Author's Notes: All the names of agents and true crime writers mentioned in the first five paragraphs of this story are real people with the exception of Max Ryan, David Rossi and Jason Gideon. Their names are used (without permission) to create an ambiance of reality. None of these people will appear in this story, or in any other story I write.
I have really dropped the ball on my multi-chapter stuff lately, and I'm aware of that. Been involved in some highly distracting personal stuff that makes it hard to keep all the balls in the air with dozens of chapters and casts of thousands, so I've been concentrating on some of those little humorous ficlets. I see light at the end of the tunnel now, and I should be getting more on track with the multis day by day. Thank you for your patience!
I thank all of you who take the trouble to write a review or to favorite or alert one of my stories. You light up my life!
~ Kitty
Act I
It's All Context
Scene III: The Potted Plant Speaks
Jason Gideon
April, 1998
Max-goddamn-Ryan was on the Today show that morning, yapping about one of the books that were coming out, documenting the Andrew Cunanan killing spree from the previous year. At least this one wasn't actually by Ryan. It was by one of those myriad true crime writers who had oozed from the woodwork since Ann Rule took the literary form crafted by Truman Capote and Vincent Bugliosi and made it into a cash cow.
At least Rule could write. And she had been a cop. And she worked with the Behavioral Sciences and Threat Assessment people. She was good folks; a pro.
A lot of these dudes and dudessess – they were just goddamn jackals, churning out words and killing trees. Turning a profit over the bodies of slain innocents and the private grief of their survivors.
Sometimes, Jason felt old.
Felt that life had somehow passed him by, that all of his gifts and all of his promise were doomed to be lost, buried in the swill that the glory-hunters churned up. John Douglas. Richard Ressler. Max Ryan. Roy Hazelwood. And now, apparently, David Rossi was about to join the ranks of ex-FBI celebrities.
And, damn it, I'm a better profiler than any of them.
The telephone rang. He peered at the readout on the little box by the phone.
His ex-wife.
Nope. Not ready for that.
He finished his espresso and left the house.
On the drive, he wondered what had become of his status as Behavioral Sciences' Golden Boy. Yeah, the Geezers had been there first, but he had been the fastest and the most accurate, the one who didn't have to puzzle the little details out – they would just drop into his lap: The UNSUB you seek is in his mid-thirties, left-handed, subscribes to Atlantic Monthly (OK, not that detailed). ...
One potential accolade still remained for him, and he was now courting it assiduously. He would be the genius who discovered and mentored the most gifted of the new generation of FBI profilers. Jimmy Franklin. Jay Wainwright. Aaron Hotchner.
Well, maybe not Jimmy. His star had shone brightly, but he was showing signs of burnout. He would come back from the field and it would come out eventually that Wainwright had been carrying all the water for him.
Wainwright. Sharp guy, endlessly intuitive. Not quite enough handles on him, though. In the end he would go his own way. Nobody would recognize the effort Jason Gideon had devoted to bringing him along, to helping him be all that he could be.
Hotchner. Good lord, there was a potentially perfect gift to the Bureau. Almost as intuitive as Wainwright, better grasp of the legal end of it than Franklin. A work ethic that put Rossi and Kline to shame.
And desperate – starved – for approval from a father figure.
That last was his most important quality, because as he ascended to the heights, Aaron Hotchner would need to be aware in every moment of every day to whom he ultimately owed his success. His Dudley Do-right background would ensure that he always ceded the credit to his creator, and a combination of reward and control would guarantee that he knew exactly who that creator was.
He was as punctilious in his outward appearance as any Hoover-era agent, and so proper that some of his office-mates had begun calling him The Suit, Mr. Wonderful, and Brownie Boy. So hard-working that he generally beat Jason to the office and often was the last to leave.
And when Jason approached him in the night, Aaron had not moved.
Had not flown out of the bed in a panic, naked but for his socks and wristwatch, like Jim Franklin, for whom Gideon had had to act as though he had merely stumbled into the wrong bed in his exhaustion.
Had not turned and shoved him an arm's length away and confronted him angrily like Jay Wainwright, for whom Gideon had been required to act as though he had been dreaming of his ex-wife.
No. He had lain there as still and tremulous as a baby bird, and finally whimpered, "I'm married."
If when it came to actual field work he was as good as his performance to date seemed to indicate, Aaron Hotchner might very likely be The One.
Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ
And damned if there wasn't a chance to explore that area of inquiry before noon that very day.
Gideon left his office and surveyed the available bodies. A limited field: Miller, who was still up to his elbows in prep for a road class he would be assisting Rossi with; Cassidy, who was a huge disappointment, and whom Jason and Rossi had tasked with their big pre-Move inventory; and Aaron Hotchner, hunkered down with a printout from FindLaw and two books of Florida case law, checking over suggestions for the prosecution of a Tallahassee case.
"Aaron," Gideon said.
Intense dark eyes met his. "Sir?"
"I need a potted plant. Grab your go bag, call your wife, and meet me upstairs in twenty minutes. We'll be in Iowa for three to five days."
Freaking eager beaver was already on his feet before Jason was done talking.
Yes. A perfect choice.
Two hours later, as the USAir flight left the tarmac at Reagan, Gideon stretched his legs as much as coach class permitted and gazed out of the window. Hotchner had requested the aisle seat so he could keep plugging away at the Florida thing – being a south-paw, he had to watch where his elbows went when he was in a narrow space like economy seats on a plane. At least he had photocopied the relevant sections of the law books he had been consulting. If he had insisted on bringing the actual damn books on the plane, there would have been heated words.
"Thought about the case yet?" he asked.
"A little," Aaron responded, frowning as his pencil hesitated over a word.
"Care to share your wisdom?"
Hotchner eyed him sideways and grinned. "Wisdom from the potted plant, huh?"
"I'll take it anywhere I can find it."
Aaron leaned back and closed his eyes. "The re-dressing indicates remorse. Five weeks is a reasonable cooling-off period. The Thompson boy was probably his first. And that would also account for the trouble he had strangling him – lack of experience. He knew both of the victims and they knew him. He has a position of authority in the community. They went along with him willingly. I'm guessing a teacher or other school personnel, maybe a church group, youth group, Four-H, FFA, Boy Scouts. Mid-thirties to mid-forties, and I think probably on the upper end of that range. Married, no children. Recently disappointed in some major life area."
Gideon's eyes glittered."Not too bad. Have they already interviewed him?"
"They may have, but only for normal evidentiary reasons: He knows the families or he lives in the neighborhood or he has been seen near the dump sites, or he owns property out there, He hasn't tried to insert himself into the investigation. This is about him and them. It's not about him against local law, or him against us."
Gideon patted Aaron's right hand. "As potted plants go, son, you obviously are starting to know what you're doing."
His subordinate's cheeks pinked up a little as he mumbled his thanks. Jason just loved that little streak of shyness he sometimes found in the otherwise confident professional.
It was – OK, it was cute.
"Not bad at all," Gideon added. "You have an eye for sorting things out of context."
Aaron smiled. "Haley's undergrad degree was in literature. Every time I try to argue that something is out of context, she gives me the evil eye and says, 'Don't give me that crap, Hotch. It's all context.'"
"'Hotch,' huh? Is that what she calls you?"
The Dreaded Dimple of Death.
"That was what I mostly got called in high school and college, yeah."
Gideon perked up. "Really! And do you prefer it to 'Aaron'?"
An unexpectedly serious sigh and a nod. "Yes," he said finally. "I do."
And Jason Gideon was as sure as sure could be that Hotchner really hated his first name, and that one of the biggest reasons, if not the only reason, was that his father had called him Aaron. Within minutes of meeting him, Gideon had been sure that the young agent had been emotionally neglected by his father. Over the past four months he had become increasingly sure that there had also been psychological and physical abuse involved.
Jason had checked up on the reputation of the now-deceased elder Hotchner: He had been ferocious in court, a flamboyant, handsome, hard-drinking, shamelessly womanizing bastard. Tales circulated of covered-up records of multiple domestic disturbance calls to the Hotchners' so-pretty-on-the-outside Richmond home. Rumors circulated that the later-life son, born when Aaron was sixteen, had been the mother's last-ditch attempt to win back the loyalty of her husband.
"'Hotch,'" Gideon repeated. "I like it. It's almost Hot Shot, but not quite."
The Hotch in question seemed not to notice. He was chewing on his pencil and glaring at a passage on one of his photocopies again.
Relaxing was not among Aaron Hotchner's more notable abilities.
Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ
The crisis arose late that same afternoon, when they took a detour to talk to Elmo Chase, a former Four-H leader who lived on a small farm not far outside Waverly. The intent of the visit was to ask him about the current leader, a somewhat theatrical gentleman who styled himself Cochise Battles.
What they found on the Chase farm, however, was a tired-looking woman in her late forties who had two grown daughters by her first husband. Her current mate, Mr. Chase, was 42, and fighting a deep depression brought on by his failure to derive any profit from some agricultural inventions he had developed. He spent most of his time in a detached "den" he had created out of an old chicken coop.
Dusk had fallen as Gideon and Hotchner followed the path from the house to the den and knocked on the door. Their breath came out in puffs of smoke.
"Who is it?" Elmo Chase called out.
"Agents Gideon and Hotchner," Jason called back. "We're with the FBI. We're talking to people in the area about the situation with the Thompson boy and the Schuller boy."
"Come on in," Chase said.
There was a faint beep as though something electronic had been engaged.
They did not enter stupidly. From their bare two or three minutes with Mrs. Chase they had already determined that her husband fit the parameters of their UNSUB quite well. Gideon reached for the latch, ordered Aaron to stay back and let him do the talking, and opened the door.
A sad-looking man with thinning tan hair and washed-out tan eyes, a man old before his time, sat in an old-fashioned rocking chair, one foot propped on an oversizes upholstered ottoman. He had a shotgun across his lap. One trembling hand rubbed along its surface as though he were polishing it. The other raised something that Gideon feared might be a handgun, but it was only a small remote device.
There was another beep.
"Got to keep the old lady out," Chase explained in his tired voice. "Man's got to have his privacy."
"I understand," Gideon said, his eyes quickly taking in and interpreting what he saw before him.
"She's afraid I'm gonna kill myself," Chase confided. "She's afraid I might feel like less of a man."
Gideon turned slightly sideways so he could ease his Sig Sauer out of its holster. Although Chase did not seem like much of a threat, with every passing minute he looked and sounded more like their UNSUB, and that shotgun might well be all loaded up and ready for Chase to use to blow his own brains out.
"Could I trouble you to put the shotgun down?" Gideon asked. "We just want to talk."
"It's just sitting there."
"Nevertheless, Mr. Chase, I'd feel a lot better and–"
Almost too fast to register, the shotgun flew up and Chase leveled it not at Gideon, but at Aaron Hotchner. "Don't think that I care about what you feel," the man said in a voice that seemed near tears. "Put the damn pistol down right there on that table, or I'll blow a hole through your big-city pal here."
Gideon calculated how much time he would have to take a shot at Chase without putting Aaron at risk.
"It's all right," Aaron said in a calm and quiet voice. "Just put it down, sir. Mr. Chase isn't going to hurt me."
Told you to let me do the talking, Gideon thought. But he didn't say it aloud. Once Aaron chose to open his mouth, it was of utmost importance that Gideon do nothing to detract from Hotchner's credibility. And since it was Hotchner's chest Elmo Chase targeted, it was certainly his call to speak.
He raised the Sig high, then carefully set it down the way he had been told. In a pinch, he could probably get to it and take out Chase before he could fire a second shot. And If Aaron – if Hotch – could duck the first blast, there was a way out of this for both of them.
Don't fuck this up, Hotch.
"You don't want to shoot me," Hotchner told Chase, keeping his hands open and in plain sight. "And you don't really want to shoot yourself, either. You don't want people to talk about you forever after as that monster or that weirdo or that crazy guy.
"They don't understand what you were doing," he continued. "Same as the Thompson boy. You thought he understood that what you were doing was your way of showing him that you cared about him, showing him how the world worked. And when he got scared, when he started to threaten to tell on you, you did the only thing you could do.
"I know that it was hard for you," he continued, that velvet baritone as hypnotic as Jason had suspected it might be. "You never meant any harm to him, and here he was, a snot-nosed kid, threatening your life, your reputation – because he misunderstood what you were trying to do. I know you hated to do it. I know how it hurt while you were dressing him, carrying him out there, trying to cover him up with leaves, because the woods are still so cold this time of year.
"And I know how you hoped and prayed that it would be better with Carey Schuller. But it was just more of the same. Mr. Chase, if you kill yourself, nobody will ever know what was really going on. And if you kill me, Agent Gideon will kill you, and you will not only be the monster who killed the boys, but the damn fool who killed the federal agent.
"You have a good woman there, Mr. Chase, and good friends in the community. You owe it to yourself not to end it all like this."
Hotchner took another step and Gideon was surprised, because he had not noticed the other two steps at all.
"May I sit down, Mr. Chase?" Aaron asked.
The man's brow furrowed with suspicion, but he nodded.
"Thank you." Hotch leaned forward with exquisite care and pulled the ottoman a couple feet toward him, then sat down, inches from the barrels of the shotgun, his head perhaps a foot lower than Chase's, his knees touching the older man's. He kept his hands raised and his eyes on Chase's face. Once, the muzzle of the shotgun brushed the front of his shirt and he seemed not even to notice it.
"I want to help you," he told Chase. "So does Agent Gideon. We've seen a lot of people who do bad things. Some of them are bad people. Some of them – well, we understand what the real problem is. That's what we do. That's our job with the FBI. We're profilers. We understand people.
"I want you to have a chance to explain to people – to the world – what was really going on in your mind. How you meant no harm to those boys.
"Will you allow us to help you, Mr. Chase? Will you hand me that shotgun and let Agent Gideon and me help you to get the truth out there?"
One of those fifteen-second eternities passed.
Elmo Chase raised the barrels of the shotgun toward the ceiling and handed it vertically to Agent Hotchner, who kept the connection going. Even after the weapon was totally in his grasp, he said in that same calm voice, "Thank you, Mr. Chase. I'm going to stand up now. I'll remove the shells and put the gun on those shelves over there. Is that OK?"
Chase nodded.
Gideon could hardly breathe.
Hotchner did what he said he would do.
"All right, Mr. Chase, we'll have to take you in. You know that, don't you?"
Another nod.
"I'm going to ask you to stand up now so Agent Gideon can put the cuffs on you. It's the law, I'm sure you know that. And if you have any questions, you just feel free to ask them. I don't want you to be afraid of anything that's going on."
"My pap was military police in 'Nam," Chase said. "I know there's rules."
"Exactly," Hotch said soothingly. "Now, will you turn around, please?"
Surprised that he was able to breathe and move, Jason Gideon moved forward and handcuffed the man.
"You done good," Chase told Gideon gruffly. "You treated me like a human being."
"We try," Jason replied.
Oh, yes, I do believe this boy may be The One.