July 22, 2017

Chapter Three

Everyone had to sleep. It was fundamental to a person's health - both physical AND mental, even the strongest minds could not live on adrenaline alone. Spencer Reid's brain had met its match, he realized as he woke to a face full of...papers. Papers strewn over every square inch of his cell. It was only after his first sighting of hope that he'd finally allowed himself the luxury of sleep for the first time in...had it really been days? With no sunlight and no work assignment,the days had blended together. He never thought for one second that he would miss the laundry room of Milburn. But he did - talking to Delgado and Malcom had taken the edge off of his boredom. Now? Now he had nothing, except perhaps a small ray of hope.

The more he cleared his mind and studied the photos objectively, he realized what he should have realized in a heartbeat. The victims had been found off of a popular hiking trail. How had they not been found for months? Because they weren't there for months. Someone must have planted them, dug them up and planted them where they WOULD certainly be found. It couldn't have been him - of course not - he had been in DC when the bodies were planted!

He dropped his head into his arms as the ray of hope disappeared, like a rock slide covering a tunnel entrance. That didn't mean anything. The prosecution would assume he had an accomplice, besides that small alibi wouldn't trump Cat's hand of aces.

His only hope was that these women had been killed while he was in Milburn - no one could deny him that alibi - but he knew he wouldn't be so luck. Cat wouldn't let her accomplices make such a stupid mistake. It was hopeless. He threw his ball point pen across the cell, wishing he had a plain notebook. If only he could write enough notes on this case to fill a novel, but the only papers he had were official forms which required his signature. Forms he had no intention of signing - some of which had still resisted reading.

The mail slot opened again.

"I told you, I'm not signing anything!" Timmons had been sent twice already to collect the forms that Reid hadn't even spared a glance at. He was still too busy trying to crack the case to bother.

"Visitation time."

Finally. The only word that could get Reid to willingly slide his hand through the slot for handcuffs.

Timmons led him out and down to the visitation room, but instead of a team member, it was. "Fiona" He breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed.

"Spencer." She replied curtly, offering him a seat. She didn't look pleased to see him, but that wasn't a surprise since he'd jokingly promised to never call her again. People simply did not get framed for murder twice. He had a better chance of being struck by lightening twice: so about 1 in a billion.

"Detective Garrison said you wouldn't be by until the weekend. Its..."

"Saturday."

"Oh. Right. So..."

"What happened."

"I didn't do it."

"Spencer!"

"I swear, Fiona, I didn't! Don't you believe me?" Was she really not going to take his case? Of course she would, she wouldn't fly out to Michigan just to say 'hi' "You have to believe me. What did the team tell you?" Did they actually think...why hadn't they visited? He hadn't let himself dwell on that question.

"Nothing. Emily stopped by my office..."

"Wait...they aren't here?" He sank down into his chair, his head in his hands. They weren't coming?

"Speencer..." a small voice whistled in his ear.

He looked up at Fiona's sad smile. "There's still this thing you keep forgetting about called 'attorney/client confidentiality'. I told Emily I needed to speak to you first. Most of my clients would frown upon me openly discussing their case with the Feds."

"But I'm not -" he protested.

"I know, You're right. You aren't like most of them. Most of my clients don't get framed once, let alone twice. So what happened?"

"I don't know!"

"Spencer, Emily told me you and the rest of the team were coming here to consult on a case and you were arrested as the prime suspect upon arrival. So you've seen the case file, which means you know something. What's your take on it?"

"The bodies were found near a well-worn hiking trail. Which begs the question why they weren't found sooner when they've obviously been dead for some time. That points to planted evidence, but the coroner didn't have an exact time of death." He took a deep breath to steady his voice. "So we can't provide an alibi. The key is getting an ID, but with that level of mutilation..." And there began the cycle. The point his brain always came back to. Without an ID, the physical evidence alone would convict him. Cat was going to win. "She's going to win," he sighed.

"Who is going to win?"

"Cat!" He bit the name out, as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

"What does your cat have anything..."

He laughed. The closest thing a real laugh he'd had in a long time. "You really don't know anything here, do you?"

Fiona smiled, slightly insulted but she seemed to have lifted Spencer spirits, somehow. "Do me a favor, Spencer. Enlighten me."

"Well after I got out of Millburn -"

"You mean after your team went to the Judge behind my back -"

"Right."

Fiona didn't seem to mad, amused maybe, but only because the tactic had worked. She wasn't going to be too upset about exculpatory evidence, but that didn't mean such misconduct would be permitted again.

"I um, J.J. and I went to confront Cat - Catherine Adams - about my mother's abduction."

Fiona sat back in her chair and listened in rapt attention to a story that was stranger than fiction.

Spencer looked up from his lap to give her a grim look of resignation. "Well, there you have it."

"So, wait...this happened in Mexico! And you thought I didn't need to know about it! Didn't I say that if you withheld information from me, it would come back to bite you in the ass?"

"I was drugged. I don't remember. Honestly, I don't." He was starting to sound like a broken record.

"You don't remember being drugged, sexually molested and having your semen bagged?"

He shook his head, his face in his hands.

"Spencer that's..." She didn't even know what to make of it.

"Preposterous. I know, that's exactly what I told HER! But..." He looked up from the table and held up the one paper that had plagued his mind both day and night for the last three days.

"But somehow someone got access to your semen and planted it INSIDE the victims, so that the rape kit would be matched to you. Is there any other way? Did you ever give a sample to a sperm bank? A fertility clinic? Does anyone else have access to -?"

"No! So how do we prove -?"

"We can't. Not right now."

"We need more victims." He had been hoping that wasn't the case. He hated wishing ill on anyone.

"Not necessarily. If you never visited Cat in prison prior to the pregnancy test, then a paternity test could PROVE that someone else had the opportunity to commit this crime. That baby is your only hope of getting out of here - ever."