Criminal Minds: Trompe L'oeil (part 18)
~ (part eighteen) ~
Morgan steps over to the laptop and kicks the chair out from the desk as he shifts the screen around. "Okay, Garcia, we need to know, where did Hotch and Rossi go?"
On the computer, Garcia looks blank for a second. "Did you try calling them?"
Morgan shakes his head, digging his hands tighter around the desk's edge. "They're not picking up. We need them back here. If this unsub has any reason to target Hotch more than the rest of us, we need him back here now. We need to know where they are."
"I don't know where they went."
"Garcia."
"Rossi didn't tell me. That's not what he talked to me about."
"Okay," Prentiss cuts in. "What did he need from you?"
"Property records," she answers. "He wanted to know how to look into property records, and if they'd be stored in a central location he could access."
"Property records?" says JJ. "Why?"
"He didn't say."
Morgan pushes back, hooking a hand behind his neck. "Did you find anything for him?"
"He didn't want me to. He just wanted to know how."
"Okay." Morgan thumbs the bridge of his nose, trying to organize all the pieces in his mind. Find the unsub, find Hotch, find… "Okay, Garcia, before, when Hotch asked you to find Gideon-you didn't find anything?"
"Nothing," she says. "Except…" She slides back from the screen, focus wavering. "There is maybe one thing. I didn't think it was relevant at the time."
"What do you have?"
"It's not going to help find Hotch or Rossi," she warns.
"Tell us anyway."
"When Hotch asked me to look for him, I did a broad search cross-referencing Colorado and Jason Gideon just to see what came up. According to the Breckenridge Gazette, Gideon was speaking at a law enforcement conference in Breckenridge in 1994."
"While the painting was on display?"
"Yes."
Morgan closes his eyes, letting the dots connect. It doesn't need to be said aloud again, but he looks at Reid anyway, expression locked for a long second. "You really did see Gideon," he finally says. "Gideon is here."
Reid nods. His face is pale, the tremble in his fingers suddenly more apparent. "Gideon's here," he repeats.
~
A brush of movement and a shadow in the corner of Rossi's vision make him turn enough to glance over his shoulder. Hotch is standing back from their table, waiting.
"Aaron," says Gideon, something unreadable in the undertow of his voice.
Hotch steps forward. Unzipping his jacket, he pulls the file he's been carrying and slides it across the table.
Gideon's hands twitch as he looks down at it.
"The unsub we're trying to identify knows who you are," Hotch says to Gideon. "He knows you're here, and he's been trying to get your attention."
Gideon looks up.
"He's targeting us," continues Hotch. "The whole team. He nearly killed Reid and he's not finished. Additionally, there are three women who are going to lose their lives, tonight, if we don't find them. And for all we know, he could have followed us here."
"Jason," says Rossi. "Try as you might to shut it off, you don't just stop being a profiler. You know him. You've seen him."
"He would have talked to you," adds Hotch. "A comment about one of your books. Hints that he knew you'd retired, or that he was familiar with your work in the BAU. You know who it is. We need you to identify him."
There is a long, brittle pause.
Tentatively touching the file's surface, Gideon drags it closer, fingers bled white under the surface of his nails.
With a final glance upward, and like he's preparing to enter a pool of ice, he takes a shallow breath. All is frozen. Then he opens the folder and dives in.
~
Gideon's here, Reid thinks. Gideon's here. He leans elbows on knees and runs fingers into his hair, raw palms pressed to his forehead. He'd thought the answer to that question would have taken the rest of everything else away. Put his thoughts back into place. Reorder his memory. Take away the holes. But it doesn't. He feels numb. The whispering of leaves in his ears won't go away.
Only one bullet in that gun, boy…
Only one…
In his head, he hears his father slamming the door, a dozen times repeated. He feels the cold earth under his knees as he tries to dig his own grave and then the juddering of his mother's wood floor as he tries to clean her spilled paint. It's all jumbling together. He's going backward instead of forward-with color and glare and out-of-place voices.
Reid, if you're watching, you're not responsible for this…
Maybe he's going crazy anyway.
And he that curseth his father… or his mother…
And he that curseth…
"I'm working on the GPS from Rossi's phone," Garcia says, as though from somewhere far away. "The storm must be interfering or they are seriously out of range. They're south of you. That's the best I can tell."
"Keep working on it," orders Morgan.
"If this guy knew who Gideon was back then," says Prentiss, "he would have included the painting in the student display specifically hoping Gideon would see it."
"How would he even know Gideon would go to the art exhibit?" asks JJ.
Morgan speaks again, voice rolling over Reid's head in a metallic tinged echo, words from a tin can mounted high above him. "Gideon probably didn't," he says. "But, classic narcissist, the unsub believed he would. Maybe even believes he did. If Breckenridge is so important, maybe he even saw Gideon here, walking around town. To him, it would have been the start of a relationship. Gideon would be his ultimate art critic. He follows Gideon's career, follows the BAU, planning for the day they meet. Then, Gideon retires, and our unsub loses the chance to tell him what he's done-have his work appreciated."
"That's how we ignored him," says Prentiss. "That's why this is personal."
Everything's personal, Reid thinks.
Tobias Hankel as Rafael is in his head, holding out a bullet. Do you know what this is?
It's God's will.
He feels Gideon's grip, tight and steady on his shoulder while the blood from Nathan Harris's slit wrists dries sticky on his palms, and can't match it to the rest of his thoughts.
Choose, and prove you'll do God's will.
Reid slides his hands down his forehead until his palms are covering his eye sockets, tips of his nails digging into his hairline.
I choose…
I choose…
Aaron Hotchner.
~
"The locations where he leaves the drawings," mumbles Gideon, more in to himself than out, as though he's not really speaking to them. His voice is low and tinged with rust. Like a waking hinge. "Esoteric. Places for artists, writers, students."
Hotch moves his elbows onto the knotted pine surface, watching him. He hasn't lost weight. He hasn't gained weight. Expression thin. Eyes distant. Dark steady wrinkle between his eyebrows. All as it was.
The lighting over the table is low, changing the depth of shading in the case copies spread beneath it.
"He's telling us he's unique. He's uncommon," Gideon continues, talking to the paper. He pulls one of the drawings closer, and looks at the notes written in the file. "He's an artist. And what good is art without an audience truly capable of appreciating his work?" His fingers hover over one of the papers, but his focus isn't on what he's touching.
"Jason?" prompts Hotch.
The expression that meets him when Gideon peers up is familiar, whispering of the past in a way Hotch doesn't have time to contemplate. Illusions and disillusions. They're all in that expression. Seeing Gideon here. Not as a ghost, but disappeared, just the same. He'd known Gideon many years, and he still doesn't know what it was all about. The sudden absence. The empty space.
"I know this place," says Gideon, turning the paper around. "The coffee shop in town."
Rossi leans forward. "Have you been in there often?"
"Two… maybe three times at the beginning of the summer," Gideon says. "Lots of fishing brochures. Good pastries. Girl behind the counter gave me a coffee on the house."
Hotch moves his eyes to Rossi's then back again. "Did you talk about anything else?" he asks.
"To anyone else?" adds Rossi.
Gideon glances down, pulling another copy closer, scanning over the notes on the profile. Hotch can see his eyes sifting back through his memory.
"Business was slow," he answers, half a shrug under the words. "We chatted. She gave me a schedule for events in town-classes, gallery showings. I told her I'd met Simon Francis in a physics lecture, before he started painting."
"The condition of human perspective?" Rossi says, as though he and Gideon had discussed the topic before.
"Physics magic," Gideon clarifies. "Reid would have liked him."
The feeling of familiarity intensifies. Hotch drags a picture into his mind of Reid then, and Reid now, and wonders what Gideon would see in him.
"No one else was in the shop?" presses Rossi. "Any of the times you went in?"
Brushing a thumb over the paper's edge, Gideon tilts his head to the side, eyes closing.
Hotch taps a hand to his mouth, then folds it down on the table.
"Eastport Tree Farms," Gideon answers, opening his eyes a moment later. "There was a customer. He said he'd grown up working Eastport Tree Farms out of Blue River, but that his true passion was art. He said… he said most artists are appreciated too late." Looking up, meeting Hotch's gaze squarely, Gideon adds the last piece. "Then he said… he said in my profession, I probably knew that already."
"Eastport Tree Farms," Hotch repeats, shifting back and standing. "That's where they are. That's where he's taken them."
Rossi follows, pulling his phone. "No signal," he says. "We can call the team from the road."
"Hotch," says Gideon, smoke and vapor and disuse in his voice.
Hotch stops, looking over his shoulder at the conflict on Gideon's face, at the hesitant hand hovering over the folded cardstock on the table.
"He's planning for me. I'm coming with you."
"I have an extra weapon in the car," Hotch answers succinctly, already moving.
~
tbc
Disclaimer regarding Simon Francis: Simon Francis is a real person and a real painter (and a real former physics lecturer). I have never met him, but I do enjoy his work. Using a real person in fanfic (even just as a reference) is a very fine line for me. Ultimately, I felt the themes Francis works with were themes that gave me a good undertone to some of the character interactions, and backlit a few things I needed for the character of Gideon and his current mindset, so I decided to use the actual person in an abstract way, hopefully in a way that brought no disrespect to the artist. My interpretation of his themes, and of his vaguely mentioned works, are my own and are not meant to speak for Simon Francis. I'm only hypothesizing how these fictional characters would respond to his work. We clear?
Additional random author notes: Also, often as I work my way towards the end of a fic, I underestimate the pacing length and layout required for those final chapters. Which just means we will likely be ending on 21-22 instead of 20-21.
And if you see any typos in this section, feel free to point them out. I think I've caught them all, but it's been a long day. A long week. And I might be more cross eyed than I think I am.
Morgan steps over to the laptop and kicks the chair out from the desk as he shifts the screen around. "Okay, Garcia, we need to know, where did Hotch and Rossi go?"
On the computer, Garcia looks blank for a second. "Did you try calling them?"
Morgan shakes his head, digging his hands tighter around the desk's edge. "They're not picking up. We need them back here. If this unsub has any reason to target Hotch more than the rest of us, we need him back here now. We need to know where they are."
"I don't know where they went."
"Garcia."
"Rossi didn't tell me. That's not what he talked to me about."
"Okay," Prentiss cuts in. "What did he need from you?"
"Property records," she answers. "He wanted to know how to look into property records, and if they'd be stored in a central location he could access."
"Property records?" says JJ. "Why?"
"He didn't say."
Morgan pushes back, hooking a hand behind his neck. "Did you find anything for him?"
"He didn't want me to. He just wanted to know how."
"Okay." Morgan thumbs the bridge of his nose, trying to organize all the pieces in his mind. Find the unsub, find Hotch, find… "Okay, Garcia, before, when Hotch asked you to find Gideon-you didn't find anything?"
"Nothing," she says. "Except…" She slides back from the screen, focus wavering. "There is maybe one thing. I didn't think it was relevant at the time."
"What do you have?"
"It's not going to help find Hotch or Rossi," she warns.
"Tell us anyway."
"When Hotch asked me to look for him, I did a broad search cross-referencing Colorado and Jason Gideon just to see what came up. According to the Breckenridge Gazette, Gideon was speaking at a law enforcement conference in Breckenridge in 1994."
"While the painting was on display?"
"Yes."
Morgan closes his eyes, letting the dots connect. It doesn't need to be said aloud again, but he looks at Reid anyway, expression locked for a long second. "You really did see Gideon," he finally says. "Gideon is here."
Reid nods. His face is pale, the tremble in his fingers suddenly more apparent. "Gideon's here," he repeats.
~
A brush of movement and a shadow in the corner of Rossi's vision make him turn enough to glance over his shoulder. Hotch is standing back from their table, waiting.
"Aaron," says Gideon, something unreadable in the undertow of his voice.
Hotch steps forward. Unzipping his jacket, he pulls the file he's been carrying and slides it across the table.
Gideon's hands twitch as he looks down at it.
"The unsub we're trying to identify knows who you are," Hotch says to Gideon. "He knows you're here, and he's been trying to get your attention."
Gideon looks up.
"He's targeting us," continues Hotch. "The whole team. He nearly killed Reid and he's not finished. Additionally, there are three women who are going to lose their lives, tonight, if we don't find them. And for all we know, he could have followed us here."
"Jason," says Rossi. "Try as you might to shut it off, you don't just stop being a profiler. You know him. You've seen him."
"He would have talked to you," adds Hotch. "A comment about one of your books. Hints that he knew you'd retired, or that he was familiar with your work in the BAU. You know who it is. We need you to identify him."
There is a long, brittle pause.
Tentatively touching the file's surface, Gideon drags it closer, fingers bled white under the surface of his nails.
With a final glance upward, and like he's preparing to enter a pool of ice, he takes a shallow breath. All is frozen. Then he opens the folder and dives in.
~
Gideon's here, Reid thinks. Gideon's here. He leans elbows on knees and runs fingers into his hair, raw palms pressed to his forehead. He'd thought the answer to that question would have taken the rest of everything else away. Put his thoughts back into place. Reorder his memory. Take away the holes. But it doesn't. He feels numb. The whispering of leaves in his ears won't go away.
Only one bullet in that gun, boy…
Only one…
In his head, he hears his father slamming the door, a dozen times repeated. He feels the cold earth under his knees as he tries to dig his own grave and then the juddering of his mother's wood floor as he tries to clean her spilled paint. It's all jumbling together. He's going backward instead of forward-with color and glare and out-of-place voices.
Reid, if you're watching, you're not responsible for this…
Maybe he's going crazy anyway.
And he that curseth his father… or his mother…
And he that curseth…
"I'm working on the GPS from Rossi's phone," Garcia says, as though from somewhere far away. "The storm must be interfering or they are seriously out of range. They're south of you. That's the best I can tell."
"Keep working on it," orders Morgan.
"If this guy knew who Gideon was back then," says Prentiss, "he would have included the painting in the student display specifically hoping Gideon would see it."
"How would he even know Gideon would go to the art exhibit?" asks JJ.
Morgan speaks again, voice rolling over Reid's head in a metallic tinged echo, words from a tin can mounted high above him. "Gideon probably didn't," he says. "But, classic narcissist, the unsub believed he would. Maybe even believes he did. If Breckenridge is so important, maybe he even saw Gideon here, walking around town. To him, it would have been the start of a relationship. Gideon would be his ultimate art critic. He follows Gideon's career, follows the BAU, planning for the day they meet. Then, Gideon retires, and our unsub loses the chance to tell him what he's done-have his work appreciated."
"That's how we ignored him," says Prentiss. "That's why this is personal."
Everything's personal, Reid thinks.
Tobias Hankel as Rafael is in his head, holding out a bullet. Do you know what this is?
It's God's will.
He feels Gideon's grip, tight and steady on his shoulder while the blood from Nathan Harris's slit wrists dries sticky on his palms, and can't match it to the rest of his thoughts.
Choose, and prove you'll do God's will.
Reid slides his hands down his forehead until his palms are covering his eye sockets, tips of his nails digging into his hairline.
I choose…
I choose…
Aaron Hotchner.
~
"The locations where he leaves the drawings," mumbles Gideon, more in to himself than out, as though he's not really speaking to them. His voice is low and tinged with rust. Like a waking hinge. "Esoteric. Places for artists, writers, students."
Hotch moves his elbows onto the knotted pine surface, watching him. He hasn't lost weight. He hasn't gained weight. Expression thin. Eyes distant. Dark steady wrinkle between his eyebrows. All as it was.
The lighting over the table is low, changing the depth of shading in the case copies spread beneath it.
"He's telling us he's unique. He's uncommon," Gideon continues, talking to the paper. He pulls one of the drawings closer, and looks at the notes written in the file. "He's an artist. And what good is art without an audience truly capable of appreciating his work?" His fingers hover over one of the papers, but his focus isn't on what he's touching.
"Jason?" prompts Hotch.
The expression that meets him when Gideon peers up is familiar, whispering of the past in a way Hotch doesn't have time to contemplate. Illusions and disillusions. They're all in that expression. Seeing Gideon here. Not as a ghost, but disappeared, just the same. He'd known Gideon many years, and he still doesn't know what it was all about. The sudden absence. The empty space.
"I know this place," says Gideon, turning the paper around. "The coffee shop in town."
Rossi leans forward. "Have you been in there often?"
"Two… maybe three times at the beginning of the summer," Gideon says. "Lots of fishing brochures. Good pastries. Girl behind the counter gave me a coffee on the house."
Hotch moves his eyes to Rossi's then back again. "Did you talk about anything else?" he asks.
"To anyone else?" adds Rossi.
Gideon glances down, pulling another copy closer, scanning over the notes on the profile. Hotch can see his eyes sifting back through his memory.
"Business was slow," he answers, half a shrug under the words. "We chatted. She gave me a schedule for events in town-classes, gallery showings. I told her I'd met Simon Francis in a physics lecture, before he started painting."
"The condition of human perspective?" Rossi says, as though he and Gideon had discussed the topic before.
"Physics magic," Gideon clarifies. "Reid would have liked him."
The feeling of familiarity intensifies. Hotch drags a picture into his mind of Reid then, and Reid now, and wonders what Gideon would see in him.
"No one else was in the shop?" presses Rossi. "Any of the times you went in?"
Brushing a thumb over the paper's edge, Gideon tilts his head to the side, eyes closing.
Hotch taps a hand to his mouth, then folds it down on the table.
"Eastport Tree Farms," Gideon answers, opening his eyes a moment later. "There was a customer. He said he'd grown up working Eastport Tree Farms out of Blue River, but that his true passion was art. He said… he said most artists are appreciated too late." Looking up, meeting Hotch's gaze squarely, Gideon adds the last piece. "Then he said… he said in my profession, I probably knew that already."
"Eastport Tree Farms," Hotch repeats, shifting back and standing. "That's where they are. That's where he's taken them."
Rossi follows, pulling his phone. "No signal," he says. "We can call the team from the road."
"Hotch," says Gideon, smoke and vapor and disuse in his voice.
Hotch stops, looking over his shoulder at the conflict on Gideon's face, at the hesitant hand hovering over the folded cardstock on the table.
"He's planning for me. I'm coming with you."
"I have an extra weapon in the car," Hotch answers succinctly, already moving.
~
tbc
Disclaimer regarding Simon Francis: Simon Francis is a real person and a real painter (and a real former physics lecturer). I have never met him, but I do enjoy his work. Using a real person in fanfic (even just as a reference) is a very fine line for me. Ultimately, I felt the themes Francis works with were themes that gave me a good undertone to some of the character interactions, and backlit a few things I needed for the character of Gideon and his current mindset, so I decided to use the actual person in an abstract way, hopefully in a way that brought no disrespect to the artist. My interpretation of his themes, and of his vaguely mentioned works, are my own and are not meant to speak for Simon Francis. I'm only hypothesizing how these fictional characters would respond to his work. We clear?
Additional random author notes: Also, often as I work my way towards the end of a fic, I underestimate the pacing length and layout required for those final chapters. Which just means we will likely be ending on 21-22 instead of 20-21.
And if you see any typos in this section, feel free to point them out. I think I've caught them all, but it's been a long day. A long week. And I might be more cross eyed than I think I am.