Minimans Chapter 3
At 5:00 PM, the museum closed. Visitors filtered out past the woolly mammoth in the rotunda. Storekeepers locked down their wares for the night. Workers at the IMAX Theater and the Atrium Cafe exited the building through the back door. Security guards did a sweep of the premises before commencing their extracurricular activities.
During the process, as the museum exhaled its bustling crowds and settled in for a good night's sleep, the dark-haired ten-year-old boy fiddled with a taser. He had been lucky to find the device within a drawer of the security desk. Otherwise, he might have needed to use his personal charms to net his prey. Predators, as he saw himself at the moment, were far better suited to an application of brute force.
The boy dallied in the wide passage between the rotunda and the Ocean Hall. He watched the man and the brats enter the men's restroom under the stairs. The smaller brat was bawling, most likely pleading to be changed out of a dirty diaper. The boy felt no sympathy for the brat. He was the youngest in his family, with two older brothers and an older sister, and he was not used to the presence of children younger than himself.
The boy waited outside, until he was certain that all the people who had gone into the restroom had also come out of the restroom, with the exception of the man and the brats. At 5:05 PM, the museum was nearly empty. The boy was not at all surprised that it had taken only a few minutes for the visitors to exit the building. It was a routine that he had observed everyday, ad nauseum, since he had started hanging around the museum with his father after school and on weekends.
At 5:10 PM, the boy was certain that all the visitors had left through the National Mall entrance. That left only the employees to leave through the Constitution Avenue entrance. He was glad that most of the employees worked on the ground floor below. He didn't want to have to tase anyone other than the man and the brats.
The boy peeked into the restroom, watching the man secure the smaller brat into a stroller. For awhile, around lunchtime, the boy had been afraid that the man and the brats were leaving early, when they had exited the museum towards the street. He had followed them out to the man's car, where the man had retrieved a stroller for the smaller brat. The man had secured the brat into the stroller, just as he was now doing, and they had all re-entered the museum to have lunch at the Atrium Cafe. The boy remembered that he had gone through a roller-coaster of emotions during the whole mundane sequence. First, he had felt his stomach drop in fear, thinking that the man was passing out of his life forever. Then, he had swallowed a lump in his throat, trying to accept the bitter disappointment. When, to his surprise, the man had returned to the museum, the boy had felt his heart leap. He had never been so happy before. It was as though he were a convicted death row inmate who had gotten a stay of execution just before the needle had pierced the skin. It strengthened his resolve to live his life to the fullest. He was more determined than ever to net his prey.
Before the man had finished adjusting the stroller, the boy sidled up behind him, edging his way past the stalls, avoiding the gaze of the larger brat, until he was within taser range of the man. He fired the taser and missed, the electrodes landing on the floor beyond the stroller. The boy, who was usually a good shot, realized that the heat of the moment had thrown him off. He switched to his backup plan. In his backup plan, he used the taser as a stun gun, applying the electrodes directly to the man's forearm, exposed now that the man had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.
The man doubled over, closing his eyes, grabbing his arm, and dropping to the floor in a fit of neuromuscular incapacitation. The boy stared for a moment at the curious phenomenon, a combination of pain and loss of control, before he whipped around to deal with the brats. He was shocked to discover that the brats were nowhere to be found. Apparently, the larger brat had sensed danger, grabbed the stroller, and escaped the restroom with the smaller brat in tow. The boy wondered why the larger brat had not called out to the man. He had no way of knowing that it was the brat's father who had taught the brat to keep silent and stay hidden during times of peril. He was not used to learning things from his father.
The boy reconsidered his plans as the man recovered on the floor. It took the boy no time at all to adjust his thinking. He was practical. He was malleable. He decided that he wasn't going to waste his time and energy chasing down the brats in the museum. Every second he wasted on that endeavor was a second lost from the company of the man. Luck had gotten rid of the brats for him. Luck was on his side.
"Jack! Henry!" the man stumbled to his feet in a flurry of gangling limbs and agitated ganglions.
"He went that way!" the boy pointed out the door.
"Which way?" the man yelled.
"The bad man ran out the door after he used that thing on you!" the boy pointed at the floor.
The man looked down, breathing rapidly and panicking, at the taser that had skittered under the sink. The boy observed the man's face. He counted on the man to believe him. The man had not seen the attacker. He had been too busy with his bodily dysfunctions to take note of his surroundings. The man, with a sweet face and kind eyes, would surely believe an innocent little child like him.
"Stay with me," the man exited the restroom, "There's no need to be afraid," he held the boy's hand and led him towards the rotunda. "We'll get the security guards to help us," he looked every which way without seeing the brats. "They'll help me find Jack and Henry," he tried to calm himself, "I'll be able to find Jack and Henry in no time," he tried to convince himself.
"I can't find my Daddy either," the boy scrunched up his face and cried. "One minute he was there, and the next minute, he was gone. I was looking for him in the restroom, but the bad man came in and attacked you. I thought he was going to shoot me with that thing too!"
"It's OK," the man bent down to soothe the traumatized child, "Why don't you tell me your name, and we can go to the security desk together? The security guards will help us. They'll help me find my kids, and they'll help you find your dad."
"I'm Jason," the boy wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve, sniffling for effect, but not going so far as to blow his nose on his shirt.
"I'm Spencer," the man said, "Don't worry, Jason, I'm going to help you. Nothing bad is going to happen to you as long as I'm around. The bad man is far more likely to come after me instead," he mumbled to himself, still looking every which way for the brats.
"Can I call you Billy?" Jason asked.
"Sure," the man replied distractedly, "You can call me whatever you want, Jason," his face fell as he spotted the empty security desk. "I wonder where all the security guards went."
"Maybe they're doing a sweep of the building to make sure that all the visitors have left?" Jason suggested.
"Good thinking, Jason," the man picked up the phone on the security desk. "Why doesn't this thing work?" the man held the phone to his ear, "There's no dial tone. Where's my cell phone?" he searched his pockets, "Oh, it's my jacket that I hung on the stroller," he sighed.
The boy hung tightly onto the man's hand, enjoying the man's company now that he had the man all to himself. He hung onto the man's words even more tightly. "Good thinking," the man had praised him. "Jason," the man had addressed him by name. The boy could tell that he and the man were going to be great friends.
"Jason," the boy felt a surge of excitement as the man addressed him again, "I'm going to look for the security guards. There's a bad man running around the museum, so I want you to stay with me and bear with me, alright? We'll go to the Dinosaur Hall first, then make our way over to the Fossil Mammals and the Ice Age. Maybe Jack and Henry went to see the dinosaurs. We did come here to see T. rex. Maybe we'll find your dad on the way. Are you up for it, Jason?"
"Yeah, Billy," Jason nodded, "Can I hold your hand?" he sniffled again.
"Of course," the man offered his hand, "Let's head this way," he pointed towards the Dinosaur Hall.
The boy followed the man into the Dinosaur Hall, gazing up at the great height of the man from his child-sized perspective. He imagined the museum full of visitors, he and the man among them, gawking in wonder at the ancient fossil skeletons. He imagined that he had come here with the man, just like the brats had come here with man this morning. He imagined that he lived with the man in a small house in the suburbs, that the man took him to school every morning and picked him up every afternoon, that the man made dinner while he did his homework, that the man told him stories in the evening and tucked him in at night. The simple fantasies filled him with an indescribable joy. He wanted nothing more than to bring them to life.
"Shhhhhhh," Reid shushed the silent boy, "In here..." he ducked into an alcove and pulled the boy in after him.
From the alcove, Reid watched in disbelieving fascination as a trio of uniformed security guards unlocked a glass display case and gingerly lifted out a delicate raptor skeleton. It was Eoraptor, one of the earliest known dinosaurs from the Triassic Period, a small theropod that resembled the common ancestor of all the dinosaurs. One of the guards wheeled up a cart containing an identical, but fake, skeleton, and the two others grasped it by the ribcage, lifted it out of the cart, and secured it into the display case. Into the cart went the genuine article, which the group wheeled out of the Dinosaur Hall, towards the elevator, the ground floor, and the loading dock. Reid had no doubt that the 220-million-year-old fossil was headed out of the museum, on its way to earn wads of cash for the corrupt security guards.
"The bad man!" Jason whispered, "He was the one pushing with the cart!" he lied easily.
"The bad man was one of the fossil smugglers?" Reid asked.
He frowned in confusion, wondering why the smuggler would take the time to tase an unobservant bystander before going on his merry thieving way. Furthermore, he wondered how many security guards were involved in the fossil-smuggling ring and whether it was safe for him to approach any of them. He decided not to approach the security guards. He would stay out of their way. There was no telling how dangerous they were, if they were willing to attack random strangers in the restroom. He couldn't afford to take any risks, not with Jack and Henry missing, not with a new child under his care.
Reid closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and pushed away an overwhelming wave of panic, followed by an overwhelming sense of guilt. He imagined himself telling Hotch and JJ that he had misplaced their children at the museum. He imagined their accusing faces and frustrated sighs. He imagined Hotch yelling at him, JJ crying, Will comforting her while staring at him with daggers in his eyes. He pushed the images away and launched his brain into its problem-solving mode. He was a profiler who knew his targets. He knew that Jack must have pushed Henry away in the stroller. He knew that Jack must have taken Henry into hiding, somewhere in a tiny dark corner of the museum, preferably within a box, where bad men were not likely to find them. He took comfort in his knowledge - of the children, who were no longer minimans but fully realized humans, and of the museum itself.
The museum was a limited space with a topography that he had known since he had first visited here more than twenty years ago. In the summer of 1985, William, Diana, and Spencer had visited Washington, DC on a family vacation. The proud glowing parents had whirled their bright exuberant child through all the museums lining the National Mall. At the time, Spencer had only been three, so all he remembered from that trip were the layouts of the museums and the stories his father had told him.
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