"Thank you." Penelope says as she opens the door for Spencer and Bedelia, the former carrying grocery bags. "Okay, just put everything on the counter and I'll put it away later."
"I like your altar." Spencer says.
"Thank you." Penelope shuts the door. They walk over to the kitchen and Spencer puts the bags down. "Yeah, there's still a lot to do before the party next week, and... I'm scared. I've never had the whole team here before."
"Why are you doing a Day of the Dead theme?" Spencer asks.
"Well, uh, my stepfather's family always made a big deal of it in Mexico, and my name is Penelope Garcia, after all, so..." She shrugs. "Hey, could you check my refrigerator and see if I have enough hot sauce?" She asks Spencer. He goes to the fridge and opens it.
Penelope glances at Bedelia who is focused on unloading the groceries. Penelope takes her glasses off and puts the fake blood on her ceeks.
"You have some jalapeno sauce here next to this jar of eyeballs." Spencer says, taking both items out. "But I think you're gonna need more depending on which guacamole you plan on making." He looks up. "You okay?" He asks.
His question makes Bedelia look over at the blonde, seeing the blood streaks.
"You guys didn't even flinch." Penelope says. "JJ's right. I told her I wanted to go scary this Halloween, and she just laughed at me. And she said I don't have a scary side."
"Well, you have some sort of scary side. You're protective of us." Bedelia says. "Someone messes with a team member, bam, bitch goes down."
"Yeah." Penelope kind of nods.
"I'm sorry. If it makes you feel better, you probably do." Spencer says.
"Really?" Penelope asks.
"Yeah. The building blocks of the human personality are complex, varied, and multi-faceted. It's essential to one's mental health to want to express these hidden personalities, and it's a fact of nature that everybody has one."
"Everybody? You have one?" Penelope asks him.
"Oh, absolutely. Yeah." Spencer nods.
"Oh, you do now, do you?" Bedelia questions.
"Ye--" Spencer frowns as he goes over her repeated words. "Yes." He nods.
"Okay. Okay, I want to see it." Penelope says. "I want to see Dr. Spencer Reid's hidden personality."
"Yeah, so do I. I'm your baby mama, I should already know about this." Bedelia says.
"Uh-- you, uh-- right here? Like right now you want to see it?" Spencer asks.
"Can't leave us hanging, Spencie." Bedelia remarks.
"I have fake blood running down my cheeks right here, right now." Penelope puts her glasses on.
"Okay." Spencer says. "Once you see it, you can't unsee it." Bedelia nods, rolling her lips into her mouth so she doesn't laugh.
"Okay." Penelope whispers.
Spencer lowers his head, his hands resting on the back of his neck and he lets out a deep grunt making Bedelia give him a concerned look. He lifts his head and holds his hand out.
"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, did that guy just fire 5 shots? Or did that guy just fire 6 shots? You're gonna have to ask yourself a question. Do you feel lucky, punk?" He asks, dragging the punk out. "That was Clint Eastwood, in Dirty Harry."
"Oh." Penelope nods.
Bedelia is unable to prevent a spurt of giggles from escaping.
"I mean, I know it's not as effective as my dominant personality, but I feel like there's-- isn't there?" He looks at his girlfriend.
"It-- it's got something." Bedelia says. "Don't worry. That... that was completely a laugh of admiration." She says, an amused grin on her face.
"Are you su--"
"Positive." Bedelia pecks him on the lips. "You're... that was scary." She says.
"I feel like you're being sarcastic right now." Spencer frowns.
"Mm. What do you think now?" Bedelia cups his face, pulling him into a deep kiss.
Penelope sighs in relief at not having to answers Spencer's questions. After a few moments, though, she decides to butt in.
"Hey. Guys, come on, I do still eat here." Penelope says, the couple quickly pulling away from each other.
"Sorry." They both apologize.
Penelope's phone chimed.
"Hey, look, we gotta go." Penelope says, looking at her phone that chimed. Bedelia grabs Spencer's hand, leading him out.
"These eyeballs. Do they need to be refrigerated--"
"No. Let's go."
+++
"Oh, I recognize that face from somewhere." Rossi says as they walk into the round table room where Hotch is.
"It's good to have you back, Hotch." Derek says.
"It's good to be back. Thanks." Hotch says. "And under the heading of no rest for the weary..."
"A woman was found dead yesterday near Provo, Utah, buried under a pile of rocks." Penelope says. "Her face was smashed. Her head was smashed. Pretty much everything smashed."
"24 hours later she's still a Jane Doe?" Spencer asks.
"No personal items were found at the scene, and the severity of her injuries made official recognition impossible." Hotch says.
"So Provo missing persons has, like, zero intel on her." Penelope says.
"Well, it looks like the victim was tortured." Bedelia notes. "Lacerations on both arms and a burn in the neck area."
"It could be the killer's way of silencing her, literally and figuratively." JJ says.
"The robe she's in almost looks ceremonial." Rossi says.
"Yeah, the unsub must have changed her clothing." Spencer says.
"Could be a straight up woman hater." Derek says. "Took away her clothes, her voice, her identity."
"And then covered her up with rocks." Bedelia says.
"Might be a concealment or an expression of remorse." Blake says.
"It looks like a makeshift tomb, if you ask me." Rossi says.
"Have there been similar killings in the area?" JJ asks.
"None that we know." Hotch says.
"I'm impressed, Hotch. How'd you get the brass to let us investigate a single, isolate murder?" Rossi asks.
"I told them that the ritualistic nature means that he's forensically sophisticated and organized and he's likely killed before." Hotch says.
"And likely will kill again." Blake adds.
"Which means we can't waste time. Wheels up in 20."
+++
The sheriff leads Derek, Spencer, and Bedelia up to the crime scene. Spencer gets to the top and turns to Bedelia, holding his hands out to her. She takes them, letting him help her up the final bit.
"A couple of fossil hunters nosing around up here found her." The sheriff says.
"Whose idea was it to send the 7 month pregnant woman to a crime scene on top of a hill?" Bedelia questions.
"Hey, we gave you the choice to stay down there. I recall your words being "I can do it. Shut up, Morgan."" Derek says.
"You did say that." Spencer confirms.
"Whose side are you on?" Bedelia asks her boyfriend.
"You-yours." He stammers, nervously looking between the two. "Shut up, Morgan."
Derek rolls his eyes, quietly laughing.
"Those the rocks?" Derek asks.
"My men moved them off her body. But that's all anyone's touched them." The sheriff says.
"These are sedimentary conglomerates with rounded clasts." Spencer says.
"If you say so." The sheriff says.
"That means that geologically speaking, they don't belong up here. The rest of this canyon is tertiary rhyolite volcanics, which means the unsub must have brought these rocks with him." Spencer says.
"Which would be noisy and time consuming." Derek says. "So the unsub obviously felt comfortable enough here to take the time that he needed."
"He's probably been here before." Bedelia says.
"Sergeant, how wide was the radius of your initial search?" Derek asks.
"We canvassed out about 200 yards in all directions. We didn't find anything."
"Well, we may need to push that out a little further." Derek says.
+++
"What used to be up here?" Spencer asks. "The dirt road leading in seems rather substantial."
"Salt mining. Hauled this stuff out by the truckloads. These hills filled a hell of a lot of salt shakers."
"Actually, less than 6% of salt in the United States is used for food. The vast majority of it goes for de-icing roads and snow control." Spencer says.
"Guys." Derek calls. "Over here." They walk over to where he is and find a woman's body.
"You're right. The killer's been here before." Spencer says.
"And he seems to have a preference for blondes." Derek says.
+++
"Guys, check this out." Spencer walks over.
"What have you got?" Hotch asks.
"The pattern in the branding mark has design characteristics similar to family crests from the late middle ages." Spencer says, holding open a book. "I found this encyclopedia of heraldry and look." He points out the design that was on the body in the book.
"It's the seal of William Stoughton, a magistrate." Hotch says.
"Check when and where he's a magistrate." Spencer says.
"Salem, Massachusetts, 1692." Rossi says.
"Stoughton was the lead prosecutor in the Salem Witch Trials." Spencer says.
"So this unsub believes he's hunting witches." Hotch says.
+++
"Our unsub chose the right role model. Stoughton was the most ruthless of all of the Salem prosecutors." Blake says.
"Our killer's also emulating the methods of execution at the time of the trials. Witches were thrown off cliffs, hung, slowly crushed by rocks." Spencer says.
"So the family crest thing, is that his way of honoring the guy?" Joe asks.
"It's more than that. He may believe he's a direct descendent of Stoughton." Hotch says.
"Garcia, were you able to run a history yet of the Stoughton family tree?" Spencer asks.
"It isn't so much a tree as it is a giant sequoia -- branches, twigs, roots, sticks, limbs, pine cones, woodpecker holes." She says. "There are literally thousands of Stoughton's descendants out there."
"Are there any in the Provo or Salt Lake City area?" Bedelia asks.
"Yeah, there's a handful, but none of them fit the unsub's profile." Penelope says.
"Can you send me the Stoughtons' ancestry chart?" Spencer asks.
"Did you hear the part I said about the giant sequoia? I can send it to you, but unless your laptop screen is the size of a drive-in movie theater--"
"Send it, anyway. We'll print out a hard copy here." Spencer says.
"I'm going to send the side of the tree that migrated westward, and do not say I did not warn you." Penelope hangs up.
"You're going to need a bigger copy machine." Blake says.
+++
They printed out the pages of the tree and matched them all up. Spencer is leaning over and looking at it, his mouth moving as he silently talks to himself.
"I've learned to stop asking questions about this guy." Joe says.
"Spence, you got something yet?" Bedelia asks.
"There's something strange about this one branch of the family tree." Spencer says. "Garcia?" He calls.
"Talk to me. I am fluent in genius." She says.
"Roy and Becky Danary, they died in 1985, leaving behind a son named William Danary, but there's no record of what happened to him." Spencer says.
"The Danarys were peace corps workers in Ecuador. They died in a car accident there. And you're right, their kid just sort of vanished." Penelope says. "Let me do some digging and I will call you back."
"All right, well, we profiled the unsub as delusional. What if Stoughton being a great-great-great-whatever is just part of his delusion?" JJ asks.
"Or the discovery of being a direct descendant triggered the delusion." Hotch says.
"He looked into his ancestry." Spencer says.
"That would be easy to do here." Joe says. "Salt Lake City has the largest family history library in the world."
"Gloria Carlyle researched Herbert Sykes' ancestry." Hotch says.
"Abby Stafford was a bookish college student." Spencer says.
"Maybe that's where they crossed -- at the library." JJ says.
"JJ, have Garcia get the names of all the employees and volunteers in the Provo and Salt Lake City library system and cross check those with descendants of William Stoughton." Hotch says.
+++
"Hey, I have a thing." Penelope says.
"What is it, Garcia?" Hotch asks.
"No library employees are direct descendants of William Stoughton, however, there's a volunteer with a fascinating family history there." She says. "Leland Duncan, son of Orland and Clara Duncan, Mormon Missionaries."
"But the Duncans aren't part of the Stoughton lineage." Spencer says.
"But, a big kiss to who can guess where they were doing their missionary work in 1985." Penelope says.
"Ecuador." Hotch says.
"Ding, ding, we have a winner." Penelope says.
"Same time and place as the peace corps couple that died and left a son." JJ says.
"So the Duncans adopted the boy and changed his name." Hotch says.
"I'm sending you a current photo of Leland Duncan along with his home address, there." Penelope says.
"Thanks." Hotch says.
+++
They solved the case and are now at Penelope's for the Day of the Dead party.
"So I looked it up." JJ says. "No witches were ever burned at the stake in Salem."
"Really?" Rossi asks.
"Death by fire was strictly a European thing." JJ says.
"Moral of the story -- be selective where you practice your witchcraft." Rossi says and JJ tries not to laugh after taking a drink.
There's a knock on the door.
"What, what, what?" Penelope mutters as she walks over and answers it, revealing Hotch. "I thought you couldn't come."
"Well, Jack got a last minute sleepover invitation, so I hope it's okay." Hotch says.
"Yes, of course, of course." Penelope says, shutting the door behind him. "Okay, everybody, I guess it's time to start. Here you go, sir." She hands Hotch a drink.
"Thank you." He tells her.
"Uh... I want to thank everybody for doing this with me, and our altar's burning, and I just feel so blessed to have you all here." Penelope says. "I will start. Uh..." She puts a photo of two people and a baby down. "This is my mom and dad. I miss them. And this is my cat Simba with his usual bowl of soda pop." She puts a photo of a cat down. "He was a weird cat." She says, earning laughs. "Okay. Who's next?"
"Uh, okay. Well, uh, this is my sister Roslyn. Ros." JJ puts the picture up. "She always dreamt that someday she'd live in Paree, so, um... it didn't happen, but I thought this would bring her some happiness." She puts a small Eiffel Tower figurine next to the photo of her sister.
"Private first class Darryl Jenson." Rossi puts a photo on the altar. "We lost him during the Tet offensive." he puts two tickets down.
"What are the tickets?" Derek asks.
"Opening day next season, Wrigley, right behind the home dugout." Rossi says. "Jenson was a diehard Cubs fan."
"Sweet." Derek grins.
"Um... my mom." Blake puts a photo of her mom and a dog and a folded up page of a newspaper, both connected by a pen. "She was the one who got me into crossword puzzles -- no erasing allowed -- which got me into linguistics."
"It's Nikola Tesla." Spencer says, putting a photo of a man up. "I figured he's probably been inventing things on the other side, so hopefully he'll bring something to us."
"I guess that's me. Okay." Derek says. "I brought... my pops." He holds a photo of his dad up. "He was a cigar aficionado, big time." He chuckles, putting the photo and a cigar on the altar. "And, actually, Rossi, he was also a huge Cubbies fan, so I was thinking maybe he and Private Jenson over there, maybe they could go to the game together."
"They can sort that out when they get here." Rossi says making the others chuckle.
"This, uh... this is my mom." Bedelia puts a photo of her and her mom from when she was 4 up. "And I remember her really liking owls for some reason. They always freaked me out, but..." Bedelia puts a small owl figurine up.
She steps back after putting the stuff up. Spencer wraps his hand around hers, intertwining their fingers. He gently squeezes her hand, rubbing his thumb back and forth.
Hotch takes a photo of Haley out of his wallet and puts it on the altar.
"Well, I guess this is proof positive that ancestry ain't all bad." Rossi says.
"How about a toast to the... 30 or 40 of us?" Penelope says.
They all clink their glasses, making sure to get everybody else.
"You were a really cute kid." Spencer whispers to Bedelia and she quietly giggles.
"Thanks." She whispers.
"Our kid's gonna be that cute." He mumbles with a small grin.
"Or as cute as you." Bedelia grins.
"Usually kids look like both of their parents to a certain degree. So, really, they'll look 50% you and 50% me." Spencer says.
Bedelia softly smiles.
"I love you." She quietly tells him, leaning up to his face.
"I love you, too." He softly smiles, letting her kiss him.