Fic: Too Close, Chapter 3 (Criminal Minds, Reid / Morgan, Chad, Sean / Cain)
Title: Too Close, Chapter 3
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pair: Spencer Reid / Derek Morgan,
Sean Hotchner / Cain Christensen
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, etc.
Criminal Minds Main List
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
-Charles Dickens
“I don’t now if there’s anything more to tell.” Mrs. Ashton said awkwardly as she lead the two FBI agents into her living room. “I already told the police everything I know, over and over again.”
“We understand, but there’s been some new developments. We think your daughter’s murder might be part of a series of homicides.” Chad explained. He took a seat on the couch opposite the fragile looking woman and glanced at Reid, who was still standing up, like a puppy waiting for his turn. “Doctor Reid here believes your daughter was the last victim, and the first three were her friends from the same degree program-”
“I knew it.” Her hands had started shaking. “Yes, I told them, but they didn’t listen.”
“You told what to whom?”
“The police. They kept saying someone was copying those…” She grimaced, clearly forcing down a feel of nausea. “… murders.”
“Did your daughter say anything about them?”
“She was shocked. They hadn’t had too much contact for a while, everyone was so busy with their studies and… Well, Sara was busy with me. I was diagnosed with cancer and she moved back here with me to help me after the operation. Cooking and cleaning and driving me to my treatments and all that. She was a… I didn’t ask, but she wanted to do it. She was a good girl.”
“I’m sure she was.” Chad assured. He glanced up at Reid, who seemed eager to join the conversation. “And very smart.”
“Yes, she was.” Mrs. Ashton wiped the corner of her eye. “The police didn’t believe me. They just kept asking if she was involved with the wrong people or did drugs. They didn’t even seem to believe me when I told them about that man.”
“A man?” Reid interjected and sat down on the armchair on the other side of the sobbing woman. “The boyfriend you talked about in the newspaper?”
“He wasn’t her boyfriend. Sara met her somewhere… I don’t even really remember. They were just seeing each other now and then.”
“How long did your daughter know him?”
“Maybe… two months? I only saw him twice.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“Outside. Couple times when they were going somewhere Sara dropped by to get something, her cellphone or wallet or whatever it was. She always forgot something. The first time she brought him to the porch to meet me, but the second time he waited by the car.”
“What was your first impression of him?” Chad asked gently. “Did anything about him make you think he might have been dangerous?”
“I don’t know. I thought he seemed a bit… off, but you know how people always start thinking like that after something happens. He seemed like…”
“Take your time.”
“Like… like he was perfectly normal, but then for a second he wasn’t. I don’t know how to put it, like a car moving without a driver. He said the right things and seemed nice, but it felt like he was pretending something he wasn’t.”
“I’ve read the transcriptions the PD did.” Reid said, making an effort to sound professional. “You said his name was Jonathan, but you don’t know his last name. Is that correct?”
“That’s right.” She nodded and pulled a hankie from her pocket to blow her nose. “The police said they went through Sara’s phone records, but couldn’t find him. They said he used payphones.”
“Did he ever come here? I mean inside the house?”
“I don’t think so. I was in a pretty weak shape back then and I spent most of my time inside, so I would have known.”
“Did the police go trough her things?”
“Yes.” She sniffed loudly. “They made a horrible mess and didn’t find anything. Or if they did, they didn’t tell me. There was that white powder-thing all over after they took fingerprints and they took mine too. Of course my prints were in her room, and hers-” She was approaching the edge of hysteria, and Chad quickly cut her monologue.
“Have you changed her room since then?”
“No, I… I cleaned after they were gone and then… I haven’t been in there.”
“Do you mind if we take a look?”
Mrs. Ashton froze for a second, evaluating both men with her eyes, then nodded tiredly.
“Just don’t make a mess.” She got up and lead them out of the living room and up the stairs. Reid quickly scanned the long line of framed family pictures hanging on the wall as they walked past them. The pictures showed a girl and her parents growing older, in the last one showing a grown woman and her mother dressed in black and carrying flowers, standing by a coffin.
Mrs. Ashton opened the door for them, but didn’t step into the room. Reid and Chad walked in, breathing in the dusty air. The room was a combination of girly frills, and thick textbooks and folders that covered most of the desk space. Everything was neatly in its place, waiting for the occupant of the room to return.
“Sorry, I’ll… I’ll wait out here.” Mrs. Ashton gritted out. “Call me if you need something.” She closed the door between them.
Chad took a look at the room, then turned to Reid.
“You wanna bet the cops called it a copycat to keep you guys from taking over the case?”
“That would be the most likely answer.” Reid agreed. “The most likely is often the right answer and-”
“So we agree, great.” Chad pulled out his beeping cellphone and flipped it open. “Christensen. Yeah, yeah, I told you I would keep an eye on him. Yes, he’s been fed. What are we doing now?” He grinned at the question. “Just killing time, Reid found this documentary on TV about some thingy I have no idea about, but he’s having fun. No, he hasn’t had any coffee while I’ve been here. Yeah, wait a minute.” Chad covered the receiver with his palm. “He wants to talk to you.” He handed the phone over to Reid, and the genius took it with shaking hands.
“Morgan? I’m fine, I had some rest and I haven’t even had coffee. No, seriously. Fine, don’t believe me. What? The documentary?” His expression resembled a man in front of a firing squad. “It’s about… Wasabia japonica. It’s also known as Cochlearia wasabi, or Eutrema japonica, did you know-” He paused to listen. “I’m not lying! Why would I lie about Japanese horseradish? I may bend the truth, but… Okay, it’s about the Starkweather-Fugate murder spree in 1958.” Whatever reply he got, his frame relaxed and he breathed deep with relief. “Yeah, I know. You too, bye.”
“He believed that?”
“I do some of my best thinking when I’m under extreme terror. Or in this case, extreme guilt and panic.” Reid handed the phone back. “Their case is going nowhere, so they don’t know how long they’ll be there.”
Chad pocketed the phone and continued searching the room while Reid started from the other end of the room.
“Textbooks, printouts, Nancy Drew Mysteries…” Reid muttered to himself as he went through the filled shelves. “A piggybank… Nothing really unusual. She seemed to be a well balanced, smart young woman. Clothes seem to indicate she wasn’t a party girl, there’s some riding gear-”
Chad interrupted him when something caught his eye on one of the shelves. “What doesn’t belong in this picture…” He pushed a few knickknacks to the side and pulled out a small wooden box from the back of the shelf. “What the hell is this?”
Reid crossed the room to take a look at the item. The box was made cumbersomely from little pieces of wood, while one side was covered with a piece of glass. Behind the glass was a collection of flowers, stiff and slightly artificial in color.
“I think they’re wax flowers.” Reid explained and took the little box. “It’s usually done with paraffin wax. Doesn’t look that well done, the colors don’t change like that if the waxing is done correctly-”
“She seems too girly to be into woodworks.” Chad quickly scanned the room, but no similar items were around. He took the box back and turned it around. On the bottom was a few scrawling done with a black magic marker. “JP and SA.”
“SA probably stands for Sara Ashton. JP for Jonathan.”
“Probably.” Chad went to the door and pulled it open. “Mrs. Ashton? Do you know where your daughter got this thing?”
The women came to the door, staying safely in the hallway and took a look at the box.
“That… She got it from that man. Said he made it himself.”
“Did the police print this?” Reid asked. A little glint in his eye made him look like a terrier about to bounce.
“I guess, there was that awful powder everywhere.”
“Thank you. We’ll look around for a little longer.” Reid closed the door again. He reached down to search the little pockets of his messenger bag and dug out a little penlight. “I’m thinking about a music box… the killer left them on every murder site. There wasn’t any prints on the outside, but there was some inside.”
“Where was that?”
“It wasn’t our case.” Reid admitted and looked embarrassed. “I saw it on TV. But the same thing could still apply.” He directed the penlight against the small glass, moving it up and down. “A lot of smudges… could be prints left behind from putting on the glass.”
“Long shot.” Chad stated, looking over the genius’s shoulder. “But worth checking out. You said they found unknown DNA from the murder victims?”
“Two of the victims. Even if the guy isn’t in the DNA database, his prints might be in the system.”
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Sean rolled over, tangling the covers into an ever bigger mess. He realized he must have slept a while, since the sun had gone down and the log cabin was almost dark. Only the roaring flames in the fireplace cast light into the room.
He pulled himself up to sit, and rubbed his eyes. The bearskin rug under him was tickling his bare backside, and he quickly pulled a pair of boxers from the floor where they had landed. Cain had kept his promise of Welcome Home sex against the wall, followed by an encore on the bearskin rug, but Sean hadn’t expected to wake up alone. He staggered up, looking around for signs of the man’s whereabouts. Sean peeked through the window and saw Cain sitting on the porch railing. He was wrapped up in a blanket, sitting under the pale moonlight, staring at something only he could see.
Sean pulled his shirt on and opened the door, shivering a bit as his feet met the cool wooden surface. Cain turned to look at him and opened the blanket to silently invite him in. Sean glanced down at the naked body under the blanket, grinned and settled against him, his back against the man’s front. Cain wrapped the blanket around them and pulled Sean close to him.
“I didn’t wanna wake you.”
“What were you doing here?”
“Thinking.”
“You weren’t gonna howl at the moon?”
“Well, not yet.” Cain looked up at the glowing full moon. “I haven’t grown fur and claws yet.”
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
“Okay, I’ve limited the search to the Virginia area and only males.” The red-haired lab-technician explained as the computer worked on the comparison. “It was a clear print, index finger. If the guy is in any of the databases, we should get lucky.”
“Thanks again.” Reid said. The three of them were the only ones left in the Quantico forensic laboratory, but he still felt like he should lower his voice. “And this is just between us for now?”
“Of course.” She grinned. “Off the record jobs are the best part of this gig. Last week one guy wanted me to run a print from the guy his wife was fooling around with. Turned out the guy had three ex-wives, eight kids and criminal record as long as the Amazon.”
“4200 miles?”
“I meant figuratively.”
“Yeah, of course and we really appreciate you doing this.” Chad interrupted and pulled Reid to the other end of the lab. “We need to talk about this.”
“I know.”
“If the print doesn’t lead us anywhere, I want you to drop this.”
“Chad-”
“You got no other leads, and the case has been cold for a long time.”
“But what if it turns up in the system?”
“Then you can inform the police and let them handle it.”
“On what basis? What do we really have, except that he knew the last victim?” Reid pleaded, brushing his hair behind his ears and avoiding Chad’s eyes. “If we find him, we can-”
“Bingo!” Technician yelled, bouncing up and down on her seat. “Damn, I’m good.”
“You found a match?” Reid walked over and leaned over her shoulder. “Jonathan Pazura. He’s got a record?”
“Nope. He was a student, and the university takes prints for their records. Welcome to the Golden Age of Paranoia.”
“Is he still there?”
“Dropped out four years ago. After that, nothing. Nothing about being employed or being enrolled as a student anywhere else. I got an address here, but I don’t know if it’s accurate.”
Chad leaned over her other shoulder. “I’ve never even heard of that place. Can you pull up a map?”
“Sure.” The technician tapped a few keys and a large map appeared on the screen, the address marked with a red dot. “Middle of nowhere. Pretty fitting for a guy off the radar.”
“One way drive would take at least six hours.” Reid speculated quietly.
“I’d say seven.” Chad stated. “Or even eight, looks like all the roads over there are pretty crappy.” He turned to look at Reid, clearly reading the genius’s thoughtful expression. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I just want to-”
“Talk to him? You used that excuse once today, so don’t overplay that card.”
“We were after that guy for over a month, and the only reason why we put it on the backburner was that we had more urgent cases! If we got something new to follow-”
“If it has waited for two years, it’s not gonna run away now.” Chad reminded, still eyeing the map on the screen.
“I could drive there and back in a day, just see if the guy actually is there and then tell Hotch what we got.”
“You’re not gonna let this go, are you?” Chad gave him a fond glance. “I know what you’re like when you get an idea stuck in your head.”
“So you’re not going to tell Hotch where I’m going?”
“Where we’re going.”
“We?”
“You’re not going alone to some remote little place where people probably still eat raw meat, drink moonshine and screw their cousins.”
“I’m not going to stay there for long-”
“Either this or I’ll call Aaron and tell him you didn’t follow his orders.”
Reid tried his best poor little me expression, but it didn’t help.
“What time are we leaving?”
“I’ll pick you up in the morning, I gotta re-arrange some of my classes.” Chad crossed his arms over his chest, giving the genius a stern look, that blocked any possible objections. “And if you try to bring those audio books of yours into my car, you’ll be traveling in the glove compartment.”
Chapter 4