A Voice Cries Out
Chapter 16
Marcus Carmichael was his name. Like the three other individuals on the short suspect list, the once-successful entrepreneur had been audited by victim number one, Stephen Davidovitch. Upon Davidovitch's retirement, victim number two, Jerry Farrell, had taken over the case for the IRS. Carmichael had sought legal representation from Max Maxfield. Unlike the other three individuals, Marcus Carmichael's case had already reached a disposition. A highly unfavorable one.
"Garcia helped me look at his early employment records, and his health history. It looks like he went out on his own because he couldn't keep a job. Kept having blow-ups with his co-workers, and even with his supervisors. They actually called the police on him at his last job, because he threatened his boss….but the boss apparently didn't want any trouble, so he didn't press charges. That's why Garcia couldn't find an arrest record."
Reid was addressing his remarks to his team, but the entire task force was listening in.
"And the psychiatric records?" prompted Hotch.
"Eight months ago, he filled a prescription for quetiapine, more commonly known as Seroquel. It's used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and several other conditions where there might be behavioral outbursts. The thing is, the prescription was for thirty tablets. It was refillable, but it was never refilled."
"Leaving him an unmedicated psychotic with a cause for resentment," mused Rossi.
"Exactly," agreed Reid.
Morgan already had his phone out. "You have an address for us, Penelope?" Remembering that he had a wider audience than usual, he opted for a more conventional form of address. As she gave the information to him, he repeated it aloud, for the benefit of the rest of the task force.
As Hotch opened his mouth to direct those assembled to their task, Reid called out once again.
"Wait!"
Many who had already turned to the door rotated themselves back around.
"Reid?"
"I had Garcia run one more thing. Before Maxfield went missing, he made a note in Carmichael's case record. Carmichael had planned to sue Maxfield for inadequate representation. That meant he must have hired another attorney. So I had Garcia look at court filings with Carmichael's name…..and we found his new attorney. The thing is, if the case still isn't going his way….and it looks like it's not…..Carmichael might be looking for another victim."
Hotch spent only a few seconds deciding. Then he split his team into thirds.
"Morgan, Prentiss, you'll go to Carmichael's address. Dave and I will cover the new attorney's office. JJ, Reid, you'll go to his home." And then he turned to the LV FBI task force leader to divide the rest of the task force.
As they headed out, Hotch managed a moment's exchange with Reid.
"I'm sorry I had to pull you away from…"
Reid's upraised hand stopped him. "We're all just doing our jobs, Hotch. I understand."
The life they were hoping to save might not have been William Reid's. But it was important to someone.
"So, was Bennington good news or bad news?" With the one case behind them, JJ wanted to probe Reid's state of mind.
He'd told them what he'd learned, but then they'd been distracted by the arrival of Hotch and Morgan, and the huddle that preceded them delivering the profile. With all the momentum shifted toward their primary case, Reid's news had been pushed to the background…..for all but Reid and JJ.
There had been too much radio chatter as the task force dispersed in search of their unsub. And, by tacit agreement, they'd put on their professional personas. Now that the unsub had been identified, the profiler couple would stick with the case at hand until its resolution.
In the end, it had been Hotch and Rossi who'd found the man, and just in time. Reid's surmise had been correct. Marcus Carmichael had been working with another attorney to appeal his case against the IRS. He'd been meeting at the attorney's office at the same time the FBI had called to caution the staff there. When a secretary interrupted their meeting to alert her boss that the FBI was on the phone, Carmichael erupted.
Hotch and Rossi arrived to find a hostage situation under way. Fortunately for the office staff, Rossi had, literally, written the book on hostage negotiation. And Carmichael had been afforded no time to protect his position. Rossi managed to attract the killer to an office window with the promise of showing his demanded escape vehicle. A Nevada State Police sniper took care of the rest.
The down side to how things played out was that there was no opportunity to formally interview their presumed killer, no chance of obtaining a confession. But what Morgan and Prentiss found at his home was eloquent in its testimony. Newspaper articles about his own case and many other tax disputes lined the walls of two rooms. A mound of hand-written, poorly-composed legal arguments topped a desk. In the garage, evidence of recently used camping equipment, including a bloody knife. Most telling of all was what was found in Carmichael's refrigerator.
Emily shivered as she told the rest. "In pickle jars. Like he was ready to eat them."
"He did eat them, Emily. Remember? There were human bite marks on both the tongues and the heart tissue left at the scene." Reid reminded her.
They'd all had to try hard to erase a mental image of Carmichael feasting on the remains of his victims.
Hours later, the BAU had left the rest of the work to the crime scene investigation teams operating at both the law office and Carmichael's home. Hotch had sent them all off for some well-deserved rest. He had, notably, said nothing more about William Reid's disappearance.
Now, in the privacy of their hotel room, JJ probed her husband. She was concerned about how long it was taking him to respond, and repeated her question.
"Spence…..what did you think about Bennington?"
"It was…confusing, I guess. That's the only word that comes to mind." Or heart, or anything else.
"What was it that made you think of it? I mean, you hadn't even seen the receipts yet."
He was stretched out on top of the bed, hands behind his head. "It was the only thing that made sense. It would have been obvious to me when I first found out about them, if I hadn't been so blinded by anger."
She sympathized. It was true. But his anger had been hard-earned, and well-placed. "I guess, even if you hadn't figured it out then, Garcia's not being able to find any records of another wedding should have been a big clue."
He gave her a look. "Tell me the truth. The rest of you had already figured it out…..right?"
JJ joined him on the bed and sat, looking down at him.
"Truth? I can't speak for any of the others…but it had crossed my mind."
He shifted to his side, the better to see her. "But you didn't want to say anything because you knew I'd reject the idea outright."
She shook her head. "I didn't say anything because I thought that, if it was true, we'd find out soon enough. And, if it wasn't, I didn't want us to be distracted from the rest of the case."
He stared at her for a moment, weighing her response. He knew he had a tendency to become petulant in any discussion about his father. He wasn't proud of it, but it was a reaction he'd simply not been able to overcome. Until now.
"I'm sorry if I've made it hard for you to talk to me, JJ. You shouldn't have to be afraid to bring something up just because you're worried about how I'll react."
She made light of it. "Are you saying you promise not to stamp your feet and slam the door?"
"I promise," he grinned. "If you promise not to send me to my room…..unless you're coming with me."
JJ pushed him over onto his back so she could lay her head on his chest. "I promise, too." She tilted her head up to look at him. "So, Dr. Norman was sworn to secrecy, huh?"
"He apologized. My mom told him she had a secret admirer and didn't want her son to know about it. Dr. Norman didn't see any harm in it, so he went along with her. And I didn't visit often enough to notice."
She heard the self-recrimination in his tone. He'd told her about his avoidance of Bennington. At first, it had been too emotionally taxing to witness the ongoing decline in his mother. And he'd been all too aware of his own risk of a similar fate. He actively avoided being exposed to a vision of what his adult life might be like. Over time, he'd been able to add 'too busy' into his list of excuses not to visit.
And yet, JJ knew Reid had loved his mother. Still did. He'd written her nearly every day, and thought of her often. In the final days of her life, JJ had been able to spend time with the woman who would, post-humously, become her mother-in-law. Diana had seen the connection between her son and JJ even before the two of them had, ample evidence that mother and son had managed to maintain their connection over miles, and years, of distance.
"You loved her, Spence. She knew that. That's all that matters."
She could feel his chin move as he nodded. "I did. I guess distance doesn't make it easier….but it doesn't make it impossible. Speaking of….."
"Ooh, that's right! What time is it?"
He looked at the digital alarm on the nightstand. "They should have been in bed an hour ago."
JJ pushed off the bed, heading for her tablet. "Except they're with their grandparents, who don't stand a chance against our children's wheedling. I'll bet they're still up."
She'd already entered the number.
"There, Meme. You push there."
"Oh….hello? Hello?"
They could hear Sandy, but their only visual was of an empty sofa. Then Henry's head filled the screen.
"Hi Mommy! Hi Daddy!"
JJ put out her palm and Reid slapped an imaginary bill into it. No bet.
"Henry, what are you doing up?" Even as the words left her mouth, JJ realized how reflexively maternal they were. If you didn't expect him to be up, what were you calling him for?
"It's Saturday, Mom. We watched a movie."
"Oh, gosh. We've been so busy, I didn't even know it was Saturday!"
Reid spoke up. "What did you watch, Buddy?"
"Air Bud. It's about this dog that looks just like Casey. And he learned how to play basketball! Can we get a basketball hoop, Dad? I wanna teach Casey to play!"
His parents chuckled. "Maybe when we get home, okay, Henry Bud?"
"Daaadddyyyyyy!" Rosie's volume appeared to increase as she toddled across the room. Her momentum overcame her power to stop, and she practically knocked Henry off his feet as she appeared on their screen.
"Rosie! How's my girl?"
"Hi Daddy! Hi Mommy!"
"Hi, Sweetheart…did you have fun today?" JJ took maternal inventory. No visible bumps, bruises or scrapes. Must have been a good day.
Big nod from both kids. "We play outside," explained Rosie.
"And we had ice cream!" added the gastronomically-pleased Henry.
"Yum!" agreed his sister.
"Hello, Sweetheart," the elder mother addressed her own daughter as JJ had Rosie. "How are things going there? You both look tired."
"We are, Mom. But it's par for the course. The good news is that we wrapped the case….well, one of the cases….today. We're not sure yet what comes next."
They hadn't discussed it, but JJ assumed she and Reid would ask to stay in Las Vegas on personal time, to continue searching for William. She knew her unit chief well enough to assume it would be granted.
"We'll have more information by tomorrow. We'll give you a call in the morning to let you and Dad know. Speaking of Dad…..where is he?"
"Right here, Pumpkin." Charles appeared on the screen, wiping his hands on a rag. "I was fixing the chain on Henry's bicycle. It came a little loose today."
"Little Man?"
Henry heard the question his mother hadn't asked, and pushed his way to the front of the crowd in the Reid living room. He lifted his pajama leg to show her.
"It's a big one!"
JJ made sure her son saw her cringe at the size of the scrape on his knee. "You must be very brave, Henry. Does it hurt?"
"Only a little." At which Rosie bent over and kissed Henry's knee, producing smiles and 'awww's all around.
"Rosie Magic Lips is making it all better, aren't you Rosie?" beamed her father. Years earlier, his heart had been touched by the empathy of the young Henry, and he was happy to see the trait running in the family.
After a few more tidbits about how the family had spent their day, the call was ended with a round of good night's and 'I love you's. JJ promised her father a solo phone call in the morning, so they could speak more freely.
Once they'd ended the call, Reid took JJ by the shoulders. "You don't have to stay here with me, you know. I can handle it. You miss the kids, and they miss you."
"Wasn't there something about 'for better or for worse'? And besides, you and the kids miss each other, too. If I stay to help, maybe we can find your dad faster and then we can all be together again."
Unstated was the impossibility of knowing if William Reid would be found alive or dead. But it was the element that brought urgency to the search.
Reid expelled a deep breath. "You know what? You're right. We did say 'for better or for worse'. It's time for something 'better'. And besides, I need it. Seriously, I need it. So…can I show you something?"
She didn't understand. "Of course….but, what?"
"I don't want to tell you. I want to show you." He grabbed her by the hand. "Come on."
They'd taken one of the SUVs on loan from their Las Vegas colleagues. An hour later, Reid's eidetic memory told him exactly where to go off road. He purposely led them away from the crime scenes, and toward a bluff he'd noticed during both of his earlier excursions with Morgan.
In the seat next to him, JJ looked around at the great expanse of …..nothing.
"I wish I could see this in the daylight. In the dark, it seems like we're out in the middle of nowhere."
He chuckled. "It's exactly the same in the daylight, trust me. Because we are in the middle of nowhere."
"Hmm. You know, when I was growing up, we were in a pretty rural area. You saw where my parents lived, but I've never taken you to where my grandparents had their farm. It was a good size, so their nearest neighbors were miles away. But there were crops, and trees, and hills…..things that made it feel less open, less…..isolated. Here, it feels so different. So….alone."
He knew what she meant, because he felt it too. Even riding together with someone he loved, the sheer scale of their surroundings was intimidating. But there was something else about it, and he wanted to show her.
"We're almost there. Just wait until we get behind that bluff."
They rode along in silence for a few moments more, each lost in thought. When Reid finally maneuvered the SUV to the place he'd sought, he shut off the engine. And then the headlights.
"Sit here for a few minutes. Let your eyes adjust."
In the near total-darkness, JJ realized her husband had purposely used the landscape to obscure the lights of the city behind them. While she waited for her eyes to make their accommodation, she wondered.
"Is this where you used to come with your dad and your uncle?"
"I think it must have been around here somewhere. I was pretty young. I don't think I'd quite mastered the eidetic stuff yet."
"Mastered?"
"Yeah. It was always there, of course. You either have it or you don't. But I learned along the way how to really use it. How to imprint a mental picture of something, so I could go back and visit it later. There are parts of those camping trips that have come back to me visually, but not nearly as much as if they had happened when I was a little bit older."
She brought up the topic she knew had to be foremost in his mind, because it was foremost in hers.
"Your dad was sending your mom flowers all that time."
"And I didn't know. I only know, for sure, that he never sent them to our home, before I …..before Bennington."
"Maybe he knew they wouldn't be welcomed."
Reid was silent a moment, thinking. "More like he knew his son would reject them. And when he knew I was out of the way, he started sending them directly to her."
"So…does that mean he still loved her?"
"No!" Then….."I don't….I don't know." After another long silence, Reid added, "I hope I didn't cause her pain, JJ. I hope I didn't keep her from something that might have made her happy, all those years."
JJ closed her eyes. Sometimes her husband's propensity for taking on the sins of others could be…..exhausting .
"Spence, don't. You can't know what would have happened, because it didn't. And you certainly weren't responsible for what your father might have thought might have happened if he'd sent her flowers. Just like you weren't responsible," she said with force, to make her point, "for his deciding to leave you in the first place."
Reid played with his lower lip, as he so often did when he was thinking. "I wonder how he knew how I felt. How resentful I'd gotten. It was different when it actually happened. I was upset, I was crying, I was scared. I begged him to stay with us."
JJ had never heard the story of the actual separation. It had always seemed too sensitive. And it had been too far in the past to matter. But recent circumstances had brought it back to prominence.
"What did he say to you?"
"He didn't say anything. He just stared at me. At the time, I remember thinking that he hated what he saw, that I was at least a part of the reason he wanted to leave. But now….."
She finished it for him. "Now you wonder if he just couldn't manage to speak."
Her eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to allow her to see that her husband was near tears.
"Spence…"
He swallowed before he spoke. "I can't imagine how it must have felt. I mean…..just the thought of leaving Henry, or Rosie, and knowing I wouldn't see them again…..let alone that it would be my idea. I can't even conceive of it."
She leaned over to kiss his cheek. "Thank God."
"But….the flowers…it feels like they change everything. Like I need to think it all through again. Maybe I got it all wrong."
JJ realized the irony. For several years, she'd been encouraging Spence to forgive his father, if only for his own sake. Now it was she who had trouble with the idea.
"He still left you, Spence. Alone, with no one to take care of you except each other."
"I know. That's what makes it so hard to understand. That's what…..that's why I needed to come out here. And then I wanted to show it to you."
"Well, we're here. What do you want to show me?"
In reply, he reached up and shut off the overhead compartment light before opening his door. JJ followed suit and met him in front of the SUV.
"This. This is what I wanted you to see." He tilted her head upward.
If the backyard patio served as Reid's chapel, then the desert was a virtual cathedral. Every bit of sky was filled with starlight, from the apex to the horizon. There were even star clouds to be seen, an occasional meteor shooting among them.
"Oh, my God," she gasped.
"Exactly." He whispered it. It didn't feel right to speak out loud.
She felt the same way. Softly, she said, "I feel so small."
He pulled her to lean back against him and wrapped his arms around her. "But not alone."
She let her weight fall against him. "Not alone. Spence, it's beautiful. So….amazing. But so humbling at the same time."
"Maybe that's what brings me to them. Knowing how many there are, and how old they are. How long ago that light left them, just so we could see it. My problems are very small, when I measure them on the scale of the universe."
They were quiet for a long time after that. JJ was sure her husband was praying, and then she felt a relaxation in his muscle. His arms still enfolded her, but the tension was released from them. There was something about being alone with the man she loved, under this brilliant canopy of stars. JJ felt like she was melting into the moment, melting into him.
She turned, still in his arms, and drew him down until their lips met. It was long, and sweet, and tender, and suddenly she wanted more.
"Spence…." she was nearly breathless.
He read her correctly, but he knew something she didn't.
She misread his hesitance, thinking he was worried about the rocky ground below them.
"There's got to be a tarp or something in the back. We can kick the rocks out of the way and lay it down."
"That's not it."
"What, then? We're all alone out here, under the stars…."
"Except for Hadrurus arizonensis."
"Had….what? Who?"
"Hadrurus arizonensis. The giant desert hairy scorpion. It's really only about five and a half inches, so it's not like it could eat us. But it does bite. And it comes out at night."
She was back in the SUV before his final syllable echoed down. But this time she was in the back seat. Reid joined her from the other side.
"Can they get in here?"
Reid told himself it was only a little white lie, and for a good cause.
"Nope. We're good."
JJ pushed him off the seat long enough to stretch out beneath him. That's when she noticed their SUV had a moon roof. He followed her eyes overhead, and smiled, flicking the small hatchway open before returning his attention to his wife. The two became lost in one another, setting aside their worries for another day.
In the vastness of the desert, under the imposing panoply of the night sky, they no longer felt alone, but filled with one another. In their love-making, they each reached deep inside and filled the other with the hope, and strength and love that would sustain them in the days ahead.