Apologies for the slight delay. We now return you to your CRIMINAL MINDS already in progress

When Reid and Sasaki entered the holding cell, Akira Fukui looked relieved to see them. He wore the suit they'd found in his apartment, and though his hands were cuffed behind him, he cut a dignified spectacle. He'd received a dose of Diomorphex soon after being taken into custody.

"Mr. Fukui," Sasaki began in Japanese, seating himself, "I'm Captain Sasaki, Chief of Police. This is Dr. Spencer Reid of the FBI. He specializes in cases like yours."

Akira tried to gesture with his hands, futilely rattling the chains. He gave a weak smile.

"The Chief of Police, and the FBI? I'm honored."

"We're not here to persecute you. All we want to do is get to the bottom of what happened."

"I suppose this is where I protest my innocence?"

"Tell us the truth. That's all we ask."

Akira shut his eyes, and took a long, ragged breath. "The truth? I'm not sure I know the truth anymore."

Reid noticed that, while he spoke with surprising calm, he avoided their eyes.

"Please tell us what you remember of the past few weeks," said Sasaki.

"Whether or not you think it's reliable," added Reid, "your experience is important."

"Doctor Reid, is it? Your Japanese is excellent. Alright." He nodded, swallowed. "Alright. You see…I'm allergic to alcohol. But when I heard about Mei Oda, I was so upset I drank half a bottle of whiskey. It made me so sick I wasn't able to keep down my medication. I don't remember very much after that…I think I slept on the street. I had a run-in with some police…"

"The behavior of those officers was shameful," said Sasaki. "They should have realized you needed help. Please, go on."

"I don't remember much until…a few days ago. That's when she showed up."

"She?"

"A girl who looked like Rei Nakamura, from Night Train. She said she came to help me. She would only show up at night, for a few hours each day. The thing is," and his eyes widened slightly with unease, "I don't know if she was real or not. Without the pills, I…see things. Things that aren't there. It's happened before."

"Mr. Fukui," said Reid, delicately, "describe more specifically the hallucinations you've suffered in the past."

Sounding almost excited, he went on: "Sometimes, when I see real people, it's like they're wearing masks. Like giant puppets. It's horrible. And I'll see puppets, or mannequins, and think they're real people. I don't see them move. It's like there are people stuck in there. Do you know what I mean…? No, of course you don't."

"Those symptoms are disturbing, if not unknown. But in other words, nothing exactly like this has ever happened before."

"No…I suppose not. But," and his voice now held a curious mixture of hope and fear, "she couldn't be real, could she? If so, who was she, what was she doing there?"

Reid and Sasaki looked at each other, debating how much to tell him. Finally Sasaki said: "Your apartment had been cleaned recently. There was women's clothing in the closet."

Akira blushed slightly. "The costumes…I keep them for my friends. Sometimes they like to dress up when they're at my place."

"In other words, it's inconclusive. We can't rule out the possibility there was someone else there. Which brings us to the subject of last night…"

And, shuddering from time to time, evincing disbelief in his own words, Akira explained exactly what he had seen.

Sasaki was nodding. Reid looked mystified.

"I'm sorry. You're certain that this girl spoke to your attacker, and he responded?"

"It's just as I said."

"It's unusual for hallucinations and reality to interact so specifically."

"But if she wasn't there…th-that means I killed that man."

"Don't worry about that," said Sasaki, with surprising gentleness. "If so, it would be an obvious case of self-defense, even had you been in your right mind."

"He thought I'd done it. The others. I saw about it on the news…" Then he burst out, raising his voice for the first time: "I would never! Those girls are like sisters to me. I…love them. But, I can't be sure. I can only be sure about Mei Oda. It was a complete shock, the worst shock. After that…"

"Mr. Fukui," said Reid, "I realize this is a ah, sensitive topic, but you could describe more precisely your relationships with these girls?"

"Oh, I know what it sounds like…coming over to my room to play dress-up. But it was never like that. I didn't touch them, and they knew I wouldn't. You see…after the accident…Yuriko…but you must know about that. I haven't dated anyone since then. I can't be unfaithful to her! It's stupid, I know, that's just how I feel. With these girls, it's different. We have a good time, and for a while I don't feel so alone. That's why I started cosplaying as Yuusuke. Because that's what Night Train is all about; losing people, and finding people again…" In a horrified wheeze he finished: "If I did hurt them, I couldn't live for another second. You need to lock me up. I don't care what the evidence is. I can't take the risk I might hurt anyone else."

Sasaki said, with faint irony: "Not to worry, Mr. Fukui, we can certainly oblige you there."

They walked down the hall to the observation room.

"What do you think?"

"A sociopath would have made more eye contact," said Reid. "I think he was telling the truth. He also presents an obvious stressor; the bottle of whiskey, and his medical records confirm the alcohol allergy. However…"

"That was itself caused by the first murder, to hear him tell it. What is it you say, a…Catch Twenty-Two? Do we still believe him?"

Reid hesitated only for a moment.

"Yes," he said. "At the least, I think that's what he remembers."

"Then the stressor might have been something he wasn't conscious of."

"Or we might have the wrong man."

"But there's no question Ryo Gan was shot with an air gun, like the previous victim…"

"An air gun we couldn't find," Reid said ominously.

Hotch found Rossi in the hotel bar. At four-thirty in the evening, he was one of its few customers. The dimly-lit, wood-paneled room, with bamboo fences and a trickling waterfall, had the same mood, elegant but characterless, as the rest of the New Otani.

Rossi was drinking red wine. Hotch ordered green tea and sat down beside him.

"Penny for your thoughts, Dave."

Rossi gave an expansive Italian shrug. "Thoughts? We got our man. Who else could it be? It didn't go as smoothly as usual, and I still don't have a working profile, but the important thing is the city of Tokyo is safe. We did our job, Sasaki has a feather in his cap, and Hasekura can boast about the success of this cooperative effort."

"But something's bothering you. Otherwise you'd never drink on the job."

"Hotch, would you cut it out with the intra-team profiling already?"

"I wouldn't have come here if something wasn't bothering me too. But I'd like to hear my suspicions confirmed."

Rossi sighed. He took a sip of wine. His cellphone lay on the bar by his elbow, and he glanced at it. Sasaki still hadn't called.

"It feels too neat," he said.

Hotch nodded.

Faint music, played on the koto harp, drifted from concealed speakers. The bartender wandered unobtrusively past.

"You know," said Rossi, tilting the wine glass, "my uncle Arturo was a Pacific Theatre vet. He hated the Japanese. That was all I got growing up; you can't trust the Japs, they're shifty devils. He used to show me a photograph of him posing with a dead enemy combatant on Wake Island. And when I was stationed in Yokohama…I kept that mentality. The kind of foreigner Hasekura seems to think we are? I was that guy, Hotch. Drinking, chasing skirts; I might have got someone pregnant…"

Hotch's tea arrived, and he took a drink in silence. Soon, Rossi went on, gazing into space:

"Then you hear these stories, about cartoons where an octopus rapes a little girl, and you except something like this. I thought it would be someone like this guy from the start. But that wasn't the profile talking. It was prejudice."

"Hasekura expected the same thing," said Hotch. "This is the man he wanted us to arrest."

"But was he wrong? The evidence against Fukui is pretty strong. Maybe my uncle was right, after all. An abnormal crime born of abnormal base psychology."

"You don't really believe that."

"I'd like not to believe it."

The phone rang. "Reid," said Rossi, with some relief, and picked up.

From the mood in the conference room, no one could have guessed an arrest had been made. Sasaki, Prentiss, Morgan, Reid and Garcia sat at the table, cogitating furiously; batting ideas back and forth, adding notes to the cork board, where photos of victims and crime scenes were pinned alongside police reports and records.

Morgan sat with his hands laced behind his head, eyes shut. "Supposing Mei Oda did kill herself," he said. "That would serve as a stressor for Fukui. He would be losing an important person for the second time. After that, like he says, the whiskey, and it's downhill from there."

"That's an excellent theory," said Prentiss, "but then why not tell us he thought she was a suicide? He seems to believe someone killed her."

"Besides, nothing about Mei Oda's psychological makeup suggests suicide," said Reid, sounding disappointed. It had after all been a good theory.

The door opened. Hasekura was standing there, wearing a double-breasted suit, smiling profusely, his face more flushed than usual under his regal silver hair.

Sasaki got to his feet. "Sir!"

"Ah, Hajime-kun! And all our ah, foreign friends. I cannot tell you how pleased I am, at this news."

"Nothing is certain yet, sir. An arrest has been made, that's all."

"Oh, come," Hasekura waved his hand as if to drive off flies. "When I read the file on this person, I knew he was ours. Just the sort of weirdo who is such a problem. Your ah, profiling must have detected him with ease."

"Actually, we have some doubts," Morgan said frankly. "Profiling isn't an exact science."

"Ah, don't be so modest. That is not like an American. Tell me," he leaned in with his usual familiarity, "explain this profiling to me. I know that it works, but not how it works."

Morgan shrugged. "You want an example of profiling?"

"Yes, if you please."

He sounded confident the demonstration would take no more than a few seconds. As it happened, he was right.

"For example, you talk loudly to disguise extreme nervousness," said Reid. "This is largely because Captain Sasaki's superior command of English makes you feel inadequate. The idea that your inferior could do anything better than you is professionally humiliating. What's more, I suspect that recent domestic troubles have sharpened your sense of inadequacy. Perceiving the Captain as a surrogate son, his rebellion angers you."

Hasekura flushed darker. He hadn't understood all of the rapid English, but he had understood enough.

"I see," he said stiffly. "Very interesting."

Then he turned on his heel and left the room."

Sasaki covered his face. Garcia and Morgan both tried not to smile.

"Sorry," said Reid, not sounding it. "I couldn't resist."

Sasaki shrugged helplessly. "Forget about him. If my career is over, so what. Where were we?"

Morgan slowly tapped his pen on the table. He said: "Supposing Fukui has a partner. He provides the victimology, but someone else carries out the attacks. Possibly even without his knowledge."

"Someone else? Who? A man or a woman?"

"Last I checked, his imaginary friend is still in picture," Garcia reminded them, glancing up from her tablet. "Could she maybe be...not so imaginary?"

Prentiss was eyeing the cork board. There had to be some piece of information they'd missed. Having to rebuild the profile from scratch was unacceptable. They must have all pieces of the puzzle but one. She scanned along the timeline: Mei Oda's death. Fukui's disappearance. Sightings of the vagrant. Maya Asano. Ayumi Tosaka. Rin Todokawa. Ryo Gan.

Her eyelids fluttered as realization dawned. Her mouth formed a perfect o.

"Guys?" she said. "We've been looking at this all wrong. Something did happen just before the murderers started. Something so innocuous we didn't bother adding it to the timeline."

Morgan's head snapped around. "What?"

"A gallant young man saved a young woman from a pack of hoodlums."

"Natsumi Kodo," mouthed Reid.

"What if she suffers from erotomania?"

"The mistaken surety of being loved. It would explain her attachment to Fukui. She's taking out the competition."

"Folie a duex," said Morgan, "a madness shared by two. Just because they play different roles in the fantasy doesn't mean they're not equally delusional."

Sasaki looked astonished, but asked: "When you spoke to Miss Kodo, she identified Fukui. Wouldn't she have lied if she wanted to protect him?"

Now the members of the BAU were firing in sequence, like adjacent tines on a windchime. This, Prentiss reflected with a growing sense of triumph, was how it should be.

"The attacks take place at night," said Reid. "So does most of Night Train. That's the trigger of her pathology. During the day, she may not even remember what's happened."

"She wasn't using forensic countermeasures!" Prentiss exclaimed. "She cleaned the Todokawa crime scene because she worked there!"

Morgan held up his hands. "Hold on. Hold on a second. There's one major problem. If something like that could set her off, how did she function until now? We're talking about a majorly disturbed young woman. How long has she held down that job? Garcia, babe, pull up her file."

"Wa-ay ahead of you."

Then Garcia's face went pale. She gaped at the screen of her tablet. "You're not going to believe this," she said. "It's like Halloween come early, and then some. Creepy."

"What?" asked the others, crowding around.

"Huge parts of Natsumi Kodo's files? Have been redacted."

"Redacted?"

"You heard me. It looks like the history of a deep-cover spy. But the old records are out there somewhere, and if anyone can dig them up…"

She tapped furiously at the screen. The others watched, breathless. Beside Natsumi Kodo's unassuming, smiling face, a new list of data scrolled down.

"Multiple citations for stalking," read Morgan, "switched high schools twice after complaints from faculty members. Ouch. Finally committed for stabbing her school principal's wife with a hair pin. Six years in a mental institution. Looks like someone gave her a clean slate and turned her lose."

"All her targets match Fukui's profile," said Prentiss, "successful, older men who have tried to reach out and help her."

"Who would suppress this information? How? Why?" gasped Reid, baffled to the point of anger.

"We can figure that out later." Sasaki took out his phone. "Kimura? Un. Ah, souka…" After several minutes, looking more and more annoyed, he turned back to the team. "The officer surveilling Natsumi Kodo lost sight of her in Ueno. He didn't suspect a thing, but I am sure she deliberately lost him."

"Where's Fukui?" demanded Morgan.

"In transit to Tokyo Detention House."

"We need him right away. Tell your dispatcher."

"I'll call Hotch," said Reid.

"So," said the officer driving the car, "what kind of music you listen to? Maybe a little rock-n-roll?"

Fukui sat in the backside, clutching his sides. He looked listless, empty. Nocturnal lights washed periodically over his face.

"C'mon, I aint teasing you. I'm trying to cheer ya up. I don't believe a guy like you could've done this. From what I hear, all the witnesses say you're solid."

At last, Fukui said in a faint voice: "I'm fine. No music, please."

"Suit yourself."

The other cop sitting beside him grumbled: "Can it, Tsuji. It aint up to you to decide if he's guilty or not."

"All I'm saying is, look at him. You think he did it?"

"It's not my job to decide one way or the other."

"Come on, man, lighten up."

He turned the radio dial. Bach's fifth concerto came on.

"Aw, shut it off," said Tsuji's partner, "I can't stand that classical shit."

"Alright, alright!" To Fukui he said, grinning: "Matsumura here likes metal. You know Metallica, American band? He loves that stuff. En-ter ni-ight…ex-it li-ight…"

"Shut up! Besides you got it backwards. It's exit light, enter night."

"You sure about that?-Whoa! Whoa."

Tsuji had spotted something in the vehicle's headlights. They were driving along a canal, and by the low railing and the still, black water, a girl in a school uniform lay crumpled and motionless. He pulled to the curb.

"You wait here, I'm gonna check this out."

"Hey asshole, we're transporting a prisoner! Ring HQ and let someone else take care of it."

"You heartless prick, she could be in big trouble. Aint you got kids?-Hang on." Tsuji spoke into the transceiver: "Base, this is car nineteen, over."

"Car nineteen, we read."

"We're in Chiyoda-ku, san-chome, on the water. Possible schoolgirl in distress, moving in to investigate."

"Car nineteen, aren't you transporting prisoner Akira Fukui? Strongly discourage, repeat, strongly discourage."

"Aw, it aint like this guy is going anywhere. He's been a real lamb. Over and out."

Matsumura was shaking his head. In the back seat, Fukui perked up, looking nervous.

Tsuji stepped out of the car. "Gentlemen, sit tight, I'll be right back."