"Blood makes you related, Loyalty makes you family"
-Unknown-
"Maya! Maya!" Garcia calls out as her and Emily catch up with her. "Hey" Maya greets as they start walking to the round table office to get caught up on the recent case. "Do you salsa dance?" Garcia asks and Maya groans, rolling her eyes.
"I told you. I don't salsa dance. You've asked me for the last 23 days" Maya states as she opens the door, letting Emily and Garcia walk in before her.
They enter the office and see JJ chug a 5-hour energy. "Oh, you're not playing around" Emily jokes before the girls take a seat. "Will's away all week, so I am pulling a double duty with Henry" JJ says as Maya shakes her head in disgust. "That's why kids are overrated" Maya declares.
"Please tell me we are still on for Saturday night because I've had it circled in my calendar for the last 23 and 1/2 days, which apparently, from the look of you, you did not" Garcia states as JJ looks tired, yet guilty. "I'll get a sitter" JJ cheers and Maya shakes her head as she relaxes in her seat while the rest of the team enters the room.
The team discover that two prostitutes have been murdered recently in Atlanta. The weird part? No rapes and the bodies were clothed when dumped. So, he's angry at the women but isn't disgusted by their gender. Why could this be?
_____
On the plane they discover both bodies had exactly 250 dollars on them. "Why wouldn't he take that?" Emily wonders. "It's a lot to pass up. Money must not be on his mind" Rossi states.
"Well, dumping the body is" Maya informs as she looks at the crime scene photos, stating that the bodies were dumped on opposite sides of town in relatively nice parks.
"Hey, guys, I hate to be the messenger of sad things, but yet another body has been discovered by some joggers at yet another park. He names Rebecca Moore and get this- a missing person's report was filed on her" Garcia informs. "How king was she missing?" JJ asks. "36 hours" Garcia informs and states that Rebecca's friend Allyson Parker filed the report. Hotch then orders, once the team hits the ground, that they spilt up.
At the latest dump site Derek, Maya and Reid chat about the killer's habits. They think it's strange that a killer would drive all the way out of the city to dump the body. The alternate theory? He's picking them up in the city, killing them outside, then dumping them near the kill site but they were told that the parks the bodies were dumped at were fifty miles apart, which is roughly the distance of one end of the greater Atlanta area to the other. Maybe this third dump site will be between the two, thus helping narrow down the geographical profile.
_____
"So, no salsa?" Derek asks as he spins his chair in Maya's direction. "Unless there will be tons of alcohol, you won't catch me dancing at all" Maya declares as she sets her pen down on the table.
"Come on, everyone's got some sort of rhythm... even if it's not good" Derek jokes and Maya gently kicks Derek leg jokingly before Hotch enters the room, wondering where Reid's at geographically.
"Now that we have 3 victims, there's a pattern. It looks like his area of control is near Ridgecrest" Reid explains. "That's a bedroom community, mostly white collar" The other detective on the case states. "It gives him easy access to his hunting grounds and disposal sites" Hotch declares.
"His vehicle could blend into both places" Derek adds as JJ and Emily enter the room. "Allyson remembered seeing a van parked on the street the night Rebecca disappeared" Emily informs.
"And she'd seen it before. But get this- it was parked in a loading zone for hours" JJ adds and Maya raises her eyebrows in concern.
"We can check any recent tickets that have been given out" The other agent states. "I'm sure Garcia is already on that" Maya sighs. "Yeah, she did, and she found nothing" Emily states.
"It's not a residential area, so a vendor maybe. Garcia's pulling permits now" JJ says but this guy has done this before and has left money, the same amount of money, at each body.
The money the unsub left was an investment he didn't have to make because he has every chance and opportunity to take the money instead but... doesn't and buries it with them. "Could be a major guilt" Maya states.
"But-but everything that happened postmortem like keeping them dressed, crossing their arms, giving them peace it's almost... nurturing" Maya adds, knowing something isn't right.
"Yeah, but the kills are the exact opposite. They're incredibly violent and angry" JJ catches on. "Multiple personalities?" Emily wonders. "I'm thinking multiple unsubs" Maya concludes.
______
The next day, the team discovers another body. "Her name was Julie Harmon. Lives in a loft downtown. Envelope of cash was in her bag, wrapped in plastic" The detective informs. "That's new" Maya says as she looks down at the body that has her arms crossed, resting in peace. "It's like she's prepped for a burial" Maya mumbles.
"This woman doesn't fit his victimology either. Look at her nails, the way she's dressed. Her shoes haven't even hit the pavement" Derek declares, pointing out different things that the team didn't see with the other victims. The detective then assumes that she's some kind of high-class call girl who fought back and got the punishment for it.
Derek suggests that the more they find out about this victim, the faster they'll understand the unsubs and find the killers.
The team then gives the profile to the assembled team, assuming it's a dominant/submissive team of white males. They then offer the idea that in those kinds of teams invariably involve a submissive who procures victims and disposes of their corpses, with the dominant just doing the killing.
_____
Later, the team finds out about the 'insurance' aspect. The latest victim was a licensed sexual surrogate, but Garcia wasn't able to find a list of clients, at least not electronically.
The 'therapy' aspect gives the team all the clue they need. Julie Harmon would only have gone to see someone actually disabled, so that plus the leg bruises and easy parking probably means a wheelchair.
And who would snag whores for a wheelchair guy and get rid of the bodies?
Their basis for this is that while a regular submissive would grab victims, only a close relation would attempt to get the killer 'help' in the form of therapy.
"You think this press conference is going to work?" Maya asks as she walks up besides Derek, watching JJ on the tv. The team decided that by having a press conference they can get the unsubs to somehow turn on each other and possibly get the less submissive one to come in confess considering how gullible they think he or she is.
"I don't know. It depends on how loyal the partner is to the dominant one" Derek declares. "But what if there relationship is stronger than we think. They may not trust each other but they'll always have each other's back" Maya rants and Derek turns his attention to Maya.
"We just have to hope that the less submissive unsub wants to help" Derek replies.
The team continues puzzling their way through the profile. It's only women who take really good care of corpses, but a man's strength would be required to hoist the bodies around. Could it be parents? One thing's for certain, they must have covered for him before because they obviously wouldn't just start getting rid of bodies for a wheelchair-bound son. Obviously they would have had to have done it for an able-bodied son first to get them into the habit.
Then the team gets a lucky break in the form of Garcia finding a case five years earlier that matches the details of this one exactly. Knowing that the killer was in a wheelchair even then, they look for handicapped students at the college where the dead coed went. Extrapolating that the parents would likely have pulled him out of school soon after in order to protect him, they get one name, Jeffery Collins.
_______
The team starts to rush over to the house, where the killer and his date are just finishing watching a movie. Then, in a preposterous series of contrivances, she goes into his bedroom to get his pills, and manages to knock them onto the floor next to a bloody piece of jewelry the clean-up crew missed. Things all come to a head at once. As the mother menaces the date with a gun.
"Guys, there was a car accident. It's Jeffery Collins father" Maya informs and the team turns their SUV's around and head straight to the scene. "Donald Collins was behind the wheel. Died on impact" The detective informs as the team walks over to the car crash.
"What's that?" Maya asks, looking at the paper in the detective's hand. "Found this in his coat pocket" she says as she hands Maya the paper that's in an evidence bag. Maya begins to read the letter and scoffs in shock.
"He confessed to all 4 murders" Maya says as she hands the letter over to Emily. "Even in death, he's still covering for his son" Emily states.
The team says that Donald commuted suicide based on the information Reid has gathered. They start to think he wanted to replicate the accident that caused his son to become paraplegic but if he wanted to do that, his wife and son would've been in the car, and they weren't.
So where are they?
Maya kicks down the door of the Collins residence, seeing the mother holding a gun to a young girl while her son watches from the side. "FBI!" Derek shouts as him and Maya enter first. "Put the gun down" Maya orders, gripping her gun in her hand as she watched the scene unfold before her eyes.
"Get the hell out of my house!" Ms. Collins screams. "Put the gun down first" Maya orders but it seems as if Ms. Collins isn't up for any negotiation. "Get my dad. He'll tell you she's crazy" Jeffery declares before JJ informs him on the tragic news, "Your father was killed in a car accident".
"Did he tell you what he did?" The mother asks. "He killed all those girls, that sick son of a bitch" Ms. Collins states. "With the help of you, right?" Maya asks and the women starts to choke over her words.
"This is over. You lost. Jeffery is going with us because we know what he did, and we know what you did, and your husband did" Maya states as she takes a step towards Jeffery.
"Don't move! He's not going anywhere!" The mother cries out. "Your husband just killed himself because he couldn't be a part of this anymore" Maya says, looking between Ms. Collins and her son Jeffery.
"He's a drunk. He couldn't stand the guilt. Look what he did to my son!" She yells, pressing the gun closer to the young girl's head.
"You did this. She's lying" Jeffery declares, making his mother more and more devastated. "You need to let him take responsibility" Rossi adds. "You think you're gonna come in here, and you're just gonna take my son, and you're gonna lock him up like some animal!" Linda Collins screams.
"Put the damn gun down, now" Maya demands, getting tired of asking. Maya watches as she looks to her son in disappointment. She failed him and she knew she did. "I always told you... that mommy would take care of everything" Linda states before she points her gun at Jeffery, to keep him from having to go to jail, but Rossi manages to shoot her to keep that from happening.
The young girl rushes to the corner and Maya quickly puts her gun away and rushes to the girl. "Hey, hey. It's okay" Maya says softly as she helps the girl to her feet, letting JJ walk her out the house.
Maya looks over to Derek who checks the mothers' pulse, she's gone. Rossi handcuffs Jeffery and wheels him out of his home where his family fell apart.
Case closed...
______
Maya walks over to Derek who seems to have fallen asleep with his headphones on. She takes a seat across from him and looks out the window of the jet as it flies through the clouds. She looks back over to Derek as she leans her head back. A slight smile spreads across her face before she shuts her eyes herself. Letting her dreams take over.
"Motherhood: All love begins and ends there"
-Robert Browning-