Lead the Way - Chapter 084 - 4x21 - A Shade of Gray
Yes this is the second episode chapter in a row. I don't know if you guys like them more or less than the other ones, but I imagine I would like them less, seeing how I know what's going to happen. I wouldn't have done it if it weren't necessary though.
Why was it necessary you might ask. Well, because of the body language. We all know that eventually Emily and JJ will get back together, right? But that would not lead to standing in opposit corners of the room. I would probably lead to a lot of touching and looking, right? Well that's not happening just yet. And instead of coming up with a meaningless chapter that does absolutely nothing I decided to put two episode chapters back to back.
And I meant to thank you for being so understanding that I missed the post on Thursday. You guys are truly the best :)
Debra Fisher and Erica Messer teamed up on this one. The Unsub, the plot, the twists, the dialogue are all their work. They made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up with that little subtle post-it note about a toy air plane.
Lead the Way - 084 - 4x21 - A Shade Of Gray
In retrospect Emily felt she should have known. Something had been bugging her about this case from the start. Two boys had been abducted from their homes in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and later they had been found dead in the woods. A third boy, Kyle Murphy was reported missing.
From the plane the team provided Garcia with a few steps Detective Lancaster, the lead on the case could already set in motion until they arrived. It wasn’t until he handed Morgan a picture of Kyle that Emily started to feel a bit queasy.
On the back of the picture someone had written: To Uncle Bill. No one should investigate a crime committed against family members or friends. Seeing how she had recently broken that rule herself, Emily kept quiet.
Within minutes the team had narrowed down the list of suspects from over 400 to five. Rollins, one of them was connected to the first two families. He had installed their TVs. He had no connection to the Murphys.
Morgan and Prentiss found toys in the pedophile’s closet that were later identified by the parents of the first two victims. There was no souvenir from Kyle Murphy. Detective Lancaster started shooting at the fleeing suspect, despite the fact that he was the only one to know where Kyle was.
The first two boys were held for two days before he killed them, yet Kyle had only been missing for a few hours and he wasn’t on the property. Which could only mean that he was already in the woods.
Why go through the trouble of abducting Kyle from his family home, with the risk of waking three people only to kill him and dump him within hours? They decided to search the woods for Kyle and Emily got her answers.
Detective Lancaster pointed out that they should look further south as there was an unmarked service road down that way. He was the one to find Kyle. He was dead, placed on the ground. It didn’t look anything like Rollins’ victims, who had been treating them like garbage, the minute he was done with them.
Both Prentiss and Morgan agreed that Rollins was not responsible for the murder of Kyle Murphy.
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Hotch had reached that same conclusion after talking to Rollins. He had admitted to the murder so he could get into a federal prison, but told the unit chief that he had dumped the boy in the Delaware river. He knew that to be a lie, not just because they had found Kyle in the woods, but also because Rollins would need more control, he needed to revisit the bodies.
Rossi and Reid had gathered further proof of Rollins innocence in Kyle’s murder. The boy had slept in his brother Danny’s bedroom the night he was taken. This meant that the destruction of his room and his toys was meant to make it look like a crime scene. Again, not something the man in their custody would have done.
“Who else knows the details of all three cases?” Hotch asked in a low voice so no one in the precinct could overhear.
“Lancaster.”
“Morgan, call Garcia. See if she can find out anything about Lancaster that we don’t already know. Reid, Prentiss, watch the video of the press conference. See if you can find anything?”
“Do you want me to talk to Rollins again?” Rossi asked.
“Yes. And I don’t have to remind anybody where we are. Please be discreet.”
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“I finished the press release we discussed. Do you want to look it over or can I send it out?” JJ loved this part of her job. When the Unsub was caught and the community safe again - well safer - she was the one who got to tell people that they didn’t have to be afraid anymore.
“Actually, I’d like you to hold that back for a while.” Her good mood vanished instantly.
“What’s wrong?”
“There has been a development.” He looked through the blinds on the office window. Outside Rossi confronted Bill Lancaster with their new theory.
“We’re looking at Lancaster,” Hotch said.
“You think he could have killed Kyle?”
She had seen her share of child victims. Some of them had been killed by close relatives or friends, but Lancaster had appeared so eager to find the Unsub, she had never considered it could have been a façade.
“At this point we only believe him to have staged the crime scene.”
“I can hold the press off for a while. Can I release Rollins’ name as a suspect?”
“I don’t see how that could harm our case. Maybe someone will come forward with new evidence.”
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Emily and Reid had looked at the footage from the press conference over and over again. She had had a suspicion, but she wanted to confirm it for herself before sharing it with the team. If she was right this tragedy was even worse than they had thought.
“I appreciate you coming by,” Mr. Murphy said as he opened the door for Emily. “But Bill was already here. He told us about Kyle.”
“That’s not why I’m here, Mr. Murphy.” She put her laptop sleeve on a chair and turned back around to face Kyle’s father. “We need to talk.”
“Well, can’t it wait? Danny’s not taking the news too well.”
“No. I’m sorry. We need to talk right now.” He pulled up his shoulders and Emily braced herself for what was sure to follow. “Hugh Rollins didn’t kill your son.”
“If Rollins didn’t kill Kyle, who did?”
“You tell me.”
The grief on his face was no act. Emily was sorry that she had to put him through this, but if he wasn’t responsible at least he knew who was. By not giving up what she already suspected he was only obstructing justice. At least that was what she told herself when she saw the tears in his eyes.
“Someone broke into my house and took my boy. When I woke up he was gone.”
“Who did this Dan?” Mrs. Murphy got up from the couch and stood by her husband.
“I don’t know,” He yelled. “My little boy is dead and you have a suspect in custody. Isn’t that good enough?” What an odd question. Sarah tried to calm her husband down by placing her hands on his shoulder.
He turned slightly toward her and took her hands into his. That was all the proof Emily needed.
“You’ve been holding hands since I first saw you.” She had hoped she was wrong.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“When couples lose a child, the grief is overwhelming. They often blame each other and they drift apart. That’s what happened to the Seagers, but you two are different. It’s like you’re protecting each other.”
She paused for a second and then said:
“So, I’m going to ask you again. What happened last night? Did you or Sarah, did you get upset with Kyle?”
“No!”
“Was there an accident?”
“No!”
“Then what are you hiding?” When neither of them reacted she took out her laptop and played the part of the press conference when Sarah had said: “I’m Kyle’s Mom.” She replayed it over and over until she broke.
“Please stop.”
“You are Kyle’s Mom, Sarah. Just tell me what happened to him.”
She shook her head, now crying as much as her husband.
“Did one of you kill Kyle?”
They refused to give up their secret and she had no choice, but to bring the whole family in for questioning.
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Emily set them up in the precinct’s break room and watched as the parents comforted each other while Danny sat on the other side of the table by himself. Hotch came in and told them that Bill Lancaster had just confessed. He took the parents away into an interview room to “confirm” Lancaster’s story.
Emily stayed behind with Danny. They had agreed to this approach beforehand. It would be less threatening to the boy if Emily just happened to talk to him to pass the time. Maybe he would give something up that could help them determine if it was an accident or murder.
She closed the door behind Hotch and the Murphys, but quickly turned the blinds open.
“Hey Danny, look, they’re just right here. Can you see them?”
He nodded a little.
“Okay.”
“Can I have a snack?” He asked the second she sat down.
“Yeah, sure.” She got up again and handed him a small pack of chips. He looked so normal. No wonder his parents did everything to protect him, how could they know?
“You got any games here?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Can I watch cartoons?”
“Sure, yeah. Let’s see if we can find some.” Prentiss got up and flicked through the channels. She stopped when she came across the press conference footage that was still airing.
Danny tried to open the pack of chips and got angry when he couldn’t. He started pounding on it until Emily reacted to him.
“Hey! Hey! Hey! Stop! Stop! Stop! Hey!” It took her several attempts to make him hear her. “I can open it for you. Here.” She took the bag and opened it before returning it to him. “There. It’s open.”
If he got this upset over a little snack, Emily wondered what the family life of the Murphys was like.
“Do you get mad like that a lot?” She asked hesitantly.
“My Mom says I have a bad temper.”
Emily nodded. Yes, she was with Sarah on this one. “Did you and Kyle play together?”
“Only when I had to. He was always breaking my stuff.”
“Yeah, I had a little cousin who did that.” She told him about Claudia. Funny that she should grow up to fix things as complicated as people’s faces. “That made me crazy.” She wanted him to relate to her.
“Not gonna miss that.” She looked at him asking herself if she had gone far enough. When he continued she knew that she had.
“He was always sleeping in my room.”
“I heard Kyle liked your bunk beds.”
“They weren’t for him. They were for my friends. He was always wetting the bed like a baby.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to play with him?” She added with sarcasm in her voice: “He was a baby, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah, but he thought he was big enough to play with me.” Danny got angry again. “Like today. He broke my model plane. Took me all week to make it.”
“Today?” Emily said after a while. According to the time line Bill Lancaster had given the team Kyle had been abducted long before the family was awake. “How did that happen?”
“I woke up really early and wanted to finish it. I had it all set up in the basement.”
“What time was that?”
He didn’t answer but he told her how Kyle had come down and asked to play with his plane. Despite his warnings that Kyle was to look, but not touch the model his little brother ended up breaking what he had worked on for so long. Telling the story now Danny got upset again.
He confessed how he had chased him through the basement, finally catching up to him. As he told her how he had hit his little brother, straddling him once he fell to the floor he kept getting angrier, spitting with rage. When in his story he reached the point where Kyle was lying lifeless under him, his anger deflagrated and he started eating chips again.
Emily felt sick to her stomach. She had listened to the brutal murder of a young boy, yet in front of her sat no monster. He appeared to be just as normal and trustworthy as the next kid. Emily liked to think they she could see “it” in their grown up eyes, but Danny was still searching for his mother with his.
“After you did that to Kyle, how did you feel?”
“Like I’d get in trouble.” Emily nodded. She felt her throat dry up. Never had she met an Unsub so young and oblivious. When they grew up they got better at hiding their abnormalities. Danny was too little to know better.
Kyle never had a chance. She wanted to cry for him, even though she had never met him. Instead of giving in to her feelings she compartmentalized them and stayed professional.
She had stared down an abyss and hadn’t been ready for what she saw. Prentiss had thought that she could handle it, when she first suspected that there was something wrong in the Murphy family. After all she had read about child murderers before.
She knew about their lack of compassion and failure to have any real emotions. What had broken through her defence structures was how Danny had retold his actions. He told her without trying to get any kind of reaction from her. He wasn’t looking for absolution or praise, anger, fear or compassion.
He just told his story, because she had asked. Just like he would have told his teacher about his last vacation with his family. No big deal. Emily refused to believe in evil as a concept, but staring at this boy she was ready to reconsider that.
JJ walked in and handed her Kyle’s autopsy report. He had told the truth. That was the last straw. While she asked if JJ could stay behind with Danny she touched her arm. She had to physically feel someone she knew was good.
Even if they wouldn’t get back together Emily knew she could always rely on the knowledge that there were people as kindhearted as JJ in the world. She looked at her blue eyes and felt safe again. Safe from a child. She really needed to get out of this room and get some perspective.
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“Danny told me what he did to Kyle.” Emily said to the Murphys. “Do you know what he did?” She was angry. Did they even bother to ask him? If so, how could they still protect him?
“Yes, we know.”
“Everything he did?” The question startled them and they looked up. “Danny stuffed plane parts down Kyle’s throat.”
“He wouldn’t do that.” Clearly Mr. Murphy had no idea who had been living in his house. How could he. Emily’s voice softened as her anger subsided.
“You told Danny to watch his temper.” She said to Sarah. “What else did you worry about?” The father shook his head. “Danny said you had a puppy, but he died.”
“Oh God.”
“Your son is ill and he needs help. The truth is…” She paused. This was a major blow. “…the only thing Danny isn’t capable of is remorse. He feels nothing. The son you were trying to protect is a sociopath.”