Chapter Text
Across the table in the interrogation room sat a teenage boy, and despite being on the clear side of the one-way mirror, Hotch felt like he was looking at his own reflection.
The kid sat, totally upright. When he’d first been left alone in the room, he’d taken in every detail around him. Now, his gaze navigated between the mirror and the door. It wasn’t a nervous flicker; it was more like the ‘orderly visual search patterns’ they promoted in drivers education for maintaining a full view of the road and the mirrors. It was a trained reaction.
He was the one last missing piece in a puzzle of a case the BAU had been assigned to. Three days ago, they’d been brought in on a case of hero-homicide. Although there was only one body, the ME had been suspicious about the failed resuscitation attempt and convinced the chief to call the FBI in.
They hadn’t found more bodies, but they’d found a county full of close calls, all with one man in common -- the hero, Sheriff Kent. They’d found everything they needed to arrest him at his house, and they’d found evidence of something else: his son.
None of the others in Kent’s department had known anything was wrong, not when it came to Kent’s unscrupulous work or when it came to the fact that his supposedly normal 13-year-old son was nowhere to be found.
He wasn’t in the house, and according to his school, he’d missed the day before, a Monday. The kid had been missing for anything between one to three days without it being reported.
They’d put an Amber Alert out, but the result wasn’t what they’d expected. The son had turned himself in that afternoon, as if he were a criminal. So there Matthew Kent sat, waiting for an officer to question him.
“Hotch,” Morgan asked from beside him. “Are you sure this is the best approach?”
Hotch nodded. He could tell Morgan was already feeling protective, and he couldn’t blame him. Hotch had no doubt that Matthew Kent was ultimately innocent, and the kid was clearly vulnerable.
He also clearly had an ingrained respect for the law and authority, and somehow, he’d interpreted the Amber Alert as evidence that he had done something wrong. It was a useful opportunity to learn what he knew. By taking his ‘confession,’ as it were, they might learn something useful. He just had to hope the amount of further damage they’d certainly be doing to Matthew Kent’s psyche was worth it.
Part of Hotch wanted to be the one to walk in that room, but he knew that was the wrong call. He was too much like the kid, and he’d seem too much like his father. Morgan was too connected to the kid, too. That left Rossi.
He was getting ready to go in alone. They’d see what Matthew had to say, and then decide if they needed to talk to the sheriff again. “Go ahead, Dave,” Hotch said.
Matthew seemed to hear Rossi’s footsteps outside the door because he stiffened, glancing one last time at the mirror before fixing his gaze on the door. He blinked as the door opened, but met Rossi’s gaze and visually followed him as he crossed the room and sat down.
“So, why’d you turn yourself in?” Rossi asked casually.
Another blink. “I saw the Amber Alert, sir.”
“So you said. And that made you turn yourself in.” He sounded skeptical.
“I… the alert must have been put out for a reason,” Matthew justified. “I thought it was the right thing to do.”
“Oh? Why is an Amber Alert normally put out?”
Matthew’s eyes locked on the mirror glass again, seeming to search it for something. “I don’t know, sir,” he said hesitantly.
Rossi snorted and nodded slowly. “You don’t know. Tell me, Matthew, why weren’t you at school yesterday?”
The kid dropped his eyes and breathed in before meeting Rossi’s gaze and saying, “I ran away, sir.”
“And when exactly was that?”
“Father didn’t tell you?” Matthew asked. He looked less like a resigned -- if frightened -- confessor and more like a deer in headlights now.
“Your father? No, he hasn’t said anything about you.”
Matthew swallowed quickly but didn’t say anything. He stared at Rossi, frozen.
“When did you run away?” Rossi asked again.
“Friday night,” he said.
“What time?”
He blinked again, like he had when the door opened. “I don’t know, sir. It was dark.”
“It was dark? So you couldn’t see the time?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I meant, it must have been night because it was dark.”
“But you don’t know what time.”
“No, sir.”
Morgan looked over at Hotch. “Why is he pushing so hard on the time? The kid said he doesn’t know.”
“I know. I’m not quite sure either, but we can trust him.”
“He’s treating the kid like a suspect!”
“I know, Morgan.” He tried to focus back on the interrogation room. Rossi was still pressing.
“What, you didn’t look at a clock or your phone?”
“There’s no clock in my room and I don’t have a phone,” he answered desperately.
“So you left from your room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How?”
“Out the window, sir. I removed the tab from the sill and climbed out.”
“Did you put the tab back in?”
“Yes, sir.”
That matched what they’d found in the room.
“Did you take anything with you?”
“Only what I was wearing.”
That matched what they’d found in his room, too. Matthew Kent’s bedroom was a small, entirely white room in the house’s split level basement, with tabs that kept the windows from opening fully. The only evidence it was anything besides a bare guest room were the child sized clothes arranged in the closet and folded neatly in the hamper.
Hotch noticed the implication that the kid’s clothes were something he’d taken and filed it away for later. It could just be word choice, or it could be evidence of abuse. It wasn’t uncommon for abuse victims to feel like every part of their life or environment, even the clothes they wore belonged to someone else or were beyond their control.
The stark environment he lived in, no games or hobbies or signs of his personality in his room certainly suggested it.
“Is that what you’re wearing now?” Rossi asked.
Matthew hesitated again before saying “No, sir.”
“Where’d you get new clothes?”
“I stole them.” He held Rossi’s gaze as he said it, but his breathing accelerated and he recoiled just barely as he spoke.
He was lying. That was interesting. Someone with so much respect for the law wouldn’t make up a crime unless they were protecting someone else. Hotch knew the others must have registered it, too. Rossi switched tacts.
“Why did you run away?”
“Sir?”
“Come on, Matthew! You’re a thirteen-year-old kid with good grades from a nice house. Why did you run away?”
There it was -- the reaction Hotch had been waiting for. Matthew’s hand twitched and his eyes widened. No matter how well trained, and Matthew seemed exceptionally well trained, no one could perfectly mask their reactions. He was afraid, and Hotch would wager that his fear was coming from both Rossi’s tone and the questions themselves.
“May I speak to my father?” He asked.
“Answer the questions,” Rossi countered. “Then, maybe.”
“Please--” he sounded simultaneously desperate and subdued.
“What did I just say?” Rossi shook his head like the kid was being stupid and annoying, glancing back at the mirror as if to share his mood with them. “Besides, why would you want to talk to the guy you ran away from?”
“I didn’t mean--” he turned from Rossi to the glass. “I thought I’d caused you enough trouble, Father. That’s all, I swear. I’m sorry. I-- I didn’t know the school would report it.”
“Jesus,” Morgan muttered. Hotch didn’t respond, but he understood the urge. His own stomach had dropped when Matthew looked at them through the glass, begging as though his father must be back with them.
“He doesn’t even know about his father’s arrest,” Morgan continued.
“Apparently,” Hotch agreed.
Rossi stood abruptly and left the room. Matthew’s gaze followed him the whole way before returning to the window.
“I’m sorry, Father,” he said softly.
Rossi rejoined the two of them behind the glass. “I don’t know where we’re going with this, Hotch. He’s scared and backed into a corner, but whatever he knows about anyone else, he’s not saying.”
“Well, we know more about the type of abuse Kent inflicted,” Hotch said slowly.
“Yeah, cus we just inflicted more of it,” Morgan snapped.
“Let’s meet with the others; we can talk this through,” Hotch said. A part of him agreed with Morgan; it wasn’t fair to play mind games with a victim. His father had clearly used his badge of office, used the law itself, as a weapon against his son. And, judging by the fact that Matthew didn’t know what Amber Alerts were for, he had no source of information about the law outside of his father. The man had free reign to twist the law into whatever he wanted it to be, and Rossi had done much the same, using Matthew’s ignorance against him. None of it changed the fact that they’d done what they’d done, and Hotch didn’t know where to go from here.
“What about the kid? We can’t just leave him in there,” Rossi pointed out.
“We can have JJ talk to him once we figure this out. She should be a less threatening presence to him.”
Satisfied enough with his answer, Hotch’s agents followed him back into the main room of the station.
“So, how’d it go?” Prentiss asked. “What did he say?”
“Not much. We know he ran away, and he seems to think that’s illegal. He’s definitely protecting someone else who helped him, and he’s either protecting his father or doesn’t understand why the abuse is wrong.”
“Why would he run away if he didn’t know? And why would he protect his father if he did?” JJ asked.
“He was probably protecting himself. Children of abusive parents experience extreme cognitive dissonance on a daily basis just trying to survive,” Reid said. “They experience moments of anger -- clarity about what’s been done to them -- which get redirected because confrontation with the parent is too dangerous. Even disliking the parent feels too dangerous.”
“So you think he ran away in one of those moments of clarity, and now he’s back to defending him?” JJ clarified.
“Assuming that taking his father’s side for his own safety is his default, it makes sense. He’s in survival mode, and whatever pushed him to run away from home isn’t his main concern right now.”
Hotch nodded. “I’m more concerned about the other person in the equation.” He filled the others in on how they’d deduced that someone had helped Matthew after he ran away.
“We think he’s defending them so they can’t be charged as accessories. It is actually illegal to help runaways in some states,” Morgan said. “But we gotta find this person. The hardass approach isn’t working, and they may be the only person he’s actually trusted.”
“We have more than enough information to charge Kent already,” Prentiss said. “We don’t have to drag Matthew through this.”
“He deserves justice,” Rossi said.
“Yeah, he does,” Prentiss countered. “I just don’t think we should be trying to decide what that means for him on his behalf. His father’s already going to jail for a long time. He’s never gonna have custody again. As far as I’m concerned, unless Matthew wants to press charges on his abuse, which you said he clearly doesn’t, our work is done.”
“Something still doesn’t fit about this,” Hotch said. “We know how Kent framed people to get promotions and eventually evolved into hero homicide. We know Matthew was abused. But we don’t know why he left or who helped him.”
Morgan nodded. “You’re right. There are a lot of people who would try to take advantage of someone like Matthew.”
“Okay, I’m with you, 100%,” Prentiss said. “But that’s not technically part of our case. What can we do?”
That was the question. By all standards, there wasn’t anything more the team could do for him. It should have gone to Child Protective Services and they should have gone back to Quantico. Hotch didn’t think that was possible -- cases with police officers always hit the team differently, and they were invested. Morgan was ready to go to bat for the kid, and if Hotch was being honest, he was, too. Prentiss, Reid, and JJ hadn’t met Matthew Kent yet, but they’d seen the evidence, and he knew they’d follow his lead.
He just didn’t know what that would be yet.
“He technically did confess to stealing clothes,” Rossi said.
“What, you want to book him for that ?”
“No, I’m saying we can hold him -- keep trying to figure this out.”
“If we’re doing that,” Morgan said, “we need a different strategy.”
JJ went in. They’d briefed her on the situation and what they’d profiled of Matthew’s behaviour so far. His gaze followed JJ with the exact same intensity it had followed Rossi with earlier as she sat down.
“Hi, Matthew,” she said gently. “How are you?”
The question seemed to confuse him even as he said, “I’m well, ma’am,” automatically.
“Good. We’re not going to charge you with anything, okay? We know you were just trying to do what you thought was right. But we need to get you checked at a hospital, and we need to ask you a few more questions.”
“Thank you,” he said. “But, I don’t need a hospital. I can answer questions here.”
“I’m sure you can,” JJ said. “But we need to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” he responded immediately.
“It’s standard procedure,” JJ said -- a trump card. They knew Matthew wouldn’t go against it, and he didn’t. He dropped his gaze and waited for JJ’s next move.
“I need to tell you, Matthew, your father’s been arrested.”
That brought his gaze right up. “What? He hasn’t done anything--”
“Yes, he has. He murdered a man. He’s going away for a long time.”
He stared at her in silence for a long moment, in shock. Abruptly, he blinked a few times rapidly and swallowed. “I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “Father killed someone?”
“Yes.”
“No, he couldn’t.” He sounded desperate. “He’s a sheriff, he upholds the law.”
“Matthew--”
“He-- he couldn’t,” he repeated, but he sounded distant, lost and confused. It was the first time they’d seen him interrupt someone, the most he’d talked back so far. When JJ started talking again, he didn’t protest. She described the proof they had without giving details on the crime -- nothing specific that could work its way into the kid’s nightmares.
Hotch decided it was time to move forward. He knew it wasn’t the wisest choice, but he wanted to do the next part himself. He felt connected to the formal teen. The team had decided to stay on. They’d back him.
“I’m sorry, Matthew,” JJ was saying gently when Hotch walked into the interrogation room. Hotch could only imagine how stunned Matthew had to be because the kid wasn’t looking his way when he entered the room like he had been with Rossi. He didn’t even seem to notice Hotch until the man was only a few steps from JJ. That startled him enough to bring his attention back to the present as JJ said, “This is Agent Hotchner. He’ll be taking you to the hospital.”
They hadn’t actually discussed that, but somehow, JJ almost always managed to be on the same page as him. It was part of what made her such an effective press liaison.
Matthew met his gaze, and any vulnerability disappeared from his face, replaced by the blank, submissive respectfulness he’d maintained at the beginning.
“Follow me, please,” Hotch said simply.
He watched as Matthew stood. He held himself erect, just as he’d sat -- essentially at attention -- but it was more than that. Hotch would have described him as standing gingerly, like he was avoiding an injury.
Hotch had had his suspicions when Matthew first turned himself in. He suspected the trip to the hospital would be revealing. He led the way through the station towards the parking lot. He couldn’t see the teen behind him. Prentiss and Rossi were back interrogating the father, but Reid and Morgan were there. They would see anything he missed.
As they reached the SUV, Hotch opened the passenger-side door before crossing in front of the car to his own seat. Matthew looked at the door, alert and silent, but unmoving and confused. He was waiting to see where Reid and Morgan would sit. The two agents slid into the back easily, and the teen took his own place in front, failing -- at least to the profiler’s keen eyes -- to mask his discomfort with the arrangement.
The hospital was close, but the silence for the short ride felt unbearable. Hotch wasn’t normally bothered by silence; he was normally confident enough in his readings of the people in front of him to control the situation, at least when it came to work. His professional barrier felt cracked just from being around Matthew. He didn’t know the right calls anymore.
He was proceeding blind, with no intentions but to help this battered young man. The four of them walked into the hospital in the same order they’d walked to the car. As Hotch heard the automatic doors close behind them, he went to speak to the attendant at the front desk. He flashed his badge and explained the situation as simply as he could. The attendant looked over at Matthew, concern creasing her face, and nodded before entering the information into the computer system. She gestured them to the waiting room seats.
They spent the wait in silence. Matthew sat unnaturally still, his eyes taking in the opposite wall and the floor, but never straying back to the BAU agents around him. He hadn’t directly looked at them since Hotch had brought him out of the interrogation room. Morgan shot him a questioning look over the kid’s head, but he accepted Hotch’s silent refusal to answer. Now was not the time to have this conversation -- mostly because they couldn’t actually have a conversation.
“Matthew Kent?” A black man in blue slacks and a white lab coat asked, standing in the hall.
Matthew stood, then looked back to Hotch for permission. Hotch nodded and stood to follow. After showing Matthew to an open room, the doctor stopped Hotch by stepping in front of him.
“Based on the information you’ve given, it might be best if I conduct the exam alone,” he said. “I’ll tell you anything relevant to your case.” Reluctantly, Hotch nodded and stepped back. He didn’t want to leave the kid alone, but the doctor was right-- it was for the best.
He returned to the other agents in the waiting room. “The doctor thought Matthew would be more comfortable if he examined him alone,” he supplied. “Any update from his father?”
“Not yet,” Reid answered.
“Hotch, he’s definitely hurt -- the way he was moving, and he was watching you the entire time,” Morgan said. “I don’t think he’s going to talk to us.”
“How did he seem to be taking the news about the sheriff?” he asked instead of responding directly.
“I’m not sure,” Reid said. “Sometimes he seemed like he was in shock, but mostly, he was paying attention to you and his surroundings. He’s better than most children at hiding his emotions.”
“He’s better than most people,” Morgan corrected. Reid nodded in agreement.
“We’ll try to talk to him,” Hotch said, “and we’ll see if the doctor’s report helps at all.”
“You know, Matthew is a good kid,” Reid said, “and if he ends up in foster care, that’s all they’re going to see. He needs help from someone who understands him if he’s going to open up.”
I know, Hotch thought. “Hopefully, it won’t come to that. We can have Garcia look into relatives in the area.”
“Why haven’t you asked her yet?” Morgan asked.
Because he was dreading it, because the kind-hearted tech analyst would vocalize all the concerns he was trying to ignore, and because if he wasn’t careful, she might accidentally talk him into involving himself. “I want to see what we find out about whoever helped him first,” Hotch said instead. “We don’t know who else is already involved in the case.”
It wasn’t long before the doctor re-emerged and summoned them to the room. Hotch motioned for the other two to stay seated. He didn’t want to overwhelm the teen.
Matthew was sitting on the exam table, redressed in his own clothes with a hospital gown set to the side. His gaze was already on the door when they walked in.
“So,” the doctor said. “As Matthew and I talked about, he’s in relatively good health physically. He has some injuries that needed treatment, though most of his injuries are superficial and will heal on their own, given time.” He handed Hotch a folder with precise descriptions of Matthew’s condition.
By superficial wounds, the doctor apparently meant that Matthew had scattered bruises as well as some scrapes that the doctor had disinfected and bandaged. Matthew also had a sprained wrist, which was now wrapped, one gash which had required a few stitches, and evidence of improperly healed older injuries.
The doctor had written, both his physical condition and interactions with me indicated a history of abuse. Hotch had expected as much. Some of the recent injuries showed evidence of minimal first aid. Whoever had given Matthew new clothes must have also attempted to help him but hadn’t gone so far as to bring him to a hospital, despite knowing he was injured. That concerned him.
“I have also prescribed an antibiotic,” the doctor said. “The scrape on his right shoulder is infected. You can pick up the prescription from our pharmacy down the hall.”
“Would you mind if we used this room?” Hotch asked.
“Sure. I’ll tell the nurse it’ll be occupied for a bit. Let me know when you’re done.”
After the doctor left, Hotch closed the door as gently as he could. Matthew still blinked, a reaction Hotch had come to see as the teens subdued flinch response.
“You’re not in trouble or under arrest,” he started. “But we do need to know about your time at home with your father and what happened when you ran away. It could be relevant to your father’s case.”
Matthew nodded. “Okay.”
“I’m sure this is difficult. Do you want to talk to Morgan and Reid here or back at the station?”
He hesitated. “If… If we go back to the station, may I speak to Father?” he asked.
“You want to?” As soon as he had, he knew he shouldn’t have asked. He of all people should understand the complex feelings people could have towards their parents.
“Yes, sir,” Matthew said, sounded both subdued and a little desperate.
“I’ll ask at the station.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Reid picked up the prescription of antibiotics while Hotch pulled the SUV around to the front and Morgan waited with Matthew. Hotch had hoped that the hospital would be a better environment for Matthew to face some of what had happened to him because it was less connected to his father and law enforcement.
Perhaps that was naive -- it wasn’t like anyone liked hospitals. The sterile, harsh white lighting wasn’t exactly comforting. It served a purpose, but that purpose wasn’t to soothe people.
The drive back was equally silent, and it was all giving Hotch too much time to think. Reid was right; Matthew needed someone who understood his situation or he would shoulder the effects of his victimization on his own and hide them behind his professionalism. Regardless of protocol, there was no way it could be right to let that happen.
But maybe, maybe the kid did have a relative in the area -- someone who loved him and could help him recover. If he did, Garcia would be able to track them down.
“Go ahead and take him to the conference room,” Hotch said. “See if he needs anything. I’m going to see if Prentiss and Rossi have gotten anything more out of Sheriff Kent.”
They were waiting for him in the main room of the station. “He’s a scumbag, but he’s been in law enforcement too long for us to get him to confess anything,” Rossi said. “Aside from some comments that Matthew is “lazy and disorderly,” we don’t have any more indication of what went on in that house.”
“We already knew he was a neat-freak,” Prentiss said. “Matthew seems more orderly than any thirteen-year-old I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine how easy it must be to piss that guy off when he has the power he’s accustomed to.”
Hotch could. “No indication that he knew whoever helped Matthew out?”
Rossi shook his head. “He claimed Matthew didn’t have any friends at school, and wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone online or go out without his permission.”
“How was he at the hospital?” Prentiss asked.
“Reserved. The doctor checked him over,” he handed them the folder as he spoke. “He’s agreed to answer some of our questions, and then he wants to speak to his father.”
“He wants to talk to him? Why?”
“I don’t know. If he seems comfortable with Morgan or Reid after they talk to him, I’ll send one of them in with him.”
It wasn’t the first time they’d seen victims of abuse drawn to their abusers, either seeking some sign of acceptance or love or seeking a chance for confrontation. Many didn’t want to ever see or hear from their abusers again, but there was no one reaction to abuse.
“Have Garcia look into Matthew’s relatives, see if there’s anyone in the area who might be able to take him in,” Hotch said.
Prentiss nodded.