(Thanks to demonchilde!)
A SKY THAT IS CHANGING
Sam chewed on her lip as she tried to compare the handwriting in Robin Poole's chemistry journal and in the letters Samson had received. Forensic handwriting wasn't even something she'd trained in, but in her anxious state she was willing to pass the time any way she could before Logan's arrival. And besides, the objects were right there in front of her, in Bailey's office, where they were awaiting the dark-haired expert. She was sitting, or rather fidgeting, on the sofa, whilst he sat at his desk.
The intercom on Bailey's desk buzzed. "Agent Malone, is Doctor Waters present? I have a caller, a Doctor Simons, on the line," the voice belonging to the switchboard operator intoned. Sam and Bailey looked at one another.
"That's Wykoff's psychotherapist. Do you mind?" Bailey shook his head and Sam walked over to the phone.
"Put her through. This is Doctor Samantha Waters." Bailey listened to Sam's intermittent replies to the psychotherapist. "I see. I'd be happy to come see him tomorrow. Can you ask him if it's okay for me to bring along a good friend of mine?" Sam looked at him while waiting for the question and reply to be carried out in the premises of the Institute. "No, that's okay. I'll come by tomorrow at four." Bailey nodded his acquiescence to Sam's implied question. "Until tomorrow, then. Bye." She hung up the phone, pausing to consider the conversation.
"Wykoff wants to see me again," Sam said hesitantly, the memory of their last discussion on the psychic playing in her mind.
"Did Simons say why?"
"No, she said he'd tell me in person," she angled for a light tone.
"And Wykoff didn't want anyone else to come along?" he asked in a flat voice.
"Hardly surprising for someone who's a recluse," she reasoned on Wykoff's behalf.
"I guess."
"Don't tell me you disapprove?" Sam looked at him with an incredulous expression.
"I don't, but..." his reply was cut short by the knock on his office door. Christine Logan stepped in through the open door. "I hope I'm not interrupting?"
Bailey shot up from his chair. Sam and Bailey both approached the former Secret Service agent. "Agent Waters, Agent Malone. Good to see both of you." The Bureau agents shook hands with the brunette.
"Shall we sit down?" The profiler and the task force boss sat side by side on the sofa and Logan seated herself on the beige arm chair.
"Thank you for coming. As I already told you on the phone, we need your expertise in forensic handwriting. We'd like you to discern whether the forged handwriting on the last page of Poole's journal is a match to the one in these letters." Bailey pointed to the journal and the letters, everyone of them in individual evidence bags.
Logan nodded her head and didn't voice any questions. She knew that this assignment operated on a need-to-know basis. "I'll do my very best. Where will I work? I need peace and quiet."
"You can use Agents Waters' office. Should you need any forensic equipment, our lab is at your disposal."
"Then, let's get to it," the brunette remarked and took possession of the letters and the journal. Sam escorted the woman to her office.
Logan emerged from Sam's office over two hours later to announce to Bailey and Sam that she was ready. She took them to the office and revealed her findings. She didn't look pleased.
"I have to conclude this a non-match, mainly owing to a lack of comparable documents. As it stands, the journal yields insufficient data for proper analysis. There's simply too little of it, and the fact that the text is forged makes it more difficult to compare. In addition, the letters themselves being copies complicates matters further."
Sam almost groaned out of disappointment, and Bailey echoed her sentiment silently. She shot a questioning look at him, and he nodded. They would have to produce the letters Jack had written to Sam for comparison.
"If you give us a half an hour, we'll give you seven letters that we believe to have been written by the same unsub as the letters you already inspected," Bailey informed her.
"For this examination, I'll need to know the sex and age of the supposed writer," Logan requested.
The agents hesitated to give up the information, so Logan pressed on: "It's vital for me to know them in order to do a comprehensive analysis."
Bailey let out a small sigh. "The writer is male and is believed to be between 34 and 48 years old."
"Thank you," Logan acknowledged the bending of regulations. Bailey got on the phone and asked the evidence room agent to retrieve Jack's letters.
Bailey and Sam were once again in his office when Logan buzzed them, bidding them to come confer on the results.
The expert started the proceedings with a question. "How long a time has passed in between the writing of these letters?"
"Approximately six years," Sam informed the brunette.
"Am I correct in assuming that these letters are the earlier ones?" Logan pointed to the notes Jack had written to Sam. Bailey nodded wordlessly.
"And is the recipient of the letters the same person?"
Bailey knew that some letters that Jack had sent to Sam over the years didn't specify her as the recipient. He wondered why the forensic handwriting expert would ask such a question.
"No. Why do you ask?"
Logan took in Bailey's response before answering. "Those facts fill in some of the blanks I had. Taking into account the natural development anyone's handwriting will exhibit in a span of six years and the differing recipients, my conclusion is that they were written by the same person."
"Will it get us a court order to seize the later set of letters?" Bailey got straight down to the point.
"I believe it will. Would you like to hear what I discovered beyond the match?" Logan asked, sounding a bit affronted by the agents' apparent disinterest in her other findings.
Sam jumped in to appease the woman who'd helped them tremendously. "Please tell us."
Logan nodded curtly. "We're dealing with someone who is capable of violence against others. He's both impatient and intelligent."
Logan glanced at her notes. "In the earlier letters, the speed of writing was slow, suggesting a personal bond to the recipient. He planned every detail in them, he possibly even fantasized about them and went over what to write over and over again. The later letters were written quickly, indicating a personal detachment to the recipient. He was being impatient, eager to get the job done."
The expert carried on. "He presses the pen when he writes, which exemplifies both emotional reservedness and aggression. He's incapable of expressing emotions."
She got down to the most damning piece of analysis. "The way the writing tilts to the left indicates that he is egotistical and greedy. It also suggests that he has a dependency relationship to his past, like his parents or his childhood home. In addition, in some cases, the tilt is indicative of a trauma experienced in childhood. He's pathologically self-absorbed, and he also has a pathological need to impress others," she remarked with a meaningful gaze.
"I will put all of this and more in a sworn statement which you can present to a judge," Logan finished and took in the stunned expressions of the Bureau agents with benevolent amusement. She was used to that reaction.
Sam slunk into the spacious training room where the women's class met, hoping to get her bearings before the class began. She looked around, but didn't notice anyone familiar in the groups of women chatting in small circles. She wondered if she was dressed inappropriately. She was wearing her old sneakers, black slacks and a baggy, purple exercise shirt. For the most part, the other women were decked out in what Sam surmised to be the latest fashions.
She fidgeted a little and looked around, trying to pinpoint the identity of the instructor. A fit brunette who looked to be in her late twenties noticed and accosted her.
"Hi, I'm Olivia, the instructor of the class. I don't think I've seen you here before," the woman offered her hand.
Sam shook Olivia's hand. "Yeah, this is my first time. I'm Sam, from the Violent Crimes Task Force," she explained, not sure how much information to divulge.
If Sam shared too much, Olivia didn't let it show, keeping a pleasant front. "Well, welcome to the class. Today, we'll be going over some defensive tactics. We rotate the subjects for the classes a bit. Sometimes, we do self-defense or yoga, other times circuit training, you name it. Keeps things interesting. If you have any requests, just let me know."
"Okay, sounds good," Sam uttered, not really knowing how to respond.
Olivia clapped her hands. "Great! Let's get started," she bounced to the front of the room, leaving Sam alone in the back. She briefly wondered whether she might regret her decision to take part in the class before Olivia ordered them to run ten laps for warm-up. The women didn't need to be told twice, and so Sam started running along them.
Sam, Bailey, John, two correctional officers and the warden walked on the aisle leading up to Samson's cell. They'd presented the court order for the inmate's correspondence to the warden, who'd offered double quick to take them to the prisoner himself. Bailey and John were getting their fair share of raucous catcalls from the inmates cooped up in their cells.
The agents waited while the correctional officers ordered Samson outside for the duration of the search. The prisoner complied and stepped outside without causing a scene, only to puzzle about the presence of the people who'd interviewed her last week.
"Hey, what's this?" she asked from no one in particular. As John and the other c. o. entered the cell and started their search, Bailey informed Samson of the purpose of the search. "We're with the FBI. I'm special agent in charge, Bailey Malone. This is a court order for the letters you have received from a Jack Anderson."
"What the hell?" Samson didn't know about what she felt more stunned: the deception perpetrated on her or the invasion of her privacy.
"You've been corresponding with a man wanted by the FBI." Bailey wouldn't go into more detail out in the open.
John found the letters quickly underneath a stack of gossip magazines. "Found them!" He put each of them in a separate evidence bag and walked out of the cell. "Five, in total," he remarked as he handed them over to Sam, who inspected the evidence bags.
"Did you receive any other letters from Jack?" Samson clammed up, forcing Bailey to inform the woman: "Lying to the FBI is a federal offence. I'll ask again: did you receive any other letters from this Jack?"
Samson made a pissy face. "No, I did not."
Bailey nodded to the correctional officers. "Bring her into the interrogation room one, please."
Once in the interrogation room, the agents got down to business right away. "In Jack's second letter, he fishes for some details about the daily life of the prison. I quote: 'What do you do all day, under the heavy gaze of the guards? Do you ever get a moment's peace?' What did you respond to that?" Sam pressed Samson.
"Come on, I can't remember things like that! It was two months ago."
"I suggest you try," Sam ordered curtly and Samson clenched her jaw, not bothering to hide her annoyance.
"I think I said that solitary was the only place where anybody could get some privacy, but that I'd never been there."
Sam presented the next letter. "Which is why in the third letter, Jack suggested that you try get into solitary. We know that you haven't been in solitary detention. What did you respond to him?"
Samson made an exasperated sound. "Look, I don't get why you're making such a big fuss about this. He's just some guy!"
"He's a guy who's killed over twenty people. So how about you just co-operate with us?" Bailey pinned the woman with a hard look.
"You're not kidding, are you? Jesus." Samson looked appropriately horrified. "Okay, I said that while he seemed like a nice man," she reflected on her words with a shudder, "I wasn't about to take a hit like solitary on my record. Solitary always means more time to serve."
"In the fourth, he obliquely attemps to ferret some information about the guards, what kind of shifts they have and so on. Did you tell him anything?"
"I might have said that nights have less guards, but that's it. That's pretty much public knowledge, isn't it? I mean, I didn't begin to write down the shift schedules for him or anything."
"In the fifth and final letter, he wonders how drugs or cigarettes make their way inside. Were you able to supply that information to him?"
"No, I've stayed clear of that business. I kicked the habit waiting for my trial and I haven't touched that stuff since. I go to meetings and everything. That's what I told him."
The agents continued the interrogation for another ten minutes. Finally satisfied that the inmate wasn't withholding any vital information, they let her go.
"Looks like we lucked out," Bailey commented.
"Yeah. She may be impressionable, but she's too ditzy to tell Jack what he wanted," Sam agreed.
"Any word on the post office box in Sandy Springs?" John enquired.
"No one has collected the letter yet. The box was rented out with cash for a month, and he presented an id with the alias Jack Anderson. The permanent address he gave on the form doesn't exist."
"Damn it," Sam bit out.
"I'll ask the Columbia field office stake out the place until the lease expires. Then, we'll confiscate the letter as evidence," Bailey concluded.
Sam surveyed surreptitiously the room Wykoff had led her to. He had a small room all to his own, a luxury in such circumstances. There was a bed in the middle of the room, a built-in closet to the left of the bed and a window to the right of it. In front of the window were two wooden chairs and a rectangular table. A picture of Diane, the late Mrs. Wykoff, adorned a low bedside table.
The profiler and the patient seated themselves at the table. Sunlight streamed in, and there were people enjoying the warm weather out in the yard.
Sam folded her jacket and put it on her lap. "How have you been?"
The man attempted a smile and clasped his hands. He gazed out into the yard for a moment. "I haven't come to terms with Diane's death, if that is what you mean."
Sam gave him a compassionate look. "I know what it's like."
Elliot rested his eyes on the photo of his late wife. "Do you have children?"
"Yes, I have a daughter. Her name is Chloe."
"Chloe," Elliot repeated the name with a smile. "Associated with the goddess Demeter. That's a good name." The man fell silent for a beat.
Then, he continued. "I'm sorry. I asked you here for a reason. Two weeks ago, I learned that I have congestive heart failure."
Sam's gut dropped. "Is is treatable?"
"My physician thinks so, but... I'm considering accepting only palliative treatment. I have very little to live for."
Sam's heart ached for the man. "I'm very sorry. But, I wish you would reconsider."
He just shook his head. "My time will probably run out in a year. I've thought about it, and I know what I want to do with the time that remains. I'd like to help you. Help you catch Jack."
Sam stood up and paced around the room for a while. Then, she faced him. "No. I can't ask that of you," she replied, mindful of the toll such an undertaking would take on the frail man.
"You caught the man who killed my beloved. I want to repay that service. I hope that you will consider it."
Sam looked out through the window, the sunlight now illuminating a whole different world.
Wykoff's news weighed Sam down the rest of the day. She had resolutely denied his offer of help in catching Jack.
Sadness for the man's inevitable fate was at the forefront of her thoughts even while showing Chloe the ropes of developing photos in their own darkroom. She tried to shield Chloe from her distress, and was able to keep up a normal front.
The girl was hanging the last developed photo onto the rope with a peg. Sam hadn't let Chloe handle the different chemical solutions; the eight-year-old had only observed the process. Even so, she seemed to have taken a liking to the whole thing. She was practically itching to take some photos to Angel, even though they hadn't dried yet.
"Angel will see them later on, sweetie. You have that math exam tomorrow, right? You want me to prep you?"
"Angel said she'd help me."
"Well then, you go ahead and tease that brain of yours. I'll clear away all this stuff and then I'll make all of us a snack, okay?"
"Okay! Is it safe to open the door?"
"Yes, all the photos have been in the water bath for the third time, remember?"
"Okay. Angel!" Chloe bellowed as soon as she opened the door. "You promised to prep me! Hi, Uncle Bailey!" Sam heard her daughter's greeting through the door that had snapped shut. "My mom just showed me how to develop photos. It was super cool," Chloe said, sounding this time more distant.
Sam grabbed the trays or developer and stop bath on the counter. She would combine the two in a glass bottle, then pour it down the sink. She heard a knock on the door. "Sam?"
"The door's open, Bail," she knelt down to retrieve the glass bottle. "Switch the light on, would you?" she asked of him as he entered the darkroom. He flicked the switch on his right. "Hey," he greeted her.
"Hey, yourself." She rummaged for a glass funnel in a white cupboard mounted on the wall, which was used to restore the developing chemicals. "What's up?"
"Nothing. I just wanted to hear what Wykoff had to say." Sam's expression darkened, but not for the reason Bailey suspected. She positioned the funnel on the bottle, put a pair of protective gloves on, then rested her hands on the counter, putting her weight onto her them and looked him squarely in the eyes.
"He's dying of congestive heart failure. He wants to help us get Jack," she said wearily.
His eyes widened from the shock, he looked to the side and breathed a heavy sigh. It was apparent that the news had hit her hard. His left hand found its way to Sam's shoulders. "That's horrible. I'm so sorry."
She bit her lip and squared her jaw, getting back to the task at hand. "Yeah," she mumbled in a choked up voice before clearing her throat. She lifted the tray containing the developer and poured its contents into the bottle. She then poured the stop bath liquid into the developer. She laid the tray back on the counter, took off her gloves with force and drew a shaky breath, her emotions getting the better of her. She covered her eyes with her right hand and fought back the tears.
Bailey had watched her struggling to remain composed. He wasn't surpised that the psychic's news was affecting Sam in this way. She'd met the man when she'd been as close to a burnout as he'd ever seen her, and he knew she'd felt some kind of kinship with Wykoff. She'd even been afraid that she'd share his fate of falling into the abyss. He'd tried to help her in fending off that fear, but now it was looming again.
He stepped closer and shifted his hand down around her waist, pulling her to his embrace. She let her hands dangle straight, just focusing on keeping her feelings in check. When the worst had passed, she wound her hands around his middle and squeezed as a sign of thanking him. "Thank you," she sniffed and disengaged from him, wiping away any remaining moisture from her eyes.
She put the gloves back on and poured the developer and stop bath mixture down the sink, running water after the mixture.
"How did you leave things with him?"
"I said no. How could I ask him to spend the last months of his life reliving unspeakable cruelty?" She sighed and decided to make a full confession. "But I considered it." It was true. As she'd paced the room, for the briefest moment she had wondered how much he could help the task force, if they could truly put an end to Jack's reign of terror with his insights. There were times when she'd do anything to be free.
"What does that say about me?" she asked with a sad smile and reached for the fixer tray. He halted her motion, wanting to drive his point home clear as a whistle.
"That you're human and you've been looking over your shoulder far too long."
She nodded silently. She raised the fixer tray closer to her before scooting down to bring out a canister from the cupboard under the sink. She poured the contents of the tray into the canister.
"What do you think?"
He took a beat, hesitating how to answer her question. She continued: "If he could prove to you that he's really psychic, like he did with me?"
"For me, that's still a big if," he replied and hastened to add: "Even if I were convinced of his abilities, there are a few other considerations. Like the possibility of causing him another relapse. And whether or not we'd be able to use the evidence we uncovered with his help in a court of law."
She mused his words in silence as she worked. She had to admit that he had salient points. And she herself hadn't made up her mind about the offer. She disposed of the toner liquid by pouring it into the big canister. She screwed the lidon tightly, then placed it back in the cupboard and locked the door. She rinsed the glass bottle and funnel in the sink, then put them in the cupboard on the wall.
"I'm gonna fix us something to eat. Will you join us?"
"I would love to, but Frannie is expecting me home soon."
Bailey bid a good night to Angel and Chloe before heading to the elevator. Sam and Bailey said good night in hushed voices, kissing each other on the cheek. Angel looked on the unfolding scene covertly from the dining table.
Sam had a few minutes to spare before her class was about to start, and she decided to call home quickly to hear about Chloe and Angel's day.
"Hello?" Angel picked up.
"Hi Angel, it's me. How's it going?"
"Just fine. Why are you calling now? Did you already skip out on the exercise class?"
Sam rolled her eyes even though Angel was miles away. "No, I'm here at the gym, but the class doesn't start for a few minutes. Is Chloe nearby?"
"Yeah, she's training Denzel again. I'll give the phone to her. Bye!"
"Bye, Angel." Some ten seconds passed before she heard Chloe's voice.
"Hi, Mom."
"Hey, you. I just wanted to call real quick and ask how the math exam went."
"Fine, I guess. The last two questions were really hard, but I think I got them right."
"That's great, honey. Did you already finish your home work?"
"We didn't get much. I was just training the off command with Denzel again."
"Okay, you keep at it. I'll see you in an hour and a half, alright?"
"Alright, bye now."
"Bye." Sam locked her locker and sprinted to the exercise room. That evening's agenda was circuit training. They would do shuttle runs, squat thrusts, sit-ups, ski jumps, press-ups and back extension chest raises for a total duration of 45 minutes, with gracious one-minute rests between the stations. The last ten minutes would be spent relaxing and stretching.
'Sam was exhausted at the end of the session. She wondered how long it might be before her fitness level would hold up. What she'd neglected to consider was that such a strenuous workout could and would impact her the next day. A lesson she would come to learn truly well.