Into the Trenches
"Tough times don't last, tough people do, remember?"
~Gregory Peck.
Penelope Garcia's Apartment. Washington, D.C.
"So, we can't know what we don't know," Kate Callahan offered, grimacing slightly at the syntax. "But we can work with what we do know—which means all we have to do right now is tackle the parts of the case that we do know about."
"Lotta 'knows' in there," Rossi commented dryly. This earned him a longsuffering look from his team member, who merely gave a helpless gesture of her hands (it's late and I'm still processing everything, 'kay, Rossi, gimme a break).
"Wording aside, we get the point," Hotch assured her. "And I agree, it's the only logical place to start. If they're building a case against Reid, they'll use every bit of circumstantial evidence they can get. We need to account for Reid's every move in this investigation. Starting from the moment the blast went off."
They didn't have a whiteboard, but Penelope scrounged up some legal pads and Kate began scribbling down notes as they hastily constructed a timeline.
"You know, when you look at it on paper, Reid's reactions don't look so great," Morgan admitted. The words came out reluctantly, as if he hated to even speak them aloud. He glanced over at Rossi, who was seated on the other end of the couch.
Rossi gave a hum of agreement. "They make sense, but in the right light…they make sense in a much more ominous way."
"Behavior is up for interpretation, in every event of life," Hotch reminded them. "We need to stick to what can be definitively explained."
"The email," Kate piped up, her head down as she focused on the timeline in her lap. "It's a piece of evidence. Did they mention it, during the interrogation?"
Now she looked up at Hotch, as did almost everyone else in the room (the exception being Penelope, who was too deeply burrowed in "the interwebs").
"No," Hotch realized, slightly surprised. "I didn't stay for the whole thing—but while I was in there, I didn't hear any mention of it. That doesn't mean it wasn't addressed later on, though."
"We have to assume they've followed that rabbit trail already," Morgan spoke, and the rest gave curt nods of agreement.
David Rossi sat up slightly, "The question is: what did they find?"
Hotch didn't bat an eye, "Penelope."
"On it, sir."
He loved her all the more for not complaining about having to stop whatever other task she was currently engaged in.
"Let's make two assumptions," Derek Morgan motioned with his hands, laying out his points. "One, that the Flying Js might have overlooked it earlier, but they're definitely gonna check up on it."
"Even if they hadn't already done so, it would have been one of the first things Dawson had checked out, as soon as they returned from the crime scene," Hotch gave a curt not of agreement.
"What's the second assumption?" Callahan turned her attention back to Morgan.
"Linnea would've been savvy enough to spot a simple fake." He gave another sweeping motion with his hands. "She's a reporter, and what little we know of her indicates that she's a pretty smart cookie."
"So…what?" Callahan's voice was weighted with dread. "Are you saying that Reid actually sent the email?"
FBI Academy. Quantico, Virginia.
"Time to call it a day, Sura," Jack entered the room with a tired sigh that seemed to emphasize his words. He tossed the manila folder back onto her desk. "Thanks for the email screenshots, by the way. I'd say that was what rattled him the most."
"Which seems ridiculous, when you think about it," Sura murmured. She hadn't even glanced up from her computer—despite her boss' orders to pack it in, she was still busily whirling away at her keyboard. "I mean, that was by far the easiest thing to trace back. Thirty seconds, tops—maybe ninety seconds, if you count in the time it took to get screenshots."
"Perhaps it was too easy," Jack commented.
Now she stopped, looking up at him in mild surprise. "What're you saying, Jack?"
He grimaced slightly. As if he'd been given a distasteful task. "I'm saying…is there any way that it can be a fake?"
"Technically, yes." Sometimes she found herself amazed at how uneducated people were in the world of technology. However, Sura Roza kept that particular line of commentary to herself. The man before her certainly didn't need any more grief. Not tonight.
"Explain the use of the word 'technically'."
"Well…anything can be made to look like something else," she gave a slight shrug. "Taking things at face value, yes, this email was sent from that phone."
"But it could have been sent from somewhere else?"
"Maybe. Possibly. I'll have to look into it." She offered a small smile, "I'm good to go for a few more hours, Jack. I don't mind—"
"No." He waved away the offer. "We're gonna have an early start tomorrow morning, and I'd prefer for everyone to have had a few decent hours' worth of sleep. Besides, Dr. Reid's already tucked in for the night—it isn't anything that can't hold until morning—"
"I'm sorry, I should've check into this earlier—"
"There were other things to look at." Again, he dismissed her attempted apology. With a slight smile, he offered, "But you can explain to me how it might not be exactly what it looks like on the ride back to the hotel."
"Deal," she returned his tired smile. Normally, she would dismiss his obvious hopes, curtly informing him that the likelihood of this email being something other than the straightforward explanation was minimal, but she found herself unable to. Tonight, he needed a ray of hope, some shadow of doubt.
She could give him that. Even if it meant ripping it back away from him tomorrow morning.
Penelope Garcia's Apartment. Washington, D.C.
"I really, really hate it when you guys make me be the bearer of bad news," Penelope informed the rest of the team. "But yes, there's an email to Linnea Charles at The Washington Daily in Reid's outbox."
The looks of dismay would've broken her heart, if it wasn't already shattered.
"OK," Morgan took a deep breath, setting his hands on his knees. "Time to add in another assumption."
"Remember what happens when you assume," Rossi intoned quietly.
Everyone in the room knew the rest of the famous adage—when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. They'd all had it ground into their skulls since day one at the Academy.
"Right now, I don't see any other option," Morgan's voice betrayed his desperation. "We're grasping at straws here, stuck on the outside looking in as they throw god-only-knows-what at Reid."
"Assumptions aren't bad," Hotch quietly quelled whatever potential disagreement could be brewing between the two agents. "Let's just not stay married to them."
Morgan nodded in understanding before he began. "All of this has the mark of the Replicator on it. I don't care what O'Donnell says, it's as plain as day. Whoever this person is, he's trying to prove how much smarter he is. Trying to show us that he's the one calling the shots, the one who has all of our lives in the palm of his hand."
"And he's doing a helluva good job at it, so far," Callahan murmured. She distinctly felt the gazes of her three team members and instantly regretted her aside. Still, her regret didn't make her words any less true.
Hotch turned his stoic face back to Morgan. "So you're saying that whoever sent the email had to have done it in the smartest way possible. Not only to prove his intelligence, but also to cover his tracks. Because he knew that disproving its authenticity would be the first thing we did."
"Exactly." Morgan shifted in his seat, turning to place his elbow on the back of the couch as he gave Penelope Garcia his full attention, "Which means I need you to wrack that crafty little mind of yours and think of how you would do that."
Penelope gave an uneasy sigh at that request. "Then we're about to go down a very dark and very deep well, my love. How technical do you want me to get in my explanation?"
He offered a smooth smile, "Talk nerdy to me, Babygirl."
FBI Academy. Quantico, Virginia.
"Look, I love you very much, but my brain is fried, so listen closely, because I'm only explaining this once," Sura Roza held up her hands, as if to ward off any pleas for mercy from her boss. They'd barely gotten into the vehicle, but she knew that Jack Dawson wasn't a man who liked waiting, and personally, she wouldn't mind having this all over as soon as possible. Not to mention, it was a short ride to the hotel, and there was a lot to explain in that time frame.
"There are two ways—well, probably more than two, but the others aren't nearly as plausible, so we'll stick with them. First: someone hacked into Spencer's email from another computer and sent the email. Adding the little 'sent from whatever phone' tagline could be a simple cut and paste job. I'll unravel that mystery tomorrow morning. In comparison, that's the relatively easy version."
Dawson wasn't so sure about that. He could work his email program just fine, but he wouldn't know the first thing about hacking into someone else's.
"Second—and this one is the real doozy—the email was actually sent from Reid's email app on his phone—"
"But how—"
"Remote access program. You can find them online, if you know where to look. People use them all the time to spy on spouses, unlock their teenager's private life, or monitor employees' GPS movements—"
"Is that legal?"
Sura's wry huff of amusement answered his question. "Now, here's where it gets sticky."
Again, Dawson mentally disagreed. They'd passed sticky about ten miles back, in his book.
"For almost every kind of program like that, you have to have direct, physical access to the target's phone—just to install the app. So it's a one-time deal, but still…."
"It still means whoever installed it had to have some kind of close contact with Dr. Reid—and a time frame long enough to steal the phone without the doctor noticing, install the app, and return it," Dawson mused, his brow furrowing in incredulity. "But wouldn't the app show up in his menu? I mean, wouldn't he know it was installed?"
"No. A program like that hides itself. And I shouldn't have said app—it's more of a program."
"There's a difference?"
"Darling, it's a good thing you're cute." She was smiling, albeit tiredly. With a shake of her head, she continued, "I won't bog you down in the specifics, but understand we're talking about spyware. By design, it's meant to stay hidden. The only way a target would find the program is if they suspected there was something there, then went digging through their phone's program files."
Dr. Reid had professed to being "rather uninterested" in computers and related technology. This didn't sound like a move he could pull off, Dawson decided—hell, it wasn't even something he could pull off, and he was pretty savvy with his iPhone.
Unless, of course, Dr. Reid was simply lying. That was always a possibility.
"How would you know to look for it in the first place?" Dawson was confused.
"Well, there are going to be signs—just like when your computer has a virus or spyware. You have to understand, this type of program would pull a lot of power and take up a lot of data. And your phone will start to complain about the heavier workload."
It was statements like that which reminded Dawson how weird his technical analyst really was.
"So, all you'd have to do is leave you phone unattended for a few minutes…" Dawson gave a small gesture with his hand to indicate the continuation of events.
"Pretty much, yeah." Sure flashed him a bright false smile. "Lovely thought, innit?"
"Here," he handed her the phone currently tucked into his shirt pocket. "Check mine. Make sure I don't have any of that."
She laughed. "You don't. No one would want to spy on you."
"You've never met my first wife."
This earned him another chuckle.
"Seriously, though. It's possible, right?" Dawson's voice warred between fear and hope. "Someone could've just walked up, taken Reid's phone—"
"And voilà? Yes. It's really that simple." However, Sura stopped for a moment, then added, "Of course, you've got the added layer of being able to actually control the phone via remote access. That makes it a horse of a different color than most run-of-the-mill spy programs."
"So...what does that mean, exactly?"
Penelope Garcia's Apartment. Washington, D.C.
"But here's where it gets hairy. Like hairier than we've currently been—like Saint Bernard hairy, got it? Like before, we were a short-haired terrier, and now, we're a Bearded Collie—"
"Garcia, I think we get the point," Hotch waved away the imagery with a slight air of frustration. The hour was late and patience was wearing thin.
"Yes, of course," she ducked her head at his tone, like a child being chastised by her father. "The thing is—well, technically, you could invent a program that didn't need direct access."
"A remote access program that can also remotely install itself?" Callahan's brows furrowed as she tried to stay on the current train of thought.
"Sweet Jesus in short-pants, it's becoming a James Bond film," Rossi muttered, looking up to the heavens in exasperation.
"No." Hotch's voice was certain. "It's becoming exactly something John Curtis would have done. If this UNSUB can build a program that perfectly suits his needs, there's no trail to follow—he hasn't downloaded it, hasn't searched for it online—and it only further proves how smart he is."
"But…how?" Morgan's face was filled with a look of utterly helpless confusion.
"Well, I can't say for certain, obviously, but if I were going to do it, I'd make sure we were on the same network—"
"Like the Bureau's wifi," Rossi supplied.
"Perfect example. Then I'd use the person's IP address—but that wouldn't work at Quantico, I don't think."
"You don't think?" Rossi seemed incredulous. In his world, all of this seemed like things that couldn't possibly ever work.
"No." Penelope frowned slightly, too drawn up in her own thoughts to notice his disbelief. "With devices like phones, you're almost guaranteed to have a different IP address every single time you come back into the building and reconnect to the wireless network."
"We don't need the specifics," Hotch held up his hands. "I think I can safely say that at this point, none of us would be able to accurately remember them, even if we did. We just need to know that it's possible."
"Oh, yeah, totally possible," the blonde gave an emphatic nod.
Rossi turned back to Hotch, his worn and tired face lined with caution. "Possible. But is it probable?"
His unit chief merely sighed. And everyone understood what it meant—they now lived in a world where anything was possible. Any dark, horrible, heart-breaking thing.
Fairfax Medical Center. Washington, D.C.
Dr. Candace Mellinger, better known as Candy to most of the world, held her clipboard tight against her chest as she leaned forward to inspect the woman who was currently her highest-risk patient in the intensive care unit.
Jennifer Jareau. A woman who by all accounts shouldn't be alive right now. Aside from the horrific traumas she'd experienced in the past two days—a three-story plummet in an elevator, multiple surgeries, and a series of seizures—her medical records indicated that she'd also suffered an array of physical injuries long before this.
Candy hadn't needed a medical chart to tell her that—she'd seen the marks on Jennifer's body during surgery prep. Those slick, shiny scars didn't need explanation. Candy knew what they meant.
There had been happy scars, too. Stretch marks from carrying the sweet, bubbly little ray of sunshine who'd stolen the ICU nurses' hearts whenever he came to visit his mother. Candy silently hoped that Jennifer focused more on those than she did the other ones. The others were certainly not attached to pleasant memories. Over the years, she'd treated enough victims of physical abuse to know. Sure, her specialty was the brain, but she'd had more women on her operating table who'd gotten there because a lover or spouse had finally hit too hard in the wrong spot on the skull than she'd care to admit.
Not that she thought Jennifer was a victim of domestic abuse. But torture was torture, and it didn't matter if you knew the hands doling out the blows or not. The body kept the tally marks, all the same.
The ward was quiet, visiting hours were over and the lights were as dim as they could get. For Candace Mellinger, walking through the ICU at this time of night was like walking through a church during a candlelight vigil. Only the most important things were illuminated—the pale and still faces of her patients, nothing more. They didn't always look peaceful, but as long as they didn't look in pain, Candy considered it a win.
You had to do that—learn how to take your lumps, how to lower certain standards to a more reasonable level. It was the only way you survived a job like this.
Jennifer stirred slightly, and Dr. Mellinger stopped her delicate inspection of her head wounds. She didn't want to wake her patient—heavens knew that the woman hadn't been resting as much as she should be.
The blonde's eyelids fluttered slightly, and she inhaled sharply, as if waking up. Her eyes didn't open again, but she mumbled, "Ros?"
Candy stood absolutely still.
"Ros, that you?" Jennifer was grimacing, trying to bring herself back into consciousness.
Candy glanced over at the IV drip. She slowly reached out, upping the dosage as she quietly intoned, "It's alright, just go back to sleep."
"What're you doing here, Ros?" Jennifer wasn't fully awake, but at least she was speaking—a good sign, neurologically. Her words were a little slurred, but that was more likely from the drugs slipping through her veins.
"I'm…I'm just checking on you," Dr. Mellinger didn't outright lie by calling herself Ros, whoever that was, but she didn't exactly declare her own self, either.
"Rosaline, you can't be here," Jennifer was becoming agitated. "I have to stay here, with Henry and Will. You can't…I can't go."
Now Candy frowned slightly, trying to understand Jennifer's words.
"I can't go with you. I can't." Jennifer was whimpering now.
"I know, I know," Candace leaned in again, gently resting her hand against Jennifer's cheek. "It's OK. I'm not gonna take you anywhere. I'm…I'm just here to make sure you're OK."
Now the patient gave a lazy, drugged smile. "You…always were a good big sister. Making sure I was OK. I wish you'd never gone away."
Jennifer Jareau was using the past tense. Candy suddenly understood. For whatever reason, Jennifer seemed to think she was communicating with her sister, who apparently was deceased.
No wonder the poor woman didn't want to leave—because leaving meant something much more metaphysical than simply walking out of the room.
"I'm so sorry," Candace Mellinger was fully aware of how ethically wrong she was in this moment, pretending to be a patient's dead sister, but at the same time, she couldn't allow herself to do anything else. "I'm sorry I left. But I'm here now. I'm here, making sure you're OK. Just like always. But you have to stay here—you have to stay here, for Henry, for Will, for Mom and all the others. Will you promise me? Will you promise to stay?"
Jennifer gave a hum that seemed to be a form of agreement. Her words had been getting heavier and harder to understand, and now she was fully slipping back into sleep.
Dr. Mellinger didn't regret her role in this charade, or even her blatant use of Jennifer's sister's memory to evoke a promise of survival. Because in the end, Jennifer Jareau would keep her promise, whether she ever even remembered making it or not.
Trauma be damned. Ethical quandaries be damned. Jennifer Jareau was going to live. And Candace Mellinger was going to help her, in whatever way she could.
"So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
~Ernest Hemingway.