A/N: As always, I own nothing.
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The group was walking out of the conference room, Colleen and Gideon were about to leave for the nursing home. Morgan and Colleen were chatting good naturedly as they walked towards the entrance to the stationhouse when John passed with a grunt.
"Who's Mr. Sunshine," Morgan asked?
"That's Morris' deputy, John Hamil."
"How come if he's from around here, he's not involved in the case and you are, not that I mind, of course?"
"There was a little incident the other day and he got taken off the case, almost got fired."
Morgan's eyebrows raised, "What kind of incident?"
Colleen told him about the phone call they had all heard and the pet names Garcia called Reid. They all thought that she had the hots for him but Reid assured them that Garcia was like that with everybody. Colleen also told him about Garcia having to spend the night in Reid's room. She saw a look of amusement wash over his face. She continued to tell him about John's assault on Garcia in the conference room and Reid pulling him off and the two almost coming to blows. "That's why John got removed from the case." Any amusement quickly vanished.
"You're telling me that jackass tried to mess with Garcia?"
"Yeah but he didn't get very far, Reid took care of it."
"Nobody messes with Garcia and gets away with it, I'm gonna have a talk with that guy." Morgan stalked off angrily.
Morgan ran into Reid and pulled him into the break room. "Where the hell do you get off not telling me about that deputy trying to mess with Garcia?"
"Sorry Morgan, it never came up okay. I've had a few things on my mind. Who told you, Garcia?"
"No, Colleen, at least she thought I ought to know, she thinks you're some kind of hero by the way! I'll tell you, if he so much as comes in the same room with Garcia, he's a dead man."
Gideon and Colleen arrived at Bluegrass Valley shortly after lunch. They went to the dayroom that was occupied by the usual suspects.
Colleen spoke to most of the elderly residents and tried to ascertain if they had any knowledge of what had happened to Thelma Fletcher. Many of them suffered moderate to severe memory loss and two years after the fact, barely remembered Thelma Fletcher let alone what happened to her.
They were just about to leave the dayroom when the sound of a motorized wheelchair heralded the arrival of Bud Talbot. "Well hello again, little lady. How are you today?"
"Oh hi Bud, I'm good. This is Special Agent Gideon. We're here again talking to residents to see if anyone can shed any light on Thelma's death. Do you have time to talk?"
"I'll make time for you Honey."
They sat down in the corner of the dayroom by the window and Colleen started talking. "Bud do you remember anything unusual happening around the time that Thelma died, any unusual people or people in unusual places at unusual times?"
"Well, that was a while back sweetie. It's hard to remember if something seemed out of place two years ago."
"If you could think about it Bud, it's really important."
"I will do that little darlin. Hey where's your boyfriend today, you know the young doc? How did you get stuck with this old codger," he said, indicating Gideon with a smirk.
"Dr. Reid is not my boyfriend and Special Agent Gideon is not an old codger." Gideon started to laugh.
"Well he might not be your boyfriend but he would like to be and you want him to be your boyfriend so what's holding you two back."
Colleen groaned and Bud laughed as they got up to leave. Colleen asked if Gideon would mind if she stopped in to visit Jim. Gideon said not at all and they headed for the room. Jim looked just as he had the day before, the tubes continued to keep fluid flowing in and out. Colleen spoke to him and took his hand. Gideon watched the young woman communicate with this unfortunate man and he saw that Reid was right. Colleen had a special rapport with these people. This was indeed her calling if she would realize it.
When they got back to the stationhouse, Reid had made a discovery. The paper used for the consent form was different from the paper in the rest of the chart. He contacted Bluegrass Valley and was told that they had indeed changed paper suppliers last year. "That means that this consent form was put in this chart recently, probably after word got out that Thelma's body was being exhumed and we'd be looking into her death."
Garcia suggested, "Maybe they have security cameras in the medical records area and we can see who had access to the chart."
"That's a good idea Garcia, I'll check on it," Reid responded and jumped up and almost ran into Morris who had just returned from overseeing the exhumation of the bodies and they had been taken to the hospital morgue awaiting Dr. Coleman's arrival.
Reid returned a few minutes later reporting that there were cameras in the hallway where medical records was located but not specifically in the record room itself. He was going to get the tapes. Perhaps they would get lucky.
Dr. Coleman called. He had arrived and was at the hospital and had made a cursory inspection of all the bodies and reported that they all had their eyes removed. He hadn't yet obtained tissue samples for testing.
"So all the recent exhumations had their eyes removed but David Rafferty said he was never asked." Hotch said, "That means that the eyes were removed without consent."
"Have we made any inroads into finding out where these eyes are going," Emily inquired?
JJ said, "We've checked with the registry and they have no record of any eyes donated from here so they must be going privately to some ophthalmologist. Finding out who that is is almost impossible due to patient confidentiality."
"So what do we know," Morgan added, "Numerous people have been killed at this nursing home, their eyes are being harvested but not through legal channels so they're being sold on the black market and that makes them almost impossible to trace."
"I'm going to run all the eye doctors from Lifelink clinics and find out who's doing a lot of eye surgery because the surgery has to be reported for the insurance to pay out." Garcia remarked, getting up and heading toward her computer.
"But if these are being done on the black market, maybe the recipients are paying cash under the table for the privilege of cutting to the front of the line." Gideon piped up.
Reid returned with the tapes from the nursing home and they put it in the player. They watched, as many nurses, aides and other staff passed before the camera, no one looking particularly suspicious. A man in a business suit went by and both Morris and Hotch jumped up in unison saying, "That's David Rafferty!"