Read my Lips

Chapter 14

Thankfully, the plane ride from Virginia to North Carolina was a short one. And the rest of it passed without further discussion of Spencer's love life. The team was met at the airport by the police chief who requested their assistance. He looked to be several years past retirement age. His upper back had a distinct stoop to it. And what hair he had left was thin, wispy, and combed across the top of his bald head. Spencer rode back to the station with him and Prentiss, listening to the man's laundry list of complaints about the other local police departments. The chief was blaming the other districts' lack of cooperation for his department's inability to make any headway on the case. The kidnapped women were all young and attractive. The story had been picked up by the national news. People were sharing pictures of the missing women on social media and criticizing the police department for not doing more to bring the girls home safely to their families. It was safe to say that the aging chief was starting to feel pressured to solve a case that he'd likely been brushing off for months.

When they arrived at the station, the BAU team was introduced to the two detectives that were assigned to work the case. Spencer hoped they might have something more substantial to offer than their superior. Since their department chief had absolutely nothing useful to say whatsoever, any information at all would be an improvement. But right away, this wasn't looking promising. The elder of the two detectives was overweight and smelled strongly of vodka and the breath mints he was sucking to try and hide it. Spencer always felt guilty judging people on his first impression of them. But he'd be surprised if the man was capable of finding his own pecker, let alone half a dozen missing girls. The only member of the team who's questions he was interested in answering were JJ's. And that was because it gave him the opportunity to stare down her shirt while he breathed his stinky vodka and onion breath directly into her face.

"Maybe he's the unsub," Morgan whispered, making sure he was close enough to Spencer that the officer in question wouldn't hear him. "Those women are missing because he ate them."

The suggestion was so inappropriate, Spencer barked out a laugh before he could stop himself. The noise drew the attention of a few other officers that were gathered around the area. Spencer did his best to turn the laugh into a fake cough. And Derek played along, giving him a few overly rough whacks on the back. But that didn't stop Prentiss from giving them both a warning glare.

The younger of the two officers looked like cop of the year compared to his coworkers. Detective Nick Ryan was tall and handsome in an all american way. His clothes were clean. And he didn't reek of alcohol. Given the circumstances, Spencer was impressed. Officer Ryan was also polite, shaking everyone's hand but Reid's before he showed the team to a large office that had been cleared out for them to use. His country boy southern twang filled the room as he offered the team what limited information he had on the case. It wasn't much. The only information of importance they got from him was the one detail that had been withheld from the media. The unsub was leaving calling cards at the scenes of his abductions. They were plain white postcards. One one side, there was a hand drawn portrait of one of the other missing girls. And on the other, there was a note from the unsub. He signed them with the name he'd chosen for himself, Casanova.

Spencer picked up the stack. The cards were wrapped in individual plastic bags, presumably to preserve any physical evidence. It seemed a futile gesture. The unsub had yet to leave a single fiber of his DNA behind. As Spencer flipped through the cards, he recognized a few of them women from the files he read through on the plane. One of the girls, he recognized immediately as Carolina Mason. She was a graduate student with blonde hair and big blue eyes that worked with special needs children. Casanova kidnapped her from her home in the suburbs of Raleigh. The note on the back of her card was a hand penned quote from the real Giacoma Casanova.

My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil as evil comes out of good.

"He doesn't know his history," Reid announced, flipping the card with Carolina's picture on it around in his hands to read the note on the back.

"Why do you say that?," Officer Ryan asked, leaning in so he could look at the note Spencer was examining. "We googled all the quotes. They're from the real Casanova's memoirs."

Spencer flipped the card back over, taking another look at the drawing of the missing woman before he explained his observation. "The real Casanova would never have approved of this."

"Ya know a few things about the real Casanova?," Ryan asked. He glanced around in confusion when he heard a few assorted chuckles and comments from Spencer's associates. But after he spent the next few minutes listening to Spencer rapid fire off information about Gianomo Casanova and the 1700's in general, he started laughing right along with the rest of Dr. Reid's team. "You're a walkin' encylopedia," he exclaimed. Glancing down at the files that were spread across the table he asked, "...you really think you can catch this guy?"

With so many women missing, the BAU had to divide and conquer. One of the missing women was actually from the area. So Spencer and JJ drove to her house. Dakota Miller's parents weren't able to provide them with much information. She'd been missing for over two months. And it was obvious that her parents were beginning to lose hope of ever seeing their daughter alive again. Their guilt was almost palpable. They went away for a weekend in Myrtle Beach to celebrate their anniversary. And when they came back, their only child was gone.

Dakota lived a relatively low risk lifestyle. She was still in high school. Out of all the missing women, Dakota was the youngest. She took art classes at Meredith University, one of the smaller private colleges in the area. She didn't have a boyfriend. And she spent a lot of her time volunteering with her mom at a local soup kitchen. On their way out, Spencer nudged JJ and gestured to a framed pen and ink drawing on the wall. It was a detailed portrait of Dakota's mother, done in an almost identical style to the small hand drawn postcards the unsub left at the other abduction sites.

"Did Dakota draw this?," JJ asked, pausing to admire the framed piece of artwork.

"If I showed you another drawing, do you think you could tell me if it was Dakota's work?," Spencer asked. JJ flashed him a look of concern. They weren't supposed to disclose information about the postcards to anyone. But if it would give these poor parent's some hope, she wasn't going to object. JJ gave him a slight nod of her head. And Reid pulled up a picture he took of one of the postcard drawings and showed it to Dakota's mother. With tears in her eyes, she confirmed that the drawing was her daughter's work. There was some sort of signature mark she made in the corner of her sketches, in lue of a signature. And that was present in the bottom right corner of the drawing on Reid's phone.

Reid and JJ bounced ideas back and forth as they headed back to the station. But so far, they didn't have much to go on. Reid couldn't even figure out how or why the unsub was choosing his victims. Once they figured out the victimology, it would be easier to determine the unsubs motivations. So far, other than being attractive, the missing girls didn't seem to have much in common.

Reid spent the rest of the afternoon hanging up headshots of the missing girls on a giant white board in the order they were taken. Three of the pictures received a line of red tape through them. Those women were already found dead. And after some time on the phone with Garcia, he was able to remove one of the photos from the board. Jessica Kingsley was not abducted. She ran away from home with her would-be rock star boyfriend and was currently on tour with his band. Garcia found pictures of her in the background of his recent social media posts. Under the photos, Reid made notes about each girl. He included the date they went missing, where they were taken from, and any other information Garcia could dig up about them. So far, there didn't seem to be any obvious patterns emerging. The women went to different schools. They lived in different cities in the area. They didn't frequent the same shops, gyms, or churches.

"You really think we'll find any of those girls alive?"

Spencer turned towards the voice. He didn't hear the younger of the two detectives coming. And when he spoke, it startled him. "You don't?," Spencer asked. Officer Ryan shook his head.
"Personally, I think all those girls are tied to a tree somewhere just waitin' to be found."

"You can't really think that," Spencer countered. He knew this wasn't the finest police force he'd ever encountered. But he had a hard time believing that this man wasn't capable of simple math. It was almost like the detective was playing dumb, though Spencer was hard pressed to think of a reason why he would want to. Most cops worked overtime to impress the BAU with their wits, or at least tried to pretend that they had some.

"If they were tied to a tree somewhere," Spencer explained, "...you would have found them by now. He makes absolutely no attempt to hide them. And think about the dates. The bodies you recovered were all found out of order from the original abductions. Megan Murphy, the woman that was found Saturday morning, wasn't even one of the first taken. Killing is not his ulterior motive. He's holding these women somewhere."

"Why would he want to do that?," Officer Ryan asked. Again, his question made Spencer pause. The man didn't seem deceitful. But the question struck him as odd. Like the officer was trying to make him feel smarter by playing dumb. Something there was clearly no need for.

"Figuring that out is how we're going to find him," Spencer said. Officer Ryan nodded his head, taking another long look at the long row of pictures Spencer hung up before he strolled casually back out of the room and left Spencer alone with his suspicions.

When he started to feel a headache coming on, Reid finally sat down to eat the takeout he ordered some time before. It was as he forked the room temperature chinese noodles into his mouth that he realized he hadn't called or messaged Eliana all day. He meant to text her when he arrived, to let her know he landed, but then he got absorbed in the case and forgot. Unlike the rest of his team, he never had anyone to check in with. It felt good, knowing he had someone at home that might be concerned about his whereabouts.

Reid called Eliana, his stomach immediately sinking when she sent his call to voicemail after only one ring. But a moment later, Eliana texted him to let him know she was having dinner with her dad. She promised to call him when she was done. And followed that text up with one that was just hearts and kissy face emojis. Reid wasn't sure how to respond to the message, but it made him smile anyway. After some internal debate, he responded by saying that he would talk to her later, without adding any hearts or kisses.

Unfortunately, later never happened. By the time Eliana called him back, Spencer was asleep in his hotel room. And they spent the next morning playing phone tag. Spencer called her while she and Lynn were picking his mom up from her respite care facility. When Eliana called him back, he was talking to the medical examiner. It was lunchtime when he finally got her on the phone. Eliana hung up moments after she answered his call. And then she dialed him back from her laptop instead, so they could video chat. Spencer was in the middle of the meeting room. And his entire team was around. But he didn't want to miss what might be his only chance that day to speak to Eliana. So he accepted the call and turned his laptop camera on.

Eliana appeared on his screen with a huge smile on her face. It would have been impossible for Spencer not to smile back, not that he was fighting it. She was just as beautiful as he pictured in his mind. And she was wearing glasses, something he'd never seen her do before. He wondered if they were just for reading, or if she was wearing contacts all the other times he'd seen her.

"Hey stranger!," Eliana teased, lifting her hand so she could wave at him.

"Hey," Spencer replied, waving back at her. "I like your glasses." Eliana lifted her hand. She must not have realized she had her glasses on when she called him back. Because she was quick to snatch them off her face. Spencer laughed at her. "Don't do that, they look good on you."

"No they don't," she countered. "They make me look like a super-nerd!"

"You are a super-nerd," Spencer observed, shaking his head when Eliana burst out laughing.

"That doesn't mean I have to look like one," she declared. Eliana smoothed down her hair, smiling into the camera as she stared at his image on the screen. "You look good," she said, with a hint of innuendo in her voice. "How's your investigation going? Have you caught the bad guy yet?"

"Not yet," Spencer admitted with a laugh. "But it's only been 19 hours and thirty-eight minutes."

His exact reference to the time since he'd landed made Eliana smile. She had a beautiful smile. When she wasn't smiling, she had a tendency to look serious and pensive. But he sort of liked that too.

"I give him another twenty six minutes at the most. He doesn't stand a chance," she declared.

Eliana was smiling at Spencer through the screen when she noticed that a muscular looking black man with a shaved head had positioned himself behind Spencer's back so that he was visible on camera. He smiled and wriggled his fingers to wave at her. "Friend of yours?," she asked, gesturing for Spencer to look behind him. Eliana giggled as she watched him shoo the other man away. She wouldn't have minded an introduction. Spencer already met pretty much all of her friends. Or at least the ones that weren't volunteering outside of the country. She'd like to meet his. But she didn't mind waiting until Spencer was ready to introduce her. Eliana had a feeling that he might be worried about his friends embarrassing him in front of her. Which, from the looks of it, was a legitimate concern. Not that she cared what his friends did. But she didn't want him to be uncomfortable.

"How's my mom?," Spencer asked. "Did you have any trouble picking her up?"

"How is your mom?," Eliana repeated. Her words were accompanied by a purse of her lips and a roll of her eyes. "That's a good question. I didn't have any trouble picking her up. But she's been feeling a little spicy today."

"She didn't flood the bathroom again, did she?," Spencer asked. From Elaina's tone and expression, he didn't think anything really bad happened. But it was hard telling when his mother was involved.

"No, she didn't flood the bathroom," Eliana replied. "But she was on an eleven when Lynn and I picked her up. So after he dropped us off, we took the metro down to volunteer at the animal shelter. I figured she could burn off some of that energy feeding puppies and playing with the cats. And do you know what she did?" Eliana glanced off camera, presumably making eye contact with his mother. And then she lifted a tiny gray kitten off her lap and displayed it for Spencer to see. "She stuck an eight week old kitten down her pants and stole it from the SPCA! She rode all the way back here on the damn metro bus with a freaking cat in her pants!"

From a little further away from the laptop, Spencer heard his mother's loud protest. She denied Eliana's accusations. And insisted that she had hidden the kitten in question under her shirt, not down her pants.
"That doesn't make it any better, Diana," Eliana chided before she turned back to the screen. "Excuse me," she said. "I stand corrected. Your mother stuck a cat UNDER HER SHIRT and stole it from the animal shelter."

Spencer was unable to hold in his laughter as he listened to Eliana and his mother chitter back and forth at each other. Eliana was trying her best to scold his mom for what she'd done, even though it was obvious that she thought the whole situation was hilarious. And his mother was justifying her behavior by pointing out all the kitten's best qualities, of which there were many. At least in her opinion. He enjoyed watching Eliana and his mother interact. It was obvious that they liked each other. And that Eliana made his mother happy even when the woman was driving her a little crazy.

When Eliana turned back to the camera, she was biting back a big smile. "I think your mother had something she'd like to ASK you," she announced.

Elaina rose from her seat so his mother could take her turn in front of the screen, handing her the cat. His mother cuddled her furry accomplice gently against her chest. And even through the laptop, Spencer could hear the tiny kitten purring.

"I think we ought to start seriously considering the benefits of getting a pet," his mother said. Spencer heard Eliana's snort of laughter from off camera.

"Looks like you already considered it," he replied, trying his best to keep a straight face. Spencer was never allowed to have any pets in the house growing up. But to be fair, that was more his dad's rule, not his mother's. She spent too much time in bed to even have any idea what he was doing in the house. Spencer always thought he'd like a pet. But he wasn't home enough to care for one. "I can't take him back now," his mother lamented. "He already likes it here."

"It's fine mom," Spencer assured her. "We can keep him."

Having received the answer she wanted, his mother apparently had no further desire to speak to him. She rose from the chair without saying so much as a goodbye and retreated to another area of the apartment with her prize kitten. Eliana was shaking her head when she sat back down in front of the screen.

"You're such a softie," she teased. Spencer watched as her smile turned from playful to wicked. And when she spoke again, her voice was husky and slightly lower in tone. "You know Lynn's coming over to pull the night shift. How about I call you later, when I get home, and we can talk without your mother and all your coworkers around…" She followed her suggestion with a wink and slight shimmy of her shoulders. "What do you say, Dr Reid?"

Eliana laughed when she heard some commotion coming from the other end of the video call. Spencer's friends were laughing and whooping it up. His face was turning red. He promised Eliana he would call her later. And then he quickly snapped the top of his laptop closed. Derek was laughing the loudest. And calling him Dr. Reid in imitation of the sexual tone Eliana used. But the rest of his team seemed equally amused by his evening plans. And by the way Eliana used his title and last name when she propositioned him.

"She's a keeper," Rossi observed. Spencer only nodded as he grabbed a random file from the table and flipped it open so he could pretend he was busy reading. With all the commotion, he never noticed when detective Nick Ryan entered the room. Or when he left. But while Spencer was on his video chat, the officer stood quietly near the doorway, listening and watching his and Eliana's entire conversation.