When Hotch and Morgan left Joey and the meeting, Morgan had already called Emily, instructing her on finding people Penelope had gone to college with. He was aware the chances of finding the guy they were looking for were slim, but then again it was a start.
"Start with guys that started at her college the same time. "Maybe we get lucky and get a hit. Otherwise we hope that the description we get will be good enough for a facial recognition program," he said, hoping that he should be right.
Emily got herself armed with Victoria again, to dig deeper into Penelope's college friends, and at first they didn't come up with anything. They even went a few years back and forth, assuming that maybe it wasn't necessarily someone who started at the college the same year she did. It was all in all very time consuming work. Eventually, they marked several people that they what little description they had gotten from Morgan, that would fit. But the few people they marked didn't really strike Emily as dangerous or threatening. All of them seemed to lead a rather quiet life, with a wife and some kids, in several smaller suburbs all over the country.
It was almost time to wrap up and go home, after combing through thousands of pictures, when they after all made some sort of progress.
Victoria had already more or less given up on their little hunt an hour before and by now flicked more or less thoughtlessly through pictures, wondering if they would ever find the guy. The problem wasn't the guy itself. They found plenty of people that matched more or less the description, but digging a little deeper into the guys that looked the part, it became plain obvious that neither of them had any recent trips to D.C. nor any kind of activity on their accounts or credit cards that would put them anywhere close to Washington D.C.
Until she stumbled over him. After she nearly had flicked past him more or less carelessly.
"I think I found something…" she announced slightly excited. She seriously hadn't accepted to find anything anymore.
"Is this one of these we had all afternoon, who look like they might be the guy, but then according to their credit cards were somewhere in Alaska or Europe during the time our witness said he saw someone with Penelope?" Emily asked, keeping the hope more or less at a minimum level.
"No, I have something as in 'his credit card shows a stay at Hilton at DuPont Circle.'" Victoria clicked a few times before continuing. "He seems to frequent Washington from what I can see on his credit card. Usually once a month … There's also something else…" Victoria said careful, not sure how the additional information would affect their case.
"Let me see," Emily said, getting up from her chair and turning Victoria's screen towards her for a better view. The picture pretty much nailed what Morgan had described the guy as – according to their witness anyway – and as if on cue she heard her friend and colleague walking towards them.
"Tell me you got something," Morgan said, his voice almost a plea. Just then he saw the picture on the screen and looked through several papers he was holding, until he found what he was looking for.
Morgan held the freshly faxed drawing from the sketch artist next to the monitor.
"I'd say we got our guy…" he said, some sort of glee in his voice. It was their first real breakthrough after all, from now things hopefully could only get better.
"Um… Morgan…" Emily said rather careful, noticing Morgan's change.
Morgan turned to his friend and co-worker, seeing her rather worried face. "What?" he asked Emily warily.
"That is Victor Lefèvre. He's wanted in several countries all over the world for everything from bank robbery to murder and kidnapping. As wide and colorful as the spectrum of criminal activity is, as bright and colorful is he. If there is any sort of crime he hasn't committed yet it needs to be invented first," Emily said, seeing Morgan's face cloud with worry right away.
At this point both agents wondered what their friend had gotten herself into. And even more importantly, how to get her out of there again.