Chapter 6: Trust No One

While Tara was at the dojo, Matt had just arrived at the hospital. He looked in on Evina's room and saw her fast asleep and Reid dosing in a recliner next to her bed. Not wanting to wake her up, he entered quietly and put a hand on Reid's shoulder to wake him.

"Huh?" Reid asked sleepily.

"Hey… Emily sent me…"

"Has there been any progress?" Reid asked.

"Some. We need to talk. Does she?" Matt whispered, nodding toward the sleeping teenager.

Reid shook his head.

Matt nodded. "Outside." He said.

Reid followed him out of the room and down the deserted hallway to an unused admin office.

"Alright, what have you learned?" He asked as Matt shut the door behind them.

"Well, we know when, where, and how she was poisoned but not by who. Based on the timeline the doctors gave us, and a little digging by Penelope, we figured out that she was dosed by eating tainted food at the Martial Arts Expo almost a week ago. Garcia ran all the vendors and employees and there were no red flags, no criminal records, no scientific background that would give them the means and know-how to do this, and no connection to or motive to harm you or Evina. That means it must have been another parent." He explained.

Reid started pacing, the way he always did when his mind was racing. "Why would one of them do this? You'd think it'd be too big of a risk for them to bring tainted food like that, their own kids would automatically trust it as safe which means they'd have to risk poisoning their own children."

"We think they somehow found a way to ensure that their own kid didn't eat whatever it was. We just haven't figured out how yet. Now we need your help. There might be details that didn't register as important on that day that might help us figure out who the Unsub is, so if you're up for it a cognitive interview might help us figure out what happened in a little more detail." Matt told him.

"Ok, let's do this…" Reid replied, taking a seat in the chair facing the desk.

Matt nodded at sat down at the desk across from him. He took out his cellphone and pushed record.

Reid closed his eyes.

"Alright Spencer… let's go back to that Expo. It was a week ago on Saturday. You had the day off, Evina was competing. What time did you arrive at Sports Center?"

"It was nine-thirty when we got there."

"Ok, you've just walked in. What do you see?"

"There are long tables set up just inside the door, with red tablecloths."

"Is there anything on them?" Matt asked.

Reid nodded. "Doughnuts… they had doughnuts and apple juice set out for the kids who were competing…"

"Did Evina take anything from those tables?"

"No. She wasn't hungry, we stopped and had breakfast on the way there."

"What happened next?"

"Evi went to go join the other kids from her Tai Chi class, and the rest of us found seats in the bleachers. There weren't many families there yet, so we were only in the second row up."

"What was at the bottom of the bleachers?"

"More tables, there's food on them. At first, it's just deli sandwiches and little bags of carrots, with coolers filled with some kind of sports, drink every two or three yards. Then, as more people started to come in, the tables filled up too, with food brought in by masters and parents."

"How long was it before the bleachers started to fill up after you got there?"

"Approximately fifteen minutes," Reid answered without hesitation.

"Ok, let's jump to later in the day, as a parent, your eyes would have naturally focused in on your own daughter in between rounds, but in those moments, did you ever sense anyone else watching her too?"

Reid nodded. "Yes."

"When was that?"

"Throughout the day, every time the kids got a break, and sometimes when the next youngest age group was competing."

"Ok Spencer, that's good. Now I want you to pick one of those moments, the one that sticks out the most in your mind. What is Evina doing?"

"She's at the food table getting a snack, but I can't see what she's eating from where I'm sitting. There are too many dishes and kids in the way."

"Ok, now this next part is very important. There's another pair of eyes on her. Whose are they?" Matt asked.

"There's a woman off to our left, she's sitting closer to the other end of the gymnasium."

"Who is she?"

"I can't tell, she's too far away and she's wearing a black tracksuit and baseball cap. I wasn't even sure it was a woman at first."

"Do you recognize her?"

"I can't tell who she is but I've definitely seen her before. She's familiar, I just can't quite put a name to the face."

"Ok, great job, you can open your eyes now," Matt told him, pushing stop on his cell phone.

Reid did.

"I'm gonna get this to the team and we're gonna see if we can use the surveillance footage to figure out who your mystery woman is," Matt explained.

"You think she's the unsub?" Reid asked.

"I'm not sure, at this point we can't rule anyone out. We have a lot of pieces but no real idea how they fit together. We know Evina was the specific target, but we have no idea who would want to hurt her or you badly enough to do all this, or why. It is suspicious though, especially since the use of poison as a weapon means that the profile does skew female. Whoever did this, I promise you we won't let them get away with it."

Meanwhile, at Reid's house, Maeve was trying to reassure her youngest child. It was after eleven, Isabel was hardly ever up this late, but despite the fact that she could barely keep her eyes open, she obstinately refused to go to bed. Instead, she was parked in her Dad's favorite armchair holding her sister's favorite stuffed cat.

"Isabel, Sweetie… why don't we go upstairs? Come on, I know you're tired." Maeve pleaded.

"No. I'm waiting for Daddy and Evi to come home. I'm not going to bed until they do."

"But Darling, they're not coming home tonight, you're sister got really sick so she has to stay at the hospital, and Daddy's staying with her so she doesn't have to be alone," Maeve explained.

This seemed to terrify Isabel, as she clutched her the stuffed animal she held even tighter as if her life depended on it, but instead of bursting into tears as Maeve half expected her to do, she stared straight at her mother, with a determined expression.

"Then I'll wait here all night." She replied.

"Isabel… please… we all need to get some sleep…"

"Mom?"

Maeve looked up to see that Conan had appeared on the staircase, she'd been so focused on trying to get Isabel to realize staying up waiting for Evina didn't make sense given their current situation, that she hadn't even heard him come downstairs.

"Hi Buddy, what is it?" She asked.

"Aunt Emily and Uncle Dave are here, I just saw them pull up outside…" He told her.

Sure enough, less than a minute later there was a knock at the door.

"Maeve, it's us, you can open the door," Emily told her.