Penelope Garcia was typing furiously in her lair, presiding over the monitors in front of her as if the ugly, ergonomic desk chair was actually a throne. A soft knock interrupted her fingers, and she whirled around to see Derek peeking his head in. "Hey, girl, what's it rated?" He asked, eager for some pseudo flirting with the tech goddess.

"PG, as always," she responded, quirking an eyebrow mischeviously. "But I could make this baby rated R."

"I'll have to sneak out to see it then." He walked into the office, turning her back around to face the monitors.

"What can I do for you, jailbait?" She asked, minimizing some extra screens.

"I need some info."

"Well, info is the jam in the pb&j of my life." She giggled as Derek rattled off a list of parameters. "What's this for, a consult?" Derek shook his head, reaching for the files he had brought with him.

"Cold case. Back to the nineties, near Cleveland." Garcia saw some photos in the file and tried not to look too close, but a couple of other pieces of evidence that had been pressed inside the pages caught her eye. There were a few receipts, a couple of tattered parking tickets, and a wristband to a novelty theme park that had probably long since closed.

"Huh," she said softly, fingering the worn wristband in her hand. "Russian Ridge…" Derek looked up from his notes, brow wrinkled.

"What did you say, babygirl? I didn't catch that." She had carefully laid the band of colored paper aside her keyboard and pulled up a new search window, not responding as she pulled up pictures and results. "Penelope?" Derek repeated, trying to read the searches as fast as she put them in.

"Russian Ridge. It's a theme park that I used to go to as a kid. They had these fake mountains, pretend snow and all that. The scariest roller coaster I had ever ridden." She gestured to a picture on the screen of a brightly stained wooden roller coaster that was nothing by today's standards but had brought her endless adrenaline rushes as a teenager. "It was the place to go during the summer. They always boasted that they made the best snow-cones outside of the USSR…back in the days when they actually called it that." The memories brought a smile to her face, and Derek realized it was probably one of the few childhood moments untarnished by the sadness of losing her parents.

"The bracelet was found on what we think is the third victim of a serial killer. We never really had much to go on, it looks like. It was two years before I joined the BAU, but when I was a rookie agent I would go through cold cases on my nights off to try and earn some good standing with the brass. I still pull it out every now and again to see if anything new has come up." His was the only name on the log book; it had been since the case was closed all those years before. Something about it always pulled him back, and Morgan could never quite put his finger on what it was. It was the most mundane of cases: there was only three identified victims, linked only by location, and the murders had an equally ubiquitous signature; the women were stabbed in the abdomen and left to bleed to death. The Cleveland PD had put resources into initially and it had been one of the first cases where they consulted with the BAU team, but interest had quickly run out after victims had stopped appearing. Maybe it was this lack of exposure that drew Morgan to the file, and yet…there was something else, some detail he always felt was missing.

"Well, give me the deets." Garcia said, pulling a few familiar forms towards her. "I'll run it through VICAP with some special flags I've been developing for exactly this purpose!" Morgan gratefully picked up the sheets and began to relay Garcia the information, pausing shortly for her to type in the necessary parameters.

"Mays, Elizabeth. 32, married, one kid. DOB March 19th, 1964. She was the first one we discovered, some patrolmen found her in the trunk of her own abandoned car. Fieles, Mary, 30, born Novemeber 11th, 1962. She was engaged and had already taken in her deceased brother's child, um…Ingrid Fieles, who was 16 at the time." He paused, letting his finger waver on the next name. "We found the Russian Ridge wristband on the third victim, but her ID was fake, and her name and picture wasn't in any system that we searched at the time, so we considered her a Jane Doe. Her body was found about a mile off of the theme park and her face had sustained partial damage that the medical examiner had determined to be animal-related. Coyotes, he said." Morgan stopped reading and got lost in thought until Garcia turned around, gently flicking his muscled thigh.

"Hey," she started gently, wheeling herself over until she was directly in front of him. She set her frog-manicured nails on his dark denim jeans and looked up, meeting his eyes. "This case is obviously bothering you. So, spill."

"This girl…she had the wristband on, right? So she probably had just left the theme park. But no one goes to a park like that alone. She had to have friends, or parents…"

"But no one ever reported her missing." Garcia finished plaintively. She pulled one of the fun pens from her cup and began fiddling with the poof on its tip, a habit that indicated she was sinking deep into her analytic thoughts, looking for new ways to approach the old case.

"I already checked missing persons in the Cleveland area and the wider Ohio area. Hell, last time I even looked at all of the surrounding states. There was no one."

"That's so sad. And you said the ID was fake? Why would she need that? It wouldn't be for drinking, if she was older than 21."

Morgan took another pen from cup on the desk and began to play with the tiny racecar that adorned its tip, complete with tiny white-walled wheels that he rolled along the pad of his thumb. "I thought that too. The medical examiner concluded that she was about 28 at the time of death. My next idea was that she was running away, from a boyfriend or marriage or family. But there's only so far you can go without a valid name."

"Hey, you know…a lot of times, if someone is running away and needs a fake ID, they'll use a name that's familiar to them. Or the same initials." She had turned back to her computer and was typing relentlessly once again, modifying her previous searched to account for the new information. "Do you have the ID in your file? I could run it."

Morgan quickly paged through the file and frowned. "I know I used to have a copy, but it's not here anymore. Cleveland PD probably has the original."

"All I need is a name. DOB, if you have it; it might be an important event from her life that's easy for her to remember."

"Alright, here we go." Derek's fingers traced down the paper, landing on a small note near the bottom. The name was written in the margins of the document, next to the 'Jane Doe' that had been typed in. He squinted to read it, holding it closer to the light. "I can just make it out. Last name is…Jacquet? Seems french…First name…Natalia. No, Natalie. Honestly, I'm not sure. All of the notes refer to her as Jane Doe. DOB, October 31, 1967. She must've liked Halloween." His brief smile faded when he looked up to see Penelope turn towards him, her face a mask of confusion and disbelief. "Babygirl?"

"Give me the file." She demanded, yanking it from his hands before he could offer it. "That's all you have? Just a name and a date?"

"I can get Cleveland PD to fax me the original." He was clearly caught off guard, and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Pen, what's going on? Penelope?" But her eyes were ensnared in the black typeface of the document, and only looked up once she was done reading it through.

"It wasn't Halloween. She didn't like Halloween."

"Penelope, talk to me. You want to tell me what's going on?" The tech analyst's hands were shaking as she read the document again, then turned the page to see if there was any more.

"Natalie. It's Natalie, not Natalia. Derek, I…I knew her." He immediately knelt down, taking the file from her and reading it again. Her lips were pressed tight together, and the scared look on her face reminded Derek of a child's naïveté when faced with a ghost story. Perhaps that's what this is, he mused silently. For her, it's a ghost story.

"Babygirl, are you sure?" He asked, handing her back the file. "So, Natalie Jacquet is her real name?"

"No, not Jacquet. Smith. Natalie Smith. Illinois Jacquet is the name of a jazz saxophonist from the big band era. And it's not Halloween, October 31st is his birthday. October 31st, 1922." Her eyes were wide, and Morgan set his hands on her shoulders in the semblance of a hug. "I mean, I can't be sure. Ohio is a big place, and Natalie isn't an uncommon name. I mean, we even knew another Natalie Smith. Smith isn't uncommon either."

"Hey, hey." He soothed. "I'm going to go get Hotch, and then I'm going to call over to Cleveland homicide to get a copy of this ID. You need to calm down, until we know for sure that it's her. Can you do that for me, Pen?"

"Penny." She said in a small voice.

"Penny?" Morgan repeated. He had been on his way out the door, but the abnormally laconic Garcia pulled him back in. He fired off a text to Hotch to come to the office instead, and slid his phone into his pocket.

"She called me Penny." Garcia said, a smile breaking through the gloom. "She was the first one to help me dye my hair. It was obnoxiously reddish-copper, and she called me Penny for so long that eventually, it stuck, even if the hair didn't."

"Penny," Derek mused, trying to keep the room light. "I like it. I'll add it to my repertoire."

"She was the only one to ever call me that." Garcia said sadly. As Morgan began to say something else, she cut him off, a frown on her face yet again. "And she's the only one who gets to."

Natalie was sitting on the worn carpet in Penelope's bedroom, painting her nails with outrageously magenta polish as she waited for the younger girl to come out of the shower. She had been watching Penelope during night shifts for two months now, and she had fallen in love with the way they somehow made a whole family, just the two of them. When the girl had admired the streaks of blonde running through Natalie's hair, their imaginations had run wild with possibilities for eleven year old Penelope. They settled on something safe, a shade of auburn that the box called Honey Sienna. They double checked it with Penelope's mom, of course, but in all honesty, Natalie knew that they would have done it even without permission.

Natalie admired her manicure and blew on them so they would harden. She heard the soft pad of footsteps, and as the door opened, her jaw dropped. "Oh my God!" She cried out. "It looks terrible!"

"I know!" Penelope said, devastatedly running hands through her limp, wet locks. "We need to change it back."

"Maybe it will look better dry." Natalie suggested, not sure what else to say. "Come sit down." She plugged in the hair dryer and began to brush through Penelope's tangled hair and dry it out. The girl's eyes were shut tight, trying to forget what they had done, but Natalie was beginning to smile. It reminded her so much of her first dye job, which had given her yellow hair with a tinge of greenish-gray that didn't grow out for months. She began to chuckle, wondering if she could find pictures of that dreadful period of her life.

"How can you laugh?" Penelope said indignantly. "I look like an Irish setter. Or a tomato. Or—"

"A Penny." Natalie smiled. "You look like a Penny."

Garcia was sitting in one of the chairs at the round table, Morgan at her left and JJ at her right. JJ had her hand entwined in Penelope's, the other was paging through a copy of the file that Morgan had made. Hotch sat across from them, and Rossi stood in the background, appraising the group as they read. They were still a member short after SSA Kate Callaghan had left the team, but they were in the process of recruiting a new agent. That is, until this came up. Reid was the last one in the room, and he first one to start talking. "I've been over this file twice and Morgan's right, this case is textbook. It gives pretty much our standard profile as far as I can see. White male, mid-life, 9-5 unassuming job, probably married or divorced." He looked around the room, seeming to notice the attitude of the room. "Sorry," he mumbled to no one in particular. Dumping his bag and blazer in the empty chair next to him, he sank down and looked to Hotch.

"Well, right now we're only interested in confirming the identity of our victim." Hotch said, bringing the screens to life. "Penelope, are you sure you want to stay for this?" Her eyes, though bleary, were stony.

"I'm here, Hotch", she said adamantly. "I knew her."

Hotch nodded once and pulled up the first shot, a scan of the original crime scene photo of a woman's body, partially covered in brown, dead leaves. The next picture was a close up of the face, which was a gruesome mess of blood and forest floor. Everyone's eyes shifted to Garcia, watching her visibly tense. If there was any question in the identity of the woman, it was confirmed in the next photo that Hotch put up, a driver's license picture of a young brunette woman with high cheekbones and a wide smile. "This was the picture on the ID that Cleveland PD faxed over." He paused, but he didn't need to ask anything before he knew the answer, written in tears down the side of Garcia's face.

JJ pulled her close, wrapping her arms around the tech as Hotch set the screens back to black. "You said her name was Natalie Smith?" Hotch probed gently. "How did you know her?"

"She was my babysitter. When I was young, and before my mom remarried, we lived right on the border between Ohio and Pennsylvania, right on Lake Erie. My mom would hire Natalie to watch me during the summers when I was too young to look after myself, but then she became my cool older friend. She would drive me places, or take me out for ice cream if my mom needed a break. Like an older sister, almost." The tears had petered out, replaced by (of all things), anger. At whom, or at what, the team had no idea, but her voice had taken on a certain edge. "She was eight years older than me, and she had her own life. Never got to go to college, but she still was working her way through the ranks of a little supermarket in town."

"Garcia, when did you last see her?" Rossi asked from across the room.

"A few months before I moved to San Francisco with my mom. I had told her we were moving, and she just…" Garcia's face paled suddenly, and Morgan reached out to put a hand gently on her back. "She just disappeared. Oh god, I thought it was about the move! I mean, I was twelve, but what if…Oh my god." Her breaths were rushed, and Morgan and JJ met each other's concerned glances over her head as they tried to calm her down. "I thought she was mad that we were leaving."