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Thank-you to my readers and followers, and especially to my reviewers: safe. from. harm, paper. creations and Moon Raven2! I really appreciate your feedback! :D


They killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on. Making them think the next sunrise would be worth it; that another stroke of time would do it at last. Only when she was dead would they be safe.

---Toni Morrison, Beloved

CHAPTER THREE

Viable Options

After stopping at the DCPD to meet with the lead detective, Rossi and Morgan headed to Capital Hill and the offices of Tennessee senior senator Gregory Williams. Though the thought remained unspoken, both agents found it strange that Williams would be working the morning after his daughter was found dead. Morgan wasn't certain what to expect when they met Senator Williams. He had an image of someone who looked like Colonel Sanders and sounded like Foghorn Leghorn.

Williams' name was fairly well-known in DC politics, due in part to his appointment as head of the Select Committee on Ethics and his reputation for conservative family values. The latter had endeared him to many voters in his state, embedded as it was in the Bible Belt. He was beloved by the type of people who tried to get the Harry Potter books banned from elementary school libraries, though it was hard to say if he truly espoused those beliefs or not. Like most politicians, he walked a fine line between partisanship and reelection.

All three of the senate office buildings were located on Capitol Hill, at the corner of First and Constitution, in the shadow of the Capitol Building and the Supreme Court. Both of the senators from Tennessee had their offices in the Dirksen Building, where the majority of the Senate committees (though not the Ethics Committee) were also headquartered. Williams' office was on the fourth floor.

"I hate having to come here," Rossi muttered under his breath after they had successfully passed through the metal detectors on the third try.

Morgan smirked but nodded. He sometimes found it hard to believe that people as different at William and the BAU team could work for the same government. Then he remembered Strauss' penchant for devious machinations and he wasn't so shocked.

After wasting fifteen minutes at security, trying to explain why they didn't need an appointment to see Williams, they were finally granted visitor's badges and ushered towards the elevators. Williams' secretary was waiting for them. She beamed when she saw them, her smile a dazzling shade of white straight from the dentist's office.

"Senator Williams is waiting for you," she chirped when they had flashed their IDs in her general direction. "Go on in."

Morgan and Rossi exchanged glances and entered the office. Senator Williams, sitting at his desk, looked up when the agents entered. He removed his reading glasses and stood, shaking Morgan's hand and then Rossi's as Morgan introduced himself and his colleague in turn. When introductions had been made, Williams motioned to a pair of oversized leather chairs in front of the desk. "Agents, please take a seat."

The senator was probably in his mid-sixties, with silvering hair and clear blue eyes. His speech was slightly accented, but not drawling, as Morgan had somewhat suspected it might be. In his navy suit, he cut a clean figure, fairly unremarkable. He remained standing until the BAU agents had settled themselves. Then he leaned forward, eyeing his visitors squarely.

"I was expecting a visit from a law enforcement representative, but I didn't think the FBI would be called in. Is this because of me?" he asked.

"We're from the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico," Morgan clarified. "Due to the…nature of the case, we probably would have been called in sooner or later."

"The officer I spoke with last night was a little foggy on the details."

Morgan ground his jaw. This was the type of situation he would never grow accustom to. How did you tell a father that his youngest daughter had been mutilated in her own bed? "She didn't suffer," he said at last, his voice growing soft. "The circumstances of her death are similar to a couple other deaths and since the BAU specializes in profiling serial killers, we were contacted."

Williams nodded. He seemed to understand the subtext beneath Morgan's words. He heaved a sigh. "What do I tell her mother?" he whispered, his practiced veneer cracking slightly under the strain of grief.

"Tell her that Neve didn't suffer and that we're doing everything in our power to bring her murderer to justice."

Williams rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I know, in your line of work you must hear this all the time, but a father should never outlive his child. I wouldn't subject my worst enemy to this kind of pain." He slammed his fist against the desk. "It's that girl," he muttered. "This is all her fault."

"Which girl?" Rossi asked.

"That girl who moved in with Neve a few months ago – Nastia Eldridge. I thought she was past that phase, but Neve always had a big, kind heart, so I shouldn't have been all that surprised when she let Nastia move in. I warned her not to let Nastia back into her life, but she couldn't say no."

"Back?"

"Nastia and Neve were roommates at USC. They were very close, but Neve was something of a bad influence."

"How do you mean?"

"Nastia is…unconventional. She was quite good at distracting Neve from her studies." Williams paused and an uncomfortable silence hung in the room for a few minutes. When Morgan realized that Williams wasn't planning on being more forthcoming, he shifted in his chair – it was actually much more uncomfortable than it looked – and leaned forward.

"By 'distract' do you mean, 'let's bake cookies and watch repeats of Full House' or do you mean 'let's go to frat parties and get drunk every night of the week'?" he asked.

Williams sighed. "Yes, Nastia took Neve to a lot of parties, but Neve wasn't much of a drinker. It had more to do with the people Nastia introduced her to. They were…bizarre."

"Bizarre."

"They were all very…intense. They were artists and film students and writers and they all had rather pessimistic world views. Nastia, for example, is an atheist and at the time, she hung around with homosexuals and drug addicts. They weren't the type of people my wife and I wanted Neve exposed to. She would come back home at the holidays with a lot of ridiculous ideas in her head."

Oh. Morgan leaned back again, finally comprehending. Nastia and her circle where the type of people Williams liked to rail against in his campaign speeches. The type of people, in other words, Williams preferred not to think of as people at all. Of course Williams wouldn't have approved of Nastia – she had managed to teach Neve to be open minded.

"I never understood Nastia's beliefs – or lack thereof," Williams continued. "Her father is a minister, after all. Very well known in New England. You'd think she'd be a little bit more conventional."

Unless her father is as rigid as you are, Morgan thought. Maybe Nastia was just stretching her wings a little – her own brand of rebellion.

"You said that your daughter let Nastia back into her life, did they have a falling out?" Rossi said, interrupting Morgan's internal monologue.

"My wife and I thought it would be better if Neve returned to the east coast, so we struck a deal with her. We were willing to pay for her graduate degree in she agreed to mover back here for school and promised to stay after she finished."

"So you sort of staged an intervention?" Morgan asked.

"Intervention is perhaps a strong word," Williams said, "but yes, we got her out of a situation we thought was unhealthy. She came back here, got her masters of education at the University of Virginia and she kept her end of the bargain. She got a job here in Washington at one of the best private schools in the city. She was a good daughter."

"But Nastia found Neve?" Rossi asked.

"Yes."

"How?"

Williams shook his head. "I don't know. Neve didn't even tell us she was in the city. My wife called her house one morning, and Nastia answered. That's how we found out. That was a couple months ago. We tried to talk to Neve about the…situation, but she wouldn't listen. She said it was her house, and she wanted Nastia to stay, so Nastia was going to stay."

Morgan nodded. "When was the last time you spoke with your daughter, Senator?"

"Two days ago. We were setting up a time to have dinner tomorrow night." His voice cracked and he blinked. "I'm sorry."

Morgan looked over at Rossi. "I think we have everything we need, sir. Thank-you for your time." He handed the senator a business card. "This is my number. If you need anything or have any questions, please, give me a call."

"Thank-you, Agent Morgan."

The pair remained silent until they had left the office building. "What do you think, Rossi?" Morgan asked as they stepped out into the fall sunshine. He slid his sunglasses over his eyes.

"The good senator and his wife certainly don't like the roommate," he replied.

"He was a bit intolerant, wasn't he?"

Rossi chuckled. "Just a bit. But I'm not surprised. His platform seems to be simply institutionalized intolerance."

Morgan raised his eyebrows in agreement and climbed into their SUV, starting the car. A wave of relief washed over him as he merged into traffic. Being so close to all these politicians made him nervous, which was ironic seeing as his career seemed to be headed towards a future in Bureau politicking.


"Thanks Rossi." Prentiss snapped her phone closed. "Morgan and Rossi just left their meeting with Senator Williams," she said, climbing out of the car. "Rossi said that Williams disapproved of Nastia Eldridge – he thought she was a bad influence on Neve."

"Why's that?" Hotch asked.

"Apparently because she wasn't a God-fearing Christian," Prentiss replied.

"Naturally," Reid murmured.

"He also said that Neve didn't tell her parents when Nastia moved in."

Reid frowned. "We're they…you know" – he cleared his throat – "lovers?" He blushed slightly.

Prentiss shook her head. "Rossi didn't say. You'll have to ask her, Reid," she said, a smile playing on her lips. Reid's blush deepened.

"Well, at the very least, this should make for an interesting interview," Hotch said before Reid and Prentiss could start bickering. He crossed in front of the SUV to the brick sidewalk, crunching a few wilted, fallen leaves as he walked. It was hard to believe that fall was already here. Where had the year gone?

Autumn Aldrin's house was a more conventional townhouse, painted white and sandwiched between blue painted houses on either side. Hotch supposed that the houses were painted so people could tell where one ended and the next began. Each building was two stories tall and the effect was disorienting: they looked too squat, as if a giant had pressed his hands against them, compressing them. He knocked on the black door and waited for someone to answer.

The door was whipped open by a petite young woman who seemed too small to produce a motion of such force. She wore a tattered Rage Against the Machine t-shirt paired with a long black skirt and purple Converses. Her hair cut short and dyed a shocking shade of pink. She looked tired, and she had done a poor job of covering up the circles under her eyes with concealer. Or perhaps it was just that the thick layer of kohl rimming her eyelids brought the bruised color to the surface.

"Yeah?" she asked, looking Hotch up and down. She was chewing a rather large piece of gum and she blew a bubble, snapping it as Hotch spoke.

"Is Autumn Aldrin here?"

Another bubble, another snap. "She's at work."

"Are you Nastia Eldridge?" Reid asked, joining Hotch in the woman's line of sight.

She shot him a look that somehow managed to combine condescension and fear. "Who wants to know?" she demanded, squinting at Reid.

Hotch held up his badge. "FBI. We're here to talk to you about your roommate's death."

"FBI, hmmm?" She eyed Reid again, reevaluating him. She jerked her chin at him. "Him too?"

"This is Agent Reid and behind him is Agent Prentiss."

"You look like a grad student," she said to Reid. "What are you, sixteen?"

Reid opened his mouth to inform Nastia that, while he had been a sixteen-year-old grad student, most were much older, but Hotch, sensing something, waved him down.

"Can we come in?" he asked.

She scowled at him and blew a bubble. "Fine," she muttered, holding the door wide. She led them into a well-lit living room. Prentiss noticed an easel in one corner of the room and she gravitated towards it. An oversized sketch pad was mounted on it and the pencil sketch of a man was half completed. He stood with his back to the viewer but was looking back over his shoulder.

"My latest," Nastia said, coming to stand behind Prentiss.

"It's wonderful. You have a lot of talent."

Nastia shrugged. "I've been having trouble with the eyes. Everyone says that hands are the hardest thing to draw, but their wrong. It's the eyes. I mean, the eyes are the window to the soul. It's hard to capture that in ink and paint." She turned away to face Reid and Hotch. "You wanted to talk about Neve?"

"Yes. We understand that you and her parents didn't see eye to eye."

Nastia raised an eyebrow. "That's an understatement. Her father's a prick. He hated me."

"Why?" Prentiss asked, coming to join Reid and Hotch around the small coffee table on one side of the room.

"Because I didn't fit into his perfect world where every man believes in Jesus and America and apple pie and marries a good woman who will be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen within six months of the wedding. Actually," she laughed, "he and my father would get on well, if I ever bothered to introduce them. He's a minister, you see, and hates anyone who's not white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant and male."

"And you didn't fit that mold. What about Neve? What did she think about her father's views?"

Nastia shrugged. "She didn't really know better, when we first met. And can you blame her? That's how she was raised. For a while, I didn't know any better either, but I educated myself and that's what Neve needed – an education."

"You gave her that education?" Reid asked.

Nastia slowly turned her head and considered him. She nodded. "I introduced her to my friends. At first, she was shocked, scandalized. Imagine if Scarlett O'Hara was dropped into The Factory."

"The Factory?" Reid asked.

"You know. Andy Warhol? Edie Sedgwick?"

Reid shook his head.

Nastia rolled her eyes and glanced at Hotch. "Where did you find this guy?"

"Go on," Hotch instructed.

Nastia ran a hand through her spiky pink hair. "Right. Anyway, at first, Neve was completely out of her element. But then she started to see that these were actual people, with complex lives and emotions, not monsters to be feared. She realized how short-sighted her parents were and once that happened, she fit right in." She stared straight ahead of her and smiled dreamily, thinking back to those times. "Really, it wasn't just me. It was Joey too."

Reid blinked. "Joey? Joey Hennessey?"

Nastia nodded slowly. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"Both you and Neve had his book in your rooms. They were autographed."

"Ah. Of course. Yes, Neve adored Joey. I don't mean that she loved him, you know, in a sexual sense. But she loved being around him. We all did. We had a group; we called ourselves the Breakfast Club, like the movie, you know?" She looked to Reid for validation, but realizing her error, turned back to Hotch and Prentiss.

"How many were in their group?"

"Well, me and Neve, of course. Autumn, Joey and two others, Charlie and George. George is a woman, by the way."

"You all went to USC?"

"Yeah. And we all ended up here. I don't know how. It just happened."

"How did Neve react when Joey killed himself?" Reid asked.

Nastia's smile melted and she started playing with the large cuff bracelets adoring her wrists. Reid watched her move the bands. "Yeah. We were all devastated, of course. But Neve? Neve actually was the strongest of us. She tried to get us to move on. She told us that Joey wouldn't have wanted us moping around."

"Did it work?"

"I don't know. It's like we needed Joey to keep us together. I haven't seen George or Charlie for months and before yesterday, I hadn't seen Autumn for almost as long."

"Why did he do it?" Hotch asked. "Kill himself, I mean."

Nastia shook her head but sat in silence for a few moments. "I don't really know," she said at last. "Joey was an artist and he had an artist's temperament." She twirled one of the bracelets again. "He took everything so seriously and felt everything so much deeper than any of us did. His emotions were so concentrated, so intense. He had a hard time handling some things, because he felt everything with such passion. Have you ever read his book?"

The agents shook their heads.

"Oh, he poured his soul into that book. If you had read it, you'd know better how he saw the world. He's hard to explain if you've never read his work or didn't know him. He was passionate and that passion informed his work and his life."

"When did you move in with Neve?" Reid asked, his eyes still on her wrists.

"Um, maybe three, four months ago?"

"Was that before or after you slit your wrists?"

"Wh…what?" Nastia's mouth fell open. "How…?"

Reid motioned to her wrists. "That's why you where those bracelets, right? To hide the scars. I'm surprised you're not wearing long sleeves too."

Nastia bowed her head. "It was after. That's why I came to live with her. I didn't trust myself to live by myself. That's why she took me in."

"And why she didn't tell her parents."

"I don't suppose they would have looked too fondly on their daughter harboring a failed suicide. That's a sin, you know."

Prentiss sighed. "Was Neve worried about anything in the days leading up to her death? Anyone who was giving her trouble?"

"She was an elementary school teacher. She wasn't the type of person to have enemies. She was too sweet."

"Did you notice anyone hanging around the house? Someone who looked like they shouldn't be there?"

"No. No one. Nothing makes sense about this."

Hotch nodded and stood. "Thank-you, Ms. Eldridge. I think we have everything we need right now. We'll be in touch."

She blew another bubble and walked the agents to the door. "Am I in danger?"

"We don't know yet," Hotch replied. "We'll update you when we know more."


"It's odd," Reid said a few minutes later, when the agents had returned to the car.

"What is?" Prentiss asked, leaning around her seat to see him.

Reid bit his lip, thinking. "That there should be two suicides in this so called Breakfast Club within months of one another."

"You think they're related?"

"They'd have to be, even if unintentionally. The question is, did Joey Hennessey know when he died that Nastia was also planning to kill herself."

"Let me grab my Ouija board," Prentiss replied dryly.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Reid sighed. "Something just doesn't feel right. I got a strange vibe off of her."

Prentiss nodded. "I agree. She was hiding something."

"Something happened in L.A. It all traces back to L.A. The murders, the victim and her friends… The key is in L.A."

"I'm glad you feel that way, Reid," Hotch said, glancing at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. "I'm going to recommend that Morgan send you there to do a little digging."

Reid frowned. Perfect. L.A. was just what he needed: it was like visiting a high school of four million.