A/N 1: I know I said that this would be 14 chapters, but although I still have my notes, I lost my outline in the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2011, so I'm not positive how many chapters it's gonna take to get from Point Q to Point Z—but the journey has begun once again.
A/N 2: Not mine, yada yada.
Thank you as always to Esperanta, who actually enjoys betaing my stuff!
Watching the Watchers
Chapter Twelve
The Word from East Armpit
5:02 PM
Aaron Hotchner
Prentiss kept looking at him oddly. He wasn't sure whether it was because she was viewing him from beyond a set of bars, or because he'd just identified her as his "Baby Mama." He didn't feel apologetic about that at all—if he was expected to just, snap, like that, adapt to having a fiancée, then she could by-God, snap, like that, adapt to having a child. Or two. Or at least one discreetly in the oven.
"It's Wallingford, I'm pretty sure," she said quietly. He sensed Morgan and Rossi moving to the near ends of their own cells, not about to miss a word. "The trial's set for next month, and the principal witnesses for the prosecution were Colonel Moyer and his wife—and you and Rossi."
Yes. The two brothers who took young boys, notably General Wallingford's grandson, in Maine in January and February of that year. He and Dave had done that one on their own, while the rest of the team dealt with the post-rescue interviews of the victims of the self-styled Slave King in Montana. The Wallingford boy had survived, but had been too traumatized to do anything but point mutely at pictures of his captors.
"But we're not critical to the prosecution," Aaron said. "The Moyers are."
"They're both dead," Emily told him. "They were in an auto accident in July. He died a few days afterward, never regained consciousness. She got better, went home, but she died too, about a month later. I don't have all the details yet. That means that you two—" her eyes flickered to Rossi and back to Hotch "—are it. You two, a couple shaky eye witnesses, and a little bit of circumstantial evidence. Hasn't anyone from the prosecution called you about it yet?"
"But they're just some guys, down-east good old boys, a couple fishermen, right?" Morgan said. "And this operation—it must have cost somebody a fortune to pull off."
"Far be it from me to deal in ethnic stereotypes," said Rossi—which was a laugh, considering his extensive repertoire of hopelessly politically incorrect jokes—"but they were, what? They were Albanians, right? Ditmar and somebody Sallaj, what was the brother's name?"
"Juxhin," Aaron supplied automatically. Reid might be the brains, but he was still the memory of the BAU. "But there were no indications they were tangled up in anything organized. They didn't have much in the way of resources, no weapons, and neither one owned a computer. They used low-end cell phones, asked for a public defender."
Rossi raised an elegant eyebrow at Aaron—the gesture somewhat weakened by coming from behind bars—and said, "But the Albanian mob can be brutal, heavy-handed, and it's fairly well-funded."
"And they don't hesitate to kill federal officials," Morgan said. "Unless somebody offers me proof that it's just a sick coincidence, there's Ms. Chen—she went chasing a lead I gave her and she's dead over by the Hunnicutt Projects."
"You have any idea where Reid is?" Aaron asked Emily. "Or Garcia?"
"Or Strauss?" Rossi added.
Prentiss nodded. "Garcia's at home. I had a friend of mine talk to Sarah, the lawyer you sent me. Then he went over to her house to give her some support. I haven't heard anything from Reid." She wrinkled her nose. "I can't think why I would want to contact Strauss."
Hotchner sighed deeply. "Because she's on the run," he said.
It was actually kind of gratifying watching Prentiss's face as she absorbed that little factoid. Her eyes about popped out of her face. "She's what?"
Aaron touched his right hand to his heart and raised it solemnly. "Before God, Prentiss. My source—and he's a big source—"
"A really big source," Rossi added. "Like six-six, easy."
Hotchner ignored the interruption. "He swears that she was an unindicted co-conspirator and she's in the wind."
"Strauss," Prentiss repeated, as though she might have misunderstood, or maybe Aaron had slipped and said the wrong name.
"Erin Strauss," he said. "I know, I don't get it either. Unless somebody let it slip to her."
"Like who?" Morgan contributed. "Reid?"
"Yeah," Rossi snarled, "like when Reid finally decides he's going on the run—"
"Whoa," Aaron said, holding up a hand to both of them. "The last word we've had officially is that Spencer Reid broke a tooth this morning. He called in when I was on the way down here, said he was trying to get hold of his dentist."
He was a dreadful liar, and he knew it, but there was no attorney-client privilege in this little corner of the Federal Building—so Lord alone knew who was listening in, and technically, the last word had been Reid's call. Seeing him booking out of the BAU that morning hadn't been a word. As long as he felt that on some level, he was just putting a spin on actual and provable facts so they looked a little different, well—that wasn't really a lie.
Much.
If a witness pulled that in court, Aaron would cheerfully (figuratively) eviscerate him and leave him dripping (figurative) guts all over the witness stand. But this wasn't court; it was the Federal Building, and these were his friends, his family, his team.
"Fine," Rossi growled. "When he got out of the dentist's office, maybe he called Strauss."
Aaron looked at Rossi. Prentiss looked at Rossi. Hotch was pretty sure Morgan was looking at Rossi, too, but he was damned if he'd turn around and confirm it.
"I think he'd rather have the toothache," Morgan said. "I know I would."
~ o ~
5:05 PM
Spencer Reid
He leaned way back against the rear seat cushions in Julian's Town Car with a contented sigh. For the first time since the warrants had come through, he felt safe—or at least relatively so. Birdwell was still pretty young for the State Department, but, like Reid, he'd been a prodigy, just nineteen months older than Spencer himself in college. That had given him a huge head start. He was a lot of things, including twisted and troubled and ambitious, but Spencer had never known him to be anything but absolutely trustworthy.
Beside him, Garcia was lost to everything but the laptop that he and Strauss had procured for her. She bent, fussing with it, murmuring things to herself that Reid could barely hear, and couldn't understand when he did hear them.
Finally she looked up and stared straight forward at the back of Julian's head. "We'll have to get to a library or a cafe immediately," she announced. "They took my phone, and that was my hub-on-the-fly."
Reid didn't bother to share that he didn't understand that, either. They'd gone around and around about it when they first met. He didn't particularly care for information technology—of course, she said that he was just being snobby because he didn't need it, and maybe she was just a little bitty bit right—and he actively resisted learning new and wonderful things about it. She would say but you're a doctor of engineering, and he would say, mechanical, Garcia, and she would say this is a mechanism, and he would say, show me the moving parts and then they would retreat to their respective corners and pout.
"No problem," Julian replied, "but I think Ms. Strauss wants to get into fresh clothes first."
Erin, who had already yanked all the curlers from her hair and was teasing it into shape in the front passenger seat, growled, "I feel like a two-dollar skank."
Reid resisted the cheap shot of asking her how she knew what a two-dollar skank felt like. Instead, he reached forward and tugged at the edge of her halter top. "Why?" he whined, keeping up the Ricky Lee style of talking. "Come on, Ma—I kinda like ol' Brandy Mae."
"God," Strauss groaned, "I'm so embarrassed."
"Don't be," said Julian. "You want to know why Spence is so good at being 'Ricky Lee'? It's because he's doing me. When we met, I was kind of 'Ricky Lee.' No shit—I had no manners, no taste, no class, and a Tennessee goober accent so shrill it set off car alarms."
"He isn't kidding," Reid confirmed. "Smart as a whip, already spoke—what was it, eleven?—eleven languages perfectly, without a trace of an accent, but not his English."
"If I thought about it," Julian said, "I could speak like an educated man. If I didn't—" his tone rose in pitch and acquired a country accent. "—hay-ull, ah was still Julie Dan Birdwell, outta purt-much East Armpit, Tennessee."
"But not literally," Reid said.
Birdwell laughed. "Damn near. Y'aw ain't lived 'til you been a scrawny six-foot redneck named Julie." As quickly as it had appeared, his country accent vanished. "But that gift for languages was my ticket out of poultry farming. Then I met Spence, as big a fish out of water as I was, for some of the same reasons and some different ones."
"Yeah," Reid said with a low chuckle. He was still maintaining his Ricky Lee persona more out of affection than to annoy Erin Strauss—though her discomfiture was definitely a factor. "And them-thar poultry ain't never recovered from the loss."
"When you're all done with the b-g deets," Garcia muttered, "I need a connection, and I need it now."
"Wait-wait-wait, 'b-g deets'?" Reid said. "That's English?"
Birdwell looked at Reid in the rear view mirror and gave a sharp descending whistle, like an artillery round. "Incoming clue!" he called. "Catch it! 'Background details.'"
Oh, for God's sake—it's only one syllable more to say it right.
"We have to stop at a gas station," Erin Strauss said, "so I can change clothes."
The ever-pragmatic Penelope barely glanced up. "You can stay in the car, ma'am, I don't need anyone to hold my hand while I do this."
Birdwell laughed aloud. "I'll bet you two get along just fine," he said.
"Who, us?" Reid gasped, and almost simultaneously, he and Garcia jerked their heads toward each other and said, "No people skills."
~ o ~
5:24 PM
David Rossi
A heavy-set woman in a corrections uniform entered the room where the cells were located, interrupting some spirited speculation about organized crime. Her equipment rattled on her heavy belt as she moved. "Miss Prentiss?" she said to Emily. "Your visiting time is up."
Prentiss, who had dragged one of the big wooden office chairs across the room from the long tables, and was now seated in front of the center cell—Aaron's—consulted her phone. "Oh, no way—it was 5:00 when I came in here. I have six more minutes!"
Hotchner—trust him to say exactly the wrong thing—said, "It's no problem. We didn't have anything else to say," which in a universe of real engagements and real fiancées would have earned him a sharp slap across the puss from any woman worth her salt. Prentiss got it, and her eyes narrowed dangerously, but only for Aaron's (and Dave's) benefit.
"Well, we have some situations we're dealing with," the corrections officer said, "so we'll have to cut it a little short. But, listen, honey, what I said about no physical contact? We can relax that a little bit. I'll just turn my back and you can sneak him a little sugar, OK? 'Course, you'll still have witnesses, but it's better than nothing, right?"
It was a tough call which of the happy couple looked less happy about this opportunity, but both of them murmured polite thank-yous at the guard, who pointedly faced the opposite wall and said, "Knock yourselves out, kids."
It was, Dave thought, possibly the frostiest indulgence in a little sugar that he'd ever seen. Emily leaned her forehead against the bars on her side; Aaron leaned forward on his side. He reached through the bars and squeezed one of her hands with one of his own, whispering to her so softly Rossi couldn't catch it.
She was whispering something back when that enormous interrogator, Wozniak, strode into the room.
"Oh, sorry to interrupt," he boomed without apology. "Keep it up, folks, just don't do anything I wouldn't do." Then he beamed toothily at Rossi. "You're Rossi, right?"
No sense in denying it. "Yeah."
"You're in luck, man. Lovebirds are busy, so I'll talk to you, how does that sound?"
"I'll only be a minute," Aaron told him.
"Oh for God's sake, be a mensch, Hotchner," Wozniak growled. "You've got your honey there. Make every moment with her count. Come on, Rossi—let's do this, man."
Rossi slipped into his shoes and jacket. He expected Wozniak to cuff him, but apparently he counted on his size and his fearsome reputation to cow his prisoners. Come to think of it, Aaron hadn't been cuffed when he'd returned from his most recent visit with the interrogator. The two had been conversing in low tones with serious expressions on their faces, but there hadn't been any sense of a threat about it—other than the fact that Wozniak looked, well, scary.
But he liked to sing.
And he allegedly made a hell of a frittata.
Wozniak unlocked the cell door himself—evidently the chick in the uniform wasn't the only person with a key—and held it open, gesturing for Rossi to join him.
"And if you'd do me the honor of looking at least a little bit frightened," Wozniak rumbled.
Rossi smiled weakly. "Won't be that much of a stretch, pal."
