Disclaimer: see my profile
Ladies of the Evening
It was ten am and Reid sat on the jet's bench looking through the file folder on his lap. They'd been called in three hours early that morning for a missing little girl in Iowa who was the fifth to disappear in two months.
He flicked his eyes up to Emily, who was studying her file. Garcia said that he should just take a chance and ask her out. If only he could think of something to say, so that she'd say yes instead of laughing at him. What if it didn't work out? He shuddered at the thought because they worked together. He'd read statistics about people hooking up at work and the percentages of failure versus success. The odds weren't in their favor.
What about Garcia and Kevin? They managed to work for the same employer and get along just fine. He brain reminded him that Garcia and Kevin weren't on the same team. They didn't work closely together. Kevin didn't lie to Garcia and make her think he was dead.
"Reid!"
He looked away from staring at Emily to see that Hotch had the look that said he was expecting an answer to a question Reid hadn't heard.
"Sorry Hotch, I was thinking."
"I was asking if you have anything to add."
"Oh, well the fact that he's taking them from homeless shelters is very telling. It's likely that he blends in, probably someone that volunteers or works in the area. He'd have to have a place to take them, and another indigent wouldn't have access to a convenient hiding place."
"Morgan just said that," JJ pointed out and received a black look from Reid for her pains.
No one, not even Hotch said anything to Reid, JJ only raised her eyebrows and returned to her notes.
Reid narrowed his eyes at Morgan, rubbed his nose and ignored Rossi's smile. It all just proved that Emily was too distracting. If considering the possibilities with her had this effect on him, what kind of problems would dating her bring? He decided now that finding out wasn't worth the risk.
Reid ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, leaving behind the filthy alleyway and the stench of putrid garbage, sweat, and foul steam from a vent. He wound his way around a big blue dumpster that looked like it had been there since the beginning of time with Hotch and the rest of the team. "It's definitely Kimberly Walsh. The ME said she's been dead less than twelve hours. She was strangled, raped and beaten. His rage is escalating."
Hotch nodded. "I thought we'd have more time. The time between taking the victim and killing them is accelerating. He could take another girl at anytime."
"We need to talk to the people that live here." Emily said.
"It's going to be tough," Reid, pointed out. "Transients by nature are mobile. Remember how difficult it was to get a line on the un-sub in Kansas City a few years ago."
"Yeah… This time we don't have a cop that keeps track of the homeless population helping us." Emily reminded them.
"Let's take the same steps we did then and talk to the indigent population here. Rossi and I will take the staff at the shelter and talk to anyone that owns or works a business here."
"Want to partner with me?" JJ yanked on Morgan's arm.
"Sure," he walked away with Hotch and Rossi leaving Emily and Reid staring at each other.
"Come on," she gestured forward, "The sooner the quicker."
She should have realized this would happen when they split up to talk to the denizens of the streets. The fact that she really didn't think about it, was just testimony to the fact that she was completely distracted. Still, there she was with Reid talking to three ladies of the evening huddled together next to a brick storefront with broken and boarded up windows. The women were completely ignoring her and they had surrounded Reid who stood with his back to the wall, and the ladies in a half circle around them. Now, he was trying to back away from a frizzed blonde-haired woman in a silver mini, a dark blue halter top and a white suede coat.
"Why don't ya dump her? We could have so much more fun without the fed bitch."
Emily fisted her hands in her coat pockets so they couldn't reach out and throttle the little witch, which would hardly be professional.
"This fed bitch would like to know if you saw anything last night," she said as pleasantly as she could.
Reid opened his mouth, and then closed it with a snap when she glared at him. "There's a dead little girl in the next alley, so why don't you all tell me what you saw last night."
"We didn't see nothin'," said the red head in a battered pair of hipster jeans and vee neck blouse cut nearly to her navel beneath a battered denim jacket. She reached out and was stroking Reid's arm.
"Yeah, you don't got no call to hassle us. We stick together because the neighborhood's rough round here."
The third prostitute wore her hair long and black, her skin was the same color as Morgan's and she wore a skin tight red dress that didn't hit much further down than her crotch, with gold spangles and a black leather jacket.
Reid was backed against the wall and very rosy in the cheeks. Emily struggled to find some sympathy in her heart for him, but it just wasn't there.
"I get that you take care of each other, but there's a killer out there that's preying on kids. We're not here to hassle you."
"I seen this guy a couple nights ago that scared me. I mean you do this job and ya get to know the crazy ones and how to stay away."
Emily nodded, keeping her eyes off Reid and her tone as light as she could despite the desire to hurt all of them for the attention they gave to her partner.
"What did he look like?"
"I dunno, all the johns look alike."
The red head snorted laughter. "Except this one," she'd attached to Reid like a leech, in Emily's opinion, despite Reid's struggle to retrieve his arm. "This one makes the slobs down on the avenue look like shit."
"Why don't you ease up on my friend?" Emily suggested evenly.
The redhead let go of Reid because there was something in the dark eyed one that spoke of murder. Yeah, she knew that look all right; she'd see it in many eyes.
"Look, its f-ing freezing out here, the sun's goin' to be up soon. I tell you what I saw you leave us alone." The redhead said.
"I'm not interesting in calling in the local's to roust you. What did you see?"
"He was a tall dude, white with one of those beards that just go around the mouth." She made motions with her hands around her own face.
"A goatee stupid," the black haired one sneered.
"Shut up Candy or I'll kick your face in for you."
"Ladies!"
Emily nearly rolled her eyes. This was getting them nowhere fast. "Do you remember anything special about him?" She asked as patiently as she could.
"Just that he didn't look like he wanted no one to see him. I'd just finished a blowjob for some asshole that would stop drooling all over my chest and I was comin' outta the alley. He passed by and he had mean, dark eyes. Don't know no more than that. Can we go now?"
"Did any of the rest of you see this guy?"
The others shook their heads, stamped their feet and blew on hands that didn't have gloves. Emily realized that none of them was more than twenty. Even though they all seemed taken with Reid, her blood cooled to them. They probably didn't have anywhere else to go.
"Alright, if you see anything," she said handing out her card. "Please call me."
The blonde reluctantly let Reid slip past her and out of their snare. "Baby, if you get lonely, just come back down here and ask for Erica, I'll take good care of you."
"What does he want with a stupid bitch like you?" The redhead said shoving at the blonde and nearly knocking her off her heels.
Emily pulled Reid away and left the women loudly arguing over whom Reid liked the best. His face was either windblown or he was completely humiliated because his cheeks were crimson.
"What's the matter with you?"
His eyes widened at the whip snap of her tone.
"Nothing!"
"You could have fooled me. You didn't say one word to those girls. Since when do you clam up like a rookie?"
"I don't know what you're so mad about. You were doing fine. I was about to talk but you looked like you were ready to kill me."
Her hands were still curled in her pockets and she longed to throttle him. Why couldn't he see his appeal?
"Look, I'm sorry; it's just that those women seemed pretty interested in you. They might have given us more if you'd just talked to them."
"I didn't do anything wrong."
She shook her head. "Next prostitutes we see, you talk to them."
"I can talk to anyone. They just caught me off guard."
They rounded a corner full face into the wind that had sprung up as the sun began its climb into the golden sky. Emily yanked up her blue knit scarf and hunched her shoulders against the breath stealing wind. Neither spoke until the building shielded them from the worst of the northern gusts.
"Hotch was right about you, the working girls seem to love you."
He eyed her carefully. "I don't appreciate the sarcasm or your attitude Emily. Let's just do our job and catch this guy before he takes another little girl. Keep in mind that I can handle myself just fine."
She doubted it, but they were coming up on a person - it was hard to tell with the hunched posture and a ragged cap pulled low on their face - and they needed to find some little piece of vital information that would take them to the next level in finding this child killer.
He spent the rest of the morning with Emily talking to the homeless, the drug addicts and prostitutes, all while wondering why she was so angry at him. It wasn't as if he wore a sign for all the working women to see that he'd be interested in their services. It wasn't his fault that they seemed to like him. He was sure that Morgan was getting his fair share of attention, and probably Hotch. There had to be working girls that like the stern, buttoned, and strait-laced type that was their boss man.
It didn't matter what the prostitutes thought any way. All they wanted was to make a living and that meant selling themselves to any men that was willing and had the cash. It was a depressing life with little in the way of comfort, but it was still just a way to make money. It wasn't as if they were interested in a real relationship. Why couldn't everyone on the team see that and stop teasing him?
He hunched his shoulders as they met up with the rest of the team, a couple of LEOs and the case detective. No one other than Reid and Emily had found anything in the way of the remotest lead. If the man with the goatee and the scary eyes had been seen, the other street people weren't talking, which meant the lead was a dead end or this man was very interesting.
"I say we get out of the cold and go over what we've got." Morgan was saying.
Hotch nodded. "We'll grab some lunch and work a preliminary profile. We can't discount what your witness said about the man with the goatee." He directed at Reid and Emily, "but we need more to go on."
"I should have enough data to work on a geographical profile." Reid heard himself saying in a rather desperate tone.
"After we get something hot to eat," JJ interrupted. "I'm freezing.
He wanted to be irritated, but she was right, it was cold and his stomach rumbled at the thought of finding something hot like a bowl of soup.
He broke off from Emily to ride with Mattingly and Rossi, so he missed the look Emily shot him, but fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for him, JJ didn't miss it.
