Chapter Seven: Baltimore
March 29th 2015, 12:02pm:
Baltimore had once been one of JJ's favorite places on the whole planet. It had one of the highest crime rates in the country, but it was also much smaller than many other cities, reducing the overpowering effect she'd found in places like New York and LA. The atmosphere was much more tranquil, the air much cleaner, the people just that little bit calmer.
Once, before she'd married Will, she and Emily had sat outside of a Starbucks across the road from the harbor for two solid hours. They didn't really talk; they just watched the world go by. It was late January, and snow danced around them, earning them peculiar looks from the patrons inside the coffee shop, but JJ had just smiled and told Emily that she hadn't felt so at peace in a long time.
Upon their arrival in Baltimore, JJ had smiled at that memory, finding much more sentiment in it after her mini road trip with Emily. But now, presented with the mutilated remains of a seventeen year old boy, it was difficult to remember the allure of this city or the profundity of the memory she'd created here. From this moment on, this would be her memory of Baltimore – another point of beauty tainted by this world.
How could she possibly keep ahold of the beauty in the world when that world was so adamant on destroying it? And how could she locate her own beauty, when those crooks and crevices in which she sought it out, were continuously engulfed in black?
"The kid's family lives right there." Morgan nodded towards the house to their left. "You can't tell me that's an accident."
"It's doubtful." Emily responded, crouching down to get a better view of the victim. She didn't need to call upon her days with Interpol, or even those moments in which she'd almost become this kid, to recognize signs of torture. For a moment, she both looked away and closed her eyes, before pushing herself up and cluing the team in on that which she was certain of.
"He was tortured. And trust me…" She twisted her neck. "It was personal."
JJ, who had been half-listening while taking notes from a witness, lifted her gaze instantly to Hotch. Finding that his eyes were fixed on her, exactly what she'd expected, she snapped her notebook closed and took a card from her pocket, returning her full attention to their witness.
"Here's my card." She said. "If you remember anything else, please call me. Day or night."
"Are you gonna catch him?" The young woman asked, clearly shaken, and JJ flicked her gaze back to Hotch.
"We're going to do everything in our power to resolve this situation." She replied solidly, not once shifting her gaze from her leader, while Emily, unbeknownst to JJ, didn't once shift her gaze from her.
With the torture element, this was a little too close to home; they all knew it. Even JJ knew it, though she wasn't feeling quite what she was certain she should be. They all expected her to be a hair's breadth away from making a rash decision or going off the rails for a second time… But, actually, she'd never felt more determined, and thus, more calm.
"Do you think it could be gang related?" She asked to no one in particular.
"It's possible." Emily frowned, as though remembering something. She crouched down to the body once more, pulled back the sleeve of the guy's shirt. "I can't tell what it is. Nothing I recognize. But whoever killed this guy wanted that tattoo gone."
"Let me take a look." Reid said, walking over to where Emily was crouched. He eyed the partial remains of black ink- "It is common for members to mark themselves in some way to show which gang they're affiliated with," –then patted at his pockets to find his phone. "Jayje, can I borrow your phone-"
"It's something." Hotch interrupted, though seemingly not fully sold on the theory. Looking to JJ, he asked, "I assume there was a reason you jumped to that conclusion?"
JJ refrained from quirking an eyebrow at his somewhat accusatory tone, and instead looked back to her notebook.
"Yes, Sir." She looked up. "The witness recognized the kid, said his brother is currently in jail for gang-related crimes."
Hotch sighed. "This needs to stay out of the press. If this is gang-related, the last thing we need is retaliation."
JJ was probably right, and still, he shook his head at the blonde agent.
"And if you're wrong, retaliation is definitely the last thing we need." Instantly, he looked to the rest of the team. "Prentiss, Morgan, inspect the body of the previous victim, specifically for any signs of tattoos. Rossi and I will interview the family of this victim, see if we can find more information on the brother. Reid, work with Garcia on finding the meaning of the tattoo – if that is something that links the victims, we're gonna need to know which gang it represents. JJ, head back to the station with Detective Jones to work on wrangling the press."
That time, JJ's eyebrow did quirk. That was no longer her job. But, of course, he knew that. Perhaps she really did royally fuck up by being hesitant on their last case, and perhaps Garcia was, once again, correct: sitting on the fence really was as bad as going in all guns blazing. Damn that woman.
Taking his lack of confidence in her like a champ, she nodded curtly and replied, "Yes, sir." before following their lead detective back to one of the waiting SUVs.
March 29th 2015, 3:13am:
Having not arrived in Baltimore until after midnight, the birds were already beginning their morning song when Hotch relinquished the team of their duties for the night. There wasn't a great deal else they could do until daybreak, and they wouldn't be much use to anyone if they were falling asleep in their coffee.
Some time after 3am, in another nondescript hotel room, JJ was slouched in a chair by the window, her arms flung back and gripping the headrest, and her face smooshed into her right bicep. There was a bed three feet away, but this semi-awkward position that she'd instantly slumped into upon entering the room was enough that she was already approaching the fringes of sleep.
Besides, didn't she still have something, everything, to prove? Perhaps if she just rested her eyes for thirty minutes, long enough for Emily to finish in the shower, she could get a head start on tomorrow's tasks – or at least work on finding them something more substantial than two partial tattoos that didn't at all match, and may or may not have meaning.
That's all she needed. Just a couple of minutes – something so simple and yet so rare in this job.
When the door to the bathroom clicked open, JJ only partially heard it, in that groggy form that seemed more like it was a creation of her sleepy-conscious than an actual, organic sound. The heat that wafted over her skin, like a largely useless breeze on an August, Floridian day, told some part of her that Emily had finished showering, and yet even as the sound of the extractor fan whirred through her mind, it wasn't enough to jar her into a fully conscious state. But then there was the scent…
It felt warm as it filtered through her senses, and in the hazy outskirts of her drifting mind, it presented itself as the color blue: calm, powerful. The color of masculinity, arguably, and yet the scene it provoked behind her eyelids was far from masculine.
Emily, in a cream satin ball gown, a direct contrast and yet a perfect complement to the powerful machine humming between her thighs, smirked at her through heavy lashes. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, her air of sophistication only propelled by the diamond, drop earrings she wore and the perfect poise with which she sat upon the bike.
But that's where any elegance ended, because much lower, where Emily's long-flowing skirt had ridden up, were stocking-clad thighs that screamed whore more than debutante. The whole scene was a contradiction – a fucking beautiful contradiction.
"JJ…"
Like the click of the bathroom door, the sound of her name was ethereal. In the captivating image behind her eyes, Emily was free of the bike now; instead, gliding towards her with a confident sway to her hips. When she stopped in front of her and spoke her given name- "Jennifer…" –it sounded like pure poetry, compounded only by the way crimson lips had wrapped so expertly around the syllables. Her name was made for those lips; those lips for her name.
But when they, with revering gentility and skilled determination, fused with her own, she realized that actually, maybe, they were just perfectly crafted for her.
"Jay, honey…"
When JJ's eyes fluttered open she, for one long moment, found herself precariously toeing the line between her dream-world and reality. From the way her head was turned against her upper arm, she could only see Emily through one eye; and though Emily was far from wearing an elegant ball gown or suggestively straddling a motorcycle, the residual urge to kiss the woman before her was somehow more powerful than it had been in that exquisite scenario her mind had generated.
In that average hotel room in the middle of Baltimore, where Emily was not dressed like some upscale escort, but simply in sweats and a tank top, with her hair unkempt and hanging damp around her shoulders, an expression so candid on her make-up free – mask-free – face… JJ found herself with one solid, mind-shattering certainty: Emily, whether now or years down the line, whether for better or for worse, would prove to be the only gust strong enough to push her from her tightrope for good.
And just like that, as her mind finally emerged from that all-seeing, all-knowing place it only reaches immediately before and after sleep, the notion evaporated into nothing.
Cautiously pushing herself up from her slouched position, she eyed Emily like she was waiting for some kind of repercussion. How could the past – however long that dream had been – have been so intense for her, and Emily have no idea? That was impossible. The woman's intuition was terrifyingly accurate, and JJ was certain she was seconds away from being told: maybe it's best we get separate rooms - indefinitely.
But that wasn't what happened.
Instead, Emily crouched before her and folded her arms across her knees, peered up at her in a manner that suggested fond disapproval rather than outright disgust. "How much sleep have you had in the past five days?"
JJ laughed, breathily, insanely relieved, and dropped her forehead into her palm. She rubbed hard at her temples and scrunched up her face. Then, looking back to Emily, she shook her head and attempted to look more alert.
"Enough." She quirked her eyebrow, daring Emily to question her. "I have a job to do."
"We all do, Jay." Emily replied as JJ pushed herself up and away.
"Yeah," JJ responded as she dug in her go-bag – more as a method of avoiding having to look directly at Emily, "but you guys don't have to prove that you're stable enough to be doing that job."
"I did once." Emily reminded, and JJ did look at her then.
"I'm sorry." She speared her fingers through her hair and dropped herself to the bed behind her. "I'm really not trying to suggest that my situation is any worse than yours was, or that I have a bigger task on my hands, or-"
"I didn't think you were." Emily interjected sincerely. "It's you who thinks that – because you're exhausted, and your mind is playing tricks on you."
You got that right, JJ thought, and then looked anywhere and everywhere but Emily when that little dream world of hers bled into reality once more.
After five, six, seven seconds of searching for absolutely anything to say in response, she dared a look at Emily, and the words came instantly. "I don't know what he wants from me, Em. I don't know how to prove to him that I've got this, that I can do this without going crazy again."
Shifting across the carpet just enough that she was able to place her arm against the mattress beside JJ, and then her chin atop of her arm, Emily responded, "You don't. You prove it yourself."
"It might be easier to prove it to Hotch." JJ peered down to Emily, grinning softly.
"Exactly." Emily returned her own smile. "His faith isn't the one that matters; your own is. Besides," She grinned, "no one ever really knows what Hotch wants, until he makes it abundantly clear that you've done the opposite of what he wants."
"Oh he makes that clear to you, does he?" JJ chuckled. "All I get are these cryptic responses that don't really tell me anything either way."
Emily drummed up her best Hotch voice- "You'll know when you know." –and JJ couldn't help but laugh at that uncanny imitation.
"Yes. That is exactly it." She exclaimed, and then something occurred to her. "Wait…" She narrowed her eyes. "By any chance, in recent days, have you happened to purposely provoke a collision between yourself and said cryptic, stoic leader?"
"No." Emily replied solidly and quickly, and then smiled mischievously. "We never would have collided - I like my bike too much for that."
"You're so bad." JJ shook her head disapprovingly, even as she fought to hide a smirk. She wouldn't wish actual pain on Hotch, of course, but it had been exactly what she needed at the time.
"Well, you didn't look too happy when you climbed out of his car." Emily shrugged. "My profiling skills told me he deserved it."
"Thank you." JJ responded, holding Emily's gaze in an effort to prove her sincerity.
Now it was Emily's turn to push herself up and away. "No need to thank me." She said dismissively. "I had a guilty conscience to remedy."
As Emily brushed by her to move to the second bed, JJ, without prior thought, reached out for her hand. She watched Emily look down to it, and back to her, and then spoke. "You have no reason to feel guilty. At all."
Emily immediately placed her hand over JJ's and looked to her like she was about to say something sincere… Until she remembered something a TV show had once told her: nothing good ever happens after 1am.
It was ironic. She'd never seen the show before, and was actually only watching it at the time because she was in a hospital waiting room at 3:15am and the TV wasn't hers to control. That damn show had no clue how on point it was, and since then, they'd become words to live by. Nothing good ever happened after 1am.
So instead of testing the theory, she smiled. "Do you think maybe we could – as in you too – get some sleep? And tomorrow, I promise to ply you with actual caffeine instead of the imposter that is green tea."
Once, when JJ was a kid, she'd travelled on a plane that hit such rough turbulence that it, out of nowhere, dropped several hundred feet. In her child's mind, where nothing was ever dangerous and everything was wondrous, it had left her both terrified and exhilarated – like being on a fairground ride. Looking up at Emily in that moment, that's what she felt: in extreme danger; in extreme awe.
Which was why, with an exhausted nod of her head, she agreed. Because she really needed that novelty theory of hers to come through, and perhaps after a solid few hours of sleep, it finally would.
Perhaps.
March 29th 2015, 9:54pm:
In a mock conference room, in the middle of a mostly deserted Baltimore Metro Police Department, the unexpected lips that brushed against the top of her head caused JJ to smile.
That curl of her lips was instantaneous, though arguably unwarranted. They had no real lead beyond the fact that they knew their twilight killer was taking males and females, ages 17-40, and torturing them for hours before dumping their body outside the home of the people who loved them the most - and the seconds were ticking by too quickly. Even the tattoo lead wasn't a lead at all, because none of them matched. The only similarity was that one particular tattoo on every victim had been messily erased from their flesh. They had nothing. But there she was, surrounded by chaos, smiling like everything was just right with the world.
Certain people, she'd come to realize, had that affect, no matter what the surrounding issues. Emily was one of those people. For JJ, she'd always been that person. She wasn't a woman of many words, but she was a woman of great, and omniscient, compassion.
Which was why JJ hadn't even needed to look up to know that the lips she'd felt and the coffee that had magically appeared in front of her was Emily's doing. But she did take from it everything Emily had intended: a little boost of confidence in a moment where it was threatening to abandon her.
Taking a sip of the garbage vending machine coffee, she smiled inwardly at Emily's previous observations- when all you have is bad coffee, you're grateful for bad coffee –and amended it slightly: when you have a friend observant enough to bring you coffee without prompt on a regular basis, it's difficult not to feel like you have everything.
As the case-focused part of her mind recognized something in the profile of one of their victims then, she almost choked on that coffee for how quickly she swallowed and slammed it back to the table.
Pulling open another file, and then another, and then another, the momentum in her chest grew until she abruptly stood to her feet and announced, "It's not gang-related!"
"Uh…" Morgan looked up at JJ's sudden outburst. How much caffeine had this woman had? "Why so?"
Scurrying over to the board they'd erected to hold images of each of their victims, she pointed out each one in turn.
"Daniel Baker – married to Corey Peters, outside the home of whom his body was dumped. Marcus Oscar, his body was dumped outside the home of Mr. and Mrs. Braxton, and Mrs. Braxton said in her interview that she didn't recognize him, but later went on to say that Marcus partook in some extra-marital activities with them many years ago, but that she's certain her husband was still seeing him. Melissa Murphy, dumped outside the home of a friend – a friend who seemed a lot more inconsolable than just a friend likely would be."
She paused, looking over the board to ensure her theory worked with every victim, and that she hadn't simply made connections where there weren't any.
"I wasn't sure at first because the first victim – Adam Dixon - has a girlfriend, but in the girlfriend's interview, she points the finger towards an ex-boyfriend of his that used to be particularly physical towards him."
"Well I guess your judgment was wrong then, agent." Hotch responded plainly, before swiftly diverting to address the rest of the team while JJ attempted to pretend that she didn't feel like she'd just been hit with a wrecking ball.
Arguably, his tone was always cold, but in that second it was enough to cause JJ's blood to freeze – she only wished it had numbed her while it chilled her to her core. Was he really regretting his decision to allow her back into the field that much? What the fuck?
"We caught a break." Jones burst into the room, his face flushed like he'd just ran three miles. "A whole crowd of people just witnessed a guy dumping something large and heavy around the back of the National Aquarium. Several guys followed him but he had a car waiting."
Before the detective had even finished, JJ was on her way out of the room with the rest of the team; and before she could set one foot beyond the threshold, Hotch stepped in front of her.
"JJ…" He shook his head- "I think it's best you sit this one out." –and then looked quickly to Emily, mostly to avoid the look he knew JJ was shooting him. "Vest up."
Emily nodded, and Hotch left the room. As she followed him out, she brushed by JJ and squeezed her arm – to which JJ responded by sharply pulling away.
When Emily's expression altered to one of genuine hurt, JJ cocked her head to the side. "What? You take me for a ride on your motorcycle and suddenly you think you have the right to kiss me in the middle of a police department?" Stepping in a little closer to Emily, she looked her square in the eye and told her, in an eerily calm voice, "Don't ever do that again."
In JJ's mind, her outburst was warranted, because Emily had done something she'd never thought possible: reversed the effects of a kiss. She'd made it mean something again.
She'd made everything mean something again.
Positive: You found a point of tranquility.
Negative: You destroyed that point of tranquility.
