Chapter 3: The Meeting
a/n: This story is such a wild hair. I hope you guys are enjoying reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it!
If you are, why not drop me a review and tell me so? I'd love to hear all about it. :)
Thanks as always to chiroho for the beta'ing! I'm making him work quite hard this time 'round, because I'm writing all this when I'm half asleep.
Chapter 3: The Meeting
Like sweet butter that's spread on toast,
We fade into mist like ghosts.
-Bob Schneider, "Ghosts"
Walter's Gap, for all Prentiss' mocking, was a nice little town. There was a pretty main street with shops and restaurants that all seemed busy. It was the County Seat, so it had a Greek Revival courthouse, a jail that had been new in 1965, and a police station that looked like someone's house. Prentiss gave Morgan a look as they pulled up in front. "Should I have brought a casserole?"
"Would you stop? It'd be good to have some cooperation from the locals, so try to be nice."
She looked mildly insulted. "I'm always nice. To cops."
He snorted and rolled his eyes before climbing out of the car and slamming the door behind him. She scrambled after him, stretching her shorter legs a bit to catch up, and fell into step at his side. "So how do we play this?"
"It's a small town. I'll just lay on the charm with the sweet Southern honey behind the desk, and we'll get anything we want."
She didn't bother replying to this, just rolled her eyes and stepped through the door he held open for her. When her dark gaze fell on the guy manning the counter, she snickered. "Go for it, big boy. I'm sure Officer Bubba over there would just love your brand of charm. You do got a pretty mouth."
"That's not funny, Prentiss. Don't you know that movie strikes fear and horror into the heart of every man who's ever thought about going camping?"
"You're the one who wanted to explore the woods, Morgan, not me."
"Hey, y'all them detectives from Chicago?" the desk sergeant called before Morgan could reply.
They exchanged a look, and then stepped forward and offered ID. "I'm Derek Morgan, and this is my partner Emily Prentiss. I believe Chief Hotchner was expecting us?"
"Sir, ma'am," he said with a nod at each of them.
Morgan gave Prentiss a subtle elbow to the ribs to forestall her cynical snort.
"Yessir," the sergeant was saying, "he told me to look out for ya. I'll just go get him. Y'all have a seat. Need coffee or somethin'?"
"No, thanks, we're fine," Morgan said.
Prentiss watched the man go with a pained expression. "We're fine?" she demanded of her partner. "I'm not fine. I would kill for some coffee."
"Copshop coffee?"
"Well I don't know. Maybe in addition to having fine Southern manners they make better coffee than regular cops."
"Cops are cops, Prentiss; manners is just window dressing."
"Actually, Mr. Morgan, I consider manners integral to civilized society. They're what separate us from the apes," a voice said from the doorway.
"Yeah, that and Colt .45s," Prentiss muttered.
"I'm sorry?" the man said, straight dark brows coming together over piercing dark olive eyes.
Unnerved by that look, Prentiss cleared her throat and held out her hand. "Emily Prentiss. You must be Chief Hotchner."
Morgan introduced himself, and they all shook hands. "Nice to meet you, Ms. Prentiss, Mr. Morgan."
"Ugh, no Ms., please."
"Prentiss is a real old-fashioned kinda girl. It's sweet, really."
She glared daggers at Morgan for a brief second (long enough to cut him to shreds, but not quite long enough to stop his heart) before turning back to Hotchner with a smile. "I guess you know why we're here," she said.
"Your partner phoned ahead, yes. Why don't we step into my office?" He led them through the station, past the curious stares of his officers, and into his small, immaculate, utterly masculine office. He offered them coffee, which again Morgan refused for both of them, and all three took seats.
"What can you tell us about the disappearances?" Morgan asked as he and Prentiss both pulled out spiral notebooks.
"Not much more than is in the file. They were first reported missing by Kevin Lynch, Penelope Garcia's fiancé. Apparently she had been calling him every night via satellite phone, and she'd missed a night."
"How long before you launched a search?" Prentiss asked.
"Considering the circumstances, we began searching right away. The missing persons reports weren't filed until the next day, but in these mountains 24 hours can mean the difference between life and death."
Prentiss shot Morgan a quick I told you so look. He ignored her. "Go on," he prompted.
Hotchner raised a brow before pulling out a map. "We started our grid search here, and extended it up through this area," he said, pointing out the locations with a blunt, calloused finger. Those weren't the hands of a paper pusher, Prentiss thought; this man was in the field as much as his uniforms. "We were assisted by the Forest Service, of course. You can contact the district ranger we worked with; her name is Jennifer Jareau." He passed a card across the desk, and Morgan pocketed it.
"That's a lot of territory to cover," Prentiss remarked. "How did you know where to look?"
"Dr. Rossi filed his itinerary with both myself and Ms. Jareau. It isn't strictly necessary, but he knew he and his team weren't as familiar with the woods as they could've been. It was a safety precaution."
"He was expecting to run into trouble?" Morgan asked.
"Quite the opposite, in fact. He was full of confidence. I think it was Dr. Reid's idea, actually. He…well…when I met with them the first time, he kept offering statistics about bears and cougars and rattlesnakes."
"Bears? There are bears here?" Prentiss said as the blood drained from her face.
"Black bears. This time of year they're heading into hibernation, though. They'll be fat, happy and sleepy, so they're really easy to avoid." He seemed slightly amused by her obvious distress.
"Come on, Prentiss; it's just like Winnie the Pooh," Morgan told her with a nudge.
"I'll remind you that you said that when a bear is eating your face," she hissed.
Hotchner hid a laugh with a cough and started to roll the map up again.
"Wait," Morgan said. "Where did those hikers find the camera?"
"Here," he said. "There are some old moonshiner shacks out there. We think it's possible Rossi's team sought shelter in them."
"Shelter? Was there a storm?" Prentiss asked.
"No, no storms while they were out. But it was this time of year; fall was moving in pretty hard. It can get cold up there at night."
Prentiss shivered. "What on God's green earth would possess them to go out there in the first place? They weren't hikers or granola-crunching tree huggers."
"No, certainly not," he agreed with a flash of dimples that came and went so fast Prentiss wasn't completely sure she'd seen them at all. "But Dr. Rossi was determined to investigate some of the older stories first hand."
"What sorta stories?"
Hotchner shrugged; kept his expression as mild as possible. "Ghosts, UFOs, strange animals up in the hills. The usual. Everyone has a story, and they're all willing to tell. Those three were eating it up. I don't know that they came to town with the intention of heading out to the woods, but something changed their minds."
"Any idea what?"
"No clue. The skunk ape, maybe?"
"I'm sorry…skunk ape?" Prentiss said.
"Local Big Foot type thing. We get a few sightings a month during hunting season, and then it tapers off for the year."
"Big foot?" she said, voice rising in disbelief; his face remained neutral. "You're serious?"
"I understand your skepticism, and I'm not saying I believe it. But that hardly matters, does it? The people around here believe it, and that's a powerful thing. I just take the reports, and send a uniform out if any damage is done."
Prentiss cleared her throat and snapped her notebook closed. She gave Morgan a significant look, and he opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, his phone rang. He checked the caller ID and his head fell back. Prentiss smirked. He glared at her, and shot Hotchner an embarrassed look. "I'm sorry; I gotta take this." He flipped open the phone and accepted the call. "Hey, baby, how's Chicago?"
Hotchner and Prentiss watched his expression change as he listened to the caller. He seemed to squirm in his seat, and after a moment he said, "Baby, I told you I'm in Tennessee on a case." He made desperate eyes at Prentiss, and she waved him away. He slunk off to take the call, closing the office door behind him, and Hotchner watched him go with a guarded expression before turning back to Prentiss.
"His wife," she explained. "She thinks the agency is just a front to cover up our torrid affair."
He lifted a brow. "Is it?"
"Yes. We both applied for and received PI licenses; we pay the rent every month on a shit hole office in a crappy building with bad plumbing; and we randomly run around town taking pictures of married men with their pants down, all so we can get some afternoon nooky on that nasty splintery desk Morgan loves so damn much."
Hotch's lips twitched in what might have been a smile. "Sounds like the perfect arrangement."
"Oh yeah. It's heaven. Too bad Elizabeth's wise to our charade."
"I guess that would cramp your style." He hesitated. Then, "I invested as much as I could into the search for Dr. Rossi's team. But it was getting colder and colder, and we eventually realized either exposure had gotten them, or some animal had."
"But you never found the bodies?"
"No. But, again, an animal could have scattered the bones to who knows where."
She shuddered. "So you don't think there's any chance we'll find anything?"
"I didn't think there was before, but those hikers found the camera. I guess there's always a chance."
"Do you think we're crazy to go looking for them?"
He was silent a long time. "I would encourage you not to. Those woods won't be any safer for you and your partner than they were for Dr. Rossi and his team."
Prentiss considered his advice with a slow nod. "Thing is, my partner thinks this case is important. He's so dead sure of it he managed to talk me into coming all the way down here, and I promise you that was a feat in and of itself. So if I'm here already, I might as well be thorough."
"I thought you'd say that," he said. Though his tone was heavy with regret, Prentiss thought she caught the twinkle of something else in his eye. She couldn't place it, though, and before she had a chance the moment passed. "Let me go over their route with you," he said, ducking his head back to the map. "You'll want to follow their footsteps as best you can out there."