𝓼𝓪𝓯𝓮 ➣ 𝓼. 𝓻𝓮𝓲𝓭

𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓽𝔂-𝓸𝓷𝓮

"Now," Mara put her elbows on the table and leaned to look at him. "What else is bugging you?"

He turned his attention back to the stack of papers in front of him. "I don't know what you're talking about."

She sent him a look. "Really? C'mon Reid, you and I both know better."

He sighed and set his pen down, meeting her eyes. "Do you ever wonder if you lived up to expectations?

"I-I beat them," she replied to him. "I thought I would be some crazy pimp/drug dealer by twenty-five."

"I thought I'd cure schizophrenia by the time I was twenty-five," Reid said, Mara frowning. "You know, when I was a kid, people told me I could do anything."

"You're afraid you've let people down?" Mara asked him.

"No, I'm afraid I let myself down."

"By not curing schizophrenia?"

"No, just because I don't know why I'm in the FBI." 

Mara nodded. "I see. You're a genius, but you have the same job as me, Morgan, JJ."

"Yeah, exactly," he said before laughing. "No, that's not what I'm saying, it's just sometimes..sometimes I kind of get this feeling like maybe I should have done something more with my life."

"Spencer, you're what? Twenty-nine?"

"I'm thirty."

Mara's mouth fell open in shock. "We missed your birthday? Why didn't you tell me?"

It was October thirtieth. She missed his birthday. Everyone did.

"The fact of the matter is, you're young, there's still time." She assured him.

"By the time Nikola Telsa was thirty, he already invented the induction motor." Reid retorted.

"You know what, you might be right," she said to him. "You don't hear much about child prodigies once they grow up. In fact, most of them turn out average."

Reid scowled at her, biting back a smile. "That's not true. Are you trying reverse psychology with me?"

"I'm just telling it like it is." She shrugged, reaching over and pulling the stack of papers from in front of him.

"What are you doing?" He asked her, still smiling.

"Well, you just told me yourself, you're washed up," she replied. "I should take a look at this."

"That's not what I'm saying," he said as Mara started marking up his organized mess. "It's-seriously, what are you doing?"

"I'm just looking to see what you missed." She continued marking the paper up, Reid getting antsy.

"Don't do-you're gonna, hey, you're gonna actually mess it up, Mara," he reached over and grabbed the pen. "Give it back to me."

He reached over and took the papers back, trying to figure out the mess she'd made. "Wait a minute..that's it."

"What?" She asked, leaning over to look at the papers.

"The real code is in the words, China Weekly Post, page F- four." He said to himself.

He suddenly got up and grabbed his bag, heading to somewhere Mara hadn't figured out yet. Mara grabbed his coffee and followed him. 

"The spam had to be converted from matrix code to binary code, then switched to base eight before being translated back into letters, I can go into more detail if you want."

"Uh, no," Mara replied. "How smart would a person have to be to write a code like that?"

"Beyond smart," he replied, looking through the newspapers for the particular one. "Profoundly gifted, an IQ of at least one-sixty. That changes the profile then. The UnSub could still hold a menial or low-level job."

"Many believe that beyond an IQ of 120, success is determined by other factors," he dialed Garcia's number. "Garcia, I need you to compile a list of people with IQs of one-sixty or above in the region."

"Checking with the Bay Area Mensa Society, which is kind of slumming is 'cause folks can get in with a measly IQ of one-thirty."

"Also check old school records," Reid suggested. "We're looking for someone who's in his twenties or thirties."

"Yeah, hit you back when I got something."

Reid flipped through the paper until he found what he was looking for. "I got it. You could do so much better."

"I'll talk to the manager, see if they know who places the ad," Mara said. "Who is this message for?"

"The writer is a genius, but the recipient would have to be too, in order to decode it."

Mara's phone rang in her pocket and she picked it up. It was Rossi. "A cabdriver's just been murdered. Broad daylight and no witnesses. The engine was still running."

Reid and Mara returned to the station while the rest were at the new crime scene. They found a missing boy that could be linked to this UnSub and after that, they were stumped.

It was starting to get late and Mara was on the verge of dozing while Reid sat in a chair, staring at the board, trying to make some kind of connection.

"They went through all the surveillance footage near the newspaper, there was nothing." Mara said to him, yawning.

"Spencer?" she asked, watching him mumble under his breath as his eyes darted across the board. "You okay?"

"Nothing this UnSub does it accidental," he said, standing up, moving closer to the door. "The message in the China weekly Post was on page F-four. Why F-four?"

"Well, that's where the classifieds were." Mara shrugged. 

"It's more than that," Reid said, pulling up a map of the country and where the kills happened, pulling a chess board over it. "See, F-four is a chess square."

"He murdered people according to a chess game?" Rossi asked.

Reid nodded. "Specifically, game six of Fischer versus Spassky in nineteen seventy-two, one of the greatest chess matches ever played. The murder locations correspond with the final three moves of the game."

Morgan dialed Garcia's number. "Garcia's lair of knowledge and wisdom."

"Hey, baby girl, do you have the list of Zodiac case experts?"

"Yes, standing by for you, I have everyone who has ever written or blogged about it," she replied. "FYI, there was way too many people obsessed with this sicko."

"All right, cross-reference that with professional chess players." Morgan said.

"Oh, that totally helps," she said. "List is getting smaller and smaller...down to nothing."

"Open it up to high-level amateurs as well." Reid said.

She typed away for a few minutes, leaving the team anxious.

"Okay, I did a search of chess players rated twenty-two hundred or higher, which would make them masters but not necessarily professionals," she explained. "I cross-referenced that search with Zodiac experts and came up with two former chess prodigies and best friends who used to write about the Zodiac in their junior high school newspaper, and I get bonus points because they both have IQs over one-sixty."

"Where are they?" Reid asked her.