Essential listening: Novocaine for the Soul, by Eels

0o0

"Can you tell us why you're focussing on African American men?"

"Who is doing this? Are our children safe?"

"Your team has been accused of institutional racism, what have you got to say about that?"

"Why won't you release a statement, Agent Jareau?"

"As it happens, I do have a statement for you," said JJ, waving to allow the assembled reporters closer.

She was back at the Police Department, helping Seward keep a lid on things. Child murders and abductions were hard enough on a town without everyone getting antsy and trying to racially profile their neighbours. With the media stirring as hard as they could it would only be a matter of time before someone got nervous and accidentally shot a neighbour just going about their business.

Still, 4 a.m. was too goddamn early for a press conference.

"As you know, early yesterday morning, Kerry and Milo Grayling, both aged seven, were abducted from the garden of their neighbour's house. They are the fourth and fifth children to go missing in Peachtree City in the last month. We are looking at this abduction in connection with the murders of three other young boys: Dylan Ferris, Rufus Caradine and Charles Colson."

"Are you saying we have a serial killer?" a man in the front asked.

JJ stared for a moment at his horrible tie. "Yes, we are."

The burble of muttering rose a notch; JJ let it. They would ask their questions and she would allow them to think they were controlling her, then they'd tie themselves in knots about the race aspect, and then she would finally be able to do her job.

"Are you still looking for an African American man?"

"Yes," JJ responded.

"Why?"

"What evidence do you have?"

"It's unconstitutional!"

It would be, JJ thought, if we actually were being racist.

She raised a hand and called them momentarily to order. "Based on witness statements from the earlier abductions we sought and interviewed owners of a faded, blue pick-up truck, believed to belong to an African American woman."

"Women now!"

"You don't know what you're doing – it's question of safety!"

"Agent Jareau –"

JJ took a deep breath, hating to use her friend's disappearance this way. But then, Grace would probably understand. She was one of them. "At one of these addresses, yesterday afternoon, Supervisory Special Agent Grace Pearce was seriously assaulted and abducted, we believe by this woman and her brother." She held up first a picture of Grace, looking painfully whole and well, then of the Cooks.

There was a momentary gasp of silence, and then all the questions began rushing back.

"What did Agent Pearce do to provoke an attack?"

"How do you know it was them?"

"This is racial profiling – they could have been framed!"

"Doug, do you even hear yourself? The agent was attacked at their house."

JJ shot the middle-aged reporter with the pink blouse a grateful look.

"Evidence recovered from the house in question strongly suggests that these two individuals are involved in the child abduction and murder cases we have been investigating. Harriet and Noah Dodds are being sought in connection with these abductions and the murders of several children in neighbouring states over the last twenty years."

This announcement was greeted by shocked silence.

"They have changed their names several times and have been known to use false ID. Details of these are available in this release," she added, handing the nearest journalist a stack of handouts. "Both of these people are considered armed and extremely dangerous, and we advise the public not to approach them. If you see them, or have any information as to the whereabouts of Kerry and Milo Grayling, or Agent Pearce, please call the tip-line. Thank you."

She walked quickly back into the building, leaving a trail of eager questions as to Grace's family circumstances in her wake. As soon as the door closed behind her, she made a beeline for Seward's office.

"That oughtta keep them off our back for at least half an hour," the Chief mused. "Your team just got back – they're meeting in the back, away from the glare of cameras."

JJ thanked her, glad the department had such a steady hand at the tiller. "Anything come in?"

"Nothin' useful." The older woman scowled. "Dodds' co-workers are shocked, but in that way they ain't really shocked at all. Seems like he was real polite, but no one really liked him. Like he gave people the creeps."

"That fits the profile," said JJ, as the two of them made their way to where the rest of the team where attempting to refuel on coffee and hope.

Morgan and Hotch were pacing; Reid was flicking feverishly through a stack of reports, trying to find anything they might have missed; Emily was cursing at the coffee machine; Rossi was on the phone, raising every contact he had who worked in the states they'd identified, in case any of them had worked on the cases of the earlier missing children.

She rested a hand on Spencer's arm; he didn't even flinch – just patted her hand and reached for the next file.

It must be chewing him up, she thought. The way he feels about her…

Emily gave her a weary and painful smile. "Garcia catch you up?"

"Yeah, about an hour ago," she replied. "Anything new?"

"Nothin'," Morgan complained, throwing himself into a chair.

"I got roadblocks up every which way outta town – assuming they're still in it," said Seward. "An APB out on their cart, and descriptions of both out to all officers."

"The media are broadcasting their details, too," JJ added.

Chief Seward nodded. "I guess we gotta hope someone spots something and calls it in."

Morgan shot her a sour look, but she didn't take it personally.

Hotch, still engaged in wearing a furrow in the carpet panels, abruptly stopped and dug in his pocket for his cell phone. "Garcia?" he asked, answering it. "Okay, I'm putting you on speaker."

"Okay, is everybody listening? Because I got juice and I don't know which bits you need to help our girl."

"Harry, I gotta go. I'll call you back," Rossi murmured, discreetly hanging up on an old colleague. If he was law enforcement, he would understand.

"We're all ears, Garcia, go ahead," said Emily, taking a seat beside Reid, who had stopped reading and was instead fiddling with something shiny, just out of sight beneath the lip of the table. The glint of it caught JJ's eye momentarily; she wondered what it was.

"Roger. Noah Cook, born 1969; his sister Harriet, 1973. Father, Alan, worked as a mechanic, mother, Rosalie, was a homemaker. Both kids are described as bright and interested in their school records until about 1977 – though it does say that Harriet 'is a little slow', which I guess is 1970s for dyslexia."

"What happened in 1977?" Hotch queried, gently prodding her back on task.

"I was getting to that. Autumn 1997, Rosalie Cook died – congenital heart disease. Left little Noah and Harriet with their dad taking care of them – and I'm not sure he did."

"Abuse?" Rossi asked.

"All the signs you guys tell me are classic," she informed them, sounding angry. "Both kids' grades slipped. Harriet came in with bruises, unwashed clothes. Noah's report says he's 'sullen and withdrawn'."

"So, physical abuse for Harriet," said Emily sourly. "Not for Noah?"

"Different kind, maybe," said Morgan, and everyone failed to meet his eyes, remembering the secrets they had uncovered about his childhood, long ago in Chicago.

"It got so bad that when she was a teenager, the school wrote home to Mr Cook, like the good concerned citizens they were, and – guess what? He suddenly discovered his daughter was too sick to go to school. Ever again."

Seward gave a low whistle. "He kept her out of school so he could keep whaling on her? Mean old bastard."

"You got it, voice of friend I don't know yet," said Garcia. "Noah Cook left home as soon as he was able, joined the Air Force at seventeen and waited out his basic training before shipping out. He served in Iran, Iraq, Panama, Saudi Arabia and Iraq again. He took part in the humanitarian air-lift in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, and refused leave on multiple occasions."

"He knew what was waiting for him at home," Rossi remarked.

"The Air Force Police didn't wanna give me his file, but as soon as I mentioned the kids… Anyway, Cook did okay in the Air Force until Bosnia, when he started having issues. He became insubordinate and increasingly violent, and was eventually dishonourably discharged in December 1992."

"That's right before Marcus Webb and Jason Gibbs disappeared," JJ observed.

"Ya, and about the same time, Daddy dearest succumbed to testicular cancer. I'm not saying he deserved it, but –"

"Garcia, when was he diagnosed?" Hotch asked.

"Uh… Early '92."

"The same time Noah started going off the rails?" Rossi asked, clearly catching Hotch's drift.

"Oh, you are smart cookies," Garcia exclaimed. For a moment she almost sounded her usual bubbly self, but then she subsided.

"That's your trigger," said the senior agent, slapping the table hard enough to make Reid jump.

"I don't have too much more than that," she apologised, sounding miserable. "I can tell you our major-league creeper didn't come across Zolpidem in the Air Force. I asked the AAP and they told me they weren't using it on the same scale back then."

"How?" Reid asked, unusually terse.

"I don't know why I wasn't expecting it to be unpleasant, but… I got a record of Nathan Derringer signing up his baby sister Haley for a bunch of vaguely shady programs in Florence, South Carolina, testing out various pharmaceuticals for cash. One of them was the effect of sleeping pills on adult ADHD – 'Haley' was in one of the patient group that got Zolpidem."

"And he's made sure she got it ever since," said Emily. "God."

"She must have saved it up a little at a time, knowing he'd want her to dispose of the boys," Rossi said, with a grimace. "She was trying to be kind."

"Their father's abuse must have stunted their emotional growth," Morgan reflected. "And laid the seeds for Noah to become the abuser."

"Maybe that's why neither of them could let go of the past," Reid mused.

"How do you mean?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, man – their house had the fewest mementos I've ever seen."

"They – Noah – kept pictures of their father, even though he abused them both. He kept the comic. The bear might have been his – or Harriet's. She had the picture from when their mother was alive under her pillow."

"What are you seeing?" Hotch asked, watching the young agent's face intently.

Again, there was a flash of silver in the corner of JJ's eye as he shoved something back in his pocket. "Nostalgia. Hey, Garcia?"

"Right here."

"You ran a search for any property in the area listed under the Cooks' names and aliases, right?"

"Of course I did!" she protested. "D'you think I'd miss a step as simple as that with our 007 on the line?"

"No, no," he said quickly, attempting to diffuse her annoyance. They were all under enough strain as it was. "I mean maybe we were looking for the wrong name. Run a search for anything under Rosalie Cook."

"Oh my God, why didn't I think of that?" Garcia demanded of the air.

"The mother…" Rossi murmured.

JJ's breath caught in her throat. This could be it. Across the table, Emily was already halfway out of her seat. Morgan was shifting from foot to foot, itching to get out there and on the hunt. Hotch, immovable as ever, glared down at his cell phone as if it had done him a personal injury.

"Nothing. Damn it!"

"What about her maiden name – do you have that in her records?"

"Ennis! Rosalie Ennis…"

Every second seemed to stretch out into an eternity. JJ's fingernails dug into the back of Reid's chair.

"YES! Oh my God, Spencer, you really are a genius!" Garcia nearly shouted, typing urgently. "There's a workshop registered to a Rosalie Lucy Ennis south of Peachtree City in Cowetta County – off Keg Creek!"

"Dispatch," started Seward, into her radio. "I need all responders ready."

"I sent the address to your beepers," Garcia announced, voice tight with emotion. "Now, bring our girl home, or so help me –"

They didn't hear the rest; Hotch disconnected the call.

"How long will it take us to get out there?" he asked, as the other agents scurried around, checking maps, rechecking body armour.

JJ pulled hers over her head and tried to plug her radio in with clumsy fingers. Emily, who was already done with hers, came to her rescue.

"Half an hour at least, even breaking the speed limit," Seward told him.

"Then let's get moving."

0o0

The rain had eventually stopped, leaving small puddles of liquid dust on the floor of the barn.

At some point in the last few hours, the cold seemed to have settled into Grace's bones. She felt brittle and exhausted, but she knew falling asleep would do her wrists and shoulders no good – and she didn't like the idea of Dodds coming back in when she had her eyes shut. In her present condition she might not be able to put up much of a fight if – when – it came to it, but she was damn well going to try. The thought of him looming up without her knowing it sent shivers through her weary frame.

Besides, the children were too frightened to sleep. They had cried themselves out, and the cold had really started to make them shiver and sniff, so Grace had tried to distract them by teaching them songs.

She taught them the one she had sung to Henry, which her mother had sung to her, and a handful of others she knew from her childhood in Oxford, and they taught her a few American nursery songs she hadn't been aware of – although she did know the one about Lizzie Borden. Milo insisted on singing that one right through, with a painful kind of determination to show that he wasn't as scared as he truly was, so Grace had taught them The Grand Old Duke of York and Doctor Foster, getting them to sing in a round until their throats were hoarse from singing and they had laughed themselves back to bravery.

As time wore on, the air in the shed began to lighten, leaving the taste of a fresh, spring morning in their mouths. Dawn was beginning to streak the sky with peach and gold, just visible through the cracks in the roof. Her thoughts were increasingly muddled and she was badly dehydrated, and in pain, but it looked like being another fine, April day, and despite everything Grace's spirits lifted a little.

By now, the team would be hot on this pair's trail. They would have found the house and searched it, and they would be chasing every lead they had in order to track down the barn and its occupants. For the first time in hours, she allowed herself to feel a little hopeful.

"Are you sure they're coming for us?" Kerry asked, for about the ninth time.

"Absolutely," Grace assured her, imagining them all clustered around the situation table in the Peachtree City Police Department, listening to Garcia, or reading through files, or glaring at maps. "It's just a matter of time."

"Then we can go home," said Milo, with a huff of tired despondency.

"Then we can see Daddy," Kerry amended. "We can teach him the song about the green field and the tree – and the one about oranges."

"I expect he'll love that," said Grace, thinking of the horror and fear on the man's face when they had interviewed him the day before.

"And have breakfast! I'm so hungry, I could eat a whole stack of pancakes," Milo declared. "With a whole jug of syrup!"

"I'm so hungry I could eat a whole plate of waffles," Kerry added, in friendly competition.

Grace's stomach rumbled and she joined in: "I'm so hungry I could eat a proper English breakfast – even the black pudding."

"I'm so hungry, I could eat – I could eat a whole monkey!" Milo declared, getting into the spirit of things.

Grace snorted.

"I'm so hungry I could – I could – I could eat a whole cow!" Kerry announced, fully dedicated to one-upmanship. "With ice-cream on top!"

"Ew, gross!" said Milo, pulling a face.

"Why is ice-cream gross?" Kerry asked, mildly outraged.

"It is if it's on a cow," Grace pointed out. "It would be all hairy."

As involved in their game as they were, they didn't fail to hear the crunch of heavy footsteps approaching the barn, and all three of them fell silent as the door opened.

Dodds stepped inside, slowly casting a glare at each of them, and then closed the door behind him. Grace's heart plummeted; he was carrying a shotgun.

Silently, he walked to the bench where some of the water bottles were still standing, laid the gun down and picked up a bottle. Grace, Kerry and Milo watched him hawkishly as he slaked his thirst, unable to take their eyes off him. When he was done, he crumpled up the bottle, tossed it into the corner and picked up the shotgun.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he walked over to Grace.

She met his gaze as evenly as she could, given the circumstances.

"I know what to do with you, now," said Dodds, and then gave her a horrible, thin-lipped sneer. "Interferin' women belong in the ground."

What little warmth she had left her. Her breathing seemed over-loud.

Was he going to do it right here? In front of the kids?

Would he walk her to an open grave?

Would he make her dig it herself?

A deep, distant instinct awoke inside her.

I've got to take as much of him with me as I can, she thought, with awful clarity. Then, when they find me, they can tie it to him.

A sudden image flashed in her mind of her friends gathered around an autopsy table, the sheet drawn back. Garcia would be inconsolable; JJ would be quiet; Morgan would be angry; Hotch would be silent and grave; Spencer –

Oh, Spencer…

Fleetingly, she thought of his anxious face; those warm brown eyes; the smile he had on his face when he was trying not to laugh; his gentle hand on the small of her back; kissing in the rain; the way he'd looked at her the night Father Silvano had been deported back to the Vatican.

He'd be okay. The others would have his back.

Her thoughts were racing, she thought, or else Dodds was travelling particularly slowly. Her eyes never left him as he laid the gun on the ground and reached up to unhook her.

Someone will need to telephone London, she thought. The Guv' will tell the others. They'll come over for the funeral. All except Alice.

Oh gods, Alice. She's already lost enough.

So have I.

It isn't fair.

That particular thought was interrupted by Dodd's rank breath on her face as he reached for her bound wrists.

This is my one chance, she thought. Better make it count, Kid Vicious.

It hurt like blazes when he roughly yanked her arms free, but he wasn't expecting any resistance – and the shotgun was still on the floor. Taking a rapid breath and gritting her teeth against the pain, Grace drew her head back and nutted Dodds as hard as she could. They crashed to the floor, separated by a few inches.

She had the element of surprise, but he had the advantage of not being injured, so as she struggled back to her feet, he kicked out and hit the back of her leg, bringing her back down with a crack to her knees that knocked the air clean out of her.

Blearily, she saw him reaching for the gun. She threw herself forward, her hands still bound and almost useless, and did the only thing she could think of.

He howled as her teeth closed on his arm and he tried to throw her off, but Grace was fuelled by fear and rage. She balled up her fists as much as her fingers would bend, damaged and bound up as they were, and brought both down on his head as hard as she could.

For a time they scuffled and writhed on the floor, and Grace had no thoughts except kicking and biting and scratching – anything to keep him away from the gun – but somehow she found herself pinned to the floor, her face pressed into the dirt and Dodds' knee in the small of her back.

This is it, she thought. Bugger.

She spat out the dirt and blood in her mouth and snarled at the kids, who were out of her eye-line, "Close your eyes – and don't ever give up hope! Not ever!"

"Shut your fucking mouth!" Dodds bellowed, and hit her between the shoulder blades with the butt of the shotgun.

Coughing and spluttering, she felt his knee lift from her back. Dodds planted one foot firmly on the ground, either side of her legs. Grace heard him click the barrel closed and imagined him taking aim, the blood rushing in her ears like thunder. She closed her eyes and thought of her friends at the BAU. All her old friends in London. Alice. The Guv'. Her father. Michael.

Her breath came in quick pants, anticipating the hail of shot that would obliterate her –

But it never came.

Grace counted to twenty, then tentatively raised her head. Why hadn't Dodds taken the shot? She could see – oh gods – she could see his shadow standing over her, the barrel aimed at her skull, but he seemed to be looking up, not at her.

What…?

He let out a strangled yell – making Grace flinch badly – then a stream of expletives that would have put a seventeenth century London dockworker to shame.

And then she heard them, over the roar of blood in her ears.

Sirens.

Sirens and engines.

Heading their way.

Hope is the thing with feathers, she thought.

But then Dodds gave a roar of rage and kicked Grace in the head. Everything went red and hazy for a moment, and then suddenly she was on her back, staring up at the roof beams. She brought her hands up to protect her face, but this time he kicked her in the stomach.

Instinctively curling into a ball, Grace screamed when he grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged her towards the doors. The sound of those sirens had awakened a dangerous hope in her, and she kicked and screamed and fought him for every inch.

Given her injuries and exhaustion (and the latest knock to her head), she was no real match for him.

Soon she was aware of daylight through the haze of pain and nausea. She had the vague impression of being surrounded by trees. Someone was shouting – it might have been Dodds. It might have been anyone. There were other voices, too; raised, unhappy.

Something familiar about those, Grace registered dimly.

And then she was deposited on her knees, Dodds still yelling words she couldn't quite get hold of, the cold double barrel of the shotgun pressed into her neck, blinking stupidly at a line of police cars and SUVs.