Verecund (Criminal Minds)

Chapter 2

Spencer sat silently watching Ash, her small body still hidden in the corner. Her thin hands shook from malnutrition and her face was slightly sunken in from not eating enough.

"What do you mean you're not from anywhere?"

Ash kept her gaze down and her arms still stayed wrapped around her torso. Spencer carefully watched her tiny movements, sitting with her in silence in the dim room.

It wasn't long before the rest of the team waited outside of the room, quietly talking. Spencer gazed at the girl before back at his teammates, beginning to stand. "I'll be right back."

"Did you get anything, Spence?" JJ asked as the doctor approached.

"Her name is Ash. She told me she wasn't from 'anywhere' when I asked her where she was from."

"You got her to talk?" Emily's face made a slightly surprised face.

"Not exactly. I think she might be mute. She's not deaf, but she won't talk. She communicates using sign language, and from what I've seen, she's mostly likely known it for years."

"Maybe we can get Garcia to look up kids who match her. All the others victims lived in Richmond, maybe she does, too," Hotchner announced.

"But what did she mean when she said she wasn't from anywhere?" Derek wondered out loud, "Maybe she's homeless, a runaway, maybe?"

"Could be," JJ agreed.

"I'll call Garcia and ask her to see what she can find."

"Reid, you need to stay here," Hotchner instructed, "If Ash communicates with anyone, it'll be you. JJ, you stay here, too, just in case. The rest of us will head back to the station to work out the rest of the kids and the evidence."

As the rest of the team split into their groups and went their separate directions, Spencer sat back in the dark hospital room, where the girl still sat curled into a ball. He sat in front of her silently for several moments before he finally began to speak softly again.

"Can you tell me why you don't talk?"

Ash didn't respond, she only kept her legs tucked to her chest with her arms around her stomach. Spencer began wondering if she had some form of autism, but she showed no other signs other than being completely silent. He searched through his small messenger bag, removing a water bottle, some smaller objects dropping right outside the bag as well. He held it slowly to the girl, knowing well that she was dehydrated.

Ash flinched away when she saw the object near her. She gazed up at Spencer before starting back down. Spencer left the plastic bottle near her feet as he stood, leaving his open bag nearby as he walked to the doctor standing just outside.

"Is there anything you've been able to find?" Spencer asked softly to the taller man, sliding his hands into the pockets of his skinny slacks. JJ crossed her arms silently as she listened next to Spencer.

"Not as of yet," the doctor said with a silent sigh. "We still haven't been able to get close enough, but she needs medical help as soon as possible."

Spencer nodded, looking back at Ash. He blinked as he thought he saw the girl move, then refocused his eyes on her. She sat slouched over her crossed legs, which were pulled tightly to her. She had an object in her hands. Curiously, the young doctor quietly stepped over to her, sitting back down.

Ash held a paperback book in her hands, open and scanning over the words. Spencer recognized it as the Physics lecture book that had fallen out of his bag- Feynman's Lectures, to be exact. He remembered it falling in the floor when he opened his bag and he hadn't bothered to pick it up in order to minimalize what movement he could.

Ash seemed very interested in the book, and she read over each word carefully. Her thin and pale fingers ran over the typed words and graphs, and even Spencer Reid's own margin notes.

Spencer decided the words and mathematics probably didn't mean much to her, but she probably was interested in reading whatever she could get her hands on- especially because it had probably been quite a while since she'd last seen a book.

The short-haired girl's finger stopped at a penciled row of mathematics. She slowly flipped the book to point to the line of pencil marks for Spencer. The doctor tilted his head and gazed at what she was trying to show him.

(∇ψ)Δs=(∇ψ)⋅Δst

"What... What about it, Ash?"

The girl looked down at the pencil writing and back at the text. She pointed at the variable t on the graph, then pointed back at the front of the equation. Spencer mentally redid his math to conclude what she wanted.

Ash had pointed out Reid's mathematical error. The certified genius had made a huge obvious mistake in his equation, and not only that, but a teenager had found it and corrected it.

(∇ψ)tΔs=(∇ψ)⋅Δs, Spencer finally knew where he had gone wrong. He looked up at Ash, who moved her gaze away to avoid eye contact with him. She put the book back in her lap, crossing her legs tighter by pulling gently on her feet. She went back to tracing her finger over each line of text as she read it closely. Spencer decided she must have needed glasses, as she almost completely doubled over to be close enough to read the text on the page.

The young doctor watched the girl read over the book for minutes until a shadow was cast over the dim lighting in the room. Reid looked up to see Derek gesturing him over by the doorway.

"Garcia thinks she's found her," Derek told Reid softly as the doctor approached him. "She said her name is Ash, but it might not be her full name."

"What did Garcia find?" Spencer matched Derek's quiet tone.

"A girl that looks just like her- Ashley Flamouria. Got a full record of abuse. Went to an orphanage three years ago, when she was twelve. She went missing about a year ago. Should be about fifteen now."

"But our unsub only started the kidnappings about three months ago," Spencer recalled. "Maybe she ran away from the orphanage."

'"According to Garcia, she was in a foster home when she went missing. She might have run from them."

"Is there any record of autism or mutism, anything along those lines?"

"No, Garcia went through her medical history. She's perfectly capable of speaking, but she was sent to therapy. The therapist wrote that she didn't talk and wouldn't say why. Therapy stopped after about two months."

"Maybe it's her way of coping with the abuse," Reid suggested softly. "It was probably one of the only ways for her to."

"We don't know exactly what her parents did to her," Derek remarked. "It probably is."

Spencer blinked and turned his head, his short hair moving in front of his eyes. He watched as the girl read the physics book in the corner.

"You all right, kid?" Derek watched Spencer in concern.

"Yeah, I just..." He turned back towards Derek, gazing at the floor in front of him. "We need to figure out who's going to take her."