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Sid hummed as water drummed along the metal edges of the autopsy table. The body, brought in by Hawkes, had told him all that it could. He washed the body, taking care to keep the pounding water from disturbing the newly stitched Y incision.
He carefully cataloged the trace taken from the body as he made his official record. His eyes burned from lack of sleep and his stomach growled, but he couldn't stop even to eat. The life of little Lucy Messer was too important to all of them.
"Hey Sid…" Hawkes said. He looked up to see Hawkes with a very tall, thin man with messy wavy brown hair and the oldest eyes he'd ever seen in a face so young. "This is SSA Dr. Spencer Reid."
Hawkes turned back to the young man. "This is our ME, Dr. Sidney Hammerbeck."
"That's quite a title," Sid said. "You'll forgive me if I don't shake hands." He addressed the young agent.
"No problem," said the young man as his eyes roamed over the body. "He was in the water less than a day." Reid continued.
Sid felt his eyebrows go into his forehead. "Yes, that's right," Sid, agreed. "The lack of washer woman's skin indicates that he spent little time in the water."
"What about cause of death Sid?" Hawkes asked as he carefully looked over the autopsied body.
"You were right… He drowned about ten days ago. He had water in his lungs. I have to confirm it by checking the diatoms in his blood, but I think it's safe to say that he drowned."
"Come on Sid, I know you have something better than that for us." Hawkes said with a little smile.
"Actually," Sid began again as he snapped his glasses together and bent over to point out some scratches and bruising on the man's arms.
"You're thinking he may have committed suicide." Reid interrupted, going red when Sid looked up at him.
"How do you know that?" Sid asked, wondering how the kid could know something, it had taken him, well longer than he cared to admit, to figure out.
"See the scraping and bruising," Reid pointed out with his gloved finger. "They're post mortem, meaning that he didn't struggle with a killer. He went into the water of his own free will or he fell in. Also, I saw the pants he was wearing before and after they were removed for processing. There's a pattern in the denim that indicates someone used them as a flotation device."
Sid stared at the kid. He'd noticed the odd pattern on the pants, but he wouldn't have guessed that someone had taken them off and then used them as a flotation device.
"So that's how Shane Casey got out of that water. I wondered if he were some kind of supernatural being. There are reports, especially some of the accounts in the old Salem witch trials of the dead rising and walking among the townspeople." Sid added thoughtfully.
"Actually, we just finished studying Wicca in my philosophy course at UVA." Reid said excitedly. "It's a highly misunderstood religion. Witches are forbidden to harm anyone. They live by a code, "and it harms none, do what ye will." They wouldn't raise the dead because that would harm the person who was dead. It's more likely that the effect brought on by certain funguses that grew in abundance in the area were responsible for hallucinations."
"True enough," Sid said, "But you have to remember that in Salem -"
"Sid…" Hawkes interrupted. "Now's not the time for history lessons and speculation."
"Sorry," Reid said going a little pink in the cheeks. "I do that a lot, just ask my team."
"Anyway," Sid went on. "How did you know that his clothes were used as a flotation device?"
"I noticed that his jeans were put back on inside out."
Hawkes stared at Reid. "You're right, I didn't think too much about it. I guess we were all distracted by that odd clue."
"I have an eidetic memory." Reid said. "I can't forget something even if I get distracted." He tapped a finger against his forehead.
"Are you some kind of a genius?" Sid asked, genuinely curious.
"Sid!"
"Sorry," he removed his glasses and handed a Petri dish off to Hawkes. "I already sent up a couple of samples to trace. It looked like ordinary dust and dirt, but you never can tell. This is something different."
Hawkes looked down at the little piece of dirty white fluff. "It looks like a feather."
"Yeah… that's what I thought too.
"Any thoughts," Hawkes showed it to Reid.
"No, it's too crumpled," Reid admitted.
"I'll get it up to Stella."
"I fingerprinted him for you as he came in without ID. I've already sent the ten cards up to Mac." Sid said.
He gave them a second plastic envelope. "I also found splinter of wood."
Hawkes looked at it and passed it to Reid. "It looks like driftwood, but we'll have to test if first," he said.
"I agree," Hawkes said. "Let's get this up to the lab. Thanks Sid," Hawkes said, turning for the elevators.
Sid watched him and the young Dr. Reid leave. The young agent turned back and gave a little wave that made him smile. It was nice to have someone else around that could appreciate his little detours into useless trivia.
00000
Mac looked up as Hawkes and Dr. Reid entered the print lab together. "Dr. Reid here thinks our John Doe committed suicide or fell into the ocean."
Mac's eyebrows went into his forehead. "That's a new one. We know Casey left the body and the clue for us. Why not kill someone?" He asked.
"What if when he fell into the water he encountered the body, stripped him of his clothes and used them to get to shore. Then he decided to use the body as a means to let us know he's back."
"That's a lot of trouble to go to just to plant a clue." Mac said.
Reid shrugged, "It doesn't fit his profile I know, but anything he does is just a means to an end. First, it was to punish those he felt were responsible for his brother's death and now it's all about torturing Danny Messer."
"Then the game's changed," Mac, said as he scanned in the ten card of their John Doe. "Let's see if we got a match in AFIS." He hit some keys on the computer and they watched as the computers shuffled through possible matches for long minutes. The computer finally beeped that it was a bust on identification.
"Well, that just means he's never been in the system." Reid observed as Mac entered more commands into his computer terminal.
"We'll check all available databases that have fingerprints on file."
"I'll ask Garcia to use her facial recognition program. She can find him." Reid said.
"Good," Hawkes said. "I'll get started on this trace."
00000
Stella frowned over the results from her computer. She wasn't getting anything helpful. The samples sent up from Sid only confirmed that the body had been in the dusty bar and on the sand at the lighthouse in Amagansett. It didn't tell them anything else. She pulled off her gloves and looked at the clock. It was closing in on two pm and as far as she knew, none of them had eaten in hours. She decided to go get food orders. Maybe if they all sat down for a few minutes…
0000
"Reid," Hotch called to the young agent who stooped over a map with a marker. "Hey Reid," He said again as a smile threatened to ruin his reputation as a hard ass. "You better move that because Detective Bonasera's coming in here with a meal. She doesn't strike me as someone to mess with," Hotch said.
Reid finally looked up. "Oh, ah okay," He sighed throwing down his marker. "I've been trying to put together a geographical profile, but I'm not getting anywhere. I think knowing who were after isn't helping. Does that sound odd?" He asked his boss.
"No," Hotch said, "it doesn't sound odd. We don't accept suspect list during cases so that our judgment isn't clouded by specifics. "We've only had one other case that was remotely like this one." Hotch reminded him.
"Yeah…" Reid thought back to Fibonacci sequences and a man that wanted to torture Rossi because of his brother's death. Suddenly, some of the parallels were a bit frightening.
"Shane Casey has a thing for numbers too," Hotch said. "His brother wasn't a serial killer, but he was a murderer. The similarities are a bit off-putting," he admitted. He suddenly drew up to his full height. "Don't let Henry Grace, cloud your judgment." He laid a fatherly hand on Reid's shoulder. "Now, let's get this cleared away."
00000
Lindsey opened the pizza box from Ray's while Danny pulled down paper plates and cups from the top shelf of the cabinet. She jumped, nearly dropping a slice when something crashed down from the second shelf.
"Sorry babe," Danny said as he stooped to pick up Lucy's red sippy cup.
He turned it over in his hands, trying to feel the ghost of warmth from her little fingers in the hard plastic. His shoulders slumped as tears formed in Lindsey's eyes. "Every time I think I'm gonna be okay, I see somethin that just throws me." He said.
"It's okay," She put her arms around him and tugged him close. "I make it through five minutes thinking that all of this will be okay, and then I remember everything that happened that day and I feel like I'm going to die."
"I'm sorry I tried so hard to shut you out." He whispered into her hair as her hands stroked his back.
"You better be," she chided him softly. "I remember when you brought that home." She pulled the cup out of his hands. "She was three weeks old."
Danny laughed, "Okay, so I was a little impatient for her to finish with your breasts." He said wiggling his eyebrows at her.
She shoved him away from her. "That's so…"
"So what?" Danny said crossing his arms over his chest.
"It's so chauvinistic." She finished.
"What can I say? I'm old fashioned." He said putting the cup back up on the shelf.
"Whatever," she grabbed a slice of pizza and threw it on one of the plates. "Just for that, you can get your own beer."
"That's a terrible way to treat a slice of Ray's pizza," he said with reverence.
"Give me a break Messer." She picked up the box, her plate and their cups. "Let's go sit down and relax for a minute."
He followed her into the living area and their table. "I don't know if I can Montana. What if she's cold, or hungry? Casey's little clue said she's in Cuba. I just can't -" He put down his plate and slammed a fist down on the table. "I wish…"
"It's okay," She put her load down on the table and hugged him tight. "No more regrets, let's just eat and then we'll talk about that night and see if we can think of anything new."
"How can I say no to Ray's?" He asked.
00000
She unlocked the door to Sarah's room. Her little girl stood up in her crib screaming out for her mother. "I'm here baby. No one's ever going to take you away from me again."
"Mama," Lucy cried shaking her head as though she were saying no to the notion that this woman could be her mother. "Dada," she cried again.
"It's time for us to have lunch," the woman cooed to her Sarah. "You slept for so long. You need to have something to eat."
Lucy pushed her away when the woman reached in to take her out of her crib. The woman nearly reached out to slap her Sarah, but she held back just in time. After all, her little girl had been gone too long, she didn't remember her mother. She had to be patient.
"We'll have some chocolate pudding for dessert. Won't that be nice?" She succeeded in picking up Lucy in her arms. "We'll play with all your toys and you'll be happy." She said through tears she didn't feel on her cheeks.
"Mama…" Lucy cried.
"Mama's here," The woman said. "I promise one day you'll remember."
She took the baby out of the room and down the hall to a kitchen full of midday sun and the smell of roses on the windowsill.
