Standard Disclaimers Apply.

As ever - big, big thanks to my readers and especially to my reviewers: LoveforPenandDerek and Green Penguin. I love hearing from y'all - you always make me smile.

I have a confession to make - I wasn't planning to have some of my characters from "Requiem" make so lengthy of an appearance, but as I worked on this chapter, I realized I couldn't resist. If you have any questions or experience some confusion, please refer to "Requiem." :) And, as always, enjoy.


Before it was a city, Los Angeles was an idea.

- John Buntin, L.A. Noir

The image of Los Angeles by the 1950s was…that of a wasteland: in the cold, hard city one was overwhelmed by emptiness, desolation and despair.

- Tina Olsin Lent, "The Dark Side of the Dream"

CHAPTER SIX:

Southland

Detective Kim himself was waiting for Reid at LAX, a testament, perhaps, to the detective's regard and gratitude to the BAU. Reid shook Kim's hand in greeting.

"Dr. Reid, it's good to see you again," Kim said as the two left the air-conditioned comfort of the terminal in the direction of short-term parking.

"Likewise," Reid agreed, distracted momentarily by the howling winds whipping around through the tunnel created by the departure drop off a level above them. He struggled in vain to control the unruly curls that the wind teased into a corona around his head. "You tend to forget about the Santa Anas when you're away from the city," he remarked.

Kim nodded, almost apologetic. "At least there haven't been too many forest fires yet." He led the FBI agent to a silver four-door sedan and the pair fell silent as Kim concentrated on leaving LAX without getting into a wreck. Reid pulled a pair of sunglasses from his messenger bag, craning his neck for a glimpse of the ocean. Every time he returned to the southwest, to the sites of his youth, he felt slightly itchy, like he was wearing a particularly thick, scratchy wool sweater. He felt his mouth go dry and his tongue grow thick as his stomach twisted, as if he expected those who used to torture him without mercy to suddenly appear and tether him, once again, to those obnoxious yellow uprights. It was an irrational feeling, he was well aware, and he could all but hear Morgan's voice carefully chiding him to relax.

But that voice actually belonged to Kim, who was attempting to restart a conversation now that they had left the environs of LAX. Reid blinked and turned his attention away from the window.

"I'm sorry?" he said.

For the briefest of moments, a frown flickered across Kim's face but it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and Reid had to wonder if perhaps he had imagined it, subconsciously stamping his own concerns onto the detective.

"I asked you where you're staying."

"Oh. The Hyperion?"

This time the frown on Kim's face wasn't imagined. "That's a little out of the way. Didn't you guys stay downtown when you were here a few years ago?"

Reid nodded. "We did, but a friend recommended this hotel to me and I thought I'd try it." He was surprised at how fluidly he was able to lie and wondered if Kim actually bought it. He had never considered himself a particularly adept liar but perhaps obfuscating the truth was a skill all drug addicts developed.

Whatever the case, Kim didn't question him. Instead, he asked, "so how exactly did you end up here? I wasn't aware that your team had been invited in on any of our cases."

Reid shrugged. "I'm not here on any of your cases. We're actually working on a case in DC."

"But there's an LA connection."

"That's right." Reid proceeded to explain the particulars of the two DC murders and some of his own questions about Joey Hennessey's connection to the deaths. That was when he broached the subject of Allison Walters.

Kim nodded. "I remember her," he said, contemplative. "She died around the time you guys came out in 2006, right?"

"A couple months before – January."

"That's right. January. It was a strange case, if I'm remembering it correctly."

Reid shifted in his seat, pausing momentarily to adjust his seatbelt. "Did you investigate her death?"

"No. I followed the case, since it was investigated out of my precinct, but I wasn't active in the investigation. I did sit in on Hennessey's interrogation, though."

"Oh?"

"I was curious about the guy. The entire city was at the time. He was something of an enigma. He didn't say much when he was interviewed on television or in magazines, so I wanted to see if he'd say something."

"What do you remember about it? The case, I mean. You said it was strange. Why?"

Kim shrugged. "Honestly, the Walters case was weird because of Henneseey. He was a character. I know, I know – we're full of characters. But Hennessey… Hennessey was a chameleon and very, very observant. He was clever too and he created a persona that his readers wanted. You never really felt like you knew who he was – he was always projecting a façade."

"You looked at Hennessey, Reid said, trying to prod Kim along.

"Of course. We had to. When the murder is practically lifted from the guy's book verbatim, you can't ignore that. So yeah, we brought him in. But he didn't do it."

"Why do you say that?"

"He was a kid, Dr. Reid. He might have been troubled, but he wasn't a killer. And like I said, he was projecting a persona. He wanted his fans to think he was some brash, devil-may-care bad boy. But he was really just another tormented writer who spent most of his day questioning his own talent. He would have taken credit if he killed her. He needed the attention."

"And it was never solved?" Reid asked.

"No. I always thought that the killer was someone who was obsessed with Hennessey and wanted to capture his attention by acting out the pivotal act in the book. But I had no idea who that overexcited fan might be. The killer covered his – or her – tracks very well. Virtually no trace evidence. You'll probably want to look at the case files yourself, right."

Reid allowed himself a smile. "You read my mind, Detective Kim."


Several hours later, Reid was lost in the contents of a file box full of police and ME reports, crime scene photos, various news clippings and other murder investigation accoutrements. He had arranged these items on the conference table that took up most of the small room. Reid figured the table must have been moved into either earlier that morning or late last night, when the LAPD was alerted to Reid's impending arrival – he had noticed a swatch of carpet a deeper blue than the rest, suggesting that the desk that had shielded the carpet from direct sunlight had recently been moved out. He had noticed the spot upon arrival, and he now found his eyes wandering to it again as he tried to mentally sort through the information the day had thus far yielded.

Everything contained in the reports more or less confirmed what Garcia had told him yesterday. Allison Walters had died as the result of twelve stab wounds on January 15, 2006, and her killer had carved "traitor" on her stomach. Reid peered once more at the crime scene photos. According to the coroner's report, Walters had probably died as the result of a single wound, to the ascending aorta, above the heart. She had bleed out rather quickly after that wound was sustained. The coroner also noted that this wound alone was extremely deep. The other eleven were much shallower, tentative even. The report had made no attempt to explain this observation, but Reid didn't need an explanation. The murderer had been inexperienced and probably didn't derive that much pleasure from the act of killing. The placement and depth of the wounds also indicated randomness and haste. Take away the other wounds, and the carving, and Reid would have profiled this death as a crime of passion. Was Walters murdered by an angry or spurned lover who then continued to stab the body and added the "traitor," inspired by Every Little Thing, still on the bestseller lists?

That explanation made sense, even in light of Tabitha Lawrence and Neve Williams' murders. Serial killers rarely stopped killing for so long a period of time – though it wasn't completely out of the question. Foyet was proof enough of that. Illness, injury or a jail stint could also take a killer off the map for months, even years. But even rarer was a killer who completely left his comfort zone. D.C. was a long way away from LA and most serial killers were loath to even kill outside of their city or neighborhood – an area they knew and could perhaps even control.

Something still bothered him, and he knew it would be dangerous to ignore that niggling voice. He was struck by the date of Walters' death. January 15 was the day that the body of Elizabeth Short – more infamously known as the Black Dahlia – was discovered. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but given the parallels between Elizabeth Short and Faye Reynolds, and, of course, her doppelganger in Every Little Thing, Madeline Chase, the character who ostensibly sparked Walter's death, it was a striking coincidence. And like the Black Dahlia, Walters was killed elsewhere and moved. Walters was found in an alleyway in South LA, in Hyde Park and the LAPD found little evidence of blood. Given her chest wound, she would have bled out quickly, and it would have made a mess. There would have been copious blood evidence.

He stood and stretched, glancing around the room for a city map. Finding the room depressingly devoid of anything at all, Reid stepped out of the office in search of the bullpen. A young officer soon came to his aid.

"Can I help you, Dr. Reid."

He nodded. "I'm looking for a map of LA."

"The city or the county?"

"Uh, the city, I guess. I'm trying to get my bearings straight. I used to go to school here, but that was up in Pasadena and I was pretty young, so I didn't do much exploring…" he trailed off when he noticed her bemused smirk.

He felt his cheeks flush. "I'm rambling, aren't I?"

She laughed. "Just a little. We've got a map over here." She led him down the hall into the bullpen. "Are you looking for any place in particular."

"Hyde Park."

She pointed the neighborhood out and he leaned forward into the map. "That's interesting," he murmured, so wrapped up in his thoughts that he momentarily forgot the officer at his side.

She stood on tip-toes to peer over his shoulder. "What's interesting?"

He shook his head. "Nothing. Thank-you. This is perfect." Returning to his make-shift office, Reid felt his head spinning. Hyde Park, and the neighborhood where the Black Dahlia's body was found – Leimert Park – were both in South LA. Another connection. But what he found most interesting of all was that University Park, the home of the University of Southern California, was also in South LA.

As he was coming to realize, everything kept circling back to the Breakfast Club.


The Hyperion Hotel, located not in South LA, but in Echo Park, was built in the mid-1920s, when the burgeoning motion picture industry still filmed there. It was a monument to the Art Deco style and therefore the façade was almost ostentatiously geometric. The building rose skyward, sharp lines drawing his gaze up. He was instantly reminded of the GE Building at the Rockefeller Center, in New York. Inside, the architecture softened to the lyrical lines of the Art Nouveau. While movies moved to Hollywood and Echo Park was today one of the most densely populated areas of LA, the Hyperion, with its lavish gardens and expansive grounds, managed to maintain the aura of a bygone era.

But Reid hadn't selected the hotel for its architecture or its history. Instead, he chose it because Joey Hennessey had chosen it. In Every Little Thing, the Hyperion Hotel is where the protagonist first meets Madeline Chase.

Truth be told, Reid was slightly surprised to find out that the hotel actually existed and now wondered why Joey had picked this hotel, out of the hundreds of thousands in Los Angeles. What was the significance? Or, perhaps, the better question was, was there a significance at all? Judging by the book – which Reid had read twice that morning – Hennessey seemed to do everything with deliberation. His words seemed as though they had been weighed carefully. Allusions, when he made them, where relevant rather than self indulgent. Meditating on Hennessey's writing, Reid had come to the conclusion that there must have been something about the Hyperion that spoke to Hennessey enough to include it in the book. And so, just as he had come to LA, Reid went to the Hyperion, looking for answers.

He brought with him the evidence box from the LAPD. Before he left the downtown station, Reid had convinced Kim to let him "borrow" the materials, though now, as he crossed the oak floors with marble inlay, he was asking himself why he had wanted them at all. After all, he did have an eidetic memory – already he could probably recite most of the reports off the top of his head. But the same niggling feeling that had been omnipresent since this case landed on J.J.'s desk told him to bring it back to the hotel.

Juggling the evidence box, the over-packed duffle he had brought from D.C. and his messenger bag, Reid finally made it to his room, on the fourteenth floor. He dropped everything onto the extra double bed along the nearest wall before plopping on the other one, leaning his elbows on his knees as he stared at the bed. He was overcome by dual emotions, dueling for supremacy in his hyper-organized mind.

The first was a nearly fatalistic sense of tragedy. He had spent most of his morning and the early part of the afternoon with the cold case file on Allison Walters. She had been a nursing student with virtually no family. When the case went cold, her body had been cremated and a few of her friends had spread her ashes at Glacier National Park, where Allison had hoped to one day hold her wedding ceremony. The only proof that she existed was in that box. How sad, he thought, that the sum total of a person's life was piled in a cardboard box and lost on a shelf in the basement of a police station.

On the other hand, he also felt annoyed. It seemed as though he was seeing everything through a veil or a fog. He could just make out the shapes of the facts he so longed for, but they were out of his reach. The situation made him angry. Uncooperative witnesses were par for the course, but normally if someone yelled at them long enough (Morgan) or stared at them until the intensity cracked them (Hotch) or simply got deep enough under their skin (Rossi), the witness would eventually talk. But when the witness was dead? Reid moaned aloud and flopped backwards on the bed, closing his eyes. He let his mind wander, hoping that in nothingness, he might be able to come up with something.


The sun hung low in the western sky, casting blood-red light through the smog-chocked afternoon air. Lena stared at the horizon while she waited, seeing but not exactly processing what was going on around her. Instead, she watched the sky, unnerved by its ominous color, and wondered if the fire season had already begun. She remembered many similar sunsets, in falls past, when the thick smoke plumes from nearby forest fires perfumed the city with cedar and the Santa Anas drove everyone mad, whistling through the canyon and the brain. Sometimes she couldn't understand why anyone would want to live here.

"Ma'am?"

Lena blinked and turned to the porter, slightly nonplussed, her internal monologue disrupted. He held out a white card to her.

"This is you parking stub. When you want to leave, call ahead – maybe ten or fifteen minutes – and we'll have your car waiting here for you."

She nodded and thanked him, taking the ticket and tucking it into her bag. She passed him a tip in what she hoped was a discrete manner before wheeling her suitcase into the air-conditioned hotel lobby. Inside, she was met with a barrage of sights and sounds – she found herself mentally recoiling from the cacophony. For late on Tuesday afternoon, the lobby was surprisingly crowded. As she made her way to the check-in counter, she passed a pair of Japanese businessmen in dark suits, waiving their Smart Phones in the air, passionately discussing something in their native tongue.

A young family passed her, headed towards the elevators. The parents spoke to one another in rapid-fire Spanish. The father was pushing a stroller occupied by a sleeping toddler; an oversized pair of Mickey Mouse ears drooped over his eyes, balanced precariously on the bridge of his nose. Their daughter, clearly as exhausted as her brother, trudged a few paces back, oblivious to the fact that she was treading on the hem of her frothy blue princess dress with every step.

Lena, meanwhile, busied herself with checking her e-mail and voicemail once again, as if twice on the runway at LAX and once more at the baggage claim hadn't been enough. How did people ever waste time before we realized we could access the internet on our phones, she mused, scrolling through her work messages with disinterest. She paused to read another late press credential request for the Miami game in two weeks time and made a mental note to forward it to Alicia later. Then, without even realizing she was there, she stumbled upon the voicemail from Dr. Reid, the one she had been sort of ignoring – or at the very least, avoiding.

She listened to it again, and found herself curious despite herself. The fact that Joey Hennessey had somehow come up in relation to an FBI case intrigued her and she found herself redialing Reid's number. Should this disconnect between my actions and my desires concern me? she wondered as the phone rang, though she didn't dwell on the question long. Her experience with psychology was more or less limited to the pop psychology books people had recommended to her to help her understand athletes. They didn't help.

"Lena!" The FBI agent's voice surprised her – she must have been hoping for his voice mail.

"Dr. Reid." She paused and the silence began to drag towards awkwardness when Reid didn't say anything. "I was returning your call," she added at last. "Sorry about the delay. I've been out of town, so I've been bad about answering my messages." That last comment was unnecessary, she censured herself. She had to stop filling silences with irrelevant words.

"That's okay," he volunteered. "Do you remember Joey Hennessey?"

"Um, yes, sort of," she said, shifting her shoulder bag as the line moved forward.

Another pause. "What does that mean?"

"I was a few years ahead of him. He didn't really get all that famous until after I left LA."

"Oh."

Lena frowned, noticing a familiar silhouette near the elevators. "Dr. Reid, are you in California?"

"Yeah, LA. I'm following up some leads."

"Are you staying at the Hyperion?"

Silence. "How did you know that?"

"Look over at the check in." She hung up and waved to him as he glanced in her direction. He hurried over to where she was standing.

"What are you doing here?" he blurted. "Don't you have to work?"

She surveyed him, taking in his rumpled hair and tall, lanky frame. He was well over a head taller than her, even when she was in heels, and she literally had to look up at him. "It's out bye week," she said, aware that this pronouncement would be greeted with a blank stare. "Every team gets a week off during the season. This week is ours."

"And you came here?"

She nodded. "I like to take in a USC game, see old friends. I have some business here too, so…" She trailed off. "So, I'm here."

"I see."

The line shifted forward again and Reid waited while Lena checked herself in. When she had received her key and left the reception, he spoke again. "I was on my way to find something to eat. What to come with?"

"Uh…" She was caught aback by his sudden request.

"I'd love to talk to you about the book and USC. Sadly, I didn't get around the city much when I was at Cal Tech."

"You were at Cal Tech? When?"

He nodded. "About fourteen years ago."

She cocked her head and wrinkled her brow, doing some quick calculations. "Where you there for a science fair or something?"

"No. I went to college there."

"You went to college when you were thirteen?"

"Well, twelve, technically. I turned thirteen that fall."

"What are you, some kind of genius," she asked, the words tumbling from lips.

He blushed, averting his gaze. "Some kind, I guess." He shot her a sheepish smile.

Lena stepped back, suddenly nervous. No wonder Reid had always seemed so incredulous of her profession. It must have appeared rather ridiculous to a genius. "Uh, I really need to get rid of all this stuff. And I have some calls to make…" She glanced at her watch. "Oh, I guess it's too late, it's almost nine back home. But I should probably… I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Good luck on your case."

She took off towards the elevators, the staccatoed taps of her heels echoing around the wood paneled lobby. Reid was left alone, a frown etched on his forehead. He might have been a genius, but when it came to women, he simple couldn't figure them out.


$64,000 and the rest of the day off (metaphorically speaking) for they reader who correctly guesses the inspiration for the Hyperion. :)