Chapter Four: Chasing cars
"Is your tech girl that good?" Rose still felt a bit skeptic about Hotchner's theory about the relation between the girl and the killings but she also felt embarrassed for not considering it before.
"The best." Morgan's face lightened up with pride. Rossi and JJ exchanged a knowing look. Both of them had suspected for a while now that their friends' relationship had turned into something more.
"And I bet she is anxious to rub it in our faces." Hotch turned on the speaker and the whole room quiet down.
"I'm so awesome." the cheerful tone of Penelope predicted good news. "You will really need to step up if you want to challenge me, beauties. Next time don't even give me a name, just the zodiac sign of the target and I'll figure out the rest out…bring it on!"
"García…" Hotch sighted and rolled his eyes but Rose caught a little smile forming on his face for a millisecond. Of course, as soon as he realized someone was looking, smile was gone.
"Fine, let's get down to business. I pulled out the records of all mental facilities on the state and checked for a little girl that fitted in name and description. Results, none. Then I widen up the search to schools and hospitals. Results, none." Penelope knew the agents wanted to cut to the point but she wanted them to understand they have thrown her a curve ball here and she had scored a fucking homerun. "Just when I was about to give up on my career and ask to my Hot Chocolate God to run away with me to an island…" Rose gave a questioning look to Hotch and he pointed at Derek, who could only smile.
"García!" Rossi called the young tech attention.
"…I found a police record. Apparently officers in New York reported a case of domestic abuse. A woman tried to drown a little boy and a newborn baby on the tub. Both suffered mental retardation and the woman showed signs of delusion. The baby was called Meggie. When the officers got to the scene, it was too late. The woman had taken off with the children and she practically vanished."
"Do we have a name?" Reid interrupted the story.
"Silvia Festa. Apparently she was a religious woman who thought she had been cursed with her children disease" Penelope answered with anger on her voice.
"Thank you, baby doll. We'll stay in touch." Derek goodbye
"You better, Hot Stuff."
"Does the name ring any bells?" Rossi questioned the Sheriff. She nodded negatively."We need García to track down any family the woman could have. She would need to stay low profile and with two small kids who are ill, she definitely needed help." Rossi continued.
"Excuse me, agents. Tale, we have a domestic fight downtown." officer Josh interrupted the meeting.
"It's Sheriff, not Tale." Rose corrected him with a light frown. Whoever she couldn't be mad at him. She knew that they were the same age but he had a wife and a toddler back home and sure needed the promotion more than she did. She didn't quite understood why Coletti had recommended her for the job and not him. "You shouldn't bother me with this Josh. You can handle this on your own."
"Sorry, Sheriff. But your old sweetheart is involved." Josh enjoyed the blush that spread through her chief's face and he couldn't help to smile. Then he noticed one of the FBIs was giving him a murderous look. Agent Hotchner, he recalled his name. Oh well, another one with a crush on Rosy, he thought. "Also Christina's mom and Matt are tangled up. And by the way it's Officer Josh." he mocked her as she rolled his eyes and Agent Hotchner took his coat.
"Where are you going?" A confused JJ asked Hotch. Rose also gave him a questioning look.
"I'll join them." he explained and then gave a look to Rose. "If you don't mind, of course."
Rose gave her permission with a small smile playing on her lips and something really similar to a smile appeared on Hotch's lips. JJ and Rossi exchanged a knowing gaze as they saw them leave.
"Houston, we have another man down." Rossi joked once they were alone.
"This is bad, David. This is Hotch we are talking about. It sure takes a special woman to make him smile." JJ noted as she picked up the phone and star dialing Penelope's number. After all, this was still a murder investigation.
"Wait...Are you saying? No way, I mean…he's Hotch!" Dereck still tried to make some sense out of this.
"Well, you did fell for Penelope." Reid interrupted.
"Hey, you got it!" Rossi congratulated Reid. The senior agent knew that the kid had trouble spotting chemistry between people around.
"I've been practicing." Reid smiled back looking like a six year old proud of his work.
"Reid! I don't have a thing for Penelope." Derek tried to deny it but he immediately had to face the tree skeptic looks of his co workers. "Bullshit. Hang up that phone JJ. I need my daily dosis of sweet baby girl." he took his coat and headed to the town hotel.
The car ride had been silent. Rose felt nervous because she thought maybe Aaron (she had finally allowed herself to call him for his first name, but of course, only inside her mind.) found her plain, stupid or boring. She was not a child. Despite her juvenile looks, a difference no greater than half a decade lied between them. She sighted and let her head resting against the glass.
Hotch interpreted that sight as a sight of boredom. He coursed his educated and reserved manners because he thought that he might come across as boring and stiff to Rose. He hadn't always been like this. He could be quite charming when he let his walls come down, but that didn't happened too often. Maybe, he concluded, he was over thinking the whole thing. What could possibly happen between them if they had never actually held a conversation that didn't involved the case? They would take different paths after catching the unsub, for sure.
Josh is having the time of his life. He felt kind of insulted when they transferred him to the back seat but it happened to be just the right place to appreciate all the unspoken drama taking place in the car. They finally got to the Long's house.
Esther Long was on the porch screaming and threatening two men with a baseball bat. One of the men was Matt who looked embarrassed and had blood on his white shirt. He was sitting on the sidewalk trying to recover. The other man looked very similar to him, but he was taller and stronger. He was screaming to the woman and trying to grab the bat from her hands.
"What the hell?" Rose stared at the scene in disbelief for a few seconds before jumping out of the car.
"They want me to what?" Penelope asked aroused as she stood and began pacing around the room. Morgan sat on the bed knowing it was best to let her express her fury. "Sure thing, let's go to Penelope and lay all our problems on her back! Oh, sure she can take them! She has no other thing to do! She has already find the ghost, let's see if she can find its family!" her voice raised an octave on the end of the last sentence. "Why are you smiling?" she questioned Derek, whose smile just grew bigger.
"You do realize you are speaking of yourself in third person, right?" he mocked his best friend.
"Don't you dare to..!" García was just starting to warm on but something interrupted her lecture. Derek, on a desperate move, pulled her from the waist and, even though he intended to make her land sat next to him on the bed, he miscalculated and she end up on top of his legs.
For some moments they just froze there, staring into each other's eyes and feeling the warmth of their bodies together. The temperature of the room raised a few degrees quickly and Penelope forgot that she must breath and blink. She didn't want to move an inch, so the moment wouldn't end. Sadly, she had to blink at some point and when she opened her eyes again, Derek had moved to the other side of the room. He was obiously embarrassed by his actions and after mumbling a poor excuse, he left the room. Penelope was yet again left with nothing but a dream on her head.
"You sick bastard! How you dare to insult her like that! Her body is not even cold." Esther Long was a tiny skinny woman who looked wore out and had (ojeras) under her eyes. Still, the combination of her voice full of anger and the baseball bat on her right hand make her look threatening. She was insulting Matt, but he wasn't able even to stand up to face her as his nose bleed increased.
"He has had enough, you old bitch! You should be locked up into an asylum" Matt's bother defended him. He had the football player type, tall and strong. "Christina was the only one of your people who was sane."
"Enough!" Rose surprised everyone with a loud and authoritarian voice she didn't knew she had in her. Then she proceeded to put her body between the woman and the men screaming and as soon as she placed her hand on the chest of Matt's bother, he relaxed. "Buck, how could it be possible that every time we see you are in the middle of a fight?"
"Not my fault, beautiful. My brother was here to offer some comfort to that bitch and he received a swing directly to his nose as a welcome." Buck explained the situation as he gave a rude gaze to Hotch who didn't lower his eyes an inch. "Who called the suits?"
"Later." Rose cut him off and then directed to Esther. "Esther, is that true?" the woman lowered her weapon and nodded affirmatively.
"I had a reason." Her eyes were shinny and her voice trembled with pain as she pick up an object from the ground and showed it to the agents. It was a broken flower pot with a note that claimed: "Now we have Three Angels with broken wings to honor."
Rose and Buck, who apparently didn't know about the flowers, gave a harsh
look to Matt. "It wasn't me!" he defended outraged as he tried to clean the blood on his face.
Mary had just finished placing the second flowerpot at the house entry. It was something rather unusual for her to come out of her house. She had been a rather shy and accumulative person and now that she had just turned 78, she got the privilege of staying home all day with her cats. However, she had seen the murder of the girl who lived across the steet on the news and she wanted to express her condolences. She liked the kid. Mary recalled how the same day she had been killed, she had waved her good bye from across the street.
Mary knew about the Night of the Broken Wings. Ten years ago, when it all started, she had read the news on the newspapers and cut the news page to pile it up together with the rest of the scraps she collected. After placing the first pot, Mary remembered about the young woman killed recently and thought it would be nice to make her a gift too. So she walked all the way to the Long's house and then to the girls house across the street. Quite a challenge for her old rusty knees.
Just when she was leaving the house, she heard a noise coming from the bushes. Her heart raced for a second but then she considered the possibility of finding a new sibling for her cats back at home. She kneeled down and practically crawled to the bushed while she mumbled. "Come little, kitty, kitty! Come to momma!" It wasn't a cat what she found behind the bush but it was too late for anyone to hear her screaming because a heavy grip chocked her breath.
"Hi my name is Mr. Williams and I live in this hole. I have several children who I'm turning into killers. Wait til they grow up." - David Berkowitz