And When I Wake
Chapter 7
Hotch started in as soon as most of them were gathered. Reid was concerned about the notable absence at the table, but said nothing.
"I'm sorry this couldn't wait until morning, but I was advised that time was of the essence."
"What is it?" Kate's yawn was barely suppressed, her body in protest. It was supposed to be heading to bed at this hour, not setting out in search of a serial killer.
Hurried footsteps from down the hall became louder until JJ rushed into the room, voicing an apology.
"Sorry I'm late."
Reid studied her for signs of upset, but saw only the slight dishevelment of rushed behavior. Not that it looked bad on her.
I guess Will took it okay. Or else she just ran out on him. Not quite sure if he should ask.
Hotch waved away her apology. One couldn't exactly be late when one was called in from home emergently. He came back to Kate's question.
"Earlier this evening, a child died in Lane County, Oregon. This was the third unexpected child death in the county within the past two weeks."
Rossi got down to business. "Cause of death?"
Hotch looked down at the report in his hand, and then around the table, anticipating their response.
"Meningitis."
Glances exchanged all around, until Morgan spoke for the rest of them.
"Okay, I'll bite. Why is this a BAU case? Isn't meningitis an infection? Don't people get that all the time?"
Kate didn't hold back either. "Yeah, why? Are we thinking someone injected something into their spinal fluid?"
"Who would know how to do that?" asked Garcia. "Wouldn't that mean we were looking at some sort of medical professional?"
Reid knew there had to be more to it. "Actually, meningitis is pretty uncommon these days." He turned to their team leader. "Hotch? What kind was it?"
Knowing there were bacterial, and viral, and fungal causes, all of them rare in 2015 America. For it to be a BAU case, there had to be something that indicated the infection was caused by something other than chance.
Hotch acknowledged Reid, and took his cue. "It was pneumococcal meningitis."
JJ and Kate exchanged a quick look with one another, and then both looked to Reid. He may not have been a medical expert, but he was their resident genius. JJ spoke for both of them.
"But there's a vaccine for that, isn't there? Henry got a whole series of them."
"So did Meg," added Kate. "In fact, she had to go in for one more because they improved it or something. Right?"
Reid was about to respond when another voice did so for him, one that was particularly familiar to two of the members of the team. She traveled so lightly that none of them had heard her enter the room.
"It's a strain that's not in the vaccine," said Linda Kimura. "Either vaccine," she added.
They all nodded their reacquaintance while Kimura apologized. "I'm sorry to see you all in such a dire circumstance once again. It seems as though it's my job to be the harbinger of bad news."
Reid smiled at her. "Not always." She'd brought him the best news of his life when she'd reported that his antibodies had saved JJ's life.
She smiled back at him. "No, not always, thank God. But, this time, I'm afraid that's precisely what I have to share with you."
Several of the team flashed back to the first time they'd met Kimura, when she'd announced the anthrax attack to them. Tonight's meeting felt almost exactly like that, except for the absence of Cipro tablets.
Reid encouraged her. "So, this strain isn't in the vaccines? But aren't there a lot of strains like that?"
She nodded. "Dr. Reid is right. There are thirteen strains in the conjugate vaccine, and twenty-three in the polysaccharide version. The thirteen strains in the conjugate vaccine cause over ninety percent of invasive pneumococcal disease. By that, I mean they cause meningitis, septicemia and pneumonia, in particular. The most dangerous forms of the infection."
JJ added, "Henry's doctor said they also cause most of the ear infections kids get. She said she's hardly seen any since they've been giving the vaccine."
Kimura nodded. "That's right. But we still see, from time to time, disease that's not from one of the vaccine-covered strains. We just haven't seen it clustered like this."
Kate had a practical question. "Why don't they just add the other strains to the vaccine….you know, why not prevent all of them, even if you don't see them that often?"
Kimura gave a tolerant half-smile. It was a reasonable question for the uninitiated.
"It takes many years to cultivate each strain purely enough to include it, and then to test the new version of the vaccine. In the interests of getting anything at all done, the most prevalent strains are targeted first."
The BAU's resident genius was reading between Kimura's lines. "So, what makes this a BAU case, and not something for the CDC?"
Kimura's grim nod told them they were at the heart of the matter. "The strain these children died from….. it was man-made. It hasn't been recovered in nature. It was created in a CDC lab, to test new antibiotics against it. We think the strain was taken from the lab, and somehow transmitted to the children."
Kimura was joining them on their flight west, and Reid wanted to pick her brain about how to go about examining what had happened. But first he had another, quite beautifully housed, brain to pick. He plopped himself in the seat next to JJ at the back of the plane, causing her to look up from the mug of tea she seemed to be examining in great depth.
"Everything okay?"
She hesitated a beat, as though deciding what to say. "Fine."
Once upon a time he would have danced around the topic, but they were past that. Sort of.
"Was Will okay with you having to come in?"
She almost seemed annoyed that he'd asked. He read her reaction without realizing her internal dilemma. Will had made it clear to her that she couldn't be loyal to him and completely open with Spencer Reid at the same time.
"He's used to it. And Toby's father was already on his way to pick him up."
He knew she was covering something, but he couldn't very well confront her on it. And part of being someone's best friend was being there when they needed you. And giving them space, when they didn't.
Well, that's not exactly true. It's not like there's any time you don't need your friends. But maybe it's just that you need to give them enough space to figure that out. And make sure they don't get hurt while you're waiting.
Which was not, particularly, his strong suit. Having a genius brain required near constant stimulation. Waiting was antithesis to that.
But he could give her virtual space without putting actual distance between them. Reid stayed in his seat and found another topic of conversation. "So, what was the prize?"
"Huh?"
"The prize. For the science fair? What did Henry win?"
"Oh." Sounding relieved at the change of subject. "You're never gonna believe this, but…it was four tickets to the planetarium show at the National Museum."
Grinning widely, Reid laughed. "It was? That's great! You and Will can take him….and maybe take Toby along, you know…cheer him up, or something."
She was surprised at the suggestion. "Oh, no. You guys won it together, you should take Henry. And, besides, didn't I hear you tell him that you wanted to do that someday?"
"Well, yes, but…"
"No buts. You and Henry are going. It's a good idea to bring Toby….although I didn't pick up on him being upset about anything. I kept waiting for him to say something about where his parents were, or how they weren't getting along, or something, but…"
Reid nodded. "Nothing." He shifted in his seat so he could face her. "Maybe they're good about not letting him hear them argue. Or maybe he realizes something is happening with his family. Sometimes, the actual breaking up isn't the problem. It's what leads up to it that makes kids unhappy."
His words, his position, the earnest look on his face….all of them told her they weren't talking about Toby any longer.
"Is that how it was for you? You know, when your father….left?"
Reid gaze turned to the window and the looming dark that surrounded the jet, but the vision in his head was of the past.
"They'd been fighting for a long time. Most of it didn't make that much sense, because….well, Mom was more and more ill. It's hard to have a good argument with someone who comes back at you with nonsense. But it was loud and unhappy most of the time. As much as it scared me to have him leave, as much as I didn't think I could take care of both of us...the silence was bliss. I actually remember thinking that. The silence was bliss."
For some reason, the word got to her. Bliss. That an eleven year old boy would use a word like that, and over something as sad as….. Without warning, JJ teared up, heartbroken at the image of the child-turned-adult her Spence had been. She touched his cheek with tender fingers. "I'm sorry."
He shook himself out of the reverie, squeezing her fingers in thanks. "All I'm saying is that it might be normal for Toby to be okay about it. Well, not normal…but, as you say, fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. But half the population of kids aren't in therapy. It's not all acrimonious. People seem to accomplish it without hurting the kids." Too much, anyway.
JJ wasn't so sure about that. But she also knew Reid's experience had been unique, so she couldn't base her assumptions on what had happened to him.
"Well, anyway. You and Henry should go. And you can take any other two people you'd like."
"Oh. Okay, then. I'll think about it."
He got up to grab some coffee, having intended to go and ask Kimura a few questions. But he got stuck in thinking about the tickets to the planetarium.
Maybe we'll take Toby, so Henry can have a friend along. And…JJ? But Will wouldn't like that. Stephanie? But that would feel weird, the two of us out with JJ's son. Kimura? I don't know that she likes astronomy, but I guess it doesn't hurt to ask. Or one of the chess kids? But how do I pick just one, without looking like I'm playing favorites?
Please, please, please, couldn't she have given me a physics problem? Maybe an engineering challenge?
Social decision-making was such uncertain and treacherous territory to Reid that he longed for familiar ground.
Maybe I'll just go and talk with Kimura.
"So, the strain was man-made, yet it traveled from Atlanta to the Pacific Northwest?"
"Or from DC. That's exactly my quandary, Spencer. I'm being sent to study the new strain and to bring a sample back to the CDC. Well, to the NIH, actually. I work for the CDC, but I do much of my laboratory work in Washington."
"Is this a chain-of-custody type of thing?"
"Exactly!" Enthused that he understood. "I'll collect the sample myself, from the most recent child's body, and then keep it with me until I can deliver it to my lab."
"So, what are you thinking?"
She gave a half-shrug and a shake of her head. "We can't be certain, yet. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the organism has morphed into a 'wild type' that is very similar to the one developed in the lab."
"So, they might just have gotten sick with something that isn't in the vaccine. But it's not likely?"
"It's not likely. It's possible, so we can't dismiss the idea entirely. But it's unlikely to be exactly the same as the one developed in the lab."
"When will you know?"
"Only when I get it back to the lab. There's limited testing I'll be able to do on the west coast."
As they were speaking, the others each moved from their scattered seats and gathered around the physician, motioned there by Hotch.
"Dr. Kimura, please give us your working theory."
She looked at each of them in turn before starting. "As I was just saying to Dr. Reid…..it's possible, but unlikely, that the bacterium has mutated in the wild to become exactly like the strain developed in the lab. So I won't know for certain until I return the sample to Washington, to study it in depth. But the working theory is that someone has obtained the man-made organism, and somehow introduced it into children in Lane County."
Morgan wanted to be sure he understood. "Garcia tells us that Lane County is one of the least vaccinated areas in the USA, mostly because of liberal vaccine refusal policies. Are you saying that these are the unvaccinated kids getting ill?"
Kimura shook her head. "No, that's just the point. Lane County has one of the lowest vaccine compliant records in the country, that's true. But the children who died were all fully up to date on their immunizations. They just weren't protected."
Hotch had more news. "Oregon just passed legislation limiting the rights of parents to refuse vaccines. There are fewer grounds for refusal now. It's possible someone wanted to make a point."
Rossi agreed, but realized it went further than that. "And it looks like they're making their point with material that's only available within the CDC and NIH labs. So we may have an unsub on the loose here. But we've got trouble back in our own river city."
