Author's note: As always, my apologies for my apparent inability to update in a reasonable time frame. Hope it's worth the wait…
Stalker
Chapter Five
Emily and Morgan sat in stunned silence for a long moment after hopping into the car and slamming their doors.
Finally, Emily suggested:
"Maybe she doesn't have to know."
Morgan threw her an incredulous look.
"That the guy she's spending her life with is her stalker?"
"What if he's not?" She questioned. Morgan said nothing, stared out over the steering wheel. So Emily followed up: "You think he is?"
Morgan hesitated, then turned, told her:
"I think it sounds crazy enough to explain why nothing fits."
He wasn't happy about the thought. And Emily shoved the possibility from her mind, flashed on an image of JJ and Will together.
Sometimes, JJ seemed happy.
(Sometimes.)
Emily tried again:
"I asked Detective Shoals to come to us, instead of going straight to JJ. When she finds out if Will has an alibi."
"She agreed to that?"
"With a little pressing. If anyone has to go to JJ with this, it should be one of us."
"Emily, we don't go to JJ right now, she's gonna feel like we lied to her later. Not to mention I'm not so comfortable keeping Hotch out of the -"
His phone rang then, and it was Hotch.
And the choice was taken out of their hands.
…
There was something clandestine about the five of them meeting up in Hotch's hotel room without JJ.
It felt wrong, to Emily.
She watched Hotch as they waited for Reid to join them, watched his eyes as he scanned a report in his hands.
She had no idea what it was, but she suspected it had nothing to do with their missing eleven-year-old and everything to do with JJ.
Backing the paper in his hands was what appeared to be the new photograph.
And instinct told her this was about to feel even worse.
Morgan had already told Hotch about the kid's identification of Will's voice.
Hotch hadn't reacted.
And even with Hotch, that said something.
Emily didn't think she liked what that might be.
Reid appeared with wet hair, apparently straight from a shower, and looked at all of them.
"Did something happen?" he queried, then added: "I mean, um, something, else?"
Hotch released a quiet breath in a sigh, and opened his mouth to speak.
"We have a problem. There are a number of things starting to add up, most of which would mean nothing individually…" He trailed off for a moment. Then: "Will has surfaced as a potential suspect."
"JJ's Will?" Reid asked immediately, and in the moment that followed, his confusion turned to understanding. "That… that actually might…"
"Might make a sick kind of sense," Morgan finished for him. "Whoever this guy is, he doesn't fit any established stalker profile. Bastard trying to punish a woman with something he knows she fears? Makes a hell of a lot more sense."
"I can buy that Will would know how stalker cases get to her," Rossi acknowledged. "But do we have reason to believe he wants to punish her?"
"What we have is a witness who has identified Will's voice," Hotch told him.
"He could be just connecting to the accent," Emily cut in.
But Hotch continued:
"We also have these."
He put the photograph and the report on the table, spread them out.
"The photo made me wonder," Hotch told them. "On its own it could be nothing. But with all the inconsistencies in the profile, it caught my eye."
He waited, let them all look it over.
It was the most recent photo – the closeup of JJ asleep in her own bed.
And it was Reid that picked up on it first:
"There's an indent in the pillow behind her. Presumably Will's. Like someone just raised their head off it a moment ago."
Hotch nodded, told him:
"Which means either the unsub managed to get past their security system and into their house undetected, and waited for Will to get up to use the washroom, and risked sneaking into JJ's bedroom for the few seconds Will would be gone, or -"
"Will himself is the unsub," Rossi finished.
There was silence, and then:
"And this?" Emily picked up the report, started scanning it.
"The report on the search of JJ's home," Hotch told her. "She was convinced that someone had planted audio and video surveillance in her bedroom. That that was how the unsub knew… the things he knew."
"But there was nothing," Rossi guessed and stated.
And at Hotch's nod, Morgan added:
"Which means the only guy with that set of knowledge is Will."
No one suggested that JJ could have been bedding anyone besides Will.
(There was comfort in that.
At least they all knew JJ that well.)
"Do we really believe she wouldn't know?" Emily asked the room. "That she wouldn't somehow recognize that it was him, even with the mask? This man shares her bed."
"But in the dark, under those circumstances?" Rossi asked her. "I think you're reaching."
He was right.
And Emily avoided their eyes as a thought nagged at her.
She didn't want to put one more nail in Will's coffin.
She wasn't close to him, didn't feel any particular loyalty to him or his reputation.
But life could only ask so much of a woman, and JJ didn't deserve this.
The problem was that Emily was in a room full of profilers.
At least one of them caught the look on her face - Rossi.
"Something to add?" he prompted gently.
And so Emily told them, not without reluctance:
"Something Reid said on the plane. This guy sent chocolates to the office on a Saturday."
Reid nodded, added: "He could have sent the chocolates to her at home. She wasn't supposed to be at work. We just got called in. The significant thing is that he knew that."
"That," Emily acknowledged, "And that she called Will. Right after we got the call. Left him a message about how she'd be busy and working and might not be able to stay in touch."
She met Hotch's eyes. Took comfort in seeing that he hated this, too.
Morgan stated the obvious:
"So Will knew."
And Hotch spoke up with yet another nail:
"Will would also know exactly where to send them."
…
They started with that part, when they'd called JJ in.
It was easiest.
"Who did I call?" JJ repeated the question, surprised by it. "Why would I call anybody about your case?"
"You called Will," Emily noted.
"Right," JJ allowed, looking them all over, confused. "Why… what's this about?"
"Who else knew you would be at the office on Saturday?" Hotch asked quietly.
"No one," JJ told them easily. "Just you guys and Will. Look, Hotch, what is it you think I did? Why would I tell anyone we were coming here?"
"It's not like that," Morgan broke in. "No one's accusing you of anything."
JJ just looked at them, clearly lost.
But there was also dread building on her face, as the silence dragged on.
Somebody had to say it, and Emily stepped up, figuratively and literally.
She kept it simple:
"The boy who dropped off the last photograph identified Will's voice."
"As what?" JJ asked immediately.
There was more silence, and they all watched her process her way to the answer.
Shock dawned in her eyes, her mouth dropped open.
It took her a few seconds to become defensive.
(And the whole room of profilers, they noted those few seconds carefully.)
"You kidding me?" JJ finally asked, and then she turned away, rubbed the bridge of her nose, closed her eyes. Clearly reeling. "You're seriously considering Will as a suspect?"
"The locals here contacted the locals there," Morgan told her. "They're after an alibi." He left a beat, then admitted: "And I don't think he's gonna have one."
"Then you're wrong," JJ told him immediately. "You think you know the man I live with, the father of my son, better than me?"
"I think it's strange that you don't say 'the man that I love'," Morgan suggested.
And JJ chuckled a horrible little chuckle, shaking her head.
"Do you really think I wouldn't know if Will had that same birthmark?"
"Birthmark?" Morgan repeated.
"You never said anything about a birthmark," Emily noted gently.
JJ was confused by that for a moment. Then:
"I guess, because you were asking about his attitude, his demeanor. You were profiling. I gave a physical description to the local police. He had a birthmark on the back of his neck, just under where the mask covered. Looked just like a star."
They were all quiet for a moment, and then Morgan said it:
"You sure about that?"
"Are you kidding me?" JJ asked again.
"I'm just saying this is the first we're hearing of it. And sometimes our memories tell us what we need them to."
"My memory of that night is crystal clear," JJ all but spat, which prompted another moment of silence.
Then JJ asked them:
"Did any of you actually stop to think that Will couldn't have delivered chocolates to the office, what with his being already out of town when I called him?"
"We followed up on that," Morgan told her.
And Reid jumped in, because he didn't like the tension that was building between JJ and Morgan:
"The order was placed by phone, and a, um, a cash payment was dropped off," Reid told her, his eyes apologetic. "The owner thought it was weird, right? She told us that the voice on the phone and the voice of the boy, who dropped off the money, they weren't the same. And the voice on the phone was… uneven? Like someone was trying to disguise it."
"Which might mean hiding an accent," Rossi added.
JJ just shook her head again, paced away from them.
And when she turned back:
"Andersen knew I was coming into the office too, he handed me the chocolates, you gonna arrest him? How about everybody in the mall with us when I took the call? They heard us talking about going to work, think we should question them? Or just round up everybody with a southern accent, that could work too!"
"JJ, I'd like you to look at these," Hotch told her, his voice as even as ever.
"I've seen it," JJ returned, voice far from even.
"Will is missing from the other side of the bed," Hotch told her.
And that threw her for just a second, before anger returned.
"Look, I get that I'm not a profiler, but do you really think that I could live with a man for two years and not know him at all? Do you really think that little of me?"
"No, JJ -" Emily started.
"JJ -" Hotch tried too.
But she was heading for the door.
She turned back long enough to tell them:
"When his alibi comes back solid, you know where to find me."
And then the door slammed, and she was gone.
…
When Emily returned to the hotel room later, it was in darkness and JJ was in bed.
When she'd changed and slipped into the makeshift bed that was her cot, Emily listened to the room.
JJ didn't have the deep, rhythmic breathing of someone who was asleep.
So Emily asked her, speaking into the darkness:
"I don't know what to think. But I know that you need someone on your side. And I'd like to be that."
Seconds passed in silence and Emily began to wonder if JJ would just pretend to be asleep.
But suddenly JJ spoke up, quiet and thoughtful:
"Maybe I settled. Maybe I don't hide it well enough. Maybe Will has more than enough reason to secretly hate me. But he's a good man. And at our absolute worst, the most he's ever done…"
She trailed off, and Emily had to prompt her to continue:
"Is what?"
"He called me a selfish bitch. Once. In the heat of the moment. Weeks ago. After a week when they'd barely seen me and I came home with my head still on the job. And he apologized. A lot."
At Emily's silence, JJ added:
"Couples fight."
And Emily wondered if she was hearing things when she thought she detected a note of uncertainty.
They were both silent long enough for Emily to think JJ was trying to sleep, when she finally spoke up again.
"I think I know when that picture was taken."
Emily waited, let her talk.
"We'd had this little party. He had friends in town. I'd had a couple of drinks. Not much, not with Henry. But enough that when I woke up and… thought there'd been lightning, and, uh… and Will was standing there laughing and telling me to go back to sleep… I thought maybe it had just been too long since I'd had much to drink and I'd turned into a light weight."
There was more silence.
Then JJ continued:
"He could have been up to use the washroom. Someone else could have been there. We've seen stranger things. You know that."
"I do."
"It's not impossible."
"It's not," Emily allowed.
But it was far from likely.
And somehow it was Emily that stayed awake all night and JJ that eventually drifted off to sleep.
And it wasn't much past dawn when Emily quietly clicked out a text message, and slipped out of the room.
…
"This needs to stay between us," Emily noted as she slipped into a chair across from Morgan.
They were in a coffee shop kitty-corner to the hotel, and Morgan already had a cup.
He nodded as he brought the drink to his lips, but she needed him to get it.
"I'm serious," she pressed. "I'm telling you because you're Mr. Obsessional Crimes and you should know. But we need JJ to have someone to trust right now. And as of now that's me, and I don't want to jeopardize that."
"She tell you something?" Morgan asked.
"Two somethings. One, she remembers the night that picture was taken. She mistook the flash for lightning. Will was standing by the bed."
At Morgan's raised eyebrows, she added:
"JJ had been drinking before bed and she thinks it's possible Will was just coming back from the washroom."
"Do you?" Morgan asked, and Emily ignored the question.
"The other thing is… and I want it on the record that I was up most of the night hating the thought of breaking her confidence…" At his nod, she continued: "They've been fighting about her being away."
She neglected to mention that they might also be fighting about just how much JJ did or didn't love him. Some confidences shouldn't be broken, even for this.
"Fighting like how?"
"Fighting like he called her a selfish bitch."
Morgan took that in, took another sip of his coffee, staring into space.
And when he spoke again, he'd changed the subject:
"You think we short-changed this kid?"
"What?" Emily asked, thrown by the shift.
"We gotta be back at the station in… what, two hours? And what have we got? A missing eleven-year-old and some vague hope that Garcia might be able to enhance the video surveillance even more. And almost no hope that'll help."
"We've been distracted, but we've been…" Emily started, considering. "I don't think we let anything go. Every lead's been followed. Every local sex offender considered and rejected. Every family member questioned. Every teacher -"
"You don't think we're off our game? Might have missed a tell in one of those interviews?"
Emily thought it through. Then told him:
"I think once in a blue moon the old familiar answers don't get us anywhere. And that maybe this is the one kid who really was abducted at random by a first-timer without a record."
"Means we're not going to find her," Morgan noted solemnly.
And he crushed his paper coffee cup between his fingers.
"It also means she was probably dead before we ever made it to town," Emily noted. Then added: "Which I do know as well as you do, doesn't really help."
"No," Morgan agreed. "But I guess it's better." At Emily's look, he added: "Not to think we were so busy failing JJ, we failed this kid, too."
…
Later, all six of them were at the local station.
Five of them working on their kidnapping case.
JJ, answering questions about her own.
There was not yet an answer about Will's alibi.
He was apparently camping with a friend, currently, and no one had been able to track him down.
Morgan was headed into the station post-coffee run when he caught sight of one of the detectives on JJ's case, and a thought occurred to him.
He caught up.
"Detective?"
"We have a break?" the woman asked quickly, spinning to face him.
Detective Shoals had been put on JJ's case, but she'd started out on the kidnapping.
"Nothing yet," Morgan told her. "We're waiting on one more his-res enhancement from our tech."
"There's talk of calling in neighboring counties, getting a grid search started just outside town. I think… some of our people, they're sure they're looking for a body."
"Might be coming to that," Morgan admitted. And it hurt, but it wasn't why he was there. "You took Agent Jareau's initial statement? In the hospital?"
The woman nodded, her expression sympathetic.
And Morgan asked her:
"She say anything about a birthmark? Back of his neck? Shape of a star?"
…
He caught JJ coming out of the ladies' room.
"You got a sec?"
She looked at him, and he realized that she did, and probably wished she didn't.
"Just come sit down, have a coffee with me," he told her.
And she eyed the tray in his hands.
"You got five coffees for the two of us?"
"I'll drop these off. You and I can go find some donut shop."
"Why?"
"'Cause you need some things cleared up."
It was the wrong thing to say, and she turned defensive.
"Oh, I do? I really need some help?"
"JJ…" He hadn't been planning to do this here, but that tone in her voice irked the hell out of him. "I talked to Detective Shoals. You never said a thing about a birthmark."
That stunned her, for a just a second. Then she recovered:
"You really want to have this discussion? You want me to explain to you how I was in shock, and maybe didn't say everything out loud that was in my head?"
"I want to sit down and talk about reality."
She stepped back away from him, threw him a scornful look.
"You know I really, really don't need this right now?"
And he was sorry.
But she needed to hear this:
"What you need is to get that the man you live with is the same one who's been doing this to you. Until you're willing to admit that and discuss it, you're tying our hands on your case."
"You know what, you can go to hell," she tossed at him. "You don't know the first thing about my relationship with Will."
She started to walk away, and he spotted Emily approaching them, and before he could stop himself –
"I know you live with a man who calls you a selfish bitch!" he called after JJ.
And she spun, and Emily froze.
JJ's eyes were wounded.
"That's excellent. Thank you," she shot at Emily.
And she headed for the front door of the station.
"JJ!" Emily called after her.
And JJ spoke without looking back:
"You can all go to hell."
…
Emily was all over him as they rejoined the others and he put down the coffees that were likely getting cold.
"She needed someone she could confide in so that she didn't lose her mind and we didn't lose what could be details relevant to the profile!"
"Em -"
"And I told you that!"
"Would someone like to explain what we missed?" Rossi queried.
"JJ took off -" Morgan started.
"After you pushed her way too hard!" Emily accused.
Hotch opened his mouth to rein them in –
But – suddenly –
Reid was out of his chair - and nearly knocking it over in his exuberance –
"Guys!" he shouted, though they were maybe five feet away from where he'd been working at a laptop, studying the new images from Garcia.
"Something we can use?" Hotch asked, moving to him.
They all made their way over, none of them missing the slack-jawed shock on his face.
"I don't understand," he muttered.
And they looked at the computer, at the image he had pulled up.
And it didn't make any sense.
And they stared at each other.
This was the girl's kidnapper.
It was the wrong case.
But there it was.
On the back of his neck.
A birthmark.
In the distinct shape of a star.
…
