The Fisher King [Part 2]- 2:1
Harita's POV
"Okay, so I got the- AHHH!" I yelled, almost dropping the tray of coffee.
"What?" Hotch asked as I turned away from Hotch.
"You know, you might want to keep your hands down." I advised. Hotch was sitting in his chair, hands behind his head, and if I had to be honest, it did look hot, but I don't have a crush on him. Hotch groaned, realizing what I meant.
"Harita, you have a girlfriend, and I have a wife."
"Still."
"Alright, Reid, how many books do you think are published in a year?" Hotch asked, as I handed out everyone's coffee.
"In the whole world? Thousands."
"Great, and all we gotta do is find one." I sighed, as I sat down on my chair.
"You know, I can see this unsub getting our phone numbers and addresses from the bureau personnel files, but come on, man, it really says in there that Gideon digs Nellie Fox? Or that JJ collects butterflies? Or that Harita keeps different types of knives she finds. I didn't even know these things about us." Morgan scoffed.
"'Ever would it be night, but always clear day to any man's sight.'" Reid recited the poem for the millionth time.
"Reid, not again with the poem from the music box, please." Morgan groaned.
"There's something familiar about it. I think I've heard it somewhere before."
"Thought you had a photographic memory."
"Eidetic memory." Reid corrected Morgan. "And that's primarily related to things I read. Like I said, this is something I think I've heard."
"Which leaves us-"
"Nowhere, that's where it leaves us." Morgan finished Hotch's sentence.
"Not necessarily." Gideon interrupted, as he came into the room. "How would we proceed if we didn't have all these clues? What's the first thing we'd look at?"
"Victimology." I answered.
"Why this particular victim in this particular place at this particular time?" Morgan added.
"We have a victim, don't we? Rebecca Bryant." Gideon threw the picture of her onto the table. "Missing out of South Boston, Virginia. You can get there in a few hours if you hurry. Take JJ. Find out everything there is to know about this girl." Gideon ordered Morgan.
"You got it." Morgan responded, who then stood up and left.
"Been letting him lead us around like he's something more than he is." Gideon scolded.
"He's just another unsub. Let's start putting together a profile." Hotch left the room.
"What do you want us to do?" I asked Gideon.
"Just keep working on this. If anybody can put it together, you two can." Gideon left the room.
…
*CUE INTRO*
(For one of the 'pictures' in the intro, imagine Harita fidgeting with a pen, looking at a map with her left eyebrow raised.)
…
"Possible Book Titles. Thousands of books published every year. This is impossible." Reid muttered.
"Wow, great mindset." I scoffed. "You know, if I didn't do the impossible when I was younger, I wouldn't be here today." Spencer nodded.
"Wait, what year is on the card?" Reid asked, as I went to look.
"Um, 1963."
"Didn't Gideon mention that Nellie Fox as in 1959?" Spencer questioned. I nodded
"Yeah, why did the unsub send this card? We got to ask Gideon." Spencer and I ran from the conference room to Gideon office, despite all the weird glances given from all the other agents.
"The book has to be the right volume and the right publication date, or the code won't work, right?" Spencer asked as we barged into the room, in which Gideon nodded.
"When you talk about Nellie Fox, it's in regards to the 1959 White Sox. That's the year that's important to you, but for some reason, this is a 1963 card." I held up the card, which was in an evidence bag.
"Well, maybe he couldn't find a '59." Gideon suggested.
"You think a pale clouded yellow butterfly was easy to find, or a music box that specifically plays the trout quintet, or a Medieval Dagger?" I asked.
"So a book published in 1963." Gideon concluded.
"It has to be. Maybe." Reid doubted.
"The guy who delivered the package to my house just turned himself in." Hotch announced his arrival. Gideon left with Hotch to interrogate the guy, while Reid and I went back to figure out which book. And for that, we had to make a stop to Garica.
"This guy is infuriatingly good. He routed his IP through major corporations, crisscrossed it through countries-"
"I thought you tracked the hacker." Spencer asked.
"No I only found what he wanted me to find, the apartment where Giles was dead. A hacker capable of getting into my systems is going to have amazingly sophisticated equipment. Did Giles's apartment have that?" Garcia asked.
"He didn't have a couch." I replied.
"Exactly. Giles was a smokescreen I should have seen through. But now I have this glorious program I wrote, tracking the hacker through his other identity, Sir Kneighf." Reid and I crouched closer to Garcia's computers to get a better look.
"K-n-e-i-g-h-f." Reid spelled out.
"That's an odd spelling." I added.
"Do you gals need something?" Garcia prestered.
"Yeah, is there a database which lists all the books published in a given year?" Reid asked.
"Individual publishers have lists, I don't think there's anything like a master one, plus it would depend upon the year, because the further back you go, the less likely there'll be any database at all." Garica explained.
"1963." I replied, despite Garcia's long explanation.
"Yeah, ok, that would be an example of extremely less likely."
"Could you do me a favor?" Reid asked. "Type something into a search engine for me? 'Never would it be night, but always clear day to any man's sight.'"
"That's from a poem, 'The parliament of-'"
"'Fowl'! Yeah, yeah! Chaucer, my- my mom used to read me that. It's widely considered as the first Valentine's poem." Reid mumbled, clearly embarrassed.
"Your mom read you Valentine's poems? Hello, therapy." Garcia chuckled, in which I slapped her in the back of the head.
"It's pretty cute, coming from a person who grew up most of her childhood without a mom." I reminded. Reid got up and started mumbling, or as I like to call it 'Reid Magic'.
"There was a contemporary british author, Fowles. John Fowles. Will you type it into a search engine?" Reid asked, breaking from his trance.
"He wrote the 'Magus', he wrote the 'French Lieutenant's Woman'."
"Anything in 1963 published in Great Britain?" Reid questioned.
"'The Collector'." Garcia answered.
"Collector... baseball cards, skeleton keys, music boxes. These are things that are collected." I realized. Garcia pulled up an image of the front cover of 'The Collector'. We all gasped in shock. There was a pale clouded yellow butterfly, a skeleton key, and a lock of hair on it."
…
"We know what the book is." I announced to Hotch and Gideon, whom we met up in the hall. "'The Collector' by John Fowles."
"You sure?" Gideon asked.
"Not absolutely. Not until we see if the code works, but I have four separate libraries searching for the 1963 edition published in Great Britain." Reid answered.
"Well done, Harita and Reid." Hotch congratulated
"Agent Gideon." Another agent called out. "There's a call for you on line 2, says it's extremely urgent."
"Is there a name?" Gideon asked.
"Sort of. He calls himself the Fisher King." Reid took the notepad from the agent, which had the name written on it. He did his 'Reid Magic', which only took a few seconds.
"This could be the unsub, guys."
"Why?" Hotch asked.
"In mythology, the Fisher King is the grail king. 'Sir Kneighf', it's an anagram for 'Fisher King'."
"Fisher King's at the end of all grail quests." Gideon recalled. We headed to the desk where line two was located inside the 'Office Rooms'.
"Line 2 trapped and traced." Hotch announced as Gideon picked up the phone and put it on speaker.
"Gideon."
"What I had to do was not my fault." The Fisher King said.
"Excuse me?"
"It was distasteful and barbaric."
"Who is this?" Gideon asked.
"No one else had to be hurt."
"Call yourself 'The Fisher King'?"
"I told you there were rules."
"I'm actually more interested in exactly how you got all those burns."
"Remember this next time you decide to step outside my instructions. Agent Greenaway did not have to die like that." The phone call ended. I gasped, as we all looked at eachother.
...
"Ms. Valez, are you there?" Reid asked into the phone. We were in the conference room, since Ms. Valez said that she had something.
"Yes, Dr. Reid, I am. I have a first edition of the collector, published in Great Britain in 1963." I pumped my hands into the air.
"Wonderful. Mrs. Valez, I'm gonna read you a set of 3 numbers. The first is gonna be a page number, the second, a line number on that page, and the third, a word number in that line. Do you understand me?" Reid instructed.
"Yes, I understand." Ms. Valez replied.
"All right, the first is page 222. Page 222. got it. Line 23. Line 23. got it. What is the 16th word on that line, Ms. Valez?"
"'The'." I wrote the word onto the board.
"'The'? Great. Page 91, line 11, word 13."
"'Path'. Does that make sense?" Ms. Valez asked.
"'The path'. Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. All right, please go to page 31, line 9, the first word." This went on forever.
…
"'The path to the end began at his start. To find her first calm her long broken heart. She sits in a window with secrets from her knight. Is it adventure that keeps him out of her sight?'" I read. "Why does it have to be a riddle." Reid scanned the riddle I wrote and started mumbling a few words I couldn't make out.
"It's never night in Las Vegas." Reid announced. I was confused at first but then I realized he was talking about his mom.
"Your mom?" I asked, in which he nodded. Reid picked up the phone and called a field office in Las Vegas.
...
"Your mom's okay. I got a call about a few agents picking her up. She's flying here right now." I said, as I sat down on Reid's desk.
"I forgot she used to always read me this poem. It's funny, huh?" Reid chuckled. "Should have realized sooner than that. Nobody knows things like the fact that JJ collects butterflies except for us, the two of us. People tell us their secrets all the time. Think it's because they know we don't have anyone to betray them, hence me only having my mother, and you only having your girlfriend. But, the truth is, I tell my mom pretty much everything."
"I don't think anyone would mind. Besides, you're not the only one. I tell Sa- my girlfriend everything too. She's the only person who has been there for me everything, and it just feels right you know?" Reid nodded.
"Do you know that I write her a letter every day?" I chuckled.
"Yeah, I did. Sometimes, when it's just the two of us staying here late at night, working on paperwork, I look over to you and see that you're writing something down on a piece of paper. The problem is, it's slow-paced, and you're trying to make your writing look neat, which you never do. I then knew you had to be writing the letter to someone important and special."
"Of course you knew. You know, my letters depend on why I write to her."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I write her letters so I won't feel so guilty about not visiting her. Did you know that schizophrenia is genetically passed?" Reid looked at me, and there were tears in his eyes. My heart broke.
"Well, sure. And I'm assuming you're afraid you'll get it. You're also afraid of losing all the good memories you have. Well, let me tell you this. If you live in fear of that, what more good memories are you going to make."
…
"The table's round." A voice called out. I was resting my eyes, lying down on the couch in the conference room. I opened up my eyes and saw Ms. Reid.
"Yeah. Just like I wrote you in my letters." Reid mumbled.
"Hi Ms. Reid. It's me, Harita." I greeted.
"Oh darling, you look as amazing, as always." Ms. Reid replied
"Oh thank you." I sat up and rubbed my eyes. When I finished, I saw Ms. Reid grabbed something off of the board, where we kept all of the clues/evidence. Before I could say something, Reid beat me to it.
"Mom, no! Don't- you- you can't grab stuff off the board. This key is evidence." Reide took the evidence bag with the key in it from her. "Mom, the unsub that we're looking for, the bad guy knows things about my colleagues personal lives, things that only you would know. Do you write about them in your journals?"
"My journals are none of the government's business!" Ms. Reid yelled.
"We're not the government, Ms. Reid." I assured.
"Well, this certainly looks like a government office." Ms. Reid sassed.
"Mother, do you write about my colleagues' personal lives?" Reid asked.
"Why did you bring me here, Spencer?" Ms. Reid replied.
"I need to ask you some things about a man I think you might know. A bad man. He's killed some people, and he's holding a girl hostage." Reid answered.
"You think I know someone like that?" Ms. Reid asked.
"Will you just watch the tape and see if he sounds familiar?" Reid pleaded. Ms. Reid nodded. She sat down in a chair, and I went over and played the video.
"'I had to make sure I had your complete attention. I assure you, you will all understand in the end why it must be this way. You might even thank me'." The unsub said. I paused the video once I saw the look on Ms. Reid's face. She was… shocked.
"Do you know him?" I asked.
"I'm sure it's... Randall Garner."
"Randall Garner?" I asked.
"He was with me at the hospital. He's a very emotionally disturbed man."
"Harita, Reid, I got to the end of the IP string." Garcia announced. "Sir Kneighf, The Fisher King, his name is Randall Garner. He's Rebecca Bryant's biological father."
...
We called Hotch and Gideon, telling them the information we found out. Hotch replied saying that he is coming over.
"I can't believe she's real." Ms. Reid asked.
"What do you mean?" I responded.
"Whenever he talked about Rebecca, he never said she was his daughter. He said all his children died in the fire. He spoke of a Rebecca, more in the abstract. I really thought she was a metaphor, not an actual human being. An ideal."
"A grail. He thinks he's the fisher king." Reid announced.
"Who does?" Morgan asked, as he and JJ walked into the room.
"Randall Garner, our unsub." I replied.
"He believes you're all modern-day knights of the round table." Ms. Reid added.
"Derek Morgan, this is my mother, Diana Reid." Spencer introduced.
"It's your mother?" Morgan asked, being the jackass he is. "Ma'am, it's a pleasure to meet you."
"So where are we on finding this son of a bitch?" Hotch walked into the room.
"Harita and I rechecked all the clues. There's nothing that points to an address." Reid stated.
"The adoption records for Rebecca listed an address of the fire, so I made a call to Nevada, and it's vacant. No one ever rebuilt." JJ added.
"Nevada? So we don't even know what state he's in?" Hotch sighed.
"I'll search the tax records, see if he owns any property." Garcia said.
"Excuse me." Ms. Reid called out. "Just before the agents got me from the hospital, a man delivered this to me. It's a photo of a house with an address on the back." Ms. Reid took out a photo and flipped it.
"Shiloh, Virginia." Morgan read. "That's only 10 miles from here."
...
Morgan, Reid, Hotch, and I went to go and check the place out. Well, us and SWAT. We got inside the house, and if I had to be honest, the place was huge, like a castle. We went to the first room that was closest to us, and we checked it out.
"Guys?" Morgan called out. I headed over to him and saw that on the table, there was Elle's FBI Badge and gun. "Guys, listen up. He wants us to know we're in the right place, so keep your eyes open. Let's go."
I checked out most of the room, with my gun pointed up, and saw that they were clear.
"There's someone upstairs." Reid whispered into the mic. I headed to where he was, which was near the stairs. Morgan and Hotch came up right behind me.
"Where?" Morgan asked.
"I saw a shadow." Spencer replied.
"Randall Garner? FBI! Garner?! Come out, Garner!" Morgan yelled as we headed upstairs. SWAT went first and checked the corner. It was clear. We stopped by the hall, and there was a room down there. Morgan and Hotch were on one side, Reid and I were on the other. Reid peeked behind the wall.
"He's in there." Reid whispered.
"All right, cover me. I'm gonna go in." Morgan said, but Reid stopped him.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait."
"What?" Morgan asked. I realized what Reid was doing, and that I needed to be in this. I looked at Reid, and he nodded to me, which I nodded back in response.
"Mr. Garner? My name's Harita Nathan. I have Spencer Reid here with me." I yelled out.
"You were in the hospital with my mother. I think- I think she might have confused you. All we want to do is help Rebecca. That's exactly what you want, right?" Reid asked.
"That's why you sent us the puzzles? That's why you said you hoped you'd be seeing us soon?" I added.
"Ask the question." Mr. Garner replied.
"There is no magical question, Mr. Garner." Spencer shouted as I explained to Hotch and Morgan what we were doing.
"He believes if one of us asks him the right question, it'll heal all of his wounds."
"Do you know the question?" Hotch whispered back.
"We know what he wants." Reid nudged me, motioning that we had to move forward. Reid and I handed our guns to the SWAT officer and made our way, despite the protest from Hotch and Morgan.
"Stay calm, Mr. Garner." I replied.
"Ask the question, Sir and Mistress Percival." Mr. Garner insisted.
"We told you, I'm not Sir Percival. My name is Dr. Spencer Reid, and this is Dr. Harita Nathan, not Mistress Percival." I cringed, but still slowly made my way up to the room, with my hands up. "We are both from the FBI. You were in the hospital with my mother, Diana?"
"If you want the grail, you must ask the question!" Mr. Garner strained.
"She's not a grail!" I yelled back. "She's your daughter. Her name's Rebecca."
"My daughters died in a fire, and my son, and my wife." Mr. Garner argued.
"Rebecca lived." I insisted.
"No. His mother, she explained it all to me."
"My mother's a paranoid schizophrenic who'd forget to eat if she wasn't properly medicated and supervised." Spencer shouted.
"She made me realize none of it was real. I didn't lose Rebecca. She never existed in the first place."
"She does exist, mr. Garner, and we're here to help her." I calmly said. Mr. Garner turned around in his swivel chair, and revealed that there was a bomb attached to him, his thumb right on top of the trigger, teasing it. "Hotch, Morgan? I think maybe it'd be better if you guys waited downstairs."
"What?" Hotch asked.
"Mr. Garner, Harita, and I are just gonna talk alone up here." Reid added.
"Go ahead and talk, Reid, but we're not going anywhere." Morgan insisted.
"Ask the question. I'll be healed, and you may take the grail. Just ask the question." Mr. Garner demanded.
"I can't." Spencer whimpered.
"Heal me!" Mr. Garner shouted.
"Mr. Garner, a fisher king wound cannot be healed by somebody else. It's not a wound to the body. It's a wound to the memory. Wound to the mind." I insisted.
"It's- It's a wound that only you can find, and a wound that only you can heal." Spencer added.
"Just ask the question." Mr. Garner's thumb was very close to the trigger.
"There's only one question that matters, Mr. Garner. There's only one really important question. Can you forgive yourself?" Spencer asked.
"I couldn't get to them." Mr. Garner whispered.
"If you tell us where she is, you can save Rebecca now. Tell us where Rebecca is." I reassured.
"You already know. I sent his mother the map." Mr. Garner said.
"What map?" Spencer asked.
"Can I forgive myself? No, I can't." Mr. Garner's thumb was about to hit the trigger. Spencer pushed me out of the door, and we ran.
"Run!" Reid yelled to the others. We jumped as the bomb exploded, making the impact fly us forward. I landed on the ground and felt something burning on my FBI vest.
"Don't move, don't move!" Hotch grabbed a towel and patted it on my back, making the flame go out, which Morgan did the same to Reid. Hotch grabbed me up and dragged me out.
"What the hell was that?" Morgan asked, as he hoisted Reid.
"He had a bomb." I replied.
"You didn't think we needed to know that?"
"We told you to go downstairs."
"Well, you didn't say bomb. You left that part out." Hotch dragged me down the stairs, when Reid stopped us.
"Stop, stop, stop, stop."
"The house is on fire, Reid. Let's go!"
"Just let me think, let me think!" We stopped moving. "He's the fisher king, this is his castle, Rebecca's got to be here."
"Reid, there may not be time for a search. Let's go." Hotch insisted.
"Reid, all she told us about was that photo. Let's go!" Morgan added.
"She's in the basement downstairs!" Reid yelled, as he took the lead. We were right behind him. We ran to the basement.
"She's in here!" Reid called out.
"I'm chained! Get me out of here! I'm chained." Rebecca yelled. Morgan moved the bed, but Rebecca was chained to the ground.
"He called us Percival." Reid recalled.
"Hurry." Hotch warned.
"The key. The key. The younger ones hold the keys. Tell me you got the key." Morgan rushed. I reached into my sweatshirt pocket and reached for the key. I bent down and inserted the key, unlocking the chains. Hotch carried Rebecca and we followed after him. Right behind me, Rebecca's room blew up.
…
"Elle's out of surgery." JJ announced as we walked through the glass doors. "She's gonna be okay." I let out a sigh of relief.
"Good. Is Gideon still at the hospital?" Hotch asked.
"Yeah. How's Rebecca?" JJ questioned.
"She's in the hospital, but she should be all right."
"Thank you, everyone. All of you." Hotch said, leaving to go to his office.
"Well, we could have only gone so far without Mrs. Reid." I added. We all part ways. I got to my desk and gathered my stuff. Once that finished, I said my goodbyes to my family, and headed towards the elevator. From there, when, I pushed the 'Ground Floor' button, and made my way. Can't wait to tell Saline what crazy case this has been.
I can't believe it. My whole childhood is slipping away. Guava Juice, LaurDIY, and a few other YouTubers are leaving, and now I'm balling. If you know me in real life, I'm not dead, I am dead.
Sandman17: Thank you :)
Toodles,
HernameisBurrito