REPLACEMENT; criminal minds (1)

𝙏𝙃𝙄𝙍𝙏𝙔-𝙁𝙊𝙐𝙍

"Maya" Hotch calls out, startling Maya before she removed herself out of her trance. "You with us?" Derek asks and Maya clears her throat before adjusting herself in her seat.

"Yeah, yeah" Maya says, looking down at the open case file in her hand as the team continues to talk about the possibilities.

"His wife cheated, and he retaliated in anger. The might not be a surprise, but that doesn't explain why he would harm his own children" Derek states and Maya scoffs jokingly at his theory.

_____

On the drive over to the father's house, the team continues their guesswork. The wife's lover had an alibi, so he's not a valid suspect. The team then wonders whether the father could have lashed out at the daughter who was leaving for college soon, basically just marking time until they start finding evidence.

"Maybe he thought her leaving was a form of betrayal" Reid says as he sits in the back seat of the SUV while Derek drives and Maya is in the passenger.

"There is another possibility. Maybe Bruce Morrison didn't do it" Derek suggests, "That will be shocking" Maya mumbles as she continues to stare out the window of the car, knowing all the answers are in the house.

_____

The team splits up, Hotch and Rossi speak to the father while the rest of the team goes through the two daughter's bedroom. Maya flips through one of the girls' diaries and doesn't find anything written down after the mother died which she found oddly suspicious.

When Maya's mom died, she would always write things down in her notebook weather it was one word or a thousand of them.

"There's nothing in the diary since her mom disappeared" Maya declares, "Look" Derek calls out as he walks over to Maya with a laptop in his hand showing some of the daughters writing assignments that she wrote on her computer.

"She only wrote when she was assigned too. Never on her own" Maya states. "Her dad is a writer and English professor; she could've been trying to get his attention" Derek declares while Maya looks around the room.

"What?" Derek asks and Maya stammers over her words as she walks around the room not seeing anything out of place or dirty. "When you were in high-school, how clean was your room?" Maya asks and Derek scoffs, "Like never" Derek answers and Maya nods her head in agreement.

"Mine either and I was in foster care for most of it" Maya states as she motions around the oddly clean bedroom.

"Hm, trash is empty, and the bed is perfectly made" Derek realizes and Maya nods her head. "Almost like someone cleaned up the room to hide evidence" Maya says, crossing her arms over her chest.

Later, Maya and Derek check the other rooms in the house and call around for some information. Bruce owns both a shotgun and a used pistol but doesn't know where either of them are. After the wife went missing, forensic investigators supposedly checked the shotgun to see if it had been used recently and came away with the determination that it hadn't been fired in years.

"If he used the pistol and he doesn't know where it is now, that could explain why he threw his clothes in the wash this morning" Maya states as she adjusts the surgical gloves on her hands.

"So, the clothes would be compromised. He did sleep in here, though" Derek says, referring to the room both him and Maya are standing in now. "We should have the sheets tested for gunshot residue" Maya says dryly before turning her attention around the rest of the room.