The Sound of Silence
Chapter 11
JJ parked herself on the edge of Reid's desk and waited for him to look up at her.
"Good?"
He gave her a smile. "Good."
"I told you they'd be great about it, didn't I?"
"You did. And they were."
She smiled her satisfaction at him. "I was right. As usual. Let me hear you say it, please. 'My wife is always right.'"
He raised his brows at her. "What about the meatloaf?"
She'd forgotten to set the timer. They'd eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner that particular night.
She crossed her arms. "Hmph. Momentary forgetfulness. Not wrong."
Now he gave her a look that said All right, Miss Know-It-All, as he crossed his own arms.
"Well, what about Little Will's birthday?"
"I was only off by a couple of days. Really, Spence, that's not fair. There was so much going on when he was born, it's not surprising I wrote the date wrong."
Now he looked satisfied. "Just saying." The look on her face told him he should hurry up and change the subject.
"Hey, have you asked Hotch yet?"
"For the time off? When I just got back?" She shook her head. "No."
"I know it's a bad time, but it will come upon us sooner than you think. Two months goes by pretty quickly."
"You're right. I'll ask him as soon as it seems like a decent time."
What had seemed pretty obvious to JJ and Reid had come to fruition. Charlene and Phil would be having a summer wedding in New Orleans. Henry had been invited to serve as ringbearer for his father's brother and his former fiancée. Will would be so happy for them, JJ had thought, more than once.
"Speaking of family…..are your parents still planning to come next weekend?" It was Father's Day.
"I told Dad we'd drive up, but he insisted. He says he wants to do it while he's still young enough, that we'll be making enough trips up there later on. But, really, I think he just wants to see Henry play ball. You know how big a sports fan Dad is."
Reid did. It was one of the things they did not have in common. But he cared a great deal for Charles Jareau, and knew the sentiment was returned. He looked forward to the visit.
"Do you think your mom might make that lemon chicken dish?" He could almost taste it.
She rolled up a journal and hit him with it. "I make that dish too, you know!"
He put his hands up in defense before he responded to her. "I know!"
"I don't see any cases that they had in common, although there was only so much trolling around I could do in the CIA servers without alerting them."
They'd gathered again at the end of the day, with Garcia leading off the reports.
"But I did notice something, mostly because italmost caught me. Notice I said 'almost'."
"Whoa, Penelope Garcia snared in a technological trap!" Morgan was delighted.
"I said 'almost', Derek! It was closing its jaws around me, but I got out without a scratch."
Hotch was concerned nonetheless. "Did you leave a trail, Garcia?"
"No, sir. At least, I don't think so. It was more a tool to catch someone in the act, not something to trace activity."
Rossi had been sitting back in his chair, hands clasped across his middle, waiting for the chit chat to end.
"What exactly did you notice, Penelope?"
"Ah, just this. That the tool that almost got me was first installed in their system just before Alan Greenly was assigned to the drug detail in Colombia."
Morgan was underwhelmed. "That's it?"
"Well, yes. And no. I noticed that our own security system was new to us right around the time Sam Obiki came back from Miami. But quite a bit before he moved over to DHS."
Reid wasn't all that impressed with the information either.
"So, two changes in computer security in two federal agencies, near the times the suicides made moves within those agencies." He'd summarized it for them. "I'm not sure that's anything. I mean, isn't security updated around here regularly?"
Garcia realized she hadn't been clear enough.
"Yes, it's updated. But these were brand new security systems. We'd had something totally different before. So had the CIA. And they're both essentially the same systems, bought from the same vendor."
Now Emily spoke up. "Well, that's not particularly surprising, is it? That two federal agencies would use the same vendor? Isn't that supposed to help with cost savings?"
Hotch didn't want the team bogged down with debate. "Let's get all of the information on the table, then we can sort through what's helpful." He saw nods around the room. "All right. Morgan?"
"Okay. Prentiss and I dug into Greenly some more. He's a University of Virginia graduate with a degree in psychology…..smart guy, graduated summa cum laude….. then was hired into the State Department right out of school. State funded a masters in…" Morgan looked down at his notes. "…..'Communications, Culture and Technology'. He got that at Georgetown. After that he was with the embassy in Mexico City, then back to DC, then an official transfer to the CIA."
JJ had an observation. "That major….the one for his masters….I get that all of those attributes might be helpful in cryptology…..communications, culture, technology. But when the courses are as broad as that, do they really give much of a background in anything?"
"Well, what Morgan didn't tell you is that our Mr. Greenly had an avocation outside his education," Emily responded. "He was a major tekkie. It looks like his talent went back as far as middle school. He even wrote his own program for a computer simulation game and made enough money to put himself through college."
"What kind of simulation?" Reid was curious.
Morgan answered for them. "Well, it seems he wasn't just a tekkie. He was a full-fledged geek. He wrote a program called "Bullygate" that basically let the geeks turn the tables on the bullies. It sounded like he wrote from experience."
Until he caught the almost undetectable wince from Reid, Morgan hadn't even realized he was being insensitive. Now it was too late to apologize without bringing further attention to it. He made a mental note to mend Reid's feelings at the very next opportunity. Only Morgan and JJ knew the full extent of what the young genius had been made to endure….as an even younger genius.
Emily resumed her part of the story. "So, anyway, it seems like Greenly was pretty comfortable around a computer. Put that together with the other aspects of his training, and you have the makings of a pretty good spy."
"Who is also good at spying on spies." The more Rossi thought about it, it seemed likely that Greenly had been an NSA plant within the CIA. Obiki and Greenly? Secrets upon secrets, that ultimately exact their price.
Morgan carried on with the remainder of the story. "As we already know, he was DC based until he went to Colombia, and then Mexico City, on the drug detail. Then he came back to DC during the CIA informant case, and he stayed here until….well, until he died."
"Any other high profile cases?" Hotch feared he already knew the answer.
"Once he was in the CIA, the flow of information slowed to a trickle. We only know what Garcia's uncovered."
Hotch nodded grimly. It wasn't impossible to subpoena information from the CIA, but it may as well have been. Most of it was so redacted that it was virtually useless. They would most likely have to move forward without it. The FBI would be minimally easier. He looked now to Rossi.
"Obiki?"
"Well, we've heard his background. The only other interesting thing about him is what he looks like, given his name. His father was of Japanese descent, but his mother was originally from Nigeria. Hence, and through the wonders of genetics, he is dark-skinned, with a very distinctive facial structure. He's memorable. Which would have made it hard for him to do real undercover work. But that's another story."
Rossi's remarks indicated that he'd been trying to theorize about the case, albeit unproductively.
"Until two years ago, he worked in the Miami field office, and then was brought back to DC to act as liaison with DHS."
"Drug connection, maybe? Case in Miami, connected back to DHS for the international component?" Morgan, like Rossi, was already working the case, trying to postulate about the workings of the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Rossi shrugged. "Couldn't dig it out. The FBI records are available to us….and there was definitely no shortage of drug activity in Miami…but it begs the question. If he was following a case that became international, why not liaise with DHS in Miami? Why bring him back to DC?"
No one had a ready answer to that, so Hotch moved on. "Emily? Anything on Dave Sanders?"
Reid watched JJ out of the corner of his eye. He saw her steel herself for whatever was about to come out about Will's old friend.
"Good cop, as far as I can tell. Fifteen years with Metro PD, criminal justice major at George Mason University before that. Nothing in his jacket."
Hotch was curious. "Not even anything to indicate why he might have been attending BCC?"
They all knew that cops were at higher risk. And that, before they sought help, they were likely to have been written up, or found with 'evidence' that didn't belong to them.
"Nothing. He was totally clean, as far as I could see."
JJ breathed again, after a minute of holding her breath. Reid reached over and squeezed her hand, and she flashed him a smile.
Hotch looked around the table at his frustrated team. "I know it doesn't look like we've gotten anywhere. But you all know this is how it has to start. We've got our foundation, and we'll just have to see which corner of it will support weight. Take it home with you tonight, sleep on it. We'll meet first thing in the morning."
Before they broke, Hotch added, "Reid. A moment?"
It was a crock pot night. JJ was officially in love with her slow cooker. She'd told Reid so many times, "We come home, and it smells like someone has made dinner for us. And then, I remember. It was me!"
Tonight, it was one of Reid's favorites, apricot chicken.
"Mmmm, that smells good!" He followed his nose to the kitchen after depositing Rosie in her playpen.
JJ sniffed, remembering their conversation of earlier in the day. "Well, it may not be as good as my mother's lemon chicken, but I suppose it will have to do."
He'd only been kidding, and he knew that she knew that. But he also realized she was a little bit hurt, though she would never say so. So he swept his arm behind her waist and pulled her to him.
"I have the best of every possible world. I have a wife who loves me…and can cook up a storm. And a mother-in-law who's determined to fatten me up…..who taught her daughter everything she knows about it. Can I love how both of you cook?"
She could do nothing but laugh. Her hands clasped behind his neck pulled his head down to hers. She kissed him, and then leaned back in his grasp and looked at him, smiling.
"I love you, you know." It was their thing, what they always said to one another. And Reid responded with their usual response, because it was true.
"I know."
"But what if the unsub is still a part of the group?" JJ was worried, after Reid recounted his final conversation with Hotch. The kids were just down for the night, so they were trying to keep their voices low.
"That's the whole point. He thinks the unsub has to be part of the group. And I agree with him. But we can't know if he…..the percentages would say it's a 'he'…..we can't know if he's a regular attender or not.
"So you have to go to all of the meetings? Every Tuesday and every Friday night?"
"Well….yes. Until we get him, anyway. Or until we figure it out."
"But how will we know if you're safe? We don't know what this is about yet. How can we protect you if you're the only one there?"
He wasn't necessarily supposed to be safe. But he wouldn't tell her that. He didn't want to frighten her more than she already was. And he couldn't tell her that he wasn't necessarily the only one there. I might as well be, since I can't bring Strauss or John into it. He still didn't know if John was aware. And he'd been led to believe he shouldn't expect any help from Erin Strauss.
"It will be okay, JJ." He'd promised her that once before, and he'd been wrong. Please don't make me a liar again.