"No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness."
Aristotle
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"Love is as much of an object as an obsession, everybody wants it everybody seeks it, but few ever achieve it, those who do, will cherish it, be lost in it, and among all, will never, never forget it."
Curtis Judalet
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07.01
Boisterously grunting, Abby turned around in her bed, her hand reaching out to alarm on her nightstand. Her hand groped in empty air, the sheets wrapped around her waist like a corset. For a second, she found steadiness. Then, the pressure under her body disappeared and she tumbled down.
With a loud and wakening thud, Abby fell out of bed and hit the floor. She groaned in pain as her still slightly sore shoulder was pushed against the hardwood floor. For a few moments, she rested her head on the cold wood beneath her, her warm breath creating moist circles on the floor. The sound of nails scratching on wood made her eyes pop open and she was greeted by the sight of Bird standing before her, his mouth open, tongue out, and he barked shortly.
"Morning Birdie. How'd you sleep?"
The dog sat down and anticipating eyes locked on the image that struggled to stand up. Abby moved her left arm in the air, feeling how her shoulder was doing. It had been six days since Luke Padov sent her flying through the air. For five days, she had been stuck at the Headquarters, assisting Garcia as she worked her magic fingers on her many computers. For five days, she hadn't done much else besides going for a smoke, get a cup of coffee, listen to Garcia and Morgan flirt bluntly and openly, smoke some more, drink some more coffee and be annoyed by all the many, many different merry colours in Garcia's office. For as far as you could call it an office.
Abby put her deep dark brown hair in a ponytail and headed towards the kitchen. Absentminded, she made herself some coffee, lit a fag and opened the claret curtains. Slowly and silently sipping on her coffee and smoking her cigarette, Abby watched Quantico Creek shimmer before her in the fresh light of dawn. For over a month, Abby had stayed at the Crossroads Inn in Quantico. Though she had liked living easy and expandable as in a motel room, she found a small house in Dumfries, Candice road, three days ago, about ten minutes away from the FBI Headquarters.
It was at the end of the road and she overlooked Quantico Creek. On a clear day, she could spot the harbour on the other side of the creek. There was a small piece of land surrounding the house, most of it covered by tall trees, a forest to the north. There was enough distance between her and her neighbours for Abby to feel comfortably. She hated it when her neighbours lived too close; it reminded her of her youth. As a five year old, her older brother was often caught watching their neighbour's have sex. No physical fights ever occurred, but there were many verbal fights and shouts, door being slammed and glasses broken.
The brunette opened the door that lead to the patio to let Bird out, and the German shepherd wiggled his tail as he passed Abby by. She heard the birds in the early morning and decided it was a good morning, a good day. The morning air swiftly and smoothly entered her house and met the warmer atmosphere in the house. For a couple of minutes, Abby watched Bird wander around in her backyard, often glanced over the creek whilst she sipped on her coffee. As she turned around and got ready to jog, she left the backdoor open for Bird to walk in and out.
She had decided today was a good day for a jog in the woods near the house. Bird tagged along and the two of them ran around the woods for over half an hour, before returning home. There was something utterly peaceful and intrinsically about jogging to Abby. It didn't tire her, she gained energy from it. She loved it when the air was cold and sharp, the frigid touch on her body had a magic that she couldn't describe. In the summer, she sought out the woods and covered plains where the air was usually colder and less saturated. The silence that encircled her comforting and the soft noise of her shoes stepping down on the ground were like a lullaby.
She might actually start to like it here. Abby looked over her shoulder before disappearing into the house. Her nose still caressed the smell of the forest, her senses still spoiled. She could get used to this. She might like it here.
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08.40
"Morning."
"Morning genius."
Reid leant back in his chair as Abby walked passed him. Smilingly, she extended the hand that held the cup of coffee. Smiling shyly, Reid gladly accepted the caffeine. She dumped her backpack on her desk and sat down, rubbing some hair that came loose out of her face.
"How's your shoulder."
"Much better. I even jogged this morning. Might be cleared by my doc soon so I can step back into all the action I've been missing."
Reid grinned, he knew best how agitated Abby had been for the past days.
"There's plenty of action left Frankie."
"It better."
"Morning."
Derek walked into the office, putting down his bag next to his desk and he took off his jacket.
"Looking sharp today, Morgan."
He sent her his mischievous smile and winked.
"Court keeps starting earlier and earlier. It's almost fascinating."
The young doctor opened his mouth to speak, but Abby sent him a silencing glare. It was too early for facts.
"How's the face?"
"Just fine."
During their last case, Morgan tripped over boxes filled with pictures, drawings and writings of their UnSub. He had landed on the edge of a flight of stairs, his weight too far over the edge and tumbled down. The event had caused Prentiss to break into a fit of laughter as she helped him up, shooing away the birds that scared ("They attacked me!") Morgan in the first place. A nice, blue bruise and still swollen cheekbone was the result. It looked good to him and several women of the B.A.U. team stated that it was a pity bruise started to fade and the swollen skin returned to its normal state. The jokes, however, the jokes remained. Abby had desperately wanted to be in Arizona, the case was more than interesting and Abby would have loved to be an active part of that, but after hearing about Morgan and his attempt to be though and brave she would have given almost anything to have been there.
Paul the Postman walked past their desks, smiling friendly and greeting the three FBI agents. As per usual, a far amount of mail was deployed on Reid's desk. The young genius immediately put down his coffee and greedily opened his mail. Morgan thanked Paul as he received his mail, eyeing excited at the letter. Abby still didn't get much mail. She got the usual correspondence of professor Langley in London and a few letters every now and then of university's she had held or was invited to hold readings, classes and lectures.
But today was Thursday. That meant no mail. Yet the short, charming looking man walked past her desk and handed her a white envelope. Surprised, she put down her coffee and started to open the mail. As soon as she laid her eyes on the content, her hearing shut down, muting all sounds around her. Prentiss entered with Rossi, both of them greeted as always. Prentiss started talking about her presumed failed date after Morgan pressed on about the matter, Reid was still reading his mail, furiously opening one letter after the other, his eyes absorbing the words in a rapid pace.
The little colour in her face drained away, sharp and piercing nails scratched her skin, leaving red and bloody stripes. She froze. Abby was unable to move as her mind imprinted the image in her brain despite her best efforts not to. She tried to put the content back in the cursed white envelope, erase the memory and pretend nothing had happened. A hammer hit down on her head, its force causing her to come back to earth. She heard Hotch descend the stairs and he approached the group. Hastily, she put the file back in the envelope. A little vehement, Abby put the white paper container in her lower desk drawer and locked it – the one drawer she locked. She caught a glare from Morgan, but looked past it. If she ignored it, so would Morgan.
"Morning."
Rossi tilted his head shortly, as he always did when he greeted the team leader. The rest of the fascinating group of people fell in line and greeted the extravagant man. Except for Abby, whom seemed to have lost the ability to speak. So instead, she turned in her chair, a couple of fingers slightly against her lips and she smiled meekly at the senior man.
"Let's go."
Without any other word, Hotch turned and headed towards the conference room. Morgan sighed as he stood up and drew the attention of a still occupied Reid by tapping him once on the back. Prentiss and Rossi quickly grabbed a cup of coffee, before following Reid and Abby, whom were only a few steps behind Morgan.
JJ awaited them in the room, already prepped for action. Whatever it was, Hotch and JJ seemed to be in a hurry. Feeling the air, heavy and thick with tension, Abby sat down next to Reid and remained silent.
"Sorry for starting the morning so abruptly."
JJ was shortly interrupted by Garcia, who entered the room, holding a block note and pen. She excused herself and sat down next to Morgan, shortly glancing at him as if asking what it was all about.
"Salt Lake City just called. They got a man for murdering seven young boys, he confessed an hour ago. They need us."
"For what?"
Rossi looked at Hotch, the tension in his face visible as he made an estimated guess.
"Finding six of them."
"My God."
Abby shortly glanced at Reid before resting her eyes on the computer screen.
"PD arrested this man-"
A picture popped up on the computer screen of an elder man, mid forties, short beard, dark eyes.
"Arnold Donalds. He confessed to murdering seven boys. They found Calvin Garret, age seven."
Another pictures appeared on the screen of a young blond boy. His cheeks still chubby, face round and angelic. He was seven, but looked around five years old.
"The six others are still missing. Good news, Harry Bones has only been missing for ten hours. His parents wanted to report him missing after he didn't come home from school. An officer off duty was two steps away from the door, it was pure luck that he overheard the conversation seeing he handle the Garret's case."
"All boys, young. Between six and eight."
Six other pictures loomed up on the computer screen.
"Calvin Garret's autopsy revealed that the boy had been choked to death. They found his body a week after he disappeared. He had been dead for three days."
Prentiss immediately looked up at JJ.
"That means Harry Bones might still be alive."
"Donalds won't talk about Bones. Salt Lake City PD is convinced he's still alive. We have to find this boy and try to recover the other five bodies."
JJ glanced around the room, staring at the six agents before her. Her words had been penetrating and adamant. As a mother, she must feel the horror creeping up against her back when imagining it to be her son.
"Scott, you stay here, help Garcia out."
"Got it boss. Good luck."
Hotch and the rest of the team had arisen from their seats and headed towards the exit. Abby stood up as well, but lingered at the table. Now more than ever she wished she was cleared for duty. Dead bodies were something horrendous, something terrifying. A life taken too early by the hands of a man or woman that wasn't allowed to take. But when the bodies were smaller, shorter, younger, it only got more worse. Abby could feel the night train, its darkness in the mist fierce and vibrating, ready for action. Compelling and disconsolating as it were, as dark and evil, the train knew that now was the time, more than ever, to get Abby to her destination. It had to cut faster through the shadows and the doubts had to be left behind in the distance even quicker. Then again, there was the mail, the envelope, the content. Abby felt his cold breath in her neck, the hair raising till a point where it almost hurt, like little pins rapidly jabbing into her skin. His phantom frigid hand slowly and smoothly sliding over hers, his touch sending peril shivers down her body. She felt herself become lethargic as the cesspool of darkness beneath her started to drag her down.
"Scott, you start working on a preliminary profile. You have access to all the evidence, let us know what you come up with."
"Copy."
Abby nodded shortly, recalling the words that had been spoken while she slowly drifted away. She ran the conversation through her mind, thankful that somehow, she did pay attention. Last thing she wanted was Hotch breathing down her neck, also.
---
10.00
Abby slowly walked towards Garcia's cupboard. It wasn't really a cupboard, but Abby liked to call it that. When she first pronounced the words, Garcia was furious at her. It took her two hours and five cups of coffee to cool down the funky computer tech. But despite her exterior and her workplace, Abby had to admit that Garcia was one hell of a technical analyst. The things she could find out on a computer frightened the dark haired agent, if only slightly.
The more time she spent with Garcia, the more Abby started to envy her. She had been surrounded by darkness her entire life, partly because of her morbid thoughts, ability to peek into other minds and her 'gift', but her childhood hadn't exactly been colourful either. Garcia, coming from hippies, did her best to make her world as colourfull and as bright as she could, no matter what she saw on those screens. She protected her world, looked away when needed, shut her ears when needed, all to protect that what she had; a colourful world. Abby wasn't sure whether that was the reason why she envied Penelope Garcia that much, or the fact that even though she looked away and shut her ears, she didn't ignore it and she didn't stop feeling. Garcia had explained that she couldn't sit around and watch the whole world go down into misery and grey and rainy clouds, she needed to do something. That could be another reason why she was so fascinated by this woman; she knew where she stood, what she believed in and what she wanted. You could say that she knew why she was here, what she was doing.
Abby didn't. She wasn't even sure why she joined the bureau in the first place. Not that she regretted her decision, not at all. She had loved every single day working as an agent and making a difference. Without it, she wouldn't know what to do because she didn't know anything else. Deep down, Abby found it worrying that she still didn't know why, yet she choose this profession. She had known about her ability to crawl through the dirt of other people's minds at a young age, always being strangely captivated by other people and their behaviour and reasons. Was that the reason? Because her soul and her thoughts were as dark and bloodstained as the one of a killer?
With her elbow, Abby opened the door of Garcia's office and entered, kicking it closed again. She put the two cups of coffee on the designated area of the table and stirred. Garcia barely looked up anymore, she had gotten used to the young female quite quickly.
"I brought you coffee."
"Thanks doll."
"So, what are we doing?"
Garcia stopped staring at the computer screens and turned her chair to meet Abby's face.
"I'm running a background check on Arnold Donalds. He's got an impressive record. Several drunk and disorderly's, he stole a car two years back, drunk driving, three assaults. Total, he did nine months of jail-time."
"Nine months?"
"Yeah."
"Unbelievable."
"Honey, you read my mind. But get this, when he was a teenager he was admitted to Utah State Hospital. It's a mental health hospital."
"For what?"
"Don't know, his record it sealed."
"Well, unseal it."
"On it."
"Anything I can do?"
"Other than your thing?"
Garcia turned in her chair to look at Abby, letting the keyboard rest for a short period of time.
"Evidence just arrived."
"Good. While you're at it, could you find everything on the parents of the victims?"
"Looking for a connection?"
"Yeah."
"I gave it a shot, nothing so far."
"With all due respect, your computers can't always find it."
"If I want, I can connect all your ancestors to famous dead people."
Abby snorted as she opened the boxes, studying the contents. On the large whiteboard, she made different sections, one for each boy. Slowly, she started to build a structured spider web.
"Ever heard about the Wilkinson case?"
"Wasn't that the chainsaw massacre guy?"
"Ya. He murdered eleven people before he was caught. All in the same neighbourhood. PD couldn't find a single connection after they chased one of the neighbours. Turned out, the neighbourhood was pretty popular for the local pizza place. In the past four months, all victims had ordered a pizza and got the same delivery boy at their doors. Now, pizza's are paid in cash, computers couldn't find a thing. One detective, however, did, when he heard a colleague talk about that great pizza he ordered. He remember seeing pizza boxes at two of the crime scenes. When he paid a visit to the pizza hut, everything fell together. The point of this story?"
"Never trust the pizza guy?"
"Never rely on computers."
"Do you want me to tell you all those stories about cases that were solved with the help of a computer?"
Abby grinned and muttered back a reply. Her smile faltered when she put up the picture of Jeremy Larkin, the first to have been abducted. She couldn't help but to think what he looked like now, his flesh rotten away, eyes shrunk and sunk back in their eye sockets, muscles turned into jelly, his once pretty face gone, stuck in a coffin in a hole in the earth.
---
10.11
"You think they're aboard the plane already?"
Abby leant back in her chair, her feet popped up on the corner of a table. Garcia was gathering all the information she could on the parents and Arnold Donalds while talking to Abby.
"I don't know. But I don't think they have during the minute and a half that passed by since you asked last."
"Am I bugging you?"
"Are you kidding me?"
Garcia turned around and grinned.
"That accent of yours could never ever bug me. It's almost enchanting."
"Enchanting?"
"Yeah."
Abby pouted for a second before she put her legs down and stood up. She swiftly walked towards the whiteboard, looking at the red, green and blue lines that crossed each other as they held theories together. Seven boys within six months. That was a lot. The first boy was named Kyle Davis, six years old. His abduction was messy, but the police could find no leads. After Kyle came Lex Thomas. He was six also. Then Mark Smith and Felix Anderson, both seven. Number five was Andy Jones, eight. After Andy, Calvin Garret was abducted but found. Harry Bones was abducted sixteen hours ago. Salt Lake City Police Department found Calvin Garret's body near the Great Salt Lake. They searched the area for more bodies but found none. Calvin Garret had been sexually abused, abused physically and starved before a pillow was placed on his face and he died.
Arnold Donalds was pulled over for a broken taillight when a police officer noticed where he came from; the Great Salt Lake. What could a person do there at three in the morning? When questioned, Arnold remained quiet and he was brought to the station. After four hours, he confessed that he killed the seven young boys. He laughed when he told the astounded detective Greg York, yelling that they would never find the boy. He hadn't spoken about the boys after he made a call to his lawyer.
"How do you do that?"
Abby hadn't felt Garcia's eyes watching her and burning against the back of her neck. She turned forty degrees, the black marker still in her head, her eyes still on the pictures.
"Do what?"
"Look at pictures like that? What? Like, feel it?"
"I dunno, it's my job."
"You're really good at your job."
"Thank you. I guess."
"Don't you ever-."
Garcia paused. She put down her headset and turned her chair to completely face Abby. The usual sparkle in her eyes seemed dimmed and Abby could feel her hesitation to talk about the subject. She put down the marker and sat on the chair. As she handed Garcia her coffee, she started to speak.
"I've been doing this kind of work for a long, long time. I've seen a lot with SCU, things that I sure as hell thought were supposed to scare me senseless. But it didn't. When you have a job like this, you somehow learn to shut it down. Perhaps even ignore. I know for one, that I rarely look at the victims as persons, because they aren't anymore. They are the clues that will lead me to the man or woman that killed them and it's my duty, not as an agent, but as a human being, to follow those clues and reach the finish line."
"Wow. You really believe that?"
"Yeah. I do, Garcia. I do. Look, I know that you see things differently, you should. We're not alike. I'm as much as a monster as any other person. I just don't hide it. I use it."
"But how do you shut it out? And why?"
Abby sighed, took a sip from her cold coffee and stared at the board.
"I'm not going to tell you how. I think that you should remain the person that you are, continue to sparkle."
She rolled her eyes at the last words and heard Garcia snort.
"Besides, I don't think I even know myself. And the why. The moment I look at those people and see them as human being, feel what they must have felt, feel what their families are going through, I can't see straight."
"You have to catch the killer, you have to reach the finish line."
Abby smiled and nodded, thinking that Garcia understood.
"You sound like a robot Frankie. Don't forget, you're a human being yourself."
It were simple words. But the effects were catastrophic. It hit her square in the face, her cheeks stinging, her nose bleeding, stars dancing before her face.
Garcia sent her a nod and meaningful look when the phone rang. Caller display said 'Morgan' and Garcia got ready to answer. For the second time in a short period, Abby found herself dazzled and fazed and confound.
What if it all were so easy?
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"I am just a watcher, I am not anger. Anger is there and I am watching it."
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
