My Life Had Stood
Chapter 31: With Ease And You Beside
"Thank you for your time." Hotch said as he left Mrs. Cutler's place, having gotten all the information he could out of the newly widowed woman. It had taken an effort to lead her back to her house and away from Eric Cutler, whose demeanor exacerbated the tension between the two. It was only after Eric decided to go inside his own house that Hotch managed to calm Susan. "If I have any more questions I'll be in touch. Or if you have any, don't hesitate to call."
Hotch tilted his head to the card he had handed Susan Cutler, listing his name and contact information. Despite what he said, he had a feeling that the woman wouldn't call. She seemed to truly despise her late husband, as well as her brother-in-law. And she didn't care for the answers as to why Victor had been murdered.
Hotch sighed as he returned to his SUV, wondering if the other members of his team had garnered any pertinent information. It was as he turned the ignition that his phone rang.
"Hello, Reid, have you found any..." Hotch greeted, phone held to his ear. He paused, furrowing his brow as he listened to the younger man. Concern lit his face as Spencer explained what had happened, that Alsie seemed to be in trouble, and that he and Rossi were on their way to check on her.
Hotch was briefly about to comment on the wisdom of both agents going while they had a case, but quickly reconsidered it. After what that morning revealed about Schmidt, both her connection to James and her bond with Spencer, he understood both agents' need to check on the petite woman.
"All right. I'll inform the others and continue to work the case. Once you two make sure Schmidt is all right, join us at the precinct."
0
-flashback/memory-
"Addie, Addie, wait up or I'll tell!" Allie yelled out as the taller girl stormed ahead. Her threat had an immediate effect: Alsie rounded on her.
"You'll just tell granny anyway. You're a leech." Alsie hissed, annoyed by the younger girl. The two of them had been swimming in a nearby pond secretly the other day and gotten caught, only for Allie to turn rat and blame it all on her.
"You...you're the leech!" Allie screamed back, not at all expecting the older girl's response. Her eyes narrowed, her face scrunched up as though ready to scream as loud as possible. "And granny Mary is not your grandma. No matter how much you butter her up. You're around cuz I want you to be!"
Alsie drew in a breath, fighting the urge to correct the younger girl. It was Mary Schmidt that she first overheard referring to Allie as a leech. The older woman had then added how envious she was that Alsie wasn't her granddaughter.
It was obvious to all but the young girl herself that Mary Schmidt disliked her real granddaughter. There was even talk about whether Allie was really Mary's son's kid or not.
"Addie!"
"I told you before, it's not Addie! It's Alsie!" Alsie growled back only to flinch hearing her own voice. The next moment she realized that the younger girl was getting ready to bawl out at her reply.
Before Allie could, Alsie ran off, going deeper into the woods. She never even looked behind to see if the younger girl had followed her.
x
Tears slid down Alsie's face as she huddled against the wall, trying not to look at Shelly. Nor to think about the blonde. It terrified her, the image she'd taken in of Shelly when Alsie had glanced at her. It was intensely vivid.
She was confused however, and horrified, her memory of what Shelly had been saying earlier still imprinted vividly in her thoughts. It was what had come afterwards that she'd blocked out.
She could only imagine what she'd done to Shelly after blacking out. Whatever it was, Shelly was lying motionless, and had been for at least fifteen or twenty minutes. She hadn't been able to call for an ambulance, too terrified. Instead she had called Spencer on the phone that'd been closest to her.
A phone she now held tightly in her hand.
"Alsie?!" Spencer's voice called out shortly following the sound of the apartment door being opened.
"Allison?" Rossi called out next, as he pointed out to Spencer where the bedroom was. The name he called her by caused Alsie to shudder, a gasp finally breaking through her lips.
It was a small sound, the only sound that she could make as she trembled, yet it drew the two agents towards her.
"Alsie!" Spencer quickly sprinted to the room, his eyes wide with fear. They widened further upon seeing Shelly sprawled on the floor.
"...Spencer..." Alsie mumbled, finally loosening out of her self-comforting huddle by the wall. Hearing her meek voice, Spencer broke his attention on Shelly and instead hurried to Alsie.
"It'll be okay. It'll be okay." He crouched down next to Alsie, his eyes taking in how small she seemed. And how terrified. Once more he regretted leaving her side earlier.
While he focused on Alsie, reassuring her that whatever happened wasn't her fault, Rossi called for an ambulance for Shelly. The next moment, after checking the blonde's wounds and starting to provide basic first aid, he also called in for a CSI unit.
"Ros..." Spencer turned back towards the older agent, his eyes wide. Rossi read them easily.
"We need to know what happened here, Reid." Rossi replied, while staunching the most serious of Shelly's wounds. Though he wondered quietly if it would make any difference - the blonde woman had lost a copious amount of blood already. "We need to take Schmidt in."
Spencer tried to speak, to argue against what Rossi had said, but his mind went blank. There was nothing he could say to refute the logic behind the senior agent's suspicions. It was very clear, going by the upheaval of the room, that some sort of skirmish had occurred between the two women. Alsie had even mumbled as much when she'd called.
"It had to be self-defense." Spencer told Rossi. Even as he said it he wondered why Shelly would attack Alsie. The two were friends, weren't they? He frowned, only to be distracted by Alsie grabbing onto his shirt and burying her face against his chest. There was only a jiffy of hesitance before Spencer responded, cradling one arm around the small woman.
Rossi took in the two with nary a word, instead keeping quiet and returning his attention to the unconscious Shelly. The bleeding of her most grievous wound seemed to have stopped from the pressure he applied to it. And though her minor wounds still bled, it seemed likelier that the blonde would survive.
Shelly's eyes fluttered as she started to regain consciousness, just as the sounds of the police and paramedics could be heard hurrying up the stairs. Her eyes fully opened seconds later and she squinted, focusing on Rossi.
"It's okay. The paramedics are almost her..." Rossi reassured the woman, only to be suddenly and mercilessly cut off by Shelly scratching his cheek. "...shit!"
Rossi cursed and jerked away from the assault, his skin burning where the blonde's nails had dug in deepest. His eyes were wide and livid, having been completely thrown off by Shelly's attack, as well as the vehemence glinting in her eyes.
"You're that bastard's father!" Shelly spat, though at a much weaker tone than she wanted. The blood she'd lost had dampened her strength to yell. "You should've...just...that bastard son...you..."
Rossi froze. His face taut as the meaning of Shelly's growled words became clear. He nearly pulled away the hand he held against Shelly's abdomen to staunch the blood-loss. He actually did so after Shelly hissed out the words 'devil's spawn' along with James' name.
Luckily for all of them, the paramedics had arrived seconds before and quickly took over. Applying pressure to Shelly's wounds and prepping her for transport, including giving her a sedative when she struggled to get at Rossi.
Alsie clung tighter to Spencer as her ears picked up Shelly's words. She trembled and bit down on her lips, her throat aching along with her head. She refused to let go of Spencer, even as they insisted she go to the hospital for a check up.
"I'm fine." Alsie mumbled against Spencer's chest, the tears wetting her eyes and the hoarseness of her voice saying otherwise. After one more attempt to convince her to go to the hospital in the ambulance, the two agents changed tactics and decided to take her there themselves.
0
Garcia typed away on her keyboard, combing through all the files she could find on the victims, while her search on Alsie continued in the background. She grimaced as nothing popped up connecting Cutler and Yaegar, at least not in the past seventeen years. Making a tch sound with her tongue, she started to refine her search to include earlier records on both victims, birth certificates, etc.
She barely touched her keyboard when her search on Alsie she had going on in the background, produced results. Medical records confirming her pregnancy three years ago as well as two miscarriages prior to that. There were also a few articles about Alsie, the headlines catching Garcia's eye.
"Oh god." Garcia gaped, horrified by the first article she read. It was short, but detailed how an unknown driver had struck the pregnant woman and that the authorities were searching for information on the driver. The next article detailed more information on Alsie's condition - that she'd been in the ICU for over two weeks, and had nearly died three times during that period.
Garcia breathed in deeply, her eyes glistening as she finished the second article. The other articles were much the same, that the police were searching for the hit and run driver, and that Alsie was recovering in the hospital. The tech analyst dabbed at her eyes, before continuing to the final article. Part of her wondered at the sheer number of articles written about the incident, as well as why none of them mentioned anything about her child dying.
Halfway through the second sentence of the last article, Garcia froze. Her mouth opened in shock, but she couldn't form any words or sounds. There was only silence as she read, her heart filling with pain as she took in the horrible words.
Alsie's daughter hadn't died, or at least couldn't be confirmed to have died. The man who had hit her with his car had apparently helped deliver the baby only to leave with it immediately after. Leaving the helpless mother behind as she fell into unconsciousness.
"You son of a..." Garcia muttered as she thought about the unknown driver. Though she only talked with Alsie once, the woman seemed so sweet and didn't deserve something like this. No mother did. Her indignation at the atrocity propelling her, Garcia searched through the police database from the area where the incident occurred.
She read through the police report with fire in her eyes, determined to find out something that could point to the culprit. Her throat caught reading it, the report much more detailed than the articles. And containing one that the media got wrong. The man hadn't helped deliver the child - he had cut the child from the mother's womb!
"Oh my god." Garcia turned away from her screen, her hand over her mouth. Nausea filled her stomach at the horrid facts. She refused to look at the photographs filed in the report, knowing from what she'd read that it would be too much for her. Every part of her being wished that she could undo reading the articles and the police report.
'Poor child, poor Alsie...' Garcia wiped her eyes again, her lip trembling. 'And Rossi...'
She swallowed, thinking about what the senior agent had told her about James being the father of Alsie's daughter. She couldn't imagine how horrible learning about this would be for Rossi. Though the lack of a corpse meant there was a chance the child was still alive, it didn't guarantee it. Knowing herself, Rossi, and the rest of the team, they would search for the kidnapper and the child. If they did so and discovered the girl was dead...
Garcia trembled. Rossi had already been through so much lately because of James and those bastard doctors who took him.
Garcia gasped, recalling something she'd skimmed over in one of the articles. Returning to them, she quickly found it. According to an article focusing on Alsie in the hospital, a man claiming to have been the father of the missing baby had raised a ruckus at both the hospital and the local police station. He had been escorted from the premises after police were called, but had ended up not being charged.
Taking a chance, Garcia searched the police database again, searching for an incident report. Nothing. The article was right about no charges being levied against the man, who though unnamed, had to have been James.
Garcia shook her head warily, wondering if it was possible that James had been devastated by the loss of his daughter. He had to have felt something if he'd raised a ruckus at the hospital. Whether anger or sadness or...Garcia bit her lip, confused on whether to hope that James had felt something. She didn't know if it was even possible.
None of the team, nor anyone else had been able to question or evaluate James thoroughly since his arrest and conviction. It had been part of his plea-deal that he not be required to submit to any evaluations without his expressed consent. Thus, none of them knew for certain what he was: psychopath, sociopath, or something else entirely.
Garcia sighed.