Chapter Text
Spencer was early. This in itself wasn’t too out of the ordinary; some nights during cases when he couldn’t escape the theories and complexities of a case he’d simply give up on and sleep and head to the office as early as possible to get back to work—that was the problem with a brain that ran like a machine with no OFF switch. But lately, it had been happening more and more, even when no new cases had crossed their desks in days. Those were the darker nights, the nights where even though sleep was in his grip, he’d awake sweating and crying for those he couldn’t save, the people he had failed.
Last night had been one of those nights as he lay in bed shaking and staring at his ceiling, the sweat on his skin too familiar in its slow cooling to the spray of Ryan Phillip’s blood. The man had done unspeakable things, but Spencer had never believed in a life for a life, bloodshed should never result in more blood, innocent or otherwise. The justice system was in place for a reason, and that reason was not just to punish, but to rehabilitate. People could change, they could be saved. He had to believe that. If not, what hope was there for him?
His fingers had twitched as that creeping itch clawed its way up his arm, the familiar call to a will far greater than his own, a caressing whisper that told him how to make the pain go away. He’d reached across to his bedside table for John’s one-year medallion. In a few more weeks he’d have to return it, replacing it with his own, but for now, he let the cool metal seep into his skin as he twirled the coin over and over between his fingers, reminding himself of everything he had to lose if he went down that path again.
But whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Ryan staring down the barrel of Jack’s gun, heard the shot blow through his eardrums, felt the sticky spatter of his blood as it hit his skin. And if it wasn’t Ryan, it was Owen, the boy’s harrowed face terrified and sunken and so, so young as he stared down the barrel of a gun—Reid’s gun. If that was what his job had come to, shooting teenagers whose lives could just as easily have been his own with the right nudge, then perhaps his career wasn’t worth protecting, wasn’t worth ignoring the one thing that could make it all go away.
He’d thrown himself into the shower as soon as the thought crossed his mind, desperate to wash the sticky slime from his skin, not daring to look down in case the water chasing the drain ran red.
That had been six hours ago.
Now he sat at his desk in the BAU bullpen, his third coffee in front of him as he tried desperately to focus on the consultation in his lap without glancing over to the file on Ryan Phillip’s he had still yet to sign off. Hotch hadn’t called him up on the late paperwork yet, but it was only a matter of time before bureaucracy overtook their leaders' need to give his agents time.
“Conference room in five,” the leader in question said as he passed between Spencer and Morgan’s desks, not looking back at them as he stalked ahead to speak to JJ who was all set to start the briefing.
Spencer closed the file in his lap and turned, catching Moran’s eye.
“Another day, another psycho,” he said, raising his mug as if in salute. Spencer just set the file on his desk and drained the remains of his own mug, face scrunching at the coffee ground sediment that washed against his teeth.
Prentiss and Rossi were already waiting in the conference room with Hotch and JJ as Spencer and Morgan entered to claim the remaining seats. Spencer chose the one by Prentiss and almost immediately regretted it, the woman’s dark eyes watching his every movement as he settled beside her.
“How’re you feeling, Reid?” she asked low enough only he could hear, her voice soft in a way that told him she actually wanted to know the answer.
“I’m fine,” he replied simply, running his tongue over his teeth to check for any remaining grounds. Emily’s eye twitched, the only indication she didn’t believe him, but then he knew she wouldn’t press. Emily was good like that.
“Okay,” JJ said once they were settled, raising her remote to power on the TV. “Vegas P.D has called us in because they think they have a serial killer on their hands.” She pressed a button and the faces of two young women—teenagers, really—flashed onto the screen, both of them blonde and with their eyes darkened slightly with kohl. “Bethany Rollins, nineteen years old. Her body was found in a parking lot of a Las Vegas diner two weeks ago, and Amelia Stone, seventeen was found just over a month ago. Both victims were found badly beaten and sexually assaulted.”
“Cause of death?” Rossi asked, flipping open the file in front of him.
“Blunt force trauma to the head. The murder weapon hasn’t been identified, but the M.E. thinks it’s some kind of heavy tool like a hammer or—”
“A hammer would have a smaller point of impact,” Spencer said as he eyed the autopsy pictures, already having read the first two pages of the file. “This is far messier, skull fractured in multiple locations. I’d say it was some kind of wrench.”
“So, someone who works with tools, maybe a handyman?” Prentiss offered.
“Or anyone with access to hand tools,” Morgan offered.
“Which could be anyone,” Hotch said simply.
“When were they reported missing?” Rossi asked.
“Both girls’ families reported them missing hours after they were found, but it took two weeks for the bodies to show up anywhere,” JJ supplied. “Which means—”
“He’s about to abduct another girl,” Morgan said grimly. “Why are we just hearing about this?”
“Because twenty-four hours ago another woman was reported missing.” JJ clicked her remote to bring up the third image, and when Spencer glanced up at the latest victim, his entire chest constricted. It couldn’t be. The woman on the screen looked exactly like— “Hester Marks, twenty-eight-year-old single mom. She was reported missing by her roommate when she didn’t return from her shift at a local diner.”
“Let me guess,” Rossi started, “From the parking lot.”
“There’s no CCTV in the parking lot, but Hester wasn’t seen on any of the traffic cameras on the adjoining streets, so police assume that was the abduction site.”
“So what? This guy has a thing for waitresses?” Morgan asked.
“The first two weren’t waitresses,” Prentiss pointed out, marking the line in her file as she said, “Bethany was a stripper and Amelia was a high school student.”
The buzz of speculation continued, but Spencer turned it out, focusing instead on the photo of the third victim, Hester, in the file. The photograph of her had been taken from a community college ID and showed a woman with mahogany hair tied away from her pale face, a few stray curls wisping at her temples. There was a spattering of freckles over her pierced nose, spreading like a soft cloud beneath her cool blue eyes.
It had been fifteen years since he’d seen Marissa Myers, but Spencer never forgot a face, and if someone were to ask what he thought she would look like now, the woman staring back at him would be almost perfect. He would have sworn his badge and gun on it if not for the brown hair and the fact the math didn’t add up. Marissa would be in her early thirties by now, probably settled down with a family somewhere that was anywhere but Vegas.
I don’t want to die in this town, she’d said to him, and in all the years since that day he’d hoped she’d found her way out, how built a life for herself out of the Las Vegas desert and was happy. This couldn’t be her. It just couldn’t. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew Hester’s face, that he had seen her smile and heard her—
“Kid,” Morgan said, snapping Spencer from his musing with a hand on the shoulder. “You alright?”
A quick glance around the room told him the meeting was over, everyone getting ready to head to the jet for the case.
“Yeah. Fine,” he said, closing the file in his lap and pushing out of his chair. Morgan looked ready to call him out, but Spencer wasn’t in the mood for his prying, not now there was a woman’s life on the line. “Let’s go,” he said, pushing past the other agent, shaking his head slightly as if it were enough to dispel the shape of the woman’s piercing gaze from his mind.
For the entire five-hour flight from DC to Vegas, Spencer couldn’t take his eyes off the case file in his lap. The rest of his team were too caught up in their own thing to pay him much mind, JJ and Prentiss discussing the case with Rossi while Morgan sat beside Hotch, stern-faced as ever as he listened in. He looked down at Hester’s picture again and racked his brain for how she could possibly feel this familiar to him. It was possible they were in school together, Hester was only two years older than him, after all, and even if he’d skipped a few grades, he could have known her as a child or something. Even as he thought it, the argument felt flimsy at best, the niggling feeling in the back of his mind telling him he knew exactly who this woman was.
He couldn’t make any sense of it! Then again, when had anything regarding Marissa ever made sense to him? Besides, he could hardly make a sound comparison; he’d never seen Marissa without her face plastered in white powder and eyes smudged with black until she looked like a ghost, her blonde-pink hair straight and limp. There were a number of possibilities that made far more sense, but he just couldn’t find it in him to believe them, his rational brain losing out to the gut feeling that he knew this woman.
“We need to find out what we can about Hester Marks,” Hotch said to no one in particular, “see if this abduction is related or a coincidence. Prentiss, Reid, you go to Hester’s apartment.” Emily gave Spencer a small smile which he tried his best to return. The last thing he needed was for his team to think he wasn’t in the right mindset for this case, especially given what happened in Texas a couple of weeks before. “Morgan and Rossi, you go to the diner and see what you can find about the abduction. JJ and I will set up at the precinct and speak with the families of the other victims.”
They each nodded their agreement and prepared to gather their things as the pilot announced they were getting ready to land.
It always felt strange for him to be back in his hometown, staring out the SUV window at roads he’d recognised from years ago. They drove in relative silence, Prentiss looking over to him at the corner of her eye every couple of minutes thinking he wouldn’t notice while he watched the roads narrow and bend as they made their way to Hester’s apartment building. It rose up suddenly out of the surrounding warehouses and auto shops, a demure two-story building built of sandstone that had once been painted a bright, sunshine yellow but had decayed over the years to a dirty, almost brown. The old sign had probably once read Sunnyside Apartments, but the wood had rotten and split in the sun, breaking through letters so it looked more like “Su--ys--e” now, the bright sun graphic now warped and the same brown as the painted sky.
Prentiss pulled into an available lot outside and Spencer caught a glimpse of a pool through the iron fencing to the courtyard, inflatables abandoned and wilting like flowers in the April sun. He may have spent his childhood in Vegas, but he was still painfully unaccustomed to the heat. He’d left his cardigan in his hotel room, but the day had only gotten warmer as it bled into the afternoon and his shirt sleeves would only roll up so far.
“Hey, Reid?” Prentiss started, and his throat tightened slightly. He could already see where this was going and he wanted nothing more than to just climb out of the SUV without being profiled by his friend. He turned to her, lifting his sunglasses so he could see her properly. “Are you alright?” she asked, voice as soft as it had been that morning in the briefing room.
He wasn’t surprised by it; ever since Texas his team had been watching him a little closer than usual, trying to gauge if he was going to fly off the handle again and do something reckless. Not that he could really blame them. He had, after all, walked unarmed and unprotected into the street to try and talk down a very much armed unsub who fit the profile of a school shooter perfectly. The statistics on his chance of survival in that situation had been staggeringly low, but he’d done it anyway. All on a gut feeling. Emily had been right there with him, watching his back like he knew she would, but once it was all over she’d looked as ready to treat him a new one as the rest of his team, maybe even more so, unable to understand how he could put his faith—his entire life—in the possibility of him sympathizing with Owen.
He swallowed. “Of course. Why’d you ask?”
Prentiss pivoted slightly in her seat, bracing one arm against the wheel as she removed her own sunglasses. It didn’t look like a comfortable position, but then he supposed that wasn’t the point of it. Emily wanted him to know this was her priority right now, above the case, she wanted him to know she was there for him. It was a nice, slightly claustrophobic gesture.
“Have you seen any movies?” The delicacy in her voice made him itch and he could almost feel it again, the slick feel of blood cooling on his skin in the open air.
“Uh, no. I—er, I haven't had the time.” Emily’s answering sigh was the nudge he needed to reach for the door handle, stepping out of the SUV before she pry any further. Her heart was in the right place, he knew, but he didn’t want it to have to be there in the first place. He didn’t want his team to always be looking over his shoulder as if to check how close he was to the edge.
The gate to the complex was propped open by a single brick, and he tried not to cringe as they both climbed the rickety iron staircase up to the second level. It reminded him of the fire escape Marissa had claimed those years ago, where they’d sat and looked at the horizon on the day of her expulsion. He’d not seen her since, not because he didn’t want to, but he just hadn’t known where to start. He had no idea where she lived and within two months of the incident, he was off to college for the first time. He could always try and find her while they worked the case, to see if she had stayed in the area or jetted off to start her life elsewhere. Maybe that would be enough for him to finally focus on Hester how he needed to, without seeing the ghost of another girl in her eyes.
He double-checked the address Garcia had sent when they reached the front door and gave Prentiss a nod before he raised his knuckles to rap on the surface. There was movement inside immediately, the hushed sound of someone giving instructions before the door opened to reveal an exhausted-looking woman barely older than Spencer was himself. Her dark hair was braided over one shoulder, the other bearing a wicked-looking tiger tattoo that clawed its way across her collarbone.
She’d only opened the door enough for her body to fit as she asked, “Can I help you?”
“I’m Agent Prentiss. This is Dr. Reid,” Emily said, both of them showing their credentials for a second. “We’re with the FBI.”
The woman’s dark eyes widened, but she sighed, rubbing a manicured hand over her forehead. “You’re here about Hester. Of course, come in.”
She stepped aside to allow them to step into the apartment and Spencer noted immediately how the temperature inside was barely cooler than that outside. Most Vegas apartments had their AC on full blast this time of year, but apparently, Hester and her roommate had not deemed it necessary. That or they couldn’t afford to do so. The apartment itself wasn’t untidy—Spencer had certainly seen worse—but the small space was sparse enough that anything out of place was immediately noticeable. A textbox lay open on the small dining table beneath the front window, sticky notes dotted over the page and lines highlighted in varying colors and there were a couple of day's worth of dishes piled up in the sink in the small kitchenette. Somewhere a TV was on, the high voices and sound effects just loud enough for him to know it was from a children's cartoon. It didn’t take a profiler to know it was Hester’s son who was watching.
“You must be Carla,” Emily said, offering the woman her hand. Carla nodded and wiped her hands on her tight jeans before accepting it, looking them both up and down as she did. “What can you tell us about the day Hester went missing?”
“It was a normal day. I was—” A loud cartoon crash blared through the apartment as the TV volume was turned up and Carla sighed. “Can you— just hang on,” she said before darting through the archway that separated the entry of the apartment from the living room. Emily looked over to him and he nodded before following after Carla with her in tow.
The living room was as sparse as the rest of the apartment he’d seen; a single sofa faced the small box TV and the coffee table was littered with children’s drawings of stars and rocket ships, but the only personal effects he could spot was the small bookshelf sat at an awkward angle between the sofa’s edge and the window that overlooked the pool. It was a wonder the wood hadn’t warped with all the books crammed into it, all from authors he recognised well; Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath. His eye lingered on the last name in particular.
I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.
He shook his head slightly as if to shake the memory loose. It was a coincidence, that was all. He needed to keep his head straight on this case. For his team, for Hester, and for the little boy who knelt behind the coffee table that had to be Hester’s son.
“Oz,” Carla said as she took a seat on the sofa beside the boy, affectionately brushing the brown curls from his eyes. “There are some people here to talk to me about your mom.”
The boy turned his eyes from his drawing up to the two agents as if only just noticing they were there. Spencer offered him a small wave, but he didn’t return it.
“Do you know where she is?” he asked simply, his word tugging something deep in Spencer’s gut.
He stepped forward and crouched down by the coffee table, resting his hands on his thighs to be closer to the boy's level. “Not yet,” he said carefully. “But we’re going to do our best.”
The boy—Oscar, he recalled from the report—looked at him for a long moment, eyes flitting over Spencer’s face without ever fully meeting his eye as he fidgeted.
“Why don’t you go play in your room,” Carla suggested, patting Oscar’s back gently. He nodded and stood, giving Spencer a full look at the X-Files -shirt he was wearing. It was a little big on him, but it looked new, the fabric still a little stiff and ill-fitting like it hadn’t been through the wash yet. Carla ruffled his curls as he passed, waiting until she heard a door down the hall click shut before letting out a long sigh.
“He seems sweet,” Emily offered and Carla smiled tiredly. “How old is he?”
“Not old enough,” Carla replied and Spencer nodded vaguely to show he understood. It was never easy when someone went missing, but explaining to a child that their mother hadn’t come home and not having a reason why must have been especially taxing. “I think he knows something’s wrong but he doesn’t quite get it, you know?”
“I do,” Spencer offered.
“I knew something was up when Hester didn’t come home.” She crossed her arms and he noted how her tiger curled with the movement like it was poised to strike.
“Was it not like her to be home late?” He asked and Carla shook her head.
“Always came right back. She likes to read to Oz before bed.”
“And what’s your relation to Hester?” Emily asked.
“She’s my best friend. Gave me a place to stay when I moved here and she—I wasn’t in the best place, you see. Hester helped me get clean, start over. I’d watch Oz in the day so she could work and then when she got back I’d go to work on the strip.”
“You’re a…” Emily began carefully.
“Stripper,” Carla said with a shrug. “Down Deja Vu. Not the best job, but you gotta eat. I was ‘spose to work that night but when Hester didn’t come home…”
“Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Hester?”
“No, Hester’s—she’s a private type. Keeps to herself. I mean, she knows the people she works with and her classmates, but they weren’t close.”
Emily nodded. “Do you think we could take a look around Hester’s room? There could be something in her things that helps our investigation.”
Carla just gestured to the walls around them. “You’re standing in it.”
“She sleeps here?” Emily asked, brow furrowed. The living room was tiny, the sofa alone taking up the entire length of the back wall.
“Couch pulls out.” He tried to keep his face neutral and he took in the space; with the couch pulled out there probably wouldn’t be any more than a foot of space between the end of it and the TV unit, and less than that on each side. It was hardly an ideal living situation, but he supposed it made sense. A waitress and stripped weren’t exactly going to be bringing home much in terms of money. The windowsill appeared to double as a bedside table, a lamp tucked into the corner and a novel lay open with its cracked spine up like someone had rested it there before falling asleep.
“Why doesn’t she have her own room?” Emily asked, not unkindly.
“Used to. She had the big one when Oz was born, but soon as he started school she said he should get his own space. He’s in the smaller and I get the other. I tried to argue with her but, god, she’s a stubborn one. Said she’d have enough saved to get herself her own place soon enough.”
“Where are her things?” Spencer asked, noting there was nothing in the living room, no clothes or even a suitcase to house them.
“We share storage in the bedroom for clothes and stuff. Everything else is in there.” She gestured to the closet built into the wall by the TV. “But she doesn’t have much.”
“Thank you for your help,” Emily said and Carla just nodded mutely back.
“You guys can take a look. I’m going to check on Oz.”
Spencer opened the closet as soon as Carla left the room and blinked at the inside. It was barely the width of a full doorway and judging by the depth had been intended to house CDs or something else insubstantial, not an entire person's personal belongings. There were two shelves inside and the top seemed crammed with bedding—a thin duvet and a limp-looking pillow—and three cardboard boxes were stacked underneath, textbooks and shoes crammed into the gaps down the side.
“She wasn’t kidding,” Emily noted as she took in the boxes. The top one was open and seemed full of old vinyl records, the cardboard casing peeling at the corners and cover art lined with age. Spencer handed that one to Emily first before pulling out the ones underneath. “Couple postcards, candles, nothing to really tell us who this woman is,” she said, turning over a postcard of the Grand Canyon in her hand and reading before dropping it back into the box. “Let’s see if Garcia has more luck.”
Spencer didn’t respond as Emily stood and pulled out her phone, instead looking through his own box of Hester’s things. It mostly seemed to be notebooks, pages upon pages of the same cramped but otherwise neat handwriting of poems and songs, even the odd idea for a story. It saddened him to think of them shut away like this, gathering dust in the bottom of some closet. One of the poems was scribbled on the back of what seemed to be an old library receipt and he recognised the words immediately.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
“Okay, let me put you on speaker,” Emily said into her phone. “Go on, Garcia.”
“ Okay, so I haven’t found very much on Hester Marks—”
“Know the feeling,” Emily said.
“ Oh, but that’s not because our girl is a hermit. No, no. It’s because Hester Marks didn’t exist until 1999 when she opened a Vegas checking account, got a job, and wrote her name on a lease. Few months later, she gives birth to her son Oscar, enrolls in community college, and so on.”
“Wait, so she’s been living under a fake name? Wonder what she’s hiding from. You got anything else?”
Spencer’s brow furrowed and he turned back to the box. A fake name? He swallowed, trying not to think too much about the last case they’d had with alias’ involved, the same case that had kept him up for months. As he dug back through the papers, his fingers brushed the pointed edge of something metal and he drew it out to find a photo frame, the edge sprayed with the kind of gold paint meant to make something look older and more vintage than it was. The paint itself was chipped in places to show the silver metal beneath, and when he turned it over he was met with the smiling faces of two teens with their arms slung around one another on the Vegas strip.
His stomach plummeted, blood roaring in his eyes as he looked at the teenager in the photo, her pale face and long legs ending in a pair of poorly laced boots. There was a reason Spencer tried not to believe in coincidence, but this was impossible.
“ Nothing yet, but—”
Spencer snatched the phone from Emily’s hand and brought the receiver close to his face as he said, “Garcia, I need you to look up a woman called Marissa Myers. Born near Vegas in ‘76 or ‘77. She would have been expelled from Las Vegas Public High School in ‘93.” Emily gaped at him, but he didn’t budge, his jaw tight as she stared at the photograph, the corner digging almost painfully into his palm, but he didn’t care.
“ Wasn’t that your school?” Garcia asked carefully.
“Call me when you find more,” he said bluntly and hung up, turning to offer Emily her phone back and seeing that Carla had appeared in the doorway, her jaw slack and eyes wide as she looked at him.
“How did you know her name?” she asked, eyes wide like a child who’d been caught and didn’t have time to think of a lie out of it.
“Reid, what is it? What’s going on?” Emily asked, eye flicking to the photo in his hand.
“This is our victim. Marissa Myers,” he said, handing the picture to her but not taking his eyes off Carla. Her brow was furrowed as she looked between him and Emily, her eyes widening even more as she settled on Spencer again
“Reid? As in Spencer Reid?”
“Sorry. Do you know each other?” Emily asked, but neither of them took notice. Spencer could feel his pulse in her ears, the annoying voice in his head screaming that it had been right from the start. He hadn’t known Hester from childhood, but he had certainly known her face, her eyes. He’d known from the moment he’d seen the photograph back in Quantico.
“You’re that kid she got kicked out for,” Carla breathed.
The roaring in his ears was becoming unbearable, as was the burning gaze of his partner a couple of feet away. He took the photo from Emily’s hand. “I’m taking this,” he said simply, leaving no room for argument as he slipped it into his satchel and hurried out of the apartment, not checking to see if Emily was behind him.
He’d been right. After all these years, it was Marissa, the girl who had saved him on the worst night of his life. And he’d be damned if he didn’t do his best to return the favor.