(no subject)
oh, thank god, this is finally done. it's a noir au (ie. it contains elements of a 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s au without being time-specific! isn't that fun! and sort of lazy.) i don't know, think detectives and agatha christie. only with a little more angst and no murder-solving parties. although, wouldn't that be something? (warnings graphic violence, death.)
bird through the wire
morgan/reid, r, 10039 words
He isn’t lost. Not in this city. The streets, the buildings - Spencer knows them all. All of the twists and turns. It’s all right. The drugstore window is painted with the colours of spring. A girl in pink stripes slumped against the counter. He stops in the crowd. Soda jerk.
Overhead, the bell makes a sweet sound. She looks up, fingers soft against her cheek. Spencer stands at the counter. He’s aware of the quietness in the shop. “What can I get you?” she asks, sticky in her throat. She gathers her hair over her shoulder like Veronica Lake. Her name is written in black. JJ.
Spencer fingers the collar of his shirt. He looks away from her face. “Whatever your favourite is?” JJ bites her bottom lip. She changes in the span of a moment (you’re serious to you’re sincere). She nods and her skirt spins away with her. Spencer watches the shift of her back, her narrow shoulders. Milk, ice cream, strawberry syrup. Spencer smiles to himself.
JJ turns around, glass in her hand. She opens the straw with her teeth. Lets the spoon slide in. “My favourite,” she says, licking at the side of her wrist. Whipped cream. Like she’s challenging him. Those girls at school. Uniforms and pulled-back hair. It’s her favourite.
“Thank you,” he says. The snap of coins on the counter. The spoon is cold. Taste of too-sweet strawberry. She leans up against the counter, watching. Spencer ducks his head; the blush starting at his neck.
JJ’s laugh sounds like it’s been caught. “What kind of boy are you?” She picks up the money easily. A little too much. A quarter goes into the pocket of her apron.
Do you have any comment? he asks, the pen sharp on the paper, writing down his own question. His hat slants a shadow across his eyes. Crossed legs. Twist of his lips, waiting. Dr. Reid, slowly and slowly in his mouth, do you have any comment on this issue? A heartbeat moving his blood.
Research at the edge of his consciousness. They want that look. When his eyebrows furrow together and his jaw tightens. The science of forensics. It’s new. It feels new. This era of crime is new. These men who sit in press rooms tied to telephones. He shakes his head. “No, not at this time.” Formulas and understanding.
His sigh is harsh and annoyed. There are cigarettes in his shirt pocket instead of a handkerchief. Thank you for your time. The handshake is cold. Spencer fixes his tie as he walks towards the door. He turns back. Withholding, he says. Dark. Angry. Neither of them can get their jobs done. That’s not new.
JJ taps the space between his eyes. Her cheeks are frozen pink. Her voice gets lost in the morning traffic of car and train. “Spence, you’re more than that.” Her hands are chapped, not gloved. “You’re capable of so much more.” The books cradled in her arms.
He’s barely awake. Out until three, in that bar. He knows what he knows. Spencer’s found this in-between spot. He can be information for all people. Cops and robbers. Penelope complains about their board lighting up almost constantly. He has to go out.
“So, what? People pay you to tell them about each other? That’s what you’ve been doing all this time?” Spencer can hear the hard click of her heels on the sidewalk. She’s shaking her head. Of course. “Right, okay.”
Spencer tries not to sound desperate. “It matters to them, okay?” Everything is taken care of this way. “Everyone deserves the chance to be good at what they do.” The space between the skyscrapers is filled with mist. The grey area. Spencer can’t just say he doesn’t like it. It’s a service that does something.
JJ’s eyes are ice, her skin the same crystal. She whistles for a taxi. Little snowflakes in the air. “Okay, Spencer.” She stops looking at him as she gets into the car. A hundred black taxis.
It was the lights. And the words. And all of these people that Spencer didn’t know. He took phone calls from men with titles for names (Dr. John C. Whitman and the head of a private research section, Andrew Cotton) and other agencies represented with acronyms. Chemistry and Mathematics printed onto paper and framed in his mother’s bedroom. Spencer would go home from the research lab with the sound of the telephone ring stuck in his head. Everyone wants him for his education, his mind. Spencer doesn’t own a telephone.
He’d been at the café tucked away into a side-side-side street and was asked about the use of Zyklon B. gas and if another substance would have been more humane by a fast-talking journalist, his cameraman stationed nearby. Spencer could barely disguise his disgust and stepped out of line without thinking about it. Collar of his coat turned up. It’s been like that for a while.
He’d be catching the night train home and someone would be there, watching. Too much attention to detail. Spencer’s forehead cool against the window. The flash barely lighting the tunnel.
And then there’s the every-man. Questions about math, death, films. Whatever’s on the tip of their tongue when they see him, recognise him. Spencer tries to ignore it, but then he’s arrogant. Frustrates him so far down. Underneath his skin.
There are two switchboards. Headsets. Plugs. The directory. Spencer’s pen and paper. There’s no code because Penelope’s the only one listening in. Three telephones in the lobby and two in the bar. Hotel telephones are connected to the hotel switchboard. One for outsourcing. One for rooms. Or, you want to be talking to the operator.
The Royal is for criminals and the working class. There’s a place up the street for anyone more. Ask Elle: she has the directions and the line-straight voice. Nothing is happening here. Jason behind the bar with his fingers on the tap. Spencer’s life is ruled by circuit boards.
“The Royal Hotel. How may I connect you?” Penelope asks, always anticipating a guest. Never assume otherwise. She looked at Spencer, first day, and said it sharply. A cut across the back of his hand. She listens carefully, fingers ready on the plug. She picks up the notebook, saying, “Eleven forty-five. 8th and West. Two hundred. Don’t even think about being late, sweetheart.”
“Two hundred? What’s he want?” Spencer asks. Penelope has always been the one to decide the value of information. Spencer just has it.
Penelope writes a set of initials down. The street name. “Complete personnel listing for the Fifty-First Bank down on Charlie. A schedule for Friday, the twenty-first, if you can get it.”
Easy enough.
Penelope found him at the tracks, no tickets in hand. Spencer was watching the horses in a haze of smoke. Taking in their physical characteristics and the course they were running. Coming up with winners every time. The benches were cold in September. She was looking over a notebook, more and more names with each flip.
“You catch the results of that last race?” she asked, pen in her mouth. “That bastard Paul needs to slow down.” Quick, fast, hard strokes of the pen.
Spencer glanced side-long at her. He listed each horse, every place. “You need any of the others?” He pushed his hair back. He had stopped slicking it. Didn’t really matter anymore.
Her face brightened when she looked at him. “You’re that genius, right? The Boy Wonder or something. Spencer Reid, right?” Her blonde hair blew in the wind.
He let out a long breath. “Dr. Spencer Reid.”
JJ works for a paper called The Marionette. Arts-based. She handles theatre reviews, spending her nights stuck in small seats and crowds, watching small names perform small plays. Spencer can never really tell if she likes it or not. Tonight she sighs before she writes anything down. They’re always tired.
Spencer takes Sundays off. It seems to be a day when nothing wants to transpire. And if something does, they should have contacted him Monday. No newspapers or library records or scouting. The silence sits softly in the space between them. A woman is smoking in front of them. JJ’s lighting up beside him.
His eyes water. Go red. Spencer watches the actors through a blur. They’re all movement. JJ leans her head against his shoulder. Smoke against his cheek. It has its own softness. It’s like the scene in front of him is on fire. JJ yawns in all of the heat.
There’s something off with Morgan. The location. Playbills on the brick walls. Working lampposts. There’s the right kind of people. Children with gum in their mouths. Mothers with hand gloves. He smiles, even with his hands in his pockets and a gun tucked into his waistband. Shaved. No cuts or bruises. He doesn’t smell like alcohol or smoke.
This is his first call.
“No paper trail,” he says. “What I tell you will not be written down. Pay attention. Cash first.” Spencer doesn’t reach out until the money is offered. Pinches it between his index and middle and slides into the pocket of his vest underneath his coat.
Morgan nods. “All right, Professor.”
Two murders up on Sandora on Thursday night. House number 224. Owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dalloway. One child; a girl, twelve-years-old. The wife and the daughter. Robert is out of his mind. He’s acting suicidal, the papers are saying. It was a hit, Spencer hears between the library stacks. “The Poles are collecting again. Hadn’t paid up his debts. You know how it is.”
All of this in a harsh, dirty whisper. Spencer taps his fingers against the spine of the linguistic reference books. He sighs. The taste in the back of Spencer’s throat is something like sick.
“And where are you going tonight?” Elle asks, tray on her palm. Tongue to the inside of her cheek. She’s all swing. The Royal is moving as it does. The piano a soft lullaby. Her skirt and her apron. She’s holding the weight of four drink orders.
Spencer shrugs and smiles. He makes to move past her, but she stops him with a hand to his shoulder. “C’mon, you know.” The purse of her lips is dangerous. “Rounds. Collecting. Whatever you like to call it, Elle.”
She drops her chin and gives Spencer a sharp look. “I know, Spencer. Lighten up.” She sweeps by him, the ice in the glasses staying perfectly still. She’s too good at all of this.
“Wait,” Spencer says, reaching out towards her. The solidness of her presence. Elle turns on her heel, steadily grounded in the carpet. Her walk is measured. She keeps eye contact. “You know the Rule of Three?” he asks.
She nods slowly. “Yeah, what about it?” Her fingers shiver with tension underneath the weight of the tray. It doesn’t show anywhere else.
“I think I have one. A badge. Not the usual suspect.” He says it casually, like it wouldn’t worry him if he were right. It’s a practiced coolness. “I’m at two.”
Elle isn’t looking anywhere specific. She bites her bottom lip. “And you know it?” Spencer nods. “Call it in. Because he might first.” She moves towards the tables. “We like you around here, kid.”
She finds him. The band onstage plays cleanly, every instrument pronounced. The Duke Ellington songbook will always be a popular choice. Spencer doesn’t mind. She sits down beside him. Spencer focuses on the flicker-flutter of drumsticks. She drinks something clear, with a burn.
“Sorry, he couldn’t come up with the cash first time around. We appreciate it. It was a that-night job. Got a little cleaned out getting a hold of a piece on such short notice. Bastard.” Her eyes wild behind the rim. She pulls the bills, banded in elastic, out of her stocking. “And it’s not like they ever act any better.”
Spencer laughs. “Maybe you’re just losing your touch.” He doesn’t mean it. She deals with things that almost scare Spencer straight. Hit men, arms dealers, mobs. Spencer, technically, isn’t even in the business.
She swallows the rest of her drink. Cigarette threaded through her fingers. “Hey, now. You want to be next? Turn you inside and out.”
She says it like Jason does when he’s talking about weather. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Every day.
“What do you want to know?” Spencer asks. He meets Morgan’s eyes with a level gaze. Rain moving in rivulets. He pushes his wet hair back. There’s light and music and smoke and heat and girls in sequins through the Green Luck’s backdoor. He shivers underneath his coat.
Morgan shrugs. “Dalloway. Who did it?” His voice forcing its way through the downpour. The set of his jaw. The sky is dark, dark. The city never tries hard enough. All the time watching Spencer.
Spencer laughs, quiet and swallowed. It’s not morbid. Small course of amusement working its way through him. He looks up with light in his face. He feels it. Morgan set in stone. Spencer remembers how it looked when he first started this, that light.
“You know how this works, right?” Spencer’s never really managed to come across as condescending. “That’s not it. You’re acting like a badge.”
He watches those words click into recognition. Morgan covers it up with a smile, disregarding. He knew it. And yet, now isn’t the time.
Spencer saw the newspaper after leaving the library with books under his arm. The boy on the corner was grinding his shoe into the concrete sidewalk, chewing tobacco. He looked up at Spencer with a black smile. Spencer had a dime in the boy’s hand before he could say anything.
It was exactly how he’d heard it: 224 Sandora Ave. The wind takes hold of the pages. Owed them seven hundred-fifty, at least, for the past six months. It wasn’t Spencer’s fault, but he drops the paper. Books too heavy. He blinks his vision back into place. Payday approaching.
The words seem to be said in slow motion, Derek’s - Morgan’s - usual energy compromised by the seriousness of the situation. Spencer read him as a badge. This is the third time. Penelope stares down at her hands, fidgeting. Inspector Hotchner has his gun out, a straight line made by his arm. There’s a third cop, one Spencer can’t indentify, outside in the hallway. Derek’s saying, “You can both choose.” His face blank. Penelope’s wet eyes. Spencer’s heart beating way too fast in his chest.
“Between what?” Spencer asks, hands out in front of himself. Balance. He knows that very few people get this opportunity. It doesn’t help. It’s not going to.
Hotchner keeps his gun raised. “You can either be tried and convicted on racketeering charges or you can come work for us. Both of you. You know that you’re better than this.” His is not allowed to be disappointed. He’s not. The sound of feet in the hall.
Morgan is having his own silent conversation, his shoulders slumped in. Morgan looks desperate. “What do you want it to be?” he sighs out. Everyone is too loud. Elle’s voice. Swell of anger.
“You,” Penelope says. Her colour drained.
The focus shifts to Spencer. He says exactly what they want him to say.
JJ’s bedroom is cold. Her sheets and her skin are warm. She pulls a set of pyjamas out of her armoire and hands them to him. Reaches up and takes off his glasses. Touch of familiarity. She gets up on her toes and kisses his nose.
He changes. JJ gets back into bed. She sleeps with her curtains open, the city coming in through the window. “What happened?” she asks, face in his neck. She puts a hand to his stomach. He relaxes. The clouded moonlight across them.
“We got caught and then we were recruited.” He takes a deep breath. He still doesn’t believe it. JJ’s hand moves. “I’m not ready to be back.” Her eyes, so blue, looking up at him.
“You will be.” JJ’s presence is a soft comfort. She’s part of his family. And she’s right.
Their disappearance is a rumour. Spencer gives Elle a list of all of the places for them to go. The office is loud around him; the Royal silent behind her.
“You’re working in my department,” Hotch says, file in hand. Spencer doesn’t know what it says about him. He doesn’t have a history. He twists his handkerchief in his hands and wipes his forehead when Hotch turns his back. He has no interest in detective work.
“With your intelligence and Morgan’s experience, I believe you’ll go far.” He has a hollow face. “Morgan will show you the routine and I’ll delegate you cases I deem fit. You understand?” His fingers are gently closing the folder.
Spencer nods. “Yes, sir.” He coughs. Cold hands. Sweat across his shoulders. He doesn’t have a choice.
“Murder. Kidnappings. The regulars. Hotch wants you on those cases.” Morgan leans up against his desk. Too many papers in some files, too little in others. The traceless. “What were you working on before?”
Spencer’s look is sharp. “Chemistry. Maths.” The question of motive is one he’s asked and has been asked a lot. A closed conversation.
“They aren’t tailing you, right?” Elle asks, elbow on the bar. “Everyone seems pretty sore, but as long as they have another place to go, it doesn’t really matter.” She puts her cigarette out against the oak. “Kind of sad, huh?”
Jason’s hand brushes over the ash. “Don’t,” he says, looking at only Elle, “do that again.” She nods - all laconic - and he turns away.
“I guess.” He runs his fingers along the crease of his pants. “What happened to her?” His tea is still hot. Painted, chipped ceramic.
“Penelope? Sent to some precinct across town. Couldn’t tell you what she’s doing, now, although it be pretty bastardised of them to make her work Racketeering, no?” Her whole upper body stiff.
Spencer shrugs. “Better than a horse-and-pony-show detective, I hope.” The weight of the badge in his back pocket is too heavy. A stupid reminder.
“Take notes. Track all probable leads. I assume you already understand behaviour, details, speech.”
Hotch is a smoker. His fingertips are calloused. The beds of his fingernails are the faintest of yellows. He tends to tap his fingers against his thigh or puts his hands in his pockets when it distracts him. He tries to hold himself back. Hotch is restrained; first by choice; the second remains elusive.
Spencer bites the end of his pen. His twenty-first birthday gift from JJ. The fine nib slides softly across the lines of his notebook. Hotch thumbs at the corner of his mouth. The left side. The skin there is cracked and dry. Red
Observation, right. Spencer understands that.
Spencer isn’t used to this desk. He isn’t used to Hotch standing beside him. “You’re going to be on the line for one another.” There’s a tarnished silver band on his hand. “You’re going to have to get used to him eventually, Reid.”
He’s been on the telephone all day, talking to car service after car service, looking for just one name to appear in their books. “I know,” Spencer says, fingering the dial. “It takes time, right? I haven’t worked on this side of the law in a while.”
Spencer detects the surface of a smile, maybe.
He’s been out here all night in the cold shadows of the restaurant up from the Royal. Spencer is still waved in, but he sits along the wall, eyes hop-scotching across the wallpaper’s pattern. Glasses and personalities clink.
It was all there in the appearance. He forgot the careful confidence. The smoothness didn’t come from repetition, but from him. He knew what he was doing, what it would eventually accomplish. Left Spencer with a handful of bills that had the same promise as a band of gold.
Spencer’s awake. His bedroom smells like dust and worn clothes and tar on the soles of his shoes. He scratches at his shoulder and pushes his hand into the sheathed feathers of his pillow. Soft, sinking. The flare of muted pain running up his calves. He searches for his glasses and turns on the radio.
(For the past three weeks the station has been playing a rotation of Judy Garland, June Christy, and Blossom Dearie. Spencer can’t really say that he minds. Girls with voices like honey.)
He puts the kettle on the stove. The cast iron one. The language of his family when he touches the handle. Yesterday’s newspaper is folded up on the kitchen table. Spencer looks down at the headline, which is always too stark and dramatic:
ANOTHER HIT FOR ANOTHER SCORE
This case is throwing Hotch. It’s a family, same method of operation. A wife and two sons. Gambling debts. There are certain places in the city where you should never play cards. Spencer’s count is twenty-four. Quotes from Hotch and civilians. Hotch offers rigid sympathy. The civilians are earnest and angry. Spencer picks up his copy of The Marionette, instead. JJ quietly reviews a student production of You Can’t Take it With You. Spencer lets out a sigh. The kettle whistles hot on the stove. He doesn’t really care.
It’s a place way out south, by the tracks; a place that Spencer has spent a few too many hours hanging around in. Eggs. Coffee. The freight trains rumbling - always a whistle and a roar - past the windows. Past an edge-of-city hotel, off of the pavement, down gravel. Last stop tonight. Obvious morning sun low in the sky. He gets a nod from the man behind the counter.
He’s at a table. Spencer sits down across from him. “It’s Derek, by the way,” he says. He holds his coffee cup loosely. It’s like he’s been waiting to say that for a long time. Three weeks ago, the second time. This is the third time. The third time before the third time.
Spencer ducks his head. “And you know mine.” He presses his thumb against a pattern of crumbs. He looks up. “You been here long? The walk takes a little bit of time.” Spencer still remembers how to apologise.
Derek shakes his head. “No.” His cup is full. “Wouldn’t matter too much, anyways.” His tie is loosened. The button at his collar undone. “I’m done for tonight, anyways. Managing those girls, hey?”
Spencer shakes his head. Whatever he wants to say today. “I’m stuck managing everyone else.” He feels warm in his coat. Just perfect. Relaxed. It’s easy to forget how different they really are. Spencer’s always liked that.
Derek’s laugh.
Almost everything is closed on Sunday. Spencer walks towards the gates of the park. The spring grass and concrete. It’s more of a place for personal histories (first kisses, pickpockets, and swings).
He follows the curve of the pathway through the trees. There are mothers with children and teenagers roller-skating. He can’t feel the sun through the heavy blankets of leaves. He sees a woman ahead of him. Her fingers combing through the grass. A halo of varicose veins around her ankle.
“Did you lose something, ma’am?” Spencer asks, kneeling down beside her. She looks at him, curiously, behind her glasses. Her eyes are a magnified black. He gives her a soft smile. “I could help you find it.”
She coughs out a harsh scoffing sound and lifts a cigarette to her lips. The collar of her shirt is unbuttoned underneath her sweater. “What are you, boy? A detective or something?” The crow’s feet under her eyes are there proudly.
Spencer lets out a laugh. (More for himself.) She tucks the cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “I am. What can I help you find?” He looks over at the patch of grass and dirt she was searching. Bottle caps and rocks. The concrete is cold under his knees. He can feel her watching him.
“A five,” she says like she’s waiting for him to challenge her. It’s the tilt of her head. She stubs her cigarette out against the side of her shoe. She crawls forward and looks back at Spencer. “You going to help, then?”
Spencer nods. “I am.” He goes right as she goes left. The flowers are trying to grow again. He carefully looks through their tangle stems. Making a show. He sees her shadow beside his. Spencer reaches for his wallet and quietly sifts through the bills. He presses a five into the bed of dirt and crumples it in his hand.
“Ma’am!” He says. “Ma’am, I found it.” He sits back on his knees. She walks over to Spencer. He holds up the bill. She takes it from him carefully.
She holds it in between her thumb and index fingers. “Well I’ll be, son. It’s this one all right.” She folds it into the pocket of her shirt. “Thanks for your trouble.”
JJ is filling in for her editor this week. Stories and scraps are scattered across her kitchen table. She holds the eye-dropper between her fingers and fills her pen. Red ink stains on paper and skin. Prints where she touched her temple. Spencer can taste the sweet-awful ink in his mouth. He’s editing an interview with an unknown playwright. It was definitely last-minute work.
“Grace has had my column all week,” JJ says. “Thank god I missed that play about rural Kansas schoolteachers.” She shakes her head. This can’t be much better. She mumbles out a laugh. She drains the last of her tea. Leaves bitter on her tongue.
“I wouldn’t even have gone to that one with you.” He fixes a comma splice. “Not like I have time to anymore, anyways.” His Sundays alone. Hotch looked at him. Looked at his empty desk. Told him to go home. It was just before five o’clock. He’s here now with JJ. Their timelines finally intersecting.
JJ’s look is soft. “You’re here now, Spence. Helping me with all this. That’s enough for me.” Her cold hand on top of his cold hand. “Remember that.”
JJ knows too many perfect words.
“It’s all just observation. Blending in. How hit men track their marks without witnesses. It’d be admirable if it weren’t so morbid.” Spencer touches his fingertips to the car’s window. The heat on the glass. Children’s faces on the other side. “The average hit man can, throughout the course of his career, hit about seventy marks.” Spencer almost hates to admit it, but vehicles are still a novelty to him. Soft leather.
Morgan raises an eyebrow, watching the road. “I get it. You’re the genius the papers made you out to be.” It’s like a bad taste in his mouth.
His hand freezes at the mention. He adjusts the collar of his coat. (Squeezes the back of his neck tightly.) Morgan’s not watching the road. Spencer is. “I was good at what I did.”
He drives with one hand on the wheel. Whenever Spencer thought of detectives, he would picture someone like Morgan, like Hotch. Not himself. Morgan’s profile and the set of his jaw. He’s been looking for too long.
Spencer swallows and nods. “Unofficial. Classified. I knew all of it. I know all of it.” He’s started fidgeting with his hands, again. Something he stopped doing when he started at the Royal. All that indifference gone. He misses just knowing that they were beside him, around him. There for him.
“You were really that someone out there willing to get all of that together? God.” Spencer’s amused that Morgan’s engaging him in this conversation. He doesn’t want him to be interested. Forget.
“You’re really surprised? There’s always someone out there.”
Morgan shifts gears. A hand between them. “That’s how we found you.” His smile in the window isn’t forced. Just sad.
It’s impossible for it not to happen. First, a little paper from the Midwest and then Spencer’s climbing his way back up to the regulars. Pictures of him in the field. The nights at the theatre (opera season starting this week) with JJ. Spencer does trust those people at the Royal. No matter how criminal.
Spencer passes seven newsstands on his way to work. He doesn’t look up. He barely registers Hotch at his desk, newspaper folded across his chest. “This,” he says, voice so low, “I’m going to make this stop. As people, as a precinct, we deserve our privacy to live and to do our jobs.” He throws the paper into the wastebasket. “You deserve better, Reid.”
Spencer isn’t quite used to the coroner’s office, yet. That’s what he keeps telling himself. The cold. He pulls his coat closer, keeping his touch local. Everything is gray and blue. He’s never really thought about this.
“Body temperatures. Youngest son, mother, oldest son. Sometime between four and six in the morning.” The coroner’s hands are covered in white cloth.
Morgan examines the youngest son’s chest would. “That’s an ideal time. The night-shift coming home and the day-shift on their way to work or, at least, up.” Heart and, if not, a bleed-out. “This isn’t his first time, Morgan.”
Spencer looks away from the boy’s body. “I’d say he’s not new to this city or even the neighbourhood. If he is local, his supplier will be someone who knows him well. Maybe even the person who introduced him to this line of work.” He looks anywhere but the slab. The coroner, lab equipment, Morgan (becoming this familiar point. He needs some sort of comfort in this off-colour place. Anything).
The coroner looks between them. Morgan is watching him carefully. Yes, they are the reason Spencer was doing what he was doing. It just had to be suggested.
This is the other art. The one his mother could never quite appreciate. Their seats are awful; stage hidden behind other people and seats. But her voice. Spencer has shivers crawling up inside of him. He can be alone and together here.
Spencer took JJ to this - Le Nozze di Figaro - four seasons ago. She doesn’t have to review it this time around, wouldn’t want to. It’s so easy to fall in love with. The sweetness. She held his hand too tightly, just right.
She’s doing it now.
Morgan has him call in. The drugstore is quiet, the voices of the druggists carrying across the aisles, the floor. Spencer leans back against the booth, fingers brushing the thickness of the phonebook.
“The coroner has confirmed the time of the deaths. Occurred between four and six in the morning. He works with the night-shift/day-shift change. Lets him leave the premises without looking suspicious.”
There’s almost always a long silence between exchanges on the phone with Hotch. Through the glass, Morgan is pacing across the floor slowly. He keeps precise notes on all of the information he receives. Careful and triple-checked.
“Good. Reid, I want you and Morgan back here. We have the husband in for questioning. Morgan’s got lead, you observe.”
His name is Richardson. “I had debts. At. At the Golden Horseshoe.” His mouth won’t close and his hands, his shoulders shake. His shirt isn’t buttoned properly and he keeps grinding the toe of his shoe into the floor. “I didn’t.” He takes a deep breath. “I didn’t think this would happen. For debts. It’s not supposed to happen to you.”
Morgan tilts his chin up, arms folded across the back of his chair. “How much?” he asks.
Richardson looks like he’s been caught off-guard. Body freezing. He looks down at his hands. “Twelve-hundred,” he whispers. “It’s been around four years. I haven’t managed.” He bites his thumbnail. “I couldn’t.” Spencer has never liked to see anyone cry.
Hotch is right there when Spencer turns away from the mirror. His gaze locked on Richardson’s crying face. “Tell me who runs the Golden Horseshoe. What syndicate is it a part of?” They’re the only two watching.
Spencer feels hot all over. An uncomfortable itch all over his skin. “It’s one of thirteen jazz clubs and casinos operated by Robert Parker. Backroom gambling.” He twists his fingers. “I don’t know who works under him. That wasn’t my business.” Richardson talks in spasms. “I’m sorry, Hotch.”
Hotch wipes a hand across his mouth. “We do what we have to, Reid.” He turns away from the mirror. “We’ve got other names. You didn’t have to find them, but you might know them.”
“Crush,” JJ says, straw between her teeth. “Even his awful accent.” She swirls her spoon. “What’s wrong with me, Spence?” Her hand reaching for his. “Am I a lost cause?”
Reid is sure he looks confused, ice cream forgotten in front of him. “No, you’re human, JJ.” He still takes her hand.
Morgan seems to really dislike going to see Ballistics. He pushes up the sleeves of his shirt and adjusts his holster. Spencer carefully doesn’t notice. “What?” Morgan asks sharply, adjusting the knot of his tie. His jaw set loosely.
Spencer leans back against the elevator. The operator stands tall and quiet. “Nothing,” he says, raising his gloved hands. Follows the slant of the operator’s straight shoulders, the movement behind the doors. The flat bell counting off the floors. The elevator stops.
Morgan lets out a loud sigh. “I hate this son of a bitch.” He presses a bill into the operator’s hand and Spencer follows him out, smirking. “Don’t,” Morgan says. He doesn’t even turn around.
Spencer understands now. It’s the attitude and the paperwork. Excessive paperwork. His right hand smeared with black ink. “He uses a rifle with a .22 rimfire cartridge and then a Smith & Wesson Model 39 with 9mm cartridges on his next mark. Why? It’s not like there are other people going around murdering families.”
“Hit men typically rotate out their weaponry, especially if they’re hitting more than one mark in the same city. What they use is based on what their supplier can afford with their money.” Morgan gives him a look. “Five years, Morgan. You learn that a hit man doesn’t carry pretty quickly.” He smiles. Seriously, more than just a textbook on Freud theories and math problems.
Morgan shakes his head. “You shouldn’t know more about that kind of stuff than me, kid.” The offices downstairs are bright and busy. “Fine, you got any ideas about how to catch this guy?” A secretary brushes past Morgan, skirt swinging against his calves. His eyes follow her.
Spencer shakes his head. Ends of his hair touching his mouth. “No, I don’t.”
For such a small backroom, the sets of metal and spiralled staircases seem almost endless. “This way,” the porter says, white-gloved hands outstretched and a cigar end between bitten teeth. Spencer follows his gestures up the stairs, circling and circling until he gets to the top.
These places are all about shadows. The brass doorknob is cold in his hand. The room is just as cold, save for the warm glass glow of a desk-lamp. Spencer sits down in front of it. Legs crossed.
“So, you know something about this guy Candle?” Spencer can only make out the basest features of the man’s face. The unshaven cheeks, purple-red mouth (warped by the light), dry skin. His thumbnail parts some amount of money in front of him.
Spencer nods. His birth date. His resume. Where he goes at night. The schools his children attend. The address of his wife’s parents. The man’s pen moves across the slip of paper with ease. His smile is sharp and horrifying. He knows how to take care of a paper trail.
“That’s exactly what I wanted, son.” Spencer picks up his charge, fingers wrapped in his coat sleeve. Sweat from the very bottom of his pores up and down his back. “You mind if my boys call on you, again?” Teeth the colour of the sun. Spencer presses his hand to his throat.
“Not at all.”
“Spence, what is it? Spence? Talk to me.”
Her eyes like water.
He gave him the name (the address, the telephone number, the everything). Spencer gave him the fucking means. Hand to his forehead. He takes a deep breath. JJ on her knees, hands around his wrists. He hung up on Morgan. Shallow air. Spencer knows the name. One forty-one. Two thirty-seven. Joseph Molin. His fingers curling in.
She’s watching his face. “You.” She bits her lip. “You gave him the information.” JJ’s face tipped away. Her hold slackens. Pursed lips. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, Spence.” She lets go.
Spencer runs a hand through his hair. Palm pressed to his scalp. “It’s not you, JJ. You didn’t do this.”
He has to call. He has to call Morgan.
“Reid, are you sure you’re going to be able to do this? Hotch’ll understand.” His hand clasps Spencer’s shoulder. “Damn, and even if he doesn’t, I will.” Evergreens surround the house. The house unlit, dusty. Tape and police officers. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
There’s ink under his fingernails and his shirt isn’t buttoned properly and he hasn’t shaved. He just feels cold. Anxious apprehension. John used to run betting tables on Monday nights. He wasn’t the best man, but he wasn’t the worst. Wore his daughter’s locket around his neck. Black smudges underneath his eyes.
Joseph Molin isn’t supposed to kill the husbands. People everywhere. Their photographer crouches down near a body in the parlour. The bright flash on John’s face. Shot in the stomach and the chest. There are bruises up his arms. Hotch stands over him.
“Obvious struggle. The unsub probably got away wounded.” He gestures to the state of the room around them. Upturned table. A broken lamp. Bent rabbit ears. “The wife and the daughter were killed first, before this.” John’s eyes are muted white. Spencer swallows.
“His name is Joseph Molin. He’s thirty-three-years-old. He’s from a suburb outside of Chicago, but relocated here after he graduated high school. He killed an ex-bootlegger when he was nineteen at a bar on South Street, but it never went to trial. I don’t know who got him onto this, but he’s worked for almost every syndicate in this city at some point. He uprooted about a year-and-a-half ago, no one knows where, after a mark went bad. Killed a four-year-old girl. Some people say he was committed, but I don’t believe it.” Spencer crouches down beside John’s body. “You don’t get paid for this kind of struggle.”
Everything seems to quiet down all at once. A cigarette hangs out of the photographer’s mouth. Silenced. Hotch’s stare is red. His arms cross higher across his chest. “You’re going to find me him.” His voice is all edge.
Spencer looks back at Morgan. His expression is soft. “You’re going to have to let me talk to her, first.” Spencer interlocks his fingers. “She’ll know.”
Hotch leads him through the aisles that the desks make. Spencer fingers their worn edges. The precinct feels smaller than it is with all of these intersecting pathways and people. He already has a map. It reminds of some place that was neither good nor bad. Spencer smiles.
Her typewriter is standard-issue black. Her favourite Signet gone. There’s a pen tucked behind her ear and the smudge under her chin shows that it’s filled with poppy-red. The sound of the keys is soft and cutting. The stack of paper beside her looks yellow under the light. She even has a name-plate.
“Garcia,” Hotch says, voice echoing outwards. She looks up in a startled panic. Hands stopped. Spencer shifts on his feet. She was never scared of other people. The threads of Hotch’s suit catch the light. His back makes the straightest line.
But she sees him. Melts back into place. She adjusts her glasses, the ones tipped with sparkle in the corners. Her hair is in so many loose curls. She stands up, awkwardly pulling down her skirt.
“Spencer, Spence,” she says, side-stepping Hotch. “Honey.” Her hands clasp behind his back. “You don’t look so good.” Spencer takes in the perfume of her neck. It’s so familiar. He hasn’t felt this placed for so long. All of those stats and people and living too easily on bad money.
Spencer nods, stepping back. Her hands unlock. “I know.” He rocks back on his heels, bites his cheek. “Business,” Spencer says. Neither of them looks towards Hotch. It’s still. “You remember Joseph Molin?”
Penelope searches his face. “Well, I’m not you, hon.” She taps her fingers on her desk. “Chicago kid, right? One of Penny’s. He got into the racket real early.”
“Penny Wright.” Thirty-two. Ash-blonde hair. A wedding ring on each hand. Rail-thin. Black eyebrows. She looked too old to be pretty. “She ran his equipment, Garica?” He feels pin-pricks up the back of his neck.
She nods. “Into the ground. About ten years back, she was the only one, but only for her kids. Outsiders were up the creek.” She walks back over to her desk, paper under her fingertips. “What’s that in-town factory they used to ‘leg out of?”
Parkton’s. Apple Heights. Empty pack houses all the way down Sebring. The Textile District. Cotton. Lender’s. Michael & Scott. Spencer looks up at her quickly. “Redgrave. Off the docks.”
Penelope snaps her fingers. “She works as the night manager. Ten to five. Well, she did.” She writes something down. “That’s the last place I can think of.” She quarters the paper and pushes it into Spencer’s palm. He didn’t even realise that he was sweating.
Hotch is a shadow.
“I don’t even want to know,” she says. Her arms around him again. “But good luck, kid. Molin always tried to under-cut us.”
The docks are the best at night. The black water. The cold air. Somebody on-deck is asleep, cigarette warm in his mouth. Everything smells of fresh salt and sky. Morgan stays close behind Spencer, hands never straying too far from his gun. Spencer keeps his hands in his pockets. Taking deep breaths.
“Relax, they’re all out for the night,” Spencer says. Morgan raises an eyebrow. “Drinking or sleeping or sailing.” The boards creak under their steps.
A foghorn sounds way off and Morgan startles. “Damn,” he says and puts his forearm to his eyes. “I really hate this place.” The factory is farther up the shipyard. Spencer takes his time. He loves this place.
JJ’s wearing one of her summer dresses. The printed white cotton the colour of snow against her tan skin. Her hair in the wind. The perfect clouds above her. People move along the shoreline. Apple crates and children with muddy feet. Water stretches out towards other ends of the earth.
“I always used to come down here when I was little,” she says. “Spend the day building sandcastles and catching tadpoles in jam jars and then we’d have clambakes at night.”
The beach is farther off from where they are. Just out for lunch. JJ stops at a small, peeling building with red soda signs. “This is it.” Unassuming. Cheerful. The plate-glass windows reflecting their bodies back. JJ always had a thing for holding hands.
She cracks open her mussels with ease (practice, practice, practice). Wet shine of butter in the whorls of her fingerprints .Spencer followers her lead until they’re left with bowls of empty black shells.
“Your first time at the docks is pretty good, right?” She unfolds her napkin from between the straps of her dress. Spencer wipes his mouth and nods. “I’m glad. This is one thing I finally knew about first.” Her launch punctuates it.
“What you know is usually worth more than what I know,” Spencer says. He means it. Spearing his fork through strawberries and cheesecake. JJ does the same and he smiles. So, so true.
She shrugs. “I wish, Spence.” She shouldn’t. A place like this, a feeling like this will always be worth more. Her milkshake straw between her lips.
Spencer didn’t expect it to be this empty. The floorboards are lined with dust. Their shoes echo across the floor. A still and a porcelain bathtub tucked into the far, far corner. There’s a chair sitting beside it and a broken broom handle of the floor.
“Last vestiges, I guess.” After prohibition (well before Spencer, well before Morgan), this place was a bottling plant. Soda. Soda pop and bootleggers and gunrunners. “We should still check her office out.”
Morgan nods, says, “yeah.” He snaps on his flashlight and pulls Spencer closer to her him. “Just so I know where you are, kid.” The light tracks across the wall. Morgan’s hand feels way too warm through Spencer’s coat. And it’s not Spencer.
Spencer has a thing about the dark. “Man, are you okay?” He whispers. Spencer’s almost gotten used to it. Morgan stops walking. The fabric feels damp. They cross the floor slowly, slower than it feels. The ticks of his watch in his pocket are endless. Spencer’s guessing that the night manager’s office is the door-less one; taken off the hinges. Morgan’s anxiety is Spencer’s anxiety. Stopped breath.
Spencer swallows. “Morgan. Those shadows don’t look right.” The ones that climb up the wall. Nothing in that room could make those. The colour too stark and flat. He can’t breathe, dark pressing in around him. Morgan’s breathing sounds so foreign, harsh and erratic. Unknown. The flashlight shows everything it can. The blood and the metal. Her mouth and her eyes. Hole in her head. “It’s not right.” It’s not right. It’s not right.
Morgan’s hand holds the back of Spencer’s shirt collar tightly. It doesn’t make sense, this is ten years later. She shouldn’t be coming back here. And Morgan saying: “Reid, come on, keep it together.” It’s more than just her head; her heart and chest and stomach. Her.
The office is suffocating with the taste of death thick in Spencer’s throat. “Give me your glove, kid,” Morgan says, gesturing out. “I’m calling Hotch. He’s devolving.” He spins in some combination of numbers and Spencer is shaking his head, his vision gray, and stumbling out onto the factory floor. Light comes in from above. The square, grid-mapped skylight.
He hears Morgan’s voice and then he feels him. The shake in his chest. “Reid, Reid.” The eye of the flashlight trailing across him. “You’re going to see these things. You know that.” The soft touch on his waist. Spencer turns too fast. Morgan’s hand tight around his arm. Fingertips on his cheek. Pulled towards his mouth.
Spencer watches the unsure flicker of Morgan’s eyes. What this means all knotted up inside of him. “Don’t,” Spencer says, voice grating. Her tears himself out of Morgan’s grasp. “I didn’t choose this, I was subjected to it. These people have died, were part of my life, Morgan and I get to see, no, I get the privilege to figure out how. Well, I don’t want it. I’ve never wanted this job.” He can barely hold onto the i’ve never wanted you caught behind his tongue and teeth. Because some things aren’t true.
“You fucked up your life, Reid. Pushing information to criminals for money? For what? You’ve got all this knowledge and you don’t use it. You sell it to murders and gamblers and pickpockets and whoever else. Hotch gave you purpose again.” The flashlight beam sways beside his feet. “He cares. I care.” Morgan’s voice gets lost in a whisper. He steps towards Spencer. “I want you to be that something better.”
There’s a dead body behind them and Spencer’s feeling hysterical and Morgan is right in front of him. Parallel. He forgets to lean backwards so he leans forwards and Morgan kisses him too hot and too firm and Spencer pulls back second. Hand on Morgan’s chest for balance. It’s awkward and he can’t keep himself upright.
“I’m not better,” Spencer says. Completely clear. “I’m not any better.” Morgan’s face still tipped towards his.
“We’ve got another coming in.”
Hotch’s voice spins around inside Spencer’s head. He’s up, coat forgotten and holster against his hip. A woman’s voice calmly registers the information for him: a man, late twenties/early thirties seen leaving the Green Luck jazz bar. Medium stature, angular face. No outstanding physical attributes. Is armed with what witnesses believes to be is a semi-automatic handgun. Two patrons dead: Nikolas Karloff and Allan Steinbeck. Two in critical condition, a waiter and a saxophonist.
“Those names mean anything to you, Reid?” Morgan asks, voice carrying down the hallway. His coat slipping into place on his shoulders. Hotch is ahead of them. Flash of the gun strapped to his ankle. Dragnet.
“Sectors of the mafia. Karloff attending to Russian interests and affairs. Steinbeck, a Midwestern gunrunner. Usually sticks to Hurricane Alley.”
Morgan nods his head. “Hotch said that the kills were done execution-style. Matched Penny.” The concern slipping in his voice. Spencer catches the purse of his mouth from his periphery. He presses his fingers hard into the networks of veins at Morgan’s wrist.
“It’ll be fine.” Her body there, right at his consciousness. He focuses on who he is and who he’s with. Spencer shouldn’t feel okay.
The cold freeze of the streets. Thin ice finding its way into cracks and around loose stones. It’s not well-lit over here. Their cars are blue-black and grey shadows. Detective Rossi lights up a cigarette with calloused fingers, back to a car. Comfortable.
Spencer’s blood moves with too much adrenaline. Hands sticky-warm from clasping them together a few too many times. The cold wraps around his skin, under his shirt, against his ribs. Spencer hates how they fight. Morgan stoically crouched down beside him. The row of shops stretched out in front of them, the feeling of more behind him. Window displays fogged up. An idle blockade. The telephone booth at the end of the street, empty.
“Why would you want to come here to die? Let the god awful cats finish you off.” Rossi says everything with a flavour of smoke. “Sorry son of a bitch.” The glow gets closer and closer to his fingertips. He’s never worried.
Hotch makes a scoffing noise. “Because he probably doesn’t expect to, Dave.” The tension cords itself through Spencer. He wants to laugh, but a nervous tremor keeps it back. Hotch’s gun is tucked carefully against his side, obscured by his suit jacket. He smiles to himself over something else that Rossi says.
The horizon of the avenue hasn’t moved. Morgan watches it between the rises of his knuckles. “It’ll be so small,” he says quietly. “The change, but you’ll feel it.” Morgan keeps straight ahead, but he finds the curve of Spencer’s knee, too dark to really see. Spencer lets out a breath and then takes another one.
(They’ve been communicating in silence. What he says suggests something else. Slow, steady. It doesn’t break.)
Orange light and factory smoke in clouds off in another corner of the sky. It’s small and dark over here. The shop faces with the same names. Rossi’s, “You see that new one with Jimmy?” lost in the stillness that just makes Spencer more nervous.
“When is something going to happen?” he asks. Morgan’s face breaks into a smile. The hot-red down the back of his neck. It’s been over an hour, it’s been two hours, it’s been three.
“When it’s good and ready. And that’s just not now,” Morgan says, shifting onto his knees. His reflection in the windshield. Spencer’s own warped and wide eyes staring back. He starts to count his breaths; ignoring the interweaving web of Rossi’s smoke, Hotch’s board-flat voice, and Morgan’s heartbeat.
Thirty-two. A shadow slips against the glass. The plain black figure walks across the horizon with his shoulder hunched. Hands where Spencer can’t see them. Hotch stands up straight, a minor shift. Morgan settles back onto his feet. Rossi crawls towards the nose of the car. Spencer stays exactly where he is.
Sixty-eight. He can’t make out the shine of Molin’s eyes. A vague, smeared stain under his chin. Fingers tapping incessantly against his thigh. The silk-shine of his hair in the patches of light. He’s in a state of everywhere. Rossi already has his gun out. Positioned and ready.
Ninety-nine. He’s whispering to himself. The rises and falls of pitch and clarity. The leftover blood of a nose bleed spread out across his upper lip. Molin taps and whispers. He has the same thin waist and long legs that Spencer has. His escape has included smashing up as many doors and walls and windows as he possibly can. That little locked-up voice of sympathy in the back of Spencer’s head doesn’t blame him.
One-fourteen. Molin’s head snaps up and his eyes go clear. He straightens up. His shot cracks and hits the tail light. Rossi turns back with a look of disbelief saying, “Really? That’s what he does first?” Spencer closes his eyes tightly. He’s looking to get killed. Spencer’s not counting anymore, he can’t.
Another one cracks through the side-mirror. “You fucking pigs.” Molin’s voice is all spit and sneer. “Don’t deserve an execution, either?” Spencer’s facing the ground, Morgan’s body around his. He can hear the small, insistent echoes of Molin’s feet. Hotch is positioned opposite of Rossi.
“Do not worry.” Vicious and defiant in his ear.
The hard slap of a bullet and more of Rossi’s edged commentary. Answer coming in the form of Hotch’s perfectly-aimed shot to the chest. He sees Molin from underneath the car. A shot low on the leg. “Stuns them every time,” Rossi is saying above him.
Morgan pulls Spencer to his feet; fingers holding on for just a little longer. Molin’s red-white eyes stare up at the sky.
You get out of this racket one way or another.
His head feels full of cotton. Pleasant and safe. Spencer is sliding down the chesterfield. Amber bottle of scotch. JJ’s wine glass on the floor by her elbow. She’s been laughing up at the ceiling all night.
“There is nobody as thin as you, Spencer,” she says, hands running distractedly through her hair. She suspends strands by her fingertips and they fall back just as quietly. “This guy would have had to be paper. This thin.” JJ’s thumb and index pressed tight together.
Spencer struggles to sit up straighter. “No, JJ. He looked at me. No, he looked like me.” He tries to think through it. His throat feels torched. “He looked like me, all sad and lonely and depressed.” He settles back into the dusty fabric and cushion. Chin to his chest.
JJ bites at the neck of the wine bottle. “You’re not lonely, are you? Not with Morgan around.” And she lets this shrieking laugh out into the air all around them. Her dress has been rumpled up past her knees.
“Sad and lonely and depressed. He looked hollow.” Spencer reaches for his arm just for that reassurance. It’s all working.
JJ reaches out for his ankle, watches her hand curiously. “No, I think you’re still alive, Spence.” Her nails bite in and he flinches. “See, look.” The straight cut of her nails tipped in blood.
Spencer takes another pull of scotch.
The day they go it’s raining. Droplets of water vertically rolling off JJ’s back. She and Spencer share an umbrella. Morgan’s overlaps theirs. His mouth tastes too clean and his hands feel too fresh. The boards are soaked. Boats in the harbour.
(Someone once told Spencer that this was the grandest place on Earth. Through all of the rain and the peeling paint and the smell of rotting fish when the sun is out, it’s true.)
“I think today’s the day for coffee,” JJ says, her voice trying to reach everyone through the weather. “A milkshake might give you the freeze.” She looks at Spencer. “Permanently.” Her arm is pink-white where the raincoat is pushed up. He’s never known JJ to get cold. Her perfume of moss through the damp.
Morgan shrugs and his shoulder brushes Spencer’s. “Reid tells me that you’re the expert.” (The way she moves along the boardwalk, her weight not bearing down, the boards not creaking.) It’s obvious. JJ is the effortless part of Spencer, the reason his hair stays in place, the cool light of his match under someone else’s cigarette, how to play off sad eyes. He is a product of the women he knows.
She eases the umbrella out of Spencer’s hand and walks up ahead of them without even a look, a wink. Morgan tips his head to the side and Spencer steps in closer to him. Silhouettes in the fog. It’s made JJ disappear. She’ll meet them there, her coat already drying in front of the fireplace that Emily keeps lighted. Day and night.
“So, that’s another one of the girls in your life,” Morgan says. Smooth and slick. Like it’s a line. “Both blondes.”
Spencer can feel his forehead creasing. Vision getting a little darker. “You must not have met Elle.”
Morgan continues ahead. “It’s just an observation. They’re there for you. Probably always will be. I have to get used to that.” The fog provides its own sadness. A setting. Wet and sick sailors with faces to match. Drunk. “You want me to be steady, right?”
Spencer’s catalogued it. Alleys. Tracks. Over Hotch’s shoulder. Behind Elle’s back. When he’s asleep. When he wakes up with coffee. Behind a gun. Underneath him. In a whisky bottle. Alone in the dark.
“I don’t know.” He looks down at the watch in his pocket. Its face open to the rain. “Not yet.” He puts it all together. “I don’t know yet.” He can taste the salt in his throat. The boardwalk circles more than half of this port. A long time walking.
Morgan’s quiet. He stops. Spencer feels the rain on him. Morgan doesn’t let him go, pulling Spencer to him. “You don’t want to make up your mind.” The wet slide of Morgan’s mouth may be saying the same thing. Maybe.
Coal-smoke in his lungs. Spencer can’t breathe.
Spencer starts the burner with a match. He bends, watching the flames flicker like little wicks. The kettle is full of water. Spencer takes down two tea cups, the glass jar of leaves. Morgan’s fingers tap against the table. Outside, the rain has turned into a storm. The window reflects the inside out.
He sits down with Morgan, the table barely big enough for two people. It’s all right. “You know, you don’t have to protect me,” he says. “And you don’t have to be threatened by those that do.” Morgan has a different place to be.
“You carry your own gun and you make your own tea.” The kettle whistles. “And you’ll always remember to pour with a towel.”
Spencer smiles. He gets up and wraps the palm of his hand and his knuckles in cheesecloth. He needs reminders. The heat seeps through. Someone to remember when he forgets. The water fills the cups with rises of steam.
Elle unties her apron. The champagne bottle stuck with a candle, shining. Spiderwebs and empties and cigarettes. Elle is quick when it comes to mixing. “You want one of these, kid?” Gin and seltzer water on the upturned crate. Spencer shakes his head. She fills his glass with water.
She leans back, feet on the edge of the box. Once packed with straw and gold-tinged glass. “How have you been?” Spencer sips his drink with the same coolness as Elle. She raises her eyebrows. “Like being a narc, yet?” And then her smile - hidden in the bottom of decanters and on long walks home to no one - comes out in full-force. Just for someone she knows.
It could be the best joke she’s ever told. “What couldn’t play that one straight?” And then there’s gin kissed between her lips and she hides behind her hair. Elle has the strangest laugh. So surprised. Spencer’s is silent.
She swallows. Finds her balance and her composure. “I’ve missed having you around. You’re just so fucking clever, Spencer.” She drinks, watching him. Suppresses another laugh. A tremble through her neck.
Spencer’s black shoes join hers on the crate. Polished to a high-shine. Morgan lent him his tin of polish yesterday morning. Dull in this place. Humbled. He still lives here, somewhere.
“Only on paper are we other people, Elle.”
bird through the wire
morgan/reid, r, 10039 words
He isn’t lost. Not in this city. The streets, the buildings - Spencer knows them all. All of the twists and turns. It’s all right. The drugstore window is painted with the colours of spring. A girl in pink stripes slumped against the counter. He stops in the crowd. Soda jerk.
Overhead, the bell makes a sweet sound. She looks up, fingers soft against her cheek. Spencer stands at the counter. He’s aware of the quietness in the shop. “What can I get you?” she asks, sticky in her throat. She gathers her hair over her shoulder like Veronica Lake. Her name is written in black. JJ.
Spencer fingers the collar of his shirt. He looks away from her face. “Whatever your favourite is?” JJ bites her bottom lip. She changes in the span of a moment (you’re serious to you’re sincere). She nods and her skirt spins away with her. Spencer watches the shift of her back, her narrow shoulders. Milk, ice cream, strawberry syrup. Spencer smiles to himself.
JJ turns around, glass in her hand. She opens the straw with her teeth. Lets the spoon slide in. “My favourite,” she says, licking at the side of her wrist. Whipped cream. Like she’s challenging him. Those girls at school. Uniforms and pulled-back hair. It’s her favourite.
“Thank you,” he says. The snap of coins on the counter. The spoon is cold. Taste of too-sweet strawberry. She leans up against the counter, watching. Spencer ducks his head; the blush starting at his neck.
JJ’s laugh sounds like it’s been caught. “What kind of boy are you?” She picks up the money easily. A little too much. A quarter goes into the pocket of her apron.
Do you have any comment? he asks, the pen sharp on the paper, writing down his own question. His hat slants a shadow across his eyes. Crossed legs. Twist of his lips, waiting. Dr. Reid, slowly and slowly in his mouth, do you have any comment on this issue? A heartbeat moving his blood.
Research at the edge of his consciousness. They want that look. When his eyebrows furrow together and his jaw tightens. The science of forensics. It’s new. It feels new. This era of crime is new. These men who sit in press rooms tied to telephones. He shakes his head. “No, not at this time.” Formulas and understanding.
His sigh is harsh and annoyed. There are cigarettes in his shirt pocket instead of a handkerchief. Thank you for your time. The handshake is cold. Spencer fixes his tie as he walks towards the door. He turns back. Withholding, he says. Dark. Angry. Neither of them can get their jobs done. That’s not new.
JJ taps the space between his eyes. Her cheeks are frozen pink. Her voice gets lost in the morning traffic of car and train. “Spence, you’re more than that.” Her hands are chapped, not gloved. “You’re capable of so much more.” The books cradled in her arms.
He’s barely awake. Out until three, in that bar. He knows what he knows. Spencer’s found this in-between spot. He can be information for all people. Cops and robbers. Penelope complains about their board lighting up almost constantly. He has to go out.
“So, what? People pay you to tell them about each other? That’s what you’ve been doing all this time?” Spencer can hear the hard click of her heels on the sidewalk. She’s shaking her head. Of course. “Right, okay.”
Spencer tries not to sound desperate. “It matters to them, okay?” Everything is taken care of this way. “Everyone deserves the chance to be good at what they do.” The space between the skyscrapers is filled with mist. The grey area. Spencer can’t just say he doesn’t like it. It’s a service that does something.
JJ’s eyes are ice, her skin the same crystal. She whistles for a taxi. Little snowflakes in the air. “Okay, Spencer.” She stops looking at him as she gets into the car. A hundred black taxis.
It was the lights. And the words. And all of these people that Spencer didn’t know. He took phone calls from men with titles for names (Dr. John C. Whitman and the head of a private research section, Andrew Cotton) and other agencies represented with acronyms. Chemistry and Mathematics printed onto paper and framed in his mother’s bedroom. Spencer would go home from the research lab with the sound of the telephone ring stuck in his head. Everyone wants him for his education, his mind. Spencer doesn’t own a telephone.
He’d been at the café tucked away into a side-side-side street and was asked about the use of Zyklon B. gas and if another substance would have been more humane by a fast-talking journalist, his cameraman stationed nearby. Spencer could barely disguise his disgust and stepped out of line without thinking about it. Collar of his coat turned up. It’s been like that for a while.
He’d be catching the night train home and someone would be there, watching. Too much attention to detail. Spencer’s forehead cool against the window. The flash barely lighting the tunnel.
And then there’s the every-man. Questions about math, death, films. Whatever’s on the tip of their tongue when they see him, recognise him. Spencer tries to ignore it, but then he’s arrogant. Frustrates him so far down. Underneath his skin.
There are two switchboards. Headsets. Plugs. The directory. Spencer’s pen and paper. There’s no code because Penelope’s the only one listening in. Three telephones in the lobby and two in the bar. Hotel telephones are connected to the hotel switchboard. One for outsourcing. One for rooms. Or, you want to be talking to the operator.
The Royal is for criminals and the working class. There’s a place up the street for anyone more. Ask Elle: she has the directions and the line-straight voice. Nothing is happening here. Jason behind the bar with his fingers on the tap. Spencer’s life is ruled by circuit boards.
“The Royal Hotel. How may I connect you?” Penelope asks, always anticipating a guest. Never assume otherwise. She looked at Spencer, first day, and said it sharply. A cut across the back of his hand. She listens carefully, fingers ready on the plug. She picks up the notebook, saying, “Eleven forty-five. 8th and West. Two hundred. Don’t even think about being late, sweetheart.”
“Two hundred? What’s he want?” Spencer asks. Penelope has always been the one to decide the value of information. Spencer just has it.
Penelope writes a set of initials down. The street name. “Complete personnel listing for the Fifty-First Bank down on Charlie. A schedule for Friday, the twenty-first, if you can get it.”
Easy enough.
Penelope found him at the tracks, no tickets in hand. Spencer was watching the horses in a haze of smoke. Taking in their physical characteristics and the course they were running. Coming up with winners every time. The benches were cold in September. She was looking over a notebook, more and more names with each flip.
“You catch the results of that last race?” she asked, pen in her mouth. “That bastard Paul needs to slow down.” Quick, fast, hard strokes of the pen.
Spencer glanced side-long at her. He listed each horse, every place. “You need any of the others?” He pushed his hair back. He had stopped slicking it. Didn’t really matter anymore.
Her face brightened when she looked at him. “You’re that genius, right? The Boy Wonder or something. Spencer Reid, right?” Her blonde hair blew in the wind.
He let out a long breath. “Dr. Spencer Reid.”
JJ works for a paper called The Marionette. Arts-based. She handles theatre reviews, spending her nights stuck in small seats and crowds, watching small names perform small plays. Spencer can never really tell if she likes it or not. Tonight she sighs before she writes anything down. They’re always tired.
Spencer takes Sundays off. It seems to be a day when nothing wants to transpire. And if something does, they should have contacted him Monday. No newspapers or library records or scouting. The silence sits softly in the space between them. A woman is smoking in front of them. JJ’s lighting up beside him.
His eyes water. Go red. Spencer watches the actors through a blur. They’re all movement. JJ leans her head against his shoulder. Smoke against his cheek. It has its own softness. It’s like the scene in front of him is on fire. JJ yawns in all of the heat.
There’s something off with Morgan. The location. Playbills on the brick walls. Working lampposts. There’s the right kind of people. Children with gum in their mouths. Mothers with hand gloves. He smiles, even with his hands in his pockets and a gun tucked into his waistband. Shaved. No cuts or bruises. He doesn’t smell like alcohol or smoke.
This is his first call.
“No paper trail,” he says. “What I tell you will not be written down. Pay attention. Cash first.” Spencer doesn’t reach out until the money is offered. Pinches it between his index and middle and slides into the pocket of his vest underneath his coat.
Morgan nods. “All right, Professor.”
Two murders up on Sandora on Thursday night. House number 224. Owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dalloway. One child; a girl, twelve-years-old. The wife and the daughter. Robert is out of his mind. He’s acting suicidal, the papers are saying. It was a hit, Spencer hears between the library stacks. “The Poles are collecting again. Hadn’t paid up his debts. You know how it is.”
All of this in a harsh, dirty whisper. Spencer taps his fingers against the spine of the linguistic reference books. He sighs. The taste in the back of Spencer’s throat is something like sick.
“And where are you going tonight?” Elle asks, tray on her palm. Tongue to the inside of her cheek. She’s all swing. The Royal is moving as it does. The piano a soft lullaby. Her skirt and her apron. She’s holding the weight of four drink orders.
Spencer shrugs and smiles. He makes to move past her, but she stops him with a hand to his shoulder. “C’mon, you know.” The purse of her lips is dangerous. “Rounds. Collecting. Whatever you like to call it, Elle.”
She drops her chin and gives Spencer a sharp look. “I know, Spencer. Lighten up.” She sweeps by him, the ice in the glasses staying perfectly still. She’s too good at all of this.
“Wait,” Spencer says, reaching out towards her. The solidness of her presence. Elle turns on her heel, steadily grounded in the carpet. Her walk is measured. She keeps eye contact. “You know the Rule of Three?” he asks.
She nods slowly. “Yeah, what about it?” Her fingers shiver with tension underneath the weight of the tray. It doesn’t show anywhere else.
“I think I have one. A badge. Not the usual suspect.” He says it casually, like it wouldn’t worry him if he were right. It’s a practiced coolness. “I’m at two.”
Elle isn’t looking anywhere specific. She bites her bottom lip. “And you know it?” Spencer nods. “Call it in. Because he might first.” She moves towards the tables. “We like you around here, kid.”
She finds him. The band onstage plays cleanly, every instrument pronounced. The Duke Ellington songbook will always be a popular choice. Spencer doesn’t mind. She sits down beside him. Spencer focuses on the flicker-flutter of drumsticks. She drinks something clear, with a burn.
“Sorry, he couldn’t come up with the cash first time around. We appreciate it. It was a that-night job. Got a little cleaned out getting a hold of a piece on such short notice. Bastard.” Her eyes wild behind the rim. She pulls the bills, banded in elastic, out of her stocking. “And it’s not like they ever act any better.”
Spencer laughs. “Maybe you’re just losing your touch.” He doesn’t mean it. She deals with things that almost scare Spencer straight. Hit men, arms dealers, mobs. Spencer, technically, isn’t even in the business.
She swallows the rest of her drink. Cigarette threaded through her fingers. “Hey, now. You want to be next? Turn you inside and out.”
She says it like Jason does when he’s talking about weather. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Every day.
“What do you want to know?” Spencer asks. He meets Morgan’s eyes with a level gaze. Rain moving in rivulets. He pushes his wet hair back. There’s light and music and smoke and heat and girls in sequins through the Green Luck’s backdoor. He shivers underneath his coat.
Morgan shrugs. “Dalloway. Who did it?” His voice forcing its way through the downpour. The set of his jaw. The sky is dark, dark. The city never tries hard enough. All the time watching Spencer.
Spencer laughs, quiet and swallowed. It’s not morbid. Small course of amusement working its way through him. He looks up with light in his face. He feels it. Morgan set in stone. Spencer remembers how it looked when he first started this, that light.
“You know how this works, right?” Spencer’s never really managed to come across as condescending. “That’s not it. You’re acting like a badge.”
He watches those words click into recognition. Morgan covers it up with a smile, disregarding. He knew it. And yet, now isn’t the time.
Spencer saw the newspaper after leaving the library with books under his arm. The boy on the corner was grinding his shoe into the concrete sidewalk, chewing tobacco. He looked up at Spencer with a black smile. Spencer had a dime in the boy’s hand before he could say anything.
It was exactly how he’d heard it: 224 Sandora Ave. The wind takes hold of the pages. Owed them seven hundred-fifty, at least, for the past six months. It wasn’t Spencer’s fault, but he drops the paper. Books too heavy. He blinks his vision back into place. Payday approaching.
The words seem to be said in slow motion, Derek’s - Morgan’s - usual energy compromised by the seriousness of the situation. Spencer read him as a badge. This is the third time. Penelope stares down at her hands, fidgeting. Inspector Hotchner has his gun out, a straight line made by his arm. There’s a third cop, one Spencer can’t indentify, outside in the hallway. Derek’s saying, “You can both choose.” His face blank. Penelope’s wet eyes. Spencer’s heart beating way too fast in his chest.
“Between what?” Spencer asks, hands out in front of himself. Balance. He knows that very few people get this opportunity. It doesn’t help. It’s not going to.
Hotchner keeps his gun raised. “You can either be tried and convicted on racketeering charges or you can come work for us. Both of you. You know that you’re better than this.” His is not allowed to be disappointed. He’s not. The sound of feet in the hall.
Morgan is having his own silent conversation, his shoulders slumped in. Morgan looks desperate. “What do you want it to be?” he sighs out. Everyone is too loud. Elle’s voice. Swell of anger.
“You,” Penelope says. Her colour drained.
The focus shifts to Spencer. He says exactly what they want him to say.
JJ’s bedroom is cold. Her sheets and her skin are warm. She pulls a set of pyjamas out of her armoire and hands them to him. Reaches up and takes off his glasses. Touch of familiarity. She gets up on her toes and kisses his nose.
He changes. JJ gets back into bed. She sleeps with her curtains open, the city coming in through the window. “What happened?” she asks, face in his neck. She puts a hand to his stomach. He relaxes. The clouded moonlight across them.
“We got caught and then we were recruited.” He takes a deep breath. He still doesn’t believe it. JJ’s hand moves. “I’m not ready to be back.” Her eyes, so blue, looking up at him.
“You will be.” JJ’s presence is a soft comfort. She’s part of his family. And she’s right.
Their disappearance is a rumour. Spencer gives Elle a list of all of the places for them to go. The office is loud around him; the Royal silent behind her.
“You’re working in my department,” Hotch says, file in hand. Spencer doesn’t know what it says about him. He doesn’t have a history. He twists his handkerchief in his hands and wipes his forehead when Hotch turns his back. He has no interest in detective work.
“With your intelligence and Morgan’s experience, I believe you’ll go far.” He has a hollow face. “Morgan will show you the routine and I’ll delegate you cases I deem fit. You understand?” His fingers are gently closing the folder.
Spencer nods. “Yes, sir.” He coughs. Cold hands. Sweat across his shoulders. He doesn’t have a choice.
“Murder. Kidnappings. The regulars. Hotch wants you on those cases.” Morgan leans up against his desk. Too many papers in some files, too little in others. The traceless. “What were you working on before?”
Spencer’s look is sharp. “Chemistry. Maths.” The question of motive is one he’s asked and has been asked a lot. A closed conversation.
“They aren’t tailing you, right?” Elle asks, elbow on the bar. “Everyone seems pretty sore, but as long as they have another place to go, it doesn’t really matter.” She puts her cigarette out against the oak. “Kind of sad, huh?”
Jason’s hand brushes over the ash. “Don’t,” he says, looking at only Elle, “do that again.” She nods - all laconic - and he turns away.
“I guess.” He runs his fingers along the crease of his pants. “What happened to her?” His tea is still hot. Painted, chipped ceramic.
“Penelope? Sent to some precinct across town. Couldn’t tell you what she’s doing, now, although it be pretty bastardised of them to make her work Racketeering, no?” Her whole upper body stiff.
Spencer shrugs. “Better than a horse-and-pony-show detective, I hope.” The weight of the badge in his back pocket is too heavy. A stupid reminder.
“Take notes. Track all probable leads. I assume you already understand behaviour, details, speech.”
Hotch is a smoker. His fingertips are calloused. The beds of his fingernails are the faintest of yellows. He tends to tap his fingers against his thigh or puts his hands in his pockets when it distracts him. He tries to hold himself back. Hotch is restrained; first by choice; the second remains elusive.
Spencer bites the end of his pen. His twenty-first birthday gift from JJ. The fine nib slides softly across the lines of his notebook. Hotch thumbs at the corner of his mouth. The left side. The skin there is cracked and dry. Red
Observation, right. Spencer understands that.
Spencer isn’t used to this desk. He isn’t used to Hotch standing beside him. “You’re going to be on the line for one another.” There’s a tarnished silver band on his hand. “You’re going to have to get used to him eventually, Reid.”
He’s been on the telephone all day, talking to car service after car service, looking for just one name to appear in their books. “I know,” Spencer says, fingering the dial. “It takes time, right? I haven’t worked on this side of the law in a while.”
Spencer detects the surface of a smile, maybe.
He’s been out here all night in the cold shadows of the restaurant up from the Royal. Spencer is still waved in, but he sits along the wall, eyes hop-scotching across the wallpaper’s pattern. Glasses and personalities clink.
It was all there in the appearance. He forgot the careful confidence. The smoothness didn’t come from repetition, but from him. He knew what he was doing, what it would eventually accomplish. Left Spencer with a handful of bills that had the same promise as a band of gold.
Spencer’s awake. His bedroom smells like dust and worn clothes and tar on the soles of his shoes. He scratches at his shoulder and pushes his hand into the sheathed feathers of his pillow. Soft, sinking. The flare of muted pain running up his calves. He searches for his glasses and turns on the radio.
(For the past three weeks the station has been playing a rotation of Judy Garland, June Christy, and Blossom Dearie. Spencer can’t really say that he minds. Girls with voices like honey.)
He puts the kettle on the stove. The cast iron one. The language of his family when he touches the handle. Yesterday’s newspaper is folded up on the kitchen table. Spencer looks down at the headline, which is always too stark and dramatic:
ANOTHER HIT FOR ANOTHER SCORE
This case is throwing Hotch. It’s a family, same method of operation. A wife and two sons. Gambling debts. There are certain places in the city where you should never play cards. Spencer’s count is twenty-four. Quotes from Hotch and civilians. Hotch offers rigid sympathy. The civilians are earnest and angry. Spencer picks up his copy of The Marionette, instead. JJ quietly reviews a student production of You Can’t Take it With You. Spencer lets out a sigh. The kettle whistles hot on the stove. He doesn’t really care.
It’s a place way out south, by the tracks; a place that Spencer has spent a few too many hours hanging around in. Eggs. Coffee. The freight trains rumbling - always a whistle and a roar - past the windows. Past an edge-of-city hotel, off of the pavement, down gravel. Last stop tonight. Obvious morning sun low in the sky. He gets a nod from the man behind the counter.
He’s at a table. Spencer sits down across from him. “It’s Derek, by the way,” he says. He holds his coffee cup loosely. It’s like he’s been waiting to say that for a long time. Three weeks ago, the second time. This is the third time. The third time before the third time.
Spencer ducks his head. “And you know mine.” He presses his thumb against a pattern of crumbs. He looks up. “You been here long? The walk takes a little bit of time.” Spencer still remembers how to apologise.
Derek shakes his head. “No.” His cup is full. “Wouldn’t matter too much, anyways.” His tie is loosened. The button at his collar undone. “I’m done for tonight, anyways. Managing those girls, hey?”
Spencer shakes his head. Whatever he wants to say today. “I’m stuck managing everyone else.” He feels warm in his coat. Just perfect. Relaxed. It’s easy to forget how different they really are. Spencer’s always liked that.
Derek’s laugh.
Almost everything is closed on Sunday. Spencer walks towards the gates of the park. The spring grass and concrete. It’s more of a place for personal histories (first kisses, pickpockets, and swings).
He follows the curve of the pathway through the trees. There are mothers with children and teenagers roller-skating. He can’t feel the sun through the heavy blankets of leaves. He sees a woman ahead of him. Her fingers combing through the grass. A halo of varicose veins around her ankle.
“Did you lose something, ma’am?” Spencer asks, kneeling down beside her. She looks at him, curiously, behind her glasses. Her eyes are a magnified black. He gives her a soft smile. “I could help you find it.”
She coughs out a harsh scoffing sound and lifts a cigarette to her lips. The collar of her shirt is unbuttoned underneath her sweater. “What are you, boy? A detective or something?” The crow’s feet under her eyes are there proudly.
Spencer lets out a laugh. (More for himself.) She tucks the cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “I am. What can I help you find?” He looks over at the patch of grass and dirt she was searching. Bottle caps and rocks. The concrete is cold under his knees. He can feel her watching him.
“A five,” she says like she’s waiting for him to challenge her. It’s the tilt of her head. She stubs her cigarette out against the side of her shoe. She crawls forward and looks back at Spencer. “You going to help, then?”
Spencer nods. “I am.” He goes right as she goes left. The flowers are trying to grow again. He carefully looks through their tangle stems. Making a show. He sees her shadow beside his. Spencer reaches for his wallet and quietly sifts through the bills. He presses a five into the bed of dirt and crumples it in his hand.
“Ma’am!” He says. “Ma’am, I found it.” He sits back on his knees. She walks over to Spencer. He holds up the bill. She takes it from him carefully.
She holds it in between her thumb and index fingers. “Well I’ll be, son. It’s this one all right.” She folds it into the pocket of her shirt. “Thanks for your trouble.”
JJ is filling in for her editor this week. Stories and scraps are scattered across her kitchen table. She holds the eye-dropper between her fingers and fills her pen. Red ink stains on paper and skin. Prints where she touched her temple. Spencer can taste the sweet-awful ink in his mouth. He’s editing an interview with an unknown playwright. It was definitely last-minute work.
“Grace has had my column all week,” JJ says. “Thank god I missed that play about rural Kansas schoolteachers.” She shakes her head. This can’t be much better. She mumbles out a laugh. She drains the last of her tea. Leaves bitter on her tongue.
“I wouldn’t even have gone to that one with you.” He fixes a comma splice. “Not like I have time to anymore, anyways.” His Sundays alone. Hotch looked at him. Looked at his empty desk. Told him to go home. It was just before five o’clock. He’s here now with JJ. Their timelines finally intersecting.
JJ’s look is soft. “You’re here now, Spence. Helping me with all this. That’s enough for me.” Her cold hand on top of his cold hand. “Remember that.”
JJ knows too many perfect words.
“It’s all just observation. Blending in. How hit men track their marks without witnesses. It’d be admirable if it weren’t so morbid.” Spencer touches his fingertips to the car’s window. The heat on the glass. Children’s faces on the other side. “The average hit man can, throughout the course of his career, hit about seventy marks.” Spencer almost hates to admit it, but vehicles are still a novelty to him. Soft leather.
Morgan raises an eyebrow, watching the road. “I get it. You’re the genius the papers made you out to be.” It’s like a bad taste in his mouth.
His hand freezes at the mention. He adjusts the collar of his coat. (Squeezes the back of his neck tightly.) Morgan’s not watching the road. Spencer is. “I was good at what I did.”
He drives with one hand on the wheel. Whenever Spencer thought of detectives, he would picture someone like Morgan, like Hotch. Not himself. Morgan’s profile and the set of his jaw. He’s been looking for too long.
Spencer swallows and nods. “Unofficial. Classified. I knew all of it. I know all of it.” He’s started fidgeting with his hands, again. Something he stopped doing when he started at the Royal. All that indifference gone. He misses just knowing that they were beside him, around him. There for him.
“You were really that someone out there willing to get all of that together? God.” Spencer’s amused that Morgan’s engaging him in this conversation. He doesn’t want him to be interested. Forget.
“You’re really surprised? There’s always someone out there.”
Morgan shifts gears. A hand between them. “That’s how we found you.” His smile in the window isn’t forced. Just sad.
It’s impossible for it not to happen. First, a little paper from the Midwest and then Spencer’s climbing his way back up to the regulars. Pictures of him in the field. The nights at the theatre (opera season starting this week) with JJ. Spencer does trust those people at the Royal. No matter how criminal.
Spencer passes seven newsstands on his way to work. He doesn’t look up. He barely registers Hotch at his desk, newspaper folded across his chest. “This,” he says, voice so low, “I’m going to make this stop. As people, as a precinct, we deserve our privacy to live and to do our jobs.” He throws the paper into the wastebasket. “You deserve better, Reid.”
Spencer isn’t quite used to the coroner’s office, yet. That’s what he keeps telling himself. The cold. He pulls his coat closer, keeping his touch local. Everything is gray and blue. He’s never really thought about this.
“Body temperatures. Youngest son, mother, oldest son. Sometime between four and six in the morning.” The coroner’s hands are covered in white cloth.
Morgan examines the youngest son’s chest would. “That’s an ideal time. The night-shift coming home and the day-shift on their way to work or, at least, up.” Heart and, if not, a bleed-out. “This isn’t his first time, Morgan.”
Spencer looks away from the boy’s body. “I’d say he’s not new to this city or even the neighbourhood. If he is local, his supplier will be someone who knows him well. Maybe even the person who introduced him to this line of work.” He looks anywhere but the slab. The coroner, lab equipment, Morgan (becoming this familiar point. He needs some sort of comfort in this off-colour place. Anything).
The coroner looks between them. Morgan is watching him carefully. Yes, they are the reason Spencer was doing what he was doing. It just had to be suggested.
This is the other art. The one his mother could never quite appreciate. Their seats are awful; stage hidden behind other people and seats. But her voice. Spencer has shivers crawling up inside of him. He can be alone and together here.
Spencer took JJ to this - Le Nozze di Figaro - four seasons ago. She doesn’t have to review it this time around, wouldn’t want to. It’s so easy to fall in love with. The sweetness. She held his hand too tightly, just right.
She’s doing it now.
Morgan has him call in. The drugstore is quiet, the voices of the druggists carrying across the aisles, the floor. Spencer leans back against the booth, fingers brushing the thickness of the phonebook.
“The coroner has confirmed the time of the deaths. Occurred between four and six in the morning. He works with the night-shift/day-shift change. Lets him leave the premises without looking suspicious.”
There’s almost always a long silence between exchanges on the phone with Hotch. Through the glass, Morgan is pacing across the floor slowly. He keeps precise notes on all of the information he receives. Careful and triple-checked.
“Good. Reid, I want you and Morgan back here. We have the husband in for questioning. Morgan’s got lead, you observe.”
His name is Richardson. “I had debts. At. At the Golden Horseshoe.” His mouth won’t close and his hands, his shoulders shake. His shirt isn’t buttoned properly and he keeps grinding the toe of his shoe into the floor. “I didn’t.” He takes a deep breath. “I didn’t think this would happen. For debts. It’s not supposed to happen to you.”
Morgan tilts his chin up, arms folded across the back of his chair. “How much?” he asks.
Richardson looks like he’s been caught off-guard. Body freezing. He looks down at his hands. “Twelve-hundred,” he whispers. “It’s been around four years. I haven’t managed.” He bites his thumbnail. “I couldn’t.” Spencer has never liked to see anyone cry.
Hotch is right there when Spencer turns away from the mirror. His gaze locked on Richardson’s crying face. “Tell me who runs the Golden Horseshoe. What syndicate is it a part of?” They’re the only two watching.
Spencer feels hot all over. An uncomfortable itch all over his skin. “It’s one of thirteen jazz clubs and casinos operated by Robert Parker. Backroom gambling.” He twists his fingers. “I don’t know who works under him. That wasn’t my business.” Richardson talks in spasms. “I’m sorry, Hotch.”
Hotch wipes a hand across his mouth. “We do what we have to, Reid.” He turns away from the mirror. “We’ve got other names. You didn’t have to find them, but you might know them.”
“Crush,” JJ says, straw between her teeth. “Even his awful accent.” She swirls her spoon. “What’s wrong with me, Spence?” Her hand reaching for his. “Am I a lost cause?”
Reid is sure he looks confused, ice cream forgotten in front of him. “No, you’re human, JJ.” He still takes her hand.
Morgan seems to really dislike going to see Ballistics. He pushes up the sleeves of his shirt and adjusts his holster. Spencer carefully doesn’t notice. “What?” Morgan asks sharply, adjusting the knot of his tie. His jaw set loosely.
Spencer leans back against the elevator. The operator stands tall and quiet. “Nothing,” he says, raising his gloved hands. Follows the slant of the operator’s straight shoulders, the movement behind the doors. The flat bell counting off the floors. The elevator stops.
Morgan lets out a loud sigh. “I hate this son of a bitch.” He presses a bill into the operator’s hand and Spencer follows him out, smirking. “Don’t,” Morgan says. He doesn’t even turn around.
Spencer understands now. It’s the attitude and the paperwork. Excessive paperwork. His right hand smeared with black ink. “He uses a rifle with a .22 rimfire cartridge and then a Smith & Wesson Model 39 with 9mm cartridges on his next mark. Why? It’s not like there are other people going around murdering families.”
“Hit men typically rotate out their weaponry, especially if they’re hitting more than one mark in the same city. What they use is based on what their supplier can afford with their money.” Morgan gives him a look. “Five years, Morgan. You learn that a hit man doesn’t carry pretty quickly.” He smiles. Seriously, more than just a textbook on Freud theories and math problems.
Morgan shakes his head. “You shouldn’t know more about that kind of stuff than me, kid.” The offices downstairs are bright and busy. “Fine, you got any ideas about how to catch this guy?” A secretary brushes past Morgan, skirt swinging against his calves. His eyes follow her.
Spencer shakes his head. Ends of his hair touching his mouth. “No, I don’t.”
For such a small backroom, the sets of metal and spiralled staircases seem almost endless. “This way,” the porter says, white-gloved hands outstretched and a cigar end between bitten teeth. Spencer follows his gestures up the stairs, circling and circling until he gets to the top.
These places are all about shadows. The brass doorknob is cold in his hand. The room is just as cold, save for the warm glass glow of a desk-lamp. Spencer sits down in front of it. Legs crossed.
“So, you know something about this guy Candle?” Spencer can only make out the basest features of the man’s face. The unshaven cheeks, purple-red mouth (warped by the light), dry skin. His thumbnail parts some amount of money in front of him.
Spencer nods. His birth date. His resume. Where he goes at night. The schools his children attend. The address of his wife’s parents. The man’s pen moves across the slip of paper with ease. His smile is sharp and horrifying. He knows how to take care of a paper trail.
“That’s exactly what I wanted, son.” Spencer picks up his charge, fingers wrapped in his coat sleeve. Sweat from the very bottom of his pores up and down his back. “You mind if my boys call on you, again?” Teeth the colour of the sun. Spencer presses his hand to his throat.
“Not at all.”
“Spence, what is it? Spence? Talk to me.”
Her eyes like water.
He gave him the name (the address, the telephone number, the everything). Spencer gave him the fucking means. Hand to his forehead. He takes a deep breath. JJ on her knees, hands around his wrists. He hung up on Morgan. Shallow air. Spencer knows the name. One forty-one. Two thirty-seven. Joseph Molin. His fingers curling in.
She’s watching his face. “You.” She bits her lip. “You gave him the information.” JJ’s face tipped away. Her hold slackens. Pursed lips. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, Spence.” She lets go.
Spencer runs a hand through his hair. Palm pressed to his scalp. “It’s not you, JJ. You didn’t do this.”
He has to call. He has to call Morgan.
“Reid, are you sure you’re going to be able to do this? Hotch’ll understand.” His hand clasps Spencer’s shoulder. “Damn, and even if he doesn’t, I will.” Evergreens surround the house. The house unlit, dusty. Tape and police officers. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
There’s ink under his fingernails and his shirt isn’t buttoned properly and he hasn’t shaved. He just feels cold. Anxious apprehension. John used to run betting tables on Monday nights. He wasn’t the best man, but he wasn’t the worst. Wore his daughter’s locket around his neck. Black smudges underneath his eyes.
Joseph Molin isn’t supposed to kill the husbands. People everywhere. Their photographer crouches down near a body in the parlour. The bright flash on John’s face. Shot in the stomach and the chest. There are bruises up his arms. Hotch stands over him.
“Obvious struggle. The unsub probably got away wounded.” He gestures to the state of the room around them. Upturned table. A broken lamp. Bent rabbit ears. “The wife and the daughter were killed first, before this.” John’s eyes are muted white. Spencer swallows.
“His name is Joseph Molin. He’s thirty-three-years-old. He’s from a suburb outside of Chicago, but relocated here after he graduated high school. He killed an ex-bootlegger when he was nineteen at a bar on South Street, but it never went to trial. I don’t know who got him onto this, but he’s worked for almost every syndicate in this city at some point. He uprooted about a year-and-a-half ago, no one knows where, after a mark went bad. Killed a four-year-old girl. Some people say he was committed, but I don’t believe it.” Spencer crouches down beside John’s body. “You don’t get paid for this kind of struggle.”
Everything seems to quiet down all at once. A cigarette hangs out of the photographer’s mouth. Silenced. Hotch’s stare is red. His arms cross higher across his chest. “You’re going to find me him.” His voice is all edge.
Spencer looks back at Morgan. His expression is soft. “You’re going to have to let me talk to her, first.” Spencer interlocks his fingers. “She’ll know.”
Hotch leads him through the aisles that the desks make. Spencer fingers their worn edges. The precinct feels smaller than it is with all of these intersecting pathways and people. He already has a map. It reminds of some place that was neither good nor bad. Spencer smiles.
Her typewriter is standard-issue black. Her favourite Signet gone. There’s a pen tucked behind her ear and the smudge under her chin shows that it’s filled with poppy-red. The sound of the keys is soft and cutting. The stack of paper beside her looks yellow under the light. She even has a name-plate.
“Garcia,” Hotch says, voice echoing outwards. She looks up in a startled panic. Hands stopped. Spencer shifts on his feet. She was never scared of other people. The threads of Hotch’s suit catch the light. His back makes the straightest line.
But she sees him. Melts back into place. She adjusts her glasses, the ones tipped with sparkle in the corners. Her hair is in so many loose curls. She stands up, awkwardly pulling down her skirt.
“Spencer, Spence,” she says, side-stepping Hotch. “Honey.” Her hands clasp behind his back. “You don’t look so good.” Spencer takes in the perfume of her neck. It’s so familiar. He hasn’t felt this placed for so long. All of those stats and people and living too easily on bad money.
Spencer nods, stepping back. Her hands unlock. “I know.” He rocks back on his heels, bites his cheek. “Business,” Spencer says. Neither of them looks towards Hotch. It’s still. “You remember Joseph Molin?”
Penelope searches his face. “Well, I’m not you, hon.” She taps her fingers on her desk. “Chicago kid, right? One of Penny’s. He got into the racket real early.”
“Penny Wright.” Thirty-two. Ash-blonde hair. A wedding ring on each hand. Rail-thin. Black eyebrows. She looked too old to be pretty. “She ran his equipment, Garica?” He feels pin-pricks up the back of his neck.
She nods. “Into the ground. About ten years back, she was the only one, but only for her kids. Outsiders were up the creek.” She walks back over to her desk, paper under her fingertips. “What’s that in-town factory they used to ‘leg out of?”
Parkton’s. Apple Heights. Empty pack houses all the way down Sebring. The Textile District. Cotton. Lender’s. Michael & Scott. Spencer looks up at her quickly. “Redgrave. Off the docks.”
Penelope snaps her fingers. “She works as the night manager. Ten to five. Well, she did.” She writes something down. “That’s the last place I can think of.” She quarters the paper and pushes it into Spencer’s palm. He didn’t even realise that he was sweating.
Hotch is a shadow.
“I don’t even want to know,” she says. Her arms around him again. “But good luck, kid. Molin always tried to under-cut us.”
The docks are the best at night. The black water. The cold air. Somebody on-deck is asleep, cigarette warm in his mouth. Everything smells of fresh salt and sky. Morgan stays close behind Spencer, hands never straying too far from his gun. Spencer keeps his hands in his pockets. Taking deep breaths.
“Relax, they’re all out for the night,” Spencer says. Morgan raises an eyebrow. “Drinking or sleeping or sailing.” The boards creak under their steps.
A foghorn sounds way off and Morgan startles. “Damn,” he says and puts his forearm to his eyes. “I really hate this place.” The factory is farther up the shipyard. Spencer takes his time. He loves this place.
JJ’s wearing one of her summer dresses. The printed white cotton the colour of snow against her tan skin. Her hair in the wind. The perfect clouds above her. People move along the shoreline. Apple crates and children with muddy feet. Water stretches out towards other ends of the earth.
“I always used to come down here when I was little,” she says. “Spend the day building sandcastles and catching tadpoles in jam jars and then we’d have clambakes at night.”
The beach is farther off from where they are. Just out for lunch. JJ stops at a small, peeling building with red soda signs. “This is it.” Unassuming. Cheerful. The plate-glass windows reflecting their bodies back. JJ always had a thing for holding hands.
She cracks open her mussels with ease (practice, practice, practice). Wet shine of butter in the whorls of her fingerprints .Spencer followers her lead until they’re left with bowls of empty black shells.
“Your first time at the docks is pretty good, right?” She unfolds her napkin from between the straps of her dress. Spencer wipes his mouth and nods. “I’m glad. This is one thing I finally knew about first.” Her launch punctuates it.
“What you know is usually worth more than what I know,” Spencer says. He means it. Spearing his fork through strawberries and cheesecake. JJ does the same and he smiles. So, so true.
She shrugs. “I wish, Spence.” She shouldn’t. A place like this, a feeling like this will always be worth more. Her milkshake straw between her lips.
Spencer didn’t expect it to be this empty. The floorboards are lined with dust. Their shoes echo across the floor. A still and a porcelain bathtub tucked into the far, far corner. There’s a chair sitting beside it and a broken broom handle of the floor.
“Last vestiges, I guess.” After prohibition (well before Spencer, well before Morgan), this place was a bottling plant. Soda. Soda pop and bootleggers and gunrunners. “We should still check her office out.”
Morgan nods, says, “yeah.” He snaps on his flashlight and pulls Spencer closer to her him. “Just so I know where you are, kid.” The light tracks across the wall. Morgan’s hand feels way too warm through Spencer’s coat. And it’s not Spencer.
Spencer has a thing about the dark. “Man, are you okay?” He whispers. Spencer’s almost gotten used to it. Morgan stops walking. The fabric feels damp. They cross the floor slowly, slower than it feels. The ticks of his watch in his pocket are endless. Spencer’s guessing that the night manager’s office is the door-less one; taken off the hinges. Morgan’s anxiety is Spencer’s anxiety. Stopped breath.
Spencer swallows. “Morgan. Those shadows don’t look right.” The ones that climb up the wall. Nothing in that room could make those. The colour too stark and flat. He can’t breathe, dark pressing in around him. Morgan’s breathing sounds so foreign, harsh and erratic. Unknown. The flashlight shows everything it can. The blood and the metal. Her mouth and her eyes. Hole in her head. “It’s not right.” It’s not right. It’s not right.
Morgan’s hand holds the back of Spencer’s shirt collar tightly. It doesn’t make sense, this is ten years later. She shouldn’t be coming back here. And Morgan saying: “Reid, come on, keep it together.” It’s more than just her head; her heart and chest and stomach. Her.
The office is suffocating with the taste of death thick in Spencer’s throat. “Give me your glove, kid,” Morgan says, gesturing out. “I’m calling Hotch. He’s devolving.” He spins in some combination of numbers and Spencer is shaking his head, his vision gray, and stumbling out onto the factory floor. Light comes in from above. The square, grid-mapped skylight.
He hears Morgan’s voice and then he feels him. The shake in his chest. “Reid, Reid.” The eye of the flashlight trailing across him. “You’re going to see these things. You know that.” The soft touch on his waist. Spencer turns too fast. Morgan’s hand tight around his arm. Fingertips on his cheek. Pulled towards his mouth.
Spencer watches the unsure flicker of Morgan’s eyes. What this means all knotted up inside of him. “Don’t,” Spencer says, voice grating. Her tears himself out of Morgan’s grasp. “I didn’t choose this, I was subjected to it. These people have died, were part of my life, Morgan and I get to see, no, I get the privilege to figure out how. Well, I don’t want it. I’ve never wanted this job.” He can barely hold onto the i’ve never wanted you caught behind his tongue and teeth. Because some things aren’t true.
“You fucked up your life, Reid. Pushing information to criminals for money? For what? You’ve got all this knowledge and you don’t use it. You sell it to murders and gamblers and pickpockets and whoever else. Hotch gave you purpose again.” The flashlight beam sways beside his feet. “He cares. I care.” Morgan’s voice gets lost in a whisper. He steps towards Spencer. “I want you to be that something better.”
There’s a dead body behind them and Spencer’s feeling hysterical and Morgan is right in front of him. Parallel. He forgets to lean backwards so he leans forwards and Morgan kisses him too hot and too firm and Spencer pulls back second. Hand on Morgan’s chest for balance. It’s awkward and he can’t keep himself upright.
“I’m not better,” Spencer says. Completely clear. “I’m not any better.” Morgan’s face still tipped towards his.
“We’ve got another coming in.”
Hotch’s voice spins around inside Spencer’s head. He’s up, coat forgotten and holster against his hip. A woman’s voice calmly registers the information for him: a man, late twenties/early thirties seen leaving the Green Luck jazz bar. Medium stature, angular face. No outstanding physical attributes. Is armed with what witnesses believes to be is a semi-automatic handgun. Two patrons dead: Nikolas Karloff and Allan Steinbeck. Two in critical condition, a waiter and a saxophonist.
“Those names mean anything to you, Reid?” Morgan asks, voice carrying down the hallway. His coat slipping into place on his shoulders. Hotch is ahead of them. Flash of the gun strapped to his ankle. Dragnet.
“Sectors of the mafia. Karloff attending to Russian interests and affairs. Steinbeck, a Midwestern gunrunner. Usually sticks to Hurricane Alley.”
Morgan nods his head. “Hotch said that the kills were done execution-style. Matched Penny.” The concern slipping in his voice. Spencer catches the purse of his mouth from his periphery. He presses his fingers hard into the networks of veins at Morgan’s wrist.
“It’ll be fine.” Her body there, right at his consciousness. He focuses on who he is and who he’s with. Spencer shouldn’t feel okay.
The cold freeze of the streets. Thin ice finding its way into cracks and around loose stones. It’s not well-lit over here. Their cars are blue-black and grey shadows. Detective Rossi lights up a cigarette with calloused fingers, back to a car. Comfortable.
Spencer’s blood moves with too much adrenaline. Hands sticky-warm from clasping them together a few too many times. The cold wraps around his skin, under his shirt, against his ribs. Spencer hates how they fight. Morgan stoically crouched down beside him. The row of shops stretched out in front of them, the feeling of more behind him. Window displays fogged up. An idle blockade. The telephone booth at the end of the street, empty.
“Why would you want to come here to die? Let the god awful cats finish you off.” Rossi says everything with a flavour of smoke. “Sorry son of a bitch.” The glow gets closer and closer to his fingertips. He’s never worried.
Hotch makes a scoffing noise. “Because he probably doesn’t expect to, Dave.” The tension cords itself through Spencer. He wants to laugh, but a nervous tremor keeps it back. Hotch’s gun is tucked carefully against his side, obscured by his suit jacket. He smiles to himself over something else that Rossi says.
The horizon of the avenue hasn’t moved. Morgan watches it between the rises of his knuckles. “It’ll be so small,” he says quietly. “The change, but you’ll feel it.” Morgan keeps straight ahead, but he finds the curve of Spencer’s knee, too dark to really see. Spencer lets out a breath and then takes another one.
(They’ve been communicating in silence. What he says suggests something else. Slow, steady. It doesn’t break.)
Orange light and factory smoke in clouds off in another corner of the sky. It’s small and dark over here. The shop faces with the same names. Rossi’s, “You see that new one with Jimmy?” lost in the stillness that just makes Spencer more nervous.
“When is something going to happen?” he asks. Morgan’s face breaks into a smile. The hot-red down the back of his neck. It’s been over an hour, it’s been two hours, it’s been three.
“When it’s good and ready. And that’s just not now,” Morgan says, shifting onto his knees. His reflection in the windshield. Spencer’s own warped and wide eyes staring back. He starts to count his breaths; ignoring the interweaving web of Rossi’s smoke, Hotch’s board-flat voice, and Morgan’s heartbeat.
Thirty-two. A shadow slips against the glass. The plain black figure walks across the horizon with his shoulder hunched. Hands where Spencer can’t see them. Hotch stands up straight, a minor shift. Morgan settles back onto his feet. Rossi crawls towards the nose of the car. Spencer stays exactly where he is.
Sixty-eight. He can’t make out the shine of Molin’s eyes. A vague, smeared stain under his chin. Fingers tapping incessantly against his thigh. The silk-shine of his hair in the patches of light. He’s in a state of everywhere. Rossi already has his gun out. Positioned and ready.
Ninety-nine. He’s whispering to himself. The rises and falls of pitch and clarity. The leftover blood of a nose bleed spread out across his upper lip. Molin taps and whispers. He has the same thin waist and long legs that Spencer has. His escape has included smashing up as many doors and walls and windows as he possibly can. That little locked-up voice of sympathy in the back of Spencer’s head doesn’t blame him.
One-fourteen. Molin’s head snaps up and his eyes go clear. He straightens up. His shot cracks and hits the tail light. Rossi turns back with a look of disbelief saying, “Really? That’s what he does first?” Spencer closes his eyes tightly. He’s looking to get killed. Spencer’s not counting anymore, he can’t.
Another one cracks through the side-mirror. “You fucking pigs.” Molin’s voice is all spit and sneer. “Don’t deserve an execution, either?” Spencer’s facing the ground, Morgan’s body around his. He can hear the small, insistent echoes of Molin’s feet. Hotch is positioned opposite of Rossi.
“Do not worry.” Vicious and defiant in his ear.
The hard slap of a bullet and more of Rossi’s edged commentary. Answer coming in the form of Hotch’s perfectly-aimed shot to the chest. He sees Molin from underneath the car. A shot low on the leg. “Stuns them every time,” Rossi is saying above him.
Morgan pulls Spencer to his feet; fingers holding on for just a little longer. Molin’s red-white eyes stare up at the sky.
You get out of this racket one way or another.
His head feels full of cotton. Pleasant and safe. Spencer is sliding down the chesterfield. Amber bottle of scotch. JJ’s wine glass on the floor by her elbow. She’s been laughing up at the ceiling all night.
“There is nobody as thin as you, Spencer,” she says, hands running distractedly through her hair. She suspends strands by her fingertips and they fall back just as quietly. “This guy would have had to be paper. This thin.” JJ’s thumb and index pressed tight together.
Spencer struggles to sit up straighter. “No, JJ. He looked at me. No, he looked like me.” He tries to think through it. His throat feels torched. “He looked like me, all sad and lonely and depressed.” He settles back into the dusty fabric and cushion. Chin to his chest.
JJ bites at the neck of the wine bottle. “You’re not lonely, are you? Not with Morgan around.” And she lets this shrieking laugh out into the air all around them. Her dress has been rumpled up past her knees.
“Sad and lonely and depressed. He looked hollow.” Spencer reaches for his arm just for that reassurance. It’s all working.
JJ reaches out for his ankle, watches her hand curiously. “No, I think you’re still alive, Spence.” Her nails bite in and he flinches. “See, look.” The straight cut of her nails tipped in blood.
Spencer takes another pull of scotch.
The day they go it’s raining. Droplets of water vertically rolling off JJ’s back. She and Spencer share an umbrella. Morgan’s overlaps theirs. His mouth tastes too clean and his hands feel too fresh. The boards are soaked. Boats in the harbour.
(Someone once told Spencer that this was the grandest place on Earth. Through all of the rain and the peeling paint and the smell of rotting fish when the sun is out, it’s true.)
“I think today’s the day for coffee,” JJ says, her voice trying to reach everyone through the weather. “A milkshake might give you the freeze.” She looks at Spencer. “Permanently.” Her arm is pink-white where the raincoat is pushed up. He’s never known JJ to get cold. Her perfume of moss through the damp.
Morgan shrugs and his shoulder brushes Spencer’s. “Reid tells me that you’re the expert.” (The way she moves along the boardwalk, her weight not bearing down, the boards not creaking.) It’s obvious. JJ is the effortless part of Spencer, the reason his hair stays in place, the cool light of his match under someone else’s cigarette, how to play off sad eyes. He is a product of the women he knows.
She eases the umbrella out of Spencer’s hand and walks up ahead of them without even a look, a wink. Morgan tips his head to the side and Spencer steps in closer to him. Silhouettes in the fog. It’s made JJ disappear. She’ll meet them there, her coat already drying in front of the fireplace that Emily keeps lighted. Day and night.
“So, that’s another one of the girls in your life,” Morgan says. Smooth and slick. Like it’s a line. “Both blondes.”
Spencer can feel his forehead creasing. Vision getting a little darker. “You must not have met Elle.”
Morgan continues ahead. “It’s just an observation. They’re there for you. Probably always will be. I have to get used to that.” The fog provides its own sadness. A setting. Wet and sick sailors with faces to match. Drunk. “You want me to be steady, right?”
Spencer’s catalogued it. Alleys. Tracks. Over Hotch’s shoulder. Behind Elle’s back. When he’s asleep. When he wakes up with coffee. Behind a gun. Underneath him. In a whisky bottle. Alone in the dark.
“I don’t know.” He looks down at the watch in his pocket. Its face open to the rain. “Not yet.” He puts it all together. “I don’t know yet.” He can taste the salt in his throat. The boardwalk circles more than half of this port. A long time walking.
Morgan’s quiet. He stops. Spencer feels the rain on him. Morgan doesn’t let him go, pulling Spencer to him. “You don’t want to make up your mind.” The wet slide of Morgan’s mouth may be saying the same thing. Maybe.
Coal-smoke in his lungs. Spencer can’t breathe.
Spencer starts the burner with a match. He bends, watching the flames flicker like little wicks. The kettle is full of water. Spencer takes down two tea cups, the glass jar of leaves. Morgan’s fingers tap against the table. Outside, the rain has turned into a storm. The window reflects the inside out.
He sits down with Morgan, the table barely big enough for two people. It’s all right. “You know, you don’t have to protect me,” he says. “And you don’t have to be threatened by those that do.” Morgan has a different place to be.
“You carry your own gun and you make your own tea.” The kettle whistles. “And you’ll always remember to pour with a towel.”
Spencer smiles. He gets up and wraps the palm of his hand and his knuckles in cheesecloth. He needs reminders. The heat seeps through. Someone to remember when he forgets. The water fills the cups with rises of steam.
Elle unties her apron. The champagne bottle stuck with a candle, shining. Spiderwebs and empties and cigarettes. Elle is quick when it comes to mixing. “You want one of these, kid?” Gin and seltzer water on the upturned crate. Spencer shakes his head. She fills his glass with water.
She leans back, feet on the edge of the box. Once packed with straw and gold-tinged glass. “How have you been?” Spencer sips his drink with the same coolness as Elle. She raises her eyebrows. “Like being a narc, yet?” And then her smile - hidden in the bottom of decanters and on long walks home to no one - comes out in full-force. Just for someone she knows.
It could be the best joke she’s ever told. “What couldn’t play that one straight?” And then there’s gin kissed between her lips and she hides behind her hair. Elle has the strangest laugh. So surprised. Spencer’s is silent.
She swallows. Finds her balance and her composure. “I’ve missed having you around. You’re just so fucking clever, Spencer.” She drinks, watching him. Suppresses another laugh. A tremble through her neck.
Spencer’s black shoes join hers on the crate. Polished to a high-shine. Morgan lent him his tin of polish yesterday morning. Dull in this place. Humbled. He still lives here, somewhere.
“Only on paper are we other people, Elle.”