Chapter 3: Little Drop of Poison

Maeve received Spencer's file a week later, it had arrived first at her university mailbox, where she'd asked him to send it, but her own situation had grown more precarious in the last seven days, so she had officially taken a sabbatical from the university, so she'd gone in disguise to retrieve the file earlier that morning. Maeve couldn't quite explain why she was so determined, but…she didn't care what it took, stalker or no stalker, she was going to get to the bottom of this…

The file contained everything she'd asked for, his medical history, a family tree, including everyone's cause of death and all medical information relevant to all natural deaths that weren't the result of old age, of which there weren't very many, full reports of everything the doctors he'd been to previously for this had suspected, and everything they'd tried, and it contained an original MRI scan taken roughly this time last year. Based on the sheer quantity of medical paperwork, it became clear to her that he had been trying to find an answer for a while, it was no wonder he'd sounded almost disheartened when she'd spoken to him on the phone. Hopefully, somewhere in the file in front of her, there were patterns, clues as to what had changed a year and a half ago that put him in such constant pain.

She decided to start with the family tree… from the beginning. The tree went up roughly eight generations and almost three-hundred years on either side… This would prove useful. If his migraines were caused by a genetic condition, it was probably rare, which meant that it was most likely recessive, which meant that it could've lain dormant for generations until someone inherited two copies of the malfunctioning gene. She laid the sheets out on her coffee table, the ancestry chart next to the records of all non-old age deaths, and examined them carefully. Something told her that somewhere in the documents in front of her, was the first clue, but what was it? Past generations had been mostly healthy and long lived, with some disturbances thanks to illnesses that had been endemic only seventy years ago, no surprises there… It probably wasn't the result of cultural/environmental deficiencies either, different branches of his family had come from different areas of the world, mostly Europe, but still all over the place… so any environmental factors that would've effected the epigenome would have been balanced out by other relatives and therefore wouldn't cause a problem… so what was it? Finally she saw it, there was an uncle on his father's side, who had died at just thirty years old… Daniel Reid had lived from November 1955 to December 1985… there was no record of an accident occurring, he hadn't been murdered… the official cause of death for this guy was a stroke, unusual for a man of his age… She checked his file, there was no record of cancer or poisoning or any other medical reason for a man who was barely thirty to die that way…

That's when her cellphone phone started to ring. Something else had changed, the things were beginning to get more personal between them, of course she hadn't given him her cellphone number, but all the calls to her office phone were being automatically forwarded to it. She still hadn't told him she was taking a sabbatical or why. She knew if this kept up she'd have to. She was really starting to like him, but she felt certain that this stalker, whoever he was, would harm anyone she got too close to, and she wasn't about to put him in danger too.

"Hello…?" She answered it.

"Hi Maeve, it's me…" he replied.

"Hi…how's it going?" she asked.

"Pretty good…." He replied exhaustedly.

"You ok?" she asked.

"Yeah…I just got home, that's all… long case, there were two all-nighters in there…not that I sleep that well regardless…"

"You do realize, that no matter what's causing this, chances are good that sleep deprivation is probably making it worse…"

"I know, but it's kind of unavoidable…speaking of which…have you found anything yet?"

Maeve thought for a second, she didn't want to hide anything from him, but she didn't understand yet what the little she'd uncovered so far meant, and she didn't think it was fair to scare him.

"I'm just getting started, I received the file this morning, I literally just got into it…"

"Ok…do you see anything so far?"

"Nothing anywhere near definitive…think about it, if the answer were common or easy to find, someone would've figured it out by now. The first thing that struck me, is just how hard you've been trying to figure this out…" She told him. "But anything I do find out, once I actually know for sure that it's going to lead us somewhere…you'll be the first to know."

"Say, I was wondering…" he began hesitantly.

"Yes…?" she asked.

"Would you, like to go for coffee sometime…with me…?" he asked.

"Oh Spencer…I would love to…" she replied, with an almost lamenting tone in her voice.

"But…" he began, knowing that she was turning him down.

"But I can't…listen…I would love to meet you in person, but…I have a stalker, I don't know who it is, or what I did to get this guy on my case, but I'm afraid…whoever it is has threatened me repeatedly and I don't know what he might do to the people I care about but I don't want to find out. So until this is over, until this guy leaves me alone…we can't…"

"Um, Maeve…I'm an FBI agent… my team and I arrest people like him. I could just tell my team what's going on and we could help you…"

"No, Spencer…I already told the police, hopefully they'll catch him soon, and this will all be over, and then…when it is, I would love to meet for coffee. Until then…I think its best that we stick to…" but she stopped short, as her landline phone had just begun to ring.

"What is that?" Reid asked. "Maeve…are you ok? What's that noise?"

"That's um…my landline…I've had all my office calls rerouted to my cellphone. No one uses that landline…not my parents, none of my friends, not my boss… no one calls me on that number…it never rings…"

"I hate to say it, but you're stalker might have somehow gotten your number…"

"Oh God…"

"Maeve…listen to me, put on a disguise, get out of there…turn your cellphone off, and call me back from the nearest payphone…If I don't hear from you in an hour I'm calling my team's tech analyst to trace this call and sending the police to your address…Do you understand…?"

"Yes….yes I understand…"

"Good…"

"Talk to you soon…bye…"

"Bye…"