Chapter 18
Week 05

The next day, while her team interviewed people at Georgetown, Katie stopped by to interview JJ, Will and Henry. "So, has he been different lately at all? I mean outside of work?"

"Not that we've noticed." JJ told her.

"Does he come around often?"

"He tries to see Henry every Sunday, either we go to a park after church or he comes by here."

"He used to come around a lot more though." Will pointed out.

"When was that?" Katie asked.

"When we thought Emily was dead," he replied. "He was here nearly every night for a while."

"The Doyle case, right?"

"That was a difficult time." JJ said quickly.

Katie nodded. "Did he come around after Maeve Donovan died?"

"No." JJ replied. "I don't think he left the house for the first two weeks. His first case back was kind of rocky but after that he was…back to normal."

"Kind of rocky?"

"I don't think he was ready to come back but we hit a stalemate with the case we were on and the Unsub was escalating, so Morgan called him to get his input, next thing we know he flew out commercial to join us."

"Right," Katie pulled her tablet out. "Does this guy look familiar?"

"No…" Will said.

"Yeah. Yeah, he does." JJ replied, her brow frowning. "Damn it." She got up and fetched her own tablet. "Henry's last birthday. We had it at the zoo." In the foreground was a very happy Henry blowing out his candles. And way in the back was the tall, rangy stranger. "He came up to me, it was casual, Henry was hanging around Spence like he always does, and he asked if Spence was Henry's father. I didn't think anything of it. God."

Katie nodded. "So Henry and Reid are close?"

"Very." JJ replied. "Henry even insists on dressing like him for Halloween every year."

"And you're not jealous?" Kate asked Will.

"Nah, Henry knows who his daddy is." Will replied with an easy smile.

"Think I could talk to Henry for a minute?"

"Sure. He's in the kitchen."

Sure enough, Henry was sitting at the kitchen table, happily coloring. "Hey Henry, my name's Katie." She said gently. "What are you drawing?"

"A dinosaur."

"Really? Wow, that's some impressive artwork." She called a picture up on her tablet. "Did you draw this one?"

Henry nodded. "I drewed it for Spencer." He told her.

"Oh. It's very well done. Can you tell me who these people are? Who's this one?" She pointed to the large male stick figure.

"That's Spencer."

"Ah. I see the resemblance. And who is this?" She pointed to the female figure.

"That's the mommy."

"His mommy?"

"No."

"Your mommy?"

"No."

"Then who's mommy?"

"His." Henry pointed to the smaller figure.

"And who is he?"

"A boy just like me."

"So you drew Spencer with a boy just like you and a mommy?" Henry nodded. "Why?" Katie asked.

"'Cause he said he wanted one."

"A picture like this?"

"No, a boy just like me." Henry sighed with frustration at the dense adults around him. "I said he should go ask his mommy and Spencer said he hadn't found his mommy so I drew a mommy too."

"Ohhh, that makes sense. "I think Spencer likes this a lot, he even put it in a frame. Real art gets frames you know."

Henry was quite please with this. "Yeah!"

Later that day it was Alex Blake in the hot seat. "So you knew Reid before you returned to the BAU?" Katie asked.

"Yes. He's a regular guest lecturer in my Forensic Linguistics class." Bake replied.

"Close friends?"

"I wouldn't say so. More like familiar colleagues."

"And yet he told you about Maeve Donovan before he told anyone else in the unit."

Blake sighed. "He didn't want to open up to the others, specifically Morgan and JJ."

"Why not?"

"He didn't want to get teased. And he was, by Morgan as soon as he even had a suspicion, ooo the player has a lady now, what you gonna do with her hot stuff." Blake sighed again. "I honestly wonder why Hotch allows it sometimes."

"Oh?"

"While they were hired within a year of each other Reid has nine years seniority over JJ at their rank And Morgan has less than a year over Reid. He has a wealth of knowledge a fairly new profiler like JJ could be learning from and yet they treat him like a child. Now I know it's not easy working with an Aspie but these are grown people who are supposed to be experts in psychology, they should be able to handle it."

"So Reid does have Asperger's? He has been diagnosed?"

"I don't know, but he has most of the symptoms, the hyperfocus, some stimming behavior, I believe he was diagnosed hyperlexic as well. I would honestly be surprised if he doesn't have it. I know he participated in a research project about it through Simon Frasier University up in Vancouver but I don't know what that entailed."

"Do you think they way they treated him bothered him?"

"The way he was acting concerning Maeve Donovan, yes." Blake replied. "But it wasn't enough for him to leave."

"Could he have left?"

"He could have stepped into a teaching position at Georgetown, half the work at the same salary. Or gone into the private sector and added a zero to the end of his salary. He stayed with the unit because he wanted to."

"What do you know about the Doyle case?"

"Nothing, it was before my time. Some cases a team just doesn't discuss and in this unit that's one of them"

"Any idea why?"

"They seem embarrassed about it. No one wants to talk about it at all."

"Right."

Later that day Katie spotted Rossi walking to his office. "Hey Rossi?" She called to him as he walked past the door to the conference room.

"Yeah?"

"Ready to go to Vegas?"