Warning: some language.
Chapter Three
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'Tell him the boy wasn't mine.'
The words resonated in David Rossi's head, clanging like a tremendous bell and vibrating his psyche to the point of breaking. Caught up in the melodrama currently eroding his young friend's life right before their very eyes, Rossi had almost forgotten under what pretext he himself had been called there. But now the implication of William Reid's words hit him like a bullet to the brain: sharp, devastating, and stunningly out of the blue.
His first reaction was rage.
Leaping to his feet, he slammed his fist against the table, causing both Reids and Ms. Hughes to flinch. "You are," he said to Ms. Hughes.
"I beg your pardon?"
" 'You are.' You asked me yesterday, 'I take it then that you are the father of her son,' Not 'You were.' "
"I - "
"WHY AM I HERE?" Rossi demanded.
"Mr. Rossi, I'm getting to - "
"Save it! Tell me directly: why am I here, Reid?" Out of the corner of his eye, Rossi could see Spencer looking at him with dazed confusion, thinking he was speaking to him, but it was the older Reid David wanted answers from. "You've said only one goddamned thing that makes any sense today," he shouted, holding up a finger, "and that was that you should have told your son all of this in private. So I'll ask again, why am I here? What possible connection do I have to all of this?"
William Reid met his gaze. "I think you've already guessed that, Mr. Rossi."
"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Dave roared and was nearly half way around the table before Aaron managed to grab him by the arm and drag him back towards his seat. "How DARE you use my son's death in this farce, this...whatever the hell this is!"
"Your son?" Spencer asked, looking from Rossi to Hotch to his father. Enraged, Rossi nearly lashed out at him as well, irrationally believing he must have something to do with it. Logic thankfully overrode his fury before he could say anything he would regret, but it was a close thing.
"Was he RIGHT?" Dave bellowed, still struggling against Aaron's hold on him. "Is this revenge for five years ago? What's the matter, you couldn't fool Agent Morgan into coming down here too? Maybe find some way to use his dead father against him?"
"What's going on?" Spencer asked the room at large. "What's Rossi talking about? What son?" He turned to glare accusingly at his father. "And exactly what hoax did you use to get him here?"
"Gentlemen, if you would please calm yourselves," Ms. Hughes requested, holding up both hands in a placating fashion. "All will be explained."
"Don't give me that!" Rossi snapped, pointing a finger at her. "I know where you're trying to go with this and I'm not going to buy it!" Hotch yanked him away from the table. "Don't start with me, Aaron. I'm not going to put up with this! What kind of bastard would use the death of someone's child for petty revenge?"
Hotch pulled Rossi to the far corner of the room and stepped deftly between him and the others. "Dave, I think you should listen," he told him softly.
"You can't be serious!"
"Do you trust me as a profiler?"
"What?"
"Do you trust me as a profiler?" Hotch repeated.
"You know I do."
"Do you trust me as a friend?"
"Or course I do. Aaron, where are you going with all this?"
"Then trust me now, Dave: William Reid hasn't shown any signs of lying."
"Aaron - "
"I'm not saying he couldn't be. Hell, he's a lawyer - he's built a career on being persuasive in arguments - but you're... distraught. You have every reason to be, but that doesn't change the fact that the man has yet to display any physical sign of lying."
"I'm not listening to this," Rossi said and tried to move around Hotch, but Aaron stepped in front of him again, blocking his way.
"Dave, he's made eye contact the whole time. His body language is open, no contracting or pulling himself inwards to take up less physical space. His hands have been still and not unconsciously touching his face or throat. His emotional expressions have been normal and matched his verbal statements, and he's made no overt move to place objects between us and himself. None of those things are proof, no, but it does make me think we should hear him out."
"Like Hell!"
"Dave - just listen to the man's story. If it's a lie, let him hang himself."
"No, Aaron! I can't sit there calmly while they warp my son's memory and my grief for whatever the hell con they've got going."
Hotch looked at him. "And if it's true?"
"Aaron, seriously? You're seriously telling me you're falling for this crap?"
"Dave, we don't even technically know what 'this crap' is yet."
"C'mon, Aaron - "
"I know it looks like, Dave, but for all we know, William Reid's only going to tell us the abduction happened at the same hospital, perhaps due to general negligence. The same - though not directly connected - negligence that might have lead to James's death."
"You don't really believe that."
"Maybe not, but think: if Reid is only doing this to hurt his son, then why the professions of love? Surely it would be worse to tell Spencer he was adopted and then rub salt in the wound by telling him that's why he deserted him and his mother, thereby confirming all of Reid's fears that he wasn't a good enough son. Any lawyer would know enough psychology to understand Reid's likely state of mind and use it against him, so why is William Reid expressing remorse?"
"I don't know. What, am I supposed to guess at the mental workings of a man who'd perpetuate a sick joke like this?"
"You do it every day as a profiler."
"This is different," Dave hissed. "And you know it! This is personal!"
"Which is why I'm asking you to trust my judgement on this. Dave, right now you're not only angry, you're frightened and you're not thinking straight."
"Frightened?"
"Frightened of reliving the pain of James's death. Of dwelling on that time in your life. Maybe even of hope."
"Frightened. Of hope."
" 'Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.' "*
"Aaron, you know I love you, but you're talking out of your ass and you're beginning to piss me off."
"Hope is a double-edged sword, Dave. Because if what you hope for doesn't end up being true, then it can crush you even more."
Rossi digested Aaron's words for some moments, then nodded in Spencer's direction. "And if this...story... turns out to be true, what's it going to do to the kid? And the team, for that matter?"
Hotch sighed and glanced back at his younger colleague, who was staring at them with brow furrowed and mind obviously going a mile a minute. "I don't know," he confessed. "But it's better to build on truth than on ignorance."
Rossi nodded and reluctantly followed Hotch back to the table.
"William," Ms. Hughes said softly, "if you would continue..."
The elder Reid dipped his head in acknowledgement and began his tale once again. "As I said, the letter I received purported that Spencer was not Janine Rutherford's son.
"Truthfully, I didn't know what to make of it. I travelled to Phoenix in order to ensure the message had actually been from Janine in the first place. As far as I could ascertain, it was. Apart from that, however, I had no way of knowing whether it was true or just the delirious ravings of a woman in stage 4 cancer. Even if DNA tests had been more readily available at the time, Janine had been cremated and the hospital would not have given me any access to her records.
"But maybe that's just an excuse. For a year I did nothing. I most certainly didn't tell Diana. And I want to make this perfectly clear: she never knew anything about this. If she remembers at all that Spencer is adopted, she still thinks he's Janine's child. Her illness... Let me be blunt: if I'd told her, I wouldn't have just devastated her emotionally, I could have destroyed her mentally as well.
"And I wanted Spencer. I wanted my family. Enough to say to Hell with some other couple's potential pain - he was ours! So for a year I spent every waking moment trying to push the possibilities to the back of my mind." William Reid paused and took a deep breath. Rossi saw the man clench his fists, digging his nails into his palms. When the elder Reid began again, tears were visibly glistening at the corner of his eyes. Dave was surprised when the man then turned to face him directly.
"But I knew, you see," he said. "I knew what it was like to lose a son, to wait all those months in anticipation, only to see him slip away after three short days, leaving a bleeding hole in your chest. I knew what it was like to see the woman you love so desperately shatter into a thousand pieces and be completely goddamn helpless to stop it.
"And so the guilt began to eat at me. It got to the point where I couldn't even look at my son without a war raging inside me. I wanted to clutch him to me and never let go, but at the same time, I saw another grieving family every time I looked into his face. Another family who was grieving because of me. One day I woke up and the first thought that popped into my head was, 'What if someone was keeping Christopher from us?'
"That was the day I left."
William Reid rose and walked over to stand in front of the window. Staring out at the city, he went on. "I won't claim it was just that. I've never been a strong man; I can admit it. Diana's illness, Riley Jenkins - it all played a part. But it was the guilt that finally drove me away.
"It's ironic, though. I thought I could alleviate some of that guilt, but instead I merely switched it for the guilt of knowing that what I was doing would eventually rip my family apart. What would happen to Diana? Taking Spencer from her, causing her to lose a second child, might have pushed her over the edge. And what about Spencer? We were the only parents he knew. What would happen to him if he was pulled away from us to live with what to him would be complete strangers?" William's voice was suddenly hoarse. "I nearly gave up so many, many times. I purposely hired a detective I knew wasn't up to the job. When he came back with nothing, I almost convinced myself I'd done enough and went home. Almost.
"Remorse is a powerful thing, though, isn't it. When I thought of going home, I worried that if I gave up without really trying to find the truth, eventually it would poison our family, breaking us just as irrevocably as the truth in the end. So I stayed away and kept searching. And I never returned home because I knew I would give up if I ever saw the faces of my wife and son even one more time."
William Reid sighed and sat back down at the table. "This is where Mr. Falco comes in," he said, gesturing to the thick-shouldered man who had to this point been silent. "He wasn't the first detective I hired, or even the second, but he's the one who finally tracked down the truth after all these years."
Mr. Falco nodded to the three profilers. "It was a long case, gentlemen. I myself started on it nearly four years ago, but there was little to build on. Firstly, we were severely hampered by the fact that the life story Miss Rutherford had given to Mr. Reid turned out to be a complete fabrication. Her real name, her family, even what state she was from - all fantasy. So we were basically working with nothing. Add to that there being far fewer national databases available when my predecessors started their search... and well, you get the picture. In any case, I won't bore you with the details of how we eventually tracked her down.
"The story is this: Janine Rutherford was actually Elizabeth Lindsey. She was originally from Manhattan, but had been living in Boston when she became involved with one Tom O'Shea, son of Dermot O'Shea."
"Wasn't he one of Ryan Mulroney's enforcers?" Hotch asked, recognizing the name of one of Boston's prominent crime families.
"The same," Falco confirmed. "Long story short, Tom O'Shea was roughing Janine - or Elizabeth - up pretty badly. She tried taking off different times, but the O'Sheas had a long reach. Finally she managed it, sneaking away right from the hospital where he'd put her after busting up her ribs one time too many. From what we can tell, she wandered from place to place for the next fourteen months, never staying anywhere long and picking up a variety of false identities as she went. Then she got a job at Mr. Reid's law firm. It was in Vegas that she apparently met the father of her child. We've never been able to definitively identify him, but it looks like he was out of the picture by the time she discovered she was pregnant. She might have moved on after that if the Reids' offer to take the child gave her an opportunity she wasn't expecting."
Here Mr. Falco opened the file that was sitting in front of him. "What she would have done had the child lived, I can't tell you. What I can say though, is that at the start of her eighth month, something must have made her suspect something was wrong and she travelled to Reno for tests. Unfortunately, the child had died in utero." With this, Falco passed a copy of Janine Rutherford's medical exam to Hotchner, who looked it over before passing it to Rossi. He then passed it on to Spencer, but the younger man waved it off, refusing to look.
"She remained in Vegas one more week. Possibly she might have stayed and told the Reids all, but then Tom O'Shea showed up at her old apartment. Her roommate told the police a man fitting his description had been nosing around, asking for "Elizabeth", a week before the Reids filed a missing persons report on Janine.
"Once we had the name Elizabeth Lindsey, we were able to track her family to Michigan, but then the trail ran cold again. Her father had died some years before and her mother had moved. Eventually though, we managed to catch up to the mother in Long Island." Falco sorted through the file, removed a photograph and pushed it across the table to Rossi. "Do you recognize this woman, Mr. Rossi?"
Rossi studied the picture, a sick feeling growing in his stomach. "She looks familiar, but I can't place her." You can, you liar, a little voice at the back of his mind said. She was there, with Father Robinson and Doctor Spinelli when...
He pushed the picture back roughly. "No. I don't recognize her."
"Her name was - is - Brenda Fichman, but it had been Brenda Lindsey. She was Elizabeth's mother. She hadn't seen her daughter in seven years - there had been some kind of falling out between them. She likely never mentioned her mother to O'Shea, which is why - along with her mother's new name - I think Elizabeth felt it was safe to run to her when faced with having to give birth to a dead child while being hunted by a sociopath.
"Brenda arranged for her daughter to be admitted onto the ward under yet another false name - Amanda Buckley - so that no one would make the connection, and then we believe she switched her daughter's dead child for yours after hearing that an eager young couple had so wanted a child."
"But that doesn't make any sense," Hotch put in. "She couldn't have passed off a child who had been dead in the womb for a month as one that supposedly died overnight in the nursery."
"We never saw James after they said he was dead," Dave answered numbly. "That's how it was back then, especially at an old-fashioned Catholic Hospital. The nuns came and told us it was for the best, that we should remember James as he had been, not cold and... "
The doctor, Father Robinson, Christ even his own mother, they'd all said the same. Still in bed, Carolyn was shrieking hysterically onto her mother's shoulder while the woman stroked her hair. His mother was crying against his chest, while he shook with sobs, weeping openly for the first time in his adult life, and his father held the both of them. And all the while everyone was keeping him from his son just when James needed him the most!
"It's for the best, Davy."
"You don't want to remember him like that, David."
"Please listen to them, Mr. Rossi."
That bitch had stood there with his mother and father and a priest of God and told him not to see his own son! But instead of grief and compassion, it had been for the sole purpose of taking his child!
No, it couldn't be true. He looked at Reid, who was as still and rigid as if carved out of marble. Rossi didn't see James, as Carolyn had always called him. He didn't see "Jimmy", the growing boy he'd fantasized about through the years. He only saw Spencer Reid.
That must be the truth. What else could it be? That Spencer was really James? Ridiculous!
Because that would mean he had failed his son.
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* Freidrich Nietzche
Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for their reviews. I believe I responded to most of you, but I'd like to thank "S", "OhWell1960" and "cl" for your responses.
