Chapter 17
Parson Farm
Grindstone Island
St. Laurence River
January 2011
The other room was cold and plain. Wooden desks were laid out in two straight rows facing the blackboard. There wasn't the color of the other room, the softness. But around the room were shelves and shelves of books. That helped. That always helped.
Spencer put his basket on the desk at the front of the room and followed her to the big, potbellied stove, where she was laying a fire. It was her. It had to be her. But Foreman's warnings were ringing in his ears. "Um...um...can I ask you something?"
"Of course." She was doing something that looked to involve kindling.
"Why don't people use names here?"
She sat back on her heels and looked at him. "You really are new here, aren't you?"
"I am, yes."
"You're not supposed to have a name. According to the overseers only humans have names, and since we aren't of the elect we're not human enough for that."
"So you just don't have names at all?"
"Noooo. But if you're going to share your name with someone you have to be able to trust them completely. They can only use it in private. Hearing someone say your name is, um..." Her head was turned to build the fire, but he could see her cheeks turning pink. "...rather intimate, really." When she turned back her cheeks were still pink. But that look was appraising and there was a bit of challenge and daring in her eyes. "We did just meet after all."
"Ahhh..." That look was entirely unexpected. "Right. Of course. Teacher." She smiled and turned back to the fire. "Can I ask...do you remember your name? Assuming you had one, once."
"I did. I wasn't born here. But no, I don't remember it. Everyone called me One-one before I became the Teacher. Do you remember yours?"
"I do. Um, do you remember anything about where you lived before here?"
She gave him a quizzical look as she sat back on her heels again. "Not really." She said, and his heart sagged. "I came when I was very young, only just enough to be taken from my mother. Maybe seven or eight. Candle."
Damn it. She likely wouldn't remember him. "I'm sorry?"
"Your candle. They did send a candle?" He looked in his basket and fished out a metal lantern that was quite warm. She opened it up and took out the lit stub of a candle thrusting it into the pile of kindling in the fire. "You have to do this every Monday, the fire dies over Sunday. There is one thing..."
"Good to know. What's that?"
"Every year I...oh, it's silly."
"It's all right, I won't laugh."
"Well, ever since I was a small girl, every harvest I have this thing...I have to drop a pumpkin."
"Drop...a pumpkin?"
"Yes. To see what it will do."
"To see what it will do?"
"Yes. They squish, of course. Splatter into a wet mess. It's always a little heartbreaking."
"Why?"
"I...I know this makes no sense whatsoever."
"No, it's all right."
"Where I'm from...I remember...pumpkins shatter into sharp, hard pieces, like glass. I remember them shattering in bits at my feet." She watched as the fire caught and closed the stove door. "For years I had a temper tantrum every year when they didn't. I used to swear a magician would come and find me and take me back to where the pumpkins were made of glass." She sighed a little. "Come on. We need to get set up for the day."
Candlewood Suites
Watertown NY
Outside Ft. Drum Military Reservation
October 2011
"Pumpkins that break like glass?" Hotch asked.
"Every Halloween Dabney House conducts the Millikan pumpkin-drop experiment from the top of Millikan Library, the highest point on the CalTech campus." Spencer said. "According to tradition, a claim was once made that the shattering of a pumpkin frozen in liquid nitrogen and dropped from a sufficient height would produce a triboluminescent spark. Everyone turns out to watch, and the pumpkins really do shatter like glass when they land. We went to watch it about a week before she disappeared. That was how I confirmed it was Tally."
"And I'm guessing you're the magician." Morgan said.
"Her mother, Professor Jensen was my undergraduate academic advisor. I was completely at sea when I went off to college. I mean academically it was great, but I was a thirteen year old kid. Her parents kind of took me in, they invited me over for dinner all the time, helped me deal with Mom; they were there when I got the flu..."
"They became a surrogate family." Hotch said.
Spencer nodded. "Tally was home schooled. She was always on campus. She started following me around all the time. It should have been annoying, but...I thought it was because I always wanted a little brother or sister, I had always been the youngest in the room, I thought someone younger who could keep up would be fun. I thought that's what it was; I mean, we were just kids, and then..."
"And then little sister grew up on you." Morgan nodded.
"You never talk about college." Hotch said. "Does that have anything to do with her disappearance?"
"It was like the light went out of everything. It just became mechanical, a means to an end or a way to fill the time. That's when I started looking at the Bureau as a career, I met Gideon when he interviewed me as part of the case, but by the time I got here I realized what the odds were."
"What the odds were?"
"I wanted to be her hero. I was fourteen, she was my little sister, I...I loved her and then one day she was gone. Some monster took her away from us to... And, you know, Mom raised me on tales of knights and heroes and I wanted to save her. But I was just this scrawny too smart kid with a sick parent to look after. What could I do? By the time I got to the Bureau seven years later the odds were impossible. I mean, Gideon and I looked at the case file but there was nothing..."
Spencer paused like something was coming to him. "What?" Morgan asked.
"They interviewed Don Parson back then." Spencer replied. "He had an alibi, nothing came of it."
"Why did they interview him?"
"I don't know." Morgan could almost see Spencer flipping through his exact mental copy of the file. "It wasn't in the notes anywhere."
"Keep him talking." Hotch said quietly. He got up to call Garcia.
"So, what happened?" Morgan asked.