By early March, the Abbot & Carson Brokerage case was taking almost all of Chelsea's attention. She finished the other cases she had been working on and had declined most other work. After the one defendant accused of insider trading had made his case on the MSNBC program; the other three defendants had started to talk publicly. The prosecution had petitioned the judge for a gag order, but was unsuccessful. Public opinion was mounting against the firm and in favor of the four defendants. The case was very time consuming and she was working on it many evenings and weekends.
When Spencer was not working a case and if Chelsea had to work late, he would stop and bring back dinner for them both. She had all of her work spread out over one end of her dining room table for weeks. To keep himself busy when she was working, Spencer brought a stack of books from the library every week to her place. As busy as she was, sometimes she would just stop and watch him read. It fascinated her that he was able to absorb that much information as quickly as he did.
Although Spencer was not a huge fan of online reading, he found the much of the information he wanted to keep up on was free from the Library of Congress. Before he met Chelsea, he would go on many weekends and evenings just to look up city maps, traffic patterns, Census records, and medial research. None of the materials he was interested in were allowed to be checked out, but most of it was now available on-line.
Reading online was much slower because the computer could not load a page as fast as he could read, but printing tens of thousands of pages per week was not a realistic option. He brought the laptop he had at home for work to Chelsea's place weeks ago. He owned a laptop partly because he would sometimes receive an email he needed to read before he would head to a crime scene, but he also had it for The Library of Congress's vast online catalogue. When he was about to head out to a city for a case, he could download a current map of the city with updated population and other pertinent information the team might need.
He felt that although it was not ideal, reading from his laptop at Chelsea's place was worth it. He liked that he could be with her reading while she worked.
#
In mid March, Prentiss had a visit from an old friend who told her about a mutual friend that had died under suspicious circumstances. Hotch authorized her some private time to look into it. At first Morgan was the only other agent involved. But when another victim with ties to Prentiss' friend also died of natural causes, according to the cornier, Spencer and Rossi were also looking into it. After some investigation, Spencer, Rossi and Prentiss were working under the assumption that someone was trying to drive out the victims' demons with an exorcism.
Morgan was outspoken that he didn't think they had a real case. He sympathized with Prentiss about her friend's loss, but did not want to be involved in what he thought was a private and religious matter. Spencer did not believe in exorcisms, but he knew that throughout history it was used on people with Schizophrenia. It was often believed that the voices a Schizophrenic patient heard were that of the devil or other demons. He not only wanted to help Prentiss, he felt the need to help the victims that were being held against their will because their families didn't understand their illness.
The case struck a nerve in all three of the agents. Prentiss because of her friendship with the victims, Rossi because of his close ties to the Catholic religion and the way it was being abused to harm instead of help people, and Reid because of he felt that this is how his mother would be treated by the unsubs.
At the home of the third victim, Chelsea's friend John and his rookie partner were with the family. John came over to say hi and Spencer introduced them to Rossi and Prentiss. After they had been asked to leave by one of the other DC cops, John came over to Spencer to apologize. "The deceased's mother is really upset and she asked us to make you leave. I'm sorry."
Spencer told him that it was OK, they did not have any official capacity here, and they had just been working on a theory involving other similar deaths.
John nodded and pulled him aside so they could talk in private. "I've heard rumors. Many in the MPDC think there is some type of a S&M club in this area. Three young healthy men, all from wealthy families, dying from natural causes is suspicious. Add the fact that they all apparently were tied to their beds and had candles burning in their room; it makes cops start to gossip. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. I don't think this will be the last."
Spencer thanked John and climbed into the back seat of the waiting SUV. He told Rossi and Prentiss of John's theory. They both were interested in how he knew John. On the ride back to the BAU they discussed John and the MPDC cops' theories. They were sure that their profile of the exorcism was correct, because they had more history on all three victims than the police did, but knowing that they were not the only department with suspicions was interesting.
Once they got back to the BAU, Emily pulled Spencer aside and asked, "Who's Chelsea?"
Spencer looked down and put his hands in his pockets. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I specifically heard your friend John ask you how Chelsea was doing." She stopped and looked at how uncomfortable he looked. "Never mind. You know you can always talk to me, right?"
Spencer nodded as she walked away and started to breathe again. He hadn't even realized he was holding his breath. He hurried to his desk before she could change her mind and ask more questions he was not prepared to answer.
The next weekend after they had closed the case, Spencer and Chelsea went to John and Becky's home for dinner, John asked about the case. Spencer did not discuss any of the details about the victims shared trip to Rome or that one was a friend of Prentiss, but did tell him that the deaths were do to exorcisms. All of the victims were diagnosed with mental illness and or drug additions and the suspects were trying to rid them of their demons. Because they were unsuccessful of ridding the patients of their illnesses, they continued to try to drive out the demons until they died of either heart failure or dehydration.
Spencer continued, "This was done against the victims' will, but the families were aware of what was happening." He was quick to point out that none of the families were hoping for that outcome, but they all seemed to think it was the best course of action even after the deaths. None of them could be charged with a crime, but all four at the table would have liked to see that happen.
Both John and Becky were saddened that someone would use a religions type ceremony to try and rid someone of a mental illness. John said, "I see people harm or kill others way too many times in the name of God."
Becky continued his thought, "I know, and to blame a mental illness on a demon or possession in this day and age, is unbelievable."
Chelsea and Spencer had a similar conversation the night they had apprehended the Priest that was responsible. Being Catholic, Chelsea was even more upset by the actions of this man from Rome and was very upset that he had diplomatic immunity. Plus she knew how Spencer felt because his mother. He had witnessed this disease very personally and he was in constant fear of being diagnosed with it himself.
After the heavy topic of this case, they were all ready to talk about something else over dinner. The rest of the evening was pleasant small talk about Chelsea's work and John and Becky's kids.
#
Chelsea was now getting more information from public sources than the information she had received from the Abbot & Carson Brokerage itself. Documents were mounting on her dining room table. On a normal case, she would not discuss anything until the case was closed. But this case was unusual. Now that the case was made public on MSNBC as well as other stations and newspapers, she had very little sensitive information that Spencer could not find in public sources himself. Chelsea had been hired for an internal audit of the broker's books for an insider trading scandal of four of their former employees. That was not uncommon. A brokerage would try to cover their interests. They needed to know what information was going to go public in trial. It is a normal response before your livelihood is made public record. Any information she uncovered could be subpoenaed for the trial, but companies had to turn over all of their information to outside inspectors anyway and felt better prepared for a PR campaign if they had all of the details themselves before the trial.
She was given full access to the company's books, but much of the information that was being presented publicly by the defendants was not in the files. One night, she thought she figured out what was happening and decided to ask for Spencer's opinion. All of the pertinent information was now public knowledge and the small amount of information that was still private she removed before showing Spencer. In less than 2 hours of going over her notes and figures, he had come to the same conclusion that she had. Someone in the company was embezzling funds and was trying to blame it on the four insider trading defendants. There were only two people at the company that had the ability to pull this off and one of them was to person that hired her. The case fascinated Spencer and he wanted to help Chelsea partly because of their relationship, but also because he wanted to find out who was behind this.
Spencer was confused as to why someone that was embezzling would hire a FA to go over the books. Chelsea pointed out that all of the incriminating evidence was not in the files she was given, but in the paperwork made public by the defendants. The owners of Abbot & Carson Brokerage had not counted on the other information getting out. She had obtained much of the information she was going over, from public records.
Reid was starting to be afraid for her safety. There was a lot of money involved and he had seen people kill over much less than this. The next day, he went to Garcia and asked her to do a background check on the two principals. James Walker and Carlos Martinez, and asked her to keep it quiet. He wanted to know whom Chelsea was dealing with and if she could be in danger. The Abbot & Carson namesakes had long sense retired and Walker and Martinez had been running the brokerage for the last 10 years. Walker had hired her to access the financial liabilities of the insider trading case. Garcia's search had yielded nothing in either his or Martinez' criminal background. But both men had a lot of assets including homes, boats and several bank accounts. Both had transferred large money to accounts to a bank in the Caymans several times over the last two years.
The trial was not scheduled until the first part of April and Chelsea would have to continue her research. She was hired to find out about the insider trading and hopefully she could find out and prove who was embezzling also.
When Spencer told Chelsea about the suspicious money transfers, she set out to find a way to confirm that information without letting anyone know she found out about it from Garcia's unauthorized search.
