Drowning in Desire (Part 2/?) [FanFic]
Title: Drowning in Desire (Part 2/?)
Author: Tooks
Pairing: Team, Strauss, OCs (Strauss' family)
Rating: FRM
Summary: A case with ritualistic killings leads the BAU straight into Erin Strauss' personal life and past.
Notes: Spoilers all the way up to the end of Season 6!! The UNSUB's a necrophiliac so, while not graphic, consider yourself warned...also he has not so wholesome thoughts about his mother. There's also cursing, some violent imagery and discussion, and some sexual activity (and watching of said activity) involving those under 18...still nothing past FRM. This is a second chapter in a new case-fic I'm working on. Thanks pink_siamese for the beta, you rock!! So...lemme know what ya'll think! :D
2011, Calypso Bar, Washington DC
Cynthia headed towards her small armoire. “So, how may I help you, agents?"
Rossi smiled. “We just have a few questions concerning Jessica Grant."
“Jesse.”
“Excuse me?”
Cynthia pulled out a white suit shirt and strip of black before looking back. “She preferred being called Jesse.” She slipped the shirt on over her white tank top before turning back to the men as she started on the buttons. “Now what are your questions?”
Hotch watched the woman’s fingers slip tiny pearlescent buttons into tiny holes from the bottom up. It was distracting and a little rude. Strauss didn’t always like, or even respect, him but she never undressed in front of him as if he weren’t there. Well, not undressed...Cynthia hadn’t removed an article of clothing, but still…
The urge to tell her to stop and pay attention got lost in the latest button. “Ma’am, have we come at a bad time?”
“I’m meeting my family for dinner in an hour or so, I need to get ready.” Cynthia stopped buttoning halfway up and slipped the black cloth, an undone bow tie, under the collar. “Continue. Without calling me ma’am.”
Rossi decided to put an end to Hotch’s awkward suffering, even if it did give him a little chuckle on the inside. “What were your impressions of Jesse? Was she together or someone liable to be disorganized? Was she trusting? Someone who might’ve gone off with a stranger on a whim?”
Cynthia worked her pendant off. Her tone iced up at the edges. “Are you implying that Jesse was somehow at fault for her own murder?”
“Not at all, ma’am.” Hotch jumped in.
“Agent Hotchner, you call me ma’am again and I’ll tell my mother you made a pass at me when I see her at dinner tonight.”
Rossi smiled. “Your mother would never believe it.”
“No." Cynthia’s lips finally formed a true, though brief, smile. "I suppose not.”
She went to her desk drawer and pulled out a jewelry box. She exchanged the leather and sea glass for silver string and pearls that wrapped around her neck twice.
“Are you going to answer the questions?” Hotch asked tightly.
Cynthia tucked the box away and looked directly at Hotch. His glare wilted a touch. “Jesse was a great employee. She was professional. She didn’t bring her personal issues to work, had a good rapport with the rest of the staff, and only flirted with the clients enough to earn her tips.” Her eyes worked slowly to Rossi’s. “As far as her going off with strangers, I couldn’t say. She struck me as savvy, but also as someone who might’ve enjoyed taking the occasional risk.”
“Did anyone here at the bar give her any trouble?” Rossi asked. “Pay her any undo attention in the weeks or months preceding her disappearance?”
“Not that I’m aware of. But you can ask Bernie about that, he may know better than I.” She grabbed a business jacket off the back of her chair. “Now, with all due respect, gentlemen, I’d rather not risk being late for my mother and the rest of the family so, unless there’s something urgent you need to ask, can we continue this at another time?”
“Of course, ma’…” Hotch’s jaw locked a moment before he adjusted the response, “Ms Strauss. If we need to speak with you again we’ll contact you.”
Cynthia nodded. “I’m usually here and if I’m not then.” She shrugged on her jacket. “Well, you are the FBI. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble tracking me down.”
Rossi smiled. “Thank you for your time, Cynthia.”
“Not a problem, Agent Rossi." She nodded. "Agent Hotchner.”
***
The two men were halfway out the bar when fast clicks of heels came after them.
“Agents,” Cynthia called out, “hold on, I may have something else.”
Hotch and Rossi turned. Now dressed to the nines, she quickly regained her composure as she headed towards them with a folder in hand.
“Ms Strauss?” Hotch still couldn’t get her first name out.
She handed him the manila folder. “I don’t know if you can do anything with it, but it’s Jesse’s employee records here. Application, references…” She shrugged. “I don’t know what to do with it, but maybe there’s something you can use in there.”
Rossi smiled. “Thank you.”
“Also, I give all my employees a sea glass pedant like the one I was wearing earlier. If you could find Jesse’s, I’d like to have it to send to her parents.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.” Cynthia took a deep breath in. “I wish you luck finding Jesse’s killer and, again, please notify me if you need anything else.” Without another word, she turned back to her office.
***
“I don’t know, something about her…” David grinned as he got into the SUV with Aaron. “I like her.”
Hotch frowned a little. “You would.”
Rossi chuckled as he shut the door. He took the file from Hotch before relaxing in the passenger seat. “Can’t say she wasn’t helpful.”
“No.”
“More than you’d expect from a Strauss.”
“I suppose.”
“What’s wrong? You know she was kidding about telling Strauss you hit on her, right?”
“Yes, of course." Hotch started the engine. "Nothing’s wrong.”
1994, Virginia Beach, VA
Aiden sat loyally beside his mother as they watched the fireworks display. He’d rather grown out of being awed by them, but he enjoyed them nevertheless. It was what the family did on the fourth of July. They sat in a row - Cynthia, Aiden, Erin, Carl, and Jenny - and watched the fireworks together. Always.
“Aiden, where did your sister go?” His mother asked with sudden curiosity and annoyance, but little actual concern since her oldest had grown into the phase of wandering off with friends. And boys.
The eleven-year-old turned his head, saw no one, then turned back and shrugged.
Erin sighed loud. She tensed when she felt her husband’s hand at her back. “Don’t even.”
“She probably just went off to sit with friends.” Carl was always defending their eldest; he defended Cynthia just as Erin defended Aiden.
“She has all summer to be with friends and, I assure you, that’s not why she wandered off,” Erin insisted. "I swear, that girl is going to be the end of my sanity, and this family’s good reputation."
Aiden stood up and smiled down at his mother; he’d be proud to help, to find his nasty, disobedient, big sister who always gave his loving mother such troubles. “I’ll go find her, Mommy.”
Carl motioned for his son to sit back down. “That’s not necessary, Aiden."
“He might as well,” Erin countered. “Cynthia’s already ruined the night, maybe Aiden can find her and salvage at least the last part of it.”
Aiden grinned. “I’ll get her!”
He bolted, gone before his father could make a final decision. He had a pretty good idea where his older sister was, but he didn’t want to just tell. It was a much better show to come back, victorious, with his sister from a mysterious location…it kept him as the hero of the family and someone his mother almost had to depend on to keep her family together. The thought gave him a delicious shiver. He headed directly to the nearest corner of the beach.
He found Cynthia’s torn-up blue jeans and Nirvana band tee mixed in with a varsity lacrosse jacket and khaki pants on the incline of a sand dune.
“It’s not true, you’re an idiot," Cynthia laughed out softly from the water’s edge. She lay, nude, with half her body in the calm, black, water and the other half exposed to the warm night air.
Aiden could see her in the flickers of the fireworks. Blue face, red breasts, green stomach, and then she turned to black and purple swirls in the water. She’d become all crests and troughs, a wave in human form. In the dark, the young boy could almost make her his mother.
The boy beside Cynthia, the teen again getting pushed off her with a laugh, insisted though. “I swear the salt water kills them. Jeremy told me so.”
“Then Jeremy’s the idiot.”
“Come on, Cyn,” the young man nearly begged. “Even if that part’s not true it’ll just come right back out in the water so, ya know, nothin’s gonna happen. Come on, baby, please.”
Aiden cringed at the whimpering beast before his sister. What the hell was cowing this preppy jock to his strange grungy sister? Then the older boy’s head bent down and he heard his sister moan. “Seth.”
“You like that, baby?"
Aiden’s disgust turned to interest. He crept closer. He’d heard his parents making love once in the middle of the night, but he’d never seen it. Closer still, he tucked himself into the shadows as he caught sight of the boy’s head dip once again to take a peaked nipple into a greedy mouth. His sister rippled out a moan.
“Please, Cyn.” Even as he spoke Seth shifted up on her. He nuzzled her breasts, then her neck before reaching her lips to kiss. “You know I can make you feel so good.”
Aiden felt the need to shift as his blood flowed out of order. It was pooling, painfully, in his groin. He tried crossing his legs, but that only caused more discomfort. He held it as if that would help control the feeling.
“Please,” the soft waves pushed them into another kiss. “Please, I’m so fucking hard for you, baby. You can feel it, right?”
Cynthia gave a slight arch as Seth moved over her a touch. “I can feel it.”
“Then…please?”
“Just this once?”
“Just this once.”
2011, Morgue, Washington DC
Reid’s face was all of a foot from Jessica Grant as she lay on the exam table in the ME’s. He didn’t see any cuts or signs of bruising. If he didn’t know better, he’d guess the woman had drowned all on her own.
Seaver stood back some from the body, not yet having that level of comfort with corpses the rest of the team had. She did look though, tried to imagine what happened at the day, the hour, the minute, this young woman died. “Her nails are manicured.”
Reid ticked his head towards Seaver with interest before he stood up straight. “Her body in general is in far better shape than you’d expect from being dumped in a river.”
“We know the killer spends time with them after their death…maybe she was dumped this morning? Found before the river had an real opportunity to take its toll on her body?”
“Seems most likely,” Reid concurred. Then he turned to the ME. “Do you, uh, have a theory of…how she drowned?”
“There are small cuts and bruises on her scalp,” the man replied, going over to gently separate sections of Jesse’s hair. There were small red lines and dots on the skin. “It’s most likely he held her under by her hair.”
“Wouldn’t she have more bruising?" Seaver asked. "On her body?”
The ME shrugged. “Depends on where she was drowned. I’m still in the preliminary stages of Ms Grant’s autopsy so I don’t have any lab work yet, but if he killed her in the middle of a large amount of water like he did the others she might not have had a chance to fight and bruise significantly enough for the marks to be distinguished between her mottling due to drowning and death as a whole.”
“Also like the others,” Seaver commented.
Reid glanced at the ME. “Megan and Alice were drowned in the same water in which they were found, correct?”
“Yes,” the ME confirmed with a nod.
Reid's brow furrowed. “So he drowned them, then brought the bodies back somewhere to have sex…then threw them back where they were first drowned?”
“Apparently.”
Seaver frowned. “Maybe he camped by the lakes? Or had a cabin or something?”
“Maybe.” Reid frowned in thought and calculations. “Either way though he’d have had to been able to get these women to willingly go with him at least near the water first.”
And that seemed a feat all on its own in Spencer’s opinion.
2011, Sequoia Restaurant, Washington DC
Aiden had always been someone able to dress for his own best effect, to wear suits tailored to show off broad shoulders and cufflinks to accent his tie, to have his socks match his pressed trousers. The powder blue stripes in his Oxford shirt brought out the color of his eyes in an almost stunning manner…and he knew that. He sat kitty-cornered at the bar to look out on the Potomac, looking like page five out of Country Club Lifestyle magazine.
The bartender headed over the moment she saw the hundred. “What’ll ya have?”
Aiden’s blue eyes brightened with his smile. “Do you have Red Bull and Tuaca?”
The woman smiled back as she shifted under his oceanic gaze. “Um…yeah.”
“Equal parts of both, please, in a highball if you have one.”
“Sure thing.”
“Thank you.”
From his seat, Aiden watched the sun go down over the Potomac. A beautiful sight as the sky went rainbow. He thought briefly of Jesse, how the reds over the river now resembled her hair. Before his mind carried him off somewhere inappropriate for the venue, he turned back to watch the bartender.
His eyes began to break her down into her parts. Toned, tanned skin spread over meaty breasts and a ghetto ass. It was a rather nice body, he supposed. It’d be better if not dismissed under a uniform outfit and nametag.
“I’m sorry." He refreshed his smile. "I forgot to ask you your name.”
“Beth,” the woman replied, walking his drink over to him. “And you are?”
Through the ceiling-to-floor windows, the sun had begun to spread itself through cappuccino hair and turn it a toasted golden brown. “Aiden.” He stretched out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Beth.”
“Likewise.”
Aiden leaned back in his chair, though kept his back perfectly straight as he did. “Would it be presumptuous to buy you a drink?”
“No,” Beth smiled a little, “just really clichéd.”
“Ah, well, I wouldn’t want to be a cliché,” Aiden laughed a touch already searching for something else to offer. He caught it as he noted Beth’s eye follow a tray of food. “What’s you’re favorite appetizer here?”
“You mean what would I suggest?”
“No, what’s your favorite, Beth.” Keeping his elbows off the bar he leaned towards her a little, enough to privatize their conversation further. “Suggestions are for sales and I’m not buying for myself.”
Beth smiled through her confusion before shrugging, “I got to try the tuna tartar once, it was pretty good.”
“Would you like to have it?”
“Now?”
“Yes. Now. With me, preferably.”
“And what about my other customers?”
As Aiden went to sip his drink his eyes stayed right on the bartender. “If you’d like to share the food with them, by all means feel free to,” he straight-faced before giving a soft smirk.
Beth laughed a little as she shook her head. “I’ll put the order in now.”
***
Aiden glimpsed his mother in the reflection of the windows and looked to the entrance. He watched as she spoke with the hostess, an air of sophistication wafting around her.
“Excuse me, Beth,” his pedigree picked-up a touch as he went to stand. He left a large bill on the counter. “I’m afraid the rest of my party has arrived and I should greet them.”
“It was nice talking with you,” Beth replied as she picked up the impressive payment.
“My pleasure entirely."
Erin saw her son approaching as the hostess walked her to their table and the smile that’d refused to come out all day finally made its appearance. “Ah, there’s my handsome boy.”
Aiden kissed her cheek, taking in her smells, when he reached her. “Hello Mother.”
“I hope you weren’t waiting long.”
“But a moment," he lied. "I assure you." He held her arm until they reached the table when he pulled her chair out, kissed her cheek again, and then took the seat opposite her. “Where’s Father?”
“I couldn’t tell you, Aiden, but he should be coming.”
He didn't let his disappointment show. “And Cynthia?”
“Late, like your father."
“Let’s just order. They can catch up.”
Erin smiled at her son. “Aiden. That’s a touch rude, don’t you think?”
“How about just drinks?" He raised a hand to catch the waiter's attention. "You deserve a nice drink, Mother, and it’s rude of them to make you wait for it.”
“Aiden…I…” she laughed softly. “Oh, all right. I suppose a drink would be fine.”
“That’s my lady,” Aiden joked with a wink and laugh.
"The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out." ~ Annie Dillard
Chapter 3
Chapter 1
Author: Tooks
Pairing: Team, Strauss, OCs (Strauss' family)
Rating: FRM
Summary: A case with ritualistic killings leads the BAU straight into Erin Strauss' personal life and past.
Notes: Spoilers all the way up to the end of Season 6!! The UNSUB's a necrophiliac so, while not graphic, consider yourself warned...also he has not so wholesome thoughts about his mother. There's also cursing, some violent imagery and discussion, and some sexual activity (and watching of said activity) involving those under 18...still nothing past FRM. This is a second chapter in a new case-fic I'm working on. Thanks pink_siamese for the beta, you rock!! So...lemme know what ya'll think! :D
2011, Calypso Bar, Washington DC
Cynthia headed towards her small armoire. “So, how may I help you, agents?"
Rossi smiled. “We just have a few questions concerning Jessica Grant."
“Jesse.”
“Excuse me?”
Cynthia pulled out a white suit shirt and strip of black before looking back. “She preferred being called Jesse.” She slipped the shirt on over her white tank top before turning back to the men as she started on the buttons. “Now what are your questions?”
Hotch watched the woman’s fingers slip tiny pearlescent buttons into tiny holes from the bottom up. It was distracting and a little rude. Strauss didn’t always like, or even respect, him but she never undressed in front of him as if he weren’t there. Well, not undressed...Cynthia hadn’t removed an article of clothing, but still…
The urge to tell her to stop and pay attention got lost in the latest button. “Ma’am, have we come at a bad time?”
“I’m meeting my family for dinner in an hour or so, I need to get ready.” Cynthia stopped buttoning halfway up and slipped the black cloth, an undone bow tie, under the collar. “Continue. Without calling me ma’am.”
Rossi decided to put an end to Hotch’s awkward suffering, even if it did give him a little chuckle on the inside. “What were your impressions of Jesse? Was she together or someone liable to be disorganized? Was she trusting? Someone who might’ve gone off with a stranger on a whim?”
Cynthia worked her pendant off. Her tone iced up at the edges. “Are you implying that Jesse was somehow at fault for her own murder?”
“Not at all, ma’am.” Hotch jumped in.
“Agent Hotchner, you call me ma’am again and I’ll tell my mother you made a pass at me when I see her at dinner tonight.”
Rossi smiled. “Your mother would never believe it.”
“No." Cynthia’s lips finally formed a true, though brief, smile. "I suppose not.”
She went to her desk drawer and pulled out a jewelry box. She exchanged the leather and sea glass for silver string and pearls that wrapped around her neck twice.
“Are you going to answer the questions?” Hotch asked tightly.
Cynthia tucked the box away and looked directly at Hotch. His glare wilted a touch. “Jesse was a great employee. She was professional. She didn’t bring her personal issues to work, had a good rapport with the rest of the staff, and only flirted with the clients enough to earn her tips.” Her eyes worked slowly to Rossi’s. “As far as her going off with strangers, I couldn’t say. She struck me as savvy, but also as someone who might’ve enjoyed taking the occasional risk.”
“Did anyone here at the bar give her any trouble?” Rossi asked. “Pay her any undo attention in the weeks or months preceding her disappearance?”
“Not that I’m aware of. But you can ask Bernie about that, he may know better than I.” She grabbed a business jacket off the back of her chair. “Now, with all due respect, gentlemen, I’d rather not risk being late for my mother and the rest of the family so, unless there’s something urgent you need to ask, can we continue this at another time?”
“Of course, ma’…” Hotch’s jaw locked a moment before he adjusted the response, “Ms Strauss. If we need to speak with you again we’ll contact you.”
Cynthia nodded. “I’m usually here and if I’m not then.” She shrugged on her jacket. “Well, you are the FBI. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble tracking me down.”
Rossi smiled. “Thank you for your time, Cynthia.”
“Not a problem, Agent Rossi." She nodded. "Agent Hotchner.”
***
The two men were halfway out the bar when fast clicks of heels came after them.
“Agents,” Cynthia called out, “hold on, I may have something else.”
Hotch and Rossi turned. Now dressed to the nines, she quickly regained her composure as she headed towards them with a folder in hand.
“Ms Strauss?” Hotch still couldn’t get her first name out.
She handed him the manila folder. “I don’t know if you can do anything with it, but it’s Jesse’s employee records here. Application, references…” She shrugged. “I don’t know what to do with it, but maybe there’s something you can use in there.”
Rossi smiled. “Thank you.”
“Also, I give all my employees a sea glass pedant like the one I was wearing earlier. If you could find Jesse’s, I’d like to have it to send to her parents.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.” Cynthia took a deep breath in. “I wish you luck finding Jesse’s killer and, again, please notify me if you need anything else.” Without another word, she turned back to her office.
***
“I don’t know, something about her…” David grinned as he got into the SUV with Aaron. “I like her.”
Hotch frowned a little. “You would.”
Rossi chuckled as he shut the door. He took the file from Hotch before relaxing in the passenger seat. “Can’t say she wasn’t helpful.”
“No.”
“More than you’d expect from a Strauss.”
“I suppose.”
“What’s wrong? You know she was kidding about telling Strauss you hit on her, right?”
“Yes, of course." Hotch started the engine. "Nothing’s wrong.”
1994, Virginia Beach, VA
Aiden sat loyally beside his mother as they watched the fireworks display. He’d rather grown out of being awed by them, but he enjoyed them nevertheless. It was what the family did on the fourth of July. They sat in a row - Cynthia, Aiden, Erin, Carl, and Jenny - and watched the fireworks together. Always.
“Aiden, where did your sister go?” His mother asked with sudden curiosity and annoyance, but little actual concern since her oldest had grown into the phase of wandering off with friends. And boys.
The eleven-year-old turned his head, saw no one, then turned back and shrugged.
Erin sighed loud. She tensed when she felt her husband’s hand at her back. “Don’t even.”
“She probably just went off to sit with friends.” Carl was always defending their eldest; he defended Cynthia just as Erin defended Aiden.
“She has all summer to be with friends and, I assure you, that’s not why she wandered off,” Erin insisted. "I swear, that girl is going to be the end of my sanity, and this family’s good reputation."
Aiden stood up and smiled down at his mother; he’d be proud to help, to find his nasty, disobedient, big sister who always gave his loving mother such troubles. “I’ll go find her, Mommy.”
Carl motioned for his son to sit back down. “That’s not necessary, Aiden."
“He might as well,” Erin countered. “Cynthia’s already ruined the night, maybe Aiden can find her and salvage at least the last part of it.”
Aiden grinned. “I’ll get her!”
He bolted, gone before his father could make a final decision. He had a pretty good idea where his older sister was, but he didn’t want to just tell. It was a much better show to come back, victorious, with his sister from a mysterious location…it kept him as the hero of the family and someone his mother almost had to depend on to keep her family together. The thought gave him a delicious shiver. He headed directly to the nearest corner of the beach.
He found Cynthia’s torn-up blue jeans and Nirvana band tee mixed in with a varsity lacrosse jacket and khaki pants on the incline of a sand dune.
“It’s not true, you’re an idiot," Cynthia laughed out softly from the water’s edge. She lay, nude, with half her body in the calm, black, water and the other half exposed to the warm night air.
Aiden could see her in the flickers of the fireworks. Blue face, red breasts, green stomach, and then she turned to black and purple swirls in the water. She’d become all crests and troughs, a wave in human form. In the dark, the young boy could almost make her his mother.
The boy beside Cynthia, the teen again getting pushed off her with a laugh, insisted though. “I swear the salt water kills them. Jeremy told me so.”
“Then Jeremy’s the idiot.”
“Come on, Cyn,” the young man nearly begged. “Even if that part’s not true it’ll just come right back out in the water so, ya know, nothin’s gonna happen. Come on, baby, please.”
Aiden cringed at the whimpering beast before his sister. What the hell was cowing this preppy jock to his strange grungy sister? Then the older boy’s head bent down and he heard his sister moan. “Seth.”
“You like that, baby?"
Aiden’s disgust turned to interest. He crept closer. He’d heard his parents making love once in the middle of the night, but he’d never seen it. Closer still, he tucked himself into the shadows as he caught sight of the boy’s head dip once again to take a peaked nipple into a greedy mouth. His sister rippled out a moan.
“Please, Cyn.” Even as he spoke Seth shifted up on her. He nuzzled her breasts, then her neck before reaching her lips to kiss. “You know I can make you feel so good.”
Aiden felt the need to shift as his blood flowed out of order. It was pooling, painfully, in his groin. He tried crossing his legs, but that only caused more discomfort. He held it as if that would help control the feeling.
“Please,” the soft waves pushed them into another kiss. “Please, I’m so fucking hard for you, baby. You can feel it, right?”
Cynthia gave a slight arch as Seth moved over her a touch. “I can feel it.”
“Then…please?”
“Just this once?”
“Just this once.”
2011, Morgue, Washington DC
Reid’s face was all of a foot from Jessica Grant as she lay on the exam table in the ME’s. He didn’t see any cuts or signs of bruising. If he didn’t know better, he’d guess the woman had drowned all on her own.
Seaver stood back some from the body, not yet having that level of comfort with corpses the rest of the team had. She did look though, tried to imagine what happened at the day, the hour, the minute, this young woman died. “Her nails are manicured.”
Reid ticked his head towards Seaver with interest before he stood up straight. “Her body in general is in far better shape than you’d expect from being dumped in a river.”
“We know the killer spends time with them after their death…maybe she was dumped this morning? Found before the river had an real opportunity to take its toll on her body?”
“Seems most likely,” Reid concurred. Then he turned to the ME. “Do you, uh, have a theory of…how she drowned?”
“There are small cuts and bruises on her scalp,” the man replied, going over to gently separate sections of Jesse’s hair. There were small red lines and dots on the skin. “It’s most likely he held her under by her hair.”
“Wouldn’t she have more bruising?" Seaver asked. "On her body?”
The ME shrugged. “Depends on where she was drowned. I’m still in the preliminary stages of Ms Grant’s autopsy so I don’t have any lab work yet, but if he killed her in the middle of a large amount of water like he did the others she might not have had a chance to fight and bruise significantly enough for the marks to be distinguished between her mottling due to drowning and death as a whole.”
“Also like the others,” Seaver commented.
Reid glanced at the ME. “Megan and Alice were drowned in the same water in which they were found, correct?”
“Yes,” the ME confirmed with a nod.
Reid's brow furrowed. “So he drowned them, then brought the bodies back somewhere to have sex…then threw them back where they were first drowned?”
“Apparently.”
Seaver frowned. “Maybe he camped by the lakes? Or had a cabin or something?”
“Maybe.” Reid frowned in thought and calculations. “Either way though he’d have had to been able to get these women to willingly go with him at least near the water first.”
And that seemed a feat all on its own in Spencer’s opinion.
2011, Sequoia Restaurant, Washington DC
Aiden had always been someone able to dress for his own best effect, to wear suits tailored to show off broad shoulders and cufflinks to accent his tie, to have his socks match his pressed trousers. The powder blue stripes in his Oxford shirt brought out the color of his eyes in an almost stunning manner…and he knew that. He sat kitty-cornered at the bar to look out on the Potomac, looking like page five out of Country Club Lifestyle magazine.
The bartender headed over the moment she saw the hundred. “What’ll ya have?”
Aiden’s blue eyes brightened with his smile. “Do you have Red Bull and Tuaca?”
The woman smiled back as she shifted under his oceanic gaze. “Um…yeah.”
“Equal parts of both, please, in a highball if you have one.”
“Sure thing.”
“Thank you.”
From his seat, Aiden watched the sun go down over the Potomac. A beautiful sight as the sky went rainbow. He thought briefly of Jesse, how the reds over the river now resembled her hair. Before his mind carried him off somewhere inappropriate for the venue, he turned back to watch the bartender.
His eyes began to break her down into her parts. Toned, tanned skin spread over meaty breasts and a ghetto ass. It was a rather nice body, he supposed. It’d be better if not dismissed under a uniform outfit and nametag.
“I’m sorry." He refreshed his smile. "I forgot to ask you your name.”
“Beth,” the woman replied, walking his drink over to him. “And you are?”
Through the ceiling-to-floor windows, the sun had begun to spread itself through cappuccino hair and turn it a toasted golden brown. “Aiden.” He stretched out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Beth.”
“Likewise.”
Aiden leaned back in his chair, though kept his back perfectly straight as he did. “Would it be presumptuous to buy you a drink?”
“No,” Beth smiled a little, “just really clichéd.”
“Ah, well, I wouldn’t want to be a cliché,” Aiden laughed a touch already searching for something else to offer. He caught it as he noted Beth’s eye follow a tray of food. “What’s you’re favorite appetizer here?”
“You mean what would I suggest?”
“No, what’s your favorite, Beth.” Keeping his elbows off the bar he leaned towards her a little, enough to privatize their conversation further. “Suggestions are for sales and I’m not buying for myself.”
Beth smiled through her confusion before shrugging, “I got to try the tuna tartar once, it was pretty good.”
“Would you like to have it?”
“Now?”
“Yes. Now. With me, preferably.”
“And what about my other customers?”
As Aiden went to sip his drink his eyes stayed right on the bartender. “If you’d like to share the food with them, by all means feel free to,” he straight-faced before giving a soft smirk.
Beth laughed a little as she shook her head. “I’ll put the order in now.”
***
Aiden glimpsed his mother in the reflection of the windows and looked to the entrance. He watched as she spoke with the hostess, an air of sophistication wafting around her.
“Excuse me, Beth,” his pedigree picked-up a touch as he went to stand. He left a large bill on the counter. “I’m afraid the rest of my party has arrived and I should greet them.”
“It was nice talking with you,” Beth replied as she picked up the impressive payment.
“My pleasure entirely."
Erin saw her son approaching as the hostess walked her to their table and the smile that’d refused to come out all day finally made its appearance. “Ah, there’s my handsome boy.”
Aiden kissed her cheek, taking in her smells, when he reached her. “Hello Mother.”
“I hope you weren’t waiting long.”
“But a moment," he lied. "I assure you." He held her arm until they reached the table when he pulled her chair out, kissed her cheek again, and then took the seat opposite her. “Where’s Father?”
“I couldn’t tell you, Aiden, but he should be coming.”
He didn't let his disappointment show. “And Cynthia?”
“Late, like your father."
“Let’s just order. They can catch up.”
Erin smiled at her son. “Aiden. That’s a touch rude, don’t you think?”
“How about just drinks?" He raised a hand to catch the waiter's attention. "You deserve a nice drink, Mother, and it’s rude of them to make you wait for it.”
“Aiden…I…” she laughed softly. “Oh, all right. I suppose a drink would be fine.”
“That’s my lady,” Aiden joked with a wink and laugh.
"The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out." ~ Annie Dillard
Chapter 3
Chapter 1