Spencer could detect something in the older agent's gait as Morgan joined him in the conference room that had doubled as their headquarters for the past five hours. Rossi had been kind enough to make a trip for the caffeine addict and he clutched his cup of coffee like a lifeline as he looked over the large map of Philadelphia and the surrounding area.
"Tell me you got something, Pretty Boy," Morgan sighed, leaning against the round table and glancing at the map, which had been pinned with brightly colored tabs to designate both the Davids' and the Sampsons' homes as well as their two prime suspects'.
"I wish I could say that," Reid sighed, "but all we know is that the unsub, whomever it might be, likely has a secondary location where he keeps the victims."
"Because both of these men have close family members," Morgan noted, seeing Reid's reasoning for the profile.
"Exactly. Unfortunately, Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and is 142.6 square miles, which doesn't help us narrow down a location in the slightest. Garcia is tracking down any extended family members for other possible second locations, and Prentiss and JJ are in with both suspects. Neither of them has cracked yet."
Morgan nodded.
"How long has Emily been in there?"
"Almost an hour," Reid replied, taking another sip of coffee.
"I'm going to see if I might have better luck," Morgan turned around and caught Hotch in the doorway. Their leader nodded in agreement.
"It can't hurt. We need to narrow this search quickly. We're wasting too much time."
Morgan quickly left the conference room, leaving Aaron alone with the youngest member of the team.
"Reid, do you know what's going on between Morgan and Agent Kent?" he inquired, hoping to shed some light on his right-hand man's peculiar behavior.
Spencer shook his head, a furrow in his brow.
"No, I didn't know anything was...if I find out anything, I'll let you know."
Satisfied, Hotch left to talk to the chief of police about their game plan after they narrowed their search enough to begin canvassing for the two missing children. Time was of the essence.
Kristina was halfway back to the station with a cup of coffee when she received a text from Morgan asking her to check up on the second suspect's home. Having spent most of her morning grilling Reese with questions, she needed a crash course on everything there was to know about Aaron Garner.
"You've reached Penelope the Magnificent, how shall I dazzle you today?" the tech analyst chirped happily, causing a smile from Kristina for the first time that day.
"Hey, Penelope, can you do something for me?"
"Anytime, Gorgeous, that's what i'm here for!"
The brunette took a sip of her coffee and turned on her GPS.
"I need everything you can find on Aaron Garner, starting with a home address."
After a few strokes of the keys, Garcia had the suspect's file up on her screen.
"Aaron Garner, 5621 Maple Street. Age 38, arrested in 2009 for exposing himself to a minor, ew-" Penelope winced before she continued- " and was released in January. Garner's wife, Mary, took care of their 7-year-old son Grady while daddy was in the slammer. His credit looks normal, no excessive spending or suspicious trips out of town...but his cell did ping off the tower nearest the Sampsons and the Davids on both days. You think he's our guy?"
Kristina heaved a heavy sigh.
"I don't know yet."
"He's got a kid," Penelope remarked, and the seasoned agent knew exactly what she was thinking-how could someone have a child and then turn around and harm other peoples' children? Aaron Garner certainly wasn't going to be winning any Father of the Year awards any time soon.
"Thank you, Penelope," Kristina muttered, hanging up the call as she turned the corner into the Garners' neighborhood.
One of the first things Kristina learned when she came to the Bureau was to trust her gut, because most of the time, her gut feeling tended to be spot on. That's why she was thrown for a loop when she arrived at the Garner house- a minivan sat in the driveway, and a little boy was contentedly drawing on the concrete with sidewalk chalk while his mother watched from the porch. It struck her as odd, perhaps, that Garner's wife hadn't gone to the station, when the uniforms brought him in. Then again, maybe it was best for her to stay with their son. It would do Grady no good to know who his father was. Kristina hoped, for their sake, that he truly was a reformed man.
As she approached the house, Mrs. Garner stood, noting her presence.
"You folks need something else?" she remarked incredulously.
Kristina sighed.
"Mrs. Garner, I'm sorry to bother you...I know the police have already talked to you, but we're narrowing the profile so if I could just ask you a couple more questions..."
Grudgingly, the small woman agreed.
"Come inside...and call me Mary, please."
The inside of the house was every bit as normal as the outside; picture frames depicting a happy family hung on the wall, and toys littered the living room. They sat on the couch facing the mantle, where photos of Grady were proudly displayed.
"Mary, does your husband have any other property?"
The reserved woman shook her head. Kristina tried again.
"Did he have a regular hangout? What was his favorite place in the city?"
Mary bit her lip.
"I don't know...Truth be told, Agent Kent, we aren't as close as we used to be. We don't talk hardly at all anymore, unless it's about Grady. He's such a good father, you have to believe me..."
"But he changed," Kristina guessed, noting the uncertainty in Mary's eyes.
"When?"
Mary gulped.
"About a month, I guess?"
"Was he becoming more irritable, more withdrawn?"
Panic set in her eyes as she attempted to justify where she felt the line of questioning was going.
"Yes, but a couple of days ago he took Grady out for an all-day hike and they came back just all smiles...I tell you, that little boy makes him better," she remarked hopefully, and Kristina's heart sunk as she began to connect the dots. Her gut was telling her that the hike with Grady on the day Lily Sampson disappeared was not a coincidence.
"Mary," she approached the situation cautiously, "is there any chance you could let me talk to Grady?"
Mary was about to object, but Kristina stopped her.
"He doesn't have to know anything about the case, I'll make sure of that," she clarified, trying to ease the mother's worry, "I just need to know what happened before, during, and after that hike."
Mary's expression was fixed into a frown. Kristina knew it was a hard decision, subjecting such a young kid-Grady was only 7, after all- to interrogation, but the thirty-three year old had plenty of experience in working with children. Her mission was to get information while simultaneously protecting them from it.
Finally convinced that Agent Kent's priorities were in the right place, Mary nodded her head.
She still watched like a hawk as the FBI agent approached her son, squatted with her hands on her knees and looked over the concrete doodles in the driveway.
"You're quite the artist," Kristina remarked, offering a sideways smile at the little boy, who looked up from what he was currently drawing- a house with a family of four in front of it. Grady shrugged noncommittally.
"I guess..."
"You like drawing with sidewalk chalk?" she asked gently, hoping to convince him that she wasn't a threat to him or his mom.
"I guess..." he replied again, putting the finishing touches on the roof. Kristina inspected the drawing closer.
"That must be your mom, huh..." she pointed to the taller woman, complete with yellow-blonde hair and a pink dress. Grady nodded.
"And that's your dad," she continued, pointing to the older male, "and there's you..." the smaller stick figure next to him, pausing as she reached the young blonde girl with pigtails to the right of Grady in the family portrait.
"Who's this, Grady?"
He shrugged his shoulders again, and Kristina thought it wise not to push him any more about the fourth member of the stick figure family.
"Your mom told me that you and your dad like to go exploring in the woods," she smiled as he dropped the chalk.
"My dad always dragged me and my sister along to camp with him when I was little. She didn't like the woods so much, but I loved it...I used to pretend we were explorers, navigating uncharted territory. I used to scare my sister so bad- I would act like I saw a bear, and just take off running," she grinned as Grady giggled.
"Have you ever seen a bear in real life? Those things are huge!" she joked, glad to see the boy opening up to her when he shook his head, still laughing.
"I doubt they have bears in Philadelphia," she assured him with a wink.
"My friend Eric's dad saw a black bear once!" Grady shot back, and Kristina gasped.
"Oh no! What happened? Did he get away?"
Grady nodded.
"Yeah, he scared the bear away by making lots of noise."
Finally convinced that she had warmed him up to her enough to get an honest answer, Kristina slyly asked him the question that she really needed the answer to.
"Do you and your dad usually spend all day out in the woods? I would get tired after a while...all that exploring is hard work," she admitted, waiting patiently for Grady's answer.
"Sometimes...other times, he takes me to my friend Eric's house before so he can run errands," he explained matter-of-factly, "Eric has an XBox."
"Oh, an XBox, huh? That's awesome." Kristina faked a smile as her heart sunk lower in her chest. Her gut was now telling her that Aaron Garner was their unsub.
Emily bent over the table in the observation room as Morgan paced circles in front of the impervious Aaron Garner. He remained unaffected by all of the intimidating Agent's interrogation tactics, tempting Derek to resort to beating the information out of him. Instead, he walked it off, waiting for the man to crack on his own.
When her cell phone rang, she checked the caller ID before pressing it to her ear.
"Kristina, what did you find out?"
"Garner took his son hiking the day Lily Sampson was kidnapped, but he dropped Grady off at a friends house for a couple of hours beforehand to run 'errands'..."
Emily paused.
"That's not a coincidence."
"No, it's definitely not. Grady also drew a family portrait with an extra little blonde-haired girl, and he got really nervous when I mentioned it. I think he knows something- I think the little girl in the drawing was Lily. Emily, I think this is our guy."
The older agent exhaled, both relieved and distraught with the notion that the supposed loving father had kidnapped two children.
"The second location is in the woods somewhere- have Reid look at hiking trails, somewhere with enough land for him to escape detection but close enough that he could make it back in town in time to pick up Grady."
Emily nodded.
"Will do. Thanks, Kristina."
"This sucks," the younger agent huffed.
"Yeah," Emily conceded, turning her gaze to Garner, "it really does."
She hung up and immediately burst inside the interrogation room, ignoring Morgan's confusion as she addressed the man sitting at the table directly.
"Tell me, Aaron, what kind of person drops their kid off at a friend's house when they're supposed to be spending quality time with them?"
Garner paused.
"I was running some errands," he lied, a furrow in his brow.
"Bullshit," Emily spat, "we both know that's not what you were doing, you sick son of a bitch."
Aaron folded his arms not in defeat, but in defiance.
"Prove it."
