January 2009 Gamma

On January 26, 2009, Chaz Villette made a "locked/work" LiveJournal posting stating "Stakeout boring. Send fun." On February 1, in a separate LiveJournal discussion, Hafidha Gates commented that "Hey, I'm a workhorse, pumpkin. I get restless nowadays if I'm out of harness too long. :+3" The latter comment implies that Hafidha may have been on administrative leave after having to shoot somebody.

In episode 2x07 "Smoke & Mirrors," we learned that there were in fact two cases in January 2009:
 * And even the two in January hadn't shaken that. Hope Mitchell's death wasn't on them, and neither were the deaths of the BAU agents and EMTs she'd killed, though Daphne was taking it hard. And the thing in Portland had been a mess, but it hadn't been their mess, and Hafidha and Falkner had handled the cleanup damned well.

We know from the DVD extra "Water Flowing Underground" that Falkner was on administrative leave at some point in February 2009 (although we don't know exactly when), and we know from "Smoke & Mirrors" that both Hafidha and Falkner were on duty at the beginning of that case. Further, Stephen Reyes was severely injured by Mitchell (the gamma in episode 2x06 "Cuckoo") and "missed one adventure" before the "Smoke & Mirrors" case. From this, we can conclude that the late January adventure in Portland was one where Hafidha (and possibly Falkner) ended up having to shoot a non-gamma UNSUB.

The non-gammaness of the January 2009 "gamma", and the ambiguity of "Portland" (Maine? Oregon? Dorset? other?) as a place name, are further examples of the tricksiness of the Powers That Be.