The Cheshire Cat Was Right

"Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen."
~George Saunders.

*Author's Note: First, I know, it's been a hot minute. This time of year always gets a little crazy for me. Apologies for taking so long with the update. Aside from general business, there are a few storylines that got a little tangled and I had to take them apart and reconstruct them, multiple times.

The second section of this chapter makes references to international terrorist Mariatu Wasaki and certain elements of the case in Nairobi—all covered in Out of Africa.

There is also a reference to Constantine the cat, who first appeared in Pay the Piper. Not that his character arc is particularly moving or important, but still.*

FBI Academy. Quantico, Virginia.

"Agent Dawson."

With one last breath to steel himself, Jack Dawson turned back to the source of the voice calling his name. The briefing had concluded and Agent Hotchner had slipped away (as if Dawson didn't know exactly what was going on), but Dawson had known the BAU chief would find him again. Not that he blamed him.

"I'd like to see Dr. Reid today." Hotchner was moving down the hall, closing the gap between them. He was still confident and assured, but his aggressive undertone from the night before was gone. Right now, he had the air of a choirboy.

Except he wasn't a choirboy, not by half. And they both knew it.

"I'll see what I can do," Dawson tried to sound both empathetic and firm. "Right now, we're a little busy—"

"Given the circumstances, I hope you're very busy—finding out who framed Dr. Reid."

"We know how to do our jobs, Agent Hotchner." The empathy left his tone, but the firmness was certainly still there. "And rest assured, we will explore every possible lead. You cannot speak to Dr. Reid at this time, but perhaps after the briefing this afternoon—"

"You've taken us off this case in everything but name, you've made it very clear that you think we're all somehow involved or at least extremely compromised, and yet you're letting us come to the briefings." Hotchner's face remained as impassive as ever, but one brow raised in slight questioning. "Doesn't make much sense."

Now Dawson smiled. "Maybe it does. Or maybe I'm just mad."

He started down the hallway again, turning back around to backpedal as he held out his arms in an encompassing gesture, "Maybe we're all mad here."

Kate Callahan had been waiting patiently by the front entrance to the Academy when Hotch reappeared.

"So, what'd he say?" She was on-alert now, hoping against hope for a positive outcome.

"I'm not sure," her unit chief admitted. "If I didn't know better, I'd say he's lost it."

"But you do know better, right?" Her words were lined with uncertainty. It'd be easy, to simply say the lead investigator was going crazy, but it wasn't very likely and it certainly wouldn't help their cause.

"There's something going on that he's not telling us about," Hotch informed her.

"Oh, I think there's a lot of somethings going on that they're not telling us about," she agreed. He gave a brief flicker of a smile at her response, and in her book, that was as good as a standing ovation, when it came to Aaron Hotchner and his stone-faced humor.

"So, we're not going to see Reid?" She guessed.

"Not yet," his face returned to an expression of displeasure.

"Jeez Louise, they're keeping him under a tight lock and key—have they let him talk to a lawyer yet?"

"They don't have to, unless he asks for it—and he won't. He's innocent, he won't think he needs one." Hotch's frown deepened. He glanced at his watch. "The next briefing won't be for a few hours. We should get back to Penelope's and see what we can do there."

She nodded in agreement as they headed for the door.

Several yards ahead of them, Lewis and Masterson were making their way across the maze of lawns and sidewalks and small outbuildings, back towards the main building. Hotch fought the urge to run after them, to beg them to let him look at the evidence himself—mainly because he knew that if he asked, they'd probably agree to help. Emily had told him about how those two had helped her cover up the truth about Mariatu Wasaki's death in the Nairobi case—they'd put their careers on the line for a woman they'd barely known, though by that point, Emily and Rowena had already shown a deep and fast friendship. Hotch couldn't ask them to do it again.

Still, that didn't stop him from wanting to.

Callahan noticed her boss' distracted air, so she quietly asked, "Watcha thinking?"

His mouth pressed into a hard line. "I'm thinking it's much harder to play outside the lines than I'd hoped."

Strauss House. Vienna, Virginia.

Like all cats, Constantine had an innate knack for knowing exactly when he shouldn't be in the way, and for finding exactly how best and most obtrusively to be in the way at that precise moment.

Jordan's cellphone began ringing and buzzing, the force of its vibration sending it dancing along the polished wood dining table, and she hurried from her post at the coffee pot in the kitchen to answer it—however, Constantine chose that moment to perform a daring feat of dexterity by weaving his way through her legs while she was in mid-stride, causing her to tumble over the cat, who also had the gall to bite her ankle, as if she were responsible for the whole thing.

"Jesus, you psychotic little bastard," she barely caught herself on the edge of a dining chair, one ankle already throbbing from the cat's teeth and the other promising to swell up with a sprain in a matter of minutes, thanks to that little dance of death.

Needless to say, she was a bit distracted by the time she answered the phone.

"May I speak to Jordan Strauss?"

"May I ask who's calling, please?" She hadn't recognized the number, and the guy kind of sounded like a telemarketer.

"Karl Miramontz, from The Washington Daily."

"Oh. How can I help you?"

"First, you can tell me if you are Jordan Strauss or not."

"Oh, yes. Yes I am," she reached down to lift up the hem of her jeans and inspect the red welt on her ankle. She shot a dirty look at Constantine, who was seated in the doorway of her mother's study, looking as innocent as a saint.

She'd learned not to expect anything less from the cat who'd primarily been her brother's creature, ever since her mother had found it as an abandoned kitten in the supermarket parking lot and brought it home, almost a decade ago. Jordan had chosen the name Constantine, after the Roman emperor—Christopher, her brother, had agreed to the name because it was the same as the demon-hunting comic book anti-hero. Truth be told, he was more like the exorcist than the emperor.

She'd inherited the cat, along with the house, when her mother had died. Constantine still slept on Erin's bed, at the foot, as he'd done for almost as long as he'd been part of this family. Jordan still slept in her old room upstairs. She couldn't bring herself to demolish her mother's sanctuary.

"Have you spoken to Linnea Charles recently?"

Now Jordan was snapped back to the conversation at hand, instantly wary. "How recently do you mean?"

"In the past twenty-four hours, I guess. But more specifically in the last twelve."

"Um…Look, I'm sorry, Karl, but I'm not sure who you are, exactly, so I'm not entirely sure how much I should share with you—"

"Linnea left your contact information with another reporter. She'd told him that if someone came looking for her, to direct them to you. And I'm looking for Linnea. Hence, here I am, speaking to you."

"You're looking for Linnea? What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that she's not here. And from the sound of it, she's not where she's supposed to be, either."

"Are you saying she's missing?"

"From my perspective, yes."

Smart man. He understood that in cases like this, semantics meant everything. "When's the last time you spoke to Linnea?"

"She and I talked yesterday afternoon. She was getting ready to leave, trying to dodge some FBI agents who were coming around to ask questions."

"Oh." Jordan might have already known something about that. "OK. Well, the last time I spoke to her was around then, too. I've sent texts and left voicemails since, but no response—but it didn't exactly surprise me, because that was part of our plan."

"Your plan?"

"It's a long story."

"I've got time."

"How about you tell me yours first, and then I'll tell you mine?"

"Deal."

A half-hour later, Karl and Jordan were on level playing field, and both were fully aware of how conspicuous Linnea's absence was.

"So I guess the only question now is: where is she really?" Jordan surmised. Karl gave a hum of agreement. "Look, I, um—I have to get some other people involved, if we want to find out what's really going on here. But we can trust them, I promise. Just…let me make a few calls, and then I'll get back to you. OK?"

"I don't see how I have any other choice," he admitted.

"No, I suppose you don't."

Jordan easily found another number in her phone, taking another deep, steadying breath as she waited for the call to go through.

"Dannie, what is it?" David Rossi's voice was filled with concern. And she loved him for it—loved him, and hated her own actions which caused the concern in the first place.

"Dave, I know I'm not supposed to be involved anymore, but—something's happened. It just fell in my lap, sort of. I think you guys need to know."

FBI Academy. Quantico, Virginia.

Spencer Reid and Jessalyn Keller were taking a lap around the outside of the building when Keller's cellphone buzzed with a text. She stopped walking, letting Spencer continue on ahead on his own. At first, he hadn't realized that she'd stopped, mainly because his mind was still busy trying to unravel the tangled mess of evidence in his head. Jessalyn had sensed that his silence was due to thoughtfulness, and she'd politely refrained from attempting any kind of conversation, though she would respond friendly enough when he did speak to her.

Not that there was much to talk about—she'd refused to answer his questions about the morning briefing, had refused his request to speak to his team (again), and had refused to confirm or deny any other pieces of evidence, even the ones he already knew about. And he had no other topic that he wanted to discuss. So they mainly kept in silence.

When he did realize that his walking companion was no longer beside him, Spencer turned back to see what was wrong—though the smile on her face implied that something might very well be right.

"Jude and Joe found your phone," she announced, hurrying to catch up to him again.

"And that's a good thing, right?"

"It could be. So long as you're as innocent as you claim to be."

Evidence Lab, FBI Main Building.

Rowena Lewis was so engrossed in Fuller's journal that she didn't hear the knock on the door—the second series of raps, louder and slightly more insistent, ripped her back into reality easily enough.

She was on her feet in a flash, opening the door with a little more emphasis than necessary. Scott O'Donnell had assigned them a team of four other evidence analysts who all worked at the Quantico lab to help sift through the "non-sensitive" materials, as Mac had labeled them before her departure—and Rowena had quickly noticed that the two younger men had taken to immediately trying to win her attentions, which was why she'd sequestered herself in another part of the lab. Her reasoning was twofold: one, it allowed her some peace and quiet to devote full attention to her task, and two, it made her seem cold and aloof—good tactics for quashing any budding feelings of amorous intent. However, if those saps starting seeking her out, she'd have to pull out the stops and be more aggressive in her actions.

As expected, it was one of her young quickly-becoming-enamored colleagues. Martin. Or Marvin. Or…something like that.

"Yes." It was a statement, not a question—she was present, but she wasn't offering help.

"Ah, yeah—the drawer that Mac wanted me to take a look at—"

"I'm aware of its existence, but I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"Last night, she noticed the drawer was unlocked, and there wasn't a key—I took photos of it, and she had us bring it back to the lab for closer inspection. She asked me to see how recently the lock had been used."

"And you're coming to me because…?"

"Well, I have an answer."

"Congratulations."

"I mean, I thought you could let her know."

She fished her phone out of her back pocket, "How about this? I'll give you her number, and you can tell her yourself."

"Um, sure, yeah, I guess—you could just text me her contact card…"

She glanced up at him again, an amused smirk on her features—she had to give this kid points for so smoothly trying to get her number. "Or I could just read it aloud to you, and you can put it in your phone yourself. Cut out the middle man, as it were."

He looked slightly crestfallen at her deflection. She stifled a silent laugh before giving him Mac's cell number.

"And one more thing," she offered a slight smile. "If you'd come out and asked for my number directly, I probably would've given it to you."

"Really?"

"Really. But you didn't, so I guess we'll never know for sure, now will we?" She gave a theatrical shrug and one last smile before moving to close the door. However, a sudden thought struck her and she popped her head out again. "Hey, um…"

"Marvin."

"Right. Mac's probably smack in the middle of her daughter's graduation—she probably won't take the call. What did you find?"

"She was right. The lock had been used, frequently and recently, judging on how well it was oiled and the amount of dust surrounding the key hole and in the gears."

"So…the drawer had a lock on it, which was apparently well-used…and yet, when you guys showed up at the scene—"

"It was unlocked and the key was missing. We searched the house for it, never found it."

"And what is your inference, based on this evidence?"

Marvin seemed surprised that she'd even ask for his opinion. With a shrug and a slight flop of his hands, he hazarded, "Someone else was there. They took the key when they killed Fuller. Doesn't make sense, though—why take the key if the drawer's already unlocked? Why not lock the drawer and then take the key?"

Roe frowned as she considered his words. "Valid point, Marvin. Thanks for the info—we'll pass it along in the next briefing."

He smiled, nodded, and headed back down the hall. To his credit, he didn't attempt to flirt with her. She realized that if he'd asked, she actually would have given him her number. And once the case was over, she would have even let him take her out to dinner, enjoyed a quick roll in the sack and sent him on his way. So maybe it was a good thing that he'd ruined his chances.

She'd barely settled back into her reading when the door flew open—no knock, no polite attempts to warn her. It was Jeff Masterson, of course.

"So my journal succeeds at being the most boring thing I've ever read." He held up the notebook to emphasize his point. "Anything good in yours?"

"No, not so far. But mine seems pretty focused on technical aspects at this point." She cocked her head to one side in curiosity. "Any mention of Reid?"

"Not yet. But some oh-so-fascinating finer points on the cultivation of TATP."

The sarcasm was not lost on his partner, who gave a wry smirk. However, it soon melted back into an expression of mild dismay. "Mine has one mention of Reid, so far."

"Well, you're catching more than I am on this fishing expedition," Jeff glanced down at his notebook again.

"Doesn't make sense," she murmured, slowly sinking back into the world of her reading. She wasn't sure what she'd expected to find, but Fuller's writings made him seem so…normal. Mundane. His words were direct and succinct without being too clinical, an almost-unbiased narrative that held all the adventure and pizzazz of a technical manual. "Why mention your co-conspirator's name at all, really?"

"Insurance purposes," Jeff reminded her, equally distracted by his work.

A beat of silence followed. Without looking up, Roe spoke, "Did you really come in here to tell me that useless bit of information?"

"Yep. And I wanted to know if you were ready for lunch."

"What, ya think I can't fend for myself?"

"I think if I let you walk out of here alone, the two newest members of your fan club will be sure to follow, and I'd really like them to keep working—the sooner they finish their tasks, the sooner we get this place back to ourselves."

She grinned at his dry and nonchalant tone. "Can't say that's a bad point."

"Of course not. I don't do bad points."

"Cocky."

"Been hanging around you too long."

"Also a valid point."

"Like I said," he didn't finish the rest of the comment, merely turning the page in his journal. Then he frowned. He turned back a page, then flipped it again, his brow furrowing even deeper.

Roe immediately sensed something was amiss. She stopped reading, her hazel eyes flicking up to watch her partner.

"Look at this," he handed her the notebook. She set down her own and took his. He nodded to the bottom of the page. "This sentence ends. Thought completed. Now turn the page."

The back of the page was blank—a not uncommon occurrence, they'd realized, whenever Fuller had used a pen with particularly dark ink (and a smart move—it kept the pages legible). She turned her attention to the next page.

"See? Picks up mid-sentence." Jeff pointed out.

"And it's written with a different pen," Roe commented, turning the page back and forth again to check. "So there's a page missing. Well, two pages, technically—a page written on, front and back."

Jeff was on his feet, moving to the other section of the room, where more plastic tubs of notebooks awaited them—they'd hauled all of the bins into this small backroom, deciding it was better to keep them out of sight, lest too-curious coworkers were tempted to take a peek and find something they weren't supposed to know just yet.

He found the faux suicide note, which had been included in the bins, still encased in its clear slick protective cover. He returned to Rowena's side, holding out the paper.

She squinted for a moment. "Doesn't look like the same ink. Slightly lighter."

He flipped the paper over. "And this page ends on a complete sentence, too."

"So we're missing a page from this journal, and it isn't the page we already knew was missing." Roe surmised with a small, slow nod. After a beat, her gaze snapped back to her partner, "Which box is yours from?"

He moved back across the room, searching for the answer to the question—Mac had made a cheat sheet, listing each box and its contents, with a diagram on the back to show its original location. That sheet was currently on a clipboard atop one of the boxes.

"Mine is from the desk drawer."

"Ah, shit," she suddenly remembered. "One of my fans informed me that the lock on the desk drawer that Mac had brought in was indeed used regularly—although they never found a key on site for it."

"So a drawer that's usually locked, suddenly unlocked with no key," Jeff stopped, looking up to stare blankly across the room as his mind considered this bit of news. "And right after a man is killed—a man who by all looks appears to be a patsy."

"Yeah," Roe mimicked his movements, setting down the journal and turning her attention to her partner. "Doesn't make sense, does it? I mean, if the killer knew about the journals, surely he'd know that he was probably mentioned in them—so why take the chance? Why leave them?"

He lightly tossed the clipboard back onto the counter and announced, "I think we've been looking at this wrong, Roe."

"Whaddya mean?" He could feel her shift behind him, sitting up straighter, fully aware of some new game afoot.

"We're assuming the killer knew about the notebooks—but did he know about all of them?"

"Possibly. Possibly not." Her wheels were turning now, she was quickly catching up. "You're thinking maybe he knew about the ones in the desk drawer, not the ones hidden inside the books on the shelf?"

Jeff hummed in affirmation. He heard Rowena shifting again, and he glanced over to see his partner on her phone.

"Something more important to attend to, Agent Lewis?"

She gave a wry smirk. "I'm looking for places that deliver to Quantico. I'm not touching the mess hall food again, and something tells me that we aren't going to leave this room for quite a while."

He glanced back at the row of evidence tubs, and he knew she was right—their next briefing was less than two hours away, which meant they needed to spend every second that they could scouring the notebooks for something useful to bring to the table.

With a light sigh, he returned to the seat next to Rowena's, taking his journal back in hand. He wasn't a man adverse to a little reading, but Fuller's at-turns clinically boring instructions and rabidly off-kilter ramblings weren't exactly the kind of thing he enjoyed spending time on. He needed some kind of incentive.

"Race ya."

"M'kay." Rowena's tone was one of guarded amusement. She never looked up from her phone. "Wanna make it a wager?"

He grinned—his partner was just a fiercely competitive as he was, which meant their working relationship was often filled with bets and taunts and dares. "Alright."

"Terms?" She held out her hand, as if awaiting a physical list.

"Last one to finish their journal has to present the new evidence at the next briefing."

"Deal."

"Just remember, I'm a faster reader than you are. I took a course in speed-reading."

"A course? As in you spent money and time on learning to read faster?"

"It's a valuable and vital skill, Agent Lewis."

"Right. A valuable and vital skill that still won't keep me from totally schooling you."

"Nope, pretty sure I'm already ahead of you."

"If I murder you now, you won't get past the next page."

"And I won't be able to give the presentation, either."

"Ah, foiled again."

He was grinning like a cheshire cat now, and he didn't have to look over to know that she was smiling just as madly. After a beat, he added, "You ever notice how frequently and easily you threaten to kill me, Agent Lewis?"

"It's a term of endearment."

"Right…there are five love languages. Which one involves threatening the object of your affection with death or other grievous bodily harm?"

"Probably the sixth one." Now she frowned. "Pizza, burgers, or Thai?"

"Burgers."

She gave a slight sound that implied she'd known he would give such an answer.

"We should tell Mac what we've found," he commented quietly.

"She's busy watching her kid graduate. Give her a few hours to pretend that this isn't waiting for her the second she gets back," Rowena informed him, still focused on her online ordering. She didn't ask him what he wanted—she knew how he liked his burgers, even down to the fact that he'd order pickles just to give them to her, just like she'd order tomato to give to him. "Besides, we're not really sure what we've found, yet."

He didn't reply, but his silence was one of agreement. Rowena finished her online order, set down her phone, and resumed her reading. A comfortable silence reigned.

Then Jeff shifted slightly. He flipped back to the previous page, then back again. "Looks like I've got another missing page."

Roe leaned forward to inspect his notebook, as if it held any clues to the page's disappearance. Whoever had taken those pages made sure to make it look clean—there wasn't a single scrap of paper leftover in the spiral, no tell-tale evidence that any pages had been removed at all.

"You don't have any missing pages," Jeff stated, his words slow, as if he were considering the implication. "And your notebooks were stashed away. Mine have pages missing, mine were in plain view in a desk drawer that was apparently frequently locked, yet unlocked and with no key present when they found Benjamin Fuller's body."

"So…the killer knew about the notebooks in the desk, and after killing Benjamin, went through and removed all references to himself." Rowena surmised with a flat tone and expressionless face. "Still doesn't explain why he left the notebooks at all."

"So we would know." Jeff's voice was filled with quiet certainty. "So we would know that Benjamin Fuller was the one who did this. So we'd stop looking, because we knew we had our guy."

"But…Fuller's death was easily proven as homicide, not suicide," Rowena's brow furrowed. "I mean, why go through all that trouble—finding a passage to serve as a faux suicide note, removing any mention of Fuller having some kind of collaborator…only to leave behind evidence that you'd been there—that you'd murdered him?"

"Things like that can devolve quickly, get out of hand." Jeff gave a small shrug, flipping through a few pages of his notebook, looking for more spots where pages had been removed, "Maybe the killer wasn't as ready as he thought—he lost control, he botched the murder. But you can't undo a bullet hole. He didn't have any choice but to leave Fuller as he was."

"Or maybe he did," his partner looked down at the journal in her lap. "Maybe the killer knew we'd figure this much out. Maybe he wanted us to—maybe he wants us to know that there's someone else, someone we can't find, someone who outsmarted us, who got away."

Jeff exhaled loudly. "It's possible. In fact, I'd say it's very possible."

He held up his notebook to emphasize his point, "Mine finally has a reference to someone other than Fuller. No name. Just masculine third person singular pronouns."

"So our killer didn't remove all references to himself," Roe concluded. "Because he didn't think he needed to. He thinks he's invincible—even if we know of his existence, he truly believes we still won't be able to catch him."

"Then I guess he really doesn't know us, does he?" Jeff turned his full attention back to his partner. Her hazel eyes flicked back up to meet his blue ones, the right corner of her mouth hitching into the briefest of smiles.

"Nah. He has no idea who he's up against."

"Even in its darkest passages, the heart is unconquerable. It is important that the body survives, but it is more meaningful that the human spirit prevails."
~Dave Pelzer.