A/N:
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been." ~ John Greenleaf Whittier.
Reid walked—scratch that—hobbled into the precinct shortly after Mrs. Heights arrived. Hotch gave us a discerning look as I bit my tongue to refrain from saying anything. She was already asking for me. As soon as Spencer sat down with me, joining the subordinate category, he noticed the tension between Aaron and I.
"I can do it Hotch," I tried to reassure him. Spencer looked and now knew the cause for the altercation looming.
"Carter decided it would be a good idea to promise Mrs. Heights an interrogation with her," Aaron rubbed his temples.
"She suggested it," I back myself up as Reid sighed. This wasn't fair. If the woman wanted me to interrogate her, what could it hurt?
Spencer pulled out a case file, "Go ahead and send Carter in," he propositioned, "It won't do any good to scare this woman away."
Aaron glared at me, sending a chill straight through my bones, "Damage has already been done," he muttered. Referring back to me, more or less sunk low in the seat, he continued, "I'll be out here with Reid listening."
Nodding, I excused myself from the toxic environment and looked back at the table. Swallowing the frog in my throat was a challenge. Nevertheless I pulled through and entered the door; Hannah was setting up her voice recorder and had a set of dull knitting needles in tow. "Nice to see you again, they didn't look too happy with you out there," Hannah waved.
Shrugging it away, I began to redirect the focus on me to her, "Can you tell me things about Bethany?"
Her eyes snapped up momentarily. Surreally they then went back to focusing on the trance like position of watching her knitting needles. "Well, she never was a patient woman, too much spite and spunk," she continued down the row of stitches. "She was immature in a sense, a little lost, she was always one of the boys, as the younger generation puts it," Hannah paused in reverence.
"So she wasn't noticed by any men?" I tried to wrap it up for Hannah.
Nodding her head, Hannah went back to the therapeutic quality of the needles she seemed adept to, "And she craved that attention desperately, she hated to be the husbandless sister, so she became a little loose," Hannah rose her shoulders up and down. "One night I take her to a little bar, I tell her I'd buy her one drink, we'd mingle, we'd go home," Hannah knitted at a quickening pace.
"Is that the night she went missing?" I questioned, watching her reactions that were well controlled by now.
Hannah sighed, "Yes, you see, someone found her in the bathroom with someone doing things that simply weren't acceptable for a lady of her status. It was a guy that had been a little too forceful on me and girls around town. Almost anyone was scared of him."
"Don't you think it was a little out of character for the spiteful and spunky Bethany to fall for that?"
"Yes, actually," Hannah shook her head with the realization, "Never thought of that," she quietly mused. "His name was Doug, Doug Janus, lived far off on a ranch he never mentioned the name of and came to town every weekend to womanize, creepy," Hannah shivered. "After they were caught, I insisted in the alleyway that Bethany come with me, but she said no, and eventually Doug took to slapping me across the face with Bethany crying in the background—I guess that's when she finally broke," Hannah concluded, trying to find her place in the now knotted knitting creation.
"Broke down?"
"Yeah," she raised her eyebrows.
Gathering all information retained, I pressed the button that put me on call to Hotch's Bluetooth. "Carter, everything going good in there?" his voice warned.
"Yes sir, just wondering if you could get Penelope to pull a file on Doug Janus, thank you," I clicked the Bluetooth off. I could see that I was losing Hannah by the minute with that little interruption. "Doug Janus, right? Can you describe him to me that night?"
"Yes, he wasn't terrible on the eyes, but he was old—too old to be pursuing a girl as young as Bethany. He was 30 at the time and still single. As I said, aggressive, I once saw him hit a girl a couple of times, my husband was home from the war and told him to back off," Hannah reminisced. "I still believed he killed her to this day," Hannah admitted, trying to keep dry eyes.
"Thank you Hannah," I tried to wrap things up, "I think that's all for today, but if you remember anything at all," I passed her my business card.
Shaking her head, she placed her hand lovingly over mine, "My pleasure sweetheart, and thank you."
Leaving the room was hard, exceptionally heartbreaking, but I walked out to hear Hotch and Reid arguing in the distance. They weren't at the table listening to the conversation, but instead around the corner. "Reid, you know that she shouldn't have promised that women an interview with her," Hotch scolded, "And yes, I get that you believe in her, but this is high profile, and I don't want someone who can easily make rookie mistakes."
"Thing is Hotch is that everyone will pick up on something different, and it might not be bad for Mrs. Heights to be able to trust law enforcement again," Spencer put forth my case. Mrs. Heights waved at me as she exited the precinct room.
"Reid, you are not in the position to make the decisions here, yes she's a fairly good agent with an apt eye, but she barely has any experience—it's nothing personal," Hotch ended, rounding the corner to see me propped up, arms crossed, in the door frame. He kept cool and suave but on the inside I hoped he was dying.
Exhaling, I initiated conversation, "It was wrong of me to promise an interview with Heights."
"It was, but other sources have told me you logic behind it," Aaron smirked as Spencer emerged from the corner of the hallway. "It went good Carter," he congratulated me as he rushed off someplace else quickly.
Smiling devilishly at Reid, I reminded myself to reward him later. Like my neck, his was covered in thick foundation that actually appeared natural, "Good job," he weakly grinned, hobbling away.
Returning to the hotel room early, I was growing tired of sitting at the precinct, trying to decipher the happenings of Bethany for Hannah. Ending up in a restaurant, sometime around one in the morning, with Reid and a few of the other locals, was actually quite interesting. There was a wild older couple that could've had the sex drives of two teens. Several young adult males taking to staring at Spencer and I. And several girls maybe a little bit older than me were giving me the evil eye that burned through the back of my skull.
During one point at our late night munchies fest, I snuck away to the ladies room. When resurfacing out from the back, I bumped into this guy in the back hallway, "I'm so sorry."
"No problem, say, that is quite a head of hair," he gestured to the curly, orangey-blonde, mess. "And a gun?" he tapped my waist, making me cringe from all the cases gone wrong.
"Excuse me," I hissed, removing his finger from my waist. This guy was seven different types of fishy… Probably comparable to that of a Kardashian's vagina.
He didn't seem to like that instead he gripped at my side even more so, "You've got seven demons on your face sweetheart," he gritted his teeth.
Slapping his hand away, it didn't make a lot of noise, for which I was thankful. "Who are you?" I asked disgustedly. When he refused to answer, I knew how to draw him into making a scene and exposing himself. So I huffed dramatically and walked away moodily.
He followed, "Hey!" his footfalls chased after me. He used a table to hop up on to get in front of me to grab my face. "And behold, a woman of the city, a sinner…"
Reaching into the holster, I gripped my hands around my Glock as I planted a kick to his ribs. Stumbling backwards, he fell to the ground with a fierce commotion. Spencer had his gun trained on him as I flipped the struggling man over on his back to cuff him, "You are under arrest for the assault and battery of a federal agent," I began to recite the Miranda rights and Reid said he'd call Morgan to come and get him and Hotch to meet me at the precinct.
Flipping through the man's drivers license, I came to realization his name was eerily Janus, Janus Kirkland. He shared some similarities with Hannah, but I had to shake that at this moment, we had to get to the precinct. "Hopefully this Hotchner guy is a lot more assertive than Reid or whatever his name was," Janus rolled his eyes. "Sweetheart, you've still got seven demons in your eyes," he smiled sickly. I thought I was going to become nauseated if this key of douche was to keep penetrating my ear at this consistency.
Emily helped transport the guy into the interrogation. Handing over all of the identification, I quickly went into interrogation along with Rossi. "Hello again Janus," I greeted him, slapping down the files of pictures related to the case.
"I was hoping to add you to the stack," Janus snidely remarked as Rossi clenched his teeth.
"Married men, be affectionate towards your wives, and do not treat them harshly," David recited, pacing around the room, observing Janus's reactions.
"Seems like honey's husband hasn't been treating her too well then, especially with the amount of charred skin I got to feel," his words swirled around me like daggers.
Anger curled into my fists as I crashed down in the chair in front of the table Janus's hands were politely positioned on top of. "Listen here bastard," I cursed, elevating my tone, "This isn't about a power play, this isn't about religion, this is about something inhumane and disgusting."
"Like your body or your sexual urges?" he pointed at me through the cuffs. "Even better, that nasty wound where the demons entered?"
Dave nodded and I left the room, not wanting to put up with that crap. It was true I already freaking knew it. Gratefully, I caught a ride with a fuming mad Derek to the crime scene. He had his jaw locked and a stern look ingrained in his features, clutching the wheel at a rate I thought it would explode. "That asshole," he finally combusted, "Don't listen to that crap Flo."
"I'm not," I lied.