Disclaimer: See my profile

xxxxxxxxxx

Reid looked up from his thoughts to see Nick Stokes standing there. "I thought I might find you here," the man said. He looked at William Reid. Nothing appeared to have changed. "How did the talk with your dad's doctor go?"

"We discussed the prognosis, the options. Everything is staying the same for now and they're going to start him on parenteral nutrition until we see if his damaged organs can heal and function. That'll take a while. I told him we'd discuss it further then." Reid looked the CSI up and down, "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"Yeah, we're calling it a day… night… whatever. We're meeting at this diner we often go to for breakfast after shift," he looked at his watch. "Well today, it's more like lunch, but I thought you'd like to join us. My bet is you haven't eaten."

"I had a bag of chips from the vending machine."

"Come on, you're not doing any good here. You need a break," Nick said and Reid stood and followed the man out of the ICU.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The long table at the back of the diner was almost full when Nick and Reid joined the others. "Wow," Reid remarked when he saw the large group of people. "I had no idea there'd be so many of you."

Archie's revelations from William Reid's computer had sparked interest in the young FBI agent and it appeared no one had wanted to be left out. "It's not often we have an FBI profiler in our midst, so we wanted to take advantage of it," said the dark haired woman he'd seen in the office.

Reid noted the man next to her sneer, but focused on Nick's voice. "I'm just going to go through everyone really quickly. You already know Greg, Catherine and Jim. Next to Jim sat the dark haired woman who'd just spoken. "This is Sara Sidle, David Hodges," he motioned to a man who gave him a slight sneer; "he handles trace, David Phillips, with the coroner, Bobby Dawson, ballistics, Archie Johnson, computer analyst, and Henry Anderson, DNA."

"It's nice to meet you all," Reid said as he and Nick sat down in the two remaining seats while the waitress took their orders.

"So, you come from here?" Sara asked as the waitress filled their cups with coffee and Reid reached for the sugar.

"Born and raised," Reid replied. "Well, I left at thirteen when I went to CalTech. I don't get back here too often." Reid didn't like the turn this conversation was taking. "So, you must work with Dr. Raymond Langston."

"Yes, Ray's part of our team, but he's away at a seminar right now. Do you know him?"

"No, I read his book, an excellent read. You must have worked with Dr. Grissom as well." He noted Sara's lips turn up slightly at the edges at the mention of the name. What had he said, he wondered?

"Yes, we worked with Gil for years," Catherine said and Reid noted a group joke around the table.

"Did I say something wrong?" He asked.

Nick leaned over, "Sara's married to Gil."

"Oh, oh I see. Well, I was just going to say that I'd attended some of his lectures at UNLV. Entomology is a fascinating subject."

"Somehow I bet there're not many subjects you don't find fascinating," Catherine interjected.

"How did it go at the Dinsdales?" Reid asked as the waitress began bringing their meals.

"We got nothing," Jim said. "The Dinsdales weren't very forthcoming but nothing we could actually prove was a lie. The kid's room was literally sanitized."

"Any sign of bedwetting? That's common when a child's being molested and not so easy to just wash away."

"No, I took the sheets off and examined the mattress, nothing," Catherine replied.

"Did you turn it over? The Dinsdales might have turned it to hide the stain." He took a sip of his coffee. "I doubt that whatever is going on is happening in the house. It will be somewhere more secluded, somewhere you won't hear the children. Did you know that upon leaving the foster care system as many as 75 percent of all children have experienced some sexual abuse. A study at Johns Hopkins University discovered that sexual abuse is four times as high in the foster care system than in general population, probably because the foster care system is so large and the need for foster parents is so great, that they don't get the proper screening and sometimes little to no supervision from the social services departments that things like this, if this is what we have here and it's my opinion that we do, happen every day." He had seemed to talk faster the more he said and finally he squeaked when he stopped for a breath and looked at the people around the table, mouths open. "Sorry, I tend to get carried away sometimes. My teammates usually shut me down."

"Thanks doc, those are some great thoughts to try to go to sleep on," Jim remarked as, he too, sipped his coffee. "So what's our next move?"

"Let me get this straight, are you inviting me in?"

Jim looked around the table, as if for a vote. Everyone seemed agreeable except for Hodges. "Well, I discovered something," the man said arrogantly.

"Here we go, Hodges to the rescue," Bobby laughed sarcastically.

"What did you find," Catherine asked.

"I analyzed the samples of dirt from the footprint at the Reid crime scene. There was a mixture of sands. One had a quartz/feldspar ratio that is consistent with sand found around here. This area is a mixture of feldspar and quartz whereas Arizona is mostly feldspar rich and California is mostly quartz rich."

Although Reid seemed very interested in what Hodges had to say, Henry was less accommodating. "Get on with it would you."

"Okay," Hodges continued. "The boots of the guy that attacked Mr. Reid had sand from here and sand that's quartz rich from the Mojave Desert area of California, particularly around the Kelso sand dunes."

"Do you mean these people may be taking this child, and possibly other children, to somewhere in California? We have no jurisdiction to go searching there," Sara remarked.

"If that's the case," Reid said, "forget about inviting me in. You don't have to. You may not have jurisdiction across the state line but I do.

"I think the next move is for you all to go home and get some sleep and I'll call my team. If they're through with the case they were working on before I left, they can be here by the time you wake up."

"Okay then," Nick said as he and the rest of the group attacked their food.