Hey, KillTheWhelp here. If you didn't see my update on my page, I've decided that More Than You Bargained For is going to take way too long for my patience and I just wanted to jump right into the Rossi stuff, so here I am! If you haven't read any of that, you don't need to, but it might help? I dunno. You do you.
"Katie's been wetting her bed," Dr. Spencer Reid reported, lifting up the covers to reveal a stained mattress.
The gangly doctor and I were investigating the bedroom of a young asthmatic girl named Katie Jacobs who had gone missing in a local shopping mall while on a family outing with her parents, aunt, uncle and cousin. At first she was believed to be a potential victim of the man who'd kidnapped another girl the week before and murdered her. But then Katie's necklace—and an expensive one at that—was found in the trash, the clasp broken. With us was Derek Morgan, the hunky chocolate man known for kicking down doors and hosting flirty phone conversations with our fabulously flamboyant tech-analyst, Penelope Garcia.
And we were only a fraction of the Behavioral Analysis Unit.
There was also Jennifer Jareau (or JJ), our media liaison; Emily Prentiss, another agent, as well as my best friend in the unit; and Aaron Hotchner, our Unit Chief. We'd recently lost two agents in our unit to the horrors of some of the cases we'd been put on. Jason Gideon, one of the people who actually created our unit back in the day, had suffered two breakdowns: One in the wake of a bomb, the other after a prolific serial killer named Frank Breitkopf took an unfortunate interest in Gideon and murdered his significant other. He left a couple of months ago, telling Reid (who viewed him as a father figure) that he was going to find himself. Elle Greenaway had left us the year before after trauma induced by an (at the time) unknown subject (or unsub) named the Fisher King had led to her shooting a rapist we were investigating. She claimed it was self-defense, but it seemed more like she killed him in cold blood. Elle's position had been filled by Emily. But Gideon's remained empty.
"A lot of six year-olds do," Morgan shrugged Reid's observation off. "Could be bad dreams."
"Some kids won't get up at night because they're afraid of the dark," Reid continued. He was the smartest person I ever knew, certifiably a genius. He could spout out factoids about anything and everything. He was also, admittedly, a little afraid of the dark himself.
I squatted down and pawed through a basket of Katie's toys on the floor. Underneath a few stuffed animals was something that gave me a lump in my throat.
"Or it could be a lot more complex than that," I said, standing up. Reid and Morgan came to my sides to look at the altered Barbie doll in my hand. Her hair had been chopped short and her eyes had been colored over by a black marker. But the most disturbing part was the paperclip wrapped around the doll's neck, the red line underneath it symbolizing blood.
"Most girls covet their dolls like an extension of themselves," Reid murmured.
"I know these signs," I sighed, wishing that I didn't. "Acting out on her toys, wetting the bed…"
"She's obviously covering something up about that necklace," Morgan added.
"And her cousin might be holding something back," Reid said.
"Katie's in a lot of pain and not tellin' anybody, and I think I know why," Morgan said.
I stared into his eyes, knowing what he was thinking and why he was thinking it. He himself had been molested as a child, so I knew this must have been hard for him.
It turned out that Katie was being molested by her uncle and that her aunt found out and blamed Katie for ruining their marriage. Using the previous kidnapping as a red herring, the aunt lured Katie away from the arcade, where she had last been seen with her cousin. She duct taped the girl's mouth shut and hid her in a storage closet. Hotch found Katie unresponsive and managed to resuscitate her.
When we returned to the Bureau, I stayed a little while longer and went up the stairs to Gideon's old office. It had been empty for months, but part of me still expected to see him behind his desk. I could picture him reading a book about obscure birds, his glasses at the end of his nose.
I wasn't particularly close to Gideon. Not in the way that Reid and even Elle were. I always felt like he didn't have faith in me, or maybe that he sensed some of my doubts when I was transferred to the BAU after my stint in Crisis Negotiations. But I knew that Gideon cared for all of us, and we all cared for him.
I wondered when he'd be replaced. I hoped that, whenever it finally happened, the person wouldn't be a dick.