Chapter Text
It was early Tuesday morning when Dr. Spencer Reid slipped into Garcia’s monitor-lit office, unnoticed by his team members.
“Garcia, can you check a number for me, not sure if it’s still active. I can’t seem to get a hold of Dr. Goikoecheandia.” Reid couldn’t meet Garcia’s eyes. He already knew the answer. He considered the fact that he might be wrong.
Garcia didn’t even have to utter a word to let him know he was right, but she said it anyway, “Jane blocked you, Reid. I’m sorry. She was tight-lipped about everything else, but she told me that much. I’m sorry, do you want to talk about it?”
“No, it’s fine. Totally normal. Just two consenting adults who agreed to remain civil. Thank you.” Reid tucked his hair behind his ear.
“Oh, okay.” Pity in Garcia’s eyes sharpened the hum of the machines. Even the light from the monitor was suddenly unbearable. His inevitably blurring vision made him softly shut the door.
The team noticed his gradual neglect of his well-being. Reid had a few noticeable clothing faux pas, such as a crooked tie. The color combination of his vests and shirts became difficult to ignore, even for Garcia, with an unsurpassed love for quirky color combinations. Shadows under his eyes cast darker shades progressively. A handful of times, his stomach grumbled during briefings, indicating frequent missed meals.
Prentiss told him her mom gave her complimentary passes to this meditation class to help her “relax”. Reid didn’t believe her lies, but went with her anyway. It was in a secluded villa. His sleep improved after the meditation sessions.
A few months later, under Rossi’s pretense of wanting to dye his hair, he invited Reid to accompany him to this new barber shop. The upfront lie made Reid certain all of his team members noticed that he had gone sloppy. He couldn’t escape it. The man was persistent.
Reid thought it couldn’t get more pathetic than that. In three months and two days, he was about to learn that even the minuscule probability of being wrong could be just as soul-crushing.
***
The streets outside were tired and sleepy. The scent of antiseptic had already replaced that of stale morning coffee. Fluorescent lights in the bullpen were partially turned off. Only a handful of agents worked quietly at their desks. SSA Aaron Hotchner watched his team trudge into the briefing room with long faces and weary eyes.
Morgan stifled a yawn. He glanced at the manila folder with the FBI logo on the table. Another case file. He grabbed it before slumping into the chair. Reid’s leather messenger bag hung heavy on his shoulder. Reid settled his things on a seat between him and Morgan, as quietly as he could. Hotch eyed Reid, clutching the green vest he had worn that morning.
Emily paced by the door until her call ended. “Yes, yes, I understand. We will speak tomorrow. I’m really sorry, I have to go.” Seeing her colleagues already settled in their seats, she abruptly cut the connection. Prentiss mouthed ‘Sorry’ to Hotch before she strode towards the seat across from Morgan.
Hotch addressed his team in his usual clipped tone, “Good job on catching the 7th Street killer. We have a new case. JJ?” He eyed Agent Jareau seated beside Prentiss and nodded.
Prentiss turned off the buzzing phone in her pocket in agitation. There was an unusually thick case file on the table. More victims. She opened the file and switched between glancing at the listed victim information and their images, chronologically cataloged on the monitor.
“Carrie Mizuki, thirty.” JJ started. “Resident of Haven Complex. The entire water supply of the apartment complex was poisoned. She called 911 before she died, saying, ‘there’s something wrong with the water’. Sixteen more are dead in the complex. The local PD is conducting a second pass on the surveillance to see if the UnSub used another entry point. No prints were found in the tank or even on the door.”
“Sixteen.” Morgan closed his eyes, rubbed his temples, and shook his head.
“That’s not all. There were a few shops in the nearby mall that were victims of carbon monoxide poisoning. At least 10 more died. There might be more.” JJ added.
“Find out what ties these victims to the UnSub.” Hotch thought out loud. “This is unlikely the first poisoning. Likely started on a small scale. Single-family homes. Small shops are nearby. We need to work on victimology. Morgan, check the lab tomorrow and see if we can get anything in the post-mortem analysis. Check regional plumbing failures or carbon monoxide accidents in the suburbs from six months ago.”
“Got it.” Morgan made a note on his task list.
The team had a moment of quiet, skimming the photocopies and printed images in their case file. Prentiss laid out three different angles of the recent crime scene in front of her. Morgan looked at the table of victims’ names to see common patterns. Until someone broke the silence.
In the evidence section, there was a high-resolution copy of a list of handwritten equations.
“Look at this. I think we found the UnSub’s list of targets… or clues to the targets.” Reid leaned back in his chair, flipping through the files in the folder, looking for clues. “It looks like advanced math. Most likely graduate level.”
“We might be looking at a mathematician?” Morgan moved closer to Reid to see which page he was staring at.
“50/50. I believe it’s more of a code, rather than a plain equation.” Reid trailed. He took a red pen and underlined the said symbols in the equation on his materials. There were several symbols that didn’t make sense. He considered the possibility that the equation might not actually exist. Reid continued toying with his pen, unable to figure out why he cannot solve the equation.
“Age and gender profile won’t help us much here. Look into the geographical profile.” Hotch stood beside the screen and pointed at the victim. There was nothing visibly tying them to each other.
Hotch dialed Garcia’s office number. As soon as she picked up, he said, “Garcia, you’re on speaker.”
Derek leaned towards the speaker, “Baby girl, can you search for mathematicians, math professors, specifically math PhD holders within DC?”
Garcia’s voice was more alert than the agents in the room. “Too many names… I need more parameters.”
“Narrow down your search for within graduates for the past five years. Cross-reference it to anyone who had been admitted to psychiatric facilities,” Hotch instructed.
Reid stared at the board in a futile attempt to solve the equation in front of him.
“I have 90 results for PhD holders. There’s a problem... I need more time to infiltrate the psychiatric facility for the past five years. Most of the ones in the current results are gone. Let me get back to you on that.” Garcia paused. Click-clacking keyboards filled the silence as the agents waited for her to continue.
“What do you mean they’re gone?” Hotch tilted his head and furrowed his eyebrows.
“Not gone gone. Gone, as in some left the country to teach as professors across Europe and Asia, while some embarked on creative activities.” Garcia quickly replied.
“Garcia, we’re looking for senior professionals who recently suffered a job loss, divorce, or even residence displacement. See if that yields any results.” Hotch added.
“Recently terminated mathematicians. Three. All of them have new jobs now. Divorced mathematicians within the time frame and the parameters. Ten. Residence displacement. Five. Sending it to you now…” Garcia sent the file to the agents in the room.
“How about mathematicians who were demoted?” Morgan asked.
“Two. I’ll send it over,” Garcia informed the team.
“For now, we have seventeen leads. We cannot expand our search to engineers and scientists. These careers have too many branches. We’ll be looking at thousands.” Hotch looked at the equation on his case file.
Reid turned towards the table and asked, “Maybe we’re looking at this wrong. What if the UnSub is not necessarily a mathematician? Then, those seventeen leads could be a dead end.” He stood up and walked towards the whiteboard where the equation was written. “Garcia, is there anyone in the BAU outside our team who can look into a bunch of equations with me?”
“Let me talk to Director Quimby. I’ll let you know if he’s got any engineers or scientists available.” Hotch answered.
Hotch took the briefing room monitor’s remote. He examined two photos of the crime scene on the screen and said, “JJ, we need visuals on the past crime scenes. Work with the local PD. See if anything turns up in the surveillance footage that can help us.”
“The local PD is also short-staffed. Two detectives are…” JJ read a message on her phone, “injured from their recent case.”
“I see. Work with Garcia and the local PD to comb through the surveillance footage of the crime scene.” Hotch pivoted to his instructions.
“Okay,” JJ messaged Garcia on the company messenger to fix their meeting time and the local PD’s address.
“The intervals between two cases are two weeks apart. If this isn’t the real second case, the UnSub might be close to devolving. We need to beat the UnSub to it.” Hotch took a deep breath before speaking again, “Team, SSA Rossi is gone for two months. He’s on a book tour. We need all the help we can get. That’s all. You all had a long day. Go home and get some rest. We’ll touch base tomorrow afternoon.” Hotch grabbed two folders and swiftly left the meeting room.
Morgan got to his feet and followed Hotchner to his office. Reid had a hunch of what Derek was telling their boss. He hoped he’s wrong. Statistically, Reid is always right.
***
The next day, Reid looked at the ghost town of a bullpen. Granted, it was bustling with agents and ringing phones, but to him, its essence was empty. With Morgan at the lab, JJ with Garcia down at the PD, Prentiss doing a round of interviews, the loudest thing he could hear in the briefing room was silence. The death of twenty-six people weighing in did not help.
When Hotch knocked on the briefing room door, Spencer realized he had missed lunch. It’s time to regroup. Everyone did what they had to do, and he’s still stuck on the equation since last night.
“Jane.” He opened his mouth to say something, but he closed it and cleared his throat. It wasn’t unusual for words to elude him during awkward situations.
“Dr. Reid,” Jane gave a curt nod.
“I see you’ve met. Good.” SSA Hotchner waited for everyone to take their seats. “Everyone, settle down. Before we begin, let me introduce Dr. Goikoecheandia from R&S team. She worked with me and Garcia last year on the PLC case. She will be working with us for this one.”
“You know him?” The man behind her asked in a low whisper.
“We’ve met, yeah.” She answered in a clipped tone and chose the seat at the far end of the room.
“What did you do? Why does he look at you like that?” The second man chimed in.
She ignored them.
Everything started flooding Reid’s memories: text messages left unanswered, the night of their disastrous date, and learning from Garcia that Jane had blocked him.
After the briefing was over, Jane raised her hand to catch Reid’s attention. He was the last to present at the briefing. “The lower limit is zero, Dr. Reid, not a null set. An engineering notation.”
“Reid, can you solve it with zero?” Morgan interrupted Reid’s drifting attention.
Reid paused, mentally replacing the null set with zero. “Yes. Thank you, Dr. Goikoecheandia.”
“You’re welcome, Dr. Reid.”
Two other members of the R&S team, who attended as Jane’s backup, exchanged knowing looks before glancing at both of them. In contrast, JJ and Prentiss accidentally met each other’s eyes, avoided eye contact the entire meeting. Garcia in the video call noticeably looked at the floor and then the ceiling, refusing to look at the monitor or her camera.
Hotch noticed Spencer’s eyes avoiding the crowd and said, “Dr. Goikoecheandia, please work with Dr. Reid on this. We’re hoping to use this as lead for the carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Okay.” Jane gave Hotch and Reid a curt nod.
“Seventeen,” Mark said, the first R&S man from earlier.
“No, I got nineteen,” John compared his notes from Mark.
“What?” Jane curiously looked up from her notebook.
“Nothing. There’s a new case we’re solving.” John pocketed his tiny notebook.
“What? Quimby gave us another case?” Jane checked her phone. Nothing from their boss.
“No, but we need to go. Brainstorming.” Both men swiftly moved past the door before she could ask more questions. They had that stupid look on their faces. She knew it wasn’t about work.
They were talking about the number of times Dr. Reid glanced at her direction. He was counting, too. And the correct answer was twenty-four.
“Dr. Reid, shall we begin?” Jane walked towards him, staring at the board.
Twenty five.