. A review would be wonderful if you feel like giving it!