Chapter 37
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It has been a few weeks since Penelope dyed her hair, and while Rossi was surprised by his daughter's new appearance he, like Emily, thought it suited her, and therefore had nothing bad to say.
It is a Tuesday evening and it just happens to be Penelope and Emily's first anniversary. As they both wanted to do something to make the occasion, but didn't want to risk making big plans and risk not being able to follow through on them thanks to work the pair decided on just a simple dinner at Emily's friend Archer's.
"You know I think Archer's given us the best table in the place." Penelope realises.
"That's not all he's going to give us." Emily says, as she notices her old friend walking towards them, carrying something.
"Complimentary Champagne." Archer says, pouring to glasses, before putting the champagne back in the ice bucket.
"Archer you don't have to do that." Emily tells him.
"Of course, I do, you're celebrating." Archer says, being well aware of what the night is for Emily and Penelope, "Whatever you want to eat tonight, I'll make sure you get it."
"Thank you, Archer." Penelope says, before Emily can object which she is clearly about to do, as she has had dinner at Archer's restaurant in the last year to know that there is nothing they can do to stop Archer from giving them things.
"No need." Archer says, before walking away.
"Well, if we have champagne I want to give a toast." Emily says.
"Oh?" Penelope asks.
"To one year of us." Emily says, raising her glass.
"And more to come." Penelope adds.
"I'll drink to that." Emily says, and the two of them toast, drink, and enjoy a romantic dinner together which surprisingly doesn't have to end because of a case.
Mid-morning, two days later and the team, including Penelope are on the jet going to conduct an unequivocal death investigation in the small town in Wyoming where there is a spike in teen suicide.
"Sir, it's not that I'm not glad to be coming with you, because I am, just don't understand the why." Penelope admits
"One of the aspects of an equivocal death investigation when suicide is a probability is an indirect personality assessment." Hotch explains, "Our victims are all internet generation kids. There should be invaluable personal data on their computers to mine for evaluation." Hotch explains.
"If they committed suicide, evidence of it will probably be in their cyber world." Morgan adds.
"So I'm gonna snoop though dead kids' computers?" Penelope asks, feeling shocked, and partly horrified by that.
"This plane seldom makes pleasure trips, Kiddo." Rossi tells his daughter.
"We've all been over the files." Hotch says, "Let's talk about victimology." Hotch requests.
"Okay. All four kids were decent students. From different neighbouring towns, but the same school and the same county." Rossi says.
"Active in sports and community." Morgan adds.
"Intact families, no mental disorders, no precipitating events." Emily adds.
"These are just average good kids." Morgan notes, "There has to be some underlying issue." He realises.
"Besides relative proximity there are no obvious connections between any of them." Reid says.
"It seems to rule out an overt suicide pact." Hotch realises.
"The first few days leading up to a teenager's suicide are usually very telling." Ried says, "Their behaviour is transparent. There's a multitude of indicators." Reid says.
"Yeah, but the most common don't exist here." JJ says, "There's no prior attempt, no period of deep depression, no withdrawal from family members, no spontaneous proclamations of love." JJ explains.
"Spontaneous proclamation of love?" Emily asks, attempting to look at JJ as she has never heard that before.
"Sometimes a suicidal person, in the days leading up to the act, will just blurt out, 'I love you', to family, sort of like a goodbye." JJ explains.
"We'll start with the latest two victims. If they were suicidal, let's find out what drove them to it." Hotch instructs, and that's just what they do.
A little while later the team have landed and arrived at the local police station and while Reid, Morgan, Emily, Hotch, and JJ have gone to the houses belonging to the two teens, while Penelope and Rossi are setting up Penelope's computer station at the local police station.
"Screens are in place." Rossi tells his daughter, "Where do I put this?" Rossi asks his daughter, showing her one of the cords.
"Don't touch that." Penelope says, rather quickly, "Sorry." Penelope says, realising that that was rather rude, "I love you Dad, I really do, but this is something I need to do alone, I'm the only one who knows how to set it up." Penelope admits.
"Okay. If there is anything I can do let me know." Rossi requests, realising that arguing with his daughter is futile.
"I will." Penelope assurers her father and she gets started on setting up her equipment.
A little while later Penelope has set up all her computers and Emily, JJ and Hotch are arriving back.
"Hey, you ready to delve into Trish Leake's online world?" Emily asks, handing the laptop over to her girlfriend.
"If by ready you mean extremely capable and even more reluctant." Penelope says.
"Yeah, something like that." Emily says, putting her hand on Penelope's back.
"How are the Leakes holding out?" The Local Sherriff asks.
"Oh, probably as well as can be expected." Emily admits.
"Yeah. They're strong people." The Sherriff says.
"Good." Emily says, sounding glad.
"Well, that's weird." Penelope says.
"What?" Hotch asks.
"There's nothing here." Penelope realises.
"Nothing useful?" Rossi asks.
"Nothing at all." Penelope corrects, "Look, there's no root directory, there's no operating system, the registry appears to be blank." Penelope reveals.
"But why would she have an empty computer set up?" Emily asks.
"I did not say empty, I said appears to be blank." Penelope corrects, looking at her girlfriend.
"Meaning?" Hotch asks.
"I'm gonna need a little while." Penelope admits, and once she does Hotch walks away with JJ, and the two of them start to talk. While the two of them talk Penelope works on her computer, and after a few minutes she finally finds something.
"I got it!" Penelope suddenly says, and Hotch and JJ walk back over, "It was just a basic trojan horse. It just hid the directories, didn't erase them." Penelope explains, "Oh god." She suddenly says.
"What is it?" Hotch asks.
"She was on a choking game site the night she died." Penelope explains.
"A what?" Penelope asks.
"Uh, it's a game kids play where they choke themselves to get a buzz, to get a high." Penelope explains, and as she does Reid, and Morgan arrive.
"They call it the good kids' high. You get lightheaded and a sense of euphoria even though no actual drugs are involved. It's something kids in high school play." Reid explains.
"Did Ryan have a computer?" Hotch asks, looking between Morgan and Reid.
"No in his room." Morgan answers.
"What about a gaming system?" Penelope asks.
"Yeah, he did." Reid confirms, remembering.
"Teenagers will find away to get online." Penelope reveals.
"I have the, um, IP address." Reid says, handing over a piece of paper.
"Oh, that will help." Penelope says, continuing to type, "Bingo. Ryan was on the same site on the same night." Penelope reveals.
"It wasn't suicide." Morgan realises.
"Hang on, there is a text to voice icon. Let's see what happens." Penelope says, pressing the icon.
"Come on, try it. we all do it. I dare you." A computer-generated voice says.
"I dare you?" Penelope asks.
"Someone was orchestrating this, purposely getting the kids to choke themselves." Emily realises.
"There's a whole subculture around this game." Penelope reveals, "They make up names for it, they do it at parties." Penelope explains.
"But someone is daring these kids in this area to play the game." Rossi says.
"It's a contest, and there are rules. Come on Evan's high, this is the big one, Garfield edged out Casper high last week. You gonna let them diss us?" Penelope reads.
"Diss, sounds like a kid." Emily realises.
"Who else would pit schools against each other?" Hotch asks.
"Reckless teenage competition." Rossi realises.
"The school that logs the most high time this Friday wins." Penelope reads.
"Friday, tomorrow." Emily realises.
"Get your friends on board. Practice makes the high last longer. Gotta do it alone and video it with your webcam, and upload it to the site for it to count." Penelope reads.
"Doing it alone requires ligatures. He's basically encouraging them to play the deadliest form of the game with no one there to revive them." Reid reveals.
"Garcia, shut the site down." Hotch requests.
"Sir, I can totally do that, but I don't think you want me to." Penelope reveals, looking at Hotch.
"Why?" Hotch asks confused.
"Right now, this site is our only way to track the unsub, and if I cut into it he will certainly know we're watching him, in which case he'll shut it down and he'll write a simple change in code, bring it back up in more covert fashion. Plus, there's no telling how many servers it's replicated on, anyway." Penelope reveals.
"You're right." Hotch realises, "We're ready to give the profile." He says, and the team do just that.
A little while later the team, while giving a talk at a local school, have found the teenager who seems to be behind everything and he has been brought back to the station, after a visit to the hospital, while his father and the sheriff have brought back his laptop. While Reid and Morgan are talking to the kid Penelope is going through with Rossi, JJ, and Emily, Hotch are watching her work.
"Mary, this Christopher kid is fantastical. He's got a segmented hard drive, serious firewalls, major league encryption." Penelope says.
"No reason for all that useless he's hiding something serious." Rossi realises.
"Okay, so that's why he's isn't worried." Emily realises.
"This is, agh, unusual." Penelope says annoyed, "Every attack I launch is shot down immediately." Penelope reveals, and as she does there is the sound of rapid beeping.
"What's that?" JJ asks.
"Somebody just uploaded a new video to the game site." Penelope explains.
"It's twelve o one." JJ says, after checking her watch.
"It's Friday, they're playing." Emily says.
"And it's only a matter of time before some of them go wrong." Rossi says.
"Guys, I'm gonna keep dead-ending on this until I get a beat on how he set up his security system." Penelope reveals, as Morgan and Reid walk out from where they were interviewing Christopher.
"Hope you got a plan 'b'." Morgan says, as Penelope types, realising that he's not going to be able to get Christopher to open up.
"Garcia, I think this kid will relate to you better than anybody else." Hotch realises, causing Penelope to look at him, "I want you to talk to him, see if you can get him to open up." Hotch says.
"Um, sir, I have never done this before." Penelope reveals, "What if I mess up?" Penelope asks.
"You'll be fine." Hotch says.
"He's right, you will be." Rossi assures his daughter.
"Talk about tech, just be your incredible self and he'll start to talk." Emily tells her girlfriend, "You'll be great." Emily says, giving her a supportive smile, as Penelope gets up.
Once she is standing up Penelope takes a deep breath before heading into the interview room.
"Hi there, I'm Penelope." Penelope says, closing the door behind her, and everyone outside continues to watch on.
"Good for you." Chris says.
"Can I sit down?" Penelope asks.
"You're the cop." Chris says, and Penelope sits down.
"Um, I look like a cop to you?" Penelope asks, sounding surprised by that.
"Yeah, what, you aren't?" Chris asks.
"No. FBI Tech analyst. I just have some administrative cyber crud to go over with you." Penelope explains, "Just a geekette." Penelope explains.
"Cool." Chris says.
"You are glum." Penelope notes, "Time is a great healer." Penelope reveals, knowing that for a fact.
"You have no idea how I feel." Chris says with a scoff.
"I lost my Mom and My step-dad when I was about your age." Penelope reveals, and as she does Rossi and Emily exchange looks, both knowing that this isn't the easiest topic for Penelope to talk about, "I don't know, I think I have a pretty good idea, and I felt totally alone." Penelope says, and as she does Rossi looks down in guilt, "Till I found the netizens." Penelope reveals.
"BTDT." Chris says.
"Hey, I'm not lying, it'll totally get better." Penelope reveals, once more knowing that for experience, "BTW, I like your nails." Penelope reveals.
"Thanks. You into Goth?" Chris asks.
"You know, I don't think I'm supposed to be anymore, but the love is still there." Penelope reveals, showing Chris her nails.
"So, you're FBI?" Chris asks.
"Yeah, I know. It's crazy, but I love it." Penelope reveals, "I enjoy your earring too. where did you score that?" Penelope asks.
"Ebay. It's supposed to be Jonny D's from that pirate movie." Chris explains.
"Most awesome." Penelope says, with a smile, and as she does on the outside Emily and Rossi smile proudly at her, as Hotch suggests that Penelope should be brought out more often, "Okay, your hole PGP disc encryption system is like crazy impressive." Penelope admits.
"Yeah, I'm into that kind of stuff." Chris reveals.
"Stuff? Dude, you do not understand. I am jealous. That is state of the art technology the feeb does not have." Penelope reveals.
"Whatever." Chris says, like it is no big deal.
"Okay. How did you get your anonymizing service?" Penelope asks.
"I got it from some link from some dude online. What do you care?" Chris asks.
"I just think it's uber cool how you set your whole system up." Penelope reveals, "Like how you use an e-shredder to obliterate your net activity and a window wiper as your secondary trash eraser. Who does that?" Penelope asks.
"Everybody does that." Chris says, and as he does the door opens and Hotch walks into the room.
"the interview's over." Hotch says.
"interview." Chris says.
"I was just…." Penelope starts to say.
"His father invoked." Hotch explains, as Christopher's father walks in.
"Dad." Christopher says.
"I'm getting you a lawyer. I screwed up and failed you when your mother died. Not this time, unless you people have something to charge him with. We're leaving." Christopher's father says, causing Christopher to stand up.
"Sly Miss P, by the way, I do miss my Mom." Christopher admits, as he and Penelope shake hands, and Christopher hands Penelope over his earing.
"She's not your friend. She was trying to trick you." Christopher's dead says, and as he does Penelope goes to say something, but before she can Christopher and his father leave.
"Sir, I'm sorry, I tried." Penelope says.
"If he invokes, he invokes." Hotch says, "Concentrate on cracking the encryption." Hotch says, before leaving.
After Hotch leaves Emily walks in, closing the door behind her.
"You did great, Pen." Emily tells her girlfriend.
"Did I?" Penelope asks, "I didn't get what we needed, I…" Penelope starts to say, but before she does Emily takes both her hands.
"You did great." Emily assures her, stressing each word, "You did something Morgan and Reid couldn't do, you got him to talk." Emily assures her girlfriend, squeezing her hands, "I'm proud of you, Pen." Emily says, smiling at her girlfriend, who returns the smile.
A little while later Penelope is working on trying to crack the encryption on Chris's computer with JJ, Reid, and Morgan watching on.
"That's another video going up." JJ reveals.
"That's four kids playing in half an hour. How many kids go to this school?" Morgan asks.
"It's catchment is the whole county. It's almost two thousand." Ried reveals, "Garcia, we really need to gain administrative access to the website. I've written down a number of things Christopher may have used as the password. I've already eliminated birthdays, holidays, pet names, and pop culture icons." Reid says, putting a list in front of Penelope.
"No, there was something pathetic about him, not criminal." Penelope admits, "When he was leaving he said he misses his mom." Penelope says, and as she does she realises something, "What's his mother's name?" Penelope asks.
"Cynthia Summers." Reid answers, and as he does Penelope starts to type.
"That's it." Penelope reveals, getting into the computer.
"All right, long in as administrator, shut down the main source." Reid requests.
"Already on it, my friend." Penelope reveals, "Kids are still posting videos through independent serves." Penelope reveals.
"Pull up the website history. See if you can learn anything from historical posts." Reid requests, and as he does Penelope prints off the posts, and Ried starts to read them.
"Wait, all these transmissions are transcripts of the same administrator?" Reid asks.
"Yeah, there's only one handle." Penelope reveals.
"This is weird. In the posts, his voice changes. At times he's using most articles, most precise verbiage, like he's trying to throw us off." Reid reveals.
"That's pretty sophisticated behaviour for a kid." Morgan notes.
"A writer can disguise his own writing style, to make himself appear younger, or less educated…" Reid starts to say.
"Yeah, but it's virtually impossible to pull of making yourself appear older, and more educated than you actually are." Morgan explains.
"There are actually two distinct writing styles." Reid reveals, "Two writers using the same screen name, one teen and one adult. Christopher was being manipulated by an adult." Reid says, as Emily, Hotch, and Rossi walk back over.
"The mother's death is a textbook case of Munchausen by Proxy." Hotch reveals.
"Surreptitious poisoning." Emily reveals.
"The kid has been choked and revived on multiple occasions." Rossi reveals.
"You said the father worked for the fire department, right?" Reid asks.
"Yeah, for a couple of months now." The local sheriff reveals.
"In what capacity?" Reid asks.
"As an EMT." The Sheriff says.
"EMT, that's our unsub." Emily realises.
"Christopher didn't even understand the wiping system on his computer." Penelope reveals.
"So the father poses as a classmate and invite local kids to join the game." Hotch realises.
"Bumps up the stakes and encourages them to use their riskiest methods." Morgan says.
"He works on Friday nights." The sheriff reveals.
"Which means he gets called out to do the rescues. He's not just collecting video tapes. His Munchausen has evolved." Reid realises.
"I'll put out an APB for his truck." The Sheriff says.
"He'll find a palace to download the video tapes. They're his trophies." Reid explains.
"After that he'll clean up his mess." Rossi says.
"Christopher's the only witness against him." Hotch realises, and once he does the team, except for Penelope and JJ leave.
A little while later the team are at Christopher's and his father's house while Penelope and JJ are back at the station, when Penelope's phone rings.
"Garcia." Hotch says.
"Yes, Sir?" Penelope asks.
"When you were talking to Christopher, did he say anything to you to suggest that he was giving up?" Hotch asks.
"Giving up?" Penelope asks confused, as JJ walks over.
"Was he trying to say goodbye?" Hotch asks.
"I don't understand." Penelope admits.
"Did he give you anything?" JJ asks.
"Yeah, how did you know that?" Penelope asks, feeling confused.
"What did he give you?" JJ asks.
"When, when, we were talking, he gave me this pirate's earring." Penelope says, pulling the ring out of her pocket.
"He's made up his mind. Suicide, the only victory over his sadistic father." Reid reveals.
"He may also see it as reuniting with his mother." Emily realises.
"The father's going to want to download those videos from somewhere, Garcia, and we got to stop that process." Morgan says.
"I'm already on that. I replaced the website with a phishing site. I'm downloading it to the servers now. When he logs onto that website he's going to be rerouted to our services, and we and we can capture his information." Penelope explains.
"Stay on that site, Garcia." Hotch requests.
"Yeah." Penelope says.
"It will buy us some time. Where are they headed?" Hotch asks the others.
"Wait. What about the mother? It's all about the mother. Pen, where is Cynthia Summers buried?" Emily asks.
"Give me a second." Penelope requests.
"You know, for Christopher, a cemetery would be a place of refuge, but for the father…" Morgan starts to say.
"He's revisiting a body disposal site." Hotch realises.
"Oaklawn cemetery, halfway between here and Glenrock." Penelope explains.
"Okay. He would willing go there with his father?" Emily asks.
"Well, the father still needs to download the videos." Hotch explains.
"And he might need a power source." Morgan says.
"There's a chapel. They use it for burials." The sheriff explains.
"Let's go, Garcia, we'll call you from the car." Hotch says, as the team hurry out.
Hours later the case is over Christopher is safe, his father has been dealt with, and the team are on their way home, which they have been for a little while.
As the other members of the team have fallen asleep Rossi carefully steps over Emily, being careful not to wake his daughter's girlfriend, before heading over to Penelope, where he sits down near her.
"Hey." Rossi says to Penelope who is one of the only people who are still awake.
"Hey."
"You okay?" Rossi asks his daughter.
"Yeah." Penelope says, clearly not telling the truth.
"Kitten…" Rossi starts to say, it being clear that he knows there is something his daughter isn't saying.
"I still miss Mom, and Santiago, I think about them all the time." Penelope admits.
"I know." Rossi tells her.
"I was telling the truth when I told Christopher that time is a great healer, but he's never going to stop missing his mom. I haven't stopped missing them." Penelope says, hurriedly going to wipe her eyes.
"I know, Kiddo. I know." Rossi says, taking his daughter's hand, and squeezing it.
Hours later Penelope and Emily are arriving back at Penelope's apartment and as she closes the door behind her Emily decides that she can't stay quiet about something she realised.
"Are you okay?" Emily asks concerned.
"Yeah, I'm just…." Penelope starts to say, before trailing off.
"Just what, Pen?" Emily asks, gently prodding her girlfriend.
"I used to be a lot like Christopher." Penelope admits, "I had the pain, the anger, even the look." She admits.
"You did?" Emily asks, sounding a little surprised by that.
"I want to show you something." Penelope says, "I'll be right back." Penelope says, before leaving the lounge room, heading into her bedroom where she goes to her closet, and pulls out a shoe box out from the very back.
Opening the box Penelope finds the picture she wants and once she has it she puts the box back and heads back out to her living room where Emily is sitting on the couch.
Seeing Emily on the couch Penelope walks over and sits next to her, "This was taken a few months after my Mom and Santiago died." She says, showing the picture to Emily.
"Nice look." Emily says, with a teasing smile.
"I angry at the whole world, especially the FBI." Penelope admits.
"You've told me that before." Emily notes.
"Yeah, but this is the part I usually leave out." Penelope admits, "What I haven't even told Dad is I started hacking into small things, and other hackers noticed." Penelope explains, "Back then I felt alone, the only people I really had in my life were Stephen, and Carolyn." Penelope explains, and as she does Emily becomes even surer that she would like to meet Carolyn some time.
"No one else?" Emily asks, as she knows that Penelope didn't really have many people in her life after her mother and Step-father died, but that is even fewer people than she was expecting, as she thought Penelope had at least a couple of other friends back then.
"Not really, I mean there was an old friend of Stephen, his best friend other than me, who's also a friend of mine, who was stationed in California back then." Penelope reveals, "He's now an FBI agent." Penelope reveals, and as she does Emily looks an interested, but Penelope doesn't explain, "But no, I didn't really have anyone else. At least not until I was approached by someone." Penelope says, and from the change of her voice Emily knows that there is more to the story.
"Pen, what is it?" Emily asks concerned.
"His name's Shane. I joined his hacking group, and he mentored me." Penelope reveals, pausing because she wants to tell Emily, but at the same time, she's worried about how Emily is going to react.
"You can tell me, Pen, whatever it is." Emily assures her girlfriend.
"We were together, but we weren't good together." Penelope admits, "It wasn't Kevin level bad, but still far from healthy." Penelope reveals, and as she does it is clear to Emily that she doesn't want to talk about the details, "I let myself get caught by the FBI, at the time I didn't even realise that that's what I did, but now I know, I wanted an out, and getting arrested gave me one." Penelope explains.
"Why did you want out?" Emily asks curious.
"I guess, I didn't really agree with what they, we, were doing anymore, I didn't agree with what Shane was doing, and I didn't like who I was becoming." Penelope admits.
"You know, Pen, walking away from a group like that takes a lot of strength." Emily tells her girlfriend.
"It felt like I was taking the easy choice." Penelope admits.
"You weren't" Emily tells her, "Trust me Pen."
"I do." Penelope assures her girlfriend, "That's why I told you." Penelope says, placing a kiss on Emily's cheek.
"I'm glad you did." Emily admits, and the two of them lean back on the couch, and drift into silence.
It has been a couple of weeks since the case involving Christopher and his father and as Penelope had her weekly dinner with her father the night before she stayed at her apartment alone instead of with Emily.
It's early morning and Penelope is just finishing making her coffee, and once it is made she heads out, taking a mouthful.
"Still not as good as Em's." Penelope says to herself as she walks out of her apartment and out of the front door, as Penelope leaves she sees an envelope with her name stuck to it, "Odd." Penelope notes, as she takes it, and after feeling along it, and making sure that there seems to be nothing other than paper in it, Penelope opens it and inside she finds something that makes her drop her coffee cup, an obituary with a message saying,
Tania was first, you're second,
On it.
"Oh god." Penelope says, sounding completely horrified.