Sidetrack
Title: Sidetrack
Author: C. M. Decarnin
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Rating: FRM for references to violence and to m/m sex (no actual sex)
Pairing: Hotch/Reid
Spoilers: All eps up through "Revelations".
Sequel to: "Detour", "Confluence", and "Confession 1", "Confession 2"
Started: 4/23/07
Summary: In northern Minnesota, Reid and Hotch continue to pursue a killer who carves formulae into his victims' bodies.
Disclaimer: The names of all characters contained herein are the property of the Criminal Minds copyright holders, and are used here without permission. No infringements of these copyrights are intended. Song quote is from Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited".
I'm sorry this took so very very long to post! Links above if you've forgotten the previous parts or haven't read them. The next section should be up a lot quicker, fingers crossed.
___________________
Sidetrack
by C. M. Decarnin
Abe said, "Where do you want this killing done?"
God said, "Out on Highway 61."
___________________________
His eyes opened slowly with slowly returning consciousness. His body felt warm, cozy. In his field of vision Hotch slept peacefully.
Handsome. He had always been handsome. But in sleep his frown of concentration had smoothed to a younger, sweeter expression, long lashes dark against his cheeks, tension gone from his lips and forehead -- young, Reid thought with a warm surge. Not forbidding, driven -- tender and touchable -- someone it would be sexy to kiss awake. Very sexy. Reid gradually became aware of a morning hard-on as he gazed at Hotch sleeping and had tactile images of kisses, warm touches, small movements, Hotch breath on his skin, arms coming around him and Hotch wakening half into sex with him and wordlessly merging into his lane --
He didn't, of course. It would be aggressive. Invading someone's personal space while they slept helplessly. Kissing, unasked.
Hotch might not mind. But he had no way to know. It was too bold.
It needn't stop him from imagining.
They were in one bed.
Had slept touching. Turning to and from each other in their sleep. He wondered what Hotch was dreaming of, in wine-dark pajamas, innocent face and endearingly mussed-up hair.
But it wasn't beauty that made him want to touch him, cleave to him. The way men looked was an abstract thing, something he could perceive but not deeply respond to. What drew him in Hotch was the way he was. His unwavering masculinity toward Reid, that allowed him to open like a plant touched for the first time by the sun. Something that recognized him. That let him in turn become aware of Hotch, his breathtaking intuition, the focus that swept nonessentials out of existence. A man who took you seriously. Who took everything seriously. A man you could trust. Touch. Hold onto. Kiss. Thrilling.
He had to pee.
Damn.
He would probably wake Hotch up getting out of bed.
The thought came to him of his confiscated Dilaudid. A bitter blow. Fear no more the heat o' the sun, the mourning line came to him. His needle too in Hotch's custody.
Hotch who was asleep.
Right, that would work. And a workday, anyway.
He made a slight move to turn toward the edge of the bed and -- wo.
Different parts of him in different neural fonts reminded him of last night's orgiastic depths and heights and splendors.
Would he be able to walk?
Turning over...
Fumble for glasses.
Eight o'clock.
They'd forgotten to set the alarm.
Oh well.
_________________
Hotch had come into the bathroom and kissed him, singularly undeterred by personal space considerations, in the middle of shaving. Reid made a note of that. After a moment he applied his buzzing electric razor to Hotch's morning beard-shadow and it had set up a not unerotic vibration through their conjoined tongues and teeth and lips that made them both laugh amidst the kissing. But Hotch had regretfully vetoed any hotter intercourse than that as they were late to view scene photos. He had already called in to postpone it an hour.
Breakfast in a cafe reminded Reid of their sandwiches the night before: toasting each other shyly with sodas in short motel glasses; Hotch fascinatingly attentive, almost -- adoring. He was still looking at him that way. Reid didn't know quite what to do with that. While he ate, he phoned.
Garcia had put dozens of photos from the victims' homes up on a wiki, and texted him to call her.
"The bad news is, you gave my poor reconstruction program a nervous breakdown. So I talked to the pathologist they're sending up from Duluth and he will do his best sewing and get back to us. And, none of the victims' names are on convention membership lists.
"The good news is, I have a suspicious nature. Some of the names on the lists -- Starfeather Dragonsget springs instantly to mind -- well, you're probably way ahead of me there. So I checked bank and credit card records. Hazel Sierra bought memberships in several cons under the name Madaline McLean. Sandie Nystrom attended ConGame as Jasmine Goldin. Nothing on the other two, but it is possible to walk into most cons and plunk down cash money at the registration desk. There'd be no record we could trace.
"But wait, there's more! If you place your order in the next fifteen minutes, you'll receive this fabulous information absolutely free! ConGame is a world-building con catering to gamers and would-be fantasy and science fiction writers. When I searched Jasmine Goldin I found two stories she published in a small semi-professional fantasy magazine last year and the year before. Madaline McLean has had several poems published in similar places."
"Hotch found manuscripts by other people at Kristin Sorensen's house. JJ has the names. Maybe one of them is --"
"--actually her. I'm on it. Now the question is, who would murder writers?"
"Historically --"
"Hon, you would not believe what Gideon has me doing, so let's just call that question rhetorical, okay? Wrap up warm and wear your mittens."
"Thanks, Garcia." Reid shut his phone and met Hotch's eyes. "They're writers. Under pseudonyms."
He could see prospects and avenues of investigation opening up in Hotch's face.
______________________
"So you're saying there's a grudge there then." The police lieutenant gazed down at the photos scattered over the conference table.
"Against sci-fi," the forest ranger elaborated. He took a sip of his coffee.
"It could be." Reid noticed that Hotch had been slowing his usual rapid-fire delivery as the meeting progressed, toward the more deliberate pace of the local officers.
"Because two of them are writers," said a Sheriff's deputy, and glanced at his colleagues. The State Trooper hauled a little bit at his tie, and a sergeant from the local PD cleared her throat, and looked at her lieutenant. Someone coughed over against the wall.
They were symptoms of discomfort that, oddly, Reid found himself feeling, not just analyzing, in the room. That was strange enough, but he was also experiencing other emotional distractions. Every so often fire swept his cheeks as he tried to turn his thoughts from what watching Hotch reminded him of. He could suddenly see all kinds of previously undreamt-of reasons why sleeping with your coworkers was discouraged. Never before in a consult conference had he ever had to restrain himself from reaching out to touch Hotch...
The lieutenant sighed. "Show of hands," he said resignedly.
What?
Two beat cops, the sergeant, one deputy, the forest ranger and a secretary raised their hands. Looking toward the door, fingering his hat on the table, the Trooper finally put two fingers halfway up and then lowered them quickly.
"Writers," the lieutenant explained.
Reid could see Hotch actually taken aback.
A third of the people there.
Hotch looked at the lieutenant.
"You're the experts," the man said with a pacific gesture. "It's just, not being from around here, you might not know the odds in Minnesota. I admit this may not be as typical as it could be. The Department has a program. But let's just say when Bob Dylan turned out to be a Jewish kid from over in Hibbing, no one was that surprised."
Reid asked, "Do any of you write science fiction?"
Heads shook, no hands went up.
Still.
_________________
After Hotch had given their profile -- the usual single white male between twenty and forty, this time with unusual, even striking, appearance and behavior, that might disturb people who encountered him, who had only been in town very briefly and probably would not be back -- they were directed out to the dogsled outfit Hazel Sierra had been part-owner of. In the car they looked at one another.
"Do you think we were wrong?" Reid asked, doubtfully.
"I don't." Hotch stared out through the windshield. "Still, if someone is killing writers in a state full of writers..."
"It will be harder to predict his next attack among so many, and he may be even more deranged than we assumed, attacking what is so normative. Unless we can find something else that connects these victims, at least in his mind."
"Science versus science fiction?" Hotch suggested. "His physics formulas -- maybe he sees the fiction as somehow a perversion or betrayal of genuine scientific knowledge."
"Alternatively he could be anti-science and see the writers as the public face or popularizers of the science he regards as anathema. The formulas could be his accusations, the scarlet letter of their guilt."
Hotch turned the key in the ignition. "In either case, why them? Why not more prominent figures in the field? These people weren't even blips on the radar."
"Which would bring us back to a more personal motive. That he knew them or for some reason hated them as individuals." Reid paused. "I want to read their writing. Anything we find. I read all the poetry at the cabin, but there will be more at her home, or it could all be on her computer. Nystrom a.k.a. Goldin didn't own a computer and no one has found manuscripts of hers."
"See if she pays an ISP. She could be storing the stuff online somewhere, using a cybercafe or library computer."
"Or a work computer. It's amazing what gets stored on those."
Reid's phone rang. JJ's voice. They briefly exchanged updates, then she said, "You and Garcia were right, the list of authors in Kristin Sorensen's proofreading files included two we couldn't identify. I managed to track --" A yawn interrupted her. "Excuse me. I tracked down a couple of semi-pro story publications under each name and the editors say they sent author's copies to a P.O. box in Sandstone, which is registered to Sorensen's home address. The pen names are Nona O. Yu, M.S., and S. Yuma Noon. No monetary payment so --"
"Anonymous," said Reid.
"Oh jeeze." There was a sound as of the phone bumping repeatedly against bone. "If I hadn't been up all night it would've bit me."
Reid opened his mouth and then wisely closed it again. Instead he asked for the stories to be put up on the wiki along with anything else that turned up by the victims. He would type in the "Madaline McLean" poems he had read.
As Reid opened his laptop, Hotch glanced over. "Kristin Sorensen published stories under names that were anagrams for 'anonymous'," he explained.
Hotch mulled. "None of these writers seemed anxious for fame, at least not under their own identities. Their reclusiveness is apparently voluntary rather than an incapacity for social interaction."
"None of them appeared in the same publications, so that's not the connection. But now that the editors know what's going on there should be a geometric increase in information about them. And JJ's doing a press conference later today."
His phone rang again.
"Leapin' lizards, what did you guys do?" It was Garcia. "The Internet has gone up like Krakatoa. It's all over LJ and IJ, every list and news service in creation. Two hours ago nobody ever heard of any of our vics, now I'm drowning in search results." Without stopping for an answer she reported, "But nobody is saying they actually knew any of them, except the one or two work acquaintances that were already there before. No online trail at all."
"Thanks." He hung up and told Hotch. "This is what I meant about the network. Even though no one knew them, just the fact that they have any connection to science fiction has created a storm of communication."
"If it doesn't elicit any information, at least it may help to warn other writers," Hotch said. Reid understood the ambivalence he was feeling; you never knew for sure what effect a news release or other direct action would have on an unsub. It could be catastrophic.
They were at the thinning margins of the town, driving into more open country, with mailboxes at the edge of the road and no sidewalks. Then there were alternating evergreens and open fields, with frequent glimpses of ponds and lakes flat and smooth and frozen. Hotch turned left at a county road.
Hesitantly, Reid said, "I'm sorry about coming apart on you like that last night, the emu stuff. I don't know what that was. I don't really feel like that. I mean I never feel like that. I haven't felt that way for years."
"And yet you're alone." Hotch said it gently.
"I like alone," he answered defensively. Then, with a wry glance, "I suppose it's conceivable I've been repressing something."
"You've been busy," Hotch put in. "You prioritized education and career."
"Conveniently," Reid sighed.
"No, I understand that. It was important to you."
"It was what I could do well. Maybe I put off the things that didn't come so easily."
"You were surrounded by adults. It would have been hard to form egalitarian bonds. Especially romantic ones. And even before that, the children in your classes were much older than you."
Memories were coming back to him. Stinging. "I did have a crush on a sixth-grade girl once. I guess I was about eight; it was before my Dad left..." and never came back.
"How did that work out?" Hotch had smiled slightly.
"One day during fractions I realized that from her point of view the difference between her and me was the same as the difference between me and a kindergartner. I was completely..."
"Humiliated?"
"More like cowed, really. I thought I couldn't even expect to imagine the scope of her knowledge and experience."
"But weren't you in the same grade?"
"I mean life experience. Sophistication." He blushed suddenly, and looked down at his laptop.
Hotch glanced over. "What?"
"Nothing," he mumbled. "Or... well... There's probably a reason that particular memory came back to me."
"Why?" Then another glance, empathy replacing curiosity in his expression. "You know, I learn from you every day. It's one of the reasons I came to care for you, the way you give of yourself without thought. It's part of the courage I was talking about. You tackle anything as if it were a puzzle that could be solved with the right piece of information."
It felt both good and uncomfortable to be spoken of so positively, though he didn't quite understand Hotch's comment. How else would you approach anything that presented a problem? His puzzlement must have showed, because Hotch reached over and squeezed his hand, smiling to himself, before asking him the name of the next road they were to turn on.
_________________
Reid had only managed to type a few poems before they pulled in at North Star Sledding. He could hear dogs yelping immediately.
A man with a huge bag of kibble over his shoulder watched as they parked, then disappeared into a garage type door. By the time they got out into the well-scraped parking area he was back, minus the sack, walking toward them. He was of only middle height, around fifty, with a thick handlebar mustache and sad eyes. He took in Hotch's suit and tie and said, "You must be the F.B.I. guy."
"I'm Agent Hotchner and this is Doctor Reid," Hotch confirmed. "Are you Arthur Ferrell?"
"Yeah." The man looked unhappily down at his boots and turned away at an angle to look toward what, from the sounds of things, was the kennel buildings.
"I understand you found the body."
Ferrell felt in the pockets of his heavy plaid wool jacket. "Hazel's team came back without her. I tracked her on the snowmobile." He gave up on whatever he was looking for. "You better come on in the lodge. I cancelled all the clients."
They followed him into a cabin that turned out to be something like a lobby and a lounge, with a check-in desk on one side. There were tables, armchairs, and several couches, and large landscape and dog photos on the walls. They accepted his offer of coffee from a niche full of clean mugs, creamer and sugar packets and other "instant" paraphernalia. Reid stood stirring his creamer in, trying to place what it was that seemed off about the man. It wasn't that he kept a certain distance -- Reid had already become accustomed to Minnesotan personal space requirements, which were not that different from his own. Not meeting their eyes was also standard. It was something less social than personal, not exactly numbness, almost a fragility --
Oh. Of course.
Sometimes Reid wondered what was wrong with himself.
Only twenty-four hours ago the man had had probably the most traumatic experience of his life, finding the horrifically butchered body of a friend and business partner in the middle of nowhere.
"You were alone?" he asked.
Wrinkles in Ferrell's face deepened. "Snowmobile only holds two. I thought I'd be giving her a lift back." His voice wavered. He sat down in a chair, his hands hanging between his knees. "When I found her I called the police."
Hotch sat down next to him. "Did she often go out alone like that?"
The owner nodded. After a moment he said, "That's why she put her money in the place. She picked up mushing and wanted to be able to take dogs out by herself without keeping her own team."
"I'm sorry to ask this. Did she often drink?" They hadn't found liquor beyond one bottle of scotch and some unopened wine in the cabin.
A smile touched the corners of Ferrell's lips. "Once in a while she'd tie one on."
"Alone?"
"Not usually." He looked at Hotch, then Reid, and Hotch again. "You saying she was drunk?"
"You didn't notice anything when she left?"
"The team was gone when I got here in the morning. She'd harnessed up before dawn."
"Could she have had someone with her?"
"Someone could have ridden in the sled." A look of horror dawned across his face. "But --"
"Then how did he get back," Hotch supplied.
He nodded.
Reid asked, "Could Ms. Sierra have taught someone how to drive a dog-sled on the trip out to where she was killed?"
"We do that all the time. But... it's only the basics. They'd never find their way back alone."
"The dogs got home," Reid said. "The police report says that there was weight on the sled when it started back, from the depth of the track the runners left."
"Will you take me back along the trail?" Hotch asked.
The man twitched and looked harrowed.
"Not to where you found her, but along the return tracks of the dogs. The police said they couldn't tell exactly where, but they mentioned an area where the runner-tracks began to seem lighter. Paslin Creek near the Stone Bridge?"
He nodded. "I could show you."
"Reid, you stay here, finish your inputting. How far is it?"
"We could be there and back in an hour."
The man showed Reid where he could hook up to a phone jack, and the two left. Reid felt strange; affected by Ferrell's obvious distress, and bereft at the sudden absence of Hotch. He looked down at his pale brown coffee. It was... startling to feel loneliness, just because a certain person left the room.
He took off his coat, refilled the coffee mug, and set up his laptop. After the Sierra poems were all entered and uploaded, he went to Garcia's wiki and studied the home photos there. In Rolhauf's bookshelves he was able to magnify and read some of the titles. Many among the paperbacks were science fiction. Then he hit paydirt: a row of books about writing. He emailed JJ to see what progress had been made with Rolhauf's computer files, and Morgan and Garcia with his and Hotch's thoughts about Sandie Nystrom's possible cache of stories online or at work. Then he read all the published stories Garcia had been able to find and put up on the wiki. They were interesting but in no sense trailblazing work, and gave him absolutely no ideas. Something had been niggling at his brain and he finally realized what it was. Like them, the unsub had been in Sandstone, halfway to Ely, but then had traveled far south to kill in Faribault, before coming up here. Was there some reason, or was it only another proof of his disorganized insanity?
Nothing occurred to him. He checked his watch. Still at least twenty minutes till he could expect Hotch back. He looked around the room. No books.
He pulled a tablet from his shoulder-bag and stared at it on the table in front of him. He got out his pen. Slowly he wrote, Dear Mom...
______________________
Backtracking the dogs was not easy. There were places where signs almost vanished, on hard snow or near-bare ground, and sometimes the unguided sled had been pulled through stands of scrub or sumac a driver would have avoided. Before they finally found the heavy runner-marks betraying a passenger, there was a long stretch of no tracks at all, which pointed to the sled having been driven on the thin-packed snow of a country road. If it had left a trail, it had been overlaid by tire tracks of the infrequent cars.
They stood and looked up and down the quiet roadway between plowed snowbanks.
"He probably left a car parked along here somewhere," Hotch said. "Maybe near where the dogs got back into the field. Could he have made them run somehow even though he was no longer driving?"
"Once they start, it's stopping them that's the hard part. They'll run all day. You have to put a spike down into the snow or dirt, or hitch them to a tree, if you get off the sled. That's what I figured had happened to Hazel, the team run off on her." Ferrell stepped off to the shoulder as a pickup truck approached. "This is near half a mile he was on this road," he offered. "People must've seen him."
"I'll make sure the police put out a request for information. Do sleds often travel by road?"
"Hell no. Good way to get killed, and wrecks the runners where there's no snow. Besides, that's what mushing is for. Get away from traffic and town and into wilderness."
Hotch nodded. "So anyone seeing him would probably remember it as unusual."
They went back to the place where the sled-track reappeared free of its weight. There were a couple of possible pull-off areas where the killer might have left a vehicle, both spots criss-crossed with tire tracks. Likely Forensics had already examined them, but he would make sure. They should look for the marks of Hazel Sierra's vehicle also. Somewhere, the two had met. Maybe she had picked him up near here on the way to the kennels.
"Did anyone come in and express interest in your dog-sledding but not sign up as a client, say Friday or Saturday?" he asked.
"Couple people."
"This man would have stood out. He would have seemed strange, perhaps jittery or hot-tempered, even abnormal."
Ferrell shook his head. "Not while I was there. You can ask Jim and Howie. The other guides. Or Carol, she might've been on the desk."
He had their addresses and phone numbers from the police. They had hoped at least one of them might be at the North Star office, but it made sense that it was closed.
As he climbed back onto the snowmobile Hotch had a sudden stab of realization: he had left Reid alone. The one thing Gideon had told him not to do.
It was certain the killer had left the area. The pattern was clear. He tried to calm himself. But visions of Reid's captivity swept over him, coupled with the memories of Reid in his arms. The way the corners of his long mouth formed little square brackets when he was distressed. His dark eyes pleading with him for the Dilaudid, which was... locked in his briefcase in the trunk of the car.
Reid would never do that. Not while they were working.
Would he?
Besides, Hotch had the car keys.
But.
Reid.
Alone.
He was safe. It was perfectly okay.
He got out his cell phone.
No service.
He wouldn't be able to hear over the noise of the snowmobile anyway. Carefully he put the phone away as they jounced across the snow.
___________________
When they got back to the lodge, he forced himself to go up the couple of steps and into the lounge at a normal pace. Reid would be right there with his computer, and would look up...
The laptop was there, on a table.
Reid wasn't.
"Reid?" he called.
There was no one in the restroom.
Ferrell was looking around, puzzled.
Maybe he had gone out to look at the dogs. In a heartbeat Hotch was back out in the parking lot. "Reid!" The rental car sat parked, nothing moved.
"Here!"
He spun around and there was Reid, walking down the driveway.
Hotch felt the expressions swarm across his face. Thank god, thank god and what on earth? and guilt; then longing.
Reid held up an envelope. "I thought there'd be a mailbox out by the road. But I guess they get their mail at the post office." And he came near and stopped; just out of Hotch's reach. Which made Hotch aware of Arthur Ferrell there, who had followed him out as far as the porch. So he could not enfold Reid in his arms and breathe out his relief. Thank god, thank god.
They stared at one another. Hotch wiped his gloved hands partway down his coat. Reid looked a little curious, uncertain. "Did you find anything?" he asked. His eyes so dark a hazel no one ever thought of them as other than brown. His hands, so delicately orchestrating...
Hotch swallowed. "Not really," he managed. "He probably had a car parked by the road there. Unless he walked or hitch-hiked to some other spot, but that would seem very risky."
"He's reckless in the momentum of these attacks, even though he's careful never to take on anyone he can't subdue, or who might have help around," Reid put forth soberly. "I talked to Morgan while you were out. He thinks that suggests that he's driven, has a mission to accomplish, possibly even a deadline, and that that sense of purpose is overcoming an innate caution."
Hotch nodded. "He has to be moving almost nonstop on this, to get around the state the way he has," Not here, not any more. Thank god. "selecting victims, observing them, and killing them at such speed."
"He can't be employed, unless he's on some kind of leave or vacation. He may have been recently fired, which could be the stressor."
"If we knew what the mission was..." Hotch sighed.
"We might get ahead of him," Reid finished.
Hotch continued to gaze at him, relieved and still berating himself. He saw Reid become again conscious of the personal nature of his thoughts. "I shouldn't have left you alone," he said quietly.
Reid looked startled, then inquiring.
"Jason told me specifically not to, and I forgot. When I got back and found you gone..."
Reid was frowning. "Gideon...?"
"He was afraid you might be a target."
"But -- I'm not," he pointed out.
"I know." And he realized then how far-reaching the trauma in Georgia was turning out to be. None of them, he suddenly saw, was really convinced that Reid was safe. The incident slid emotional tentacles into their view of him and their approaches to unrelated cases. Reid had pled that he did not need protection... and none of them, in their heart of hearts, believed it.
He didn't know what to say.
It would look like a lack of trust.
It wasn't that Reid had no worries of his own about his competence. The night before, as they'd attacked their food, his smiles had been so broad that they'd changed his face completely, making it look more grown-up, and oddly more masculine. Yet the fears had surfaced.
He had suddenly said, "Because of the term 'schizoid' that used to refer to what's now called multiple personality disorder, a lot of people confuse schizophrenia with split personality." It had come seemingly out of nowhere, but Hotch found his thought process crystal clear.
He answered, "We didn't see the Tobias personality on the Webcam, except briefly while he was resuscitating you. But I felt as though I could see him, reading your report."
"It's so hard to know what to feel." Despite his much smoother, happier expression, there was still a tired droop in Reid's shoulders. "Tobias was the actual killer, not his father. And yet when I spoke with Tobias, he seemed innocent. His father-voice was unrecognizable as the same person."
Hotch's stomach had clenched. He knew too well the voice of a father roaring to be unleashed through the mouth of a son. He consciously relaxed his muscles. And took another bite of his sandwich.
Reid had added, "Some people think everyone has multiple personalities, not dissociated, but working together like the strands of a rope. I don't think I do. I'm not really very complex."
It was true, Hotch had realized. Maybe that was the key to what was so unique about Reid. He had no hidden agendas, no secret life, no different faces for different places. And yet... that manic stream-of-consciousness of his thought-to-speech... it wasn't consciously intended to cover anything -- Reid's darker thoughts tended to slow or even silence him; no, what it covered, it hid from Reid himself. Of course.
Mostly emotion, he suspected. Perhaps the positive as much as the negative. Whatever threatened to be beyond control in his solitary, unsupported existence, to touch frighteningly on the fate he feared might await his mind; whatever felt too strong to be assuredly rational.
The BAU forced intimacy, to some extent. However Reid had resisted his own, he would have been unable to avoid observing deep emotions in the others. Perhaps it was slowly desensitizing him, letting him see how normal strong feelings could be.
And Tobias Hankel had certainly given him a crash course. Despite any parallels Reid might be drawing, he had to know, now, how incomparably more in control he was than the madman he had outwitted and killed. Even in the throes of terror and anguish, every word he had said to the man had been crafted for survival -- his own or others'. The primal coexisting with, even powering, the rational.
Now, with his heart rate returning to normal, Hotch saw how the team's fears might confuse and undermine Reid, if they weren't admitted and dealt with openly.
Guiltily, though, he realized he was glad the drug situation provided a separate reason to monitor Reid on this case. Right or wrong, he just did not want Reid out of his sight.
________________
End
8-11-07
Author: C. M. Decarnin
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Rating: FRM for references to violence and to m/m sex (no actual sex)
Pairing: Hotch/Reid
Spoilers: All eps up through "Revelations".
Sequel to: "Detour", "Confluence", and "Confession 1", "Confession 2"
Started: 4/23/07
Summary: In northern Minnesota, Reid and Hotch continue to pursue a killer who carves formulae into his victims' bodies.
Disclaimer: The names of all characters contained herein are the property of the Criminal Minds copyright holders, and are used here without permission. No infringements of these copyrights are intended. Song quote is from Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited".
I'm sorry this took so very very long to post! Links above if you've forgotten the previous parts or haven't read them. The next section should be up a lot quicker, fingers crossed.
___________________
Sidetrack
by C. M. Decarnin
Abe said, "Where do you want this killing done?"
God said, "Out on Highway 61."
___________________________
His eyes opened slowly with slowly returning consciousness. His body felt warm, cozy. In his field of vision Hotch slept peacefully.
Handsome. He had always been handsome. But in sleep his frown of concentration had smoothed to a younger, sweeter expression, long lashes dark against his cheeks, tension gone from his lips and forehead -- young, Reid thought with a warm surge. Not forbidding, driven -- tender and touchable -- someone it would be sexy to kiss awake. Very sexy. Reid gradually became aware of a morning hard-on as he gazed at Hotch sleeping and had tactile images of kisses, warm touches, small movements, Hotch breath on his skin, arms coming around him and Hotch wakening half into sex with him and wordlessly merging into his lane --
He didn't, of course. It would be aggressive. Invading someone's personal space while they slept helplessly. Kissing, unasked.
Hotch might not mind. But he had no way to know. It was too bold.
It needn't stop him from imagining.
They were in one bed.
Had slept touching. Turning to and from each other in their sleep. He wondered what Hotch was dreaming of, in wine-dark pajamas, innocent face and endearingly mussed-up hair.
But it wasn't beauty that made him want to touch him, cleave to him. The way men looked was an abstract thing, something he could perceive but not deeply respond to. What drew him in Hotch was the way he was. His unwavering masculinity toward Reid, that allowed him to open like a plant touched for the first time by the sun. Something that recognized him. That let him in turn become aware of Hotch, his breathtaking intuition, the focus that swept nonessentials out of existence. A man who took you seriously. Who took everything seriously. A man you could trust. Touch. Hold onto. Kiss. Thrilling.
He had to pee.
Damn.
He would probably wake Hotch up getting out of bed.
The thought came to him of his confiscated Dilaudid. A bitter blow. Fear no more the heat o' the sun, the mourning line came to him. His needle too in Hotch's custody.
Hotch who was asleep.
Right, that would work. And a workday, anyway.
He made a slight move to turn toward the edge of the bed and -- wo.
Different parts of him in different neural fonts reminded him of last night's orgiastic depths and heights and splendors.
Would he be able to walk?
Turning over...
Fumble for glasses.
Eight o'clock.
They'd forgotten to set the alarm.
Oh well.
_________________
Hotch had come into the bathroom and kissed him, singularly undeterred by personal space considerations, in the middle of shaving. Reid made a note of that. After a moment he applied his buzzing electric razor to Hotch's morning beard-shadow and it had set up a not unerotic vibration through their conjoined tongues and teeth and lips that made them both laugh amidst the kissing. But Hotch had regretfully vetoed any hotter intercourse than that as they were late to view scene photos. He had already called in to postpone it an hour.
Breakfast in a cafe reminded Reid of their sandwiches the night before: toasting each other shyly with sodas in short motel glasses; Hotch fascinatingly attentive, almost -- adoring. He was still looking at him that way. Reid didn't know quite what to do with that. While he ate, he phoned.
Garcia had put dozens of photos from the victims' homes up on a wiki, and texted him to call her.
"The bad news is, you gave my poor reconstruction program a nervous breakdown. So I talked to the pathologist they're sending up from Duluth and he will do his best sewing and get back to us. And, none of the victims' names are on convention membership lists.
"The good news is, I have a suspicious nature. Some of the names on the lists -- Starfeather Dragonsget springs instantly to mind -- well, you're probably way ahead of me there. So I checked bank and credit card records. Hazel Sierra bought memberships in several cons under the name Madaline McLean. Sandie Nystrom attended ConGame as Jasmine Goldin. Nothing on the other two, but it is possible to walk into most cons and plunk down cash money at the registration desk. There'd be no record we could trace.
"But wait, there's more! If you place your order in the next fifteen minutes, you'll receive this fabulous information absolutely free! ConGame is a world-building con catering to gamers and would-be fantasy and science fiction writers. When I searched Jasmine Goldin I found two stories she published in a small semi-professional fantasy magazine last year and the year before. Madaline McLean has had several poems published in similar places."
"Hotch found manuscripts by other people at Kristin Sorensen's house. JJ has the names. Maybe one of them is --"
"--actually her. I'm on it. Now the question is, who would murder writers?"
"Historically --"
"Hon, you would not believe what Gideon has me doing, so let's just call that question rhetorical, okay? Wrap up warm and wear your mittens."
"Thanks, Garcia." Reid shut his phone and met Hotch's eyes. "They're writers. Under pseudonyms."
He could see prospects and avenues of investigation opening up in Hotch's face.
______________________
"So you're saying there's a grudge there then." The police lieutenant gazed down at the photos scattered over the conference table.
"Against sci-fi," the forest ranger elaborated. He took a sip of his coffee.
"It could be." Reid noticed that Hotch had been slowing his usual rapid-fire delivery as the meeting progressed, toward the more deliberate pace of the local officers.
"Because two of them are writers," said a Sheriff's deputy, and glanced at his colleagues. The State Trooper hauled a little bit at his tie, and a sergeant from the local PD cleared her throat, and looked at her lieutenant. Someone coughed over against the wall.
They were symptoms of discomfort that, oddly, Reid found himself feeling, not just analyzing, in the room. That was strange enough, but he was also experiencing other emotional distractions. Every so often fire swept his cheeks as he tried to turn his thoughts from what watching Hotch reminded him of. He could suddenly see all kinds of previously undreamt-of reasons why sleeping with your coworkers was discouraged. Never before in a consult conference had he ever had to restrain himself from reaching out to touch Hotch...
The lieutenant sighed. "Show of hands," he said resignedly.
What?
Two beat cops, the sergeant, one deputy, the forest ranger and a secretary raised their hands. Looking toward the door, fingering his hat on the table, the Trooper finally put two fingers halfway up and then lowered them quickly.
"Writers," the lieutenant explained.
Reid could see Hotch actually taken aback.
A third of the people there.
Hotch looked at the lieutenant.
"You're the experts," the man said with a pacific gesture. "It's just, not being from around here, you might not know the odds in Minnesota. I admit this may not be as typical as it could be. The Department has a program. But let's just say when Bob Dylan turned out to be a Jewish kid from over in Hibbing, no one was that surprised."
Reid asked, "Do any of you write science fiction?"
Heads shook, no hands went up.
Still.
_________________
After Hotch had given their profile -- the usual single white male between twenty and forty, this time with unusual, even striking, appearance and behavior, that might disturb people who encountered him, who had only been in town very briefly and probably would not be back -- they were directed out to the dogsled outfit Hazel Sierra had been part-owner of. In the car they looked at one another.
"Do you think we were wrong?" Reid asked, doubtfully.
"I don't." Hotch stared out through the windshield. "Still, if someone is killing writers in a state full of writers..."
"It will be harder to predict his next attack among so many, and he may be even more deranged than we assumed, attacking what is so normative. Unless we can find something else that connects these victims, at least in his mind."
"Science versus science fiction?" Hotch suggested. "His physics formulas -- maybe he sees the fiction as somehow a perversion or betrayal of genuine scientific knowledge."
"Alternatively he could be anti-science and see the writers as the public face or popularizers of the science he regards as anathema. The formulas could be his accusations, the scarlet letter of their guilt."
Hotch turned the key in the ignition. "In either case, why them? Why not more prominent figures in the field? These people weren't even blips on the radar."
"Which would bring us back to a more personal motive. That he knew them or for some reason hated them as individuals." Reid paused. "I want to read their writing. Anything we find. I read all the poetry at the cabin, but there will be more at her home, or it could all be on her computer. Nystrom a.k.a. Goldin didn't own a computer and no one has found manuscripts of hers."
"See if she pays an ISP. She could be storing the stuff online somewhere, using a cybercafe or library computer."
"Or a work computer. It's amazing what gets stored on those."
Reid's phone rang. JJ's voice. They briefly exchanged updates, then she said, "You and Garcia were right, the list of authors in Kristin Sorensen's proofreading files included two we couldn't identify. I managed to track --" A yawn interrupted her. "Excuse me. I tracked down a couple of semi-pro story publications under each name and the editors say they sent author's copies to a P.O. box in Sandstone, which is registered to Sorensen's home address. The pen names are Nona O. Yu, M.S., and S. Yuma Noon. No monetary payment so --"
"Anonymous," said Reid.
"Oh jeeze." There was a sound as of the phone bumping repeatedly against bone. "If I hadn't been up all night it would've bit me."
Reid opened his mouth and then wisely closed it again. Instead he asked for the stories to be put up on the wiki along with anything else that turned up by the victims. He would type in the "Madaline McLean" poems he had read.
As Reid opened his laptop, Hotch glanced over. "Kristin Sorensen published stories under names that were anagrams for 'anonymous'," he explained.
Hotch mulled. "None of these writers seemed anxious for fame, at least not under their own identities. Their reclusiveness is apparently voluntary rather than an incapacity for social interaction."
"None of them appeared in the same publications, so that's not the connection. But now that the editors know what's going on there should be a geometric increase in information about them. And JJ's doing a press conference later today."
His phone rang again.
"Leapin' lizards, what did you guys do?" It was Garcia. "The Internet has gone up like Krakatoa. It's all over LJ and IJ, every list and news service in creation. Two hours ago nobody ever heard of any of our vics, now I'm drowning in search results." Without stopping for an answer she reported, "But nobody is saying they actually knew any of them, except the one or two work acquaintances that were already there before. No online trail at all."
"Thanks." He hung up and told Hotch. "This is what I meant about the network. Even though no one knew them, just the fact that they have any connection to science fiction has created a storm of communication."
"If it doesn't elicit any information, at least it may help to warn other writers," Hotch said. Reid understood the ambivalence he was feeling; you never knew for sure what effect a news release or other direct action would have on an unsub. It could be catastrophic.
They were at the thinning margins of the town, driving into more open country, with mailboxes at the edge of the road and no sidewalks. Then there were alternating evergreens and open fields, with frequent glimpses of ponds and lakes flat and smooth and frozen. Hotch turned left at a county road.
Hesitantly, Reid said, "I'm sorry about coming apart on you like that last night, the emu stuff. I don't know what that was. I don't really feel like that. I mean I never feel like that. I haven't felt that way for years."
"And yet you're alone." Hotch said it gently.
"I like alone," he answered defensively. Then, with a wry glance, "I suppose it's conceivable I've been repressing something."
"You've been busy," Hotch put in. "You prioritized education and career."
"Conveniently," Reid sighed.
"No, I understand that. It was important to you."
"It was what I could do well. Maybe I put off the things that didn't come so easily."
"You were surrounded by adults. It would have been hard to form egalitarian bonds. Especially romantic ones. And even before that, the children in your classes were much older than you."
Memories were coming back to him. Stinging. "I did have a crush on a sixth-grade girl once. I guess I was about eight; it was before my Dad left..." and never came back.
"How did that work out?" Hotch had smiled slightly.
"One day during fractions I realized that from her point of view the difference between her and me was the same as the difference between me and a kindergartner. I was completely..."
"Humiliated?"
"More like cowed, really. I thought I couldn't even expect to imagine the scope of her knowledge and experience."
"But weren't you in the same grade?"
"I mean life experience. Sophistication." He blushed suddenly, and looked down at his laptop.
Hotch glanced over. "What?"
"Nothing," he mumbled. "Or... well... There's probably a reason that particular memory came back to me."
"Why?" Then another glance, empathy replacing curiosity in his expression. "You know, I learn from you every day. It's one of the reasons I came to care for you, the way you give of yourself without thought. It's part of the courage I was talking about. You tackle anything as if it were a puzzle that could be solved with the right piece of information."
It felt both good and uncomfortable to be spoken of so positively, though he didn't quite understand Hotch's comment. How else would you approach anything that presented a problem? His puzzlement must have showed, because Hotch reached over and squeezed his hand, smiling to himself, before asking him the name of the next road they were to turn on.
_________________
Reid had only managed to type a few poems before they pulled in at North Star Sledding. He could hear dogs yelping immediately.
A man with a huge bag of kibble over his shoulder watched as they parked, then disappeared into a garage type door. By the time they got out into the well-scraped parking area he was back, minus the sack, walking toward them. He was of only middle height, around fifty, with a thick handlebar mustache and sad eyes. He took in Hotch's suit and tie and said, "You must be the F.B.I. guy."
"I'm Agent Hotchner and this is Doctor Reid," Hotch confirmed. "Are you Arthur Ferrell?"
"Yeah." The man looked unhappily down at his boots and turned away at an angle to look toward what, from the sounds of things, was the kennel buildings.
"I understand you found the body."
Ferrell felt in the pockets of his heavy plaid wool jacket. "Hazel's team came back without her. I tracked her on the snowmobile." He gave up on whatever he was looking for. "You better come on in the lodge. I cancelled all the clients."
They followed him into a cabin that turned out to be something like a lobby and a lounge, with a check-in desk on one side. There were tables, armchairs, and several couches, and large landscape and dog photos on the walls. They accepted his offer of coffee from a niche full of clean mugs, creamer and sugar packets and other "instant" paraphernalia. Reid stood stirring his creamer in, trying to place what it was that seemed off about the man. It wasn't that he kept a certain distance -- Reid had already become accustomed to Minnesotan personal space requirements, which were not that different from his own. Not meeting their eyes was also standard. It was something less social than personal, not exactly numbness, almost a fragility --
Oh. Of course.
Sometimes Reid wondered what was wrong with himself.
Only twenty-four hours ago the man had had probably the most traumatic experience of his life, finding the horrifically butchered body of a friend and business partner in the middle of nowhere.
"You were alone?" he asked.
Wrinkles in Ferrell's face deepened. "Snowmobile only holds two. I thought I'd be giving her a lift back." His voice wavered. He sat down in a chair, his hands hanging between his knees. "When I found her I called the police."
Hotch sat down next to him. "Did she often go out alone like that?"
The owner nodded. After a moment he said, "That's why she put her money in the place. She picked up mushing and wanted to be able to take dogs out by herself without keeping her own team."
"I'm sorry to ask this. Did she often drink?" They hadn't found liquor beyond one bottle of scotch and some unopened wine in the cabin.
A smile touched the corners of Ferrell's lips. "Once in a while she'd tie one on."
"Alone?"
"Not usually." He looked at Hotch, then Reid, and Hotch again. "You saying she was drunk?"
"You didn't notice anything when she left?"
"The team was gone when I got here in the morning. She'd harnessed up before dawn."
"Could she have had someone with her?"
"Someone could have ridden in the sled." A look of horror dawned across his face. "But --"
"Then how did he get back," Hotch supplied.
He nodded.
Reid asked, "Could Ms. Sierra have taught someone how to drive a dog-sled on the trip out to where she was killed?"
"We do that all the time. But... it's only the basics. They'd never find their way back alone."
"The dogs got home," Reid said. "The police report says that there was weight on the sled when it started back, from the depth of the track the runners left."
"Will you take me back along the trail?" Hotch asked.
The man twitched and looked harrowed.
"Not to where you found her, but along the return tracks of the dogs. The police said they couldn't tell exactly where, but they mentioned an area where the runner-tracks began to seem lighter. Paslin Creek near the Stone Bridge?"
He nodded. "I could show you."
"Reid, you stay here, finish your inputting. How far is it?"
"We could be there and back in an hour."
The man showed Reid where he could hook up to a phone jack, and the two left. Reid felt strange; affected by Ferrell's obvious distress, and bereft at the sudden absence of Hotch. He looked down at his pale brown coffee. It was... startling to feel loneliness, just because a certain person left the room.
He took off his coat, refilled the coffee mug, and set up his laptop. After the Sierra poems were all entered and uploaded, he went to Garcia's wiki and studied the home photos there. In Rolhauf's bookshelves he was able to magnify and read some of the titles. Many among the paperbacks were science fiction. Then he hit paydirt: a row of books about writing. He emailed JJ to see what progress had been made with Rolhauf's computer files, and Morgan and Garcia with his and Hotch's thoughts about Sandie Nystrom's possible cache of stories online or at work. Then he read all the published stories Garcia had been able to find and put up on the wiki. They were interesting but in no sense trailblazing work, and gave him absolutely no ideas. Something had been niggling at his brain and he finally realized what it was. Like them, the unsub had been in Sandstone, halfway to Ely, but then had traveled far south to kill in Faribault, before coming up here. Was there some reason, or was it only another proof of his disorganized insanity?
Nothing occurred to him. He checked his watch. Still at least twenty minutes till he could expect Hotch back. He looked around the room. No books.
He pulled a tablet from his shoulder-bag and stared at it on the table in front of him. He got out his pen. Slowly he wrote, Dear Mom...
______________________
Backtracking the dogs was not easy. There were places where signs almost vanished, on hard snow or near-bare ground, and sometimes the unguided sled had been pulled through stands of scrub or sumac a driver would have avoided. Before they finally found the heavy runner-marks betraying a passenger, there was a long stretch of no tracks at all, which pointed to the sled having been driven on the thin-packed snow of a country road. If it had left a trail, it had been overlaid by tire tracks of the infrequent cars.
They stood and looked up and down the quiet roadway between plowed snowbanks.
"He probably left a car parked along here somewhere," Hotch said. "Maybe near where the dogs got back into the field. Could he have made them run somehow even though he was no longer driving?"
"Once they start, it's stopping them that's the hard part. They'll run all day. You have to put a spike down into the snow or dirt, or hitch them to a tree, if you get off the sled. That's what I figured had happened to Hazel, the team run off on her." Ferrell stepped off to the shoulder as a pickup truck approached. "This is near half a mile he was on this road," he offered. "People must've seen him."
"I'll make sure the police put out a request for information. Do sleds often travel by road?"
"Hell no. Good way to get killed, and wrecks the runners where there's no snow. Besides, that's what mushing is for. Get away from traffic and town and into wilderness."
Hotch nodded. "So anyone seeing him would probably remember it as unusual."
They went back to the place where the sled-track reappeared free of its weight. There were a couple of possible pull-off areas where the killer might have left a vehicle, both spots criss-crossed with tire tracks. Likely Forensics had already examined them, but he would make sure. They should look for the marks of Hazel Sierra's vehicle also. Somewhere, the two had met. Maybe she had picked him up near here on the way to the kennels.
"Did anyone come in and express interest in your dog-sledding but not sign up as a client, say Friday or Saturday?" he asked.
"Couple people."
"This man would have stood out. He would have seemed strange, perhaps jittery or hot-tempered, even abnormal."
Ferrell shook his head. "Not while I was there. You can ask Jim and Howie. The other guides. Or Carol, she might've been on the desk."
He had their addresses and phone numbers from the police. They had hoped at least one of them might be at the North Star office, but it made sense that it was closed.
As he climbed back onto the snowmobile Hotch had a sudden stab of realization: he had left Reid alone. The one thing Gideon had told him not to do.
It was certain the killer had left the area. The pattern was clear. He tried to calm himself. But visions of Reid's captivity swept over him, coupled with the memories of Reid in his arms. The way the corners of his long mouth formed little square brackets when he was distressed. His dark eyes pleading with him for the Dilaudid, which was... locked in his briefcase in the trunk of the car.
Reid would never do that. Not while they were working.
Would he?
Besides, Hotch had the car keys.
But.
Reid.
Alone.
He was safe. It was perfectly okay.
He got out his cell phone.
No service.
He wouldn't be able to hear over the noise of the snowmobile anyway. Carefully he put the phone away as they jounced across the snow.
___________________
When they got back to the lodge, he forced himself to go up the couple of steps and into the lounge at a normal pace. Reid would be right there with his computer, and would look up...
The laptop was there, on a table.
Reid wasn't.
"Reid?" he called.
There was no one in the restroom.
Ferrell was looking around, puzzled.
Maybe he had gone out to look at the dogs. In a heartbeat Hotch was back out in the parking lot. "Reid!" The rental car sat parked, nothing moved.
"Here!"
He spun around and there was Reid, walking down the driveway.
Hotch felt the expressions swarm across his face. Thank god, thank god and what on earth? and guilt; then longing.
Reid held up an envelope. "I thought there'd be a mailbox out by the road. But I guess they get their mail at the post office." And he came near and stopped; just out of Hotch's reach. Which made Hotch aware of Arthur Ferrell there, who had followed him out as far as the porch. So he could not enfold Reid in his arms and breathe out his relief. Thank god, thank god.
They stared at one another. Hotch wiped his gloved hands partway down his coat. Reid looked a little curious, uncertain. "Did you find anything?" he asked. His eyes so dark a hazel no one ever thought of them as other than brown. His hands, so delicately orchestrating...
Hotch swallowed. "Not really," he managed. "He probably had a car parked by the road there. Unless he walked or hitch-hiked to some other spot, but that would seem very risky."
"He's reckless in the momentum of these attacks, even though he's careful never to take on anyone he can't subdue, or who might have help around," Reid put forth soberly. "I talked to Morgan while you were out. He thinks that suggests that he's driven, has a mission to accomplish, possibly even a deadline, and that that sense of purpose is overcoming an innate caution."
Hotch nodded. "He has to be moving almost nonstop on this, to get around the state the way he has," Not here, not any more. Thank god. "selecting victims, observing them, and killing them at such speed."
"He can't be employed, unless he's on some kind of leave or vacation. He may have been recently fired, which could be the stressor."
"If we knew what the mission was..." Hotch sighed.
"We might get ahead of him," Reid finished.
Hotch continued to gaze at him, relieved and still berating himself. He saw Reid become again conscious of the personal nature of his thoughts. "I shouldn't have left you alone," he said quietly.
Reid looked startled, then inquiring.
"Jason told me specifically not to, and I forgot. When I got back and found you gone..."
Reid was frowning. "Gideon...?"
"He was afraid you might be a target."
"But -- I'm not," he pointed out.
"I know." And he realized then how far-reaching the trauma in Georgia was turning out to be. None of them, he suddenly saw, was really convinced that Reid was safe. The incident slid emotional tentacles into their view of him and their approaches to unrelated cases. Reid had pled that he did not need protection... and none of them, in their heart of hearts, believed it.
He didn't know what to say.
It would look like a lack of trust.
It wasn't that Reid had no worries of his own about his competence. The night before, as they'd attacked their food, his smiles had been so broad that they'd changed his face completely, making it look more grown-up, and oddly more masculine. Yet the fears had surfaced.
He had suddenly said, "Because of the term 'schizoid' that used to refer to what's now called multiple personality disorder, a lot of people confuse schizophrenia with split personality." It had come seemingly out of nowhere, but Hotch found his thought process crystal clear.
He answered, "We didn't see the Tobias personality on the Webcam, except briefly while he was resuscitating you. But I felt as though I could see him, reading your report."
"It's so hard to know what to feel." Despite his much smoother, happier expression, there was still a tired droop in Reid's shoulders. "Tobias was the actual killer, not his father. And yet when I spoke with Tobias, he seemed innocent. His father-voice was unrecognizable as the same person."
Hotch's stomach had clenched. He knew too well the voice of a father roaring to be unleashed through the mouth of a son. He consciously relaxed his muscles. And took another bite of his sandwich.
Reid had added, "Some people think everyone has multiple personalities, not dissociated, but working together like the strands of a rope. I don't think I do. I'm not really very complex."
It was true, Hotch had realized. Maybe that was the key to what was so unique about Reid. He had no hidden agendas, no secret life, no different faces for different places. And yet... that manic stream-of-consciousness of his thought-to-speech... it wasn't consciously intended to cover anything -- Reid's darker thoughts tended to slow or even silence him; no, what it covered, it hid from Reid himself. Of course.
Mostly emotion, he suspected. Perhaps the positive as much as the negative. Whatever threatened to be beyond control in his solitary, unsupported existence, to touch frighteningly on the fate he feared might await his mind; whatever felt too strong to be assuredly rational.
The BAU forced intimacy, to some extent. However Reid had resisted his own, he would have been unable to avoid observing deep emotions in the others. Perhaps it was slowly desensitizing him, letting him see how normal strong feelings could be.
And Tobias Hankel had certainly given him a crash course. Despite any parallels Reid might be drawing, he had to know, now, how incomparably more in control he was than the madman he had outwitted and killed. Even in the throes of terror and anguish, every word he had said to the man had been crafted for survival -- his own or others'. The primal coexisting with, even powering, the rational.
Now, with his heart rate returning to normal, Hotch saw how the team's fears might confuse and undermine Reid, if they weren't admitted and dealt with openly.
Guiltily, though, he realized he was glad the drug situation provided a separate reason to monitor Reid on this case. Right or wrong, he just did not want Reid out of his sight.
________________
End
8-11-07