A/N: A new job is curtailing my efforts to get back to regular 1-2 day postings but I will do my best to keep up with my self-imposed schedule.
I'm not so sure I'm any good at this case fic writing biz (feel free to tell me differently) but you keep adding the story to your favourites or update requests so I guess I'll keep going with it and I'll see what the future holds for our favourite team of profilers.
Thanks again to those who continue to read and add my work or even me to their favourites lists; please feel free to also review my work. I'd love to know what you think.
WARNING: Content in this chapter may be unsuitable for younger readers.
The Colour Red – Chapter 4
The list Garcia provided the next day was longer than anyone was expecting. Hotch made the decision to keep the teams as they were for professional reasons with Reid and Emily to take on part of the list. He also asked for and received the manpower to run six additional teams of two to help run down the list in a day. No one needed to say that they had less than 24 hours before another woman's life was ripped apart forever; they all already knew it.
New Section-
"How's your knee?"
"My knee is fine; now ask me how my stomach is doing?"
"If it's any help I'll remind you that this is the last stop on our list."
"It does help. Do you mind if we stop for lemonade on the way back to the station?"
Reid murmured an affirmative as the house came in view. Emily pushed her nausea to the side and took in a deep breath to steady her slightly spinning head as they took in the immaculate gardens and clean lines of the two storey property framing the man currently pulling a suitcase out of the car. She checked the folder in her hand and nodded.
"That's Kim Wheats. He's a general manager for a food distributor in New Jersey and he comes home for a visit every weekend."
"Home?"
"His mother lives here. Father's recently deceased. He arrives Friday afternoon and leaves Sunday lunchtime after church like clockwork. He's been doing the same thing for the last 8 years ever since he moved states. Hotch flagged him as a possibility so Garcia is currently pulling up in depth information on him and his past."
"Do you find it strange being married to Hotch and having to switch between the personal and the professional?"
She gave it serious thought as they watched Kim walk up to the door and disappear inside the house. "Not really. I mean, at work I still think of him as Hotch whereas everywhere else he's simply Aaron to me. Despite the rings I now wear I still have a professional obligation to keep and I intend to do it so well that there is no doubt I'll still be working with my husband when we are retired from the Bureau. Besides that, there is a subtle difference between Aaron Hotchner the family man and Aaron Hotchner the agent. Most wouldn't notice it and I know Haley couldn't pick it, but I see it and I respect it. It's what makes working with him doable; I simply look for which man I'm speaking with and I address him accordingly."
"Why couldn't Haley see the difference?"
"I believe it is because she only wanted the family man; she never understood that the working professional was so tied up in the family man that trying to separate his two sides was like trying to destroy him. Despite the grief it caused him, I'm glad she left Aaron because it gave him free reign to be the man she never allowed him to be."
Reid nodded thoughtfully and followed her up the driveway. At the door she pressed the doorbell and they waited. When the door was opened a minute later they were looking at a handsome man about 6 feet tall, with broad shoulders, a trim waist and stylish glasses framing hazel eyes.
"May I help you?"
"Kim Wheats? I'm SSA Hotchner and this is Dr Reid; we're with the FBI. Might we have a word with you regarding the recent rapes happening here in Augusta?"
He looked at her steadily for a long minute; long enough that she thought about making her request a demand. When he finally replied it wasn't with what she'd been expecting. "You should come in; this might take awhile."
Reid flicked her a look but followed her into the house without any other sign that he was as nervous about all this as she was. Kim led them to a sitting room and asked if they wanted anything to drink. After they'd both declined and they were all seated he asked curiously, "What led you to want to speak to me about the rapes?"
Emily blinked as her mind noted he hadn't automatically denied having anything to do with the recent attacks as the other three men they'd spoken to that day had. What was going on?
"Our technical analyst drew up a list of all the men in the Augusta area who work or live out of state and are only in this city every second weekend; the weekends of the attacks. Your name was on it. You arrive about this time every second Friday and you leave at Sunday lunchtime. The file we have says you were born here in this city but about 8 years ago you moved out of the state for work. May I ask why you chose an out-of-state job over a local one?"
He shrugged. "New Jersey Fresh offered me a far better deal than anything I'd found locally so I took it. Now ask me if I am the Augusta Rapist as the press have dubbed him."
She exchanged another look with Reid that confirmed he was just as confused as she was.
"Are you the man raping women in this city every second Friday for the last three months?"
"Yes, I am."
Another look, a deeper sense of confusion wrapping her up. Her head was beginning to feel just a little funny again and her stomach was in an uproar.
It was Reid who moved to clarify what they'd just heard. "Did you just admit to raping six women at knifepoint?"
"Yes, I did."
Emily raised an eyebrow as she pushed the slight floaty feeling in her head to the back. "Why would you admit to offences that will see you in jail for the rest of your life?"
"Maybe the better question to ask me would be why I have been raping these women without killing them. Or even just ask me why I am doing this."
"Alright; why have you raped these six women?"
"To answer that question properly will take time and shouldn't you read me my rights before we speak further. Otherwise I could get off on a technicality and I wouldn't want that."
Emily not only read him his rights but cuffed him as well because she didn't quite trust this calm man not to be playing with them for some reason.
"My mother and father would have sex all the time. They were like Energiser bunnies, a friend once said. It was too embarrassing for words; whether I had friends over or not wouldn't matter. If they wanted sex they'd have it and not always in a private place either. I can't count the number of times I walked into a room in this house that was not their bedroom to find them at it again. This room in particular seemed to be a favourite as was the kitchen and my dad's study. I didn't know who initiated things in the past and I didn't really want to know; as soon as I was old enough I got a management degree that enabled me to get any job I chose and when Fresh offered me the out-of-state job, I leapt to take it.
"I stuck to visiting maybe once a year and found that my leaving had only given my parents a bigger playground. When dad died three months back, I came home for the funeral and found out just what the deal was the hard way. Turns out my mother is a sex addict and had been since she first had sex at 15. Problem was an infection in her early 20's left her nearly numb and only the most vigorous of sex could be felt by her. She also needed a large cock and pain to gain orgasm. Dad wasn't that big on his own so they used a black market Viagra derivative to make him big enough for her needs to be met. His dying didn't make her needs go away so when I returned for the funeral and stayed here she cooked me a meal and she put the drug in my food so I wouldn't notice it until it was too late."
"Wait; are you saying your own mother drugged you and raped you?"
"Don't look so shocked Agent Hotchner. I'm sure it happens more frequently than I know."
"But your father was just barely dead and your mother was moving on to you already?"
Kim shrugged. "What can I say; I come from an extremely messed up family."
"Did you think about saying no?"
Kim shot Reid a dark look that made both profilers sit up straighter and pay more attention to their surroundings. "Of course I did. I first noticed the difference within minutes of finishing the meal. There was a painful tingling and stretching feeling and so I excused myself to the bathroom. I closed the door and got my pants off in a hurry and just stared in shocked horror as my penis became as big as I thought my father's had always been. I was so shocked I didn't realise I hadn't locked the door until my mother wrapped her hand around it and squeezed hard. Looking me right in the eyes she said she wanted all that inside of her now.
"I practically knocked her over as I got her hand off me and called her a whore and other names too horrible to mention in polite company. I went to my room, locked myself in and packed as fast as I could. Problem was, I'd never had such an erection before and it was extremely painful. I was just wondering what to do about it when mother called through the door that the only way to make the pain go away was to have lots and lots of sex. When I challenged that men needed time to recover afterwards she returned that the drug allowed the man to go many times before it worked out of the system and if he didn't have sex it tended to stay in the system longer and the pain would just get progressively worse and more crippling by the hour.
"I held out for about an hour after that before the pain became too much and I sought her out. We had sex continuously for six solid hours before she told me no more because she was bleeding and bruised and the pain was overriding the orgasms she was having. I demanded to know what the hell I was meant to do with the need still riding me and she told me to go out and find someone else. I found three women that night who were willing until they got a look at the size of me and then they said hell no and walked away. I tried a prostitute some girls said liked it extra-large and she too said no."
"So you did the only thing you thought you could do?"
"Yes. I grabbed a ski mask and a knife and went and took what I needed. I made them close their eyes because that was what I'd had to do to make the time spent with my mother bearable and I took their red underwear and burned it because that was the only colour my mother had in her underwear draw. As soon as the drugs were out of my system I went home only long enough to grab my things and tell my mother she'd never see me again and I left to return permanently to New Jersey. I figured her parting comment about seeing me again and soon was simply a cheap parting shot but I was quickly proven mistaken.
"That particular derivative was different to any Viagra I'd ever heard about. It was addictive. It took me almost two weeks to realise that the drug was the only thing that had changed and could therefore be causing my painful discomfort and...want for lack of a better word. When I called her up to demand an explanation she told me the drug was addictive but refused to give me any more information. She said if I wanted it badly enough, all I had to do was come home.
"Over the last three months I've found that I can only last two weeks before the pain and need gets to be so much that it interferes with work. So I go home, let her drug me and play with me until she says enough is enough and then I go find a woman to slake the rest of my needs."
Reid leaned forward in his chair. "The thing I don't understand is why you would choose voluptuous blondes over slim brunettes like your mother."
"Don't you?"
"You choose your favourite type so that at least you are getting a little something you need from it all," Emily guessed with confidence.
He inclined his head in her direction with an approving look.
"But why give it up now? You've obviously come home to get your need dealt with but now you are giving yourself up before you get your fix. What's changed?"
"I knew it was wrong from the first but I was so shocked by the whole thing that my brain shut down for a few weeks and by the time it kicked in again, the addiction was too strong to kick on my own and being the man that I am and admitting to having extremely vigorous sex with my mother, even if it wasn't initially my fault, would have been too difficult for me to do. But now here you are and you have arrested me and when the cravings become too much, I know there will be a hospital and all the help I need. I'm relieved now to have this out in the open and to know that I won't be able to hurt anyone else because I will be locked away. It helps too, to know that my mother won't get off scott free because she still drugged me and she still had sex with me and I know that this is an offense she too can be charged for."
Despite their shock over Kim's revelations, Emily and Reid did what needed to be done. They collected the evidence Kim led them too and bagged it as best they could. Reid elected to stay at the house until forensics could arrive which left Emily to escort her willing prisoner out of the house.
Reid walked slowly along the front of the picture wall taking in all the photos that depicted the years the Wheats had lived as a family. He was studying the latest family portrait he could find when the sound of shots being fired had him diving for cover below the window line. He lifted his head cautiously as he pulled out his gun and his mobile. No one fired at him so he was able to get a clean look as he dialled 911.
Kim Wheats sat against the side of the vehicle, a gaping hole in his chest and his glasses cracked and hanging from one of his ears.
He continued scanning the front yard and his heart stopped as he spotted Emily on the ground, face down and not moving and a woman who looked like Kim's mother walking toward her with her gun drawn and pointed at the downed woman.
"911; what is your emergency?"
End-
A/N: I'm working hard to make sure I get this story finished before the end of the weekend.
As always, I love reviews, so please let me know what you think.