"Some memories never fade"
-TheRandomVibez-

"Guess who's back" Garcia starts off as she briefs the team on the new case. But is it really new? "The Marin Headlands last night. David Atley and Nicole Puli, both 24, both grad students at Berkeley, shot multiple times in their vehicle- wait for it" Garcia stops before she shows the image on the car windshield. It's blood. It's a symbol. A symbol the BAU knew all too well.

"The zodiac?" Maya questions with such shock in her voice. She never actually worked on the case, but she could tell it had an impact on the team. "No way" Rossi states.

"Come on, it's got to be the 2.0 version" JJ says and Maya nods her head in agreement since they haven't seen or heard of the zodiac in several years.

"You would think so, except for the crazy similarities in the M.O." Garcia adds and Maya looks down at the file and starts reading through it while Garcia explains. "I'm talking same victimology, same geography. And two souvenirs were left at the crime scene" Garcia says as she reveals the souvenir on the screen. It's a photo.

"Local police say that it's Marcia Miller. She was found near Napa in 1971. Strongly suspected that she was a victim of the zodiac, but police never confirmed it, and they didn't publicize the case" Garcia rants proving everyone that this is most likely the Zodiac Killer.

"So, the Zodiac took this photo at the killing and saved it all these years? Why wait so long?" Maya questions. "The Zodiac's last confirmed victim was the cabdriver, Paul Stine. He mailed pieces of Stines bloody shirt along with his letters to prove it was him. This photo could prove he's back" Rossi explains and Maya notices the worried look on Garcia's face.

"You just mentioned the bloody shirt?" Garcia asks to which Rossi nods his head. "This is the second souvenir that was left at the crime scene" Garcia says as she shows the photo of the bloody shirt on the screen and the blood was tested to be O-Negative which is the same blood type as the cabdriver.

"How old would Zodiac be by now?" JJ wonders. "The murders took place in the late sixties. But he was suspected of other crimes and sent all types of things like letters and codes to newspapers until 1974" Maya answers as she reads through the file in her hand.

"Well, at the very least the Zodiac would have to be about 60 by now" Derek says and it would make sense because it doesn't take a-lot of strength to pull a trigger... but a lot of skill not to get caught for 40 years.

______

On the plane ride the team goes over the Zodiac's M.O., and how strange it is that it hasn't changed in 40 years. Garcia then goes onto name the only two copycats of the Zodiac Killer, Heriberto Seda and Saito Sakakibara.

"The fact is, the Zodiac was driven by a need for notoriety and control" Rossi states. "He enjoyed the terror he spread through the city" Hotch adds as Maya sits up against one of the tables as she looks around at the team.

"But he stopped. After he sent his last letter in '74, he just vanished" Maya says. "Most likely wound up in a prison or a mental hospital" Rossi says, and Maya clears her throat as she hears the words 'Mental Hospital'.

"He could've... been just released and picked up where he left off" Derek trails off as he watches Maya expression fade from normal to worried. Why?

______

Hotch, Emily, Reid and JJ head out to the crime scene and look over the uncannily similar evidence, but Reid immediately announces that it can't be the actual Zodiac. Why? He just gets feelings sometimes. The four of them continue to look at the crime scene and learn more about the unsub. Reid then asks for a printout of the newspaper's online comments section but won't explain why.

Derek, Maya and Rossi head over to see a cop who worked on the case. "He hasn't had a visitor in ages" The wife of the used to be cop says as Maya and the two men follow her to her husband's room. "Bob?" The wife calls out as she bends down slightly to her bed rested husband.

"Hello, Detective. We're Agents Rossi, Morgan and Regan" Rossi introduces but the man just stays lying in his bed.

"He has Parkinson's. This is one of the bad days" The wife informs, and Derek figures she could help. "This is about the Zodiac, isn't it?" She asks and Maya sighs before nodding her head. "But- Did Bob ever talk about his work?" Rossi wonders and gets informed that that's all Bob used to talk about. Work was his life.

Turns out, Bob has some old boxes from the case of the Zodiac Killer. "Could we take a look?" Maya asks and the women states she doesn't mind. Maya looks on the wall and notices all the pictures taped onto it. All the pictures go with the case of the Zodiac, and it seems Bob has been looking for him for years but is unsuccessful.

"Are you okay?" Derek asks as he walks up beside Maya who observes the photos. "I'm fine" Maya answers before looking over at Derek with a slightly confused look. "It's just towards the end of the plane ride, you weren't focused. You got down after we talked about mental hospitals" Derek says and Maya tenses at his last words and looks back at the pictures plastered on the wall.

"You did it again" Derek analyzes and Maya shakes her head, "I have no idea what you're talking about" Maya says softly before they start to look through the boxes Bob has stored in his room.

While going through his stuff, they find more pictures from the same set as the one left in the car. So that's the last piece of copycat proof they need to prove their theory. Sadly, the cop has Parkinsons, and can barely communicate - so he can't help with any theories about who might have taken the missing photo.

The guy's wife says that plenty of people came by in the past to discuss the case, and Rossi asks her to make a list.

______

At the office, the team gets some bad news - no one was following either of the victims, the shirt doesn't match the original, and the detective's wife could hardly remember any visitors. Can't these guys catch a break? They can, it seems, when Reid finds a message on the newspaper's website using the same characters that the Zodiac did for his cipher.

The message says that something will happen related to President Garfield at 98 minutes 'past the horizon' in Magic City. Apparently Magic City can only refer to Birmingham, Alabama, so they calculate based on Birmingham's sunset of 6:22 that something will happen at 8PM in Golden Gate park - where there's a statue of Garfield.

So, the team rushes to the park to stake it out, hoping that the killer will go for the bait couple on a bench by the statue. "No one at the south entrance yet" One of the detectives say over the radio.

Maya leans towards her mic, "Copy that" Maya says softly as she looks around at her surroundings before looking to the couple, they planted on one of the benches.

They're alarmed when an SUV drives up, and they rush to confront the driver who walks towards the fake line couple. "FBI, drop the note" Maya orders as she cocks her gun back.

The man stops in his tracks when he sees the couple raise to their feet with a gun in their hand. Suddenly, the rest of the team surrounds him, giving him nowhere to run or hide.

"I'm just the messenger" The man declares making Maya knit her eyebrows in confusion as one of the cops handcuff him. "I'm supposed to deliver a letter" He states before Maya grabs the letter off the ground.

"Reid, it's for you" Maya says as she looks up to Reid concerned. Reid puts his gun away and grabs the letter from Maya.

Reid proceeds to read the letter that states, 'You're not as smart as you think you are'.

"Who sent it?" Hotch asks but the messenger has no clue. "I just deliver it to the address when I'm supposed to" The messenger states as the team wonders where the unsub is, if he's not at this park. Turns out, the killer was at another park and another couple had already been stabbed to death.

"The courier service said the envelope was left with cash in their drop box" Rossi says as him, Morgan, and Maya arrive at the crime scene where JJ and Hotch are. "The messenger himself had a clean record" Maya adds as she crosses her arms over her chest looking down at the crime scene in front of her.

"This was some kind of targeted messaged for an individual. Very different M.O." Rossi declares. "What individual? Because the unsub sent the letter for Reid" Maya says as the team looks around at each other wondering if Reid could be in any type of danger.

Is the killer living out fantasies that he and the Groom had years ago as a way of maintaining his connection to the guy, or is the Groom the killer? That would be quite an unbelievable twist, since it was the killer who saw Reid on television and decided to taunt him. It's time to give the profile.

Unlike the real Zodiac, whose goal was mass hysteria, the team thinks the copycat message is directed at an individual woman with whom he's obsessed with because the women the unsub has killed so far have been surrogates for her. The profile also adds that to the fact that the women were brunettes to extrapolate that the killer must have a fixation on a particular brown-haired woman.

_____

Emily finds Reid in a cafe, where he's worrying about the fact that he's accomplished nothing of note in his life. Emily reverse-psychologies him into refocusing on the cipher, and Reid discovers that there was, in fact, a secret code in the message.

If you reverse-engineer of the message back into binary, you get a page number of the classified section of the 'China Post', a local bilingual paper. Since you'd have to be a genius to be able to do that kind of ciphering, Hotch has Garcia search for super-smart people in the Bay area by checking school records and MENSA enrollment. After all, the message was for someone, wasn't it?

Then Hotch gets a call from Maya- the killer has struck again. He's shot a cabbie and abducted someone from the cab in broad daylight, leaving no witnesses. How the hell did he manage that?

"The engine was still running. What, was he dropping the unsub off?" Derek asks as him, Maya and Rossi take a look at the cab and inspect it.

"In '69 Zodiac killed the cabdriver from the backseat. But this driver was shot from the outside" Rossi observes. Maya and Derek open the car doors of the cab and look around at the backseat. "You going to tell me why you shut down earlier?" Derek asks before Maya rolls her eyes and spots something on the ground.

"Wow, would you look at this" Maya says as she grabs the item of the ground if the backseat and shows it to Rossi. "It doesn't look that old considering it looks digital quality" Maya says. "There's a void in the blood spatter pattern. It's a blowback shadow" Derek says and Maya quickly looks back to the blood spatter, learning Derek was right.

"Someone else was here" Maya declares. "The only question there is now is... where the hell are they now?" Rossi wonders as Maya and Derek look to each other stressfully.

_____

"All ads have to be placed in person at the 'China Weekly Post'. This ad was placed a week ago by a white male in 20s or early 30s" Emily informs the team. "So, he has this all planned out" Maya says as she reads the paper from China Weekly Post.

"The unsub kidnapped someone from the back of the cab. That could be who the messages were for" Rossi states before Garcia calls about the little boy in the picture found at the recent crime scene.

The little boy, Robbie Shaw, disappeared eleven years ago. There were no suspects in the case.

The team gathers together again after separating to find more details on the case but each person on the team came back with very little to no information and saw Reid going crazy over this case. Reid comes to a conclusion that everything in the case has meaning, so the killer didn't put an ad on page F4 because that's where the China Post puts its classifieds, he chose the China Post for his ad because they put their classifieds on F4.

What could the significance of that co-ordinate be, though?

Reid learns that F4 is a chess square, so the team starts to think the unsub is murdering people based off a chess game. "Specifically, game 6 of Fischer versus Spassky in 1972, one of the greatest chess matches ever played. The murder locations correspond with the final 3 moves of the game" Reid rants and Maya widens her eyes as she looks at the map on the screen that Reid had someone design. Man, that kid is smart.

The chess thing is a good lead, so they ask Garcia to find chess players who are also into the Zodiac killings. They come up with Harvey and Caleb, best friends who were chess prodigies and Zodiac nuts.

JJ grabs her tablet and pulls up the information that Garcia has sent over. JJ opens up a photo and Maya widens her eyes. The Fiancé Marisa Devon looks like the two other female victims.

"They were the surrogates for her" Maya declares as JJ shows the team the photo.

"Caleb could be jealous of his friend" Derek declares. "Or what if he's afraid of losing Harvey?" Emily wonders and Maya points to Emily, understanding her logic. "If he was a child prodigy, he may no longer feel special as an adult. He could be trying to hold onto him" Reid explains, learning that Harvey's engagement must've been the trigger for his behavior lately.

Hotch asks Reid what the next move in the game would have been, had the loser not forfeited. There's only one possible play, which must be the map co-ordinate they need to go to. Luckily the restaurant is a place the killer was known to frequent earlier in life, so there's a paper trail connecting him to it.

______

The team arrives at the restaurant seeing Caleb's car in the parking lot. Morgan, Maya, Reid and Hotch enter the restaurant with their guns raised, looking around at their surroundings. Voices are head and Maya turns her attention to them and learns that they're in the back and seems the best friends are having some sort of disagreement.

"If it's a hostage situation, Caleb's not going to be easily talked down" Hotch declares softly. The team slowly makes their way to the back and listen in on the conversation.

Turns out, Caleb and Harvey murdered Robbie Shaw all those years ago when they were 15 but Harvey lies to his wife saying they didn't. He's still trying to protect himself even if that means his best friend looks crazy.

"So... do you want to kill her or should I?" Caleb asks because apparently that's how the game has to end. "This is not a game!" Harvey shouts angrily.

"If we get rid of her now, we'll be long gone before she's found. And the police won't catch us because the murders were perfect. Just like Robbie Shaw's" Caleb declares until Reid emerges from the shadows with his gun raised, "Not really".

"If they were perfect, I probably wouldn't be here right now" Reid states as Harvey continues to protect himself, saying he had nothing to do with any murders or the kidnapping of his wife. Basically, selling Caleb out all on his own. Reid continues to talk with Caleb and Maya peaks her head from the corner and listens in on the conversation while she holds her gun in her hand.

Caleb learns that Harvey is moving in a couple of months and Reid can tell that triggered Caleb. They were supposed to be the best of friends. Keep each other's secrets even if those secrets were so brutal that they could land them both in prison. Clave reused Harvey with his life, but Harvey couldn't say the same. He was different.

They grew apart and Caleb couldn't handle it, but Harvey could. Harvey wanted nothing to do with him. Caleb was only around so he didn't tell a soul about those murders.

"Robbie's bones are buried in his backyard" Caleb confesses before he drops the gun onto the ground, excepting his fate. Derek and Maya emerge out of the darkness. Derek grabs ahold of Caleb and takes him away while Maya points her gun to Harvey while Reid gets the wife instead.

"Don't think you're off the hook, let's go" Maya orders and Harvey sighs as Maya grabs his arm and starts walking him out.

_____

Back at the BAU office, Reid enters the room with Emily with everyone in the office. "Surprise!" Everyone cheers as Maya says stands there with her arms crossed over her chest. "Happy birthday" Everyone cheers as they walk up to Reid and give him a hug.

"Happy birthday" Maya says as she gives Reid a handshake, she wasn't big on hugs.

Reid blows the candles out on his cake, and everyone claps while Maya pushes the cake towards Reid's face, getting chocolate on his face. "I'm still gonna eat the cake" Maya declares while everyone burst out into laughter.

Later that night, after the party and fun was over. Maya was at her desk gathering her things when Derek was walking towards her, getting ready to leave as well. "You alright?" Derek asks and Maya nods her head as she lifts up her duffel bag and places it on her shoulders. Derek opens his mouth to say something else but he realizes that he shouldn't pry into her life.

"My brother" Maya says, making Derek stop in his tracks. "I got upset about the mental hospital because my brother is one... right now" Maya answers as Derek walk towards her. "I didn't even know you had a brother" Derek says, "Surprise" Maya says awkwardly as she shakes her hands in the air slightly.

"After our moms death, we got switched around multiple foster care homes. They wanted to keep us together. I finally hit 18 and got us our own house. It wasn't much but we loved it" Maya starts off, not even getting into the worst of it.

"As my brother got older, I noticed his behavior changed and not to that typical teenage boy behavior it was... scary" Maya says.

"The only he wanted to talk about was our moms death. He was a little younger at the time so he remembered what he could. But he only remembered the worst parts" Maya says as she looks to Derek who listens with concern.

"I got worried about him so... I sent him to a mental hospital, and they confirmed that he wasn't okay mentally so instead of 72 hours like I promised, I changed his release date" Maya says before letting out a sigh.

"I only visited him once. It's been around 10 years since I've seen him because I don't know what to say. I don't even send him letters" Maya concludes as she starts to feel bad. "Maybe, it's for the best. He's your brother but not everyone can be helped" Derek states as he wraps his arm around Maya's shoulder and starts walking out with her.

Maya didn't move or flinch. She felt comfortable under his touch, so she stayed there and walked with him as well.

"The past is a nice place to visit, but not the right place to stay"
-Paulo Coelho-