The Strange Case of Dr. Reid and Ms. Green
When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure. ~Author Unknown
Baltimore, Maryland
"Uh-oh!" the blond haired, blue eyed boy, seated in the front of the shopping cart, exclaimed with a giggle as he once again picked up the box of Mac 'n' Cheese and dropped it to the floor of the grocery store. The nine month old flashed his young mother a wide grin, flashing his five teeth.
"Dylan Matthew Green, what did I say earlier?" Ashley Green couldn't help but smile as she attempted to scold her son. Trying not to laugh, she squatted down and picked up the box and placed it back in the cart out of Dylan's grasp.
Finding his little game hilarious, as soon as Ashley turned to grab a bag of Doritos from the shelf, Dylan reached the other direction stretching his tiny arms so he could knock a total of three bags of chips to the floor. "Uh-oh!" he shouted again, before falling into another fit of giggles.
"Dylan Matthew," Ashley warned him, not smiling this time as she returned the bags to the shelves. After placing her bag of Doritos in the cart she leaned on the handle and read over her list. "Alright, man, almost done then we can go home and take our naps, okay?" she told Dylan as she attempted to smooth down his hair, which as usual was sticking up in all directions.
Wiping a bit of drool off of his cheek she prepared to move on to the next isle, until some one called to her, "Excuse me, can you help me?" a small voice asked as a little hand tugged on her shirt. Looking down, she saw a little girl about nine or ten years old looking up at her hopefully.
"Sure sweetie, what do you need?" She replied kindly, allowing the girl to lead her a few feet down the isle.
Pointing up to the top shelf, she answered, "Can you get me some of the BBQ chips please? I can't reach."
"Sure," Ashley responded with a sigh. She was definitely taller than the girl, but she still didn't quite hit that five foot mark at only four feet eleven inches. As she stretched up wards in her attempt to grab the indicated chips, she had no clue what was going on behind her. She heard Dylan beginning to fuss and with out looking behind her she called out, "Hang on little man; mommy will be there in a sec." Finally, after a few minutes of stretching, she snatched one of the orange bags and handed it to the girl.
"Thank you!" The girl smiled widely before skipping down towards the front of the store.
Once again looking at her list as she strolled back to the cart, she wondered vaguely what had been wrong with Dylan, who she no longer heard crying. As a matter of fact, she didn't hear him at all. Dropping her list to the ground she looked up in a panic. Dylan was gone. She couldn't breathe and she began hearing a roaring sound in her ears as she began hyperventilating while running from isle to isle. "Dylan! Baby, where are you? Dylan!" She screamed as she ran around, frantically searching the store, and then the parking lot. All other customers were looking at her like she had gone crazy as she collapsed to the pavement, sobbing uncontrollably. Who ever had taken her son, they were long gone.
Quantico, Virginia
"What's going on JJ?" Derek Morgan asked as soon as the entire team was assembled.
JJ sighed, the concern heavy on her features. "This case is in Baltimore. In the past two months there have been five young boys kidnapped, each fitting the same description. All of the victims were between eight months and one year old, with blond hair and blue eyes, approximately fifteen pounds. Also each was taken in a public area. Three were taken in Gunpowder State Park, the second victim from a friend's birthday party, and the fifth from a grocery store." She gestured to each location on a map of Baltimore County on the screen. With the press of a button, the image changed from the map to pictures of the victims, with their names underneath. JJ pointed to the last picture, "Our latest victim, Dylan Green was taken while grocery shopping with his mother this morning. According to County police, he was taken about an hour before they called."
Taking charge, Hotch looked around the table at everybody. "Everyone, grab your overnight bags, I want to leave as soon as possible, we all know what their chances of survival are at this point. Garcia, start digging. Find everything you can on each of these families, see if there is a chance that these are revenge kidnappings. I also want you to check death records for any children who have died recently fitting the description of the missing boys." And with that, everyone on the team stood and went to prepare for the new case.
An hour and a half later as the SUVs carrying the collection of agents went over the border into Baltimore County, Hotch called Spencer Reid, who was in the car behind him. "Reid, I want you, Morgan, and JJ to go and talk to Ashley Green, the mother of this morning's victim."
"Alright, not a problem," Reid replied after receiving her address from Hotch, his nerves evident in his voice. He knew that she would be extremely emotional, and Spencer wasn't exactly good with the emotional aspect of cases. Thankfully, JJ and Morgan would be there, so he wouldn't be as much of a risk of making the mother more upset. He passed the directions to Ashley on to Morgan, who was driving, and sat back and leaned his head on the window. As he stared out at the streets of Baltimore County he attempted thinking about the one thing he didn't know everything about. What do you tell a grieving mother who's nine month old son has just been kidnapped?
Ten minutes after Hotch called them, the trio pulled up to a small house sitting right on the water. There were various brightly colored toys scattered about the front lawn, all of them damp from that morning's rain. JJ walked ahead of the two men and knocked twice on the dark blue front door. Once Spencer and Derek had reached the door, it was pulled open by a small girl who almost looked like she could be in high school, but when you really looked at her, she appeared to be no older than twenty two or twenty three.
"Yes?" she croaked out, she had been crying non stop since Dylan had disappeared and her voice was beginning to go. She self consciously wiped stray tears from under her red rimmed eyes as she stared at the three strangers.
They simultaneously flashed their badges as JJ introduced them. "Hello, I'm agent Jennifer Jareau with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. This is SSA Dr. Spencer Reid, and SSA Derek Morgan. Do you mind if we talk to you about Dylan for a little bit?"
"Sure," she sniffled quietly as she stepped aside allowing them inside. As with the front lawn, there were many different toys scattered about the otherwise clean house. "Sorry," she apologized quietly as she began picking up the ones in their walkway.
"Don't worry about it. My house looks about the same as this; I know how messy little boys are." JJ smiled at her and took the large red plastic car from her hands and sat it on a nearby table.
"You have a son?" A small ghost of a smile flashed momentarily on Ashley's face as she looked across the room at a framed picture of her son that was hanging above the fireplace.
"Yeah, Henry, he's six months old now," JJ told her as she led the way to the couch.
"Oh, so he's starting to crawl. That's when they really start getting into stuff. I remember when Dylan was starting to crawl, I turned my back for a second and when I looked back again, he was coated in blue paint. It didn't come out of his hair for almost two weeks."
Derek sat down on an armchair across from the couch and leaned forward as he talked to Ashley, "Now, I know this is really difficult to talk about, so if you want to stop and take a break at any point, just let us know, okay?" Ashley nodded, indicating that he could proceed with the questions. "Okay, is there anybody that you can think of that would have done this? Any one that paid a little bit too much attention to Dylan? Was there any one at work or that takes care of him while you're working that seemed like they were overly interested in him?"
She ran a shaking hand through her tangled brown hair as she thought. "No, I'm an artist so I'm almost always home. And whenever I leave, I usually take Dylan with me. But whenever I do have to leave him, my mother watches him and she would never do this."
Spencer crossed his arms across his chest as he asked his own questions, "What about his father? Do you think he might have something to do with this?"
"He decided that he wanted nothing to do with me or Dylan. Besides, he moved to California with his new skank three months ago." A scowl made itself at home amongst her features, completing the look of the betrayed mother. Then her features softened and a look of realization dawned on her face as she looked back at Derek. "Wait, at the park, last week. Dylan was playing in the sand box and I was sitting on one of the benches nearby, and some woman came over and started asking me all kinds of questions about him. She asked me when his birthday was, what he liked, any weird habits he had, and that didn't really strike me as odd, a lot of parents at the park do that, play the how-cute-is-yours-compared-to-mine game. But then she started asking me things like how much he weighed, if he had anything medically wrong, and things like that. It was just strange how specific she was getting. I ended up making up a fake doctor's appointment, grabbed Dylan and left." Her honey brown eyes widened in horror and they once again filled with tears, "Oh my god, is this my fault? I should have known she was up to something! Do you think it was her?"
"This is not your fault," JJ placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, "you're not the first person this has happened to. And we don't know if this was her doing or not yet, so don't blame yourself. Now, did she ever tell you her name?"
"Just her first name, Mary." She roughly wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand.
"Excuse me a minute," Spencer said apologetically, walking back outside as his cell phone began ringing. "Yeah, Hotch?" he answered as soon as he closed the door behind him.
"We've found three bodies. I need you to bring her down to the morgue to try and ID them. Tell JJ and Morgan to meet me at the police station to talk to the other patients."
"Hotch, I don't think-," Spencer began; he couldn't handle calming her down if one of them was really Dylan. This was a job for JJ, or Emily, not Spencer.
"Reid, you can handle it. Now, just do what I say, you of all people know of the time constraints with this case." Hotch sounded stressed as he hung up on Spencer. Spencer took a deep breath as he walked back inside, this wasn't going to be pretty.
Okay, so there's chapter one. Obviously I don't own any of the Criminal Minds characters, I'm not that amazing/god-like. I'm close, but not quite lol. Also, there is a banner for this story posted on my profile, so check it out. Anyways, review and tell me what you think. Should I continue?
