The Sound of Silence
Chapter 4
They assembled themselves, as usual, at ten. Rossi walked into the conference room with JJ.
"How are you holding up, Cara? Is it hard having your heart in two places?"
She'd grown to feel very close with the man who'd inspired her to join the FBI. He had a knack for putting her feelings into words.
"Is it that obvious?"
He pulled a chair out for her. "Not at all. But I know how charming my goddaughter is. I'd be surprised if you found it easy to leave her."
"It's not easy to leave either of them. But it has to happen. And I'm sure it will get to be more of a routine….if not easier…with time."
"The paradox of parenting. You help them develop deep attachments so they can feel secure in the world. And that security makes them feel confident enough to leave you." He noticed the look on her face at his last few words. "But not for a very, very long time."
She smiled at him, and then to herself. I'm so glad we asked him to be Rosie's godfather. He has such parental wisdom, it would be a shame for it to go to waste.
They all quieted down as Hotch hurried in, looking a bit ruffled. It was an unusual sight, and it caught their attention immediately.
"As you may have learned from this morning's news, a CIA agent, Alan Greenly, was found dead last night. It appears he killed himself with his own weapon."
It was the case Morgan had been talking about earlier. Apparently they were to be brought in on it.
Hotch continued. "Normally, CIA internal affairs would look into a case like this. However, as you might remember, Agent Greenly was on a list of possible suspects in our case with the CIA several years ago."
"And we cleared him." Emily's concern was evident in her voice. She'd not been with the team at the time, but she'd made it her business to familiarize herself with their cases before she joined them.
For many in law enforcement, profiling was still something of a mystery. The more cynical considered it a form of sorcery. If the BAU had missed the boat on a high stakes case such as the CIA case had been, there could be serious fallout for the FBI, and for the BAU in particular.
"We did. So, while the FBI is being asked to take on the case, it will be investigated by another unit. The BAU will have no official involvement."
Morgan was feeling defensive on the part of the team. "Not every profile can be accurate. We can't be faulted if the evidence pointed to him not being involved."
Hotch sympathized with the sentiment, but didn't want his team to start feeling at odds with their fellow FBI agents.
"I think everyone understands that, Morgan. But the FBI can't afford to subject itself to claims of conflict of interest. So, because the BAU was involved in the original case, it can't officially be involved in the re-investigation."
Emily needed clarification. "Are you talking about the investigation of Greenly's death? Or is the original CIA case being investigated again?"
"Both. Although it looks like a pretty straightforward suicide, but the ME will give us a definitive answer on that."
Rossi had been stroking his beard, having picked up on something in his friend's choice of words. "You said we can't be 'officially' involved in the investigation. Does that mean what I think It means?"
Hotch chanced a small upturning of his lips. "Only if you think it means that we'll be reexamining our prior evidence. I think the director would approve of it as a quality control measure."
"And we all know how the director feels about quality control." Emily joined her unit chief in smiling.
"This is so weird. I feel like I'm investigating, but trying to look like I'm not investigating. Sort of like 'act casual'. But it's annoying not to be able to put my hands on everything. I like to work visually."
Reid was venting to JJ and Emily over their adjoined desktops. JJ sympathized.
"Garcia says the electronic file is marked 'eyes only', and they'll know if anyone else tries to access it. And she can't very well hack into the FBI mainframe from the BAU."
"But it's annoying trying to piece this together from residual files on your personal computers. I'm with Reid. This is weird….but mostly it's just royally frustrating!" Emily was considerably less enthused than she'd been during the team meeting.
"Let's just put together what we do know." JJ tried to be practical.
Emily was game. "Okay. An undercover CIA agent from the counter-terrorism unit was killed, but initially it was thought to be a suicide. The hit was arranged by...…you know, maybe we should back up. Forget that we found our guy. Maybe we shouldn't make any assumptions."
Reid shook his head. "We had pretty solid evidence on our unsub. He was pretty brazen, calling us in to investigate, when he'd orchestrated the whole thing. No, I think we can stick with him. But maybe we closed the case out too quickly after that. Maybe we didn't look at the others closely enough."
JJ was willing to go down that road with her husband. "Okay. So what did we have against Greenly? And why did we clear him?"
Reid was able to handle that one from memory. "He'd only joined the unit about two weeks before, and they'd been working with the informant for much longer than that."
"Didn't he also have an alibi?" JJ had still been their liaison then, and spent most of the case working with Garcia in the computer room.
Reid's memory had sparked Emily's recall of her case review. "He did. But, then, all of them did. They're the CIA, they think of these things."
"So, does that mean Greenly was cleared just because he'd only recently joined the unit? What about what he did before?" JJ thought it was an unusually thin foundation for clearing a suspect, and not consistent with what she knew of her team.
"Before that, he'd been in South America, on a drug cartel detail. It really didn't have anything to do with the informant's information. That was all specifically related to the Middle East," explained her husband.
Morgan had wandered down from his office, feeling the need to brainstorm with his colleagues. He'd heard the last part of their discussion.
"Maybe we're looking at this all wrong. I mean, think about it. The first case involved a killing made to look like a suicide. Maybe this one is, too. It doesn't have to mean that Greenly was involved the first time, and killed himself out of remorse. What if he's a victim too?"
"So you think maybe there's someone else we missed on the first case? And that person might have killed Greenly?"
"Why limit it to that case? It could be related to something much more recent. That case was years ago," Reid pointed out.
"Or what if he just found this lifestyle too much to handle?" offered JJ. "He might have killed himself for reasons totally unrelated to any specific case."
Reid studied his wife after that comment. He knew she was thinking about the other recent suicide, that of Dave Sanders. Despite her assurances to the contrary, it had obviously been weighing heavily on her. Are you going through something, my love?
Any further discussion was interrupted by a call from Garcia, leaning over the railing into the bullpen.
"Oh, boys and girls…I really do love saying 'girls'!...our fearless leader needs us back in the conference room. We have a case."
Hotch began by acknowledging their obvious frustration.
"I know you'd rather settle the Alan Greenly issue before taking on anything else. But you know that we're not officially involved. It's going to have to take a back seat to any of our active cases for now."
Rossi tried to support his old friend. "I, for one, trust our colleagues. If there's no connection to the old case, they'll be able to prove it. If we 'help' them along in our spare time, all the better. But if we don't have that spare time, I'm sure they'll get the job done just fine."
In truth, the rest of them trusted their colleagues as well. But it felt strange to lack control over a case.
"All right?" Hotch ran his eyes around the table, and received muttered response of "all right", "yes", "sure". Satisfied, he signaled Garcia to begin.
"Okay. We're in New Jersey for this one. A jogger found a body wrapped in a roll of carpet in the dunes along an undeveloped stretch of shoreline."
"They still have undeveloped shoreline in Jersey?" Morgan was surprised.
"Sure they do, Derek. A whole mile or two," joked Rossi.
Hotch cleared his throat to indicate he wanted their minds on the case at hand.
Garcia continued. "Rossi might be right, actually. The jogger had been on a boardwalk, and had to get off for a little stretch before the next boardwalk began. That's why he was running by the dunes. Anyway, the body was of a woman, late twenties or early thirties, blonde, thin build. She looked to have been dead for under 48 hours."
"Missing persons reports?" JJ asked.
"None local to that area, within a two week time frame. Going back, there are a couple over the past three years."
"Working girl, maybe? Are they checking to see if any of them went missing?" Morgan knew as well as the rest that serial killers had a predilection for targeting sex workers. It was unusual for them to actually be reported as missing.
"They're making the rounds of the known locations as we speak."
"Why are we being called in, Garcia?" Reid hadn't heard anything yet that would make this a BAU case.
"Ah, boy genius, the heart of the matter. We're being called because this is the third such discovery in the past three years."
"Three makes it a serial." Emily stated the usual thinking on homicides.
"Bingo. And they're hoping we'll be able to help them find something because it looks like this one is fresh."
"All right, people. Wheels up in thirty. JJ, you'll handle reviewing police reports on all three cases. We'll get everything sent to you electronically."
"Yes, sir."
As the meeting broke up, JJ and Reid lingered behind in the conference room.
"Two weeks, two away cases. What were the odds?" she tried to joke with him.
"For us, and our luck…..pretty much one hundred percent." His smile didn't reach his eyes. "Really, JJ, I'm so sorry to be pulled away again. I was hoping to give you a break this week."
She did her best to look upbeat, but the very thought of another week of single parenting while working full time was wearing her down already.
"It's the job, Spence. It's what we do. And it's what you do, so very well." She leaned up to kiss him. "We'll be okay. I'll ask Karen to tire them out so I can get them down early, how's that?"
He smiled, holding on to her. "Are you okay?"
She looked like she didn't understand. "Me? Yes, why?"
"I don't know. Just…..these suicides. Alan Greenly, and Will's friend. I thought it might be hard for you."
She looked away for a moment, thinking, deciding…then turned back to him.
"Okay, you got me. It is hard. I just…well, you never know about people, you know? I mean, from what Bill told me, Dave was fine. Happy, even. And then, suddenly, he was gone. Without warning, according to Bill. So, how do we know when someone is ready to snap? Did Dave know? Was he struggling? Or did he just lose it all of a sudden?"
The undercurrent to her statement was strong. They'd been through tremendous trauma a year ago, and they faced emotional distress with every case the BAU handled. Could it happen to them?
He felt it so strongly…..he couldn't leave her now. She needed him home.
"JJ, let me talk to Hotch. I can stay behind, with you and Garcia. I can still help them from here. It won't be that different from when I work out of the police station."
She'd begun shaking her head the moment he'd started speaking.
"No. No, Spence. We can't start doing that. I can tell what you're feeling. I'm feeling it too. But the moment we start giving in to it….well, that's the moment we need to think about stepping away from the work. And I'm not ready to do that. Are you?"
His eyes bored into hers. He knew she was right, but…
"No, no I guess you're right. I'm not ready to leave it…..yet. But I hate leaving you, JJ. Especially now."
She put a hand to his lips. "There's no 'especially now'. There are simply two unrelated incidents that we happen to have heard about. Nothing that affects us directly. Nothing has happened to us. Right?"
He hesitated. "Right. Except…."
"No, Spence. I'm sorry I said anything. I'm all right. Really. I am."
He pulled her into an embrace. "I love you, you know."
It always made her smile. Always would. "I know. And I love you, too."
"I know." He lifted his hands to hold her face. "Anything, JJ. You can tell me anything. Count on me for anything. Please tell me you know that."
She hugged him. "Of course I do. I'm okay. Really. Now, go." She tried to lighten the mood by playfully shooing him out the door. "You don't want to miss the plane."
As he left her, he thought...Oh, yes, I do.