"She's being released tomorrow," I tell Garcia once I'm in the parking lot, "I think I can get her to talk to me without all of the guards present. I'm going to pick her up and maybe I can even convince Hotch to let me stay for a few days. I mean, if I can pull this act off for long enough, she might let her guard down and slip up."
Garcia is quiet on the other end of the phone, which doesn't happen very often.
"Are you sure that's a good idea, Spencer?" she finally asks, "I mean, I get that you think she's responsible, but there isn't any evidence pointing that way. Are you positive that the only reason you're wanting to stay is because of the case, or is there something else?"
"Yes, it's just for the case. Why else would I stay?"
"Reid, you've been overly invested in this case from the beginning," Penelope states, exasperation in her voice, "Sloane has been able to get under your skin and you can't get over the fact that she's been five moves ahead of us this entire time. Even with being convicted for Mr. Robinson's death, she got off with the slap on the wrist equivalent for murder. You are playing a chess game that you're going to lose, Spencer. She isn't worth risking your badge over."
I run my hand through my hair, I can't explain this. Garcia's right, Sloane has been many steps ahead of us since the start and I hate it. I've never dealt with an unsub who's this strategic and detailed in their planning. I think that's why I can't just let this one go, I don't like losing and with her that's all I seem to do.
"You're right," I admit, "I am way too invested in this one. But Garcia, I can't let it go to just have her turn around and keep killing these men. I genuinely believe if I can play into her delusion for long enough, I can figure out "
I hear her sigh, "Hotch is not going to like this."
"I know," I start driving, "what if I tell him I'm going to visit my mom in Vegas? I mean it's not like it's a huge stretch since I'm already on the west coast."
"But do you really want to risk lying to him and being caught later?"
I sigh, "no, I don't." I shake my head, "but if I do ask for more time, he's not going to give it to me. Hotch was pretty clear that he wanted me to give up on this one and he didn't like the idea of me coming here in the first place. So, staying longer to spend more time with Sloane is definitely not going to sit well with him."
I know I have to tell him the truth, I mean he'll be able to tell if I'm lying even from 2,224.4 miles away, but I don't know what else to do. I need to figure out why this pit in my stomach won't go away and why even with all of the evidence saying that she didn't do it, I can't accept it. I know if I can get close enough, she'll slip up. She's already on the brink of a psychological break from being in prison; if I can play into that she will reveal the truth to me.
I pull into the motel parking lot and park outside my door. I sigh into the phone, "what do you think I should do, Penelope?"
"I don't know, sugar," she sounds deflated, "but if she actually has something to do with this, you're going to be the one who figures it out. Call Hotch, Spencer. You don't want this to not be above board."
I nod, accepting that she's right, "I will."
--
Standing in the parking lot of the prison, I'm still questioning if this is the right move. I ran through all of the scenarios in my head a hundred times and I know that this one has the potential for the best outcome, but there's always room for error. After getting off the phone with Hotch last night, he only agreed to give me today with Sloane unless I get something concrete that connects her to this and could be added to the case file. I have to be smart about this and not let her get me flustered, which is going to be difficult considering she knows how to push all of my buttons.
She was supposed to be released at 7 am sharp but when I glance down at my watch I see that it's almost 8:30 am. I fidget anxiously next to my car, I hate it when things don't happen on time. I check my watch for the fifteenth time and when I look up, I see her.
She's wearing a loose pair of jeans and a plain, white t-shirt. Her hair is up in a messy ponytail and she's holding a small cardboard box that is filled with the items she's collected while incarcerated.
She's smiling as she approaches me and once she's only a few steps away, she drops the box and wraps her arms around me in a tight embrace. I hesitate for a moment, quickly wrapping my mind around what's happening, before I hug her back. I take this moment to glance in the box that's by her feet. I immediately see a journal, some children's drawings, and a photo of me. My stomach drops, how did she get that picture?
She releases me and looks up smiling, "I didn't know if you'd actually be here."
"Of course," I say, putting my hands in my pockets and creating a little bit of distance,
"I promised you I would be, and I always keep my promises." She nods, still smiling, and picks up her box of belongings before sliding into my passenger seat.
After asking where she wants to go, she gives me the directions to her house that's about an hour away from the facility. I'm not exactly sure what I expected, but I'm surprised that she's having me go to her home. Since none of the crimes were committed in Arizona and she's still not an official suspect, a search of her home was never authorized. I mean, I know where it's at since I was surveilling her, but I was never permitted inside of the gated community. But now she is willingly giving me access to it. Maybe this trip won't be a bust afterall.
"Do you mind?" her question pulls me out of my head. I glance over and see that she's holding up her phone and has the AUX cord in her hand.
"Go ahead," I tell her, giving her a small smile.
She plugs in her phone and begins playing music I haven't heard before, but that isn't surprising since I don't really listen to anything other than classical. However, what she plays does surprise me; I look at the screen in the rental car to see it's a song called 'Cough Syrup' but Young the Giant. I pictured her as a lover of bubblegum pop music, not indie or alternative. But now that the music is filling the car, and I look over to see her mouthing the words, I can tell that I was wrong about that.
The drive goes by relatively fast, the music stays mostly within the indie/alternative genre but the occasional pop song that I've heard while hanging out with Penelope comes on. Before I know it, Sloane is directing me into a gated community filled with upscale townhomes. We take a few turns before pulling into the driveway of her home.
She takes a deep breath and I look over to see her face is full of relief. She steps out of the car and quickly leads me to the front door through the small gated courtyard. She unlocks it and walks inside. I follow her, trying to memorize every detail about the space in case, by some miracle, she left something out that may incriminate her. But as expected, nothing looked out of the ordinary. Despite her being loosely linked to a string of murders and being incarcerated for nearly 5 months, her house doesn't look like it. Her home is filled with bohemian decor, photos of friends and family, and live plants making the home feel lived in and warm.
"You can make yourself comfortable," she says, bringing my attention back to her, "I'm just going to take a quick shower to get this prison funk off me."
She says it with a laugh, clearly relieved to be home. She flashes me a smile before making her way upstairs to where I'm assuming her bedroom is.
This is a different side to her that I haven't seen before. In almost all of our interactions previous to this, she's been cold and calculated with her words. She's always had the upper hand and been able to keep us all guessing on if she was being honest. Except when she would talk about her past trauma, then we saw the more vulnerable side of her. The part of her that was still scared by what these men did / attempted to do to her and couldn't get through the story without crying. But this side, the happy, go with the flow kind of girl, the version she is with her family, friends and clients; I get the appeal.
I hear the shower turn on and I know this is my opportunity. I know that anything I find right now won't be admissible in court since I don't have a warrant, but hopefully I can find something to at least prove to Hotch that Sloane is still a viable suspect. I scan her bookshelves and find a few different genres of literature ranging from the classics of To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre, 1984, and The Great Gatsby to more modern stories such as the Hunger Games trilogy, Little Fires Everywhere and Handmaid's Tale. It's mostly fiction, but she does have a few that would fall into the 'self-help' category which is definitely interesting to see.
Along with the books, she has a couple of tobacco and vanilla candles as well as photographs of her family going from childhood to present day. One photo catches my eye, it's of her and Tim Hughes along with another man I don't recognize. I see him in a few other photos, so I take out my phone and send a copy of the photograph for Garcia to see if she can ID him.
I continue my search but all I find is that she has an expensive collection of tequila and red wine, she can cook based on the wear and tear on her pots and pans, and she likes nearly every genre of music according to the vinyls sitting beside her record player. She also really likes vanilla and tobacco candles because she has a total of five in her living room alone.
I'm not necessarily surprised by my lack of discoveries though. It's not typical of an unsub to leave incriminating evidence just lying around for anyone to find. My guess is that if there is anything here, it would be in her bedroom, which I don't exactly have access to at the moment. But even if I gain access to the bedroom, I have doubts that there would be anything to find in there either. She's too organized to leave anything up to chance. Now that I think about it, there's no way that she would bring me here if there was anything to connect her to the missing / murdered men.
I hear the water shut off, which means Sloane will be back out within the next few minutes. I quickly go to the bookshelf again and pick up her well worn copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. I take a seat on her wicker accent chair and open the book to a random page to make it seem as though I've been sitting here the entire time. I hear her footsteps cascading down the stairs and I turn to see Sloane in ripped, skin tight light wash jeans, black ankle boots, and white, cropped t-shirt. Her hair is slightly damp and her face is free of makeup.
"God, I feel so much better," she tells me as she plops down on the white sectional sofa next to me. "Prison showers aren't exactly a place where you can relax and truly get clean, if you know what I mean."
I don't, but I can imagine. Her knees are curled under her and she's resting her head on her hand that's positioned on the back of the sofa. She's clearly not only comfortable in her home, but with me in it.
"I'm glad," I smile at her, "you have an incredible home."
Her face lights up, "thanks! I travel so much it's hard to keep this place feeling homey, but I definitely try."
"So, why stay in Arizona?" I ask, closing the book and leaning in towards her, "I mean, wouldn't it make more sense to move to one of the cities that your clients reside in?"
"Mostly because my family's here," she says with a shrug, "plus I like being able to come here and be able to fully recharge. You know, not have to worry about running into any clients at the grocery store or when I'm on a real date." Her eyes flick up to look into mine and she smiles. "Speaking of which," She stands up and holds her hand out to me, "let's get going."
—
Sloane decided to take me to her favorite coffee shop in Phoenix, a place called Songbird Coffee and Tea House. We're sitting across from each other at one of the outdoor picnic tables enjoying the warm March weather. Sloane takes a sip of her hot tea and smiles at me.
"You have no idea how many times I pictured doing exactly this while I was in that awful place," her eyes are soft and she looks like she's genuinely at peace. "I'm so glad that you finally came to your senses and realized that this was all just a big misunderstanding."
I nod and take a drink of my iced oat milk latte, using the moment to collect my thoughts.
"I am too," I tell her and I reach my hand across the table to take hers, "I'm also glad that we can finally do this."
She coyly bites her lip, "you're so good, Spencer. It's rare to find that in a man these days."
"What do you mean?"
She sighs and gently rubs her thumb over my knuckles, "from what I've experienced, the modern man only wants three things: money, power and sex." She brings her eyes to meet mine again, "as long as they have two of the three they are typically satisfied but once they get a taste of all three, they become addicted and want it all the time."
She gives my hand a light squeeze before releasing it and takes another sip of her drink. "but occasionally you'll come across a man who has different values. Ones who want three different things in life: love, respect, and kindness. Those men are far and few between and personally," she places her hand over mine, "I like to believe that you are the second kind of man, Spencer, and I'm really hoping that I'm right."
I feel sick, this is wrong. She might be a murderer but she is also a girl who has major trust issues. So, does that make me just as bad as the men who have hurt her to be using her fragile state of mind like this? I take another sip of my coffee to give myself time to come up with a response.
"I hope I can prove you right too," I say after a moment, "but I doubt I'm the only man in your life that you feel falls into that second category."
"You're right," she says with a smile, "there's also my father, step father, brother in laws and my few male friends, but like I said, they unfortunately don't make up the majority."
I nod, "given my line of work I feel obligated to agree with you."
Considering 63.62% of murders in the United States are committed by men, which is seven times more than female offenders. It goes to prove that men are typically more violent than women.
"But I can tell that you do have a solid group of people to support you, based on all of the pictures in your house at least," I tell her.
She lets out a small laugh, "so you did snoop through my place while I was in the shower." I feel my face get hot but her light hearted demeanor tells me that she's not upset, "find anything interesting?"
"Not particularly," I say honestly, "the only slightly intriguing thing I found was that you do have a lot of photos of one man in particular that I haven't seen before."
She sits up straighter and keeps her eyes on mine, "oh yeah? And what does this guy look like?"
"He's tall, at least 6'2 based on the full body photos I saw of the two of you standing next to each other, he has black hair and blue eyes and I believe he's around your age," I tell her and take another drink.
Her face relaxes again, "Oh, that's just Nathan."
"Nathan?" That's someone we haven't heard of yet, I wonder who he is to her.
"Yeah, he's a," she pauses and leans in to me, "well, if I tell you about Nathan, you promise you won't get him arrested?"
I press my eyebrows together, "why would I need to promise that?"
She sighs but stays put, "well, his profession may or may not include soliciting a certain favor for monetary gain."
So he's a prostitute?
"Okay, I promise not to arrest him," I try to hide the question in my voice but it comes through despite my efforts.
"Well," her voice drops to a whisper, causing me to lean in closer, "Nathan is a professional Dom, so he gets paid by his submissives to play out their fantasies that they feel they can't do with their significant other or with a random hookup. Everything he does is consensual with safe words and written contracts to prevent any misunderstandings from occurring."
I nod, encouraging her to continue. "He and I met when I first started traveling for work. We were at a five star hotel's bar in Los Angeles, searching for clients, when we started talking. I told him about my lifestyle and he was intrigued. He had never considered traveling to his clients before but he certainly liked the idea. So after meeting up a couple of times, we started coordinating our travel schedules when we could and became really good friends. He's very protective and wanted to be close in case I ever needed him." She shrugs her shoulders and pulls away, "and now it feels odd being in a city and him not being there too."
I nod, trying to wrap my mind around what she just told me. She must have taken my silence as jealousy because she takes my hand again and meets my gaze. "But you have nothing to worry about, Spencie. He's just a friend and we have never been anything more than that."
That's the last thing I'm concerned with. If this Nathan guy was following Sloane's travel schedule, he may have also been in the area when the men have gone missing. He would have the strength to overpower the missing men, given that in the photos of them together he's in excellent shape, but does he have the motive?
Sloane did just say that he is extremely protective of her, so what if she told him about her past trauma and her rules when it comes to her clients. She told me once that if a client crosses the boundary, she cuts them off and black balls them to all of her contacts in the industry. But what if Nathan is the one who took it one step further?