"What else do you see?" Derek asked, keeping his voice low. He didn't want to pull her away from her memories.
"She grabbed me-" Erin said, a chill ran down her spine, she could feel the phantom cold hands gripping her arms in a vice. The wind picked up suddenly on the patio, far off trees whipped and branches swayed violently in the breeze. Even the atmosphere was suddenly working against them.
"Look down, Strauss. Look for a wedding ring," Derek encouraged her.
In her mind, Erin glanced down at the woman's hand that yanked her to her feet. They moved closer to the window, the dim light fell on her assailant's wrist. "There's a tan line-"
"She's married?" Derek pressed, if nothing else they could have Garcia look for a marriage license.
"Not a ring. A watch line-" Erin corrected.
"Did you know her?" He pressed, "any detail helps."
Erin's eyes popped open. "I'm done." She said, standing up.
"Strauss, come on. You remember more than you think you do," Derek argued, climbing to his feet.
"No." She crossed her arms defensively over her chest, with her head held high. She shot him a haughty glare. "I can't give you anything else."
The French door swung open and Dave stepped out onto the porch. "Is everything okay out here?"
"Fine," Erin said, glaring at Derek. "Your unsub is a woman, she has long hair, she's physically fit and wears Chanel number 5." She said, brushing passed Hotch and Dave, walking inside the house. She made a beeline for the guest bathroom. Locking the door behind her, she dry heaved into the toilet bowl. No one was going to believe her, even if she had more to go on than her own testimony. As it was, the press was going to paint her as a bureaucratic, power hungry bitch. They would leverage Curtis's attack against her if she had to face Alex in court, no jury would believe her.
Derek waited until the door was closed and picked up the pack of Marlboro 100s, "She's smoking now?" He accused, staring Rossi down with a glare that could rival the foreboding clouds hanging over them.
"Very rarely," Dave answered coolly, "wouldn't you?"
"So, you let her?" Derek accused, his brow knotted in anger. "I thought you were better than that. Why am I more upset about her hurting your kid than you are?"
"Watch your mouth!" Dave glared at Derek, barely holding on to his temper. He took a step forward, his hands clenched in rage.
"What the hell is wrong with her? She's pregnant-" Derek spat, disgusted.
"You're here to help find the person stalking her. I've never known you to judge the victim, Derek." Dave said pointedly. "What the hell is your problem with her anyway?"
"My problem," Derek snarled, "is that your woman has her nose so high in the air she's going to drown when it rains. She's had an axe to grind with this team for the last 6 years, now I'm supposed to be on her side-"
"Yeah," Dave nodded, "you are, because I asked you to-"
"Let's get back on track," Hotch interrupted, stepping between the two men to stop Rossi from taking a swing at Morgan. He reached up and touched Dave's chest, moving him slightly away from Derek. "Dave, what do we know?"
"We know Curtis targeted Strauss because she screwed him during the Amerithrax case-" Dave said. His phone rang and he sent the caller to voicemail without seeing who it was.
"We need to be careful about who gets involved." Hotch said. "If the unsub is a woman it's someone Curtis knew."
"Someone he trusted-" Dave cut in. "She's someone who had as much to lose back then as he did." His phone rang again, interrupting his train of thought. "Excuse me." He said, stepping away from the group, he answered the phone.
"David, what the hell is going on?" Vera screeched into the phone as she navigated her car down the highway. She hit the gas pedal experimentally. The unmarked car behind her sped up. "Someone is FOLLOWING ME! Cassie called and told me that someone is following her too...Someone is stalking my grandchildren. David, what the hell is going on?"
"Calm down, Vera. Everything's fine. That's your bodyguard, following you. There's a protective detail on you and the kids."
"Why?" She pulled the car over, into a gas station parking lot and locked her doors.
"They're your protective detail," Dave tried to explain. "Someone is stalking Erin-"
"So now, you paid someone to stalk me."
"Protect you." Dave corrected, "When I catch the unsub-"
"The what?" She snapped, confused.
Dave rolled his eyes, annoyed. "When I catch the 'bad guy,' your protective detail will go away."
"You're really cramping my style, David Rossi." Vera said, not hiding her annoyance, "I guess I'll see you and my daughter in a few hours."
"Did you clear this with Erin?" Dave asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I've been calling her phone since yesterday. When she didn't answer, I jumped in my car and headed for Virginia. Of course, I stopped at a hotel a few hours in-"
"Shit," Dave bit out.
"Excuse me?"
"Don't call that phone anymore, we're getting her a new one."
"What about the children, David? They need to talk to their mother-" Vera argued.
"She called them last night." Vera didn't need to know that Cassie didn't answer. "We're getting her a new phone-"
"Fine." Vera cut in, adjusting her rearview mirror to touch up her makeup. "I guess I'll see you soon."
"That's really not necessary," Dave argued.
"I'll stay with Peter and the kids."
Dave rolled his eyes, "you do know they're divorced, right?"
"I'm aware," Vera huffed. "Against my better judgement."
"I'll tell Erin you're coming, but-"
"You need to go-" Vera finished, she tossed her makeup bag in the back seat and ended the call.
"Is everything okay?" Hotch asked, staring at Rossi as he put his phone away.
"Fine," Dave dismissed his friend. He turned slightly towards the door, "I'm going to uh...go check on Erin." He said, with his hand on the knob. He stepped inside, Mudgie was stretched out on the floor in front of the empty sofa. "Erin?"
She wasn't in the kitchen or the living room. He crept closer to the guest bathroom, knocked on the door and called for her, "Sweetheart?"
"What's going on?" Erin asked, stepping off the staircase, an empty laundry basket in her arms.
"Why aren't you out there helping us?" He asked, surprised.
"Because, victims don't solve cases-" she deflected, daring him to argue with her. "I needed a break."
"You're not an ordinary victim, Erin. You can help us catch the bastard."
"No. I gave you all the evidence you needed to find Curtis, you and the BAU get to catch this one."
"Erin-" he tried to argue with her.
"No, David." She held up her hand. "I was up all night trying to put the pieces together-" She pinched the bridge of her nose to temporarily stop the headache between her eyes. "I don't trust myself, David. There's a reason why I took a desk job. I can't handle the field the way you do." She said, her heart pumping faster in her ears.
"I trust you," Dave cradled her freezing hand between his and led them to the couch. "Don't spin out on me now. What did you figure out?" He asked, taking the basket and laying it on the couch. "You shut down on Morgan when he got too close. I know you remember something." He hadn't heard the interview, but he could tell by the expression on her face and the way she stiffened when Derek confronted her, that she was hiding something.
"David-I-I can't do this-" she argued. "I'm not a profiler-" She said, glaring at him. She stood up from the sofa, needing to put as much space between them as possible. "You wouldn't push another victim like this!"
"No other victim has your skill set." He reminded her, "Curtis got to you, because he knew you were closing in on him. Come on Erin, you're the Section Chief of the BAU, you know what to do."
She held her head high, but inside she shook. "Yeah and if I hadn't tried to solve the case on my own, this wouldn't have happened." It was her fault that Curtis went on a murder spree, those bodies were on her hands as much as his.
"It's too late for that, now." Dave chided, "Let's go back 20 years, who else did you screw over in the Amerithrax case?"
"I didn't screw Curtis over." she argued, crossing her arms over her breasts. "He tampered with one of the letters-"
"So you snitched and he got demoted," Dave surmised. Finally, they were getting somewhere. He should have realized that a formal interview wasn't going to work, Erin Strauss did her best thinking when she was good and pissed off.
"Of course I snitched. He tampered with evidence and sent a guilty man to prison-"
"What happened with Blake?"
"She made a mistake."
"And you let her?" He asked, with a frown. "That doesn't sound like you-"
"I didn't let her." Erin shook her head, regretfully. "But I didn't help her." She sat down on the sofa, 20 years of regret was a heavy burden.
"Tell me what happened," he said, cradling her hand in his.
"I was petty...I shouldn't have-"
"What?"
"I'm not that person anymore, David. You have to believe that-"
I know that, Erin. Hmm…" Dave cradled his chin, "If I had to guess, I'd say you were up for a promotion."
She nodded, "I couldn't handle the field anymore. I was desperate for an office job."
"And, Blake was...distracted with her personal life. You knew she messed up and left her on the hook?"
"You're too good at that." Erin grouched, "she was pregnant, her husband was gone. I knew she was struggling."
"You didn't help her."
"I didn't even try." Erin admitted, "I should have. David, I know how this sounds….It was in my best interest if she made a mistake and I allowed it to happen. She was transferred to another field office and I secured my desk job at Quantico."
"Do you know where she was transferred to?" Dave pressed, trying to put the pieces together. If Blake was the Unsub, there had to be another connection to Curtis.
"Kansas…" Erin said, on an exhale. "With John-"
"That's what I thought. Come on," Dave took her by the hand and pulled her off the couch. "Let's go tell Hotch, what we didn't notice before."
She opened the door, Hotch and Morgan were huddled at the patio table.
"It's Blake." Erin said, stepping onto the porch. "Your unsub is Alex Blake. I know how crazy this sounds, I have no physical evidence, but I need you to listen to me. She's been holding a grudge against me for the last 20 years. She and Curtis were transferred to the Topeka field office after the Amerithrax case."
"That's your opportunity-" Dave said, "they could have been planning this for years."
"It's circumstantial," Morgan argued. How many times had she worked against the team, when they couldn't come up with physical proof against a suspect? Now, the shoe was on the other foot and he was having a hard time believing it.
"Erin, are you certain?" Hotch asked as the men turned around to face her. "You have to be positive-"
"I saw her face. She sent the plant because I didn't put the pieces together. I told her we were at the hospital last night."
Blake's a federal agent, Strauss," Morgan argued.
"You don't think I know that!" Derek Morgan was slowly proving her point, she was insane. If the best team in the BAU didn't believe her, there was no hope; she would have to take Alex down on her own.
"Do you really think she's angry enough to blow her entire career over a grudge?" Derek pressed, "don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think Blake cares enough to try to kill you."
"She might-" Dave said and pulled out his phone. "Look at these text messages Blake sent me from the jet." He said, handing Morgan his phone.
Morgan scrolled through the messages, something was off, but it wasn't enough to make him suspect his teammate. "I agree, it's weird but Blake's a linguistics expert-"
"That's what I'm saying," Dave said "she knew exactly what she was doing and she knows that the team knows the bad blood between her and Erin. She knew I wasn't going to believe that she was worried about Erin."
And, she drove us to the airstrip," she cut in.
"She was with us at the hospital," Dave said. "Stuck to me like glue, waiting for Erin to wake , it's classic gaslighting behaviour."
Hotch nodded, as team leader he had to make the executive decision. "I think Erin's right, she has a motive. Everyone needs to realize, if Blake really is the partner, this just got a lot more complicated."
Strauss looked, first at David and then at the other two men present and blew out a breath as she realized she might as well tell them everything and get it over with. She opened her mouth to do that when suddenly the doorbell rang. Erin walked inside and cut through the kitchen to open the front door and there stood, the subject of their conversation, Alexandria Blake. The look of surprise on Strauss' face was genuine. Thunder crashed over the house and Erin nearly shouted to be heard.
"Alex." Involuntarily, her eyes flicked downward to the other woman's hand. A thin leather band adorned her wrist. The breeze filtered in from the open door, the air was thick and heavy with an impending storm.
"Hi Erin."
To exact revenge for yourself or your friends is not only a right, it's an absolute duty.
Stieg Larsson