Standard disclaimers apply. Please pardon my poor Spanish. I haven't spoken it for years.

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CHAPTER NINE

Thursday brought with it the storm that had been threatening New York for days. The torrential rains that drenched Manhattan created a damp chill that settled in the bones. The city seemed disheartened by winter's violent return; people trudged to work underneath black umbrellas, unconvinced that the weather would ever improve.

The team began filtering in to the precinct office early. No one had slept well and an unsettling send of doom had descended on the entire office. Lena had been missing for over one hundred hours and the chances of finding her alive had grown slim. When the entire team had arrived, clutching watery cups of police department coffee, Hotch cleared his throat.

"Okay, guys, someone's clearly trying to confuse us, so let's get back to basics. What do we know for certain?"

"Someone from the team drugged Lena, allowing the unsub to abduct her from her hotel room without much of a struggle," Prentiss said.

"And judging by the security video, it was either Ryan Hanson or Ronnie Taylor," J.J. added.

"Ronnie came up clean when Garcia did a background check," Reid said.

Prentiss was shaking her head. "And I just don't think it was him," she said. "He's just a kid."

"I want another crack at Ryan Hanson," Morgan said. "He's an egotistical son of a bitch, and but I think I can get to him."

"And then there's Elliot Mann," Reid murmured.

"Who isn't having an affair with Lena," Rossi said.

Hotch sat down at the head of the table. "We were thinking that Ronnie planted the story. But I suppose Ryan could have just as easily done it."

"Don't forget – Lena arrived in New York hours before the rest of the team," J.J. said.

Hotch glanced down the table at Reid. "Lena hid clues in her house. Do you think it's possible that she hid something here too?"

"Where?" Rossi asked. "The NYPD and the FBI tore her room apart. If there was anything there, they would have found it."

"Check-in at the Hilton New York begins at three p.m.," Reid said idly, staring at the wood of the conference table as he thought. "She wouldn't have had access to her room yet." He frowned. "She was hiding things in plain sight, like 'The Purloined Letter.' Hold on." His dream last night had set him to thinking about the pictures he had taken from Lena's house and he now produced him from his bag. The team watched him in silence as turned over the first one, the picture of Lena at the 2008 AFC Championship. He slid off the back of the frame. A series of numbers were written on the back of the picture.

Prentiss reached for picture. "These look like latitude and longitude coordinates," she said.

"We'll have Garcia run them," Hotch said. "What's in the other picture?"

Reid opened the back of the other frame. The back of the picture was empty, but a credit card was taped to the frame cardstock. Reid retrieved it. The name ELENA KOVALEVNA was inscribed on the front. He flipped it over; it was unsigned.

"Elena Kovalevna?" Morgan asked. "Who the hell is Elena Kovalevna?"

"I think it's Lena," Reid murmured. He dug the NFL almanac out of his bag. He had bookmarked the page that listed the Patriots' front-office staff and he now opened the book to this page. "See? She scratched out her name and wrote Elena Lopez y Kovalevna in its place. And that makes sense. 'Lena' is a Russian diminutive for the name 'Elena.' Spanish nomenclature traditionally includes both the father and the mother's name. The father's – Lopez – comes first and then the mothers – Kovalevna – and the two are joined by the article 'y' which means 'and' in Spanish. Traditionally, when Lena married she would have kept her father's name and added her husband's name, conjoining them with the word 'de,' which is what's called a nobiliary participle. But interestingly-"

"Okay, Reid, we get it," Morgan interrupted.

Reid blushed and lowered his gaze back to the book. "So say Elena Lopez y Kovalevna is her given name, she probably shortened it to Lena Lopez, which is much shorter and less of a mouthful. And since it's alliterative, it's probably easier to remember too. Did you know, the prefix –ez in Spanish means 'son of?" So the name Lopez means 'son of Lope.' It's the traditional surname of the Castilian province of Lugo…"

"Reid," Hotch said softly.

Rossi reached for the credit card. "I helped process a lot of the evidence from Lena's hotel room, including her billfold. She had credit cards in there, and they were all issued in the name Lena Lopez, not Elena Lopez or Elena Kovalevna or Lena Lopez y Kovalevna or anything like that."

"Clearly wherever she was using this card, she didn't want anyone to link it back to her, at least without doing some digging," Hotch said. "Okay, Dave, Morgan, you two bring Ryan Hanson back in and see if he'll give you anything. Reid, I want you to call up Garcia and find out what you can about this credit card and these coordinates. If they point to somewhere in the city, you and Prentiss should head over there next." He turned to J.J. "How do you feel about going to Hoboken with me?"

She nodded. "Okay."

The team dispersed. Prentiss picked up the loose photo and flipped it over. "You took this from her house."

"Mmhm." Reid busied himself with his cell phone, avoiding what he figured would be a disappointed or chastising look from Prentiss.

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why'd you take them?"

He shrugged. "They were practically the only pictures in the entire house. And given how deliberately she seemed to arrange everything, there had to be a reason she had left these two – and only these two – out."

Prentiss sighed. "She's lucky we sent you to look around her house. I would have thought she was anti-social, maybe that she had stripped away any memories of her husband from the house. I don't know if I would have made this connection."

"We just sort of think alike, I guess." Reid opened his phone and dialed Garcia.

She answered the phone on the first ring. "Good morning, my dear. What can I do for you today," she chirped.

"I'm going to put you on speakerphone," Reid said. "I've got a couple things for you to do."

"I'm waiting with baited breath."

"Okay, first, I've got longitude and latitude coordinates for you to triangulate."

"Shoot."

Prentiss read the numbers from the back of the picture and Garcia tapped them into her computer.

"Hmm." Garcia murmured. "It's a bank. In New York – the Financial District, of course."

"A bank?" Reid repeated.

"Yeah. Martinez International Holdings. It looks like it's an international bank that caters to Spanish citizens doing business in the city. It's based out of Grenada."

Reid and Prentiss exchanged glances. "That would make sense," Prentiss said.

"Do you have an account number that you want me to look up?"

Prentiss flipped over the picture and then flipped it again before checking the other photo. "There's nothing else on either of these pictures. Wouldn't you think that if she wanted us to find the bank, she'd leave the account number too?"

"I can hack into the server and try to find an account through the back door, but that'll take longer," Garcia offered.

"No. I…I think we've got it," Reid said. He returned to the NFL almanac. "Here. She wrote the number in the book."

"Well, give it to me," Garcia purred. Prentiss laughed and rolled her eyes.

"9027150388. I've got a password too, if you need it."

"Nah. I'm looking at it through the mainframe. Okay. It's a personal account, in the name of Raphael Lopez y Calderón. And the executor is Elena I.R. Lopez y Kovalevna. Spanish citizen, D.O.B. is 31 October 1980. That's Lena, right?"

"Yeah."

"Lena's a Spanish citizen? I thought she was born in the U.S.," Garcia said.

"She probably has at least dual citizenship – her parents were both foreign born," Prentiss said. "What kind of account is it? Savings? Checking?"

"It's an account for a vault box."

"When was it last accessed?" Reid asked.

More typing. "It looks like it was last opened on 25 April 2009 at nine-thirty in the morning. She must be an important client if they opened the bank for her on a Saturday morning."

"Garcia, can you send us the address of the bank?"

"It's already on its way to your phone. What else do you need?"

"We found another credit card that we think belonged to Lena. We need you to run the number and find out what she was using it for."

"Sure."

Reid read that number to Garcia. "It's in the name of Elena Kovalevna, by the way," he added.

"Well, that answers that question," Garcia said.

"What question is that?" Prentiss asked.

"If she had another card that wasn't among her affects, I still would have found it when I ran her numbers. But I ran them using her name and birth date, so this card wouldn't have come up." She paused, momentarily engrossed in her work. "It looks like she only used it once, at a place called The Personnel Office."

"I've never heard of it," Prentiss said and Reid nodded agreement.

"I'll see what I can find about it. I'll call you back soon."

"Thanks Garcia," Reid said. He hung up the phone. "Shall we?"


Martinez International Holdings was a sleek building cloaked in dark, reflective glass that rose nearly twenty stories above the Financial District. Compared to most of the surrounding businesses, it was actually a small building, and it seemed somewhat detached from the rest of the street, almost as if its architects intended to distinguish it as foreign-owned.

All the signs posted on and around the building were in Spanish and, Reid noticed, the bank's hours were listed in military time, the norm for European countries. Inside, the lobby was paneled in a dark stone, perhaps granite. A man in a dark suit approached the two agents as they entered.

"Buenos días, señor y señora. Puedo ayudar ustedes?"

Reid deferred to Prentiss. Ever since Elle had mocked his poor Spanish pronunciation years before, he tended to avoid speaking the language when possible.

Prentiss held up her badge and Reid followed suit. "Buenos días, señor. Soy Emily Prentiss, de la oficina federal de investigacíon y el es el doctor Reid. Habla usted ingles?"

"Sí, por supuesto. What can I do for you agents?" The bank representative spoke softly with a melodic accent.

"We're investigating the disappearance of one of your clients – Lena Lopez," Reid said. "We understand that she visited this bank on the morning of her disappearance and we're hoping that we might have access to the vault she visited."

The bank official nodded. "Please come with me. You will need to speak with Señor Valdez, our manager." He led them out of the lobby to the elevator bank. They rode the elevator to the twentieth floor in silence. When they arrived at Valdez's office, the man knocked on the door before sticking his head in the office and exchanging a few words in Spanish.

"Señor Valdez will see you."

"Gracias," Prentiss said, and the two agents entered the office. It was wood paneled, with a huge picture window that overlooked tiny Hanover Street and Exchange Plaza. Beyond the towering buildings was the East River and Brooklyn. The office was lined with bookshelves, filled with the dusty, leather-bound volumes that normally filled the offices of district attorneys and judges. They were, for the most part, also in Spanish.

Valdez was sitting at his desk, but he rose as Prentiss and Reid approached his desk. They introduced themselves and he shook their hands before offering the two leather seats opposite his desk to the agents.

"I am so sorry about Señora Lopez," Valdez said when they were settled in their respective chairs. "Her father was a loyal client for many years. I understand you're interested in seeing in her vault." Like the bank employee they had met before, he spoke with an accent, but his was not quite as strong, or perhaps it was lessened with an almost British pronunciation. Reid glanced around the room. Sure enough, a diploma from the Imperial College Business School hung on the wall.

"If we need to, we can come back with a warrant if we must, but we hoped it wouldn't come to that," Prentiss said. Reid noticed that her posture was just a little straighter than usual and her diction had altered almost imperceptibly. He wondered if this was the way she presented herself to her mother's State Department contacts.

"Thank-you," Valdez said. "Normally, we would require proper documentation for such a request, but Señora Lopez signed a waiver before she left on Saturday. She said someone from law enforcement might be here one day." If he found this information odd, he didn't show it. "I'm just waiting for verification from your bureau."

Within a few moments, the phone rang and Valdez excused himself, speaking briefly into the receiver. He must have been satisfied with whatever he heard, because he stood and led them from the room.


Valdez left the pair in a small room with a table and a few leather chairs and in a few moments, yet another employee arrived with a small bank box, large enough to hold European-sized copy paper and several inches deep.

"There is a key-pad on the top. You'll need the password," the employee said. "I'll be waiting outside for you."

Reid opened the almanac and read the password to Prentiss, who typed it into the key-pad. The top popped open and Prentiss reached inside, retrieving two manila envelopes. Both of them had Lena's name and address on them.

"Reid, check out the return address."

"The Personnel Office. This is what she ordered with that credit card."

Prentiss handed on of the envelopes to Reid and they opened them. "'Report on Raymond G. DeSalle,'" she read.

"Number 87," Reid noted.

"These are background reports. No wonder she used a secret credit card. She might have gotten fired if the team knew she was running such invasive background checks on players. Wow, look. There's even information on his stock portfolios and bank accounts. This is the stuff we use Garcia for."

"This one's on Ryan Hanover." Reid flipped though the pages and paused on the third page. "Oh wow."

"What?"

"Until February 2009, Ryan Hanover was deeply, deeply in debt."

Prentiss frowned. "So what happened?"

"Ryan deposited two million dollars into his savings account on February 5th. On the 6th, he wired $600,000 of it to an account with an offshore holding account in the Caribbean."

"February 5th? That's convenient."

Reid nodded. "I'll say. And the next week, he wired another million dollars to a Bank of America account based in Orlando, Florida."

Prentiss laughed curtly. "Guess who still maintains a house in his hometown, Orlando, Florida."

Reid's eyebrows flew. "You're kidding."

"Ray DeSalle. Receiver extraordinaire." Prentiss flipped through her report until she found a highlighted entry in the bank account listings. "Mr. DeSalle received a one million dollar payment on Monday February 9th into his savings account. You know what this looks like, Reid?"

He nodded. "It looks like Ryan received a two million dollar payout after the Super Bowl and he used it to pay off his debts and Ray DeSalle."

Prentiss reached for the report and perused it. "I wonder if these were gambling debts."

"If he used gambling to get out of debt, then it's probably safe to assume he got into debt through the same method," Reid said. "So, he approaches DeSalle and offers him half of the payout to throw the game."

"DeSalle does, and since the Patriots were such heavy favorites to win, betting against them would have earned Ryan a shit load of money."

Reid pointed to the papers. "It did. He came out with $400,000 in excess of his debts and DeSalle's fee." He looked Prentiss in the eye. "It was Ryan. Ryan drugged Lena's drink and gave her key to the unsub."

"No one would think twice about Ryan getting the key to Lena's room – they'd probably assume he needed to consult with her on projects or something. Or, he just said Lena asked him to get the key. No one would be looking for malicious intent."

"And no one would blink if Ryan got Lena a drink at the bar." Reid returned the papers to the envelope. "Come on. We've got to get back to the precinct before Morgan and Rossi start that interrogation."