Work Text:
Temporary Placement
Katie Cole hadn’t known about the connection between her more recent team member and the infamous David Rossi when she’d recruited her. It hadn’t been common knowledge until after her probationary period had ended, in fact, which made her feel a lot better. Joan hadn’t used her connections for anything other than possibly using Rossi’s knowledge of what different aspects of the bureau needed and tailoring her education to that knowledge. It helped to block out any accusations of nepotism.
Joan was a good fit for her unit. She wasn’t a trained profiler, like Katie herself, but she had a lot of the instincts and could read people incredibly well. A lot of the offenders that they were aiming to capture were excellent at blending in and were often deeply trusted by the people around them. Joan was good at both finding them in the first place, and in finding the tiny crack in the trust towards them and widening that crack. She was all right with the traumatized children they often had to remove along the way, not the best on the team but perfectly comfortable with it if required. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very talented at the undercover aspects that they sometimes used, but that was perfectly fine. Not everyone could be good at everything.
For now, though, most of the team was slogging through their bread and butter, reading through chatroom logs and trying to find leads. The internet had made things infinitely easier for pedophiles to find and lure victims, and they were still playing catch-up in a lot of ways. They didn’t want to come down on kids talking with kids for many reasons, but that was the most basic way they usually made contact with their victim pool.
Joan had gone on a coffee run for the whole unit and had come back quiet and thoughtful. She sat down at her desk after she’d distributed the coffee, and instead of turning to the chat logs pulled up several of the local newspapers. After flipping between three different versions of the same crime bulletin announcement, she made some notes before pulling up some of the reports that they regularly accessed.
Then she headed up to Katie’s office.
“Something on your mind?” Katie usually only saw this level of deep focus from one of her team when something either extremely disturbing or incredibly big crossed their paths.
“I think that someone is using CPS to abduct kids in the greater DMV area,” the girl said. “Actually, they’re using the name of CPS and a lot of common misunderstandings about the foster system to abduct them. I would be really surprised if someone actually from Family Services was involved.”
“Explain.”
“There are reports from local crime bloggers about children being removed from unsafe conditions in several different districts, but there’s no corresponding report in the family services files, or in local police records. Not even something with names redacted. I’d need to talk to people in the office and also possibly families and neighbors, but my instincts say to start digging.”
This had potential as a lead, and if Joan was correct, it was an absolutely terrifying and diabolical way to abduct children. Who was going to report their child missing when family services had them? “Go ahead and start digging. Take someone with you if you go for interviews.”
“Understood.”
The case went deeper than Agent Girardi had originally considered, and this was the case that ultimately lost Katie a good team member when the young woman was poached for a special task force related to the case, and then recommended on the basis of that for an entirely different mission. The whole thing was deeply frustrating, but it was clear that Joan had been called out to a different type of work. She wished her well and hoped that they would meet again under better circumstances.