A Voice Cries Out

Chapter 12

He bolted awake, his biological clock chiming loudly. After Reid fumbled for his glasses, he could make out the time on the digital clock. 7:13. The morning meeting of the task force was scheduled for 7:30.

He could hear movement in the bathroom, and called out.

"JJ… how long have you been up?"

She walked into their room fastening an earring. "Long enough to have been for a run already, Sleepyhead."

He was already rushing by her, headed for the shower. "Why didn't you wake me?"

She had to raise her voice to be heard over the running water. "I thought you needed the rest. You didn't exactly sleep soundly last night."

He was already toweling off by the time he replied. "But I wanted to talk to Hotch about the desert…"

"Already called him. He wants the team to meet after the task force meeting."

"Did he say anything about me going out there?"

"You, Morgan and Emily."

He stopped in the middle of rubbing his hair dry. "Three of us?"

"He didn't exactly say it, but I got the feeling he's not convinced the cases are related. He wants you and Morgan to go, to compare it to the other sites. And he wants Emily as a fresh set of eyes."

"Does that mean he thinks there might be something to….."

"I don't know. But he knows that you need to put it to rest. So he's giving you the chance. I think we should just be happy about that."

She looked him up and down, smiling. "And, not that I don't appreciate the view, but…..maybe you should put some clothes on."

His hair paid the price for Reid's being only a few minutes late for the task force meeting. Emily barely concealed a grin at the sight of the dishevelment on top of his head.

The police contingent would focus on following up on any crime scene evidentiary results that were forthcoming, but little was expected to be produced today. They would, therefore, also take on the task of finding overlap in cases between the two deceased IRS agents, and look for any similar connections with either of the missing tax attorneys. Hotch assigned Garcia to be as helpful to those tasks as her electronic network would permit.

JJ and Rossi would compare the dead IRS agents' personal profiles, and then look for any similarities or connections with the tax attorneys. Maxfield's cases were still off limits, but Reid would make another covert entry into his father's case files. But not until he returned from the desert.

As the task force broke to go about their varied duties, Hotch held his team back.

"Short BAU meeting, then we'll get going on our assignments."

Most of them grabbed coffee, and then settled around the conference table. Emily smiled as she watched JJ run her fingers through Reid's hair, in a thinly-veiled attempt to tame it.

Once they were settled, Hotch turned to Reid.

"Do you want to tell them what you found?"

It was actually JJ who'd found it in Diana's journal. Reid had been so distracted by the memory of his near-miss with Riley Jenkins' killer, that he'd glossed over the subsequent item of detail.

"Last night, when I was reading through the journal we found in my father's closet, there was….well, really, JJ noticed it more than I did…..there was a reference to my Uncle Daniel. I don't really have a memory of him, but apparently he died, not all that long before Riley Jenkins did. I had a memory of being at a funeral…I remember asking my Mom about it when we were here on that case….and she told me it had been my Uncle Daniel's funeral I was remembering. Then, when Emily died….."

He stopped, mid-sentence, and threw his eyes in her direction, embarrassed and sorry at having brought it up. She returned a sad smile, regretful at the fact that it had happened.

He moved on without completing the thought. "Well, when I visited my Mom again, we talked about Uncle Daniel. And she told me he'd killed himself. Shot himself, actually, and been found in the desert. I'd forgotten about the desert part of it, until JJ found it in the journal. So, we wondered…"

His voice had begun trailing off, a signal of the fatigue that was already present so early in the day. JJ heard it, and took up the tale.

"We were just curious, really, but …well, we had Garcia dig into it, and…"

"And," came through the speaker phone, "it should surprise no one that, despite the fact that this happened…..oh, a gazillion years ago, and was on scanned paper records…the great Garcia, genie of knowledge, dispenser of detail…"

"Garcia…." Morgan tried to move her along.

"Patience, my sweet bundle of bodaciousness. What I was trying to say was that I found the record of Daniel Reid's death. And the exact location where his body was found."

Rossi wasn't at all sure any of this was relevant. "Why are we thinking an almost thirty year old suicide might have anything to do with our current case?" He looked in Reid's direction. "Not that it's not important, Spencer, but I don't see the connection."

Reid acknowledged it. "I don't know that there is a connection. But we noticed it, and the location…."

Garcia spoke up again. "The location where Daniel Reid's body was found was only two miles from where Davidovitch's remains were, and 1.3 miles from where the second victim, Farrell's, remains were found."

Emily agreed with her more experienced friend. "The desert is probably a popular spot for the dumping of bodies, isn't it? I mean, it's so big…..it's not as likely that someone will stumble across a dead body."

Morgan felt the need to remind all of them. "We're not sure the unsub meant for the bitten tongues and missing hearts to be part of a display, or if they were removed as part of a compulsion. So he may or may not have purposely left the bodies near the hiking trail, where they were a little more likely to be found, given the vastness of the desert."

Rossi was persistent. "Whether or not they were meant as a display….I still don't see why we think there might be a connection with Reid's uncle's suicide. Hotch?"

The unit chief was of mixed opinions. "Dave's right in saying there's no overt connection between the old case and the new one," he started.

Rossi interrupted. "Not just that. I'm not sure why we're talking about Reid's uncle as a 'case'. Is there some question as to whether he was actually a suicide?"

Reid and JJ looked at each other, not sure which of them would speak. The decision was moot when Garcia's voice once again came through the phone.

"Actually, he was declared dead of a gunshot wound to the head. But the only gun found at the scene was a shotgun. It would be an impossible shot to make."

Morgan's eyes were on Reid as he spoke. "Not if he had long arms like Pretty Boy's."

Reid nodded his understanding. "It sounds like that's what was concluded back then. But I don't know…."

"Well, we can put that to rest, can't we?" Morgan was already pushing his chair back. "There's got to be a shotgun around here."

Rossi was persistent on the lack of connection between the two cases. "Even if we reach a different conclusion about your uncle, Spencer…..why connect the two cases?"

"They're only connected if my dad is part of the current case, I think. Two brothers…..even years apart….with the same remote location involved…."

That spurred an idea in Emily. "Do you think maybe it was a place they went together? Your father and his brother, I mean. Do you know if they were hikers?"

Reid gave a helpless shrug. There was no way to know, now. Diana and Daniel were both dead, and William was missing. Except…

Emily responded to her own question. "We can ask Dorothy Ricks, your dad's office manager. She might at least know if he still hiked. She seemed pretty close to him."

Hotch's nod indicated she should make the call just as Morgan returned, shotgun in hand.

"Okay, Pretty Boy, let's see what this looks like in your hands."

"Ahem….." The clearing of JJ's throat reminded her husband of the family gun ethic. Always check. Always.

Reid opened the gun and verified an empty barrel. Then he tried holding the gun against his body from several different angles. It became clear that even his long arms weren't long enough for a shot to the temple, as had happened with Daniel Reid. He could have accomplished a shot to the chest, or the chin, but to put the gun to one side, hold it steady enough and shoot with the one hand from that side, was impossible.

Hotch looked to his old friend to answer a question on all of their minds.

"Dave?"

The gun aficionado understood, and shook his head. "No change in general design or barrel length for at least a century." So it couldn't simply have been another 'size' of shotgun.

Morgan let out a whistle. "So it couldn't have been suicide. Kid, looks like your Uncle Daniel was a murder victim."

It seemed like there was yet another Reid-family-related cold case before them. But without a definite link to the current one.

Emily returned from her conversation with Dorothy Ricks.

"She says he told her once that he used to like to hike, but had a bad experience one time, and stopped. He never said what the bad experience was, but she'd always assumed it was either a fall, or maybe he got lost."

JJ had an idea. "What about Riley's dad? Wasn't he very friendly with your parents? Maybe he could tell us something."

The man had been arrested for the murder of his son's killer. But the courts had been kind to him. He'd served a fifteen month sentence in a minimum security facility, and been released. The fact of his having been in the penal system, however, might make him easier to find.

"Garcia…"

"On it, sir."

Hotch turned his attention back to the rest. "We've got a lot of ground to cover today. Let's get moving."

As so often happens, the third trip to the desert seemed to go by more quickly than the prior two had. But maybe that was just because Reid had so much information to filter through his mind.

My uncle was murdered. He'd seen so many shell-shocked families of murder victims. Now he tried to conjure an image of his parents, in that same situation. But they didn't realize it was a murder. They thought he'd killed himself.

He tried to remember his conversation with his mother about it. It had occurred at another time of turmoil in his life, after Emily's 'death'. He wasn't quite as good with recall from auditory input, but if he could visualize, he could virtually replay the scene…..

*** "You lost your Uncle Daniel when you were four. Do you remember that?"

He'd flashed on it during that murder case that hadn't actually involved his father.

"Vaguely. I can picture it, and I can sort of remember you mentioning his name. But that's all. I don't even know how he was my uncle. Was he your brother?"

She gave a wistful smile. "I had long since been put of my family…what little I had. No, Daniel was your father's brother. His younger brother."

Funny. In all these years, he'd never even thought about his father's side of the family. As though William's rejection had been made on the part of all of them. Now he began to wonder about the Reids.

"What happened to him?"

Diana shook her head in pity. "It was so sad. So sad. They were so proud of him, and then…." Her voice trailed off.

"Then? Mom, what happened to him? How did he die?"

She looked directly at her son now. "He shot himself."

Reid was stunned. He'd thought mental illness only ran on one side of his family.

"He…. why? Did they know why?"

She shrugged. "It was conjecture. He'd been in graduate school….. he was so bright. Not as bright as you, of course. But very bright. He was getting his degree in physics. And then he just disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

"Yes. He was in school in…. Massachusetts…."

"MIT?"

"Yes, that's it. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He'd just been home for winter break, but then he'd gone back. Or so we thought."

"He didn't?" Reid was starting to feel like he was working a BAU case.

"Well, we don't know that, do we? The family thought he'd gone back. But he was found here, in the desert just west of here. It was so sad."

He didn't understand. "How did they find him?"

"A hiker found him, down in a canyon. He was dead. He'd shot himself."

"How? Was there a gun?" Still working the case.

As so often happened, Diana abruptly shifted gears. She was done with this voyage into memory.

"Well, of course, there must have been a gun. But, my dear Spencer, your Uncle Daniel's was the only death you experienced as a boy. It's no wonder you're having such a difficult time now." ***

And now, he wished he'd pressured her more at the time. It had been murder. And he might have found out about it, if only he hadn't been so rattled about the apparent loss of Emily Prentiss.

I still had both of my parents then. Maybe I could have helped to solve it. Get justice for Uncle Daniel.

One more piece of fallout from that time of deception among the team. And, maybe, a contributor to the fact that William Reid was now also among the missing. Reid could only hope his father hadn't met the same fate as his brother.

"Hey, you're awfully quiet back there. You okay?" Emily was solicitous.

"Fine. Just…you know, working through things."

She thought she might keep his mind from going to bad places if she worked through those things with him.

"You know, I've been thinking. When we get out there…..what if we try a cognitive interview?"

"With me? About what? I was just a kid."

"Exactly. So maybe it's a distant memory. But maybe, if your dad liked to hike way back when…maybe he brought you out here. And maybe being surrounded by the scenery will help bring the memory forward."

It hadn't happened when he'd gone to the sites with Morgan, but then, they hadn't been using a technique.

"Maybe." But his tone told her he was doubtful.

Morgan spoke up. "You know, Kid, maybe the princess is on to something. What if we tried cognitive recall on your memory of the time your uncle died? You know, the funeral, a conversation between your parents...anything, really."

Reid had to consider it. "I did have that visual image of being at a funeral, but my mom had to tell me whose funeral it was. I don't know. It was a long time ago."

"I know, Kid. And, if it was any other brain but yours, I wouldn't even think it was worth trying. But…"

Reid sighed. They had to get a lead from somewhere.

"All right. We'll try both. The desert first. We'll have to wait on the other. It's too easy to have false memories when the interview covers more than one scene."

Morgan nodded as he turned the SUV onto the off-road portion of their journey.

"One thing at a time."

"God, it's beautiful. It so huge!"

It had almost become a mantra. Emily had been reciting it ever since they'd left the highway. Behind them, they could still see the tall buildings of Las Vegas, but the rest of the terrain was desert, flatland broken only by equally flat-topped mesa.

"The clouds look like they could actually touch the ground. And it looks like both the earth and the sky go on forever."

"I don't know, Princess. I must be too much of a city boy. Give me civilization any day."

She chuckled. "I didn't say I'd want to live here. I just think it's…..amazing. And there's a lot more color than I thought there'd be."

Reid spoke up. "It's not quite the same kind of view as you'd get in the Painted Desert, but it has thirteen different hues of brown, yellow, orange and pink."

"Looks red way out there, see?" Emily pointed to their right.

"It's a trick of the eye. If you get up close to it, you'll see it's more of a rust color. Mostly brown, with some orange."

Reid may not have spent all that much time in the desert during his youth, but he was as knowledgeable about it as he was about anything else.

"All right," said Morgan, "here's the visitor's station. We're pretty close now. Pretty Boy, can you remember exactly where we were?"

For the first time, they were in the desert unescorted. But Reid's memory served them well, and they found the exact location where the Davidovitch remains had been found.

Emily knew she was there to give a fresh opinion. She began to walk the area, noting the markings left on the ground by the evidence collection team.

"So, it's just a short distance from where a hiker might have left his vehicle at the visitor's station. But we're not sure if the unsub drove the victim here?"

"There were no tire tracks, but there had been a storm. So, no, we can't be sure. But it's unlikely he drove," answered Morgan.

"So, he either transported the body some other way, or they both walked in." She surmised.

"Right," replied Reid. "But we can't know if the victim was under duress, or if he just walked out here with the unsub, without knowing what was planned."

"You know what I don't see?" offered Emily. "I don't see any evidence that the victim was restrained here."

"Restrained?" Morgan didn't understand her point.

"Well, if the cause of death was dehydration, how did the unsub keep the victim here long enough to dry out?"

Reid realized how addled he was by the whole case. They hadn't known about the dehydration when they'd been here before. Still, it should have been an obvious question. And he didn't have an answer.

"Unless he kept the victim elsewhere for long enough to dehydrate him, and then brought him here."

But it didn't sound likely, even to him, and they were all three inclined to reject that scenario.

"So," posited Morgan, "we need to figure out if the unsub had a way to keep the victim here, without water…..how?"

"Could he have drugged him? Or kept him subdued, somehow?" Emily wondered.

Reid wasn't certain. "Maybe. Now that you've pointed it out, I don't see any evidence of stakes in the ground, or even a heavy enough boulder that the unsub could have kept him tied to. But I saw the autopsy report, and there was no evidence of drugs in his system. I suppose it's possible he was drugged early on, then became too weak to move, while the drug metabolized. But I would think the dehydration would have affected the clearance of any drug."

That made sense to Morgan. "So, what are we thinking? That the unsub somehow stayed out here with the victim, maybe threatened him with a weapon, and watched him shrivel?"

Emily shook away the image. "This guy's pretty complex. Organized enough to plan something like that, patient enough to wait for the victim to become debilitated….and then angry enough to carve out his heart, and take a few bites."

Morgan threw a look her way that said, Take it easy. She cast her eyes quickly at Reid to see his reaction to what she'd said, and then gave Morgan a nodded assent. Investigating a case with such a close personal connection was going to be challenging.

Nothing else from the site striking Emily, they got back into the SUV and followed GPS coordinates to the place where Daniel Reid's body had been discovered.

Reid exited the vehicle and stood, perfectly still, trying to picture a young man who might have looked very much like him, standing in the very same spot many years ago...moments away from death. So many years later, there was no chance of finding evidence of any sort.

the others gave him a few minutes, and then Emily decided it was time for distraction.

"Okay, Reid, let's see if we can get you to remember anything."

Her words brought him back to the present. The younger man wasn't enthused, but it had to be done. "All right."

She settled him on a small ledge, where he could face out at the desert expanse.

"Okay. Now, you can either close your eyes, or keep them on the distance, whichever you think will work best. All right?"

"Okay."

"Good. Now, take yourself back. You're four years old, and your dad wants to take you on a little trip outside the city. He takes you for a long, long ride in the car….and you see that you're not in town any more. You see the city getting farther and farther behind you…..you see the sand….and the brown colors…..and the blue of the sky…..and the clouds…"

"The clouds….the clouds are in the way….I blow them away…..I want to see…..Dad…Uncle Daniel…..can't see…no blue sky….no…dark, it's dark….too dark…scared.…..but the clouds…..and the wind blows…and…oh, my God…the sky….."

His two fellow profilers exchanged a concerned look at Reid's words. But he didn't seem particularly agitated. Emily asked an unspoken, 'Should I keep going?' Morgan responded with a 'Why not?' shrug.

"What about the sky? Are you frightened?"

Reid had shut his eyes now. "Not frightened…..beautiful…..no clouds…..stars….so many stars….beautiful…holy….."

"You were in the desert with your father at night?"

Reid nodded.

"And your Uncle Daniel?"

"He knows the names…..he can name them all…..but so many…."

"Did something happen that night, Spencer?" Using his childhood name.

"Watched the stars…with Dad….and Uncle Daniel."

She asked a few more times, in a few different ways, but the answer was always the same. Finally, with an agreeing nod from Morgan, she ended the process.

Reid actually shook himself back to the present.

"Kid, you all right? That was more like a hypnosis session than a cognitive interview."

Reid acknowledged it.

"I learned a little bit of hypnosis technique after the last time we were in Vegas. The process helped me a lot then, so I thought it might be useful to have a little skill with it. I just applied it as a little self-hypnosis, while Emily led me."

"Well, I wish you'd thought to tell me. You scared me a little bit there. Like I didn't know my own power."

He smiled in apology. "What did I remember?"

Morgan had thought to voice-record the whole thing, and played it back for Reid.

The young man listened intently. As the recording progressed, his colleagues could see the dawn of recognition in his face.

"Reid?"

"I remember. Sort of. I remember Dad took me out to the desert, and we met Uncle Daniel out here….somewhere. I don't know if it was here. We were going camping. I don't remember how far we walked. I think they carried me part of the way, though. And I remember they wanted me to see the stars. They said it was why they went into the desert….to see the stars."

Morgan nodded, now understanding Reid's recalled concern about the clouds. They would have been in the way.

"So you think you went camping with your old man and his brother….but nothing happened?"

Reid could only shrug. "I guess not. Or else it's just buried."

Emily pointed out what they did know. "At least we made some progress on the connection your dad and your uncle had to the desert. Sort of."

Reid stiffened as another, unwelcome thought came to him.

"My dad and his brother went to the desert together. We know that now. What if they went one time…and only one of them returned?"

A.N. The *** segment, where Diana recalls Daniel's death, is from Prelude. In case it sounded familiar.