Read my Lips
Chapter 34
Eliana sat quietly, sipping the large vanilla latte that she lied and told her dad was an herbal tea. Her eyes darted from one area of the room to another. She'd never been in a police station before, let alone in the area behind the front desk where the real police work was taking place. The conference room was smaller than she expected. The tight space was bustling with activity and what seemed to be at least five different conversations happening simultaneously. Eliana tried to listen, but she was having a hard time keeping up. There were stacks of papers littering the table she was sitting at. Off to one side, there was a large board with pictures of all the missing girls on it. A few of the pictures had a red line across them. Eliana tried not to think about what that meant. Or how close she came to being just one more dead girl.
Pushing her dark thoughts away, Eliana focused on Spencer. He was pointing at images that Kevin was putting up in the large interactive white board. Two open books were balanced on his other arm. Eliana could tell he was in his element. Unlike the nervous hesitation he showed when he was alone with her, here he was carrying himself with complete confidence. The total shift in his persona was unexpected. But Eliana had to admit, she was kind of into it. She liked seeing him take charge and command the room, though she had no idea how he was able to keep up with so many different trains of thought at the same time.
All the old area maps Kevin scrounged up from the university library were spread out across the table. Rossi and Prentiss were rifling through them, flipping pages and carrying on a totally separate conversation even as they answered Spencer's questions. There was a present day aerial map of the area where she was found on the screen. Kevin was scanning through pictures of the old plantation that used to be there, trying to superimpose the images over the map and line them up.
When Morgan did his memory recall technique on her, Eliana was told after that she described the foundation of a historic era building. Spencer's running theory was that she was in the ruins of an old plantation outbuilding Casanova found and outfitted for his own purposes. Since Eliana heard running water under her, he and Kevin were trying to line up the maps and figure out which ancient outbuilding was located on or near a water source. Eliana was impressed by how much information Morgan was able to get out of her with a simple relaxation technique. The time she spent in captivity was still a horrifying blur. Eliana could recall some of what happened. But the memory of her kidnapper on top of her as the ropes cut into the skin of her wrists was so vivid that it overshadowed the rest.
Eliana's hands instinctively moved to the slowly healing rope burns on her wrists. In a few places, the ropes cut so deep that it left her with bleeding cuts that were now scabbed over. As her injuries healed, they were starting to get itchy. She was rubbing her finger back and forth across one of the larger scabs when she suddenly felt someone's eyes on her. Eliana glanced to her right, her eyes meeting the gaze of the younger detective in the room. She remembered that his first name was Nick, but his last name escaped her. He offered her a soft smile.
"We have a first aid kit in the other room," Nick with no last name offered. "I can get you some ointment if you need it..." Eliana shook her head as she lowered her hands and placed them in her lap, hiding them under the table. The officer had a slight southern drawl. It reminded Eliana of her ex-fiance Riley. Which made sense, given that they were both from the same area. She told herself that was the reason she felt immediate distrust for the detective. Despite the fact that he'd been nothing but completely kind to her, having the detective anywhere even close to her personal space made her skin crawl.
Eliana watched as Officer Nick moved away from her. He approached the area where Kevin was working and plucked up a photograph from a stack of evidence that was sitting off to one side of the table. The photo was wrapped in a labeled ziplock bag. From where she was sitting, Eliana could only see enough to know that the photo was old and partially faded. She watched as the man held it in his hands, cocking his head slightly to the side as though he was studying the image.
"Hey Charlie," Nick said, calling out to the other local detective in the room. "Am I crazy or does this look like Denny Rader to you?" The much larger of the two detectives glanced at the photo with a look of interest. But clearly, he wasn't interested enough to haul himself out of his seat.
"Bring it over here," he suggested, motioning for his partner to bring him the picture. Charlie studied the photo for a moment before he nodded in agreement. "I'll be damned. It does look like him."
Eliana sucked in a hard breath as every single conversation in the room came to an immediate halt. Prentiss turned, ignoring the papers in her hand as she hit the two detectives with a series of rapid fire questions. As they answered, Kevin's hand flew across his keyboard. Denny Rader was a criminology professor at North Carolina State University. He occasionally consulted on cold cases for the police department. The younger of the two detectives admitted to having a casual friendship with him. And after a little more prodding from Prentiss, Nick also admitted that his friend was a known womanizer that had a bad habit of sleeping with his students.
Just as quickly as it ceased, the activity level in the room went right back through the roof. Kevin put Penelope, the BAU's other technical analyst, on speaker phone. She began spitting out all the information she could find out about their new suspect. And about the woman in the photo, who she now knew was Denny Rader's ex girlfriend. His dead ex-girlfriend. The woman disappeared not too long after the photo was taken. Eliana could feel her heart pounding in her chest. The more Spencer's colleagues spoke, the more clear it seemed to be that her kidnapper was the college professor in the photo. More phone calls and computer hacking were taking place as they attempted to locate the man. The professor didn't show up to teach any of his classes. His cell phone was off. But the last signal from his phone pinged near the edge of the wooded area Spencer marked off on the big map. Eliana didn't even realize how fast and hard she was breathing until she felt Spencer's hand on her shoulder.
"It's okay," he soothed. "Take a deep breath." Eliana did as he suggested, gasping as she pulled in a lungful of air. She blew it out slowly through her mouth as she watched her father approach. He set a cup of water down in front of her before he snatched up her coffee. He popped the lid on the disposable cup, taking one look at the contents before he cast an irritated glance in Spencer's direction. Aleksander crossed the small room in a few long strides, tossing her mostly full cup of coffee directly into the trash.
"Hey!," Eliana protested. "I was drinking that!"
"Not anymore," her father announced. When Eliana responded with a huff of irritation, he added, "You're having a panic attack. The last thing you need is more goddamn coffee." He pointed at Spencer, directing his next statement to him. "Don't buy her any more coffee."
Spencer held his hands up, displaying his palms in an obvious sign of acquiescence. Eliana rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath, calling her father an overbearing jerk. "I can buy my own coffee," she grumbled. "I'm not a child." Eliana glanced up when she felt Spencer set his hand back on her shoulder. He was doing a good job hiding his amusement at the exchange she just had with her father. But he looked like he wanted to laugh. It made her smile as she reached up and gently gripped his hand. He squeezed back, hugging her against his side for just a moment before he rushed back to what he'd been doing before she suddenly forgot how to breathe normally.
Even without any knowledge of police procedure, Eliana could guess what the next step was going to be. Uniformed officers were stationed at Professor Rader's home and office, in case he showed up back there. Everyone else was heading down to the marked area on the map to start searching. Eliana thought it was going to take some real convincing on her part to be allowed to go. Her foot was still hurt and she had absolutely no business joining in on a police manhunt. Her father voiced a slight objection. But everyone, including him, knew as well as she did that Eliana was the only one that had seen the entrance to Casanova's dungeon. They had a better chance of finding the place if she was with them. There was more than enough police, military and FBI presence to ensure her safety.
Eliana rode in the backseat with Spencer as Derek drove them to the small overgrown parking lot that served as the last known location of Professor Rader's cell phone. There was a dark colored SUV in the lot. Eliana didn't have to listen in on Derek's conversation with Penelope to know that the vehicle in question belonged to the man they were looking for. She stared at it as everyone else slowly climbed from their vehicles and organized themselves into two search teams, trying to recall some memory of being in the backseat of that particular car. For some reason, it didn't feel right. Eliana didn't remember much after she was drugged and carried out of Spencer's apartment. But she could remember feeling a cold, hard, flat surface under her. She pictured herself in the cargo space of a delivery van, not squished into the backseat of a Ford explorer. Eliana shivered despite the humid North Carolina air as she told herself that her kidnapper probably just laid the backseats flat and tossed a tarp over them.
"This is the spot," Detective Nick confirmed, pointing over towards a sandy back in one curve of the river. "The boy said he pulled her from the river right here."
Eliana cringed slightly at the man's choice of wording. The detective didn't appear to have any malicious intent. But of all the ways he could have referred to her savior, he chose to call the young man 'boy'. Eliana's eyes flicked towards Derek first, wondering with some concern if he was upset by the man's covertly racist remark. Derek met her gaze and gave her a wink. Eliana smiled in return. There was no doubt in her mind that he'd heard a lot worse in his line of work. And at the moment, they had bigger fish to fry.
As he helped her navigate up a steep embankment, Spencer's main concern was Eliana's foot. But it was the bulletproof vest he insisted she wear that was actually causing her discomfort. It was heavier than it looked. It was making her sweat in all the wrong places. And it was rubbing against her sore ribs. But Eliana reminded herself that she'd rather be sweaty than dead.
Despite the vest and the strange circumstances surrounding their hike, Eliana was still able to appreciate the beauty of the wooded area along the river. The trees were tall and the foliage was lush and green. The light was filtering down through the tall trees, painting a mosaic on the ground near her feet. She looked forward to a time, after this nightmare was finally over, that she and Spencer might be able to go on an adventure for fun instead of as part of a search party.
"Does any of this look familiar?," Spencer asked. Eliana grasped his hand, letting him help pull her up the last bit of a small hill. She took her time as she looked around her, then out over the water. On the other side of the slowly widening river, Eliana could see movement through the trees. Most of the local police department, along with a few of Spencer's colleagues, were searching along the opposite bank.
"When I jumped, the river wasn't as deep as I thought. I remember hitting bottom. The water was cold… Eliana said. She lowered her voice before she continued. "I was sure I was going to drown. And I was glad. Because it seemed better at the time than what I knew he was going to do to me if I lived."
That's what she remembered. Not the way the trees looked, or any particular curve in the river. Despite the heat and her uncomfortably sweaty vest, Eliana was grateful when she felt Spencer's arm wrap around her. He held her against his chest, pressing a brief kiss into her hair before he spoke. "I'm really glad you didn't drown," he told her. She looked up at him and smiled, keeping her hand locked around his as they pushed further into the woods.
The sounds of people moving through the trees around them slowly faded away as Eliana picked her way up a steep hill. The river widened after the last bend, putting the other half of their group further away from them. She stopped at the top of the incline, bracing her hand against the trunk of a maple tree as she caught her breath. There was a break in the treeline a few yards away. Eliana took a sip of her water, her eyes wide and focused on the area ahead of her. She blinked them shut, remembering the feel of the hard packed dirt against her hands. She could hear him screaming behind her. Casanova. When he popped out of the barn style door, she knew it. Because his voice suddenly increased in volume.
"There," she whispered, lifting her hand and pointing towards the spot where the incline flattened out and the tree opened up. Spencer spoke into the radio he pulled from his belt. But Eliana almost couldn't hear him over the rush of her own heartbeat in her ears. She moved into a patch of sunlight as she stepped closer to the edge of what she now remembered was a steep cliff that overlooked the river.
"You jumped from here?," Spencer confirmed. She nodded her head, glancing down to find that he was gripping her hand. Her one foot was dangerously close to the edge of the drop off. Eliana didn't realize she was so close to the edge. She let Spencer pull her back in the other direction as her dad and Prentiss approached.
"Nick took one of the other officers and headed out a little further into the woods," Aleksander explained. He lost sight of the detective. They were technically supposed to keep sight of each other at all times. But since the man was with another officer and seemed to know the area better than the rest of them combined, Aleksander wasn't worried.
"This is where she jumped," Spencer said, pointing towards the drop off behind them. Eliana watched as her father passed her by, leaning forward to peek over the edge. It was at least a hundred foot drop into swiftly moving water. He moved away from the edge with slightly less color in his face. Eliana reached for her father, resting her head on his broad chest as he hugged her in the same way he always did. One intensely rough squeeze followed by a quick release.
When Aleksander stepped back, Eliana saw Prentiss touch him. All the woman did was rest her hand on his shoulder for a brief moment. But her father reacted to the contact, shifting his body closer to her. No one ever touched her father. It made Eliana smile, though she tried her best to hide it. She wasn't sure when it happened. She'd honestly been too wrapped up in her own recovery to notice that her father was completely smitten with the BAU unit chief. It was the best kind of surprise. Eliana allowed herself a sliver of a moment to just be happy for him. And then she pointed in the direction she believed Casanova's underground bunker was located.
Eliana parted her lips to speak. But before she could, the sound of gunfire broke the quiet of the forest. Birds flocked from the trees, taking to the sky in a flurry of frightened chirping. The initial blast sounded like two gunshots fired in rapid succession. And a moment later, two more followed. The noise was loud. But also strangely muffled. Eliana didn't have to ponder the reason for that. They were coming from underground.
