Chapter nine
Washington Medical Center
Washington DC
Spencer
Spencer stepped out of Helena's room and found JJ and Emily. He quickly gave them a rundown of what he had learned from Helena, which mostly confirmed what they had already surmised. He surprised himself by not telling them about her talking about dreams, or knowing about his being shot in the knee. It felt wrong to tell them, he didn't trust them not to ask about why she was so concerned, to ferret out that he had felt abandoned after the shooting, to use that against him at some point in the future. Or just to tell him that she was cold reading him, that his micro-expressions gave it away, that he ought not to trust her.
Besides, how did she know about the discussion he had with Garcia about the cookies?
While they went in to interview her about the rape, a thought he could barely touch, he went to find the others. Hotch was off wrangling various agencies, given that this was a bombing everyone seemed to be in on it. Rossi was still working with his friend, the Bishop, and the Dioceses. And Morgan was just starting to talk to a deputy. "Hey, Reid," Morgan called him over, "Anything new?"
I could tell him, Spencer realized, that would be all right. Morgan has never broken trust with me, not ever. But not with this many people around. "Only confirmation of what we've come up with so far. I think this one is going to be in the details." He looked over at the deputy, wondering what was going on.
"I agree. This is Deputy Rodgers; he was the first cop on scene back at the original accident. Garcia tracked him down." Morgan turned back to his interview. "Is this the person who drove away from the scene?" He showed him Marion Prestwick's ID photograph.
"Nope," the deputy replied."
"You sure?"
"Yep, person I saw was bigger, male, and black."
"Can you describe him?"
"Hmm, 'bout your size and build, bald as well, a lot darker."
"Willing to sit with a sketch artist?"
"After twelve years? I'll give her a go."
"And you couldn't get a license plate?"
"Nope, the plate was covered in snow."
Spencer spoke up. "Was there anything else that stood out about this incident?"
"Yeah, there was." The deputy replied. "It stuck with me all these years, that's why I remembered it. The girl, she was an odd one. I put it in my report that she said her Mom and Dad died, but she called her parents 'Sam' and 'Maria'. At first I just thought, you know, liberal hippy types."
Spencer nodded, turned to Morgan. "She referred to her Grandmother by her first name as well; it might have just been a familial convention"
The deputy nodded. "Yeah, but when Father Paul got there, he started calling her Ma'am. A priest calling a twelve year old girl Ma'am and her just sitting there like it was her due and a'callin' him 'Paul'. I never heard of nothing like that before."
"Huh," Morgan absorbed that. "And you never went back to interview her further?"
The deputy shook his head. "We went back to ask Father Paul about her, but he said he sent her out west to live with family. Said she was all shook up by it and she was better off with her people. Tried to get CPS involved but they said she didn't have any paperwork so there was nothing they could do. And Father Paul took the bodies, had a quiet funeral for them, the coroner said they probably died in the accident….you know, budgets are tight and Father Paul had been part of the community for, hell, long as anyone could remember. We all trusted him."
"Yeah, we get it." Morgan nodded. Spencer could tell he was repressing his frustration. "Come on, we'll call the office, get you set up with a sketch artist."
The details, Spencer thought, this is all in the details. When Morgan headed off he went to find Rossi and the Bishop. He knocked on the door, and waited to be invited into the room. "Hey Reid." Rossi acknowledged him. "Did you get anything?"
"Maybe," he turned to the Bishop. "Do you remember a Katherine Creston at all?"
"Yes!" You could almost see the light bulb going on over the Bishop's head. "Kat Creston! She was Father Paul's housekeeper. I could not remember her last name."
"And her family?"
"Oh, I remember she had a daughter. Mary? Marion? No, Maria, that was it. I remember Paul and Kat knew each other back in high school, or so he told me. She ran off to Baltimore the year he entered the seminary. Came back not long after he was settled in the parish, said she'd married but he died in Vietnam. Anyway, she was a young widow, no money, Paul took her in. Paid her under the table out of his own income."
"And that didn't sound hinky to you?' Rossi asked.
"Well of course it sounded hinky. For goodness sake we could all pretty much guess that he was one of those who went to the seminary to avoid the draft. But given all the other scandals going on a monogamous relationship with a consenting woman of the appropriate age that was kept very discrete wasn't a high priority. Besides, other than that he was a model priest. I was pleased to have him in my community." The Bishop turned to Spencer. "Why do you ask?"
"Apparently Helena was Katherine Creston's granddaughter."
The Bishop sighed and shook his head. "That means she was also likely Paul's granddaughter. Well, that explains why he got involved, but why take her to the convent? He probably knew a dozen families that would have taken her in."
"What do you know about Katherine's family?"
"Oh, very little; I don't think I ever met any of them."
"Did she have any other family? Brothers? Sisters?"
"No, not that I recall; you know, we have all of Father Paul's files in the archives, maybe you can find something in there."
Spencer did an inward little happy dance. Not only was that very likely an outstanding place to find a lead, but a solid paper trail was something to be enjoyed in and of itself. "Thank you, that might be very helpful. Um, did you ever notice, did that family call each other by titles, Mom, Dad or did they tend to use first names?"
"Oh, first names. I always figured Kat must have spent time in one of those hippy commune places for a while, that's where she picked it up."
"Did Father Paul call Kat 'Ma'am' a lot?"
The Bishop chuckled, "All the time. I always figured it was because she ran his life like a staff sergeant. And then after she died her daughter took over, and he started doing it to her. It was just teasing, I thought. Why?"
"Just trying to sort a pattern, thank you." He nodded to Rossi, indicating that he would explain later, and headed back out.
Back in the hallway Emily and JJ were just coming out of Helena's room. "Well that was horrible." Emily sighed.
"Why?" Spencer asked.
"It's hard enough to do one of those interviews with your average adult." Emily told him. "Now try it with someone raised in a convent."
JJ had joined them, shaking her head. "She didn't even know the correct terminology for her own body parts; let alone what was happening to her."
"Did she know enough to fight back?" Spencer said. He had to know how bad it was, he realized, for some reason he had to know how deeply to drive the guilt into his soul.
"Not the first time." Emily told him. "Afterwards she was told that if she ever put up a fuss, Mother Marion's words, she'd be abandoned down there. After that it was just lie back and think of England."
"The thing about artificial insemination is that you can't really try it every month. You have to wait a month to see if it worked. And Mother Marion had to be careful about the number of times she took a delivery. It came out to about four times a year." JJ shook her head. "Thank God it never took."
Spencer's mind had been ticking over in the background, even while he considered the odd desire to feel guilty about what happened to a woman he just met. "What kind of a family always refers to the eldest female as 'Ma'am', even when she's a minor?"
"A royal one," JJ replied. "What, you think we found the missing Romanov?"
"No, they found her in the same pit as her brother." Emily informed her. "DNA testing confirmed it back in '09." She turned to Spencer. "Why?"
"I don't know. We know that Father Paul was heavily involved; the Bishop offered us his papers to go through. I was going to talk to her some more, then see about the papers in the morning."
"Well she's going to have to wait too. She got pretty upset when she realized we were talking about reproduction, they gave her something to help her sleep. She's going to be out 'till morning."
Spencer drooped inwardly; he really had wanted to talk to her again. "Well, tomorrow then."
"Yeah. We have quite a mystery."
"We do."
