Chapter 14: Pieces of the Puzzle

The possesion of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery- Anais Nin

Spencer's head was spinning. Chelsea was dead. Everything that Amber had said about seeing her could easily be explained. Seeing her could have been a trick of the mind. It was common when dealing with loss. Like maybe seeing someone that looked like the lost one, and thinking it truely was them. The note was even easier than that. Any competant forger with limited access to something she wrote could fake the note. If given a handwritten essey or such, Spencer himself could most likely pull it off.

But this was no trick. Spencer didn't know this girl. He'd only seen pictures. He wouldn't be imagining seeing her. And by the look on Amber's face, he wasn't the only one who saw her. Maybe if he were back on drugs, he might be seeing this, but Amber most certainly wouldn't be. This could not be explained away. This was Chelsea Dumant. Completely alive.

She giggled a little. "My, my. I've rendered the notoriously chatty Dr. Spencer Reid speechless." He was alarmed to learn that she knew who he was. "Suprised? Don't be. I always have been resourcful. I know a lot about you."

"Like what?" Amber asked, unthawing a little. Chelsea's smile grew, if that was possible.

"Like his mommy in Las Vegas had paranoid schizophrenia. Like his father left when he was ten, leaving him to deal with his mother. Like he graduated high school at age twelve and has three doctuates, working on a fouth. Like he joined the FBI's BAU at age twenty-three. And was kidnapped once, killed his captor, but was left with a drug addiction. You've been clean for over a year, though, but temptaion can be a bitch." The way she said this worried him, almost as much as everything she knew did.

"How do you know that?"

"Like I said, I'm very resourcful."

"How are you not dead, Chels?" Amber asked, her voice cracking.

"Maybe this will shead some light on the subject," she told them, throwing a small, pink book on the end of Amber's cot. With a last smile, she flipped her hair and walked out, closing the door behind her. There was a soft click! as the door was locked.

Amber was staring at the book. Spencer studied it for a moment.

"Is that a diary?" he asked. She nodded before grabbing it. Slowly, she pulled it open and started leafing through pages. Her shock grew and grew with every page. "What's wrong?"

"It's Chelsea's diary."

"I figured that," he told her. She shook her head.

"A lot of entries she made, we helped her write. Sometimes we added our comments or thoughts, and helped her think of what to write. And it's all here!"

"And this is odd because...?" he asked, confused.

"Chels hated pink. He diary was blue." Now Spencer understood the problem. "But it's her hand writing. It's all of our hand writing, actually." She made it to the last entry in the book and a picture fell out. Nervously, she picked it up, but dropped it as soon as she saw what it was.

"What?" he asked, alarmed. With a gulp, she handed him the picture. He would have dropped it too if not for being used to unusual suprises and twists. The picture was of Chelsea. But that's not what made it shocking. There were two Chelsea's smiling up at him. "Does... did Chelsea have a twin sister?" he asked, keeping his voice as calm and steady as possible.

"I don't think so. If she did, we never saw her and we never heard about her." Then silence eveloped them, after Spencer asked if it would be alright if he read it (even if the girl was (possibly) dead, he would feel like he was invading her privacy if he didn't ask). She allowed it and they were left to their thoughts. Spencer's headache made reading difficult, and he intentionally read extra-slow, but he finished all too soon.

He didn't know how much time passed, but it was a long time before the door opened again. Chelsea walked in with the same smile as before. She noticed the diary on the floor and the picture in Amber's hands.

"I knew you'd find it," she said.

"I didn't know you... Chelsea had a twin," Amber said.

"Silly, clueless, little bitch. I am Chelsea." Amber opened her mouth to say something, but Chelsea raised a hand to stop her. "I never told you about my sister, Kelsey, because she was an embarasment to the whole family. She was mentally unbalanced. She attacked people, lashed out at random times. She nearly killed my little brother once. That's when my parents decided they couldn't take it anymore and she was sent to a mental hospital. I was forced to visit with them every month. The picture was taken in the garden that the patients are allowed to go in for air and exercize. She hated it there, and she managed to run away. I knew she would come after me, so I killed her before she could."

"Why did you kill AJ and Katie? They were your friends." Amber was crying now.

"They saw me kill her. They would have told. I had to get rid of them."

"I had no clue. Spencer had no clue. Why are we here?"

"It would be too sloppy to kill just a few and leave others who could ruin everything. And you saw me. Last Friday after play practice."

"I thought I was imagining things!" There was a silence.

"She's lying," Spencer said.

"What?" they asked together, shocked.

"You told me that, while she may be manipulative, Chelsea would never hurt you and the others. This diary is pink, but Chelsea's was blue. A smart person would stop after killing who they needed to kill, not keep going and risk everything. This is Kelsey." To his suprise, Kelsey gave him a billion-dollar smile and started clapping slowly.

"Very good, Dr. Reid. I underestimated you. You must be very good at your job." He didn't give her the satifaction of responding. "You're a genius, if my information is correct. But, that might be very bad for me..." She pulled a gun from a holster he didn't see (Really, he thought, I am losing my touch! How did I not notice that?) and pointed it at him, at the dead center of his forhead. He realized that it was his gun. She must have seen this.

"A Glock 17. Standard issue for the FBI?" He didn't respond, just glared into her eyes. She smiled sweetly before holstering the gun. "I'm not going to kill you... yet." With that, she left again.

CM

Back at the police station, everyone was in overdrive, despirate to find their missing agent. Garcia had found the pictures on the computer at last, so, while the murder charges were dropped, that was all the proof they needed to lock him up. Hotch decided to see if a deal could get him to talk.

"You're facing some serious jail time," he said to the glaring boy. "I know you know something that you're not telling us. I can make a deal."

"What kind of deal?" his lawyer asked.

"He goes to a juvenial detention center until he's eighteen. When he is released, his record is expunged. He doesn't do jail time, he has no record."

"Why do you want to know this so bad?" the lawyer asked.

"Three girls are dead. We want to catch a murderer before we have to add another to that list." This didn't say that anything bad had happened, so they lawyer couldn't use that to get a better deal. They made sure nothing reached the ears of the three men in this room.

"It's a pretty good deal, kid," the lawyer told him. Conner looked up at his father, who looked disappointed in him, but nodded his head. Conner turned back to Hotch.

"Okay," he said. "I'll tell you what I know." Hotch waited for him to start talking. "The night I was supposed to meet Chelsea, she came early. Well, I thought it was her." He shook his head. "She said her name was Kelsey, and she handed me a book. It was a small blue diary. She told me that inside were all the secrets the girls had. She made me go home and blow off my meeting, told me to read the diary. I did. On the last page, the was a picture of two girls. Two Chelsea's. There was a red X on one and the back said 'All bitches must pay.'"

"Do you still have it?" Hotch asked. He nodded.

"Yeah, it's in a shoe box in the back of my closet."

"Thank you." Hotch stood and left. There was still a team, led by Prentiss, who were searching the house. He called her.

"Prentiss," he said, "Conner Jenkins just told me that in the back of his closet was a shoe box-"

"Yeah, we found it."

"Was there a girl's diary in it?"

"Yeah, it was weird, but we didn't open it."

"Well, it might have information in it. I need you to bring it here, A-S-A-P."

"Sure." The line went dead with that.