" Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. "
— Leo Tolstoy
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18.2 ; GUILT.
QUARTER TO EIGHT THE next morning, Caroline had just started on her third cup of coffee when Spencer's voice cut through her morning grogginess.
"Here's a question—" The young doctor's finger, still covered in a crime scene glove, tapped the spine of the notebook in his lap. "If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if there's nobody there to hear it?"
Caroline leaned her head against the back of the chair she was sitting in and let out a soft groan. Even if she had gotten eight hours of sleep instead of four, it was too early for quantum hypotheticals.
Sometime after two in the morning, a local deputy had found Finnegan's dead body under a pile of leaves. The M.E. had ruled his death as one of natural causes—a heart attack. Had said that his heart had most likely given out while setting up a bear trap. The old man's body had gone undiscovered for a week while the coyotes gnawed at him.
Well, mostly undiscovered. Someone had to hide the body under the leaves.
Which left their main suspect dead before the second and third murders had even happened. So, all the team had to go on now was who has been living in the dead man's house. The team—with the exception of JJ, who was still fielding calls at the police station—had spent the rest of the early morning sifting through Finnegan's things.
It wasn't exactly back to square one, but it sure did feel like it.
Morgan paused his search of a nearby bookshelf as he glanced at Reid over his shoulder. "What the hell are you readin' over there?"
"I was just thinking," he replied, the look on his face becoming more thoughtful.
"Well, the unsub found Finnegan's corpse in a lightly traveled part of the woods and no one else knew." Morgan gestured to the empty, dusty house around them. "So he was able to use the house, and no one was the wiser."
"Actually, I was referring to Finnegan's wife," Spencer said.
Caroline sat up a little straighter, pressing her elbows into the tops of her knees as she took another tentative sip of her coffee. "What are you talking about?"
"She was rumored missing, perhaps killed fifty years ago. When, in actuality, she left Finnegan for another man. He writes about it in his journals." Spencer nodded to the old notebook in his lap. "How he would look out the window on a daily basis to see if she would come home. She never did. He never recovered. He ended up turning into a recluse that people in town misunderstood."
"He was more than a recluse," Caroline murmured as she set her cup on the table. The warm smell from her coffee no longer seemed to appeal to her. "He was the town pariah."
She couldn't begin to imagine how lonely Finnegan had been. Once, after her parents' death, she had felt lonely, but she had never been alone. There was a difference between being lonely and being alone. She was lonely because not a person in the world fully knew everything she went through in her childhood home six years ago. She lived with the memory of that every day, it weighed on her consciousness, her dreams—haunted her, even.
But she had never been alone, not even in the height of her despair. She had always had someone to turn to, someone to worry about her when she was gone for more than a few hours. She had her brother, and Cait, and Hotch, and Haley, and Spencer. She had people. People who cared what happened to her, cared if she fell off into nothingness.
Finnegan had had no one for a very, very long time.
She must not have been containing her thoughts well because both Spencer and Derek were staring at her, their faces both a little worried. Spencer opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, but before he could speak, Gideon walked in from the kitchen.
"Found somethin'," the older profiler said quickly. He waved his hand at them, his palm facing behind him. "Come here."
The three shared a look before following Gideon into the kitchen, which was about as unremarkable as the rest of the old house. Located at the back of the house, the kitchen smelled like old grease. The tea-stained counters were cluttered with various sorts of junk—empty liquor bottles, old bags of chip, an odd assortment of cracked mugs. Sitting on the island in the middle of the faded white tile were several empty aluminum trays, the plastic lids still resting on top.
Gideon gestured to the trays. "Provisions, delivered by the church to every elder's doorstep, each one dated after Finnegan died."
Derek frowned as he stepped on the other side of the island, his back towards the rusted refrigerator. "So the unsub ate everything."
"Almost everything," Gideon said as he pointed to a circular styrofoam container in one of the trays. The sides were covered with grey duct tape. "Unopened bowls of creamed spinach thrown into the trash, each one wrapped with duct tape."
"So we're looking for a guy who really, really hates spinach?" Morgan asked, his frown deepening.
Beside her, Spencer grunted softly. "Who doesn't?"
She bit her lip to keep from smiling as Gideon ignored the comment. "He's ritualized, meticulous, and organized. He'd eat with the same things every time," he continued. He looked at Morgan. "Let's pull full prints. Have Garcia run them for a match."
Derek nodded right as Gideon's phone began to ring, the loud noise almost echoing through the otherwise empty house. The older profiler pulled the phone out and mumbled, "Hotch," before stepping out of the kitchen to answer the call.
Three pairs of eyes followed as he left the room. Once their superior was no longer in eyesight, Spencer asked, "It's about Elle, isn't it?"
Caroline's gaze became fixated on the off-white floor tile in the kitchen. She focused her attention specifically to the tile a couple of feet from her. It had a small crack through the center and almost seemed a little dirty than the tiles surrounding it—the color resembling more of a beige than white.
What could she say? She couldn't be absolutely certain that Hotch was calling about Elle. He could be calling to check with the progress on the case or to offer a new angle on the profile. There could be a hundred different reasons for why their unit chief called.
But, deep down even she knew. She knew because of the way her gut twisted, the guilt of knowing what she knew finally taking a physical form. It was about Elle.
Morgan, however, gave a half-shrug of his shoulders. "I don't know."
Spencer frowned at that for a moment before he turned to Caroline. "You talked to her in Ohio, Care, didn't you?"
At the question, which sounded more like a statement in how the young doctor had said it, caused her head to whip towards him. She felt her eyes widen, felt her muscles stiffen. She mentally kicked herself for not leaving when Gideon had—for missing her opportunity to escape.
She couldn't think of a way out of the conversation now, not when both of her co-workers were now staring at her. The only thing she could think of to say was, "We all talked to her."
Even to her ears, her response sounded weak and forced. She knew Morgan saw right through her, but Spencer only frowned a little. Brilliant and astute as he was, he still couldn't accurately read the mood of a room sometimes.
"I meant that night. You know, before everything that happened...happened."
She knew what he had meant. The night she had felt that there was something off, knew that something wasn't right, and wandered straight to Elle's room. How could she ever forget that night?
Morgan, who could see the anxiety rolling off her like a fog, seemed to take pity on her. She couldn't help but sigh in relief when he interjected, "Doesn't matter who Elle talked to or didn't. She made her choice. We all gotta live with it now."
As Morgan brushed by her, no longer interested in the conversation, she was struck by what he said. It was easy for him to say those things because he hadn't been the one in Elle's hotel room that night, watching her attempt to drink away her demons. He hadn't seen the look in her eyes and saw what was there, knew that she wasn't well.
She was the one who saw and realized and hadn't said a word. She was the one who had the guilt that felt like a knife in her side, sharp and hard with each breath.
However, despite what she felt, what Morgan had said was true. Elle did make her choice, just as Caroline had made her own that night.
And now, she had to find some way to live with it.
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"Why the woods, JJ?"
Caroline paused and glanced up from her lunch—a grilled chicken sandwich with no lettuce and a cup of fruit—to look at Morgan, his expression thoughtful as he addressed the press liaison. She hummed an uncommitted reply as she took a sip of her coffee, eyeing the fries on the coffee table.
She couldn't blame her. It was rare for the team to ever get a lunchbreak during a case. Most of the time, she would eat something at breakfast and something right before she went to bed. It was nice to have some time to eat and to take a break, even if it only was thirty minutes.
"Your fear," Morgan clarified as Caroline gently pushed the basket of fries towards JJ. The press liaison's answering smile was downright gleeful as she plucked out a fry and popped it into her mouth. "You said it was of the woods."
Caroline reached over and stole a fry for herself as JJ replied, "I used to be a camp counselor when I was a teenager in the wood up in Vermont. I had the night shift. Tuck the girls in, turn off the lights, you know, the typical drill."
She slowly picked up her fruit cup and a cheap plastic fork from the table as she listened to JJ's story. Once she popped the lid off the plastic container, she offered it to Spencer, who had been sitting beside her quietly reading a book and picking at his sandwich. Now, however, his attention was drawn to the press liaison, his expression curious and his book forgotten on his lap.
Absentmindedly, he took a grape from the cup and chewed it slowly. She settled back into the worn couch as she stabbed a piece of cantaloupe with her fork.
"Everything seemed fine, all the kids were asleep," JJ explained quietly, her eyes now trained to the floor. She spoke in a hushed tone, almost like she was afraid someone besides their small group was going to hear. "You know, nothing seemed out of the ordinary...until I noticed that there was some blood on the hallway floor."
Caroline stopped mid-chew. Blood?
She had never been a big fan of sleep-away camps; she had watched one too many slasher movies when she was younger to have a firm stance on the subject. Now, given her job, it gave her all the more reason to hate camping. There was no telling how many unsubs lurked in the woods, watching, waiting for the perfect time to strike.
"So I followed the blood trail out to the camp director's cabin, walked up to his bed, and he was just lying there underneath his covers. Dead."
She stared at JJ with wide eyes, forcing herself to swallow the cantaloupe in her mouth. Even her co-workers looked uneasy. Morgan's face was blank, his mouth slightly agape. Spencer had shifted himself on the couch, leaning towards Caroline. Their shoulders were almost touching.
"Someone had stabbed him," JJ continued, ignoring them. "I ran out of there so fast. Out the door, down the hall. I just remember it being really dark. Once I got to the door, there was another counselor there. I guess she heard me scream. They caught the caretaker on his way out of town. I guess he still had the knife on him." She shrugged her shoulders a little. "Anyway, I guess that's probably when I decided I didn't like the woods."
Morgan's eyes darted to Caroline and Spencer, both shell-shocked, before glancing over at JJ. "You're serious?"
It was silent as she finished off the rest of her coffee. Once she was done, she set the cup on the table in front of her and met each of their wide-eyed stares.
Then, she laughed. "No," she scoffed. "You guys fell for that?"
Morgan leaned back against the couch, chucking to himself in relief. Caroline managed a small laugh, even though it was a little half-hearted. Spencer, however, just sat silently beside her, his nose wrinkled at the press liaison.
"Come on," she said with a smile. "I don't know why I'm afraid of the woods. I just...I am." JJ pointed to Spencer across the table. "Why is he still afraid of the dark?"
Morgan chuckled. "Yeah, Reid, why are you still afraid of the dark?"
"Because of the inherent absence of light," he said and Caroline bumped her shoulder against his as she giggled.
In the midst of their laughter, Morgan's phone started ringing on the table. "JJ, that was pretty good," he said as he reached for his cell. "Just know that payback is a bitch."
She rolled her eyes as she wiggled her fingers at him. "I'm shakin'."
As Morgan stepped out to answer the phone, JJ looked over at Caroline. "So, what's yours?"
She frowned at her as she took a bite out of a strawberry. Once she swallowed it, she said, "What are you talking about?"
"Your fear," the press liaison replied casually. "You're the only one who hasn't fessed up yet."
Caroline popped the rest of the strawberry into her mouth as she deliberated her answer. She tried to think of a way out of the situation but given both Spencer and JJ's eager expressions, she knew she wouldn't be able to pull it off easily.
"You're going to laugh," she said with a small frown.
"We would never," Spencer said quickly. And she believed him too with those earnest eyes staring at her over his glasses.
JJ scoffed. "Speak for yourself. I'm making no such promises."
He didn't acknowledge her comment. "I promise I won't laugh," he said, and then he gave her a smile so genuinely sweet with a touch of shyness that an unexpected warmth rushed through her.
She knew she was going to cave, had known it the moment she had seen his face. How could she ever say no to him?
Caroline stared at him for a moment longer before she sighed. Her cheeks flushed an embarrassing shade of red. She couldn't believe she was going to admit this out loud.
"Oh, this has gotta be good," JJ murmured as she leaned forward, her eyes now gleaming with curiosity.
"When I was younger, I—" She cleared her throat. Spencer nodded for her to continue. "I...used to be afraid of baked beans."
The room was silent for a split second before JJ burst out into laughter.
"Oh, my God," she said in-between gasping breaths. "Baked beans? Why?"
"My cousin ate too many when she was younger," Caroline said as her cheeks grew even hotter than before. "I watched her throw-up all the beans and I thought..." She sighed. "I thought the beans had attacked her stomach."
At her response, JJ started laughing even harder, so hard that there were tears in the corners of her eyes. Caroline, despite the possibility of even further embarrassment, risked a glance at Spencer.
He sat straight, almost like he had a rod attached to his back to keep a perfect posture. He stared straight ahead with his lips mashed together in a thin line. His face had turned an uncomfortable shade of red from holding in his laughter.
She sighed. The effort he put in was sweet, but she didn't want him to hurt himself. "You can laugh, Spence. I appreciate your restraint." At that, she cast JJ a withering look. The press liaison was too busy doubling-over with short, quick laughs to notice.
Her words snapped whatever restraint Spencer had as he started to laugh. However, to his credit, his laughter wasn't as loud as JJ's. His laugh was soft and timid at first like he was unsure, but then his laughter burst out of him like a water main burst, slow at first then all at once.
Caroline wanted to stay straight-faced—after all, they were laughing at her—but she couldn't help herself. The sound of Spencer's laughter had melted away any embarrassment she had felt and now, despite herself, she was giggling along with them.
Even she had to admit, it was a little funny. It was so long ago, such a childish, irrational fear, but the mention of it brought back pleasant memories. Suddenly, she wished she could go back to that moment when her cousin had eaten too many baked beans.
She wished she could go back to that simpler time where the most she had to be afraid of was something silly, something that she could laugh about.
In the midst of their laughter, Morgan entered the room. However, the moment Caroline saw him, her laughter died down in her throat almost immediately. His face was hard and stoic, almost as if he were wearing a mask. His mouth could've been considered to be in a grimace if not for how tight his lips were pulled across his teeth.
The room had gone quiet. JJ and Spencer were now looking at Derek with openly concerned looks.
"Call Gideon," he said through his teeth. "We just found our unsub."
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The first set of prints on the food containers had been James Charles', the local Ozona guidance counselor that had been assisting them with the case. When they arrested him, they found a red baseball cap in his possession—Nicholas Faye's baseball cap.
And to make matters even worse, they couldn't find his nine-year-old son, Jeffrey. When JJ called the school, the administration told her that he hadn't shown up to school today.
This is what led Caroline to the Charles' residence. The search for a killer had turned into a rescue mission. Another child missing.
She frowned as she walked through the house. It was a small, one-story home with two bedrooms and a shared bathroom. She had combed through the father's room and had found nothing but an old family photo—Jeffrey, James, and what she presumed to be Jeffrey's mother—stuffed in the nightstand drawer. Everything else had been typical of a single-parent household.
It didn't make sense. The house was well-lived in, that was evident from the pile of laundry by the kitchen door and the cluttered living room, but it wasn't the wreck it should have been. If James Charles was their unsub, the house would be a mess, a reflection of his mental state. The unsub was devolving both physically and mentally. James just seemed...sad.
She walked into the kitchen, narrowly avoiding bumping into one of the CSI techs. The kitchen was about as unremarkable as the rest of the house. However, it probably was the most well-kept area in the house. The small wooden dining table in the center of the room had no clutter except for a vase of yellow daisies. The off-white counters were fairly clean with only jars of sugar and flour on them.
As she went further into the kitchen, she saw something resting on the edge of the counter. It was an EpiPen about six inches long with a yellow cap over the injection needle. Somebody in this house has an allergy, a pretty serious one judging by the dosage on the label.
She turned it over in her hand as she muttered to herself, "An allergy..."
She found herself drawn to the old, worn-down refrigerator in the back of the room, tucked between the pantry and the sink. She opened the door, a blast of cool air hitting her skin, and she paused to look inside.
"Hey, Spence," she called over her shoulder. He had to be somewhere close by.
Less than twenty seconds had passed before he appeared behind her with his hands stuffed in his pockets. She stepped out of the way as she let the refrigerator door swing all the way open.
Inside were dairy products—all taped shut with grey duct tape.
"Call Gideon," Caroline said to Spencer as she tore her gaze from the refrigerator. "I don't think James Charles is our unsub."
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The adrenaline flooding through Caroline's system was hot and warm, her body feeling like a live wire. She was almost positive she could hear it in her blood—that rushing sound she heard in her eardrums. Her heart feels like it's about to explode as she jumped out of the car and onto the pavement. She wanted to quell the hammering of her heart so that she could slow down and assess the situation, but she couldn't stop it. Not when all she could see were the blurring colors of the woods fall behind her as she sprinted, pushing her legs to go faster.
It was all she could think about was the missing little girl lost in the woods. Tracy Bell, she thought, forcing the girl's name in her head. Not another dead child.
After Spencer had informed Gideon of what they found at the Charles' residence, three things suddenly became abundantly clear.
One: James Charles wasn't the one allergic to dairy. After all, why would an adult buy something they knew they were allergic to?
Two: the duct tape is a preventative measure, to make sure the diary isn't accidentally eaten. It's a habit; something an adult would teach a child when they were younger.
And three: Jeffrey was the unsub. The second set of prints on the food trays had been his. The nine-year-old had eaten everything. Everything except the creamed spinach.
Suddenly, all the little things that didn't make sense before suddenly did. Who else would a kid follow into the woods without protest? And no one would think twice about a kid carrying a baseball bat, especially a young boy. Better yet, no one would even bat an eyelash at the sight of two kids together—especially not now, not with the buddy system they put in place. They had inadvertently educated a killer.
She knew the things that led to making Jeffrey what he was—his mother abandoning him, his father working all the time. He took to bludgeoning other children who he viewed as having what he didn't. He was withdrawn, had very little friends, and absolutely no remorse for his actions.
But even knowing everything that she knew, she still couldn't stop herself from wondering where it had all went so wrong. How twisted and sick did the world have to be for a nine-year-old to become a serial killer?
Thankfully, it wasn't her job to answer that question. Her only job was to find the little girl who had gone missing from her bus stop.
The air she sucked in was cold and hard in her lungs. "Tracy!" Caroline called out into the woods. "Tracy Bell!"
A shrill, high-pitched scream cut through the forest, immediately to her left. She wasted no time pivoting on her feet and taking off in the other direction.
Through the treeline, she could see it. Two children—a girl with blonde hair laying on the ground and a red-headed boy standing over her, a silver bat raised over his head. The girl screamed again as the bat came down right beside her pink tennis shoes.
Caroline reached the pair right as the rest of her team did. They had to of heard Tracy's screaming. She was sure she'd never forget it.
Gideon yanked the bat out of Jeffrey's hand mid-swing and pulled him close, snaking his arm across his chest to pin him down. The boy thrashed in the older man's grip, his eyes wild as he bared his teeth at the young girl across from him. He tried to lung towards her, but Morgan stepped in, placing a hand on his shoulder to help Gideon keep him still.
Tracy shrieked in fear as Jeffrey snarled at her. She scrambled up from the ground and darted into Caroline's arms, burying her face into her stomach. Her whole body trembled like a leaf caught in the wind. Wordless sobs erupted from her throat in short bursts.
Caroline wrapped her arms around the girl tightly as she watched Gideon and Morgan drag Jeffrey away, kicking and struggling. She swallowed the tight lump in her throat away as she ran a soothing hand through Tracy's hair.
"Shh," she said softly as she patted the hair down on her head. "It's okay now. You're safe."
It wasn't until she felt Spencer's hand on her elbow that she felt the urge to move again. She glanced over at the young doctor behind her. Behind his glasses, his eyes were wide and a little sad. She wondered if he felt the same thing she had as he had ran through the woods.
The worry. The fear.
But she said nothing. She carefully detangled Tracy's arms from around her waist to instead replace it with her arm around the little girl's shoulder. Caroline held onto the girl as they started their walk back through the woods. Somehow, Spencer's hand winded up on the small of her back, gently steering her forwards.
She risked a glance behind her. During the struggle to contain Jeffrey, Gideon had dropped his bat on the ground.
The sight of the silver bat laying on the ground, still covered with flakes of blood from its previous victims, is what made Caroline suddenly understand JJ's fear of the woods.
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Night had fallen an hour after the jet took off the tarmac. She stared outside the window beside her and saw nothing but darkness and the occasional blinking light on the plane wing. The inside of the jet was quiet except for Gideon whispering on the phone—no doubt to Hotch—and Spencer's soft snores beside her.
She turned her head slightly to glance down at the young doctor. He was sleeping in the fetal position, his long legs tucked under his body. His glasses had somehow slid down his face now and rested on the tip of his nose, threatening to fall off. She slid his glasses off his face as he slept—carefully, so as not to disturb him. She gently folded them and set them on the table in front of them.
The steady thrumb of the jet's engine had a tendency to lull most of the team to sleep, especially at night. JJ was passed out on the couch in the back of the plane, a thin blanket pulled up to her shoulders. Morgan, who was sitting across from her, looked close to falling asleep with his eyes closed and only one earbud in.
She knew she should probably try and sleep as well. It was a long flight and she had work in the morning. And typically, she would be sleeping right about now. There was something about the vibration of the plane and the white noise of the engine that could knock her out most of the time, but not tonight. Not when there was so much on her mind.
Children killing children. The lives of three families forever altered. Elle.
Caroline had been thinking about Elle a lot since Gideon brought her up this yesterday. What he said in the woods: innocent until proven guilty. Except she wasn't innocent and he knew it. He knew just as she knew the Elle that the team had once known.
All she knew was how she felt now. Guilt—such a small, insignificant word that clung to her and rotted her insides. She had known and hadn't said anything and now someone was dead.
"I should have said something."
The words slipped out her so fast, she wasn't even positive it was her who said them. But she realized she had when Morgan opened his eyes and pulled out his earbud.
He stared at her for a moment before he said, "What?"
Now that she had said something, it was like she had opened the flood gates and everything that was on her mind tumbled out, completely and totally unfiltered. "To Gideon or to Hotch or to anyone. I talked to Elle that night, and I knew she wasn't right. I—I should've told someone."
Morgan carefully wrapped his earbuds around his phone before setting them aside. He leaned towards her, his face somber and serious.
"Care, listen to me," he said, keeping his voice low so he didn't disturb the rest of the plane. "Do not do that to yourself. You were just trying to help a friend. You hear me?"
Slowly, she nodded, but he could see the unconvinced look on her face.
He sighed then shook his head. "Elle made her own choice. That's on her. Not on you or Spencer or me. Her."
She knew he was right. What could she of possibly done to stop Elle short of restraining her? It wasn't fair to place that kind of blame on herself. She should forgive herself and just move on. She would.
And yet, as Morgan settled back into his seat and closed his eyes, she couldn't understand why she still felt so heavy.
It wasn't until the next day when Hotch had told the team that Elle had resigned from the Bureau when she finally understood the aching in her chest.
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adaline updated!
this chapter gives me mixed emotions bc elle is gone, but that means my mf queen emily prentiss is going to be representing. you already know her and caroline are going to be a Power Duo™.
also! i cannot find the words to describe how thankful i am for you guys. white noise hit 300k reads a week ago and i am in shock. thank you for continuing to support this story.
i love you all so much that it hurts.