A Voice Cries Out
Chapter 6
Morgan and Reid were the last to arrive back to the Vegas FBI office, after making the long trek in from the desert. JJ's eyes anxiously followed her husband as he moved around the table to take a seat next to Hotch, trying to assess his emotional state. He looked tense, and frustrated.
Notably, he'd avoided eye contact with her. He'd done that kind of thing before, in a vain effort to protect her.
He's afraid I'll be able to read the look in his eyes, and that it will worry me. Like the fact that he isn't looking at me won't do the same. That's my Spence.
So she did what she knew would work. She stared at him until he felt compelled to look at her.
When she caught his eyes, she queried him. How are you? Then watched his face change as he gave up attempting to deceive her. His silent response was obvious. I need you.
But it would have to wait. Hotch had arranged for them to debrief together before meeting with the Las Vegas SSAs in charge of the case. It was a courtesy being afforded them by their Vegas colleagues because of the personal connection with a possible victim, but also because the William Reid case had yet to be definitively connected to the Davidovitch murder.
The unit chief started the discussion, letting his eyes rest more often on his youngest than on the rest.
"We were only able to speak with the office staff and his paralegal, the other attorneys were out of the office. According to the office manager, there was no unusual behavior until he failed to come to work."
Emily interjected, "She seemed very fond of him. Seemed to know him really well."
Reid's eyes shot in her direction. "How well?" He's married and he's fooling around?
Emily was quick to back down. "Not… well, I don't know. But I got the sense that it wasn't romantic. And that she was sorry it wasn't."
The others followed her gaze to Hotch for confirmation.
"I had the same sense as Emily. But not a sense of jealousy."
"Just regret," clarified Emily, and there was something in her voice that said she was familiar with the sentiment.
Hotch brought them back to the main issue. "We'll be getting a list and synopsis of his cases for the last six months. Some of them were redistributed to other attorneys in the office, but his paralegal thought he'd be able to figure out which had primarily been William's."
That plan didn't sit quite right with Rossi.
"Davidovitch was already retired for six months. If there's a connection, it might well go back a lot further than that. It could be as long as thirty years."
"Rossi's right," agreed Morgan. "We need to have Garcia cross reference all of the IRS agents' cases with both of the attorneys' cases, as far back as we can go."
Hotch put up a hand to placate them. "We'll have Garcia do everything she can. But it seems William Reid was a little….late….to digitizing his cases, so many of them were entered into their system as scanned documents, rather than new electronic data."
Emily smiled and look pointedly at Reid as she added, "Yes, it seems he was very fond of pen and paper." Like his son. But she didn't need to add that. It was already in all of their minds.
She continued, filling them in on the visit to the IRS office.
"They were all pretty shaken up about Davidovitch. I wouldn't exactly say they were fond of him…considering none of them had seen or spoken with him since his retirement dinner. But there was definitely a sense of fear, like they were wondering if it could happen to them."
JJ asked, "Was he involved in anything that any of them knew of? Any investigations? Any angry clients?"
Hotch responded with a simple. "He was an auditor."
General groans at that. Morgan said it for all of them. "So he pretty much had nothing but angry clients."
"Well, there must have been a case or two that stood out from the others. Someone who struck his colleagues as being unusually upset…right?"
JJ found the need to contribute to the conversation, if only as a means of getting her mind off her husband. And the news she had to share.
"There was," said Hotch. "There were actually several. We gave the names to Garcia. She should have something for us soon."
Morgan had his phone out, ready to check in with his Baby Girl, but Reid put out a hand to stop him.
"You'd better put the volume down on that. Do you realize how many things we've given her to do, just this afternoon?"
Emily smiled. "Are you saying we might have caused her to implode?"
Rossi shrugged. "We may as well find out. At least she's two thousand miles away."
"Two thousand, four hundred, twenty six," corrected Reid, not noticing the smiles around him. He might be emotionally stressed, but he was still Reid.
Morgan made the connection, opting to keep it off speaker until he appraised Garcia's mood. The others could only hear his end of the conversation.
"Hey, Momma… how…I know, I know…..hey, cool your jets, Baby Girl…breathe...take a breath….in…out…..that's it…..all right, I'm putting you on speaker, all right?"
He'd walked away from the table, now came back and put his phone in the middle.
"Garcia?..." Hotch used his best command tone. "What have you got for us?"
A long, audible inhalation and exhalation came through the phone.
"Sir! I'm still running a couple of programs, and I didn't think I'd be able to look at any of Mr. Reid's older cases until at least tomorrow, because they were sending the information electronically, but the scanned documents took up so much bandwidth that it kept clogging their system…but that's not a problem any longer."
"It's not?" Having the sense that this wasn't the good news it should have been.
"No! It's not a problem any longer because they shut off the flow of information altogether. I thought they'd crashed their system, so I called them, but a woman named Dorothy Ricks told me that her boss said they were violating confidentiality and he made her stop. He's also demanding that I delete the information they've already sent me."
"Garcia, you didn't…" Reid didn't care about the legality just now. He only cared about finding out what had happened to his father.
"Of course I didn't, my baby genius. But it will make it harder for me to go in their system without being noticed. I can do it, but they'll be looking for me. And it will take me longer to bring everything over, with the size of the files. That gives their security more time to find me."
Reid had a thought. "Would it be faster to just look at the files in place? If you can get me into their system, maybe I can just read through them without having to download."
Brows went up around the table. They all knew Reid could digest written information at lightning speed. They'd seen him do it before. But….that fast?
"Spence….are you sure?" JJ was concerned that his emotional involvement with the case might affect his ability to process the information.
He shook his head. "No. But I have to try."
"Garcia?" Hotch prompted her to react to Reid's proposal.
"I can remote in and send the visual to one of your monitors there. Yes. Yes, I can. And I can set up a 'little thing' that will tell us if they know we're in there."
Morgan teased her. "A 'little thing'?"
"Yes, Derek, a little thing." They could all hear the confidence returning to her voice, as she announced this solution to one of many problems.
Reid cleared his throat and spoke up again.
"Garcia….did you find any records of his… marriage?"
They hadn't given their report yet. Only Morgan knew about William Reid's visits to the florist to buy flowers for his wife. Now JJ's eyes flew to her husband. "Spence?"
He didn't even try to hide the bitterness. "That's right. He married again. He brought her flowers all the time. Dutiful husband that he was." Then corrected himself, hoping, in spite of the vitriol he felt. "Is."
"Pen?" JJ prompted Garcia to respond.
"Nada. Nil. Nothing. I found nothing, sweet thing. Only a record of his marriage to your Mom, Reid. It looked like they were married for about eight years before you came along…right?"
Reid made no response, still trying to absorb what she'd said about not finding a record of William's second marriage.
Morgan saw the dilemma in his friend's face. "See? Maybe Yazzie got it wrong." Not believing it for a minute.
"Or he just lied to Yazzie, like he lied to everyone else." Bitterness laced with anger.
Hotch scrutinized his young genius. They were only a few hours into the case investigation, and the young man's emotions were starting to leak into the process. It would bear careful watching. And, perhaps, a difficult decision to isolate Reid.
JJ almost cringed when she realized she and Rossi were up next. Spence was already struggling, and he didn't even know yet.
Her colleague started the report. "We noticed a little hostility from the responding officer….Guidry was his name. He made the welfare check on William Reid, and he was pretty defensive about not having noticed anything out of place."
"So there was something out of place?" Emily didn't understand what he was trying to say.
Rossi shook his head. "No. Nothing obvious. But Guidry wasn't buying our assurances on that. He sat and watched the whole time we were there, and then…"
"And then he insisted we leave everything as we found it." JJ sounded upset.
Emily shrugged. "I don't get it. What…"
JJ spoke over her. "I found something. It may not be related to the case, but ….I thought it might be important …." Her voice trailed off. In truth, it might not be important to the case at all, and she knew it. But it was important to her. And, she knew, it would be important to her husband. Moreover, she knew he would be upset that William had it.
Reid's eyes were penetrating. "What is it?"
JJ waited a beat before responding. "It was a journal. It was one of your mother's journals, Spence."
They begged off dinner with their teammates, wanting to call home before the kids were asleep.
"We'll get something in the room, and see you all in the morning," JJ explained. It had been a very long day, and she wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by her family, even if only virtually. It wasn't hard to see that Reid felt the same way.
Hands clasped, they rode the elevator in silence. JJ leaned on her husband and rubbed his arm. When they finally made their way into the privacy of their room, she simply turned around and opened her own arms, and he gratefully stepped into them.
The depth of his need was apparent in how tightly he was holding her.
"Rough day, huh?" So understated, it was almost a joke. Making it sound like almost any other rough day, and not the one on which he'd found out his father might have become the victim of a grisly killer. And the one on which he'd found out that his father had gone on to have a whole new family after he'd abandoned his first wife and son.
"Hmmph." His face was buried in her shoulder.
She started to pull away, but he just held her tighter. She would have let him, but...
"Spence, it's after nine at home. I know Henry isn't going down until he hears from us."
The thought of his own children missing him was motivation enough. Reid broke away and motioned JJ to the bed. He joined her there a moment later, his tablet already summoning the video connection. The contact made, their screen lit up…and so did the two looking at it.
Her brow was furrowed at first, as though she was trying to figure something out. But, as soon as she recognized the faces, Rosie burst into a wide grin.
"Hi, Baby Girl!" Without planning, they'd said it in unison.
"Daddy! Mommy!" Rosie tried to reach out and touch them through the screen, then appeared annoyed when her hand wouldn't go through the glass.
"Hi, Sweetheart! Mommy misses you!"
Daddy's head pushed Mommy's away. "Daddy misses you, too! What did you do today?"
"Played."
For all of her advanced language skills, and her wide vocabulary, Rosie could be a woman of few words. Reid often watched her, feeling like he could see her trying to sort through what she wanted to say and, becoming overwhelmed, settle on just one or two words. She so often looked like she wanted to explode with speech but, somehow, just wasn't ready. JJ had noticed it too, and would often tease her husband.
"Maybe you were like that as a toddler too, Spence. But you obviously got over it."
"Hey," he would answer, in mock indignation, "I resemble that!"
"Where's Henry?" asked the young boy's mother.
Now a head of shaggy blonde hair appeared on their screen. Henry, to his mother's chagrin, liked to model himself after his father.
"Here I am!"
"Hey, Little Man, we missed you today. How was school?"
"Okay." Another Reid of few words. Sometimes.
"What did you do?"
"Nothin'."
Reid gave his son the one-eyebrow raise. Do they become teenagers in the second grade?
"You went to school and did nothing all day? What about your spelling test?"
"Oh, I got a hundred on that."
Reid smiled and high-fived his son through the screen.
I'm sorry I'm not there to help you with your science project tonight."
"It's okay, Daddy. Papa is helping me."
"He is?" Disappointment in Reid's tone. He'd been looking forward to it.
Now the voice of Charles Jareau could be heard, though the face on the screen was still Henry's. And then Rosie's. And then Henry's again. Finally, the screen seemed to be pulled back, so that both faces could be seen at the same time.
"Don't worry, Spencer. I'm just helping him gather his materials, and we're doing a little search on-line. You'll have plenty of time to map the stars when you get home."
It was their most frequent bonding experience. Henry would join his father outside, and learn about the stars and planets he could see from his very own backyard. When the science assignment had been made, the youngster had been adamant about wanting his project to be about astronomy. JJ had come to the rescue of both of her men when she found the umbrella idea on the internet.
"You take a clear umbrella, and you go outside and start marking the stars you can see through it."
"Like a planetarium!" Henry's vocabulary was pretty good, too. And so was the rest of his mind. It had been his idea to rotate the umbrella to show his classmates how the night sky changed over time. It was enough to make JJ wonder if she would even be able to understand his projects by the time he hit middle school.
Sandy made a brief appearance behind the children. "Hello, Sweetheart. Hi, Spencer. How is Las Vegas? You haven't been back there in a long time."
The Jareaus didn't know the details of this case…..nor those of any of their other cases. They just knew that, if their daughter and son-in-law were being called in, it meant that death had come to the innocent. This time, they also didn't know that it was possible that a member of Reid's family had become one of those innocents.
"It hasn't changed all that much. Maybe more crowded, is all." Reid kept it superficial.
"Well, I'm going to head these two off to bed, if you don't mind. Henry insisted on staying up for your call, but tomorrow is a school day."
"Okay, Mom. But could we speak with Dad for just a minute while you're doing that?" Code for, 'alone, without the kids'. Sandy caught her daughter's meaning and agreed.
A round of 'good night' and 'I love you' ensued, and then Reid and JJ were left to talk to Charles. Without giving him the details of their official case, they explained about William having gone missing, and the concern that the two might be related.
"My God, Spencer. I'm sorry. So sorry." He knew better than to ask if Reid was all right. Of course he wasn't.
"Thanks. I need to ask you to do something for me."
"Anything."
"In our bedroom closet, there are a couple of boxes on the floor in the left hand corner. They're my mother's journals. I think they're pretty much in chronological order. Can you take a look and see if there are any missing? She wrote the date at the top of each entry."
"Of course. Can I ask why?"
JJ responded this time. "I was at William's home today. And I found what looks like one of Diana's journals. I opened it and it looked like her writing, as I remember it. I wanted to take it with me, but our 'chaperone' from the police insisted it had to stay there, since there's not been an official determination of a crime."
"You couldn't just pull rank?"
"Ha. I wanted to but, technically, he was right. Rossi indicated I shouldn't ruffle feathers, so I didn't. Spence will go back there tomorrow to look at it."
"Hmm." Charles was familiar with the journals' role in his son-in-law's life. They'd shown him what his mother had been like as a healthy young woman….someone he'd never met until she'd introduced herself through her writing. And they'd been the primary way JJ had come to know her mother-in-law. "Do you think he kept it as a memento? Or do you think there's some significance to it?"
"I won't know until I read it. But it would help to know if there's an entire year missing, or if this is just some sort of 'extra' thing. I didn't pay attention to the dates when I read through them." He'd been too emotional about the content.
"All right. Sounds like a project. I'll get back to you when I've gone through them. Please, both of you….take care of one another."
They both smiled at the paternal concern. "Always do. And, Dad, thanks again to you and Mom. We love you."
The connection broken, JJ scooted behind her husband on the bed.
"Let me rub some of this out." She put her thumbs to work on the knots in his shoulders.
Reid tipped his head in all four directions, giving her better access. "Aahh.."
Behind him, she smiled. "Feels good, does it?"
"Feels amazing. What would I do without you?"
Even though they'd been keeping the conversation light, she could hear the depth of meaning in his words. JJ moved forward and brought her arms around his, hugging him from behind. She rested her chin on his shoulder.
"Are you okay?"
She moved with him as he heaved a bitter sigh through his chest.
"For my family, this was just a normal day."
"You have a bigger family now, Spence. One that doesn't walk out on one another. We're all healthy, and we're all with you in this."
He lifted one of her hands to kiss the back of it. "Whatever 'this' is. But you know I count on it. On you. On all of you."
Reid stood and repositioned himself back against the headboard, pulling JJ up next to him. He'd always loved feeling the weight of her head against his shoulder. It made him feel grounded. And that was exactly what he needed right now.
She tipped her head up to him. "Tell me about it."
He recited for her all of the conversation they'd had with Ben Yazzie and his daughter, and the bitterness seeped out again.
"His wife, JJ. I don't care if Garcia can't find a marriage certificate. Maybe he didn't bother to make it legal. But, if there wasn't someone he thought of that way, why would he tell the florist that's who the flowers were for?"
"Spence…if there's no record, maybe it was a newer relationship. Maybe he didn't really walk out on you and just move on right away."
"Twenty years, JJ. Yazzie said he'd been in business that long, and my dad had been his customer the whole time."
She gave up. "I don't know. I'm sorry, Spence. And…" She sat up and turned to face him. "I'm sorry that I reached out to him at all. I should have respected that you didn't want him in your life. I just thought…"
He cut her off. "You just thought that he must be like your dad. You couldn't picture anything else…..I know."
JJ's relationship with Charles had always been strong, even when tested around the death of her sister. He'd been faithful to his remaining family, leading them through a time of grief and trial that could have ended them. Instead, it had made them stronger. Meeting him so many years later, Reid had felt the same kind of encouragement from his father-in-law. He'd long ago decided that Charles Jareau should be his parenting role model.
JJ acknowledged it. "You're right. I guess I've seen my fair share of dysfunctional parents, but I've always hoped they had it in them to do the right thing when their kids most needed them."
"Maybe most of them do. Just not William Reid."
She could sense his need to change the subject again. "Tell me about the desert."
He knew she wasn't asking for case details. Morgan had already filled the team in on the situation of the scene, the desolate location, and their discussion about whether it was a dump site or a kill site, and what it all might mean for the profile. Now her husband described for her the feeling of it.
"It's huge. Quiet, except for the wind. Cold. Barren, almost. Just some scrub and a few tumbleweeds. And yet, there's color. The cliffs in the distance…they call it the high desert….they're yellow, but also brown, and orange, and there's even a hint of red. The sand seems to change color whenever a cloud passes in front of the sun. It feels….ancient. Like it's been there forever. And somehow it manages to seem like it's been untouched by humans at the same time that it seems like it holds so much history."
"I was reading about it before you and Morgan came back. The Anasazi, they were called. The ancient civilization."
He nodded. "Yeah. There's a museum here, The Lost City Museum. We should go there sometime."
"Maybe when the kids are older, we can bring them out. They should see where their Dad comes from."
He laughed. "Right. Circus,Circus. That's the Reid side of the family."
"Stop. The Reid side is also the one that appreciates the beauty of the desert, and the night sky. I think you've already passed that second one on to our son."
Reid pulled her back against him. "He does love it. And I love watching it with him. Can't wait to show it to Rosie, too."
"Don't you be keeping her up late. You know she's a bear when she doesn't get enough sleep."
"Speaking of, why don't you try to get some? It's been a long day, and we're three hours past our own bedtime."
JJ eyed her husband. "Why don't I? As if you don't need it?"
"I don't think sleep will be coming my way tonight, JJ. My mind is too active."
"Spence, tomorrow may very well be another difficult day. And a lot of the work will depend on you."
He was already planning to go to his father's condo to read Diana's journal, and then back to the FBI office to stealth-read his father's case files.
"You need to get some rest." Now she looked at him with a sly smile. "I know how to help you relax. What you need is a good dose of endorphins. And I know just how to give it to you."
It turned out she was right. They gave each other that good dose of endorphins and afterward, still wrapped up in one another, they slept.
A.N. Lots of real life commitments the next few weeks, so updates will likely be slower in coming (like this one) than my usual pace.