The Boss' Niece (Spencer Reid)

18. Almost positive ID

CASSIDY
Spencer and I sat in the conference room with the rest of the team, listening to Emily.

"If the unsub was somebody Monica knew, he might be able to give us a suspect." Emily suggested bringing in Monica's son, hoping that he might have some idea as to who could've done this. Luckily for us, he didn't hesitate when it came to telling us who might have been the perpetrator.

"Yeah. I know exactly who did this. His name's Mac. He, uh...he was dating my mom." Carl sat in one of the empty offices, a look of grief and fear on his face.

"What can you tell me about him?" I asked as Spencer and I sat across from him, waiting for a description.

"Dorky, boring." Carl rolled his eyes. I could hear him sniffling, probably from all the crying he'd most likely done after hearing about his mother's death.

"He always wore these, uh...these wool sweaters. He never stayed over. He said he wanted to protect my mother's virtue." Carl continued, wiping his eyes.

"The kind of guy that would go out of his way to appear nonthreatening?" Spencer asked.

"Yeah." Carl nodded, his hands fidgeting.

"You went right after him as your mother's killer. How come?" I asked, confused.

"Because yesterday...I came home to help my mom around the house." Carl started.

(Yesterday)

CARL
I unlocked my mother's front door, hoping to see her in the kitchen making some lunch, or maybe in the living room, reading a book. Instead, I could hear him talking on the phone to someone, the conversation sounding too suspicious to ignore.

"Don't worry, honey. I'll be home soon." I could hear Mac chuckling.

"I love you, too. Bye." I watched as Mac hung up the phone, clearly unaware that I was standing nearby.

"Hey, who's that?" I made my presence known.

"Huh?" He turned around, clearly shocked to find me standing near him.

"Oh, ho. Hey! Carl, I was...I was just..." He panicked. His face dropped and he quickly shoved his phone into his pocket, clearly trying to come up with an excuse.

"No, no. Who, uh, who was that?" I questioned him again, watching as my mother walked into the room, confused.

"Is everything all right?" She asked, smiling.

"No. He just said "I love you" to somebody on the phone." I glared at Mac, who looked between me and my mother with a nervous look on his face.

"Uh...yeah, my mom." He nodded.

"Oh, yeah? You call your mother "honey"?" I wasn't buying his crap, but he was sticking to his story.

"Yeah, I do." He acted confident.

"He does. I've heard him. He checks on her several times a day." My mother smiled, clearly oblivious to the fact that Mac might have been cheating on her with another woman.

"Okay, have you ever met his mother?" I asked, skeptical.

"No, I haven't, but..." Before she could continue, Mac cleared his throat, interrupting.

"Hey, let's clear the air and address what's really going on here, yeah? You're being protective of your mom. Heh! And as you should, because she is an incredibly special woman. But I want to...I want to prove to you how pure my intentions are with her, because I know this has been fast." Mac acted innocent and my heart dropped with fear and anger when I watched him pull a velvet box from his pocket.

"Um, I've been waiting my whole life for you...and I don't want to wait any longer." Mac exhaled. Surely he wasn't about to do what I thought he was going to do, right?

"What?" My mother looked at Mac confused.

"What?" I gasped.

Mac exhaled one more time before getting down onto one knee.

"Will you marry me?" He asked. I almost punched him right then and there, but seeing my mother's reaction stopped me. She seemed overwhelmingly happy.

"Oh, of course I will. It's beautiful. I love it." She kissed Mac and let him slip the ring onto her finger as she stared at it, a look of love and affection on her face.

(Present)

CASSIDY
"I couldn't stand watching her make such an awful decision like that, so I left. He must've killed her as soon as I was gone." Carl admitted, exhaling. I watched as he let another tear slip from his eye.

"You have any photos of Mac?" Spencer asked.

"My mom, she posted a lot on social media. Here's all his contact info." Carl handed us a note with lots of writing on it, allowing Spencer and I to leave and head back to the conference room where the rest of the team waited.

"Paul McIntyre, aka "Mac". He dated Monica two months before he proposed to her. The address he gave her was a fake, and the phone number that he gave to her was for a burner that's now been disconnected." Rossi read the information we all had gathered from the note that Carl had given us.

"You know, it could be an unsub who targets a lonely hearts victimology...middle-aged women who are emotionally susceptible to his charisma." Spencer brought up a good point.

"And he takes his charm and harm seduction all the way up to the proposal and kills them." JJ exhaled.

"Garcia, what'd you find?" Morgan asked as he answered his phone, putting the call on speaker.

"Okay, I ran this photo of Mr. Mclntyre through facial recognition, and I'm telling you with my full confidence he does not exist." Penelope began.

"And I want to be really clear about this. I'm not saying he covered his tracks. I'm saying this guy is a stone-cold apparition." Penelope exhaled.

"Is there anything in the creation of the false identity we can track?" Emily asked.

"Okay. According to his faux dating profile, he values family and serving the homeless, which would be really cute if, you know, he didn't cut her face off and burn her house down." Penelope explained before groaning at the last part of her sentence.

"Helping the homeless was exactly what Monica was interested in." Hotch nodded.

"The unsub was creating a persona tailor-made to get her guard down." I scoffed.

"What about financial records?" Morgan questioned.

"Oh, this is where things get really nasty. Actually, the part about the face is the nasty thing, but I'm sending you the specifics on this." Penelope explained before sending us all the details.

"Shortly before dating Monica, the unsub opened a bank account using this fake identity. He used it as a fence to create an untraceable offshore account." Emily read the information on her tablet.

"He was draining Monica's money the whole time they were dating." I gasped, shocked.

"And then the low-down, lying sleazeball closed said account. And we all know what that means, don't we, my pretties?" Penelope questioned. We could all imagine a look of disappointment on her face.

"He's a con man." Hotch rolled his eyes, clearly not surprised.

"Yeah, but con men resort to violence only out of necessity. If he had a false identity, it would have been easier just to skip town than murder Monica." JJ shook her head, befuddled.

"Maybe after the proposal, Monica discovered he wasn't who he said he was, and then he killed her to protect his anonymity." Morgan suggested.

"But then why go to these lengths?" I asked.

"Why start the fire?" Spencer added onto my question.

"And, more importantly, why cut off the face?" Hotch exhaled, shutting his tablet down.