A Voice Cries Out
Chapter 13
"So….how is he doing?"
JJ looked up from the open folder in front of her on the table. She and Rossi had been poring through personal material on the two confirmed victims for over an hour.
"He's okay. Considering, anyway. He's not really sleeping. I don't think he can get his thoughts to slow down enough. But he's holding together."
"I'd be willing to bet a certain charming little lady has something to do with that."
JJ smiled at him. If ever a godfather was in love with a goddaughter, it was David Rossi.
"I believe you would be right. I don't know how we would have gotten this far without the kids for comic relief at the end of the day."
She pushed back from the table, needing to stretch. "I just wish I thought it would be enough for…..well…who knows what's just around the corner in this case?"
He heard the worry in her voice, and he thought it was warranted. But, not wanting to add to her burden, he tried to assure her.
"He'll be okay, Cara. He has you."
She smiled as she pushed her chair back. "Thanks for that. Can I get you some coffee? I'm pouring."
He handed her his mug and looked back to the file he'd been reading. He and JJ had exchanged folders, so that both sets of eyes could winnow through the material for connections. Rossi's brow furrowed as he tried to remember something he'd read in the other file. He slid it across from JJ's place to his.
"Hmph. Here's something. They had kids the same age…boys. Farrell was a scout leader…maybe…."
"Maybe. But Davidovitch's daughter made it seem pretty unlikely. It didn't sound like he was all that involved as a father."
"Where is the son?"
"Overseas. He works for an oil company. Hasn't been home for almost two years, according to his sister."
"Okay….well, it was worth a try. Apart from that, I don't see anything that would tie the two victims together outside of work. I think we should concentrate our efforts on the case connections."
"Or someone within the IRS."
"True enough. Let's go find our comrades in blue. We'll let them wade through the cases while we look for other connections."
They wandered out of their small conference room and into a much larger meeting room, where teams of task force members were reviewing files. It was easy to spot their unit chief among the sea of blue.
"I thought you were working on getting a subpoena for Maxfield's cases. Or is this more fun than hanging around with a bunch of lawyers?" Rossi teased his old friend.
Hotch gave him a withering look. "I helped with the groundwork, but the locals have to apply for it. So I thought I'd help out here."
"Any word from Spence?"
Hotch nodded. "Emily called. He remembered being in the desert before, with his father and his uncle. But nothing beyond that. They're on their way back in."
Or so they would have been, if not for a message hurriedly delivered from the task force administrative coordinator.
"Agent Hotchner? This just came in." He handed over a message. JJ could see that it was brief.
Hotch spent only a few seconds reading and processing. Then he looked at his two team members.
"They've found William Reid's car."
Reid could feel his stomach roiling, and was glad he'd skipped breakfast. They'd been diverted to another location, a parking lot of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus. William Reid's vehicle had been located, inadvertently, when a security guard became curious about the car being parked in the same spot for over a week. He'd been concerned that a student was attempting to live out of the car, and run the plates. The BOLO had come up immediately.
Why the car would be at UNLV was a mystery. So far, nothing in what they'd uncovered about William Reid had led them to a connection with the university. They could only surmise he'd been lured there. Or, perhaps, had been visiting someone there, and then been taken. The fact of the car's lying unmoved for all that time bode ill for an innocent explanation. It was increasingly clear that he was in trouble. And Reid could only hope that the use of the present tense was still warranted.
Emily turned to look at him. "Hotch said the report indicates no sign of struggle. But they haven't been inside it yet. They're waiting for us."
He could only nod, not trusting his voice.
Morgan sought out his friend's eyes in the rear view mirror.
"Hey, Reid….don't go leaping to conclusions. There are lots of explanations for his car being there." If only I could think of a single one.
They'd been coming from the west desert, and had to cross downtown Las Vegas to get to the campus only a mile and a half beyond the famous strip of casinos and hotels. Morgan had kept the accelerator fully depressed for as long as traffic would allow. Now, they turned onto the university property.
"This place is huge," remarked Emily, who'd been educated on urban campuses.
"It's Paradise."
"What?"
"We're in a town called Paradise. My dad's car was found in Paradise. How about that?"
The way Reid said it, it sounded like an omen.
"Do you remember your way around here, Pretty Boy?" Morgan knew Reid had won an undergraduate degree, and at least one of his Ph.D.s, at UNLV.
"Turn left at the statue, then right around the quadrangle. The School of Physics and Astronomy will be on your left."
It was where they'd been told William's car had been found. Once they made the turn around the campus quad, it wasn't hard to spot their destination. There were two Nevada State Police cars and a campus security vehicle surrounding their target.
Emily had trouble seeing the vehicle beyond the surrounding cars, but then…..she put a hand to her mouth as she spied it, and sought out Morgan's face. The look of surprise told her he'd noticed it too.
It was a light aqua version of the ancient vehicle Reid had driven right up until Henry had been born. Then, because JJ had insisted he have something more reliable if he was to transport his godson, Reid had modernized.
Both of them turned to look at their colleague, whose facial expression combined shock and consternation. Emily was almost positive the shock was due to the similarity in vehicular design choices between the estranged father and son.
They exited the SUV and made their way over to the group of LEOs, making introductions all around. If the LEOs noticed the similarity in names between the FBI agent and the owner of the vehicle, they didn't choose to mention it.
"I thought it was just one of those grad students, you know? The inside of it was messy enough for someone to be living out of, but usually the kids have something like a van, so they can lay a mattress in it. Caught me totally by surprise to find out there was a BOLO on it," explained the security guard.
Morgan took the lead for the BAU team. "Do you know exactly how long it's been here?"
"Not exactly, no. But we can find out. I didn't make much of it until probably a few days in, because it hadn't moved. That's when I thought somebody was probably squatting in my parking lot. But the entrance to the building has a security camera that's mounted high enough, it should pick up this part of the lot."
"How do we get that feed?" asked Emily.
"I'll take you over to our main office. Do you want to look at the vehicle first?"
Reid had already been leaning over the car, eyes shaded by his hand, so he could see into the window. Now his teammates joined him. After just a quick glance, both of them stood and gave each other a raised brow look.
Reid was still peering in, his own brow furrowed in concentration as he created a visual image of the contents. He would take inventory later. When he stood, Morgan watched him for a reaction. Not seeing one, he addressed the LEOs.
"Nobody touches this until the crime scene investigators are done with it, all right? We'll go take a look at the tapes, and then come back after the evidence collection is completed."
The profilers returned to their vehicle and started following the guard across the campus to the main security office. Morgan eyed Reid in the rear view mirror.
"You all right, Kid?"
"Fine."
"What did you see?"
Emily shifted in her seat so she could turn around and look at him. "Did you notice anything…..familiar?"
The look on Reid's face was inscrutable, prompting Emily to push him.
"Reid, didn't you notice? That could have been the inside of your car…..pre-JJ, anyway."
Reid gave her a quick glance and then turned his eyes to the window. "I noticed."
A quick turn of the head from Morgan drew Emily's attention, and she watched her companion give a subtle shake of his head. Any similarities in behavior between William and Spencer Reid would have to go unprobed for now. Their young genius was obviously struggling to absorb it. Emily returned an equally subtle nod to her colleague, and then changed the subject.
"I'll get Garcia going on finding a reason why he would have been here. Maybe he knew someone, maybe he was auditing a course. We did find out he was good with numbers, didn't we? Reid, was he also good with the sciences? Did he like to dabble?"
No answer. Morgan saw that Reid was still staring out the window.
"Reid?"
"Huh?"
Morgan repeated Emily's question.
"I think his brother was. My Uncle Daniel. But my uncle went to MIT….I remember my mother telling me."
"Okay. But maybe your dad was like his brother. Maybe he did take a course or two."
"Or maybe he was just helping one of the professors with their taxes?" offered Emily. "We could definitely have Garcia look into that."
She brought out her phone to call their colleague just as Morgan pulled the SUV into the security parking lot.
"Go ahead, I'll be right behind you." She waved the others inside.
They didn't even need Reid's prolific processing skills. With William Reid's car standing out like a sore thumb in the middle of the parking lot, watching over a week's worth of video surveillance was akin to looking at a still life portrait. They ran the feed backwards and watched as the vehicle sat, undisturbed, for almost eight days. And then, at about 3 PM….almost exactly eight days ago…..they saw the car pull into the lot, and the driver's door opened. And out stepped a dark haired man of slight build, maybe six inches shorter than Reid.
"Is that him?" asked Emily, who'd never met the man. He wasn't built quite like Reid, but there was something about his gait that seemed familiar.
Morgan moved his eyes from the screen, to his open-mouthed little brother, and back again.
"It's him."
With information beginning to flow in, the team planned only a short break for supper. They would reconvene at the FBI office at 7.
JJ begged herself and Reid away from the others. They would get something and bring it back to their hotel room, so they could check in with her parents and the kids.
And, she thought, so I can take care of my husband.
He'd looked more shaken than ever when he'd returned from the UNLV campus. JJ was aware they'd found William's car, and identified him on a security videotape. He'd been alone, and walked into the science building of his own accord. And then disappeared. After the initial spotting of William's arrival to the lot, Reid had watched the ensuing eight days of video, making sure the man hadn't simply exited the building and left his vehicle behind. But he hadn't.
That finding had spurred a thorough search of the Astronomy and Physics building, carried out by a combined force of Nevada State Police, UNLV Campus Security, and three weary BAU profilers. There was no sign of William Reid anywhere.
"They can't very well dust the entire building for prints, or look for his DNA. We don't even know where he was going in there, or who he might have been visiting."
Reid expressed his frustration to his wife as they entered their room.
"Give PG a chance to find something, Spence. If he has a connection with anyone there, she'll uncover it. Then the area for evidence collection will be narrowed."
She closed the door behind them and led him over to their bed.
Her husband shook his head. "This was over eight days ago. And the campus is active. Do you know how many people have been in and out of that building in that time? It would be nearly impossible to cross reference all the fingerprints, let alone the DNA."
"Well," she threw up her hands. "It's a start, right? At least we know where he went when he left his condo. And that he didn't seem to be there under duress…or could you tell?"
He knew what she was asking. If he'd been stressed at the time, his William's gait might have been slowed, even hesitant, showing his reluctance. Or it might have been hurried and uneven, demonstrative of anger or upset. But William Reid's gait had been steady and relaxed.
"It didn't look like anything was wrong. But he was only on screen for a few seconds. It was hard to tell."
"I'm amazed you found him on the video at all." JJ curled herself behind Reid and started massaging his shoulders. "Ugh….I can feel it….here…..and here…..and here…"
Her fingers usually elicited a steady stream of 'aahhs' from her husband. Not so tonight, which caused her to crane her neck forward to see his face.
"What?"
He looked off to the distance, revisiting the scene in the parking lot.
"The reason we found him so easily on the video was…..his car."
"What about it?"
"You remember the car I had when I first came to the BAU?"
"The original Reidmobile?" It had been a team joke. Ancient, boxy, and filled with an assortment of used coffee cups, notepads and books.
"Yeah. My dad's car…it was almost exactly the same. Except in aqua."
JJ stopped kneading. "Your dad had a car just like that?" She sounded as surprised as Reid had been. "What about the inside?"
He threw a glance her way. "Almost the same. Except he had tax law and accounting books."
"You and your dad…."
He snorted. "Yep. Me and my dad. I know Emily and Morgan noticed, because I saw them looking at one another when they thought I wasn't watching."
JJ slid forward so that she was sitting next to him, and turned him toward her.
"So, you and your dad have the same…..bad….taste in cars." Trying to inject a little humor. "Who would have thought driving in style was genetic?"
He tried to smile, but failed.
"What's wrong, Spence? Why is this bothering you so much?"
"Because. There are so many things I don't know about myself, JJ. I've measured myself, and how I am, and what I do, only against my mother's side of the family. Against my mom, really. I didn't know anyone else. Now I find that things I thought were unique to me might actually be part of a familial trait. That, whether I want it or not, I have this connection to my father. And….."
He'd stopped. But she could see where he was going, and urged him to finish.
"And what?"
"And….what if that's not all that's familial? What if I turn out to be the kind of father my dad was?"
You are becoming too predictable, my love. "Spence, you told me yourself that your dad said he left because he was afraid. He didn't know how to handle you, or your mom."
"So?"
"So….are you afraid of Henry?"
"No."
"Rosie?"
He gave the half smile that always got to her. "Well….maybe."
She laughed. "Only because you know she's got you wrapped around her little finger."
"But you'll save me from her, won't you?" Smiling widening. It seemed she always knew how to save him from himself.
JJ just waved her little finger at him. "She'll have to unwrap you from this one first."
He grabbed her finger, and then both hands, and used them to pull her to him.
"Never."