Criminal Minds: Trompe L'oeil (part 4)
~ (part four) ~
There is a burnt sound in the air. Words and voices that make Reid think of the bright heat below a bed of simmering charcoal. White ash floating away from it, building in a brittle wind, like a reverse cascade of snow. It settles softly in his ears, rests gritty on his eyelids, and for some reason, makes him think of Hotch.
"Give him some time," a stranger's voice echoes, plowing through the heat. "Talk to him. Let him know you're here. It will help lesson the confusion."
A moment later, smooth fingers touch the top of his head, firm points of contact that spread flashes of light across his brain.
"Reid," he hears. It's a plain sound, and steady.
He can't remember where he is but he can tell he is lying down, feels almost upside down, and when he finally gets his eyes open, there are twists of bright colors, but no ash. Panic moves through him when he takes a breath and a moan eases from his throat.
"You're going to be okay," Hotch's voice says clearly. "You're in a hospital, but you're going to be fine. Reid, you're going to be okay."
~
"You handed a federal agent a cup full of poison and you don't know where it came from?" Emily asks incredulously, dropping a file on the table. Her headache has not gone away. She feels her pulse beating behind her right eye, but her face stays neutral.
The girl on the other side slumps, folding her arms across her body. "I told you, I just gave it to him," she says. "I didn't pour it." She's got black-painted fingernails, black-streaked blond hair, and too much eyeliner-subtle representations of an in-your-face attitude and an image that gives Prentiss flashbacks but shows nowhere else in the girl's demeanor.
"Then who did?" she asks. "Only two of you work behind the counter. If it wasn't you, it must have been Ian."
"And I told you, Ian wouldn't poison anyone."
"And then you refused to tell me anything more. Why?"
"I don't have anything more to tell."
Prentiss sends a patient glance towards the two-way mirror, picturing Rossi's expression on the other side before turning back to the girl. Sitting slowly, she softens her voice. "Carin, listen to me. We know you're not the criminal here. But we need you to help us so we can figure out who is."
Carin stares silently at her knees.
Prentiss starts speaking. "We know you're an English major at the University of Denver and you're a good student. You've worked in that coffee shop three summers running and while you work there, you volunteer twice a week for the Summit County Forest Support project. You got a speeding ticket last month driving down to New Mexico to visit your parents. It was the first ticket you've ever received and you were mortified. You kept it a secret because you were afraid of how they would react."
The girl flicks her gaze up, eyes wide.
Emily waits. She doesn't have to wait long.
"Did I kill him?"
"No. Agent Reid is still alive, and what happened to him was not your fault. You're a good person and you wouldn't hurt anyone on purpose. But the man who did this was in your shop. He was close enough to you to get poison into a cup he knew would be handed to a federal agent. We need to figure out how that happened. You saw him, Carin. You spoke to him. We need to know every detail so we can catch him before he hurts anyone else. Do you understand?"
Slowly, the nod comes.
"Did you pour the coffee?"
Nodding again, Carin says, "I thought I was doing something nice."
"What do you mean?"
"When he came in, he didn't look like an agent, but he had that gun on his belt, and when he described the flier he was looking for, I knew what he was talking about because I'd read about it in the news."
"It made you nervous," deduces Emily.
"Yeah. He was really nice when I asked about it, though. He made Ian promise to walk me to my car when my shift was over. And he had those rings under his eyes, like he'd been working nonstop, you know? And I thought, if anyone could use a free cup of coffee, it's him. I signaled Ian for a cup and then poured an extra. I told the agent it was on the house for law enforcement."
"An extra?"
"We brew shifts of coffee. At least… that's what we call it. When we have a new brew, the old brew becomes extra. There's usually only a few cups left, but as long as we're responsible with who we give it to, we're allowed to give cups of it on the house. We call the cups extras."
Suddenly, the door opens. Prentiss turns her head around.
Rossi has a serious expression on his face. "We need to talk," he says.
~
Reid has his head hunched forward in the angled up bed, chin strained down towards his chest even though the room keeps tipping sideways and the position makes him dizzy. He keeps feeling his arms unfold but when he tucks his chin back down to look at them, they're folded still, and he doesn't know which is the reality. He's just trying to hold himself together, but it's not working.
Morgan keeps talking him into leaning his head back. "Easy, kid," he keeps saying, touching him on the shoulder when his breathing gets too fast. "Easy."
"Where's Hotch?" Reid asks. His voice is unsteady in his own ears and he thinks he might be shivering. He knows Hotch was here and now he's gone, and he's not sure if that means something might have happened to him or not, but it feels like it.
"He's calling JJ," Morgan explains patiently, slowly, like he's already explained it once or twice.
"Is he okay?"
"He's fine," Morgan says, same slow voice.
"Where's Morgan?" Reid asks next.
Morgan goes still, eyes closing. When he opens them again, his face is carefully calm. "I'm right here, Reid. I'm right here."
"Right," Reid says, flicking his eyes away. Part of his brain tells him it's true, Morgan is here, but another part says maybe he's not, and Reid just wants to make sure. He bites his lips against asking after the others. What he's saying is wrong. He knows it's wrong. But he can't seem to stop the feeling in his chest or the thoughts in his head. "Right," he says again.
"Hey. Deep breaths now. Look at me."
Reid does, drawing air slowly.
"What you're feeling is to be expected," says Morgan, holding his gaze. "The doctor said that you'd be feeling anxious for a while. And that you might be… off in other ways."
It's a diplomatic way of saying you might still hallucinate, but Reid keeps listening.
"It should fade in a few hours but for right now, it's normal. So if you need to know someone's okay, you go ahead and ask, alright?"
Reid nods, but he thinks what he's feeling is so much more than anxiety, so much more than being off. He feels like the world is going to fall apart and he can't stop it. He keeps thinking of Bob Dylan's My Back Pages and of his mom scribbling in notebooks.
Pounced with fire on flaming roads...
He can't get the words out of his head.
"I'm not anxious," he lies shakily, because if he admits it, that's it, everything will end. He'll end up caged, Gideon will be taken by Frank, and Strauss will kick Hotch out of the BAU. The world will burn and girls will die by the hundreds, jerking violently in the leaves until they succumb to the overdose, then, magically, be frozen in pictures.
Reid tries to swallow. His throat is slow to cooperate.
"Easy, kid," Morgan says again, hand returning to his shoulder for a moment before touching his forehead and moving his head back to the pillow. "Easy."
Morgan's voice is hypnotic. It sways with the slanting rhythm in Reid's head.
Very distinctly, he hears music playing.
He's almost certain it isn't real.
Almost.
~
When he opens his eyes again, it's hours later and he's been dreaming of Gideon. The dream lingers, like a shadow in the corner. Reid hears Gideon's voice like an echo. I'm sorry for leaving like I did. It had nothing to do with you not being good enough.
He knows it's an illusion.
~
tbc