A Voice Cries Out

Chapter 9

"Hotch, do you really think…." JJ whirled to face her unit chief as she watched her husband leave with Morgan.

"I have no choice, JJ. I need his eyes on the location. Especially his. He knows the desert better than any of the rest of us."

"But, what if….."

"I gave him the option to walk away from this case, and he refused it," Hotch started out sternly, but then quickly deflated, acknowledging his shared concern. "Morgan will be there for him, if he needs support."

"But couldn't I…"

He gave her a meaningful look. "I think you already know the answer to that."

She did. Reid would have an easier time maintaining a professional stance if he didn't have his wife at his side to support him. It was a paradox unique to their particular situation.

Acknowledging the truth, JJ sank into the chair vacated by her husband.

"I guess I may as well finish what he started then."

She picked up Diana's missing journal, and offered a brief plea to her absent mother-in-law before she began to read the words the woman had written so long ago.

I promised you I would take care of him. But now I need you to do the same. Please.

Prentiss and Rossi arrived to the strip mall that housed the law office of missing tax attorney Max Maxfield well before any of the local establishments were open. They'd wanted to watch the employees arrive, and get a feel for the environment, before probing them on their employer.

"Okay, you can thank me now," said Emily.

"Thank you?"

"For insisting we stop for coffee on the way. This is a sleepy town at this hour of the morning."

Rossi laughed. "That's just because it only quieted down a couple of hours ago. If New York is the city that doesn't sleep, Vegas is the city that sleeps in."

Emily chuckled at that. "Sounds like my kind of place." She took a sip of her coffee before inquiring. "Do you have a gut feel about this? Do you think this guy is the victim?" They'd been advised of the newly found body in the desert.

Rossi shook his head. "I'm not sure. I don't think we can assume anything. I don't even think we can assume he's a victim at all. These tax attorneys out here…..they're a dime a dozen, and they're not all legit. There's a better than even chance that he's just run off with someone's fortune."

Emily took that in, and continued sipping as she watched a few of the emporia begin to open.

"What do you think about Reid's dad, then? Is he a money-grubber, or is he legit?"

Her companion shrugged. "Hard to say. He seemed to be involved with city government…..he thought we were there investigating something to do with the mayor's office, a few years ago…..so….."

"So that could either make him more likely to be legitimate….or he's into another type of scheme."

"Exactly. He didn't seem particularly put off or surprised that the FBI was at his door, even before he realized we were there with his son."

"So, do you think he was expecting to be investigated, back then? For completely different reasons?"

"He definitely gave off that vibe. But after we cleared up that he wasn't involved in the Riley Jenkins murder, or the one that followed, I never thought to check on it."

Emily was lost in thought for another moment. "I'll bet Reid did. I'll bet he made sure to know everything about his father after that."

"Reid didn't know. He wasn't with us when his dad mentioned it. Unless Morgan told him, I don't think he knows."

"Don't you think he should know now?" Emily had already reached for her phone.

Rossi waved her hand down. "Not now, my friend. I'm afraid he may have much more on his mind just at the moment."

"Dehydration?" Reid spoke his surprise into the speaker of his cell. "Are they sure?"

Before Hotch could answer, Morgan shouted from the driver's seat, "Isn't every dead body found in the desert dehydrated?"

Hotch had been as surprised as his teammates to hear the ME's report on the cause of death of Stephen Davidovitch.

"The ME said it showed up in the internal organs. Shrinking and discoloration of the kidneys, damage to the bladder."

Reid was still having trouble taking it in. "Could he say if the tongue was removed before or after he died?"

Just because the cause of death was dehydration, he didn't want to assume there hadn't also been an assault beforehand.

"He thinks the tongue was severed first. Obviously, the heart was removed afterward." Or else its removal would have been the cause of death.

"He thinks it? He isn't sure?" Reid realized it as a crucial point of information.

"He's not willing to commit on that. The external dehydration of the tongue, and the damage from the sun, make it hard for him to be sure."

They didn't need to discuss it. All of them knew that the removal of the tongue before the victim's death made it a homicide. The removal after death made it the mutilation of a body...the body of a man who might have wandered into the desert on his own, and met an unfortunate fate. Or the body of someone who might have been brought there, and left to die. But they would have a much harder time proving the latter.

Reid shook his head in frustration, but didn't express it to his unit chief.

"All right. We're just about to be out of cell range. We're meeting up with Trooper Bell again, and he'll take us to the site. We'll get back to you as soon as we're back in range."

"We're good here, Hotch," added Morgan, by way of signing off…and sending an additional message to his unit chief.

Reid let a few miles go by before remarking, "You don't have to look out for me, you know."

Morgan threw him a look.

"I know." Right.

'There are so many things that can hurt a child. My child. My heart. Increasingly, I realize that I'm one of them. But not today. Today I found my poor boy with a much more immediate danger. I knew it, somehow. I could sense it. I literally ran to the park. I must have looked like a wild woman. But I knew, with every fiber of my being, that Spencer was in trouble. I feel like I have that kind of connection with him, and I often wonder if he feels it about me. I prayed with every step, that he would be there, safe and whole, when I arrived. And he was. God is so often turning His back on me these days. But not today. Spencer was there, at one of the chessboards, playing against a young man.

At first, I looked around for the danger, not understanding. But then it came to me. The danger was sitting at the board with him. That young man's eyes gave him away. So lurid. And looking at my son that way. My son! I know I frightened Spencer, but I couldn't see another way. I grabbed him by the hand and ran him out of the park, and all the way home. The poor thing. He looked so lost, and confused. He's such a smart little boy, I know he's aware there's something wrong with me. If my behavior hasn't told him, the loud disagreements with William must. What will become of him? Of me? Of us?'

JJ lifted her head and rubbed her eyes. This particular journal was so filled with crisis and emotion that it was taxing just to read through it. How can she have lived it? And Spence!

The implication of Diana's writing was clear to anyone who knew the succeeding history. The pedophile who'd abused and then killed Riley Jenkins had targeted Spencer Reid first.

Who knows what might have happened if she hadn't had that intuition, and acted on it?

JJ's entire life would have been different. She wouldn't have had Reid in it, nor Rosie. Nor the kind of love she'd never even known to wish for. Thank you, Diana.

JJ brewed herself a cup of tea and then returned to the conference table, intent on finishing her reading. But she was disturbed by the vibration of her cell.

"Dad? Hi."

"Hello, Pumpkin. How's my girl today?"

Glad she didn't put you on speaker. Pumpkin. But JJ was actually fond of the name, and touched that her father still used it.

"I'm good, Dad. What's up? Something with the kids?"

"The kids are fine. We sent Rosie to Karen's, so your mother could do some grocery shopping, and Henry's at school. I called because I think I found what Spencer wanted."

"Oh, in the journals. You found evidence that one was interrupted?"

"Yes. It was buried about twenty pages in…..I hope Spencer doesn't mind that I read that much of it."

Charles Jareau was already very fond of his son-in-law, but had gained a deepened respect for the young man after Diana's journals had given him a glimpse into the nature of the young life Spencer had weathered.

"Of course not, Dad. He asked you to look through them. "

"All right. I just didn't want to be invading his privacy….."

"His life…and his Mom's….are part of our history together, Dad. He's okay with it. I think he kind of wishes you'd met her. I know I do. Even when she was ill, she was impressive."

Thousands of miles away, Charles smiled. "I definitely get that. And I'll look forward to learning even more about her."

An idea started to form in the back of JJ's mind, but she squelched it. It's not the right time.

Aloud, she said, "So what did you find?"

"She makes a reference to her mind becoming a sieve. And to some blackouts she'd been having. This is all part of a passage she wrote explaining why she had to start a new journal. But it reads like she thinks she might have actually destroyed the missing one."

JJ was surprised at that. "She doesn't just think she lost it? She thinks she destroyed it?"

"I can't be sure, because some of her writing is rather confused at this point. But it almost sounded like her husband chided her, reminding her that she'd destroyed the journal."

JJ was quiet a moment, taking it in. It was sounding like William had taken, and hidden, Diana's journal, and then tried to convince her she'd purposely gotten rid of it. Almost like he was gaslighting her. But…why?

She sighed. "All right, Dad, thanks. I'll tell Spence when he gets back." This wasn't quite something for a phone conversation.

"How is he, Honey?"

"I'll have to let you know, Dad. Hotch sent him out with Morgan. They found another body."

Charles had the same reaction his daughter had, hours before.

"Why didn't…."

She gave the same answer Hotch had given her. "He needed Spence to look at the site. He'd been at the first one, and he's more familiar with the desert than the rest of us." Even if he'd been a city boy most of his time in Vegas.

Charles' voice reflected his concern and regret. "Please tell him we're pulling for him. Tell him we're all praying hard."

She smiled, knowing it was true. "Thanks, Dad."

JJ had barely ended the call when Hotch came back into the room, holding his phone in his hand.

"I'm with JJ now. Go ahead."

The quality of Reid's voice told them he was just barely in range of a cell tower. It kept going in and out.

"….not him. It's not my dad."