CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
THE WATCHER
( original )

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"GOING ONCE! GOING TWICE! SOLD!"

Amelia's dreams were coming true. Everything she had imagined in the story of her life. The blood, sweat and tears, highs and lows; they led her to this very moment where everything changed. She was thirty-seven, old enough that other women would've admitted defeat and continued dreaming at a distance, but not Amelia Fitzgerald. She had the husband, the children, the job. Now she had the house. 32 Belcourt Avenue. The place for memories to be made.

"We did it," Patrick's smile was ear-splitting. He drew her in close, holding her head to his shoulder. Nothing could bring him down. "I love you, Ams."

Amelia pulled away, not wanting to miss a second of the moment as she scanned her new front yard. White picket fence, freshly pruned rose bushes, plenty of space for her children to play. There was a large wrap-around porch which would be perfect for hosting family dinners and wine nights. Her wired brain was already calculating the cost of a new coat of white paint. She could see it peeling around the trims, and she had no doubt the inside of the house would also need some work to meet her standards.

"Come with me, Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald," the real estate agent said after shaking both their hands and congratulating them. It wasn't every day you spent 1.3 million dollars. "We'll get the pesky paperwork out of the way and then I'll leave you with the keys!"

The keys. Amelia would need a photo with the keys as well as the giant board hammered into the yard where the estate agent's assistant had just plastered over the words 'FOR SALE' with a sticker declaring the property 'SOLD.' Sold to her. To Amelia. She couldn't stop smiling.

"James," she called to her eldest, her only boy. He and his younger sisters, Lily and Nora, were knee-deep in the rose bushes playing hide and seek. "Jimmy! Girls! Come on out of there!"

When the world was laid at your feet, hope became dangerous. Nothing was ever truly permanent. Should Amelia have seen it coming? Even then, on the best day of her life, there had been an undercurrent of tension. Neighbours lingered in their yards, curious for a glimpse at the new faces joining their community. The other bidders were climbing into their vehicles and driving away in defeat. How was Amelia so oblivious? He was right there...

The letter came a week after the contractors arrived. Patrick and Amelia were yet to move out of their current house, deciding to keep the kids somewhere stable while they had their renovations started. They checked in at the property every other day, and as one week led into another, it was Amelia's turn. She checked the mailbox, surprised to find a plain white envelope tucked in among her utility bills. There was no return address, but she could feel the crinkle of a folded piece of paper inside.

With butterflies in her stomach, she sat down on the porch steps to read it. What if it was an invite, a welcome to the community? Leaving behind her old friends, she did hope to make new ones soon. She ripped open the envelope with eager fingers.

Dearest new neighbour at 32 Belcourt,

Allow me to welcome you to our neighbourhood.

I want to know all about you. How did you end up here? Did you hear 32 Belcourt calling you with its force within?

32 Belcourt has been at the heart of my family for decades now, and I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. It's close, I can feel it. My grandfather watched the house in the 1940s, and now he has entrusted me with its secrets. Do you know the history of the house you are making a home? Do you know what lies within the walls of 32 Belcourt?

Why are you here? Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me, if so. Was your old house too small for the growing family? Will three children become four? Or was it greed that made you decide to bring me your children? I will find out.

Who am I, you ask? There are hundreds of cars that drive by 32 Belcourt everyday. Maybe I am in one, gazing at your rose bushes. Look at all the windows you can see from 32 Belcourt. Maybe I am in one, peering through those lace curtains.

I am waiting.

Welcome, my new neighbours. I do hope we can be friends.

Let the party begin.

The Watcher.

For a moment, Amelia sat motionless. She had forgotten how to breathe. Through every rapid pound of her heart pulsing blood between her ears, she determined one thing. She needed to get inside. 

There were eyes on her.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

DALLIS KNOCKED ON HOTCH'S open door, waiting in the hallway for him to hang up the phone. He turned away from where he faced the window, his brows set in a deep frown. When he realised it was her, he waved her towards his desk, mumbling an 'I need to call you back.' He didn't wait for the other person to answer, flipping his phone shut and returning it to his pocket.

"Everything okay?" Dallis asked. She had a feeling she knew who he was talking to. Lately, only one person was capable of making Hotch miserable enough that he forgot to iron his typically meticulous suit jackets.

"It will be," he said, which was enough of a confirmation.

Dallis took this as her cue to change the subject. "I have something I want your advice on. Mei, my brother's girlfriend, she's a police officer and one of her friends received this letter last week. Mei's not sure what to make of it, she thought we might have something else to offer."

Hotch nodded, holding out his hand for the file she'd prepared as he settled back behind the safety of his desk. "Okay, let me take a look."

Dallis sat patient, quiet, as Hotch flipped through the pages of notes. When he got to the copy of the letter Mei had sent Dallis that night in Miami, he paused. The raise of his eyebrows was faint but Dallis knew it intrigued him. She'd had the same reaction.

"Have they received another letter like this?" he asked once he was finished.

"No," she shook her head, but what she wanted to say was not yet. Everything written down on that piece of paper promised further communication. I am waiting. I do hope we can be friends. "But Mei's expressed concern for their children, and I've got to admit that I feel the same way."

Hotch let out a sigh. "If nothing's happened and the local PD of--"

"Camden," Dallis filled in. "Florida."

"If the local PD of Camden hasn't invited us onto the case... if there is one..."

She knew where this was going. She pursed her lips. "Then there's nothing we can do."

If it were anyone else, she would've argued. Why did they have to wait for something to happen? It was rare that a situation like this presented itself before someone was kidnapped or murdered. If they profiled him now, they'd have a chance of stopping him in the face of his intentions. But she also understood where Hotch was coming from. They couldn't give a profile to people who didn't want it. As much as she hated it, she'd keep her mouth shut.

"And Cohen?" Hotch called out before Dallis could close the door on her way out. "Please don't pursue this on your own terms."

Dallis nodded, meaning it when she said, "I won't."

She should've trusted her gut. One letter became two, then three, each more erratic than the last. The Watcher, as he called himself, was immensely displeased with the Fitzgeralds and how they were treating 32 Belcourt. So he followed through with what Dallis had feared. He acted.

"Ten-year-old James Fitzgerald has been missing since yesterday afternoon in Camden, Florida," JJ stated, bringing up a photo of a sandy-haired boy with a toothy smile.

He wasn't familiar to Dallis but she recognised his surname and the location as soon as they came from JJ's mouth. She immediately turned to Hotch, catching the way his jaw clenched as he sat forward in his seat. "And we're only just hearing of this now?"

They knew who the odds favoured when it came to missing children, and it was rarely on the side of the child and their loved ones. Several hours had passed since this particular disappearance. With each hour, the chances of finding him alive were halved.

"His parents, Patrick and Amelia, along with the Camden PD believed he might've gone to a friend's house until he failed to arrive home by dinner," JJ said as she took a seat beside Dallis at the table. "The Fitzgeralds only moved into 32 Belcourt Avenue a month ago, so there was a chance he might've gotten lost on his way from the bus stop. Then this arrived in the Fitzgeralds' mailbox."

James' face was replaced with a three-sentence letter that Dallis and the team also located in their files. The handwriting was the same as the one Dallis had kept in her desk drawer -- just in case -- but there was a sense of frustration in the sharp lines of ink that slashed across the page.

I promised you that I would learn your children's names and draw them to me. I have the force of 32 Belcourt in my blood, they can hear it singing. Why did you underestimate me?

"I have the force of 32 Belcourt in my blood," Reid repeated under his breath. "I promised you that I would learn your children's names... this isn't the first letter the family got?"

"No, it's not," Dallis muttered.

Morgan blinked at her. "You know something about this, Cohen?"

She glanced again at Hotch, trying not to let her expression show what she was really thinking. I told you so. Hotch met her expectant stare and sighed. "Dallis came to me with the first letter just after we got back from Miami. I told her there was nothing we could do."

"And you found this letter how?" Rossi asked.

"My brother's girlfriend, Mei, used to be roommates with Amelia Fitzgerald during their college days and they've stayed in touch over the years. She asked for my opinion, but because The Watcher never followed through with his threats--"

"The Watcher?" Emily frowned.

"His alias," JJ clarified, bringing up another letter, different from the first but longer than the most recent.

Patrick and Amelia,

I am pleased to know your names now and the name of the young blood you have brought to me. Jimmy, Lily and Nora. You certainly say their names often. Were you trying to get my attention? It's been years and years since the young blood ruled the hallways of 32 Belcourt. Have you found all the secrets it holds yet? Will the young blood play in the basement? Or are they too afraid to go down there alone. I would be very afraid if I were them. It is far away from the rest of the house. If you were upstairs, you would never hear them scream.

32 Belcourt is crying from the pain you have inflicted on it. The house begs for me to intervene. You are stealing its history. It was once full of life and young blood, then it got old and so did my grandfather. But he kept watching until the day he died, and now I watch and anticipate the day that the young blood -- your young blood -- will be mine again.

Welcome to the product of your greed.

The Watcher.

"Camden PD have asked for our help?" Hotch confirmed.

JJ nodded. "James' parents are going out of their minds with worry and Detective Romer is concerned that this unsub might not stop at James. The Fitzgeralds also have two daughters, nine-year-old Lily and six-year-old Nora."

"Then we better get to Florida quickly," he decided. "Rossi, when we land, I want you to take Cohen and Morgan with you to the bus stop where James Fitzgerald was last seen. Retrace his walk home, see who or what he might've encountered. Talk with his parents and see what they have to say about these letters. Prentiss, you and I will go to Camden Elementary and talk with James' peers and teachers. Someone might've seen something. The rest of you go straight to the station and look over those letters in greater detail. We don't want to waste any more time."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"WELL, WE KNOW ONE thing," Morgan said as they came to a stop outside 32 Belcourt Avenue. "James' walk home would've been short and busy. There's at least one person around at all times."

32 Belcourt Avenue was located on a main road leading into the heart of Camden, a town boasting a population of 23,000 people. It was lined with large, domineering houses -- some were new but most were colonial, including the one they now stood in front of. There was constant activity occurring; someone mowing their lawn or walking their dog, a car driving past, the mailman delivering daily letters and packages. It should've been hard for someone to miss a child being approached and taken in broad daylight.

"Yes, but is that just because a boy's been taken in a town where everybody knows everybody?" Dallis couldn't help but wonder.

To prove her point, she raised her chin towards the house opposite 32 Belcourt where the lace curtains had not-so-subtly been yanked across the window. They could still see the outline of a nosy neighbour on the other side, perhaps waiting for them to disappear inside before looking again.

As they followed the winding driveway towards the closed front door, Dallis wrote down as many details as she could. The fences on either side of the property were high and lined with various plants and flowers. Various tools were left scattered outside the garage from renovation work put on hold. There was a blinking camera perched above the porch steps. Dallis didn't have a chance to knock before the door was quickly wrenched open.

"Who are you?" a man, who she presumed was Patrick Fitzgerald, demanded to know.

She held her badge up to the mesh of the screen door. "Agents Dallis Cohen, David Rossi and Derek Morgan. We're with the FBI."

Patrick's eyes narrowed, slowly scanning each of their identifications. Then his shoulders slumped and he propped the door open just enough for each of them to step through one at a time.

"You'll have to forgive me," he mumbled, scratching at the underside of his jaw where day-old stubble was breaking through the skin. "It's been a rough few weeks."

"I can imagine," Rossi said sympathetically.

"My wife, Amelia, is in the kitchen with our girls," he lead them down a long hallway, past a grand set of oak stairs leading up to the bedrooms, into the back of the house.

Dallis continued to observe. Much of the house's original structure had been kept. There was a gilded mirror hanging above the fireplace in the front sitting room, a claw-foot table in the kitchen where three people sat huddled together. She could understand what the unsub meant about its history, but the walls were silent. No force called out to the people within. It was just a house.

"Ams, honey," Patrick laid a hand on his wife's shoulder. Her blonde hair had been pulled back in a rough ponytail, but a few strands fell down to frame the gaunt lines of a tortured face. Amelia's eyes were dark and vacant as they took in Dallis and the two men behind her, like she wasn't really present in the room with them. "These are agents from the FBI. They're here about Jimmy."

"Has there been news?" she asked, desperately clutching her husband's wrist. "Have they found him?"

"Not yet, Mrs Fitzgerald," Dallis said gently. She felt her heart pang when Amelia started to cry.

"He must be so scared..."

Encouraged by their mother, the little girls with matching blonde braids started to whimper. Patrick seemed lost in the centre of it all, struggling to keep them together when his own emotions threatened to drag him under.

"Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald--"

"Please, just call us Patrick and Amelia," he interrupted Rossi.

"Patrick," Rossi amended, also watching Lily and Nora. "Is there anywhere the girls can play that'll allow us a moment's privacy?"

Amelia inhaled sharply. She swept at the bags beneath her eyes with trembling fingers. "They're not to leave our sight. If anything happens..."

"What about the living room?" Dallis asked, still careful to keep her voice soft.

There was another entrance to the grand space in the corner of the kitchen. If they kept the door open, they'd be able to hear Lily and Nora as they played but also ask Patrick and Amelia questions without innocent ears overhearing them. Amelia considered this for a moment, then forced a nod. She guided the girls towards their toys holding one of their hands in each of hers, leaving Patrick to invite the agents to sit around the table, handing out cups of tea and coffee. It seemed to make him feel useful, like he was actually doing something if he couldn't be out there searching every nook and cranny for his son. 

It took a few minutes, but the girls were soon settled. Amelia returned and was swept up in Patrick's embrace. Dallis was careful, considerate of how she began. "I understand you've been receiving letters since you moved in here?"

Patrick scoffed. "Yes, and I can tell you who they're from."

The three agents paused. This, Dallis hadn't expected.

"You can?" Morgan raised his eyebrows.

"Those bastards next door," Patrick spat. His knuckles were white around the handle of his mug. He wet his lips with a quick swipe of his tongue. "They're the only house in the street who can see into our back patio over the fence and they've been living there for generations. They've taken our boy! I don't care what they say! Where I come from, when you come after someone's family, you get your ass beat."

"And nobody else has been acting strangely since you moved in that you've noticed?" Dallis asked.

"No one," came Amelia's quiet confirmation. She'd started to cry again, burying her face into Patrick's bicep, momentarily distracting him from his fury. "I just don't understand it. We had everything we've ever wanted..."

They asked a few other questions that left them with little more information. Now that Patrick had pointed the finger at the neighbours in number 30, who he said were the Logans, he refused to budge.

"There's nothing to go on here except a view into a backyard and some reclusive behaviour," Dallis muttered as they set off back down the street. They'd left their SUVs near the bus stop.

"Hopefully, the others have had more luck," said Morgan.

When they arrived at Camden PD, the rest of the team had gathered in the corner with Detective Romer, a middle-aged woman with coffee-coloured skin and long braided hair. She shook each of their hands amicably but with a sense of urgency. Dallis didn't blame her. She had a missing child on her hands and parents who would wreak havoc if he wasn't returned to them safely.

"What did you find?" Hotch asked.

Dallis lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "Honestly? Nothing substantial. Mr Fitzgerald insists it's the neighbours--"

"Jeremy and Sarah Logan?" Romer sighed. "We've never had complaints about them before. They keep to themselves, yes, which might be strange in a town like this, but I can't arrest them for wanting their privacy. I mean, Jeremy's mother, Viola, is a ninety-year-old woman."

"Did anything stand out to you in those letters, Reid?" Dallis approached where Reid was standing in front of the board. Pinned in the centre was the photo of James. Surrounding him were images of yellow tape around the bus stop, a photo of 32 Belcourt and various excerpts from the Watcher letters.

"Well, they do indicate proximity of some kind," he remarked. "The repeated mentions of construction and the house changing might suggest someone is unhappy with the Fitzgeralds for moving in. 'Welcome to the product of your greed' places the blame on them, but it does contradict the unsub's request for 'young blood to be returned to the house.'"

Dallis paced the length of the board, scanning every word for something fresh. "Ever since I read that first letter, I keep coming back to how he references the house. 'Did you hear 32 Belcourt calling you with its force within?'"

"He describes it like a living thing," Reid nodded. "I noticed that too."

"A living thing he's immensely protective of," she sighed.

"What about the walk from the bus stop?" Emily asked her, Rossi and Morgan.

"There's constant traffic, both vehicular and on foot," Morgan stood with his hands on his hips. "Someone had to have seen something." Hotch and Emily exchanged a glance that didn't go unnoticed. "What?"

"We spoke with James' teacher and a few of the children in his class," Emily shared, shuffling around in their paperwork for a rough sketch of a man with dark hair and a beard. "One of the girls who takes the same bus as him everyday claims to have seen a man talking to James at the bus-stop earlier in the week, then on the day he went missing they left the bus stop together."

All of a sudden, Romer froze. "Can I take a closer look at that?"

There was something about her expression. She traced a red-painted fingernail across the man's stern expression, lingering on his beard.

"What is it?" Hotch narrowed his eyes.

"I know we said there was no substantial evidence," she said. "But Jeremy Logan has a beard."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"I'M TELLING YOU, YOU'VE got the wrong guy!" Jeremy Logan shouted as he paced the length of the interrogation room.

Dallis sat with her hands folded on top of the small wooden table, blank-faced but patient in the firing line. Hotch had promised her the team would be watching as she asked Jeremy Logan the standard questions -- where were you the night that James Fitzgerald went missing? What is your relationship like with Patrick and Amelia? -- She trusted that if she somehow lost control of the situation, her team was there to intervene.

"Nobody's pointing any fingers, Mr Logan," she said for what felt like the hundredth time in the past ten minutes. "Will you please sit down?"

"No, I won't 'sit down,'" he barked out a laugh. "You're accusing me of kidnapping a boy. I'm not a predator, missy--"

"Agent," she corrected. "And I'm asking, not accusing."

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes."

Finally, Jeremy stopped pacing. He refused to sit but Dallis took this as progress. She slid the copy of the first letter across the tabletop, waiting for a moment as Jeremy approached. Quickly, he snatched it up and returned to the corner, squinting to read the scrawling words.

"What the fuck is this?"

"A letter the Fitzgeralds received a week after moving in," she said, then laid out the other letters. "They also received all of these right up until the day James went missing." Jeremy pressed his lips into a thin line. "What is it?"

"It's odd hearing everyone calling him that."

"Calling him what? James?" He nodded. "Well, that's his name, isn't it?"

"Yes, but everyone calls him Jimmy." He held up the letter. "Even this guy knows it."

"Well, we're running out of time to save Jimmy, Mr Logan," Dallis said as he finally sat down opposite her. "If you know anything at all--"

"I didn't touch that kid," he snapped again. "And if you people actually bothered to do your jobs, you'd see that. I was at work all day yesterday, then I took my ma to a doctor's appointment. Ask around if you don't believe me." He crossed his arms. "Now, can I get the fuck outta here?"

"For now," she sighed. "We'll be in touch if we need anything else."

"Sure you will," he muttered, and with a sharp slam of the door he was gone.

Dallis met the rest of her team on the other side of the glass. Hotch waited for her verdict.

"I'm confident it's not him," she said. "The anger might be argued as suspicious but he offered us an alibi that can be easily proven."

"Then what do we do now?" Romer asked, anxiously tapping the heel of her boot against the floor.

Dallis was confident they had enough to give her officers a profile, but that of course was up to Hotch.

"Gather everyone out front," he said at last. "We'll tell you what you're looking for."