Missing
Chapter 4
"Hank Johnson? I don't know, PG. Johnson's a pretty common name. And considering it was a flight to Houston, I'm guessing 'Hank' is right up there, too."
Emily Prentiss wasn't about to change their strategy based on something so flimsy.
"I know," said Garcia. "But it's all we could come up with. And Derek noticed it right away."
"Derek? Derek Morgan?"
"Hello, Princess," came the deep, oh-so-familiar voice, as Morgan stepped into the camera's line of sight.
"Morgan! What are you doing there? And why is it that you've only come to visit when I'm away?"
"It's not intentional, I can promise you that. But it's a little busy overseeing intelligence-sharing between law enforcement and the Bureau."
"Ha! I expect it's a little territorial, if It's anything like Interpol and…..well, and pretty much anybody."
"Yep. But my little man here and I found ourselves with a little unexpected free time, and I thought I'd pop in on some old friends."
His other old friends chimed in as Rossi, JJ and Tara called out their greetings. Then Morgan heard an unfamiliar voice.
"Agent Morgan, this is Luke Alvez. I've heard a lot about you. Pleased to make your acquaintance."
Morgan looked with interest as Garcia made a face, but he returned the greeting in kind.
"Likewise. You'll love working with these guys."
"Already do."
Emily spoke up again. "So, Garcia filled you in. You know Reid as well as anybody. Any thoughts?"
"Well, for starters, I think it's a sure thing he's headed off after his mom, under his own steam. If they were planning to just take him, why send the photo? No, I think someone was trying to lure him."
"But where?" asked JJ. "The photograph indicates that she's in Las Vegas, when the last we knew, Spence had moved her to Houston, so she could be in a new study. So the question is….is she actually in Vegas, or did they just want to make it look like she was?"
Morgan thought for a few seconds before responding.
"I guess that depends, mostly on how cunning the person is who's after Reid. Obviously, they were trying to lure him. It would be straightforward enough to show where she was, and assume he'd come after her."
"But why move her?" asked Rossi. "Why not just lure Reid to Houston?"
"Well…" started Tara Lewis, catching on to where Morgan was going. "….what if our unsub is cunning? What if that's what he takes pride in…playing the game?"
Rossi followed her reasoning. "You're making a case for Mr. Scratch."
All of them, including Morgan, were aware of how intricately the escaped murderer had conned Lewis and her family.
"Maybe he's not done going after the team," she asserted.
The discussion gave Emily Prentiss pause. Maybe she would need to rethink her initial strategy...and there was still time to do so. They hadn't arrived to Houston yet. She could keep the whole team on the ground there. Or she could drop off JJ and Rossi, and bring Tara and Luke with her to Vegas, as originally planned. She began to work it through aloud.
"If it's Mr. Scratch, we have to think as he would….we have to get inside his head."
Which, they all knew, was a very dysfunctional place to be.
"But we also need to be inside Reid's head. We need to see the photograph, and the situation, as he would see it. Because that will tell us how he reacted. And it will tell us where he is."
There ensued a long silence, broken by David Rossi.
"All right, I'll start. What reason would Mr. Scratch have for moving Diana Reid back to Las Vegas? Isn't it more likely he wanted to see what Reid would do if Reid thought he'd moved her?"
"But," said JJ, "maybe Mr. Scratch knew Spence would see through it. Maybe he was just testing him. You know, genius versus genius."
Tara probed further. "So, you're saying that you think Mr. Scratch didn't move Mrs. Reid, but wanted to watch Reid figure it out? I don't know. What if he wanted Reid to second guess himself, look at it as a ruse, and go to Houston, all the while his mother has been brought back to Vegas?"
JJ closed her eyes in frustration. Tara Lewis might be right. Reid might be in Houston. And Diana might be in Vegas. Or any permutation thereof. Leaving a few additional questions.
"Maybe what we should be asking is: Where is Mr. Scratch? And who is he really after?"
In the end, Prentiss felt she had no choice but to divide her team. They touched down outside Houston, discharging JJ and Rossi before heading off to Las Vegas.
"Garcia is looking at manifests for some of the smaller airports," she told them. "Maybe Reid thought it would be easier to get past security with a fake ID if he traveled on a smaller airline. But she's still looking for 'Hank Johnson' to resurface somewhere in the area."
The tech analyst had been unable to find any prior history with that particular ID. Which didn't sit well with JJ.
"What if Mr. Scratch booked that flight? What if he was 'Hank Johnson'? What if that was just a ruse to throw us off? We already know he can fake an ID. He did it to Spence once before."
Prentiss nodded. "I know. So, if we find a sign of Reid at another airport, we'll know 'Hank Johnson' is Mr. Scratch."
"And if we don't?" asked Rossi.
"Then we'll have to keep our options open. But, even if Reid traveled as Hank Johnson, it's likely he'll interact with the Anderson Clinic as Spencer Reid. They already know him there, under that name. So.."
Rossi nodded, understanding. "So that's where we'll start. What will the rest of you do, when you get to Vegas?"
"We'll go to Las Vegas Memorial and see if we can convince them to tell us if they've had….or still have…Diana Reid."
It wasn't at all unusual for Rossi to work in the field with Jennifer Jareau. But it was unusual to have such an extended silence between them. The only other time he could remember her being so lost in her thoughts was when they'd been in Texas, and Reid had been shot, and fighting for his life in surgery. Rossi wondered if a similar worry was troubling his companion now.
"Penny for your thoughts."
She startled. "Hmm?"
"You were off somewhere inside your head. I was just wondering if you cared to share."
JJ gave an apologetic smile.
"I'm just worried, I guess. If this is Mr. Scratch….. When I think about what he did to Hotch…..and then to Tara… I mean, think of it. Hotch….well, we don't know exactly what he went through. But I think we both know that there was something more than he told us. He just wasn't quite himself after that."
"I wish I knew more than you do about it, my friend, but I don't. Whatever happened to Hotch, he took with him into witness protection."
Rossi's words were tinged with regret.
"That's just it. He had to leave the FBI. But at least didn't have to go alone. At least he has Jack."
The boy had been the reason for their former unit chief's decision, after all.
"He does."
"And then…..look at what he did to the whole Lewis family. My God, that was torture for Tara. But at least she got her brother back, at the end."
"You're not trying to say that Mr. Scratch actually accomplished some good…"
"No! No, of course not. Tara's brother would have died because of Mr. Scratch if Reid hadn't figured out the mechanisms of that trap. No. But I am saying that his mother is the only family Spence has. If Mr. Scratch takes her from him…..what's left for him? Or even if we find her? What happens then? Spence won't leave her. But how do you put someone with dementia into witness protection? And what if... what if she dies? Does that leave Spence in witness protection alone, all by himself, forever?"
Rossi opened his mouth to reply, but JJ hadn't finished.
"And what if Mr. Scratch has done something to her? What if he's killed her? I can't imagine Spence having to live the rest of his life knowing he couldn't save her, not just from her illnesses, but from a psychopath! I just….I don't know if he can come back from something like that."
Her emotion draining, she added, much more quietly, "I don't know if he would want to."
She didn't have to explain it to Rossi. Reid had been dealt several major losses in the past few years, and Rossi had done his best to help the young man deal with his grief. But he knew that each loss carried forward to the next, rendering the burden ever heavier. JJ was right. Reid might eventually reach his limit.
Rossi offered his colleague the only wisdom he had.
"Well, why don't we see to it that he doesn't have to?"
The remaining three profilers were headed directly from the airport to Las Vegas Memorial. As Luke drove them, Emily had just finished talking with JJ and was now on the phone with Garcia.
"That's right. Four days ago. They've got cameras inside and out, mostly to keep an eye on the patients. See if you can hack the feeds."
Assuming that particular kind of breech of protocol might go undetected. But she also knew to tread more lightly elsewhere.
"We'll want to get access to her medical records as well, but I think we'll need to go through channels for that."
"Channels?" The tech analyst sounded like she was unfamiliar with the concept.
"We should be able to get a subpoena for them, if we can prove that the 'Spencer Reid' who signed his mother out of Anderson four days ago wasn't really Spencer Reid."
