Chapter 19
Week 06

"I am so sorry about this." Dr. Norman said.

Katie was sitting in one of the exam rooms at Bennington, her shirt off, her eye darkening, numerous bruises and scratches popping out on her flesh. One of the nurses was calmly going about treating her wounds while Rossi and Dr. Norman waited on the other side of the curtain. "You don't have to apologize." Katie told him. "She's ill. She lost control. Does she do that often?"

"Her condition has been destabilizing, it has since her son went missing. It's from the stress. She tends to fall into the delusion that someone is a man names Gary Michaels, apparently a pedophile that went after Spencer when he was much younger, and who actually murdered a friend of his."

"I'm familiar with the file. Thank you." The nurse left and they heard the sounds of Katie getting dressed. "Did she ever become delusional and attack Spencer?"

Dr. Norman sighed. "When Spencer brought her here it was because her attacks had become too violent and there was no longer enough down time between them for him to recover. He just couldn't handle her anymore."

"That was after his time at CalTech." Katie stepped around the curtain as she tucked her shirt in. "Did she go on these rampages before he left?" Dr. Norman was going to say something but he just sighed and nodded. "And CPS never stepped in?"

"As I understand it Spencer's intelligence allowed him to pretend that nothing was wrong at home and make it quite convincing."

"Right. Thank you for all your help." They bid their good-byes and left Bennington.

"I'm sorry about that." Rossi said. "I didn't know she had it in her."

"That's all right. I wasn't trying to provoke it but I expected it." Katie had her phone out. As they walked he heard her calling her tech. "Johnny? Yeah, I want Laura Patterson's early educational record. Yeah, pre-college, pre-high school preferably, any academic testing. No, we'll stop here and get Reid's. Yeah, thanks."

"Got something?" Rossi asked.

"Maybe. If I ask you about the Doyle case are you going to tell me anything useful?"

"The Doyle case? We closed that two years ago. You think that has something to do with this?"

"Indeed I do."

Week 07

When Rossi got to work the next time he found Hotch waiting for him in the hallway in front of the SCIF. "What did I miss?" Rossi asked.

"Katie is in the SCIF with the Director interviewing Harvey Petrossian." Rossi pointed to the other end of the hallway where the Director of the FBI was talking with Strauss. "The Director of the NSA. Petrossian is a cryptologist."

"And she didn't want us in on it?"

"We don't have a high enough security clearance to talk to him." Again Rossi pointed to the other end of the hallway. "Neither does Strauss or our Director." Hotch informed him.

Rossi just blinked. "Reid meets with this guy privately on a regular basis. How high a clearance does Reid have?"

"I don't know." Hotch chuckled a little. "Apparently no one else in the FBI has a high enough clearance to get that information."

Just then the door opened. Petrossian, the NSA Director and Katie left with quiet smiles and farewell handshakes. Petrossian nodded to Rossi and gave him a sheepish smile as he left but he still didn't say a word. Katie just sighed and shook her head as four sets of expectant eyes looked at her. "Nothing. They haven't had a security breech, Mr. Petrossian hasn't seen either of our Unsubs; there's been no indication that he's been tracked at all. Whatever this is it has nothing to do with the NSA."

"If only it had been that simple." Their Director sighed.

The three agents headed back to the BAU offices. "No pressure Katie, but how close are you?"

"Very, I think." She replied. "But I don't know that it's going to help all that much. I'm consulting with an expert this afternoon."

"From outside the Bureau?" Rossi asked.

"Yeah. We should be able to give the profile tomorrow. But right now, Hotch, you're up."

They sat down in the conference room. This was deliberate on Katie's part, she wanted the sense that they were working together, and not that Hotch had the power of the desk. "So this is the part where I ask you what Reid is like to work with and you tell me that he's pleasant, friendly, gets along with everyone, is efficient, reliable, and there's no one you'd rather have at your back in a crisis. And then I ask you if anything in his behavior has changed lately and you tell me no, he's been on time, no unusual time off, nothing stands out at all. Am I right?"

"So far," Hotch agreed.

"So let's get to the meat. Start with the Maeve Donovan case. Did you or anyone on your team have any idea that he was seeing someone?"

"Not until about a month before the case exploded. Blake and Garcia found out when he consulted with Dr. Donovan on a case we were working on."

"He brought her in on a case?"

"He suspected that the Unsub was a medical doctor who was attempting a leg transplant. He thought that it might be because he was trying to help a family member who lost their leg through a genetic anomaly. Dr. Donovan was a geneticist. She did help solve the case before we lost the last victim."

"All right. Now I know once the Replicator alerted him to Dr. Donovan's stalker having found her he asked the team for assistance. Would you say he was desperate at that point?"

"Very. I'd never seen him in such a state."

"What happened after?"'

"He was out for two weeks, but I told him to take the time he needed. I know how it can be."

"Understandable." Katie said gently. "Why did he come back?"

"As I understand it Morgan called to consult with him on a case."

"You guys couldn't solve it without him?"

"We…probably would have eventually. But…"

"But?"

"Garcia doesn't work well when any of her family are in trouble. I think Morgan placed the call because he knew Reid would respond and Garcia would hear his voice."

"So he manipulated Reid and interrupted his grieving process to make Garcia feel better?" Katie asked.

Hotch blinked. "I…I didn't think of it that way."

"When Reid joined you in San Francisco did he appear ready to return to work at all?"

"Honestly no. But the case seemed to help; by the time we flew home he seemed to be back to his old self."

"So he recovered completely in…" Katie checked her notes. "…less than twelve hours while working through a case."

"He appeared to. He even took everyone up on their offer of help."

"Help?"

"They asked if they could do anything and he had them come over and help him clean up his apartment. He'd gone through all of his books, they were everywhere."

"He couldn't do that himself?"

Hotch blinked again. "You think he did that for them? Giving them something to do to make them feel better?"

Katie didn't answer that question. Instead she moved on. "Tell me about the Doyle case."

"The Doyle case?"

"Specifically about the clean-up after the initial encounter."

"You mean what happened with Emily."

"Yeah."

"She was badly injured; she nearly died on the table. She was going to need months to recover and she needed the space and safety to do so. So we hid her."

"You turned her over to the US Marshall's service? Witness protection."

"No, we did it."

"Your team?"

"No, JJ and I. She used some of her contacts at State and we had help from Emily's old supervisor at Interpol."

"Without authorization."

"Yes."

"And you told the rest of the team that she was dead?"

"Yes."

"Did you follow SOP after?"

"No." Hotch admitted. "I handled the grief counseling myself."

"Do you have that kind of training? Specifically, in providing grief counseling to people on the autism spectrum with abusive backgrounds and addiction issues?"

Hotch was quiet a moment. "No."

"I have the file on the Cy Bradstone case. It was first case after Prentiss returned. Morgan filed an unusual incident report, apparently Reid and JJ had a blow up at the station?"

"He was upset."

Katie sighed. "You two completely forgot to take his past into account, didn't you?"

"We had other things on our mind."

"Did you two stay in contact with Emily at all?"

"She and JJ played online Scrabble together. It was dangerous and foolish, I know…"

"According to Morgan's report Reid, quote, was at her house every night for ten weeks straight, crying, unquote. Was she playing while Reid was at her house fighting his cravings?"

"Possibly."

"What did you tell him? What explanation did you give for why you lied?"

"We said we were following orders. We had to keep it secret to protect her."

"But you didn't know about his clearance then?"

"No."

"Because by all rights with a clearance like that they would have put him in charge of the op, right?"

"Yes."

"So he would have known that you were still lying."

"Yes." Hotch sighed and the stone face cracked revealing his distress.

"What?" Katie asked.

"During the grief counseling he said that the last time he'd been in counseling was after his father left, that everyone wanted him to talk but that he wasn't capable. He was only capable of saying what others wanted to hear. And I told him that he didn't have to do that here."

Katie just looked at him. "And all the while you were lying through your teeth." She said. "OK profiler, looking back how did he react to it?"

"He lost trust and shut down. He started telling us exactly what we wanted to hear. We went to Rossi's for a cooking lesson after that case and he showed up like nothing had happened, which, upon hindsight, makes no sense unless he was putting on a show. He concealed personal information and hid his grief because he could no longer trust us with it." Hotch was starting to blink back his own emotions. "We made him vulnerable because we forced him to isolate himself, didn't we? This is our fault."

"Let me consult with my expert and give you the profile."