A Voice Cries Out

Chapter 15

"How about I drive?"

JJ recognized the look on her husband's face. He had a lot to work through, and his mind would be anywhere but on the road. Already engaged in the process, Reid merely tossed her the keys and got into the passenger seat as JJ started them back toward the Las Vegas FBI office.

JJ was practiced in giving Reid the time and space he so often needed. They were precious commodities in a household inhabited by two young children, but she made it a priority. It had been one of the things they'd had to work through early in their relationship. Reid had lived a very solitary life before he'd fallen in love with JJ, and he'd been worried that he'd become dependent on that solitude. Having to share space had been one thing. Having to share himself, so often and so consistently, had been another. He'd said that he was afraid of being moody without his time alone. But JJ had seen right through that. She'd seen his insecurities. His fears that he would open himself fully to her, and to Henry, and be found wanting. That they would all find that he had too little emotional depth to offer them, that he was fully defined by his intellect.

She thought back to that time in their lives now, as she drove them along in silence. As they'd drawn closer to sharing a life together, he'd seemed to pull back, and she'd worried that he'd decided it was all too much. That they'd worked through it had been a minor miracle accomplished through the remodeling of part of the basement into an office space, and to Reid's frequent visits to what had become his virtual fortress of solitude…..the canopy of stars that overhung their backyard. When he'd begun to share that experience with her, and later with Henry, JJ had felt the solidifying of their new family.

In the seat next to her, Reid's thoughts were jumbled. Literally for decades he'd thought of his 'Reid' heritage only in terms of the distaste he felt for William. To learn that he'd had a relationship of sorts with his Uncle Daniel as well was disquieting.

Professor Dahlgren liked him. Said he was a great guy. Said he liked spending time with me. But so did my dad, once upon a time. Until he felt overwhelmed, that is. By an eleven year old boy. I don't care if I was smarter than he was. I was eleven! Professor Dahlgren said Uncle Daniel was smart, too. Maybe that's where it came from. Maybe it was more than the sum of my father and my mother. Maybe my uncle would have kept up the relationship. Maybe he would even have made Dad feel like he could handle things. Maybe…..

Maybe what now appeared to have been the murder of Daniel Reid had resulted in reams of fallout in the lives of Diana, William and Spencer. Given that his father had last been seen entering the building where Daniel had worked that last, fateful summer, Reid couldn't help but wonder if there was a connection. But what?

JJ noticed the subtle change in his expression, and concluded that he was ready for some conversation.

"Did it bring anything back, talking with Professor Dahlgren? Do you remember more about your uncle?"

The frustration was evident in Reid's voice. "Just flashes. But I can't be certain I'm not creating them, based on what I heard. I'm pretty sure about the trip to the desert, because that came from out of nowhere. But any picture I might be getting of Uncle Daniel, and his working at UNLV…. I think I might just be making that up in my head."

"Spence, wasn't there anything about him in your mother's journals? The one we found at your dad's place was only about the time of his death. What about before that?"

Reid had been combing his eidetic memory for days, searching for just that information. "I don't remember seeing it. And that's got to mean that there's nothing there. Maybe he wasn't around all that much. He was in graduate school then…"

"Graduate school at nineteen…. he must have taken after his nephew."

Reid smiled. "I was thinking about that. We were pretty similar, I'd bet. And I can't help but wonder if his dying triggered something in my dad. You know, something that would make him leave us."

She'd begun to wonder the same thing. "Do you think he and your dad were close?"

"Enough for us to go camping with him. And I do remember my mom saying how broken up the whole family had been when he died."

"So, could your dad have met some people in the science department all those years ago? Maybe he kept in touch with them, and was visiting with them?"

"Well, so far no one's acknowledged it. But there may be someone who's on sabbatical, or they might have even retired by now."

"But then why would your dad go there to see them?"

"He wouldn't. Which means that, if there's someone who knew both my dad and Uncle Daniel way back, and isn't telling about it now…."

She finished the thought for him. "Maybe that's the person we need to talk to. Maybe your dad did go to visit, and there was some sort of disagreement, or altercation, or something…."

"Which would mean it's unlikely my dad is part of the other case. What are the odds he would deliberately be going to visit someone who turned out to be a serial killer?"

But it doesn't mean he didn't go to visit another kind of killer.

The BAU had a brief end-of-day meeting before they each headed over to the hotel for some rest. Hotch and Rossi filled the rest in on what little could be determined at the site of the discovery of the latest victim. He and Morgan would head back out in daylight. Morgan would provide the continuity in observation among the sites, but Hotch again wanted to see it for himself.

Reid told them about the connection between his family and the professor of astrophysics at UNLV, while Emily reported on the frustrating lack of progress in wading through Maxfield's records.

"I was right. Tawny was an expert filer. Except when she forgot that 'L' comes before 'M', and confused 'C' with 'O', and 'S' with 'Z'."

"I can help you in the morning," offered Reid. He always found it soothing to his roiling thoughts when he could focus on a task. The rest of his mind kept working on the problem, but it did so with much less distress to him.

"There's something else you'll need to look through as well, Pretty Boy. We had a message earlier. Ben Yazzie called, wondering if anyone was going to pick up those records we asked him to put together about your dad's orders from his flower shop. So we arranged to have a patrol car swing by and then deliver them here at the end of their shift."

Reid had nearly forgotten about the flowers, having been so distracted with the discovery of his father's car at the probable site of William's disappearance…and especially since this evening's news about his uncle. Any softening he'd begun to feel toward his father evaporated with the memory of what the florist had told them. That William had been a regular sender of flowers to his wife. The one he'd acquired after he'd left his first family.

And yet, why hadn't Garcia been able to find any trace of said marriage?

Exhaustion overtook him that night, and Reid slept through until morning. But, he soon realized, there was a part of him hadn't been resting. As had so often happened when it was faced with the unknown, his mind appeared to have been working through the night, and some clarity was present when he awakened. While JJ was in the shower, he wrote her a note and slipped out. Texting Hotch that he would need to be late for the morning task force gathering, he left on an errand to confirm what his brain had already told him.

When he arrived at the FBI office an hour after the meeting had concluded, Reid found Rossi, Emily and JJ all buried in Maxfield's files. Hotch and Morgan had already headed out to the site where the most recent body had been found. They were still waiting for confirmation that it was Maxfield.

JJ couldn't quite read the look on her husband's face, but she was relieved to see some of the weariness of the previous days lifted from it. His note had only told her he had something to do, and not to worry. Which, of course, had set her to worrying fiercely. Her anxiety soothed by his safe arrival, she knew enough not to push him in public about where he'd been, or what he'd been doing.

Rossi simply pushed a box of files in Reid's direction.

"Here. Happy reading, Dr. Twenty-Thousand-Words-Per-Minute."

Reid smiled and accepted the cardboard gift. He'd lifted out a thick pile of folders and started rifling through them when Emily remarked, "I still don't get it. How do you do that?"

"Do what?" Reid hadn't even looked up.

"That." She pointed at him, and the papers in front of him. "You've just gone through what it's taken me a full hour to do."

"I'm only looking for four words, right? The names of the clients the two IRS agents had in common with Maxfield. So I don't have to process all the words, I just have to word-find."

Rossi looked askance at him. "I would think that's a different skill from speed reading." Wondering if they were discovering yet another genius super-power.

Reid shrugged. "It is."

Rossi hid his smile behind a folder. Once upon a time, Reid would have been self-conscious about his prowess in almost anything. His genius, and his related skills, were a large part of what had set him apart from others for much of his life. They'd contributed greatly to his being bullied as a child...and, sometimes, as an adult...and thus, his gifts had become a source of insecurity. That he could now so easily acknowledge one of them spoke to the growth in confidence of the young man. And, Rossi knew, much of that growth in confidence was because of the love and support of the woman sitting across from him. The childless senior profiler felt an almost paternal pride in his two youngest colleagues.

Emily had been studying Reid ever since he'd joined them at the conference table. She didn't see any overt signs of upset or distress. He didn't seem more anxious than the case warranted. In fact, he seemed a little more animated than he had yesterday. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she gave in to it.

"So, Reid…are you going to tell us why you missed the meeting this morning? Where were you?"

Just briefly, Reid stiffened. He'd been planning to keep it to himself for a while, feeling as though he'd not quite fully absorbed it. But they were in the middle of an investigation, and one never knew what would turn out to be important. Slowly, he pushed back from the table and looked around at each of the others.

"I was at Bennington."

"It's pretty much like the other sites, Hotch. No sign of restraints, yet the ME says this one died of dehydration, too."

The two men had gone over every square inch of the evidence grid, and Morgan couldn't see anything that made this location any different from the ones where the first two bodies had been found.

Hotch shielded his eyes against the bright sun. Even sunglasses were no match for the intensity of the light. Instinctively, he moved into the shade of a very large boulder. And then, immediately, understood.

"Were the other locations exactly like this? The rough terrain? The rocks?"

Morgan read the idea in his superior's mind. "You think he used the shade for himself? While he stayed with them and watched them dry out?"

"If the other sites were anything like this one, the unsub could have had protection and shade for himself. Look, here…..there's a little rock ledge for him to rest himself on."

Morgan shook his head, more in disgust than in disagreement. "He must have had a weapon, then. Or he incapacitated them in some way the ME hasn't found yet. Are we still waiting on toxicology?"

"The preliminaries are negative, but the full panel will take another week."

"Well, however he kept them here…..letting them bake in the sun like that….that's torture. It would have been kinder if he'd bled them dry…"

Morgan cut off his words as the two men shared an 'aha' moment. They'd just found their profile.

"Our unsub is organized, and he's angry. He's punishing his victims for perceived wrongs, and doing to them what he feels has been done to him."

Hotch got them started on the profile. Most of the team were meeting with the task force and all available units from the LVPD and Nevada State Police. Only Reid was missing, holed up in the conference room with the remainder of Maxfield's files. He'd taken over the search of Maxfield's files from the others.

Rossi took it up from Hotch. "Of course, we don't mean he's been tortured in the desert. But we do think he feels as though he is a victim, and he's seeking revenge."

Emily clarified. "He feels as though the government, or more specifically, the Internal Revenue Service, has gutted him financially. Bled him dry, so to speak. And he's turned that into a metaphor."

"Which means he's got some degree of intelligence, probably some higher education, maybe even an advanced degree," added Morgan.

One of the LVPD cops spoke up. "It doesn't take a college degree to kill somebody and rip their heart out."

Hotch acknowledged the point, but added, "Metaphor is a sophisticated concept. To actualize it with a behavior requires higher order thinking, no matter how violent."

Emily added, "So we think our unsub may be employed in a white collar job, possibly a professional, and was probably in a higher income bracket."

"The more you make, the more you stand to lose." Rossi explained the logic of it. "And the angrier you get when you have to pay the piper."

"If he's that crazy and angry about finances, I guess I get why he might have wanted to rip his victim's heart out," said a state trooper, " but what about the tongues?"

Morgan fielded that one. "He thinks they lied to him. Or ratted him out to the feds. We're looking for someone who underwent an investigation and either owed the IRS a lot of money….or maybe was even put away for it."

Hotch assured them of the progress the team had been making. "We've got a short list of client names overlapping among the three victims. We're working now to see which fits the profile."

Throughout the briefing, JJ had been having difficulty keeping her mind on the task at hand. She kept throwing glances in the direction of the conference room, concerned about her husband. His morning excursion, and the bits of new information that had been coming in all day, were bound to have his emotions in turmoil.

Just as the large group was about to disburse, Reid rushed out from the conference room, file folder in hand.

"Got him!"