Not long after JJ and Morgan returned from getting the surveillance footage, Morgan decided to check on his goddaughter and his best friend.
At the hospital, Reid was back in Evina's room, watching her sleep. He was wishing he could sleep himself, but knew he probably wouldn't. It was only ten o'clock but it felt like three in the morning. The last six hours had been an emotional roller coaster. He was torn. His every instinct as a father kept him rooted at Evina's side, but there was still a part of him that wanted to personally hunt down and punish the unsub who had done this to her.
Without warning, the relative silence was broken when his cell phone started to ring. He took it out of his pocket and saw that it was Morgan, so he stepped out and answered it.
"Hey Morgan…"
"Hey, how's our girl?"
"She's asleep, for now, the anesthesia wore off a few hours ago but she was only awake for about thirty minutes."
"What do the docs say? When do they think they'll release her?" Morgan asked.
"Thankfully there wasn't any other organ damage and the antibiotics they have her on are working, so hopefully she can go home tomorrow or the next day."
"Good. Listen Kid, I know where your head's at. I've been in your shoes, but trust me, take the time that Emily gave you."
"Morgan this unsub poisoned and almost killed my daughter." Reid replied sharply.
"I know; and I know you wanna help us nail their ass to the wall for it. But Reid, Evi needs you more than we do right now, more than anything else. Your place is with her right now."
Morgan could hear Reid sigh heavily on the other end.
"Have you guys made any more progress?" He asked.
"Yeah, JJ and I just got back to the office with the footage from the day Evina was poisoned; and Lewis and Garcia think they've identified a possible suspect. We're about to sit down with the others, watch the video, and go over what we know so far."
"Keep me in the loop please."
"Come on Man, you know we will." Morgan promised before hanging up.
When he got off the phone with Reid, Morgan looked up to see JJ standing next to him. Her blue eyes appeared to be twice their normal size. Clearly she hated the very idea of their best friend going through what was literally the worst nightmare of every agent with kids. "H-how are they?" she asked.
"Evina's gonna be just fine. The doctors confirmed that there was no permanent damage to other parts of her body and that the meds they have her on right now are working so, she's going home either tomorrow or the day after. Reid on the other hand, he's somewhere between terrified and royally pissed off. I don't know if he will come back in time to work the case actively or not but; if he does, I really wouldn't wanna be this unsub when Reid finally gets his hands on them."
At that, JJ lowered her gaze and gave a small knowing smile. "I don't blame him…"
"Yeah, me neither. Of course, there's not much we can do until we figure out who the unsub is. Let's get it done." Morgan suggested. JJ nodded and followed him to the conference room.
Once everyone had taken their seats, Emily began the meeting. "Alright guys, I know it's getting late but we are only marginally closer to catching this unsub than we were four hours ago, so let's do what we do best and use everything we know so far to build a profile. I suggest we start with victimology."
"Well, as a victim, Evina is as low risk and you could possibly get. She's a straight A student, she keeps herself busy, between school and her three activities, she's actually not home a whole lot more than we are, her schedule might be more predictable, but it'd still be pretty hard for someone who wasn't stalking her to figure out."
"Her Tai Chi Master described her as hardworking, unusually disciplined, and driven to succeed, but not the type to step on others' toes to get what she wants." Tara added.
"Yeah, my gut tells me that this is much more about Reid than it is about Evina; and as Rossi and I discussed on the way to Reid's house, this is extremely mission-oriented behavior." Emily said.
"What did Maeve and the other two kids tell you?" JJ asked.
Just like that, Emily's mind was back in Reid's living room.
She'd asked Rossi to interview Maeve, while she talked to the other two children.
"Who did this to my sister?" Conan demanded.
"We don't know yet, but we think you might be able to help us." Emily told him.
"How?" He asked.
"Well, we think this happened at the martial arts competition your sister was in, last weekend. I need to know if there was anything you saw, heard, or even felt that made you feel like your sister was in danger."
"Emily?" JJ asked, dragging her back to the here and now.
"Conan pointed out another one of the competitors, one that apparently had it out for Evina. Then he asked me if there was a chance this guy's parents might have done something." She told them.
"I heard about the same kid when I stopped by the dojo to talk to her teacher. He said their rivalry didn't make any sense because they didn't even practice the same style of martial arts, which means they were never actually competing against each other. So, thinking it might be about something else, I had Garcia dig into him."
"And?" Emily asked, turning to Garcia.
"The creep of the week award goes to sixteen-year-old Nathan Mitchell. He has a history of disciplinary issues and violent behavior. I think he's just an angry person, I thought it was a dead end, until I found out that there are no records on him or his dad prior to 2018, no birth-certificate, nothing. Now, even I know that he doesn't fit the profile like, at all, and his dad's a lawyer, not a scientist, which means there's no obvious evidence of either of them having the skill set to pull this off, but this is too weird to just discount."
"That is more than a little suspicious." Emily agreed. "But the patience this unsub has displayed so far reflects an older ubsub, and the use of poison screams female."
"So we're looking for a woman, who's getting back at Spence…"
"Right, and Reid's never been the womanizing type, so it's probably not a jilted lover, and even if it was, an unsub like that would probably go after Maeve, not Evina. Speaking of which, Rossi, what did Maeve tell you when you interviewed her?"
"She described a woman who she caught paying unusually close attention to Evina even when she wasn't competing, she didn't know who it was, but she doubts it was a coincidence given what's happened, and frankly, so do I." He replied.
"Reid said something similar when I talked to him." Matt added. "He described the woman as wearing a black track suit and a baseball hat. He said he recognized her but couldn't see her clearly enough for an ID, she was too far away. Hopefully we'll get a better view of her on the surveillance footage than they did in person."
"Maybe, Garcia, pull it up."
"Ok, just a second, there it is…"
At her words, a recording of a large gymnasium appeared on the screen behind her. From where the camera was placed, the team could see most of the length of the gymnasium. That included the area where the mats where placed for the actual events to take place, the bleachers and the food tables lined up between the two. The picture was clear but in order to get the wide angle, the camera had been placed on the ceiling on the opposite side of the room. Individual people there barely identifiable as it was and they knew there was no way the unsub would knowingly appear on camera without taking countermeasures of some kind. For a few minutes, no one made a sound, they all just sat there, watching intently, trying to pick up on anyone acting suspiciously.
"Can you enhance this?" JJ asked.
"Already on it, give it another couple of minutes…" Garcia replied as the paused image became much clearer. When the process was finished, she zoomed in on a young girl standing in front of one of the food tables with an unmistakably familiar brown ponytail with a small braid pulled in on the side of her head. "and there's our girl. It looks like Reid, Maeve, and the kids are just a couple rows up, like practically front row seats."
"Now that we know where they are, let's see if we can find the person they saw watching her. Even if she turns out not to be our unsub, we still need to talk to her." Matt said.
They scanned the area off to Reid's left, looking for someone who matched the description he and Maeve had given during each of their interviews. Finally they saw her, a woman wearing a black tracksuit who spent a lot of time looking in Evina's direction, and who seemed to be using the brim of her matching black and white baseball cap to hide her face from the camera.
"That's gotta be her." Rossi commented.
"Babygirl, blow that up and capture it." Morgan added.
"Way ahead of you, but unless I can find a better angle, there's no way this'll give us an ID."
"No, and with it already being six days later, the scene will be way too contaminated for forensics to give us anything useable. We'll have to find another way to identify her, but this still helps." Emily said.
"How so?" Garcia asked.
"Well she was bold enough to stick around and watch. Most unsubs want to experience the suffering they inflict on their victims. For her, knowing the plan was in motion was enough, but she had to take that risk. She had to see it, it's a compulsion. She knows that Evi's about to be in a lot of pain and that it will be psychological torture for her family but she couldn't stop herself from taking that risk."
"So what do we do?" Garcia asked.
"For now? We go home, we get some sleep, we come back and give the profile," Emily replied. "For now there's just not much else we can do and we're all running on vapors."