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A/n here's the next chapter my friends... Enjoy
Hotch, Reid and Detective Markowitz pulled into the parking lot at Columbia Mental Health. The large, grey block building was both impressive, and intimidating. It reminded Reid of his old high school in Las Vegas. It had the same, small, evenly spaced windows and large metal doors at the very center of the front of the building. He shivered as goose bumps jumped out on his arms. The sky was blue, but white clouds lined with grey were gathering overhead.
They exited the truck and Reid pulled off his sunglasses. The wind was picking up and he noticed that all of them pulled their jackets tighter. It looked like there was going to be more rain after just a few days of sunshine.
The lobby of the hospital was functional and very depressing. The desk was old, wooden and pitted with age. The nurse was behind it was clad in a white uniform. Her dark hair was pulled up tightly under her matching white cap. She looked up from her computer, the most modern looking thing in the room, and addressed Hotch.
"Can I help you?" Her tone said there would be no nonsense tolerated.
Hotch withdrew his badge. "My name is Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit. This is Dr. Spencer Reid and Detective Rose Markowitz of the Washington DC Police. We'd like to see Jonathon Zacharias."
The nurse looked very surprised at this request and Reid wondered if Zacharias ever had visitors.
"I'll have to summon Dr. Charles." She told Hotch. "Please take a seat. He's with a patient and will be with you in a few minutes."
The three of them went to the excruciatingly uncomfortable looking chairs in the waiting area. They were plastic, cream colored, and very hard. The tile floor was grey and scratched with the traffic of the years. There was a metal table with old copies of AMA magazines and back dated copies of Readers Digest in orderly piles. In fact, the piles were so neat and tidy; Reid presumed that the nurse behind the counter would be displeased if he or anyone else touched them in any way.
Det. Markowitz caught him eyeing the magazines and then the desk. She smiled conspiratorially at him. "She does look pretty intimidating. She reminds me of the nurse at the clinic I used to go to as a child. She looks like the type that would disapprove of scrubs and colors in the workplace."
Reid gave her a nervous smile in reply. "Yeah… She's a bit scary." He agreed.
"I imagine she has a tough job." Hotch said but Reid thought there was some agreement in his unit chief's voice.
They chatted to each other about the hospital and its uninviting surroundings. The walls were the same grey as the tile on the floor. It was as though someone had gone to great lengths to make the place morbid and depressing. Reid wondered how anyone was supposed to make progress in dealing with whatever mental disorder they had in this place.
"This sanitarium was built fifty years ago. I don't think the designers cared about making the place live-able," Det. Markowitz said. "I'm surprised no one has updated the décor." She added.
"Actually, most of the state run institutions were built to house the insane and disturbed, not to try and "cure." them. It was felt that they didn't need the so-called comforts of home." Reid said.
"Doesn't sound like a place you'd want to be." Det. Markowitz replied.
Reid was saved from answering by the return of the nurse and a very tall, grey haired man with piercing brown eyes and bushy eyebrows that almost met over his forehead. His face was lined, but his body was lean and toned under the white coat he wore.
"I understand you're here to see Jonathon Zacharias." His voice boomed out to them and the nurse looked like she didn't approve of the noise in her quiet domain, but she didn't dare show it.
"Yes," Hotch stood and walked forward toward the doctor. "We'd like to question him about the disappearance of Katherine Duncan."
The doctor frowned. "I don't think you'll be able to get anything out of him."
"We can get a warrant if that's what you want." Hotch said.
"No… It's not that, I'm just saying that ever since Jonathon was brought, here he's been under supervision and sedation. He's not violent to others, but he has tried multiple times to kill himself."
"What's your diagnosis?" Reid spoke up.
The doctor looked a bit chagrined before answering the young doctor's inquiry. "I don't have one. Mostly he's just terrified and acting like he's feeling very guilty about something. As I said, he's been under medication, most of the time, he doesn't make any sense. For insurance purposes, I gave him the diagnosis of acute anxiety disorder."
"What does he say?" Reid probed.
"He talks about hearing voices, specifically one voice. He says it belongs to her, but he won't tell me her name. He's not schizophrenic in the true sense of the word. The voice he hears doesn't come from inside his head. He claims to hear the voice talking to him from the walls and the ceiling and the floor."
"We'd still like to try and talk to him," Hotch requested.
"I'll take you to his room."
They followed the doctor to the elevator and then up to the top floor. They walked through halls that were the same unrelieved gray tile and grey paint on the walls. There where doors at regular intervals along the hall, and the windows that Reid had noticed from the car, were on the opposite side from the doors. They were painted white and had small rectangular windows in the upper left hand corner.
The end of the hallway had a door like the others. The doctor unlocked it and opened the door. The room was small with padded walls and a small cot made from plastic at one corner of the room. A man - who looked as though he'd once been built like a line backer, but now had gone to seed - sat in one corner. He was facing the corner and mumbling under his breath.
"Johnny… the police and the FBI want to talk to you."
The man rocked back and forth in front of the wall, letting his forehead bang against the padding. "In the walls…" He said softly.
"Johnny… you need to focus." The doctor said. Zacharias ignored the doctor and continued to rock back and forth. "She wants… Into the walls, I have to…"
"Johnny!" The doctor said more firmly.
"Let me talk to him," Reid said as he stepped forward in the room.
"I don't think -"
"He's a great psychologist, let him try." Hotch interrupted.
The doctor shrugged and left the room. The detective and Hotch drew in closer to the patient and the doctor said. "I'm going to leave you alone." Seeing the look on Det. Markowitz's face, he said. "I told you he isn't a danger to anyone, only to himself."
He shut the door and Reid crouched next to Johnny. He had light blond hair that fell over his eyes. He was looking down at the padded floor of his cell and whispering under his breath.
"My name is Spencer Reid."
The man kept rocking back and forth and mumbling, but now it was a bit louder. "She tells me I have to… She says it's my fault… Her voice in the wall, always in the wall, it makes my head hurt."
"Who is she Johnny?" Reid asked the bigger man.
"She says I have to… have to… I don't want to talk… She always talks and talks and talks. Make the pain stop."
"It's okay… I'm just here to help," Reid said in a very soft voice.
"Go away… make the voice go away. I can't stand it. Please make it go away…"
He rocked faster, and faster, and began to keen like a wild and trapped animal. "I don't want to hear her… Make it go away… She won't go away."
Suddenly he opened his eyes and straightened up. He looked at Reid and his eyes were almost black. They stared directly at him and he said in a completely clear voice. "It's my fault!"
"What's your fault?" Reid asked.
"It's my fault. I killed her!"
Chills ran up Reid's spine despite the fact that he believed that he had heard it all in his job. "Who did you kill?"
"I killed her… She talks to me from the walls and tells me that I killed her. She says I have to die. In pace requiescat… In pace requiescat…"
He was shouting and hitting his forehead with his hand. Hotch pulled on Reid's arm and the young man got to his feet. Hotch and the other's left the room just as the doctor and the nurse came into the room. They stayed out of the way and watched the doctor hold Johnny while the nurse injected something into the big mans vein. In no time he was lying on the padded floor looking at the wall.
"I'm sorry… I thought he was calmer today." The doctor apologized. "I'm also sorry you weren't able to question him."
"He confessed to killing someone." Reid said.
"Yes… he's said that before, but we can't get any details out of him about the crime or this woman he thinks talks to him. He just acts like he's terrified all the time."
Hotch thanked the doctor and the group headed back down to the first floor and out of the door. The minute Reid stepped out of the door behind Det. Markowitz, rain began to fall. They hurried through the big drops splattering on the pavement and got into the SUV.
"Sorry that he didn't make any sense," Det. Markowitz said as soon as they were seated and Hotch started the truck.
"I think we found out quite a lot." Reid said.
"Oh yeah…"
"Yeah… I mean we know that he didn't kill Katie. She's alive and well. She touched me, she talked to me, and I could smell her perfume."
"Then who does he believe he killed?" Det. Markowitz asked.
"I don't know…"
Hotch was looking at him in the rearview mirror. "Reid… I know that look and that tone. What are you coming to?"
"It's just something he said and the way he was talking. I've heard it somewhere, but I can't think of it."
"You'll work it out. You've never let us down."
Reid tried to smile for his boss, but the feeling that there was something he couldn't remember wasn't making it easy to pull out of his memory. It was something that he'd read rather then heard, so it should be easy.
He looked out the window as they drove away from the hospital. The rain was coming down harder, running down the windows like painting dripping down a freshly painted wall. Then he remembered where he'd read the passage. It was so simple.
"Hotch… I think I know what Johnny said that was bothering me."