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“We found the car.”
“Okay?” Chris frowns, signaling before he makes the turn. “You’ve apprehended the unsub, then?”
He trusts his team enough, he knows they know what they’re doing. But he hears the beat in between Allison’s voice, that moment of hesitation that makes him wonder how much more they need to be trained before he can leave them to do their job without holding their hand through it all.
“What is it?” he prompts. “Nearly there, traffic’s shit.”
“The unsub is only sixteen years old.”
Chris almost runs into the car ahead of him. He presses the headset closer to his ear, like that helps him hear better. “What.”
“Dad, I--“
“Put Kate on the line.”
Almost immediately he hears the shift in Allison’s tone, the hardened way she voices her insistence. “It’s the right car, Dad,” she says. “We tailed it for two hours. Same car spotted pulling out of the Mahealani’s residence last week. We have our unsub.”
“Not both of them,” Chris tells her, because finally the puzzle pieces have fallen into place. It’s only three bodies later; he hates that they always have to wait until they get a discernible pattern before they can begin slotting the facts they know, before they can even begin seeing the full picture, but that’s a hazard of the job. They don’t know more until they know more, and usually, that means the body count’s risen.
“It makes sense now,” he tells Kate once she gets on the line, taking the phone from a huffing Allison probably. “The vascillating between care and brutality, why we couldn’t link them to each other at first.”
“Are you sure about this, Chris?” she asks, but already he can tell she believes it too. “Not very often we see a dominant partner letting his partner do some of the killings.”
“There’s the textbook, Kate, but deviations aren’t far from the realm of possibility,” he says. “Keep the unsub in the holding cell and we’ll see what we can dig on him.”
“On it.”
“Be there in five,” he says, finally pulling up to headquarters. “If I manage parking. Fuck.”
The boy is maybe closer to nineteen years old, but he understands why Allison thinks he’s younger. In the same manner his daughter aced through four grade levels and finished school early, her hair perpetually in a ponytail to make her look more than her twenty years, this boy has buzzed his hair to the style of a spastic teenaged boy, cheeks flushed just this side of rosy and lashes long and spiky dark against freckled skin. But Chris notices how much taller he looks, how much closer to fully developed his body is.
“What’s your name, son?” Chris asks when he walks in without preamble. The boy, who Kate tells him has been left in the room since they found him in the car, jumps up, startles, blinks impossibly clear eyes at him before turning his gaze away almost immediately. His head is bowed, his shoulders hunched just so. There is a faint bruise on his cheek, a small cut in his lip. Small things, barely noticeable if you don’t know what to look for. Chris finds them all there.
The boy says nothing, so Chris repeats his question. He wonders where the boy had been found-- in an orphanage or on the streets? Perhaps a back alley somewhere? They’d originally dismissed the idea of partners because the assault on the victims, the young boys, made them think the unsub might have been unfulfilled somewhat, suffering from a form of impotency that might have been his stress point, his trigger.
This boy adds a new dimension to the case. It blurs some assumptions to the point of irrelevance, but makes other things a little bit clearer.
“We just want to know a few things,” he says again, but the boy barely even glances up. He keeps his hands on his lap, fidgeting. He’s trying to fight movement but it happens anyway. Chris wonders if that’s something that’s never gotten disciplined out of him.
Chris flickers his gaze over to the window, behind which he knows his team is watching. He gives them a small nod, almost imperceptible, before he sighs audibly. The boy looks up at him then, something like curiosity flickering on his gaze. Then Chris’ phone rings and he holds up a finger to the boy as he flips it open.
“Argent.” He nods, turns away before he stands up and walks out the room. The door shuts behind him and he tucks the phone back in his pocket, nodding at Allison who’d slipped out of the other room.
“Sorry about--“
“It’s fine,” he tells her, nodding at the food she’d brought with him. “Good luck.”
People have an innate urge to trust Allison. Why shouldn’t they? She’s kind and nice and sympathetic, and God help him, he loves his daughter but to a certain extent she looks vapid. Innocent. Like her beauty is all she is, unlike her aunt or her mother, who look like they know exactly everything going on around them.
Allison is a doe, and she uses that to her advantage.
She’s already got the boy laughing (nervously, but that’s more that she’s drawn out of him in two seconds than he thinks he’d have gotten in two hours) by the time Chris walks into the other room, taking the spot between Kate and Victoria as they watch. Knowing what they did of the unsub, there is no way he would have told Chris anything, but he needs to have seen Chris before Allison still. People laugh when they talk about the good cop, bad cop routine, but Chris will be damned if it doesn’t work.
“Not a fan of Twinkies, I take it?” she asks.
“Didn’t really--“ the boy pauses, like he’s already said too much. He likely has. His gaze flickers over to the window, and it’s the worst kept secret in the world but Chris just nods. The boy then frowns, places his hands back in his lap.
Allison looks over at the window with a frown, but her voice is gentle as she presses on. “We’re here to help you, you know,” she says quietly, intentionally lowering her voice. It does no difference; they’re micced up regardless. But acknowledging the white elephant in the room is just another way to earn his trust. “We know what’s going on.”
Chris can see the way he swallows hard, the way his pink tongue darts out quickly to wet his lips. He hears the tremble of fear in his voice. “All of it?” he asks, Chris reading the words from his lips more than he hears them.
“Most of it,” Allison admits. “That’s why we need you.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t-- he’ll not--“ his voice turns pleading. “He’s good, though, he doesn’t really-- he doesn’t hurt me. I--“
“It’s okay,” Allison says, placing her hand on his. “We’re here to help, okay?”
“I want a lawyer,” he says, clamming up as he pulls his hand away, shrinks back. Chris sighs. He can’t imagine holding fear over someone like that from so far away. He’s been on this job for longer than anyone on his team has, and every day the things he sees still surprise him.
“Won’t give me a name but Stiles. Says that’s all he’s ever been called,” the lawyer tells them after he spends some time in the room with Stiles. “You know what we’re pleading, I hope.”
“And you know what we’ll counter with, Mr Whittemore,” Chris says. “Look, the DA’s willing to give him a few leniencies if he gives us a name--“
“In case you haven’t noticed, my client is shit-scared,” Whittemore hisses. “You’re going to have to make sure he never sees the face of the man that did all this for him.”
“What do you think we’re here for?” Chris asks, crossing his arms across his chest.
Whittemore eases. “I got a kid his age--“
“I know. We’re here to help.”
“I’ll do my best,” Whittemore says.
In hindsight, Chris should have seen it coming. It’s a rookie mistake, one he knows better by now to make, and he makes it anyway.
“How long since the boy’s disappeared?” he asks.
“Twelve hours,” Lydia says, voice loud through his headset. Distantly he hears the typing in the background, can almost see the multiple screens she’s using to run checks and cross-references.
“Since he probably figured out we have the boy,” Chris says, biting down the fuck he wanted to let out. “Tell me about the victim.”
Lydia gives him all the information she has. “We have the vehicle though, so we can’t match it with any that could have been seen around the McCall residence.”
“I didn’t think we would,” Chris says. “Look up all the van purchases and rentals in the last twenty-four hours within a hundred-mile radius. He’d have tried to go far to throw us off the scent but not that far.”
“Are we sure this is related to the killings, though?” Lydia asks.
“We aren’t, but it’s our closest bet.” Chris doesn’t say that in case it isn’t, they’d have little else to go by anyway. “He’s escalating. Meanwhile, keep running your search on Stiles.”
“Unique name, sir, but I’ve got no hits on it. Not in the last month, year-- I’ve gone back two decades. I have nothing on him.”
“Any variations on the spelling?”
“Nothing on Styles either, nothing I could find.” Lydia sighs. “I’ve got a list of names beginning with Stil-- but that’s more than we can handle without overloading my queries. I’d need a narrower field.”
“You don’t have one.”
Chris is talking to the victim’s mother when he receives the call.
“There are only five van purchases in the last few hours,” Lydia tells him without preamble. “And all of them check out.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Chris asks before he remembers where he is. Mrs McCall looks up at him in surprise, her eyes red and swollen from tears.
“Is it--“ she starts to ask but Chris is already turning away and Allison’s already got her arm around the woman to comfort her.
“But,” Lydia says, and sometimes he swears her flair for the dramatic reveal is going to get them killed someday. “I widened my search to include all vehicle types. I took out convertibles, anything that’s too small, and focused on family-type SUVs.”
“Go on,” Chris tells her, seeing where she’s going.
“Three purchases in the last twenty-four hours, but only one that was within the hour after news hit we’ve apprehended a person of interest.”
“Lydia, if you don’t tell me--“
“His name is Peter Hale.”
Peter Hale’s only living relatives are surprised when Chris’ team pays them a personal visit.
“He isn’t in Harris Facilities?” Derek asks, his face moving into a frown. Behind him, his sister Laura wraps her arms around herself.
“We just gave them a call,” Chris tells him. “He checked out over a year ago. You never came by to say hi?”
“He was catatonic,” Derek says. “After a while visiting him became--“
“We understand you lost family in that fire too,” Allison says.
“We lost everything in that fire.” Derek purses his lips. “Funny how pranks can go awry, right?”
“We’re sorry,” Chris says.
Laura shakes her head. “Don’t be. Sorry only goes so far, as does dwelling on the past.” She takes her brother’s hand and squeezes it. “Visiting Uncle Peter day in and day out-- we just kept going back into that hole. We couldn’t afford to get sucked in.”
“Do you know where he might have gone, then?” Chris asks, and they share a fleeting look, one that barely lasts a second. He thinks he might have to ask again but then Derek gives him an address.
The old Hale family house was condemned years ago, but apparently Peter Hale has found renewed purpose in it. They manage to obtain floor plans and coordinate with the department to organize an ambush. Once he realizes he’s surrounded Peter does what few unsubs do, and raises both hands in surrender.
He’s not catatonic any longer. The absence of his partner seems to have done a number on his mental state-- he looks like he hasn’t slept, a few stray locks of hair are out of place, and the suit he wears (who wears a suit committing crime?) is a little rumpled-- but Chris can see the glimmer of amusement in Peter’s eyes as he lets himself get escorted to the car.
“Careful,” he admonishes the uniformed officer guiding him out. “That’s Armani.”
After, when Scott is returned to his terrified mother and the team is left to pick up the pieces, Chris will hope he has enough pills to keep the sights from seeping into his nightmares. There’s enough evidence in the Hale house for a life sentence, more than enough to haunt its walls for centuries.
“He was so angry,” Kate whispers beside him. “I’ve never--“
“How can anyone be capable of this?” Allison wonders.
His phone rings and he picks it up. “Good news?” he asks Whittemore.
“Stiles wants to know what we can get if he talks,” Whittemore tells him. “You ready to talk to the DA?”
“I’ll send you the details,” Chris says before he hangs up. “Time to go. We’ll let crime scene handle this.”
He glances at his sister, at his daughter, and he wonders if he shouldn’t have brought them both into the family business.
Peter is annoyingly amiable, and Chris soon realizes he may be questioning his decision to ride in the car with him on the way to the precinct.
“What was different about Stiles, Peter?” he asks. “What made you decide he wasn’t worth killing.”
“Are you saying you’d have gutted that boy, Mr Argent?” At the flash of annoyance on Chris’s face, Peter laughs. “I heard them call you by that. Relax. I’m in cuffs, remember?” He holds up both hands as though to prove his point. “Can’t slit your throat from where I’m sitting, and anyway, you’re hardly my type.”
“That much is obvious,” Chris says. “So why keep Stiles?”
Peter only smiles.
The trial doesn’t take long to set up. It is unusually fast, but all things considered it doesn’t surprise him. Everyone wanted Peter Hale burned for his sins.
His family attends each hearing, stoic and unmoving from their seats in the last row. He barely looks at them when he takes the stand. Once, after the judge declares a recess, he looks at Chris and asks where Stiles is.
It takes all of Chris’s self-restraint not to punch him then and there, and they make sure the two are never in the same room at the same time.
Chris is relieved when the judge reads out the sentence: life without parole. Solitary confinement until a psychiatrist evaluates him fit for social interaction. Stiles, while he’d been an accomplice, hadn’t carried out any of the killings-- the one time the murder hadn’t been as brutal was the one time he’d begged for Peter’s mercy and taken the brunt of his anger, it turned out-- so he is exonerated.
Chris is a man of the law and a defender of the judiciary process, but even he thinks Peter Hale should never be taken out of solitary.
Kate is talking to Stiles outside the courtroom as Chris slips out, just behind those escorting Peter Hale out, back to his jail cell.
“This place is great; they’ll help you get re-adjusted after the trial--“ she’s telling him just as Chris walks by, Peter in cuffs.
Stiles’ eyes go wide and he freezes in place, something flashing quickly across his face before it disappears again.
Peter gives him a wink then, and Stiles flattens himself against the wall in an instant.
Chris growls. “Keep walking, Hale,” he orders, grabbing the man by his upper arm. If he’s maybe a touch rough, well, that’s not his problem.
Kate tells him later she was able to talk Stiles down, and he seemed to have coped well after that episode.
“Where is he going now, do you think?” he asks Kate.
“For his sake, somewhere far, far away from all this, I hope.”
“Me too.” Silver linings, Chris thinks, come too few and far between in his line of work.
“Mr Argent.”
“Do you have any idea what time it is, Martin?”
“Whatever is six plus seven hours of going through all the records I could find because I couldn’t let something go, I’m guessing,” she says, just this side of snippy, so Chris figures he can listen.
“What is it?”
“His name is Genim Stilinski.”
One last loose end. Praise the fucking Lord. “Great,” he says, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Thank you, Martin. Go get yourself a drink--“
“Born to John and Elizabeth Stilinski, nineteen years of age,” Lydia continues. “When he was seven his mother fell ill with cancer, and when he was nine she passed away. His father turned to drinking, and one night when he was twelve John Stilinski got into an accident. Some frat boys were speeding--“
Some people get no breaks. Chris tells Lydia this much, ignoring the way his heart clenches in his chest because inasmuch as he regrets teaching Allison everything he ever knew, and bringing her into all of this, at least she has both of her parents. She’s luckier than most.
“John Stilinski survived, but was paralyzed from the waist down.” Lydia pauses. “He was eventually transferred to a facility-- Harris Facilities and Care?-- that offered long-term care, where his son visited him everyday until--“
“Until he met Peter.”
“I took the liberty of calling them,” Lydia says. “Peter was catatonic and didn’t respond to anyone until Stiles came along. The head nurse says-- the head nurse told me Stiles helped rehabilitate him.”
Chris sat up. Beside him, Victoria stirs. “Can you patch me through to the courtroom security cams?” he asks. He reaches for the laptop on his night table, opens it up to log on.
“Sir?” She’s hesitating because it isn’t strictly legal, but--
“Now, Martin,” he says. “I’m online.”
“Yes, sir,” he hears, and then his screen flickers to life.
“Get me the footage from the hall at somewhere between two to three in the afternoon today,” he says, telling her to pause when he sees him entering the hall. “Go back a few minutes, while Kate’s talking to him.”
She does, and he nods through the scene. From the bottom of the screen he watches him enter, Peter Hale in tow. Stiles freezes, like he remembers him doing, glancing frantically at Peter then at Kate and Chris before jumping back at the moment Peter might have acknowledged him with a wink.
It plays out like the book. It plays out exactly like the book.
Chris shoves Peter down the hall and Kate asks Stiles if he’s okay. He nods shakily, steels himself with a deep breath. He forces a smile and Kate squeezes his arm. She turns away and there it is--
A smirk, brief but knowing, uncontrollably gleeful, on Stiles’ face.