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"Spencer, what are you doing here? Baby," Dianna Reid reached up and fingered a small bit of hair that fell over her son's forehead when he didn't answer right away. "Please tell me that you're not here on one of those awful cases you work on."
"Well, not exactly," Reid replied unable to meet his mother's eyes.
"Okay, what's up?" His mother asked suspiciously.
"Mom, I need to talk to you about something." Reid said softly as he looked over his mother's head noting a nurse and an orderly were standing nearby, ready for an adverse reaction. He'd spoken to Dr. Norman, explaining the circumstances and asking if his mother could be medicated before his visit. She seemed lucid but calm which was what he'd been hoping for.
"Spencer, you're scaring me. Are you all right? There isn't something wrong with you, is there?" She looked like she was about to rise from her chair but Reid stopped both her and the hospital personnel, who'd been about to move forward, by raising his hand.
"I'm fine Mom," Reid assured her. "I'm here about something else." He'd gone over this conversation many times in his head, but now that the time had come to say the actual words, his brilliant mind was blank.
"What is it Spencer?" Dianna could see the concern on her son's face and reached out to him.
Reid took a deep breath. "Dad was attacked last night. He was stabbed numerous times." He saw his mother's mouth gape open and heard her gasp, but raised his hand again to stop the Bennington employees from moving in. "He's in serious condition in the ICU in Summerlin."
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"Hotch, we may have something," JJ said as she closed her phone. "Garcia called and said Rachael's DCFS worker is Moira Ernest. I called DCFS and she apparently called in sick today but there's no answer at her home and no answer on her cell. Detective Vartann went to her home but there was no one there. Garcia tried to track the cell but it's turned off."
"Okay JJ, tell Garcia to keep a trace on that phone in case she turns it back on. We need to know where Moira Ernest is." Hotch replied.
"Do you think she has something to do with this?" Rossi asked.
"I don't know but she was the child's care worker. She'd be notified of any court dealings involving Rachael and it seems awfully strange that she would suddenly disappear just when Rachael does." The unit chief said.
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The large man pushed a piece of his oily, shoulder length brown hair behind his right ear as he looked at the Las Vegas Sun's crime reporter, Mort Neufeld's bi-line, which displayed a not too flattering picture of Lou-Anne McDaniels, probably one of her mug shots, he thought, along with a short blurb about her murder in an alley in the city the night before. This was just what he needed. This would convince that little brat bitch that there was no chance of getting back with mommy dearest again and that she better cooperate. He'd love to just smack the little bitch silly but that left bruises and some of the customers didn't like bruises. They liked the clean innocence of the children they were watching on the screen. If he smacked her around like she deserved, he'd have to wait for the bruises to heal and, as everybody said, time was money. He took the paper and strode down a long hallway and stopped in front of one of the rooms. He opened the door and shone his flashlight into the darkness within. No lights made it scarier for the room's occupant, something they counted on. The little girl blinked as the light hit her eyes and put her hand up to shade them, even though she welcomed some light. She couldn't see the person behind the brightness, but she didn't need to. Rachael could tell Mitch Lowery by the way he walked, the way he breathed and, worst of all, the way he smelled.
He stared at the little girl on a mattress that rested on the wooden floor, no sheets or blankets to give her comfort or warmth. Two steps in the small room, what most people would think of as no larger than a cell, brought him to the mattress where he knelt and grabbed the girl by the back of her long curly black hair. "Look at this you little shit," he said pointing to the paper and shining the light onto it so she could see her mother's picture. "No more need to whine for mommy. She's dead. That's what we do to people who don't do what we say. You got that?" He asked pulling her hair even tighter so Rachael gasped. He released her hair and the child fell back onto the mattress and a moment later was in complete darkness again where she let silent tears meander down her face.
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"Serious con…" After a long silence, Reid wasn't sure what to expect when his mother opened her mouth to speak. "Is… is he going to be alright?"
That was the question he'd been dreading, the one for which even his genius could provide no answer. "I don't know," he admitted at last. "The doctors have done all they can to repair the damage the knife wounds did to dad's body. Right now it's just wait and see." He wondered if what he'd said was getting through as he waited for her response. That had been the question most of his life. Sometime's he'd felt like he was caring for a child younger than himself and at other times his mother was the brilliant literature professor that he knew her to be. Those were the times he'd loved the most.
"Who would do something like that to your father?" She asked.
"They're investigating that right now," Reid told her. "Mom, I… I need to ask you something. It's important."
Dianna Reid seemed to be lost in her own little world, Reid feared as her eyes stared straight ahead, appearing to look at something no one else could see. He had seen this a thousand times before. But, to his surprise, a moment later she turned her head, "What?" She asked.
"Do you remember," he asked gently, just above a whisper, "if you and dad ever talked about what he wanted done if a situation like this ever came up?"
His mother looked far away again, but this time it was like she was looking back in her mind, looking for an answer. He'd seen the same look when he'd been trying to get her to remember Riley Jenkins. Finally she turned to him again. "I don't remember, why?"
"The doctor," he paused for a moment and cleared his throat. Dianna could see his Adam's apple move up and down as he swallowed. "If he doesn't improve, he wants me to decide whether or not to discontinue life support, because I'm next of kin."
He was totally unprepared when Dianna suddenly blurted out, "I want to see him."
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"Okay," Hotch said as they all stared at the white board. "We're all tired. We've hardly gotten any rest since the kidnapping and this. Let's go get something to eat and turn in for the night. Maybe we'll get more with fresh eyes. We'll deliver the profile first thing in the morning."
The rest of the team mumbled their agreement, left the room and headed down the hallway. A dark haired man, accompanied by a thinner younger blond man stopped them. "Are you with the BAU," the older one asked.
"Yes, I'm SSA Aaron Hotchner," Hotch said and gestured towards the rest of the team, "SSAs Prentiss, Morgan Rossi and Jareau."
"CSI Nick Stokes, CSI Greg Sanders," Nick motioned to his partner. "You must work with Spencer. We were on the scene at Mr. Reid's house and the ones who took pictures of his dad. How's his dad doing?"
"I don't think there's been any change," Hotch told them.
"Okay, well I hope everything works out for him. I guess we better find out what Catherine's got for us tonight. Nice to meet you; I hope you can get whoever did this to him and the McDaniels woman and find that little girl," Nick said as he and Greg moved on to begin another night shift.
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There had been many discussions and objections by both Reid and Dr. Norman as to why Dianna Reid should not go to the hospital to see William. They had all fallen on deaf ears. Dr. Norman had said that he could, of course, simply refuse to allow her to go and medicate her but Reid had wanted to avoid that if at all possible. That was the reason why Dianna was sitting in a chair beside William Reid's bed with two employees of Bennington keeping a close eye from the desk.
Reid had done his best to explain to his mother that there was nothing she could do for his father, but that had seemed of no consequence to her. He'd tried to explain what William's condition was and what to expect when she saw him, but he still kept a tight hold on her as her mouth and eyes had both widened at the sight of him and her hands flew to her face. "No!" was all she had said. After that she had sat silently in the chair beside his bed, softly holding his hand, now and then wiping away a tear. Reid glanced at his mother's hand resting in his father's and then his eyes shifted to his dad's on the other side of the bed. It was almost twenty years since he'd left them. Almost twenty years they'd been apart and they still both wore their wedding rings.
A soft cough took Reid's attention away from his parents and he looked up to see someone else standing over his dad's bed. "Hotch, what are you doing here?"