Criminal Minds (TV Series)

False Flag (2017)

Paget Brewster: Emily Prentiss

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Quotes 

• Melissa Miller : We're veering dangerously close to "bull crap" territory.

  Emily Prentiss : We could call it murder. If the profile was Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, we could arrest the piece of coral, I guess. Or we could just accept that life is...

  Melissa Miller : Messy, random. Yeah.

  Emily Prentiss : Until it's not.

  Melissa Miller : What does that mean?

  Emily Prentiss : Well, that seemingly unimportant book, there was one additional detail Bob Orci told us about that I forgot to mention. No, I... I didn't forget. I was holding back for dramatic effect.

• 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.

• Emily Prentiss : What's your name?

  [pulling her badge out] 

  Emily Prentiss : I'm Emily. Emily Prentiss. It says right here. The reason I'm asking is so we can have a conversation.

  Doug Downey : Doug. I'm Doug.

  Emily Prentiss : Great, Doug. Let's just take a second. Let's think through the logic of this.

  Doug Downey : I... I didn't do any of this!

  Emily Prentiss : We're not saying you did, but you are making things worse with that gun.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : The reason we asked you here, the only reason, is to listen. That's all. Okay? So just listen.

  Emily Prentiss : Listen. Put the gun down.

  Doug Downey : [seeing something]  I know a false flag when I see one. You bitch!

  Emily Prentiss : No!

  [Doug puts the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger] 

• Emily Prentiss : You want to talk about it?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No.

  Emily Prentiss : It's okay to tap out if you want.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No. Emily, I can do this.

  Emily Prentiss : Has she said anything that points to her involvement in the murders? Have you gotten any answers out of her?

  [Tara shakes her head no] 

  Emily Prentiss : Maybe it's time to change up the strategy.

• Melissa Miller : What's going on? Who are you?

  Emily Prentiss : I'm SSA Emily Prentiss of the BAU. Melissa, you're gonna want to take a seat.

  Melissa Miller : Oh, god. Someone died, didn't they?

  Emily Prentiss : What makes you say that?

  Melissa Miller : You guys have had me waiting in here for hours while your team tracked down Bob Orci. What happened?

  Emily Prentiss : Are you recording this? You should.

  [Melissa turns her recorder on] 

  Emily Prentiss : Agents Simmons and Alvez landed at Bob Orci's at 3:37 a.m. They were very surprised by what they found.

  [the scene flashes back to the previous scene] 

  Luke Alvez : FBI!

  Matt Simmons : Oh, my god.

  Emily Prentiss : Hey, guys, meet Bob Orci. Weapons down, please.

• Melissa Miller : Wait. So you got there before them. How?

  Emily Prentiss : By helicopter. Not the Bureau's helicopter. This one belongs to the police force.

  Melissa Miller : What?

  Emily Prentiss : There's been a push. Police forces across the country have been purchasing military-grade hardware.

  Melissa Miller : Yeah. Like grenade launchers and tanks.

  Emily Prentiss : Roswell doesn't need a tank. It needs a helicopter. People get lost in the desert. Sometimes an FBI agent like me needs to get to a cabin in the middle of nowhere as fast as possible. Based on your warning the sheriff and I landed a mile away and we came up with a plan.

• Melissa Miller : Organic tomatoes.

  Emily Prentiss : Yeah.

  Melissa Miller : "ANFO" stands for ammonium nitrate fuel oil. *Fuel* oil. You can't grow anything with it.

  Emily Prentiss : We pointed that out to Bob. He said that must be why his tomatoes kept dying. We searched the whole compound anyway. There was no bomb. But Bob Orci had quite the story to tell.

• Bob Orci : It's all an act. I'm no hermit. Yeah, I... I tell these truthers that I'm some kind of holy fool and they buy all my stuff.

  Emily Prentiss : By "stuff", you mean your books?

  Bob Orci : No, the books are a loss-leader. But the vitamin supplements, oh, my god, I've made so much money off the vitamin supplements.

  Emily Prentiss : So, "Catcher in the Rye" is just the latest in a long line of crap.

  Bob Orci : Well, the book itself isn't. And J.D. Salinger is a genius. Didn't you read my commentary, read my notes, annotations?

  Emily Prentiss : I tried. You lost me when you tried to connect Holden Caulfield to the Bilderberg Group.

  Bob Orci : There is no connection. All you gotta do to fool these morons is ask a question that starts with "Isn't it interesting?". Like-like... like, isn't it interesting that Holden Caulfield and Bilderberg Group both have fifteen letters. Yeah. And then you tag that with "Wow! Wake up, Sheeple", you just sold a thousand copies.

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : We think the killer might have bought one of your commentaries. Who'd you sell to in Roswell?

  Bob Orci : The book group is... is reading "Catcher in the Rye" next month, so all I was trying to do was capitalize on that. And only one guy seemed to show any interest.

• Melissa Miller : So it was Carl's copy. Doug didn't bring it with him? Why would Doug put page 76 over Carl's throat?

  Emily Prentiss : He didn't. Only Carl's fingerprints and DNA were on that page. Doug never touched it.

  Melissa Miller : You've lost me.

  Emily Prentiss : Ever been shot before? People do weird things when they're shot. Carl was slipping into shock, meaning he had some vague awareness that he was gonna die and his brain was short-circuiting.

  Melissa Miller : So that clue that seemed so important four hours ago, it means nothing.

  Emily Prentiss : Life is messy. Random. That's why I sent Agent Jareau back to the first crime scene. We needed to take a look at it again without any preconceptions. And when she saw the cleaning supplies, she had an idea. Specifically, what happens when you're not careful how you clean your aquarium. So she had Garcia do some research.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : Melissa thinks that Sandy Hook was staged. I was there that day, and I counseled those parents, and I saw... I saw those kids. So the day that I lose to someone like her... that's the day that I quit.

  Emily Prentiss : It's biased thinking, and if we allow it color our profile and the arrest falls apart, we'll be a stain on the Bureau.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Okay, so, what, we just... we just back off on Melissa?

  Emily Prentiss : No. We back up our profile. You have a theory, Tara. Now prove your results.

• Emily Prentiss : We have to make an arrest or release all the truthers from custody. Give me the version that makes the most sense.

  Jennifer Jareau : Okay, well, Doug was holding the gun that killed Carl, but there is nothing behaviorally that points to him being a killer.

  Luke Alvez : And Melissa's the undiagnosed psychopath, and Carl was figuring out that she was cheating. And as his girlfriend, she would know where he hid his guns, and so we... we're thinking this.

  [he continues in voiceover with flashbacks under] 

  Luke Alvez : Carl and Melissa were fighting. Psychopaths aren't known for their small egos or impulse control, and so Melissa got angry and she waits for Carl to turn his back, and then bang. So she cleans up as best as she could, but now she has to hide what she did. So we asked the truthers to listen to our profile, and she thought "Aha! I'll turn this to my advantage. I'll frame my boyfriend, who is the most likely suspect if they put this together." So she slips the gun into Doug's pocket. And Doug walks through without incident because the metal detector is broken. He doesn't notice the gun in his pocket until midway through our profile, and then he panics.

  Doug Downey : What did you put in my pocket?

  Matt Simmons : Gun! Drop it!

  Luke Alvez : He assumes, like all truthers, that no one in the government is gonna believe him, so his last words aren't to us, but to Melissa.

  Doug Downey : I know a false flag when I see one. You bitch!

  [return to real time] 

  Emily Prentiss : That's the version that makes the most sense. Even if I buy it, a D.A. won't. We need more, guys.

  Matt Simmons : Well, the only thing that's left is the bullet and the casing. But she could have dumped that anywhere.

• 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.

• Emily Prentiss : The answer's no.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I think we should consider it.

  Emily Prentiss : No. She will control the audio. She can twist your words, edit them to make the Bureau look bad.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : We already look bad. The brass is gonna want to know how and why Doug killed himself in front of us.

  Emily Prentiss : Yeah, and that's my ass, but I'm not making this situation worse than it already is.

• Luke Alvez : Garcia, have we confirmed that this truther's even legit?

  Penelope Garcia : Of course I've confirmed that, and she is. Melissa Miller has a pretty popular truther podcast, especially around Roswell. She promotes all kinds of conspiracies, but her cause celebre is staged shootings.

  Matt Simmons : So she thinks the reason we have gun violence, it's been faked by the government as a pretext to revoke the Second Amendment. Nice.

  Emily Prentiss : It's another reason not to do this.

  Jennifer Jareau : Or it's the exact reason to do this. What was tonight, other than a staged shooting, and why is she the only one willing to cooperate?

  Luke Alvez : Unsubs like to insert themselves into the investigation. Profile skews male, but she could be a partner.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Okay, then if she isn't involved, I can get her to talk. I'm a forensic psychologist. I'm trained to outwit and outsmart clinical psychopaths far more dangerous than her.

  Emily Prentiss : But if we're wrong, she's going to post her podcast. Then what? Then we're the next example of fake news.

• 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.

• Matt Simmons : So, we went through Carl's meticulous log of his hardware, and the missing gun that should be here is a Bodyguard 380. Now, if the unsub found this in a secret compartment, then he knows Carl, probably very well. And based on the fortress that Carl lived in, it'd probably be another truther. No one else could get that close.

  Jennifer Jareau : And that would explain why there was no forced entry at Bryan's, either.

  Luke Alvez : So when Carl said "I'm close to finding out who it is", he wasn't talking about some secret cabal, he was talking about a friend.

  Emily Prentiss : Someone he was willing to call the cops on. We should bring all the truthers in for questioning.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No. No, that won't work. They won't cooperate under coercion. Look, I say we lay all our cards out on the table. Let's deliver our profile to them.

  Emily Prentiss : Oh, that's risky.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : But worth it. Either one of the truthers points us to the unsub... or he shows up himself.

• Emily Prentiss : So this is the metal detector you had at the legion hall?

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : Mm-hmm.

  Emily Prentiss : And you made all the truthers walk through it.

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : Yep.

  Emily Prentiss : And then after that, you brought it back here to the police station, you haven't touched it since?

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : Mm-mm.

  Emily Prentiss : Sheriff, why didn't you tell us you were gonna do that?

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : You told us you didn't want to spook the truthers. You also told us the killer might show up, so this was for our protection. Can you tell me I was wrong?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No, Sheriff, you weren't wrong, but it does beg the bigger question: how the hell did Doug get a gun through that thing?

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : I was hoping you could answer that. You all being the geniuses with this investigation.

• Jennifer Jareau : No, that's not right.

  Luke Alvez : What do you mean it's not right? It's right here.

  [as they pass through the metal detector, Emily and Tara notice it doesn't go off] 

  Jennifer Jareau : No, that's not what I saw.

  Emily Prentiss : Did that just...?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Yeah. Yeah, it did.

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : What is it?

  [Tara walks through the metal detector, which doesn't beep] 

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : How in the world could that happen?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I think I might know.

• Melissa Miller : Where's Dr. Lewis?

  Jennifer Jareau : I'm SSA Jareau. I'm here to talk to you about your favorite book, "Catcher in the Rye".

  Melissa Miller : I get it. You're rotating agents now, wearing me down so I can't see your lies. Is that the game?

  Jennifer Jareau : Well, I just had some information Agent Lewis didn't, but if you don't want to hear it...

  Melissa Miller : [stopping her as she turns to leave]  Oh, no. I want to hear.

  Jennifer Jareau : [sitting down]  So after we found such a prominent clue on Carl, we wanted to study the original text, so we got a copy of the book. Apparently, "Catcher in the Rye" is the local book club selection this month. And did you know that there are two actual...

  Luke Alvez : [the scene dissolves into a flashback at the metal detector]  ... brick and mortar bookstores in Roswell? But one of the owners was happy to give me a copy. What page is it?

  Jennifer Jareau : Uh, 76. That's what was on Carl.

  Luke Alvez : Okay, here it is. It, uh, it starts mid-sentence. "Don't see how he could like a phony book like that and still like the one by Ring Lardner."

  Jennifer Jareau : No, that's not right.

  Luke Alvez : What... what do you mean that's not right? I have it right here.

  Jennifer Jareau : That's not what I saw.

  Emily Prentiss : Did that just...?

  Jennifer Jareau : Yeah, see, this... this page 76 is different. The page on Carl's throat was annotated. The publisher bolded terms and phrases for emphasis.

  Luke Alvez : Well, that would throw the whole layout of the book off. I mean, your page 76 wouldn't look like this one.

  Jennifer Jareau : Okay, so there are two editions of the book. That's common. But maybe it's not the page that's important. Maybe it's the edition.

• Penelope Garcia : The devil's in the pitchforky little details, my friends. I-I matched the formatting of the text on poor doomed Carl to a local publisher. He goes by the name of Bob Orci. He writes conspiracy-related commentary for books like "Behold a Pale Horse", "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", "Mein Kampf".

  Jennifer Jareau : Books the truthers love.

  Emily Prentiss : Right now, we need as much evidence as possible to prove that Doug is our unsub. If he bought the book we found on Carl, it strengthens our case. Luke, you and Matt bring in this publisher.

  Luke Alvez : I'm on it. Garcia, can you help me out with an address?

  Penelope Garcia : Yeah, I'm... I'm working on the physical address of Mr. Orci as we speak. The thing is he lives so far out there that it's not a place where there are street numbers on the houses, so the closest thing to a physical address I can get you is...

  Melissa Miller : [the scene dissolves to the interrogation room]  Route 3, Greenwood Way?

  Jennifer Jareau : You know him?

  Melissa Miller : By reputation. He's not a truther. He's an anarchist. He's dangerous.

  Jennifer Jareau : How dangerous?

  Melissa Miller : He has fertilizer lining his place as an explosive.

  Jennifer Jareau : [jumping out of her chair and opening the door]  Prentiss!

  Melissa Miller : Wait. That far out in the desert, there's no cell service. You're not gonna reach them by phone.

• Bob Orci : Carl Lee. His name was Carl Lee. And the reason that sticks out is because he asked me to write a dedication on the inside cover of the book. It's something I add for an extra twenty bucks. You know? And sometimes I use the wild man font and the truthers all go "Oh, wow, look. He actually wrote stuff in my book."

  Emily Prentiss : [dialing her phone]  Tara, we have something.

  [cut to Tara at Carl's apartment] 

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Found it, Emily.

  Emily Prentiss : What does it say?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : "To my darling Melissa. Love always, Carl."

• Melissa Miller : We were dating. That's not a crime.

  Emily Prentiss : So why hide it?

  Melissa Miller : The truther community is small, and we're gossipy. Also, we're already convinced agents like you are watching us. So Carl and I covered our tracks. So well, in fact, that the great and powerful Garcia is not going to find them.

  Emily Prentiss : I believe you. Which is why we had to rely on old-fashioned profiling to figure out this next part. And it started with a question you asked first. Why would Doug kill himself for no reason? So, we reconstructed Doug's suicide to see what we missed.

  [dissolve to the legion hall] 

  Dr. Tara Lewis : So you were there and I was here.

  Emily Prentiss : Right.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : And then he was screaming at you, "I know a false flag when I see one, bitch", and then bang.

  Emily Prentiss : No, that's not right. He said all those things, but not to me. He was looking at you.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No. No, if someone made eye contact with me and called me a bitch, I'd remember.

  Matt Simmons : Maybe he wasn't looking at either of you. He was looking between you.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Uh... JJ, you were posted up over there for line of sight.

  Jennifer Jareau : Yeah.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Okay, there's only one other woman in the room he would have been talking to.

• 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.