Eidetic - A Criminal Minds/Spencer Reid Story

Chapter Twenty-One - Lies

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." - John F. Kennedy

*Vivian Santos*

Spencer put his phone on speaker and set it down on the conference table. "Garcia, I have Viv and JJ here. Explain what you found," he said.

"Okay, but this might be hard to hear, Viv," Garcia said. Spencer looked at me and I sighed.

"It's okay, Garcia. I can handle it," I said.

"Okay, well here goes," Garcia started. "Your brother wasn't actually murdered that night in the park. I looked up the original police report and it says that he just went missing. When his friends noticed that he was gone, they had backtracked the path they had taken and saw that he was gone. After they had searched for a few hours, they gave up and reported him as missing."

"So, why did your parents tell you that he was dead?" JJ asked. I shook my head.

"They wanted me to have closure and didn't want me to have false hope. That's why they even had a funeral for my not-actually-dead brother," I replied bluntly. Spencer grabbed my hand.

"If you want to, we can stop..." I cut him off.

"No, let's just get through this so that we can get this over with. I don't want to be bothered by this anymore," I replied.

"Well, a few days after the disappearance, there was a charge on his credit card that no one seemed to notice. It was for a one-way plane ticket to Russia," Garcia continued. "When I saw that charge, I looked through a few of of his emails and saw some that were concerning."

"Let me guess, the exchange was with Viktor Brodsky," JJ said. At this point, I started to feel nauseous.

"You would be correct. You would think that someone that got hired as a techie would learn to use a firewall and proxy servers when you're a Russian mobster. The emails were sent a few months before Daniel's college graduation, and they never addressed anything directly, but it doesn't take a profiler to know that Brodsky was recruiting Daniel," Garcia said. "I was also able to get Daniel's laptop from the original case and looked through his files. I found that he was surfing the dark net about how to weaponize viruses and anthrax."

"Why would the Russian mafia want Daniel?" Spencer asked. I closed my eyes and squeezed his hand.

"Daniel's major in college was biochemical engineering with a minor in computer science. He graduated in the top ten of his class," I said. "If I had a guess, it would be to help develop some type of biological weapons. He did some research on cancerous cells during his first year." 

"There's also something else..." Garcia trailed off a little bit and we could hear the clicks of her mouse. "There are records here of him meeting with a psychologist. Apparently he had said some concerning things to a few of his friends and professors and the psychologist thought that he was a developing sociopath. A late-blooming one at that. According to the psychologist's notes, Daniel had been experimenting with some hardcore drugs and began isolating himself more and more."

"Had he ever tried drugs or alcohol before?" Spencer asked. I shook my head.

"Daniel never did any of that stuff growing up, but my parents did tend to bug him about school since he was always considered the 'smart one.' He probably reached his breaking point, and then somehow learned to fake his emotions and still managed to graduate," I said.

It began to get harder and harder to breathe and I could feel my throat tightening up as tears threatened to spill out. I didn't want to believe that this was true. Deep down, I hoped that this was all a dream and that I would wake up at anytime with nothing more than a cold sweat.