My Life Had Stood
Chapter 35: How Near Had I Forgot
Nevada:
George Alvarez leaned back in his chair and sighed, about ready to call it a day. He should've been on his way home hours ago, but something his client Somerfield said over their lunch-meeting bothered him. Despite their meeting and that everything they discussed was protected by lawyer-client privileged, Somerfield hadn't been forthright.
Alvarez was sure the wizened man had been lying through his teeth. Add to that the way Somerfield had skirted over the reasons he sought legal counsel in the first place...Alvarez was having doubts he could advise the man further. Or that legal counsel was the real reason Somerfield retained him in the first place.
"George." A knock on his opened office door and the sound of his name pulled Alvarez out of his thoughts. "I thought you were done with work hours ago. That you were going home at 3?" The man who stood in the doorway instinctively looked at his watch as he spoke, noting that it was after 5.
"I was. I..." Alvarez stood up and rubbed his forehead. "...I could use a drink."
"That bad?" The other man commented, refraining from asking for details. He knew how Alvarez acted when something was troubling him with work and also outside of work. This was the former. "...do you want to join me for take out? Take a break from clients and cases."
"...you're not going home?" Alvarez asked, after noticing the other man motioned toward his own office.
"Uh...not yet. I put in for some time off, so I was getting all of my clients' paperwork in order for whoever's taking over my workload while I'm away."
"...how much time are you taking off, William?" Alvarez studied the other man, curious. He'd known the other man for a while and never known him to pass a case or client over just to take time off. "Is everything all right? Your wife and son...?"
The man gave a sad, self-deprecating sigh. "Aside from the fact I haven't seen either of them in years...? They're fine, I'm sure. If anything was wrong, I'm sure Spencer would barge in here...or his team would." William Reid made a face that revealed that what he'd just said was what he hoped would happen. Though he honestly doubted it would.
"Your son doesn't keep in touch? That must be tough."
William Reid shook his head. "Honestly, that's my fault. I walked out on them when Spencer was a child. I don't blame him for still being angry."
"All right." Alvarez replied, not knowing what to say, having never had children. He and his wife had tried, but were unable to conceive. Then his wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer five years ago, leading eventually to a hysterectomy. "What is it then? Something's bothering you. William?"
"..." William Reid seemed like he wasn't going to answer and had turned to leave. But then he surprised Alvarez by handing him an article cut from a magazine. "You read about this, right?"
Alvarez took the article, recognizing by its title that it was about the child-switch kidnappings that'd taken place nationwide. Starting as far back as forty years ago, maybe longer. "Yeah, I know about it. It's horrible. All those families...those children..."
William Reid nodded, his expression saying there was more to his interest in the case than just as a reader. He studied Alvarez, as though hunting for what the other man thought.
"Will..." Alvarez' eyes flitted to the article, scan reading the words. He blinked, one of the names popping out. "...Dr. Morland Somerfield? The FBI are searching for Somerfield as a person of interest in the case?"
Alvarez shook his head, frustration and anger filling him as he considered what he and the wizened doctor had discussed. Not once had Somerfield mentioned about being sought by the FBI or that he was connected to this nationwide case. Their talks had simply been about things like malpractice and patients suing their doctors. Alvarez had been under the impression that Somerfield had lost a patient and wanted legal counsel for a pending malpractice suit.
"George..."
"William, why did you have me read this?" Alvarez demanded, not sure what he was shocked by more. Learning about his client's duplicity or that his co-worker had brought him that info, which would likely prevent him from being able to do his job.
"It...it's not what you think." William Reid replied, explaining that he never wanted to sabotage his coworker. That his intent wasn't to take a client away from Alvarez. "I..."
William Reid paused, before motioning the other man to wait while he went to get something. Alvarez, however, followed the other man, glowering. It wasn't until he was handed a folder, which appeared years, maybe decades, old that Alvarez's anger switched to confusion.
He took it and opened it. His eyes widening at what it contained.
"William, this..."
0
D.C area:
"What? No. That isn't what...my daughter died." Alsie said slowly, her heart having stopped at Spencer's words. Her eyes darted from one to the other of the agents, suddenly wishing that she had told Garcia to stay rather than agreeing to speak with the two men alone. "She...she wasn't...didn't...No."
Hotch stood quietly off to the side, studying Alsie's reaction, while Spencer squeezed her hand.
"That is what happened. You were hit by a car three years ago, and the driver of that car cut your daughter from your womb." Spencer repeated, his brown eyes widening at the distress on the petite woman's face.
Alsie continued shaking her head, her own brown eyes not straying from Spencer's. "It...no...I...I would know...if...if...I would've remembered..."
"You passed out almost immediately after the unsub started cutting you. And you didn't regain consciousness until almost a month later." Spencer continued, keeping his voice gentle. He bit his inner cheek as Alsie shook her head, the news that they both thought would cheer Alsie up seemed to have done the opposite. It didn't appear to register to her that this meant her daughter might still be alive.
"No...the doctors and nurses all said...I asked them...they said that she died..." Alsie managed to say, squeezing Spencer's hand with every pause. "He...he told me as well...he..."
"I'm sorry, but you were lied to. The doctors...the nurses...they thought it was kinder..." Spencer swallowed, the anger he felt at Alsie's doctors three years ago was overshadowed by his concern for the woman.
"How could it have been kinder?!" Alsie snapped, surprising the two agents. She snatched her hand away from Spencer's, her eyes livid. "Telling me that my daughter died? Kinder?! They...and James...he..."
Alsie turned away, glowering at a memory. She swallowed back the sudden nausea that filled her stomach, and took in a deep breath.
Hearing her mention James, Hotch neared the bed and shot Spencer a glance. One that the younger agent missed, being distracted by Alsie.
"...Miss Schmidt, you were aware that James visited you briefly in the hospital three years ago?"
Alsie shifted her glare towards Hotch, who noticed both the held back tears and anger in them. "Yeah, I...I was in and out of consciousness that day but...yeah." Her brow furrowed, her brain whirling with thought. She suddenly grabbed hold of her arm, where the the nurse had attached an IV to administer medicine and nutrients while she'd been unconscious.
"Alsie...?" Spencer and Hotch both noted the strange action with curiosity and concern.
"He...James..." Alsie pulled in her lip, chewing on it as she mulled over the memory. "I...I don't know how he got his hands on it...but he...that day..." She sighed bitterly, and closed her eyes. Only to open them again a second later, shaking her head. "He injected it into my IV...I..."
Alsie voice broke off and she pulled her legs up to her chest, hugging them close. She looked so vulnerable, huddled into a self-comforting ball. Completely oblivious to the worry in Spencer's face and the growing realization in Hotch's.
"...what?" Rossi's horrified voice caught the other two men off guard, neither having realized the senior agent had entered the room.
"Dave..." Hotch started to say, understanding what Alsie had been in the midst of explaining as well as why Rossi was horrified by it.
While waiting for Alsie to regain consciousness, he and the older man had read her medical files from three years back. The day Alsie alluded to, when James had visited her, was the same day that the poor woman's condition had suddenly worsened. The hospital had determined the cause to be a bad reaction to her medication, assumed at the time to be the result of a mix up.
Now, with what Alsie just revealed, it seemed that James may have been responsible for it.
Rossi, instead of responding to Hotch, simply shook his head and left the room. Completely unable to handle or fathom why his son would do such a thing. To try to kill the mother of his own child.
"Dave." Hotch called out to the other man, having followed him back into the hospital corridor. "Dave."
"Aaron, don't. I can't..." Rossi stopped, and turned back towards the other man. His thoughts were on his son's victims thirteen years ago, the ones that had later been killed. He had adamantly denied the possibility that James had been involved in their murders when Hotch first told him, but now...
"...Dave, this doesn't prove James is a killer. Schmidt didn't die."
"Don't, Aaron. Don't try to..." Rossi took a steadying breath, his expression between livid and pained. "He tried to kill Schmidt, he injected her with a drug that interfered with her other medication...he..."
"...Schmidt didn't die though." Hotch repeated, emphasizing that fact. "And she was in the hospital at the time, where there was always a chance she'd be revived. If James really had wanted to kill her, he could've waited until she was discharged. Or at any time while they were living together."
"...Aaron..." Rossi shook his head, but also allowed the other agent's words to sink in.
"Dave, when we found out about James' other victims that were murdered years after their rapes, you insisted James wouldn't have killed them. You profiled that he would only kill someone as an act of mercy." Hotch paused, allowing a moment for his words to sink in. "Think about it. Schmidt was in the hospital, having just suffered a huge trauma. Physically and mentally. She'd already flatlined twice and been revived, on top of it all she believed her daughter, that she'd tried so hard to conceive, had just died."
Rossi slowly nodded, understanding what Hotch was suggesting. He glanced back down the hall towards Alsie's room.
"Add to that, the fact that when James resumed his sexual assaults on women three years later, he didn't choose any that resembled Schmidt...but rather avoided his previous 'type'." Hotch let Rossi mull over what he said, and refrained from reminding the other agent that James had attempted a suicide-by-cop.
"...he cared about her..." Rossi mumbled, surprised by the realization. "...James didn't choose against his type on purpose as a countermeasure to throw off our investigation. He did so because he had to. He couldn't bring himself to attack women who reminded him of Schmidt..."
"And he likely insisted on telling her their daughter had died as a way of giving her peace of mind. That she would be reunited with their daughter after death." Hotch added quietly.
Rossi mulled things over, visibly less upset than he had been just minutes ago. He couldn't condone anything his son had done, but he was thankful that Somerfield's experiments hadn't turned James into a cold-blooded killer.
He started to speak then stopped, something else suddenly occurring to him.
"James...doesn't know Schmidt is alive. He likely believes he succeeded in killing her, and, adding to that losing his daughter...those were his stressors. And then finding Amy Wagner again was his trigger. The reason he resumed his attacks."
"Dave..."