Criminal Minds Series Rewrite: Season Four

Amplification: Part Two

The bookstore has been closed ever since Albert died, and Gayle's purchase happened right before it closed down. It would explain why only three people were hit, and when General Whitworth sent his men in for testing, they came back positive for Anthrax.

Albert's bookstore was the unsub's test run. He's gotta have a history with the place, so Penelope needs to come up with a list of present and past employees of the place, customers with grievances against the owner, and if any of them had a science background.

An attack of Anthrax isn't meant to kill three people inside a bookstore, it wants to be out in the open where it can feed and multiply in the way that it wants to. Just a small amount can wipe everyone out, and they'd never see it coming.

Another hour goes by and the six survivors of the attack are now down to four. This attack is killing people left and right and there is nothing you can do about it. The more they die off, the more family members demand answers for what's happening.

"It feels like the plague of Egypt," Linda says.

"Ten scourges created by God. Plague six was unhealable boils believed by biblical scholars to be caused by Anthrax."

"You never missed Sunday school, did you?"

"Actually, I've never been before. How is she doing?" Spencer asks about Abby.

"She's a fighter. She's held on this long because she's young and strong, but she's started to bleed into her lungs. We're running into another problem, though. When the next of kin have questions, what do we tell them about the cause of death?"

That is a question only Hotch and General Whitworth can answer. You can't tell anyone anything without punishment if it didn't come from Hotch. Instead of thinking things like that, you can try and think of the unsub and profile you have on him. It might help your team catch whoever is doing this.

Because the locations aren't symbolically significant, the attacks are personal. Understanding the significance of the locations will be the key to identifying the unsub.

This personal element strongly indicates a home-grown terrorist like the Amerithrax case. This is someone from the science or defense community. That's why the CIA is here. Hotch thinks they may know him. These home-grown terrorists are myopic zealots that believe that their work is of the greatest importance.

He may have preached about the threat of an attack on America. His coworkers would describe him as histrionic, paranoid, and secretive. He may have logged excess hours at work in the past weeks preparing for the attack. He even might have taken the full dosage of Anthrax vaccines over the recommended eighteen-month schedule and had yearly boosters.

This guy has his own workspace where he makes his product in privacy. He also has access to large, expensive, industrial-grade equipment at work. He's written about the threats of Anthrax attacks and published papers about it, yet he feels no one is listening, and that angers him. Now, he may have recently experienced some sort of professional humiliation like being demoted or fired. Now, that would have been his trigger, the moment he decided to go rogue.

He may have betrayed his loved ones to his cause and may be recently separated or divorced. This is somebody who knows every detail of the 2001 Anthrax attack and has talked about what that suspect did right or wrong. He's watching the news very closely to see how the country reacts, and it's not a good one.

The CIA dug deep into their records and found a video of a classified hearing with the Subcommittee on Defense and Homeland Security in January of 2002. Dr. Lawrence Nichols used to work at the institution and left in 2002. The video is sent to your team at the hospital, Derek's team in Maryland, and the main office with everyone else. You and Spencer go into an empty hospital room to watch the video. Dr. Nichols went to the Senator to ask for money for a project he wanted to do with dangerous chemicals. He went to talk to the Senator about the attack in 2001 and why he should have funding for his project.