A/N: this chapter is closing out the case portion of the fic. i really want the rest of the story to be focused on demily without having to sidetrack for "case talk" anymore, so in order to do that, i gotta tie off all the loose threads from earlier chaps. BUT i cannot lie, this chapter is a HUGE part of why my writing schedule got thrown off. :'''') to those of y'all who write case fics for FUN? you're among the elite. i just find it very hard lol.
Prentiss stood at the head of the bullpen, arms crossed over her chest as she focused on the presentation unfolding in the room. She'd gathered her team on the main floor of the division to tie up loose ends on this case, and at the moment, each member was putting forth equal effort to finalize the material they would need for the official record. Because while the finality of a dead unsub would be enough for the average civilian, Interpol would need a full account with investigative documentation.
On a more personal level, she needed to properly lay to rest a desire that tugged at her heart since the explosion last week. A woman sought out her help. After being turned away by her own trusted coworkers and unit peers, she somehow managed to talk her way to the top of Prentiss' busy work queue. She feared the ramifications of this cold case not so much for herself, but for her son. In the end, Prentiss' only hope was that Elana Foster could rest easy and Teddy could comfortably move on, knowing that no part of this case went underdeveloped or overlooked.
In order to do this, she asked her team to present the new facts of this case to her like they would present it to a scrutinizing board of directors, or even to a skeptical police precinct. Until the parts that she knew fully aligned with the things her team discovered, she would play the audience, listening and asking questions. And since she'd last touched base with her team over 24 hours ago, there was a whole lot more of the puzzle that had fallen into place. Elements that were once blurry were now making themselves visible in HD.
"This was Adrian Morley." Lelant said, with a small remote in hand.
Behind the brown-skinned agent's gesture, the television centered in the bullpen now presented a driver's license image of a man with dark gray hair. He smiled in the slightest with pure confidence. Aside from some dark circles creating the smallest shadows under his eye, he seemed healthy and handsome— an "aging-playboy-with-a-multi-million-dollar-business-plan-up-his-sleeve" type.
Lelant continued, "In 1981, Morley co-founded a power and electricity company. It serviced the greater Birmingham and greater Glasgow areas, in addition to townships in north Wales. Business was lucrative, and revenue was beyond lucrative. Then, in April 1986, the company as a whole undertook a massive PR hit when Morley was charged with 3 counts of embezzlement."
Taking the reins on this part of the presentation, Agent Yun began speaking,"Court proceedings lasted over half the year, and in that time, what everyone had come to know as 'Foster & Morley Energy Networks' was simplified to 'Foster Energy'."
"I know the lawsuit was notoriously laden with grey areas surrounding Morley's motivation," Prentiss mentioned, "But also I have it on file that he was convicted."
"Yes." Yun replied, "Criminal hearings and grueling prosecutions ensued, and the jury did find Morley guilty on all counts. Not only was he effectively removed from the books at his own company, but he received a 15 year sentence."
"But he didn't served all that time," Imani Mitchells interjected, "See, after spending almost a year in prison— losing all his assets, sponsors, spending thousands on legal fees— in January 1987, new evidence was actually able to exonerate Mr. Morley. An underground ring of hackers were convicted for his charges."
"However, the compensation that followed his wrongful conviction was abysmal." Lelant noted in such a way as to indicate that this was a key stressor in the case,"When the courts considered his reparations, for whatever reason, they took into account his net-worth and assets prior to imprisonment. They then settled with him for a meager £20,000."
Hughes, the eldest agent in the room shook his head, and then spoke, "In speaking with some of the current management at Foster Energy, I was told that, regardless of whether Morley had been proven not-guilty, his partner (Harrison Foster) wanted nothing more to do with him… Morley's career with the company went down the loo, and with no family to support him, he essentially lost everything."
"Where did he end up?" Prentiss inquired with a frown.
"That brings us to the next point." Lelant transitioned, clicking a button on the remote that pulled up old news headlines, "Shortly after the embezzlement case closed, in February 1987, 8-year-old Theodore Foster went missing. Local authorities did get involved, but never pursued a deep investigation. After a mere 2 day search, the report was closed."
"These events happened so close to each other, I had a hunch they might be connected," Prentiss commented, "I am to understand you found something to prove it?"
"Yes!" Mitchells chimed in, "So, there wassomething that caught my eye was when I looked into some of Mr. Foster's old phone records like you asked me to. The logs show he received multiple phone calls from a secure number on that 2nd search day. 7 calls to be exact. And the timing of the 7th actually coincides with a payment wired to the unsub's "untraceable" bank account."
"That's a huge lead, Mitch," Prentiss affirmed the techie's information, "Why didn't these dots get connected for our case sooner?"
"Chief, I went off your hunch, but I had to sift and cross reference the phone logs and the bank statements manually." Mitchells asserted respectfully, "This company, like most companies, didn't upload their entire file archive for digital access. They just left the oldest files in the attic to grown mold…"
"Of course," Prentiss grimaced at the mention of rotting evidence, but then responded warmly, "I appreciate you going the extra mile on that."
Picking up the discussion where it left off, Yun posed a question, "By that seventh call, Foster most likely knew that someone had abducted his son. But then he wires a payment to what? To keep letting this person get away with holding his son hostage?"
Lelant was quick to answer,"Well, considering that Theodore was alive up until last night, it's clear that the first ransom payment (and all the payments made afterwards) weren't promising his safe return. Rather, they were to ensure that he'd be kept alive as a sort of collateral until the balance was paid off."
"That balance certainly accrued interest," Prentiss said openly as she ogled the photo scan of Foster's checkbook displayed on the screen, "This is the debt that Elana inherited, but it went up in price every year."
"And every year, Theodore Foster continued to grow up in captivity." Yun said darkly.
"Where was he being held?" Asked the division chief.
"In a warehouse north east of here. The Woodford area." Hughes said, "We discovered it after gaining access to a safe in Foster's old office and finding he'd been receiving proof-of-life photographs."
On queue, a series of images popped on to the screen. What they depicted was inhumane, completely without compassion or regard for a child's life. He lived in a cage for a short period of time, but with each photo, the boy got progressively older and earned a form of freedom. The bruises, scars and thinness went away with time; the terrified look in his eyes transformed into something deadly. But even if he eventually evolved into a dangerous unsub, it didn't make it any easier to see him as a child locked away in a kennel.
"These photos are from Theodore's early 20s and they go all the way back to that first year of captivity." said Lelant, "And. They're all at the same location."
"Mitch was able to find us this location based off some of the more architectural details in the background—" Yun started.
"And because Adrian Morley was our lead suspect in the abduction," Mitchells cut in, "I double-checked to see if he had any capital that he hadn't sold off. After following a little paper trail, I eventually found the warehouse in Woodford under his step-father's name."
"So last night, a couple hours before the break-in at your flat," Lelant spoke, "Hughes and I investigated the space, and uncovered a mother load."
"Which included what?" Prentiss asked.
"Evidence that directly incriminated Morley in the kidnapping of Theodore Foster." Hughes revealed, "It was like an evil underground lair, Em."
"The cages and the shitty living environment from the old photos were still on the south side of the building," Lelant divulged,"But the real intrigue of the location was a makeshift office space, shrouded with nothing but notebooks. They were filled with budgets and balances and financial equations and print-outs and clippings and notes. Thousand and thousands of notes themed around "the conspiracy", "the betrayal", "the wronging"."
Prentiss cocked her head, "Morley's handwriting?"
"Most of them, yes." Yun answered, "When they brought the notebooks to be entered into the evidence locker, I read though some of them and it seems that Morley was throughly convinced that Foster had secretly hired hackers to frame him for embezzlement with the over-arching goal of having the company all to himself."
"One of the notebooks goes into detail about how him and his co-founder had a long standing rivalry bubbling underneath their united front." Lelant added, "It finally spilled over during the trial."
Emily frowned, her thoughts briefly tuning out the team's conversation. Morley was clearly revenge motivated. He was intelligent, and compulsively driven to right the wrongs that had been done against him. He was dominant, principled and organized, never leaving any part of his plan to chance. That was part of his profile, and it made sense that, as a young, scorned, egotistical male, he would snap the moment he lost everything that mattered to him.
Every unsub had their trigger, and for Morley, it was Foster turning him away after the trial. That was the betrayal. And because the error was too great to be corrected by the justice system that failed him, he took matters into his own hands. He kidnapped his enemy's son, and for many years, used it to contribute to his psychological torture.
The picture was clearer now more than ever. However, Emily hadn't expected to find that it was grandfather Foster's past selfish decisions that eventually lead to his entire family's demise…
"This is all great material, but we know for a fact that Adrian Morley wasn't the man who broke into my house." Prentiss asserted.
"No, and he wasn't the person who killed Elana and her mother, either." Lelant replied,"Adrian Morley died about 10 years ago."
"Morley's dead?" The division chief raised the question.
Hughes nodded in response, "In a perimeter search, his remains were detected under a mound behind the warehouse. With what was left of him, the coroner suspected a natural, but sudden death occurred in his 50s. Heart-attack. Possibly a stroke."
"And now enter Theodore Foster." Lelant pulled up the M.E.'s headshot of the dead intruder, "There's no doubt that being held hostage and victim to unthinkable abuse in his formative years opened the door to his subjugation. His brain quickly learned that in order to survive, he had to hide his inner child and mirror the strength of his captor."
"Hiding away his true self was, of course, an involuntary shift in his mind." Yun pointed out.
"Wait. You guys think he had a dissociated split personality?" Mitchells wondered aloud.
"Dissociative identity disorder." Prentiss corrected,"Last night, I was able to parse that out each time he made a demand. His speech felt real, yet incredibly scripted. Only— that was firsthand. What lead you guys to this conclusion?"
"The notebooks." Yun answered succinctly, then continued, "Most of the notebooks from the warehouse belonged to Morley, however a handful of these notebooks were— different. They contained the same thematic content, but they were written in completely different handwriting. And sometimes, certain entries were written in entirely different personas."
Lelant elaborated, "Our working theory is that Theodore suffered his first personality break very early on to protect his inner child. Then, when the person he'd been conditioned to trust and obey for 15 years died, it broke something inside him. And instead of finding a way to freedom, his mind locked him in even deeper."
"In the years to come, his dominant personality manifested itself as his kidnapper." Yun tagged on this information, "His lifestyle mimicked everything he had observed his captor do, and carried out everything he'd been instructed to. Living as Adrian Morley, he managed to remain underground for the next 10 years."
Emily hadn't read the notebooks yet, but through her team's presentation, it seemed very clear to her that Theodore had made himself at home in the space that stole his childhood from him. Subsequently, denial and grief played a huge role in repressing what was left of his true self and inner child. He emerged, believing he was the man who he'd buried and continued to execute his plans. For a moment, she felt an unrestrained sense of sympathy for the boy lost within.
"One thing to note," Yun started, "Is that, although he was isolated, Theodore didn't miss out on the technological advancements that happened between his abduction and now."
"What Morley allowed him access to, once he was fully submitted, was not at all limited," Hughes spoke, as Lelant pulled up photos of a corner in the warehouse dedicated to monitors and computer screens. It narrowly reminded Emily of Garcia's office back at the BAU (sans the cutesy toy collection), "He became extremely tech efficient; earning enough knowledge to evade the camera's outside Teddy's school, to collect updated information on his family's whereabouts and to trip the alarm system in your home."
"That must be where he was firing off those ransom emails as well…" Prentiss
trailed.
"In fact, it was." Mitchells confirmed, "I analyzed a few of the hard drives, and on top of some very advanced encrypting software, I discovered the clandestine server he was using to contact the outside world. He sent emails to Harrison Foster until his death, then moved on to Elana… and finally to you."
Emily inhaled deeply. In the aftermath, she could now see how Foster's death had toppled everything like dominoes. By the way that Theodore spoke last night, it was evident that his death would not be the final payment. Someone had to pay. Moreover, Theodore had been indoctrinated with Morley's philosophy on revenge. And without much control over his own mind, the dominant personality took the stage. Abduction became necessary. No payment, meant that another Foster needed to pay the physical price.
"Reading through one of the more recent notebooks in Theodore's writing, there are pages that are very straightforward in detailing a plot to kidnap "the boy" and that, again, repetitively mention betrayal." Yun shared.
"Does he write at all about using a bomb to achieve this?" Prentiss asked with a dose of incredulousness, "Planning to take a new hostage as leverage for higher ransom makes sense, but what still doesn't fit is the explosion. We know that Morley's M.O. was long game psychological torture. He got high from knowing that his enemy was suffering a slow, internal pain— blowing up the Foster family doesn't fit that bill."
Yun shook his head, "There's nothing about a bomb per se… however, there are a handful of entires that lead me believe that the real Theodore found about his dominant personality's plan to abduct Teddy the same way we did (via the notebooks), and which seem to suggest he wanted to do something to prevent it from happening."
"Go on." Prentiss encouraged him.
"Well, the entires are incredibly brief, but the tone is steeped with worry and fear." Yun continued, "He wishes for an intervention, but insists that there's nowhere he can go or hide to create one. However, this is in stark contrast to later entries, where he's a bit more confident. The fear element is removed, an he's more resolute as he writes about something he calls "Homecoming."
"Look at how it's capitalized," Lelant drew attention to the screen, which now sported a new notebook scan, "He's emphasized it to signify the importance."
"Almost as if reuniting with his family was destined to be more of an occasion than it appeared to be…" Prentiss thought aloud.
Hughes arched his brow, "What're you thinking, love?"
Emily shook her head. She was unsure, but that didn't stop her from putting another hypothesis out in the open, "I'm thinking that "Homecoming" was the bomb."
Her team stared back at her with eyes wide, "We're all ears." The grey haired agent prompted her to continue.
"Zoom in on the bottom of that entry." Prentiss requested, as she took a couple steps forward to the get a better look at the evidence displayed on the TV, "Right here, he writes, 'He thinks that what's stolen will cover the dues, but it won't. They are unending. It'll last as long as there's a descendant alive. But with Homecoming we'll all finally be together, and be free. Surrounded by it, this is something he cannot take away.' "
"I mean… it certainly reads as if, even though he may have lacked the ability to completely stop his dominant personality from executing his plans, he had something of his own planned." Lelant said with a shrug.
Yun countered, "But if he wanted to end it all, exploding himself in the warehouse would've been much more efficient. Why would he try to kill his whole family in the process?"
"He was delusional," Prentiss stated matter of factly, pressing her point because she no longer doubted if she was on the right track, "Theodore Foster spent the majority of his life isolated from society, and he nurtured a warped sense of love and trust. He may not have been aware of the split in his personality. But if he knew anything absolutely, he knew that the debt would never be paid, and therefore the violence would never stop. In his mind, the only way to make sure that no one else would suffer, the only way to eternally reunite every member of his family— would be to gather with them all in death…"
As the last pieces of this monstrous puzzle fell into place, she recalled the look that passed through Theodore's eyes when he died in her upstairs hallway. Years of being separated from his family gave way to him believing he was someone that he wasn't. Then, like medicine, encountering his older sister restored the inner child— his truest self. He was granted clarity at the time and place he'd most hoped for. His plan of action fell into place, and presented him the opportunity to set ablaze Homecoming.
But there's so much grey area in a psychotic mind, and without actual medication, there's even less control. In danger, the brain reverts to its animal instincts, of which Theodore's were split, damaged, and unabated. That full-proof form of self-preservation kicked in, and the dominant personality reemerged, saving him from the threat of dying in his own fire.
It was undetermined whether Theodore was fully aware of Morley's actual death, or if he was aware he'd assumed Morley's persona. Nevertheless, he didn't get to experience the freedom he so desired until a many days after Homecoming killed his family. He remained responsible for a little boy's world of terror, hurt, and loss. And although the division chief couldn't fault him for wanting to protect his family from a vengeful legacy, she couldn't spare sympathy for the actions he later took to achieve it.
For Teddy's sake, Elana got spooked and guided her son to safety. She'd spent her last few days prioritizing the life of her son, and in the end, she made the greatest sacrifice any mother could ever make. As a leader, Prentiss would always harbor some kind of guilt around her death. But every case worked itself out in different ways, and if this was all she could do to honor the young agent's bravery, she could confidently say that, with this final point, this cold case was officially closed.
"I think that's it." Hughes announced,"We've done it."
"I'm sold." Lelant concurred, "Any next steps, chief?"
Prentiss nodded, "I'll need an after-action report from each of you. As well as references, profile notes, and professional deductions. Mitchells, be sure to get me a flash drive copy of the evidence you gathered. Have everything on my desk ready to be signed off tomorrow morning."
"Yes, chief." The four agents said in unison.
Without so much as another word, the team pivoted and returned to their respective desks. Peaceful and quiet midday work hours could commence. Meanwhile, Emily climbed the stairs to her office; brooding and in deep anticipation, because the next order of business on her list was one that instilled in her the smallest sense of unease.
It was time to reunite Teddy with his father.