A Voice Cries Out
Chapter 11
Much of the afternoon was taken up with a meeting of the newly formed inter-agency task force. With the discovery of the second IRS body, and without any confirmed relationship to the missing tax attorneys, the sense of urgency had died down. But the BAU trusted the dedication of their Vegas FBI counterparts, as well as that of the state and local police. The urgency may have waned, but the task force would work every lead, and remain vigilant for more.
For a particular member of the BAU, the sense of urgency continued. When the rest of the task force broke for an evening meal, Reid stood along with them. But then he turned to his wife and whispered, "You go ahead. Get something. I need to see that journal."
Expecting her to follow his suggestion, he'd already started to head in the direction of the conference room. And then he heard, "Oh, no, you don't."
"Huh?"
"Spence, you barely slept last night, and now you haven't eaten a thing all day. Right?"
"We were busy. And I wasn't all that hungry."
Mentally realizing that the inevitable had finally happened….Yes, I now officially sound just like my mother….JJ chided him.
"You still need to eat. Your brain needs fuel, doesn't it?" Appealing to what she was sure would motivate him to comply.
She knew her husband well. He went for it.
"Well…..can you bring me something? Or order something in? Really, JJ, I need…."
With a smile, she relented. "I know you do. And I'll order us something for here. I just…"
He knew his wife well, too. "You don't want me to be alone when I read it."
Her eyes were apologetic, while she nodded her assent. "It's nothing new, like I said, but…. I don't know…for me, it was a whole different thing knowing about it, and reading it in your mother's voice. It was like her fear was palpable."
He knew what she meant. It had permeated all of Diana's other journals as well, especially when her illness made its presence known.
"It's okay. I'm glad you'll be here." He squeezed her hand in thanks, and they momentarily went their separate ways. She, to see about nourishment, he, to have another vicarious encounter with his mother.
Alone in the conference room, Reid picked up his mother's hidden journal and, as he had with each of the others, caressed it. She had left so little behind, having been stripped of nearly everything in life by the failing of her brain. The leather-bound books were nearly all he had to remind himself of her.
He closed his eyes for a moment, conjuring a favorite memory….his mother, lying in bed, relaxed, pen flowing over the page. He knew he was only privy to her writing on her good days. On the bad, she banished him from her room. As a boy, he hadn't realized she'd been writing even on those ugly days and evenings. But as a man, he'd come to see that she'd continued to pour out whatever was inside her at the time. Disheveled writing and ink blots, even the occasional ripping of a page, gave it away. But nothing ever quite moved him as much as those pages where there was a thinning of the fibers, a near-transparency that he knew would have been made by her fallen tears.
At William's apartment, he'd bypassed his usual ritual and gone straight for the content, so anxious to know what his father had tried to keep hidden. Now, he opened the book slowly, almost reverently. He'd already been through all of the other volumes. This was the last 'virgin' contact between himself and his mother. It seemed to want to be relished.
JJ came back just as he began turning pages. "I got us some Italian, is that okay?"
He didn't even look up as he mumbled, "As long as I can eat it with a fork, anything is good."
"Are you just getting started?"
"Mm-hmm.."
Correctly gleaning that he wanted to read uninterrupted, JJ found the biographical case file on William Reid and started thumbing through it.
What a way to 'meet' my father-in-law.
She looked at his official office web site photo, and then copies of the ones that had been taken with his Little League teams. She was poignantly reminded of Henry's new-found love of baseball, and wondered, for a moment, what it would have been like for her son to have learned the game from his grandfather. She even wondered, briefly, if the love of the game might be a genetic trait. And then had to remind herself, not for the first time, that Spence wasn't Henry's biological father. He may as well be, they love each other so. But she offered a mental apology to Will, anyway.
JJ looked for evidence of her husband in William's face. Not his smile. That's more like Diana's. Maybe the eyes? There's a certain intelligence there.
And, she realized, a certain evidence of burden, one she'd often seen in Spence's eyes in the past, now largely gone. It had faded, achingly slowly, as she and Henry made their way into his life, and then disappeared almost completely when Rosie arrived. Now she only saw it when life became challenging. Like now.
She read through the information that had been compiled, much of it by Garcia. The oldest of two sons. Parents died fifteen years ago, within a few days of each other. Wonder what that was about? And why in the world they didn't seek out their grandson in all of that time. Resenting them, without even knowing them, on her husband's behalf.
But then she found something that might serve as an explanation. Oh, no. They lost their son.
Daniel. William's younger brother, a suicide, while he was still in graduate school. So young. And so violent! The COD on the death certificate read "gunshot wound to the head". And then she noticed the location….
JJ raised her head to say something, but became mute when she saw Reid staring out the window, clearly lost in some distant thought. He looked so troubled.
"Spence?"
She had to repeat herself before he responded. "What is it?"
She'd read any number of worrisome things in the journal, but couldn't know what had triggered his reaction.
He lowered his gaze to the table. "The park. The chess boards. I remember. I flashed on it for a moment when we reopened the case…..but now I actually remember. I can see him. And I can remember my mom coming to the park, and pulling me away. I can see him…."
Him. The man who'd sexually abused, and then murdered, Riley Jenkins. And who might well have had his sights set on Spencer Reid before that.
She reached across the table and laid her hand on his. "Nothing happened to you…right? He never got the chance…..right?" Hoping that his reaction was only to what might have been, and not to an actual memory.
"Nothing happened. It's just….. I remember him, now. I remember that I liked him. He treated me like an adult. And even though I was only a little kid…..well, I was so different from the other kids my age….I was grateful for it. I never even thought…"
"How could you? What child would suspect that an adult would do that?"
He nodded. She was right. "But….I thought his treating me like an adult was a good thing. I never even thought it might be for a different reason. And now…..now, I guess I can see how it works. How these guys get into kids' heads. Because he was definitely in mine."
It was a hazard of the business they were in. Any parent might wonder if their child could one day be lured by a predator. But JJ and Reid could actually picture it. They could see the act, and know what followed. And what followed after that. They'd seen too many dead children to pretend otherwise. Now, Reid was saying, he knew exactly what it felt like. Why a child would succumb. And it frightened them once again, for their own children, and all of the others.
JJ's shiver in response to the thought caught Reid's attention.
"We know better. We can teach them. It will never happen." He turned his hand under hers, so he could squeeze her fingers.
They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Their food had arrived.
"I vote for a nutrition break. What do you say, Spence?"
He really wanted to continue his reading, but he could hear it in her voice. She needed some normalcy just now.
"I say I'm famished. And I am so fortunate to be married to a woman who knows how to order out."
"Ha! I'll never be as good at it as Emily," she said, acknowledging the team's take-out queen.
She spooned spaghetti and meatballs onto a couple of plates, and then filled the empty space with salad.
"Wish I'd ordered some wine to go with it."
Reid gave her his best attempt at a leer. "Are you trying to ply me with liquor, Madam?"
"I wish. For now, I'll ply you with pasta. But when we get back to the hotel, all bets are off."
Both of them dug into their meals, JJ with a bit more gusto than her husband. The case was definitely taking a toll on him emotionally and, she thought, there was every sign that it would take a physical toll as well. She decided some distraction was in order.
"Hey," she said, as she cleaned her plate, "do you know what time it is?"
Reid checked. "Almost 5:30." It took a moment to sink in. "Oh! That means it's almost 8:30 at home…..we'd better call."
She smiled. "Yep. Let's see if we can video chat from the computer in here." She went to a desk in the corner of the room. "Oh, great…we can. Come on over."
He joined her in front of the web cam and she punched in their home number. Within seconds, they saw a familiar blond head and heard, "Hi Mommy! Hi Daddy!"
"Hey, Little Man!" Both parents responded at once. Then JJ continued, "Where is everybody?"
"Meme and Papa are giving Rosie her bath. I already took mine….see, all clean!" He held up two pristine palms to the camera.
"Ahem…" said his mother, who knew her son well, "what about your feet?"
Henry nearly fell off the seat trying to bring his soles up for the camera. "All clean too, Mommy! Meme 'minded me."
JJ stole a sideways look at Reid. The worry lines were easing from his face, as they did with nearly every interaction with their children. And, as usually happened, his mouth was spread into a wide grin.
"Do I hear the dulcet tones of little Miss Rosie Posie in the background?"
Henry didn't know anything about 'dulcet', but he knew Rosie. "Here she comes."
It seemed like their daughter's face was comprised solely of nostrils, as she came so close to the camera lens and stayed there. "Mama! Daddy! I here!"
Reid made a mental note. Uses pronouns. That's early!
Henry was becoming eerily facile with all things electronic. He saw how Rosie's face looked on their parents' screen, and pulled her back.
"Like this, Rosie. You have to sit back, so they can see you."
Adult hands entered the screen now, and situated Rosie on Henry's lap.
"Dad? Is that you?"
Charles Jareau briefly put his face in the camera's sight line. "Yes, I'm here, Pumpkin. How are things going there?"
"They're going. It's a bit slow, but we're making a little progress." None of the adults would say much in front of the children.
"Well, I guess that's good. And Spencer, how are you holding up?"
Reid could almost see Henry's antennae going up. He was a very bright child and, unfortunately, wise in the ways of the world. There was ongoing concern about the effects all of his early life traumas would have on him, but no way to avoid the fact that they'd happened. Without really understanding how or why, Henry had become attuned to the emotions of the adults around him. Whether as a defense mechanism, or for some other reason, he had developed the habit of honing in on those subtle and not-so-subtle conversations. Reid saw that he was doing so now.
"I'm fine," he blustered. "This is a homecoming trip for me." As they all knew, all too well.
JJ picked up the theme. "You know, I've been thinking that maybe we should make a family trip out here some day. Dad, you and Mom might like to see some of the shows. And the kids can see where their dad grew up."
Henry was sufficiently distracted by that. "Can we? Can we, Mom? Daddy, can we go on a trip?" In his enthusiasm, he'd almost dumped Rosie from his lap.
"Yay!" said the youngest Reid, not quite sure what the excitement was about, but happy to partake of it.
Reid laughed at both of the kids. "We'll see. Maybe when this case is over, if we can manage some leave."
"Yay!" Henry agreed with Rosie.
The kids were a little too pumped for bed, so there was no possibility of having an adults-only conversation. Goodnights were exchanged all around, and JJ promised her father another call, later on, "If we can."
"Understood. You take care of each other, all right?"
"We will. You and Mom, too. And please give her our love when she gets back from the Y."
After they'd ended the call, Reid mused to JJ, "Wow, your dad takes up golf, and your mom takes up yoga. Who knows what retirement might have in store for us?"
"Hmph. It better have sun, sand and surf in store, or I'm not retiring."
"Well, Vegas has plenty of sun and sand." He thought a moment more. "Do you really want to bring the family out here?"
"Sure, why not? They've been to Pennsylvania, they've seen my roots. And they know my parents. I'd like them to know something about where their dad came from too. Wouldn't you?"
She couldn't be sure. Maybe his memories were too unhappy. Maybe they were too….private….to be shared. As much as he'd learned to open up, sometimes Spence was still a little like that.
"Well…..sure, I guess. I just….well, what's there in Vegas for kids? I mean, besides Circus Circus?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. We could show them the house where you lived, where you went to school. There are museums, aren't there? And the desert…you probably take it for granted, because you grew up around it. But the desert is…well, it's the desert."
He squinted at her now. "Have you ever been there?"
"To the desert? Well….no, not really. I've seen it, on the ride in from the airport. But I've never actually been in it." She shivered again. "It's a little eerie, isn't it? It's so …big."
He gave her a look. "I thought it was woods. Now you're telling me you're afraid of the desert, too?"
She dismissed the idea. "Not afraid. Just…..intimidated, I guess."
His face told her he'd made up his mind about something.
"For someone who grew up around here, I didn't spend all that much time in the desert. Life was too challenging in town. But that doesn't mean I wasn't there at all. I managed a few trips, mostly on my own. And it was…it was.." his eyes wandered, in search of the right word, "….it was awe-ful. Awe-inspiring. I think it was where I first fell in love with the stars." Now he looked directly at JJ. "I want to share that with you. And I want to share it with the kids."
JJ leaned into her husband and kissed him. "Then let's do it. Let's have Mom and Dad bring them out here, as soon as this case is ov…"
She cut herself off, and looked sheepishly into his eyes, seeing in them the same sense of guilt. They'd both been so caught up in the moment that they'd forgotten. The case being 'over' might very well mean that they'd found William's body. And then the family would be visiting Vegas for a very different reason.