CHAPTER 19

WE ARE EXPECTED TO DO SOMETHING

Angie woke up, grateful that it was Monday morning. Second week of the Academy. She had so many expectations.

Dan met everyone at the auditorium and explained that they would be getting their weekly agendas on Sundays, but given the circumstances, this time they got them on Monday.

"Circumstances, my ass!" Angie rolled her eyes and Bryan had to kick her under the table, so that she wouldn't go on and shoot another snarky comment.

As it was to be expected, they started off with a two-hour intense fitness training, followed by a shower, before it was time to head back to the auditorium for their first class - crime scene investigation. They would have ballistics in the afternoon, but Angie was more than thrilled for this specific morning class.

"As future Agents, you must be able to assess a situation and individualize a threat before it even happens. You must have a sharp eye - to see what is important and what is not, at a crime scene. But firstly, you must be able to figure out where is your actual crime scene. Now, we deal with more and more staged crime scenes and planted false evidence these days, so it is crucial that you keep your eyes open and your mind clear. At a crime scene, you cannot think with your emotions. You must put these in check and go in, ready for anything and everything. In this course we are going to get deep into the what and how of crime scene investigation; collection, preservation and transportation of evidence; while in another class you will learn about analyzing that evidence and yet another class will teach you how to use this evidence to reconstruct your crime scene, draw conclusions and come up with your profile. But, for my class, just remember to stay vigilant and to observe, write down any information and collect all evidence that you find relevant to the case at hand. And, if you happen to stumble upon a crime scene, or even a staged one, we expect you to take measures and start an investigation." Their professor said.

The man was in his late 50's and he had white hair. God knows how many gruesome discoveries he had made in his career. He also seemed like someone who had extensive knowledge and who would possibly have seen it all and knows how to deal with any type of scenario. Angie already liked him and the fact that he had a nice, deep, manly voice, was a plus. He oozed authority and those were the kind of people Angie leaned towards in her life.

"Did you hear that? We are expected to do something. Oh, we are so going back to our crime scene!" She whispered to Bryan.

"And goodbye steak for lunch. Or lunch at all, for that matter." Bryan whispered to himself unhappily.

The professor then poured an insane amount of information on them, starting with the right procedure of securing the perimeter of a crime scene and even measuring how much space and personnel would be required; the guidelines on collecting evidence and the right containers for preservation of each kind of evidence - hard, liquid, bodily fluids, cartridges, guns, shattered glass; fingerprint, earprint and footprint lifting, and so much more.

"Why are you not taking any notes?" Bryan nudged his friend at some point.

He had been writing things down all morning. Something about Angie's self-proclaimed nerdiness was rubbing off on him.

"I've seen CSI, duh!" She giggled, finding this lecture to be a bit basic and mentally blaming herself for having read a few too many books on the subject already.

In reality, Angela hated crime shows. If she ever saw something crime-related on TV, it would be a real documentary on some serial killer. And even then, she would be much more interested in reading a book about him, rather than watching some crappily produced video version of things. Words were facts. Edited images weren't.

"From this point on, you have access to my laboratory, room A 10 in this building. You are authorized to use any of the tools you might need, to further your learning and your technique. Just, please, do not waste materials. Be wise with everything you touch and put it to good use. Now, it was a pleasure meeting all of you and I'm looking forward to seeing you again on Friday morning, after your fitness training. Have a good and productive week, everyone." With those words, five hours after the class had started and two hours after a normal person's lunch break usually would start, the professor left the room.

"Ha! Be wise with things because the Bureau does not want to waste any money on buying you any more toys, so you better be careful playing with the rusty ol' ones you have at your disposal." Angie could not help it. Snarky remarks were her thing, even if she liked someone. And she very much liked her professor. She just never learned how to bite her tongue.

"Where are you going?" Bryan closed his book and walked after her.

"A 10." She stated, as if he didn't already know.

He then picked her slim body up and literally carried her out of the building as he walked towards the food court.

"Food!" He stated and she laughed.

"Fine, let's grab something to go and then go grab our toys and head to our crime scene." She gave up, but only because he was holding her up in the air, like a doll, and there was no chance she could defy him.

Thirty minutes later they were back at the presumed crime scene. Bryan had managed to buy sandwiches for both, while Angie had managed to go to room A 10 and grab a few things they might need.

"Hey, take a look. Those look like partial footprints." Bryan pointed out a smudged area on the ground.

"Footwear impression marks! Footprints, in criminology, refer to the impression left by a bare foot on the ground or a surface." She could not help herself. She just had to correct him.

"Okay, nerd." He nudged her and laughed.

"Oh, it turns me on when people call me that." She laughed back.

It was so easy to joke with Bryan. She felt like she could be herself around him, whoever she might be, really. She wasn't too sure at this point.

"No. This is not Amanda's. This is not even a footwear mark. It looks like..." Angie kneeled and took a closer look. "Oh, damn it. Did it really have to rain?" She added out of desperation.

"Wait a minute. This here looks like a bicycle tire trace. When I was a kid, I had a mountain bike with huge tires and I'd ride it with my cousins when it rained. I loved that stupid bike!" Bryan pouted, remembering how one of his cousins had borrowed the bike and had broken it, unintentionally.

"Your point being?" Angie rolled her eyes. They had little time and he was wasting it, reminiscing about a stupid bike.

"My point is that the traces it left looked exactly like that. And the bike made little-to-no noise when you rode it. So, what if there is more to the story? What if Amanda did not fall to her death, but was rather pushed down the hill?"

"Hmm. That suggests a possible homicide. We have the victim. So, who are our suspects? What was the motive? We know the when and we can pretty much assume the how, too. We need the who, the why and the exact how." She earned herself a look by Bryan. "What? I told you, I watch CSI all the time."

"Oh yeah? Do you like Peter or Jackson more?" He asked casually.

"Oh, Jackson all the way!" She smiled and the way she replied so calmly and genuinely made his blood freeze.

"Angie, there is neither a Peter nor a Jackson in any of the franchises of the CSI TV series." He stated, but she did not seem bothered.

"Alright. Would you like to sit and discuss that or would you rather do something useful instead?" With those words, she pushed something in his hands.

"Luminol." She called out and when Bryan did nothing, she gave him a nasty look. "You wanna play, like in the movies? Okay. I call something out and you pass it on to me. Now open the bag. Luminol!" She said once more and this time he understood what she meant.

"You know how to lift dried out blood?" He raised an eyebrow.

Yes, they had just had their first CSI class about gathering evidence, but they did not get into such details.

"I can try." Angie shrugged and he decided to trust her. "I need the oxidizing agent now."

When Bryan handed her the item, she could feel that he was trying to figure everything out.

"Luminol is a white-to-pale-yellow crystalline solid that is soluble in most polar organic solvents, however, it is insoluble in water. It is used to detect trace amounts of blood at crime scenes, as it reacts with the iron in hemoglobin. In order for luminol to show its luminescence, it must be activated with an oxidant. The activator is usually a solution containing hydrogen peroxide." She spoke while applying an even layer on the surface that she wanted to test for blood.

"Wow, you weren't kidding that you like chemistry. I wouldn't be surprised if you knew the formula for that thing, too." Bryan had some knowledge and he kind of thought he was going in the FBI Academy prepared, but he had nothing on Angela.

"C8H7N3O2." She said with a smile. "When I was younger, I had a very nice chemistry teacher at one of my schools. She taught me so many things and she even let me go in the laboratory with her, after school."

After that, she frowned.

"Whoops, I guess I just wasted the luminol. I mean, I know that it must be dark, in order for us to see the luminescence, but still, I thought we could at least see some sort of a reaction even now. It's quite gloomy out here today." She then picked out another small tool from the bag that she brought from A 10.

She was not going to give up. Her second blood test came out positive.

"Oh, well that was easy. See, this is the Kastle-Meyer test. It is the quickest and easiest way to find out if there is a possibility of a stain, or a surface, to contain traces of blood. It is not 100% accurate, but it is very helpful in situations like this. See, first you swab the surface, then you add a negative sample, then you add a drop of the chemical reagent on both samples. After that, you add a drop of hydrogen peroxide on both samples. If your test swab changes color to hot pink, then your surface tests positive for blood. The negative sample should stay clear, obviously. It is just for comparative purposes and to make sure your reagent works just fine. In cases where it is hard to test, you can first treat your swab with a tiny bit of ethanol, to increase the sensitivity." She narrated and Bryan watched their swab turn pink.

"Don't look at me like this. I'm not a genius. I literally said two sentences. It's easy to know stuff like that – you read about it, then you watch a video of the procedure, then you read it again and you remember it. Honestly, it is a really easy technique. I promise, you will be a pro in these things in no time. I'll make sure you learn everything you might ever need in your career." With a small smile, she once again stayed humble.

He handed her a few more things when she called out for them and they put everything away neatly.

"No. I need a small paper bindle first for this. You cannot put shattered glass directly in plastic containers. It's against CSI policy and by CSI I mean crime scene investigation, seen as a science, not as a TV show." She grabbed the items and stored two tiny pieces of glass. Finding glass around trees was definitely something that deserved being checked out.

"Wait. Let's try to reconstruct our crime scene. Your ideas?" She said when they were about to leave.

"Well, we were here at around 2:30 at night. It was raining. Dark. Cold. There was this heavy wind, so there is the possibility of someone approaching us by bike and us not hearing a thing. Amanda and Jack had just argued and they both wandered off. Wait, that makes Jack a suspect." He cringed.

Ever since Angie had yelled at his roommate, he had decided to side with her, so he had cut off contact with Jack.

It wasn't because he was following her ever move, but rather because he agreed with her point of view.

"I guess it could. However. If a bicycle was involved, Jack couldn't have possibly had the time to go after Amanda, push her off the cliff, go hide the bike and then come back to where we were standing. It was pitch black and this is an area that none of us were familiar with. Even if he ran, the timeframe is way too small to fit the crime. He was right next to us when Amanda screamed. I doubt she waited to hit the bottom of the hill, on order to scream, giving him time to get back to where we were."

"Not to mention, there is no motive. We can rule lust out. He did not seem interested in her whatsoever." Bryan commented.

"How can you be so sure?"

"He told me. It wasn't Amanda he was drooling after."

"Eww, don't tell me he also likes elder women. That Agent, what do you call her...Hotness? Is he after her as well?"

"Oh, no. She's all mine." Bryan said dreamily.

Angie rolled her eyes.

"Jack likes them young. Passionate. Wild. Smart. Beautiful. Driven. Brunette. Green eyed. Amazing toned body. And a lot of snark. Apparently."

"Oh, crap. He's into me." Angie pouted, taking that as an insult.

"Wow, someone has a pretty damn high opinion of herself." Bryan made the mistake of challenging her, to which she replied with a content nod. "I mean, you are all of that and more. But Jesus. Some modesty, no?"

"I haven't worked my ass off to be modest." Angie said while checking the mud on the ground.

"Something else is on my mind. Why kill a trainee? I mean, come on, victimology. This seems like an opportunistic kill, rather than a planned one. Nobody could have predicted her walking off, and even if so, how did they manage to see that it was Amanda in the dark? None of us saw flashlights or any type of light source going off. At best, one could have only been able to see a human frame in the dark, but couldn't even work out if it were male or female."

"Ah. Wait a minute. I saw something flashing right before the scream. I thought it was just a thunder."

"I had my eyes closed, trying to calm down and give myself reasons to not kill either of those idiots after their argument."

"You do realize that makes you a suspect, don't you?" Bryan laughed.

"I guess I can't argue my overwhelmingly strong wish to have a single room. There's my motive. But that still doesn't explain the bike. Is it possible that the tire prints were already there before everything happened?"

"No. I walked by that place earlier that evening when I wandered off. It was still not that dark."

"I forgot about that. That gives you the time to have prepared for the kill. And that, my dear, throws you right into the pool of suspects." She said contently.

"To be honest, I just had to pee behind a tree when nobody was looking. But your theory sounds way more fun." He was now making sure that all of the samples they took from the crime scene were safe and sound, tucked away into the right containers. Angie had written a few notes on each plastic or paper bag and each container.

"I guess we are all done here. For now, anyway. We would surely need to come back and check this out with a fresh pair of eyes. But for now, we still have to eat our sandwiches on the way back to campus. Our next class starts in 20 minutes and I am not going to be late for ballistics." She stated, getting up and taking the first step towards the campus.

"I would hate having to wait another second before I could see you struggle finding out where the "gun charger thing" is." He laughed sincerely and it offended Angie, but she wasn't going to show it. So, she bit back with a remark.

"Is that what your ex-girlfriend called it?" She intended to sound ironic, but those words instantly put Bryan in a really crappy mood.

He walked a bit faster and did not say a word to her until they walked into the classroom. Even then, he had the perfect excuse to be quiet and focused. Angie picked up in the bad vibes, but everyone was entitled to have bad moments, so she did not push him to speak.

Their new training officer spoke about guns and shooting and all sorts of wonderful things, but Angie did not seem too eager about this class either.

"What's wrong?" Bryan finally broke the silence, after he heard Angie sigh yet one more time.

"I'm bored." She shrugged, holding a gun and pretending to be inspecting it, as the teacher had just instructed them to do.

"You have a pretty good grip." Bryan commented.

That statement alone alarmed Angie.

One, because how on Earth would he know what a good grip was? And two, she wasn't supposed to be good.

"Movies." She excused herself, immediately grabbing the gun a little sideways and a little less correctly.

"If that gun was loaded, you'd be dead." The teacher commented as he walked by her, seeing her aim right to her stomach.

"Whoopsie." She smiled and held the gun differently. Wrongly, again.

"Look, I'm a very sarcastic person and it takes a lot of balls to be able to handle my stupid remarks sometimes. I'm aware that what I meant as a joke came out as an offense to you earlier and I just want you to know that I am sorry and that I wouldn't have said it, had I known that this was a sensitive topic for you. Lesson learned. Never happening again." She turned to face him, she just couldn't hold those words for any longer. It had been an intense couple of hours since he had gotten upset.

"That's a whole different conversation, for some other time." Bryan leaned forward, pushing the gun away from Angie who had, once again, left it unsecured. Thank God it wasn't loaded. "But I appreciate what you just said." He added hesitantly.


Emily was facing a whole new challenge after the refreshing Monday morning shower. She had one pair of clothes and one pair of very overused underwear. Not having a better option, she put them back on and went to have a stroll down the street. It was a good thing that she had the weird habit of keeping both her fake ID and her fake credit card, in the same wallet. She now had some money to splurge on things and to survive the whole week.

"Oh, Paris!" She exclaimed as soon as she walked outside.

The weather was beautiful. It was warm, but not hot, and that was the best excuse to go get a cool new jacket.

Few shops down and she was now walking with seven bags in her hands and a silly smile on her face. There were no worries inside that pretty dark-haired head of hers. For the moment being.

Finally, she gave in and bought a new suitcase, so she could bring all the goodies back to America. And once she found herself with a huge suitcase to fill, her shopaholic problems started showing.

"Oh wow, Garcia would love this!" She said to herself when she found a really cute fluffy pink pencil case with a unicorn on it.

"JJ is going to flip out!" She picked up a blouse in JJ's favorite color. She used to wear stuff like that all the time, back in her liaison days. Emily preferred her on the field, though, even if that meant wearing boring black clothes most of the time.

"Dave, awwh!" The item she picked up this time was something for the house and, really, it was more a present for Dave's wife than him.

"Alright..." She had already started using the suitcase to store all the new things, after one of her shopping bags gave up on her and the contents of it had rolled down the street as she was crossing.

"That only leaves Reid. That's a hard one to shop for." She murmured underneath her breath, walking aimlessly by this point.

"Catherine?" She heard a man call out from behind her and she froze.

"Wait up." The man added and it was then that Emily Prentiss decided to do something highly untypical for her.

She ran for her dear life.