Criminal Minds (TV Series)

False Flag (2017)

Joe Mantegna: David Rossi

Photos 

Quotes 

• Emily Prentiss : The unknown subject we're looking for is a male, most likely in his twenties, based on the two victims so far. But before we go any further, we need to be clear. Age is the most difficult variable to predict. He could be in his forties.

  David Rossi : A very fit forties.

  Emily Prentiss : So, our point is the profile is a guide only. It's an investigative tool, and we need to stress that. All we have is a series of deductions, but one of those deductions is that the unsub knew his victims personally, which is why we're delivering the profile to you, because you also knew the victims. So, our goal is not to make you uncomfortable or suspicious. Normally we wouldn't even give the profile this early, but you are our best chance at discovering the identity of...

  [Gary raises his hand] 

  Emily Prentiss : Yes?

  Gary Hiles : I have a question for Agent Rossi.

  David Rossi : Go ahead.

  Gary Hiles : Why did your last book suck so bad?

  David Rossi : [laughter]  Uh... well, we're not gonna talk about that now.

  Gary Hiles : Really? That's all I want to talk about. I mean, you even consider that Tommy Yates was a patsy?

  Jennifer Jareau : Look, we get it, okay? You have no reason to trust us. We're the FBI, and you are the official community of the Roswell, New Mexico truthers.

  Melissa Miller : Thanks for not calling us conspiracy theorists.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : No, that's not the only thing. The podcast. She... she had us right where she wanted. She could have posted the audio of our conversation to prove we were trying to cover this up, but instead she deleted it. Which she only would have done if she had revealed herself somehow.

  Jennifer Jareau : She didn't say anything incriminating when I talked to her.

  Emily Prentiss : Me, neither.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Then it was me. She let something slip, something she doesn't want me to remember. So... what?

  [flashback] 

  Melissa Miller : Aurora, Orlando, Sandy Hook. The United States government shot up a bunch of empty buildings and then gathered everything up and traded it amongst themselves, because that's how plausible deniability works.

  [return to real time] 

  Dr. Tara Lewis : She traded it.

  David Rossi : Traded what?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : The bullet and the shell casing. She took the evidence and she gave it to someone else.

  David Rossi : And you know this because...

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Think about a conspiracy theory like a pathology. What... what disgusts her, what she fears most in other people, that's the action she'll copy to justify her own belief system.

  Emily Prentiss : So who has the bullet?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Who else?

• Emily Prentiss : The unsub we've been looking for is Melissa Miller, and we think she's made one of you an accomplice to her murder of Carl Lee.

  David Rossi : An unwitting accomplice.

  Jennifer Jareau : We aren't keeping you in custody. Anyone who wants to leave can, and everyone that wanted representation has a lawyer present. All we want is for you to listen to our theory.

  Matt Simmons : After Carl Lee's murder, Melissa approached one of you and she told you that the U.S. government was gonna frame both Bryan and Carl's murder on the truthers. Right on cue, we showed up.

  Luke Alvez : So she gave you a box or bag, told you not to look inside, said it was all part of our cover-up.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : What she gave you was material evidence of Carl's murder. Now, you can think what you want of us. We are not here to frame anyone. We are not the murderers. She is.

  Emily Prentiss : Did anyone accept something like this from her?

  [silence; after a moment, Tara notices Gary confer with his lawyer] 

  Gary Hiles : [stepping forward]  I did. It's... it's at my house.

• David Rossi : We don't just have egg on our face. We have blood on our hands. It's not like these conspiracy theorists are gonna be quiet.

  Emily Prentiss : I am aware of that. I need options.

  David Rossi : We're out of 'em. The profile says it's a truther, and only one of them is talking to us. We have to throw a Hail Mary.

• Penelope Garcia : It's time to get out our tinfoil hats, my fine furry friends, because we are on our way to Roswell, New Mexico, aka Ground Zero of conspiracy theorists because of a certain alien crash... I mean weather balloon.

  Emily Prentiss : The sheriff there has had two suspicious deaths over the last forty-eight hours. Both victims were members of the truther movement.

  Penelope Garcia : Yes, which is a group of conspiracy theorists who share their out-there beliefs online with each other. No judgment here. Uh, let's look at our fist victim, Bryan Behar. He believed that the flouride they put in our drinking water is a mind control agent meant to keep us docile. He died by drowning. "People drown all the time", you say; I say "not in their own aquariums".

  Matt Simmons : So the M.O. matches his conspiracy. Is that a coincidence or a choice?

  David Rossi : That depends on victim number two.

  Penelope Garcia : Uh-huh. That's Carl Lee. He's a JFK conspiracy nut who was shot once in the throat.

  Jennifer Jareau : As anyone who saw the Zapruder film knows, that's where the first bullet struck Kennedy.

  Luke Alvez : Carl Lee we can definitively classify as a homicide, but the drowning death, that could have another explanation.

  Emily Prentiss : That's why we'll be treating this as an equivocal death investigation. Wheels up in twenty.

• Penelope Garcia : It looks like our two victims were talking via encrypted texts. It took a while to break, and their conversation was short, but its content made my perfectly-shaped eyebrows go "Hmm?". Carl says to Bryan "I think I'm getting close to finding out who it is", to which Bryan says "Maybe we should go the police", and Carl says "What good would that do?".

  Matt Simmons : Well, that could be motive. Whatever Carl was close to finding could have killed him and Bryan.

  Luke Alvez : At first glance, yeah. But we're talking about conspiracy theorists here, and a lot of them suffer from association fallacy. Let's say you thought Lyndon Johnson had JFK killed in order to escalate the war in Vietnam.

  David Rossi : That's ridiculous. Everybody knows that...

  Emily Prentiss : No, no. We're not getting into that again. Go ahead, Luke.

  Luke Alvez : Uh... my point is that if you thought the government could do that, then you were likely to believe that they'd brought down the towers on 9/11. Pretty soon you're down that rabbit hole and you see everything as a plot.

  Jennifer Jareau : So maybe these guys weren't into anything. Maybe they just talked themselves into a group delusion.

  Emily Prentiss : Okay, we should investigate that when we land. And since the police are mentioned so prominently on the text, they might know what the victims were looking into.

  Matt Simmons : Chicago Mob, right? Killed JFK.

  David Rossi : He gets it!

  Emily Prentiss : No, don't get him started, Matt. Next he'll be showing you YouTube clips.

• Penelope Garcia : So let's talk about weird science. There are certain types of coral that, when they come into contact with bleach, release something called a palytoxin. So the coral, it, like, emits this aerosol, and then that aerosol causes the throat and the lungs to close and the eyes and the skin to burn.

  Jennifer Jareau : Well, that's the mystery chemical weapon the M.E. couldn't place.

  David Rossi : So let's play this out. He pours in the bleach, coral spits out its toxin, and mother nature does the rest.

  Jennifer Jareau : It's not murder. It's an accident.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : It all started with Carl's text. "I'm close to finding out who it is." He was talking about Melissa, as in "I'm close to finding out who she's cheating with."

  Jennifer Jareau : She was cheating with Doug?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Yes. And when she found out Carl was onto her, she killed him.

  David Rossi : Whoa. Slow down there, partner.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Think about it. It's the oldest motivation in the book: sex. Melissa is cunning and manipulative, and she is a psychopath, and a good one. I mean, she sat there while I laid out this entire case, she did not tip a thing. Now, Doug's prints were on the gun because of the suicide, but with Carl, Melissa could have used gloves, and...

  [seeing them all looking at her] 

  Dr. Tara Lewis : What? Why is everybody staring at me?

  Jennifer Jareau : Tara, I want to believe that. An arrest would relieve a lot of tension on this case, but...

  Luke Alvez : But we don't have the evidence, and without the evidence, we're no better than the truthers.

• David Rossi : Anything?

  Matt Simmons : Melissa's house was spotless. Zero evidence of her involvement.

  Emily Prentiss : How are you guys doing?

  [seeing the murder board] 

  Emily Prentiss : Yikes.

  Jennifer Jareau : Yeah, every time we try to reason it out, we keep hitting different walls.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : [showing Melissa the recovered bullet and shell casing]  You know what that is, Melissa? That is a magic bullet.

  David Rossi : [branding a pair of handcuffs]  Stand up. Melissa Miller, you are under arrest for the murder of Carl Lee. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney.

• David Rossi : [Wants to talk to Emily in private]  Look everybody, give us a second. You too, Garcia