Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.
Rossi looked at Garcia for a long moment and realized that she was probably the only person in the whole BAU team he could tell about this issue. Sure, the others would listen sympathetically, too, they'd nod at the right moments, they'd offer their opinions, they would care. But they'd also analyze him, they'd try to figure out why he was coming up with this particular case right now and they'd form some sort of psychological assessment on him.
Thank you very much.
Garcia, on the other hand, she was, for lack of a better word, innocent in this regard. She would really listen, not listen and at the same time try to figure out what his interest in this old file was revealing about his current state of mind.
He wasn't blaming the others for their approach, no. It was the nature of the beast when being a profiler. Hell, he had driven three wives crazy with the habit of analyzing everything! But at the moment he preferred the company of someone who listened with the heart, not with the mind.
"The case in the Angeles National Forest probably triggered this…", Rossi began, carefully studying her reaction.
Garcia's eyes grew wide. It was the case with the unsub that had been buried alive as a teenager and gone through a near death experience.
"If this makes you uncomfortable…"
"No, go on." She sat upright and nodded.
"This here…" he lifted the file in his hands "…was one of the last cases I worked on prior to my retirement. An unsub who drugged his victims and then buried them alive. We spent weeks hunting him down…and when we finally got him, we… well, we found this…" He retrieved about half a dozen black and white shots from the file and spread them out on the desk between them.
Garcia involuntary closed her eyes. She had just seen too much doing this job.
"Don't worry, it's just landscape, no gruesome details."
Indeed, at first glance the photos looked harmless – a spot in the woods, apparently pretty much in the middle of nowhere, fir trees and bushes all around, but it didn't seem to be winter, judging from the leaves on the ground it was probably autumn.
"The mounds here and there, are that…?"
"Graves, yes. Eight young women and men altogether."
Garcia squinted. "But… there's an open grave, isn't there?… Did you manage to save one victim?"
The hopeful note in her voice wasn't lost on Rossi. "Look at this", he said and pushed one particular photo towards her. "Do you see the prints around the hole? And the strange long scratches inside, all along the walls?"
She studied the photo, looked up, studied the photo again… "Oh my God!"
"Someone was buried in that hole and dug himself out."
His vague way of speaking made Garcia frown. "Someone?"
"We had to shoot the unsub when we arrived on the scene. He was heavily armed, opened fire immediately. We only discovered the open grave after he was dead."
"But there was no victim?"
"Judging from the traces, he or she ran off during the shootout. It was a highly complicated situation in almost impassable terrain, we couldn't cordon it off properly. Of course we searched the area, for days, but shortly after the pictures were made, a heavy rainstorm came down, washed away anything the dogs could have used as a trail…"
Garcia pressed her left fingertips to her mouth. "No body showed up?"
"No body. Either there's still a skeleton out there or a highly traumatized victim. Just like in the Angeles National Forest case."
And they both new what being buried alive had done to the unsub – a victim himself, he had become a multiple murderer…
"We found blood inside the hole. Well, back then we couldn't do much with it except figuring out the blood type. Nowadays, things would be different, of course, but wasting government funds on a case that's been solved for ages? Don't think Strauss' generous Christmas mood goes that far, not with the big financial review coming up in January…"
"Well, there are ways to work around getting a permission from her…" Garcia let the sentence trail off.
"You could get that DNA without Strauss finding out about it?" Rossi lowered his voice.
"It would require bending the rules a little…" She was positively whispering now. Her skin was tingling in the neck area – they were talking about doing something forbidden. Right here, in FBI headquarters … with Hotch and the others only a few feet away… Garcia couldn't help it, that was exciting.
"As long as nobody knows…"
There was a gleam in Rossi's eyes that hadn't been there before. It made Garcia smile – and a little suspicious. "David Rossi, did you just manipulate me into helping you by appealing to my mischievous side?
He couldn't help but think that she had somehow managed to turn his originally rather gloomy afternoon mood completely around.
"Cara, you know us Italian men. We don't manipulate. We seduce."
... ... ...
A day later, snowflakes were softly tumbling from the sky above Quantico. Inside the FBI building however, other things were tumbling.
"Seriously, Reid, you're sure great at a lot of things, but dancing isn't one of them." Trust Derek Morgan not to mince words.
"But I'm doing exactly what the book says!", Reid protested. "My knees are slightly bend. My legs are shoulder width apart. The toes of my left foot are at a 45-degree angle to the toes of my right foot. I'm swaying my hand towards the left until I'm only a few inches short of a 45-degree angle."
"It's dancing, kid, not geometry." In one fluid motion, smooth as a panther, Morgan got up from the chair in the bullpen he had been occupying and joined Reid at his desk. He knew very well that all the women were watching since it was coffee break and Garcia had joined Prentiss and JJ for a chat. "Turn on the music again."
Bing Crosby and the Andrews sisters' version of "Mele Kalikimaka" sounded through the office, just low enough not to bring Strauss an unexpected Hawaiian Christmas greeting, should she happen to pass by this part of the building. Predictably, Morgan had no trouble at all to adapt to the music. He easily picked up the floating rhythm and moved with it, rolling his waist and hips in elegant clockwise circles.
"He could wear a hula skirt and not look ridiculous", Garcia sighed. JJ and Prentiss could only agree. Actually Derek Morgan in a hula skirt would be a very desirable visual… they would get full view of his chiseled chest… mhhhmm…
"I'm doing the same!", Reid insisted, rolled his hips roughly in time with the music and knocked over the lamp on his desk.
"Huh. Makes me almost want to look at some crime scene photos, to get that image out of my mind." Rossi came walking in, carrying a pile of folders.
Both men stopped. "There you go, Reid. Dancing just isn't you thing." Derek turned the music off.
"Well, maybe not hula dancing." Rossi put the pile of folders down, regretting his, in hindsight, rather harsh joke. The young profiler looked terribly crestfallen. Heavens, he really hadn't wanted to make him sad. "Any reason you wanted to learn this dance in particular?"
Reid looked away rather embarrassed.
"What is it, son?" Rossi moved in closer, his profiler instincts awakening. Morgan studied him with renewed interest, too.
Reid sighed. He knew where this was heading. Once the team got the idea something was on his mind, they wouldn't stop asking till he told them. Better to spill it out right now and save them all a lot of time and energy.
"Hula dancing connects the dancers with the spirit of the universe by unifying their existence with nature. I thought learning that would be…something new… got the idea doing research for an article on Boethius."
"But every form of dancing does that, if taken seriously enough." Rossi hesitated for a moment, then decided that he definitely owed the younger agent some sort of reparation for spoiling hula dancing for him. He crossed the distance between them.
"What other music do you have?" Rossi gave Reid's ipod display a tentative push and the device squeaked. Garcia, watching his every move, winced. Before he could cause any severe damage, however, Morgan interfered and opened the device's menu with a slight brush of his thumb. "What about a Viennese Waltz?", he asked, slight mischief sparkling in his eyes.
"A true gentleman's dance", Rossi replied, unfazed. In an elegant gesture, he extended his hand to Reid. As Reid cautiously took it, he pulled him closer. "A good close hold is the key to the waltz. Now just let the music guide you and I'll help you along with the rest."
A moment later they were turning clockwise around the desks, in time with the music, Reid a little more insecure than Rossi, but all in all surprisingly graceful.
Which was exactly when Hotch showed up. "Do I even want to know?"
Rossi halted in an elegant stop right next to the ipod and took a bow.
"Team-building exercise, Aaron."
Hotch's appearance served as some sort of cue - the whole team proceeded to disappear into the conference room again, with another flimsy excuse to exclude Rossi. Garcia, however, let herself fall behind. "Got some results…", she told him, smiling triumphantly.
Oh, she loved beating the system. Somewhere in her heart she was still a hacker, even after all these years in law enforcement. "Not a match, but sufficient similarities. Must be a blood relation."
Rossi slowly nodded, reading the test result.
"So, what will be your next step?" She studied his face, but it gave nothing away.
"What are you doing this weekend?", he asked.