"Boom Boom Pow" is by the Black-Eyed Peas, and I have just done something I swore I'd never do: I used the title of a song I hated as the title of a chapter I love. Still, I wouldn't have picked it if it weren't so absolutely fitting. A bomb goes off. Hence the "BOOM! BOOM! KA-POW!" stuff.
Chapter VIII: Boom Boom Pow
"It's been an hour. Why has Slessman's car not returned?" asked Gideon agitatedly.
"We have to consider the possibility that this was just a ploy to gain two hostages at once. Varda could already be dead, and now they're just doing whatever they can to get another hostage," said Hotch, face stoic as ever.
"It isn't," Callia said. "I heard the voice on the other end. I'm not a profiler, but I'm not an idiot either. I know that Varda-"
The four agents, Elle, Morgan, Gideon, and Hotch, and two pretend agents, Callia and Henry, jumped fifty feet in the air as a car exploded as it turned the corner to them. Once the debris and smoke was mostly cleared away, they could see Slessman, groaning, bleeding, and crawling toward them.
Callia reached him first. "Where's Varda?" she screamed in his face. Hotch and Morgan had to both physically restrain her from killing Slessman then and there, while Gideon tried to staunch the bleeding. Elle pulled out a phone to dial 911, and Henry threw himself at the remains of the car to try to find Varda. But it was no use.
There was no trace of her anywhere.
"There was no trace of a bomb," said Elle. "I couldn't find any trace of anything that didn't belong to a car."
"There is a chance that Slessman just turned the corner wrong," Henry said.
"So do we operate under the assumption that Varda is dead?" Morgan asked, facing Hotch. Gideon was so quiet, nobody wanted to look at him, or Callia.
Hotch was so busy pondering the forces that could make a mother feel more for a stranger than for her own child, he took a while before answering. "Serial-killing teams aren't that rare," he said. "There's usually a submissive and a dominant personality."
"Slessman would be the submissive," Henry was quick to point out.
"The other guy, he's like the schoolyard bully recruiting a good underling. He'll be protective of Richard and make him feel like he owes him," said Callia.
"We need to identify the other guy, and fast," Lauren said, upset. "I don't want anyone else to die."
Callia sat down in front of Henry. "I just paid my friend Eddie a little visit, and I want to give you something." She handed over a halberd, an orb, an amethyst amulet, a sword, a wand, and a faceted black ball. "Now, you are in charge of water."
Henry looked at the things in his hand. "You can't possibly be serious." He started to hand the amulet and the ball back, but Callia closed her fist over his.
"Look, you have a connection to Varda that no one else here has. If I have to grant you more power to figure out where she is, so be it, I'll do that," Callia explained. "Sayen used her abilities to bring Ken back to life. We don't even know if Varda's dead yet."
Henry didn't ask, "What if she is?" He knew that he would have a harder time dealing with it than anyone else. He closed his eyes and barely felt them sink into his own skin.
"Now, tell me where Varda is," Callia said.
Morgan lay on Slessman's bed and looked around the head of the bed. Often, the things that are closest within reach of the bed are the things that help the person go to sleep. In Slessman's case, it seemed to be music—CDs to be exact. Heavy metal music. Morgan sighed. This was proving impossible. He hadn't learned anything except why Slessman had trouble sleeping. Then he noticed the CDs on the shelf nearby. He opened a few of the more worn-looking ones and smiled.
"Hey!" he called to Emily and Yadid outside the room. "I need you to look at all of these and tell me which one looks more used."
Callia was very displeased. "Damn Sayen," she would've said, just so she could be angry at the tesseracts that prevented Henry from getting a reading on where Varda was. But Sayen could be dead, and Callia knew better than to insult her sister/daughter when she wasn't around. It would be almost like lying. She shook the distressing thoughts out of her head and focused on the task at hand—giving Mrs. Slessman a cup of hot tea so she would like them more and give more information.
"Did your son have any special friends?" asked Hotch.
"There was a man," said Mrs. Slessman after a while. "His name was Charlie." She took a sip. Callia and Hotch were getting uncomfortable, sitting so close to each other with nothing to do.
"Does Charlie have a last name?" Callia asked.
"Um, Linder, I think," Mrs. Slessman said slowly.
Further away, Lauren looked at a pile of papers she had gathered on Slessman for a Charles Linder. When she found it, she nudged Andres with her shoulder. "Look!" she hissed. "Slessman's cellmate at prison!"
Andres looked closely at it. "Cascadia Prison. So Slessman does have a criminal record." He looked very uncomfortable and kept rubbing his arms. This didn't escape Lauren's notice.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I'm a man of comedy, not murder. Just being in this building, it makes me nauseous. I don't know how you can stomach it," Andres frowned. "I mean, these are men who kidnap girls and kill them. Girls who look like Emily, like you."
Lauren looked away for a moment, then swallowed. "I guess I never really thought about it in death terms."
"Well, can we get out of here, then?" Andres asked.
Lauren looked at him. "Just because we're leaving doesn't mean that death won't happen to us."
Andres laughed. "Oh, I'd like to see death try to touch you."
Lauren smiled and kissed him. "We'll leave as soon as I tell that FBI guy what I found."
"What are you doing?" Callia asked Henry as she sank into a chair. Taking care of four lovesick people at a restaurant was harder that profiling, it felt, so she just left them alone in the restaurant.
"I'm waiting for Linder's address to be faxed over," Henry said.
Callia nodded, forgetting completely about the boy as Hotch walked past. Flagging the older man, he asked, "Does the FBI Director's Office want a field assessment of Gideon?"
Hotch looked surprised again. "You could see that, huh? Well, don't worry, everything is okay."
"Hey," Henry waved the fax in the air. "This thing says your friend Charlie is dead." Callia groaned.
Henry was quiet for a second before saying, "You know, if Varda were here, she'd say, 'The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you will see.'"
"Winston Churchill," Callia smiled softly and walked away. She needed to go with Gideon to the prison.
"Is there anyone we can interview about Slessman?" asked Callia as she joined Gideon.
"The guard who worked Slessman's block was named Timothy Vogel. You might want to try him," said the warden. "He's down that way," he pointed with his baton. The moment she saw him, Callia froze.
"What?" Gideon asked, a little worried.
"The day before she disappeared, Varda said she was breaking up with someone named Timothy Vogel," Callia whispered in horror.
"Don't tell him that," Gideon said. "Don't give him any hint that we're looking for him, or he'll bolt."
Callia nodded, smiling her widest as she gave Vogel her hand to shake.
"Why are you pacing?" Yadid asked Hotch.
"Callia's in the same prison as Slessman. Prisoners tend to be violent. I'm worried she might not come back in one piece."
Yadid nodded. "Yeah, I know how you feel."
Hotch looked at him. "Then how are you so calm?"
Yadid stared at him a little surprised. "You're the FBI agent. You don't know how to deal with your feelings?"
"It'd help if I knew what I was feeling."
"Well, I don't like your job. You deal with violence every day, and I don't want that world to touch Emily."
"That world is everywhere," Hotch knitted his brows together. "I wish it weren't, but it is," he thought.
Yadid smirked. "For someone who can tell what other people are thinking by looking at their face, you aren't very good at hiding yours."
"The double chocolate chip cookies are done," Emily said, poking her head in. With one last look at Hotch, Yadid kissed Emily and they left together. Hotch stared at the shadowy window.
Callia wasn't feeling good out there, he could tell.
"Are you lost?" Vogel's voice dripped sympathy. The two women and man could feel the shallowness of it. "I can walk you guys out of here." He unlocked a door for them.
"What can you tell us about Charles Linder?" Callia asked.
"Linder?" Vogel was taken aback, but covered it well. "Oh, he was scum. He caused a lot of trouble in prison. I mean, half my job is protecting the inmates from each other, but he was something else."
"Did you protect him?" asked Gideon.
"A puny little white guy, especially in a prison like this?" Vogel looked at him like Gideon had just asked if one and one made three.
"Linder was 6' 4". Are you talking about Slessman?" asked Callia.
"I guess so," Vogel said. He opened the door and Callia dashed out, mouth wide open and gasping.
"What's wrong?" asked Gideon, following her out.
"There was a pink pleather rose on Varda's keychain," Callia chewed her tongue. "It was Varda's favorite." She pulled out her phone and dialed Hotch.
Hotch hung up, glad for the extra information, and turned toward Elle. "I need you to get a box with Vogel's name on the outside. I don't care what you put in the box. You can get a hundred advertisements for Fred's Chicken Coop for all I care. I just need it for when I interrogate Slessman," he told Elle, who nodded and left.
Henry looked at the piles of empty CD cases around him, spinning a disc on his finger. When he looked at the CD, a light bulb went off and he grabbed a paper clip.
"We've been through all the CD cases, but we've missed the obvious," he said, using the paper clip to pull out another CD.
Morgan chuckled. "You're amazing."
"Thank you," said Henry. "It's Metallica," he said, looking at the CD.
"All right, I'm an insomniac who listens to Metallica to go to sleep at night. What song could possibly speak to me?"
Henry looked at the CD. "Would you believe me if I told you that Callia loves metal?" Seeing Morgan's best, "Get to the point," look, Henry cleared his throat and said, "Try 'Enter Sandman.'"
"Should we go back outside?" Emily asked Bela.
Bela smiled thinly at her. "I prefer to deal with monsters."
Emily looked down. "I liked your show because all the monsters were made up. But people don't need to make up monsters. There are real monsters. I want to fight the real monsters with them."
"Exactly," Lauren said. "So why leave? You're too emotional to—"
Emily looked down. "You, and your awesome knowledge, can't get you hope." She stood up. "I'm getting edgy in here while they're out there."
My friend, Officer Tyler Mendez, says that knowledge and happiness are virtually exclusive. He's a homicide detective, so I know this stuff. I work at a coroner's office, so I think I know what he means.
In the next chapter of Tesseraction, someone says a very funny line in a not-so-funny situation.
"I know all about you, Tim. You're at the gym five days a week, you drive a flashy car, you stink of cologne, and you can't get it up."
Read and Review! Or at least stay tuned.