heather || spencer reid

xviii -trying to solve the mystery-

*

"Sir, could I speak to you for a minute?",
Garcia asked, wanting Hotch to come out of the conference room.

As he nodded and left the room behind, she led him to her office.

She got into her swivel chair and put a very pink pen into her hand to point onto her bright screen with it.

"As you know, the wonderfully beautiful Penelope Garcia can open secret files..", she said, waiting for a reaction but there was none, so she continued, her voice turning into a near-whisper, "Heather was raped by a certain Rowland Scott. Apparently this went with her father knowing, since Rowland was a friend of his, and it took her years to finally be able to tell the police."

"Why was the file secret?", he asked puzzled. Garcia shrugged her shoulders, "I have no idea. But yeah, Heather's parents were divorced from early on and her mother died of cancer when Heather was ten, the house in which she lives today was her mothers. But when Heather moved- her stalker did as well. Rowland now lives not that far away. Here's his address."

"Okay, thank you Garcia. I want Morgan, Prentiss and Rossi go and check it out, maybe he is the Unsub. I'll go and look at the letters once again with Spencer and JJ. Spencer can't know that we're so close, I don't want him to see how we discover Heather since it may not be how he hopes to find her. I don't want to crush him."

Garcia understood. They couldn't risk Spencer getting miserable again. She thought it wasn't fair at all, somehow there are always people leaving him.

-
"This stylistic means is fairly odd", Spencer said, "I haven't seen that before: you aren't hard to find night and day ; that's a litotes. He also uses metonymies, onomatopoeias and as you already said enallages. I also find it odd, like you Hotch, that he uses the same word for two different meanings and that he apostrophises the negative but not the positive verbs."

"Right. And what does that say about the Unsub?", JJ asked.

"He has a dominant character, probably is older than we thought he was and wants to seem like he knows Heather well, trying to convince her that she made mistakes and it's her fault and that she should regret not having continued being in a relationship with him, which he underlined with all of the stylistic means he uses. What means he stalked her before and thought they were together but when she moved, she left him behind, not telling him about it and hurting him in doing so. And he wants it to be her turn now."

-

-

"Baby Girl?", Morgan spoke into his phone.

"Yes? Everything alright Chocolate Thunder? You sound concerned."

"Rowland isn't to be found. His house is clear."

"Do you think it's him?", Garcia asked.

"100 percent. There are enough pictures of Jayce stuck on his wall to prove that. I'll send them to you. Can you please tell me where all of these were taken so that we can check out the places and see if anyone noticed someone taking special interest in her?"

"Sure. Okay, I got the pictures, I'll send you the locations. I can check Heather's bank accounts and everything even though I feel bad looking into all of her stuff."

"Great. Could you also check Rowland's accounts? I think that would be quite helpful. Thank you Sweetness."

"No problemo."

After they had hung up, Rossi said,
"I know this coffee shop, let's start there till we get the rest of the addresses."

The two others found that it was a good idea and got into the car, Morgan sat in the drivers seat listening to Rossi's directions.

When they reached the small coffee shop, there was someone at the door greeting them, "Feds.", he said, showing them a cocky smile.

He was tall and slender, short black hair covered the top of his head and he looked like he would get a bald spot soon even though he didn't seem that old.

Morgan stopped in his tracks and went to ask him some questions, gesturing for the others to go into the shop and show pictures of both Heather and Scott to see if anyone knew anything about their whereabouts.

Everybody they had asked answered the questions in the negative, even the 'hey-feds-guy'. The farthest they had come was that some said they saw Heather sometimes since she often came there to get coffee. One person also described someone being with her, but the description fitted Reid.

Derek got the other addresses from Garcia and the same thing went on in every other location they had driven to. Everybody said they hadn't seen either of the two.

They just somehow weren't to be found. And apparently nobody knew anything.

After a long day, driving around in Virginia and asking every person they saw about Scott and Heather, they were tired.

Every one of the three had gotten a message from Hotch that said they should come to Strauss' office since she asked to see them.

"Did you get the text message as well?", Rossi asked, JJ and Morgan nodded.

So Derek drove them back to the bureau.
When they got out, they took the elevator and drove straight to Erin's office, wondering what she wanted to say to them.

When Rossi opened the door for them, they saw that the remaining team was already there.

"Alright, so thank you for coming. I have to tell you that due to the fact that we got a lot of police departments asking for our help at the moment and the cases lining up and you not getting any further in your current case, since there is no new evidence, we are forced to give this case to another unit. I do understand that this is hard since you may personally be involved in this case, but maybe it's for the better because of that same fact.", Strauss started.

Some of the team members found themselves directing short concerned glances at Spencer.

They quietly nodded, shaking Strauss' hand but everyone in the room knew that they would continue to search Heather.