Chapter 3
The door to the coroner's office made Emily's stomach flip, but she swallowed the feelings and followed JJ inside the room, shivering slightly from the depressed temperature. The medical examiner was a stout, polite man with a comb-over whom they had worked with before, so he recognized the pair right away. "Agent Prentiss, I am so very sorry for you." Emily nodded, swallowing hard again. "I'll leave you alone then."
"Thanks," she murmured. A sheet was draped over the body, folded down to reveal his upper torso and head. Her pale hands fluttered towards John's chest, resting for a moment on a small tattoo by the left shoulder of three olive leaves arranged in a triangle. "He got it in Rome without telling us. Our families took a day trip to the coast, and when I saw it, I told him he'd make a good teenage girl."
"And what did he do?" JJ smiled, relieved to hear Emily talking.
"He pushed me into the ocean." She matched JJ's sad smile and pulled John's hand out from beneath the sheet, entwining it in both of hers. "And I pulled him in with me."
"Sweet." Even though they were well-meaning, the words fell flat in the silence of the room. Still holding on tightly with one hand, Emily reached for the sheet with the other to uncover John's arm. "Emily, are you sure…?" JJ trailed off as the sheet shifted aside, revealing the bruised inside of John's arm, the only sign that his stillness was not a stupidly deep sleep. The coroner walked back into the room, and JJ's heart ached as she drew Emily back from the table.
"You didn't find any signs of a struggle, or defensive marks?" Emily asked desperately.
He handed her a clipboard, showing his various findings. "All of the damage we saw was consistent with an overdose of heroin or cirrhosis of the liver. Nothing more."
"He was drinking." Emily concluded, looking at the black and white paper representation.
"Somewhat heavily too," the coroner confirmed. JJ took the results from Emily and flipped through them on her own. "I estimate that it started recently, within the last year."
"…within the last year." Emily repeated quietly to herself. "And there were no signs of previous drug usage?"
"None." JJ could almost see the wheels turning in Emily's head, and before the thoughts could go too far, JJ pulled her away. Thanking the coroner, JJ dragged an oblivious Emily into the hallway and over to the car.
"Emily, don't go there. You need to take some time and process this before it gets out of control."
"Before what gets out of control?"
JJ huffed, pausing for a second to figure out her phrasing. "We don't know why he died, Emily. You're not thinking clearly."
Instead of getting offended, Emily simply shrugged it off. "We need to go to the police station; they asked me to come by." They got into the car, buckling their seatbelts.
"Em, I don't think they meant two hours later." JJ took her hands off the wheel, turning to face her friend.
"You think it's too soon for them?" She put on oversized dark sunglasses to hide her eyes even though it was dark outside.
"Honey, I think it's too soon for you." JJ watched the thought dawn on Emily, then just as quickly watched her shake it off.
"Jayje, I can't sit at home and do nothing. Just take me to the precinct. I'll just wait until they're ready for me."
As JJ's phone buzzed with a text from Hotch, a new idea popped into her head. "Let's compromise. It sounds like we'll be pulling an all-nighter, so if you want to hang around at the BAU we can go to the station tomorrow morning."
"Tomorrow morning?"
Showing Emily her watch, JJ replied, "Em, it's almost eight PM. We'll stop and get some food on the way back."
"I'm not hungry." Her head was turned out the window, and JJ could not see her expression.
"Em, you haven't eaten since breakfast."
"I didn't eat breakfast," She murmured without thinking. Catching JJ's stunned and gently admonishing gaze, she consented. "Fine. We can stop at a drive through."
Half an hour later, JJ walked into the bullpen sipping on a large cup of coffee. The team was gathered in the middle of the desks, reading through files and trading off interesting leads. "Emily?" Morgan inquired curiously when he saw her walk in.
"With Pen." JJ responded easily, slinging her briefcase down at her desk. "She's going to stay here over night until she can go in to talk to the police tomorrow morning." Seeing Rossi's raised eyebrows, she quickly defended her decision. "It was either that or going to the station right now. She refused to go home, and honestly I wouldn't have let her be by herself."
They all nodded in understanding and returned to their work as Hotch handed JJ a stack of files. She opened up the cold and completely unappetizing sandwich she had grabbed at the store, ignoring its off-putting paleness of it in favor of the satisfaction is would provide. Silence fell over the bullpen, punctuated only by footsteps receding in the distance as all of the other FBI agents who had stayed late were finally going home, leaving the team alone in the center of the room.
An hour later, as JJ swallowed the last dregs of her coffee, she caught Morgan's eye as it strayed from the page in front of him. She grimaced sympathetically and began to look down again, but Morgan's relentless gaze held something that made her look up again. "What?" The word fell like a drumbeat in the room, causing everyone else to startle from their trances.
Morgan slowly set his file down and looked around at the curious glances. "Was the ME positive that is was an overdose?"
Hotch nodded, passing Morgan a single sheet of paper. "They faxed this over fifteen minutes ago. As far as they can tell, the dose was self-inflicted. If he didn't have any experience with drugs, it could have been accidental."
"But why would he use the drugs in the first place?" JJ asked. Their current case forgotten, the team gradually started to dig into their new case. "Emily was adamant that he would never…"
"She also said that he seemed different than normal, and obviously it was bad enough that Emily noticed something." Morgan countered. "We can't just ignore his erratic behavior."
"We don't need to do anything." Hotch interrupted, a sense of finality in his tone. "We already have our case; this one is not our jurisdiction. It's not our job to investigate Cooley's death, especially if it is ruled to be a suicide."
"It's Mathew Benton all over again." Rossi said wryly. "Metro was sure it was a heart attack, when really it was an exorcism."
"This is different." Reid said quietly. "We have evidence that he engaged in rash and risky behavior…and doing heroin for the first time fits that pattern."
"There was no pattern." Emily's voice cut like raw diamond through the tired atmosphere. She stood in the back where she had just come from Garcia's office, eyes red and tired. She seemed to be moving through molasses as she came towards them accusingly. "This was not a suicide."
Hotch nodded patiently. "Emily, I understand that this can be hard to come to terms with, but all of the evidence-"
"It's shit." She interrupted loudly, the words echoing in the ceiling. "The evidence says nothing. I know John. I've known him since he was a kid. Profile him, I dare you. There is nothing to suggest that he would do something like that."
"Emily, listen." JJ pleaded, laying her hands on Emily's arm.
As soon as the hands made contact, though, Emily shoved her back, sending her wildly into her desk with a clatter. "Get off me!" With a look of complete and utter rage, she stood before the stunned team. "If you're not going to listen to me, I'm just going to have to prove it on my own." She turned and stalked away, letting the doors close noiselessly behind her.
"JJ, are you sure you're alright?" Reid asked, examining her hand. She had sprained her wrist as she broke her fall, and now Rossi and Garcia were gathered around her, watching the doctor at work. Hotch was in his office, talking urgently to someone on the phone.
"I promise, I'm fine." She smoothed her hair with her free hand and checked her cell phone again. "I'm more worried about Emily. Where is she even going at this time of night?"
"Home." Rossi said comfortingly. "She's probably exhausted. Let her be for the night."
Garcia wrapped her arms around JJ from behind, and JJ half-heartedly returned the embrace. "Sugar, there's nothing you can do tonight. And…we have another case." JJ nodded, holding Garcia for a second more before letting her go.
"Do you have anything new, Garcia?" Hotch asked, walking up behind the group.
"I have a call history between one of our victims and an unknown number that wasn't registered to any of her acquaintances…I'll run it down and see if I can triangulate a location." Her fingers were already dancing across the surface of the tablet in her arms as if they were choreographed.
"Let me know when you've got any information." Hotch replied quickly. "JJ, what did you get from the first victim's sister?" And just like that, the team was off to the races, trading names and theories like they were bartering in a street-side market. The only sign that anything had changed was the occasional glance thrown at Emily's empty desk, or a surreptitious checking of the phone. Finally, when the hands on the clock hit two AM, Hotch set down the last file and sent them team all to their homes.