My Life Had Stood
Chapter 10: James Rossi
"This hospital needs to be placed on lock-down." Hotch told the hospital head of security. They'd tried to get to their unsub before he left the elevator, but instead found out he'd managed to slip onto the express one. "And my team needs access to the restricted floor."
"Hotch, is it true? The unsub approached you and Rossi?" Lewis asked. She, Morgan, and JJ had been alerted to what had happened after the unsub eluded Rossi and Hotch.
"Yes, he did." Hotch replied. Upon being alerted to what had occurred, Morgan had gone with Rossi up to the hospital's restricted floor, while Lewis came with him to secure the other floors. JJ had remained outside the surgery ward.
"Why did he do that? We didn't even know what he looked like before this."
Hotch remained quiet for a moment, not wanting to mention the connection their unsub had with Rossi. He hadn't managed to tell Rossi the results of the DNA comparison, the unsub having interrupted just after Hotch told Rossi what Amy Vaughn had confessed.
"Hotch?"
0
Rossi and Morgan waited outside the door leading to the restricted ward. It was, according to employees, just a storage area for files and medical equipment. Part of it was also currently undergoing renovations.
The doors leading to it from the stairwells were too reinforced to be kicked in. And the express elevator allowing access to it had been disabled in some way by the unsub. All that could be done was to wait for the key-card that had the required access-permission to open the door.
"This unsub..." Morgan shook his head and glanced through the vertical window in the door. He stood ready, checking for any sign of the unsub. "Why did he take the express elevator up rather than continue down?"
"He figured we were on to him, and that he wouldn't have time to flee." Rossi said, his tone hiding the tumult of emotion going through him. Though Hotch hadn't yet told him the results of the DNA familial comparison, he knew the answer. He'd figured it out immediately when Hotch had said they should speak privately.
"But why show up here at all? He left the book and told you and Hotch to look in it, right? Why?" Morgan asked, trying to figure out this unsub's motive for doing so. It'd seemed counter-intuitive for their unsub - who had so far eluded them and the local police - to go out of his way to catch their attention.
"He said he was a fan." Rossi mumbled, recalling the book holding the Polaroids. It was a copy of one of his published works, the last one he'd written prior to returning to the BAU. Though it being one of his works wasn't what bothered him. "...I signed it. It had my signature on the title page."
"So you met him before. Rossi, you can't beat yourself about..." Morgan was interrupted by steps approaching from below. It was Hotch holding the key-card needed to bypass the door.
"Here." Hotch handed Morgan the key-card, while side-glancing at Rossi. "Lewis and JJ are going to be on stand-by at this floor's other exit, in case he tries escaping that way."
"All right. Ready?" Morgan said, glancing at Hotch and Rossi. He got the feeling they were holding something back, however he refrained from questioning them. He trusted both of them.
"...yeah." Rossi mumbled while Hotch nodded. The three of them soon entered through the door, guns drawn.
0
James leafed through the files packed in boxes near the far end of the room. Where he sat snug between two tall shelves filled with boxes of files yet to be digitized or destroyed. He paused, listening carefully for footsteps.
Though slight, he heard a scuffling. The sound of footsteps. He scoffed when he heard one of those combing through the floor call out the name Kevin Wagner.
James scowled. "That's not my name."
The footsteps changed direction after he called out. It wasn't long before three sets of feet neared the alcove.
"Kev..."
"I said that's not my name." James growled, picking up the gun that he had placed on top of the closest box. He heard the same voice about to respond but instead it stopped, another voice whispering.
There was another voice that joined in, and one of the pairs of feet approached without hesitance, despite the other two trying to get this third one to wait.
"James, come in quietly." David Rossi said after stepping into view, just at the start of the makeshift alcove. His heart thudded quickly in his chest, his gun aimed toward the younger man. Rossi's eyes took in the dark hair and eyes of James, as well as the young man's face. Finally recognizing the similarities. He was glad that Hotch had told Morgan to check on Dr. Connell, who had been on the elevator when James had sneaked on.
"..." James studied Rossi, his own gun pointed toward the older man.
"Put it down, James." Hotch said, aiming at him through a gap between boxes on the shelf. The younger man glanced at him, before quickly returning his attention to Rossi.
"Well..." James drawled out that word, the corners of his mouth twitching. He studied Rossi, his firearm still aimed directly at the man's chest. "I see you got my message."
"Those photos, yeah." Rossi said, observing the younger man. His thoughts and emotions were jumbled - this man in front of him was the unsub, responsible for numerous rapes and mutilations. Maybe even more than they knew, if Reid's theory was right that this recent spree was a taunt to the authorities.
Yet this man was also James. Hair color, eye color, face structure...there was no denying the resemblance between the two of them. The kind between father and son.
"James." Rossi approached slowly, about to holster his handgun.
"You put your gun away and I'll fire." James scowled, his body language and how he tightened his grip on his firearm revealing he wasn't bluffing.
Rossi renewed his aim at James, another emotion joining the tumult inside him. Confusion mixed with dread.
'What?' Rossi swallowed, steadying himself at the unexpected threat. The usual demand from an unsub would be the opposite - for agents and police to lower their weapons. That James demanded Rossi not lower his suggested that the former didn't have escape in mind.
James smirked. "...I've thought about this for three years."
Hotch listened, understanding same as Rossi what James had in mind: Suicide by cop. Though worse, his gut told him, this unsub - James - wanted Rossi to do it. Would force him to do so.
"Is that when you found out?" Hotch spoke, still aiming his firearm at James. The latter once more glanced at him, lingering a second before returning to Rossi. "That you were switched as a newborn?"
"Oh, I knew that long before then. Kevin Wagner Sr told me when I turned five, when..." James paused, giving a 'hm' sound. "Well, I probably don't need to elaborate on that, do I?"
The way James said it, and what they knew of Kevin Wagner Sr, made elaboration unnecessary. The reports Garcia had uncovered from James' childhood: about the hospital visits and Wagner being a registered sex offender, weighed on Hotch's mind. As it did on Rossi's.
"James..."
"I always wondered," James began still not pressing the trigger or even attempting to since threatening to shoot Rossi. This, along with the calmness in James' demeanor started the two agents to reassess things. "Why you didn't look for me. Why you never realized..."
"..." Rossi drew in a breath, hearing the same questions that echoed with the emotional storm inside his brain. Why didn't he realize what'd happened all those years ago? Had his grief gotten in the way of his instincts?
"...then I learned you were told I died." James gave a derisive laugh.
"James, we can talk about this once you're in custody. Put down the gun, and we'll talk." Rossi stepped closer, his thoughts considering the women who were victimized. None of them had actually been killed, the only one who'd died had fallen into the river accidentally. It was possible, that while James was a rapist and mutilator, he wasn't a killer. Working on a hunch, Rossi lowered his gun.
"What! I said, you lower your gun, I'll shoot!" James snarled, pressing the trigger but not enough to fire. He didn't fire even when Rossi holstered his firearm and approached closer.
"You're not going to fire." Rossi said, stopping just two and a half feet away. "You'd have done so in the waiting room if you were. If you could..." Rossi added the last bit after observing the gun up close. The distance between them before had obscured it, but now he could see the stopper placed just inside the gun's muzzle. It was a replica of a gun. "Hotch, it's a fake gun."
James scowled, his wrist twitching at his bluff being called; he glowered at Rossi and then at Hotch as the two approached to cuff him. He thought for a moment whether to resist, and decided against it quickly. Physically resistance would be useless.
"Well-" He drawled, smirking as he was lead out of the alcove. "This has been fun. Quite a reunion. By the way, I left my latest gift in Hyde Park. Perhaps she's still wandering around..."
James laughed, watching the effect his taunts had on Rossi. He saw as disgust, then anger, and then horror passed over the elder man's face.
"Ohh, what a face. Looks like you wanna hit something...why don't ya? Come on. I'm used to it." James laughed again, seeing how his last sentence caused Rossi to tense. "So you do know about that..."
0
"Come here. Now. Now." A woman with menacing burgundy hair, and eyes a cold gray, nearly shrieked as she pulled the girl away. "Leigh!"
He stared, shocked and confused. The woman pulled the girl away, the chess game they'd just been playing, abandoned. He hesitated, chewing on his lip - the girl had called the woman 'momma.'
"Um..." He watched as they left, the woman gripping the girl's wrist tightly. He could hear the woman berating her daughter for hanging out with 'that boy.' His eyebrows knit in part hurt and part confusion.
Even more strong was the sense that this wasn't right. But the girl had identified the woman as her mother...
"Spencer..." His own mother called to him from behind him, and he turned around toward her.
Spencer stirred in the hospital bed, the beeping of the machines pulling him from his dream. His brown eyes fluttered open and he made a sound between a whine and a groan. The sort of sound one made when they didn't want to wake but were forced.
"Spence!" JJ exclaimed as she noticed him waking, her voice bringing in Garcia.
"Hey, JJ." Spencer attempted to sit up, only to be cautioned against it. That he might pull his stitches if he wasn't careful. He blinked, recalling getting shot; he lied back down. "When did you get here, Garcia?"
"About thirty minutes ago." Garcia replied, smiling at him being awake and all right. It had terrified her when she'd heard he had been shot.
Lying silently in bed, Spencer smiled back. His dream slid back into his subconscious, not forgotten but filed away to think about later.
"In a few days, the doctors say you should be well enough to be transferred to a hospital in D.C." JJ said, giving a reassuring smile though Spencer caught a glimpse that something was distressing both of them.
"What about the case? Did you find the unsub? Did something..." Spencer sat up, concerned; only to be chastised to lie back down - both by JJ and Garcia, and by a stab of pain from his bandaged abdomen.
"Careful!" JJ and Garcia nudged him back into lying down. "Don't worry about the case. We caught the unsub. He's in custody."
Spencer relaxed slightly, relieved by JJ's words as well as the soreness of his bandaged wound. That soreness meant he hadn't been mistakenly given morphine or other narcotics by the doctors. Not that he often feared something like that happening, but once in a while he did consider the probability of it.
His brow furrowed, wondering what the two were distressed about. He was about to ask, getting worried that someone else had been injured, when Garcia spoke.
"The unsub's Rossi's son James." Garcia blurted out, while JJ crossed her arms. After James had been brought into custody, Hotch had informed the rest of them of the connection between Rossi and the unsub. None of them had believed it at first - most of them hadn't known about Rossi having had a child with his first wife.
"What?" Spencer's eyes widened and searched for any signs of deception. Though he knew this was something none of them would lie about. "How is that possible? That's..."
"Amy Vaughn apparently switched her son with Rossi's at the hospital shortly after both were born." JJ replied, explaining what Hotch had told them. "Her son had died and...she switched them."
Spencer hesitated before responding, trying to mentally digest what he'd just been told. It was bizarre and horrible. He knew that newborns being switched in or kidnapped from hospitals did happen, but while the latter was a deliberate act, the former was usually accidental.
"...how is Rossi?" Spencer asked.