"Since when are you a doctor? Last I remember, you were no better than a tabloid journalist."
Tatum Katz had a rough start with the BAU. Her papparazzi-adjacent photographer being a suspect in one of their cases wasn't exactly a great first impress...
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twenty-four || post-season 7, episode 14
While waiting for Spencer to return from the car, Tate found her way down to her mother and stepfather's old bedroom. All of her mother's things were missing. Where Toby had memorialized Tate's presence in the home, he had completely disregarded her mother's. She tore through the closets, searching for any trace of her mother's existence to no avail. Finally, she opened one of the closet doors in the hallway to reveal a staircase.
"Spence?" she called back into the house. When there was no response, she sighed and decided to go it alone.
Tate kicked up dust wherever she walked as she entered the attic. The rest of the house was in pristine condition when she arrived, including her old bedroom, likely thanks to a staff Toby kept, but it seemed no one tended to the abandoned storage area up the closet stairs.
Tate pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and turned on the small flashlight as she looked around the space. She skimmed the neatly-kept organizational system before coming face to face with a stack of boxes marked "Irene." She immediately got one down and started digging through it. Stacks upon stacks of her mother's clothing. When she pressed it close to her nose, she could still pick up the faint scent of her perfume. Tacky and sickly sweet, but vibrant vanilla nonetheless.
"Tate? Where'd you go?" Spencer yelled through the house.
Tate bounded down the stairs and poked her head out the door, startling Spencer. "Come see what I found."
<3
They ended up taking all of the boxes of her mother's things with her to be sorted on a later date. The boxes Tate got the opportunity to open were only her mother's clothes and the beginnings of some old books and keepsakes, but nothing she could spend too much time examining yet. She and Spencer still wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, so that remained a priority.
"Thank God we decided to go with the minivan. I hope this thing can hold all my shit," Tate remarked as they started packing boxes into the rental car. They'd almost gone for a small, low-to-the-ground vehicle, but Spencer talked her out of it.
Once everything was in the van, with the help of a few staff members who'd shown up to start cleaning the house as they did every day, Tate had to let them know that she'd be selling the property soon. She invited them to stay on and continue upkeep on the huge house until it was off the market, promised a big bonus when the house sold, and sent them on their way.
Then it was off to CubeSmart Self Storage. The envelope with the key sat in her back pocket as Spencer drove them through Los Angeles. They pulled up to a dingy warehouse with a gaudy, orange color accenting the upper edge of the building.
"The man was a millionaire, but he had a shitty, low-budget lawyer and kept his shit in this musty storage facility. There was so much wrong with him," Tate muttered before climbing out of the vehicle.
