The house looks like any number of country farmhouses Maes has seen in his life. There's details—the way the windows are framed, the particular pitch of the roof, the style of the railing—that are just a little off to Maes's sensibilities, but on the whole, the Maes family home isn't that foreign. Not like the squat brick police station, not like the strange gas stations or the roads with their painted lines, and certainly not like the cars he's never seen anything like.
There is bright yellow tape that reads caution around the barn out back, but the farmhouse itself doesn't have any.
"Do you recognize this place at all?" Rossi asks him as they step up to the house. He reaches under the mat to grab a key that the Deputy told him would be there. Maes honestly isn't certain if he can think of a less secure place to hide a spare key, but the key works and lets them in.
Maes looks around, taking in creaking wooden floors, the den to the left of the door, the worn coat hooks, the polished end of the banister, worn by years of hands running down it.
"No," he says with certainty. There are things that are familiar in the way that houses in general are familiar, in the way that he knows that the house will have a kitchen and bedrooms and a bathroom, but nothing more familiar than that.
"All right," Reid says. "Why don't we continue through the house, see if we find anything interesting or if it can give us any more insight into Tucker Maes. If you can also give us any insight into Hugh Maes, that would also be appreciated."
"Even though he died… how long ago?" Maes asks.
Reid looks up and meets his eyes. "Ten years."
Maes swallows. Roy told him it had been ten years since he died. He wonders if it's possibly a coincidence that this world's version of him died at approximately the same time he did. But if it worked that way, if the worlds were linked in that way, shouldn't Tucker Maes have died with Shou Tucker was killed? Should there be a Nina alive somewhere? Well, that question is stupid on its surface because of course there should be a Nina alive and happy somewhere else in the universe. That's the only right thing about this whole mess.
Moving through a formal living room, Maes is struck by the sense of a place where people haven't been much.
As if reading his thoughts, Rossi says from the next room, "Is it just me, or does this house not feel like it's been lived in much?"
"It is not just you," Reid confirms. "Tucker Maes has certainly not been cleaning since his parents passed. This room is hardly touched, and it doesn't even look like the family room has been used much, even though this is where the TV is." He looks around the room thoughtfully as Maes tries to understand why the TV is important, though all the screens he's seen since he woke up in this strange world.
"Is the TV really that important?" he finally asks after a minute, moving over to look at the pictures displayed on the mantle.
Coming to stand at his side, Reid says, "The average American watches a little over four hours of TV a day, so for most people, the TV becomes a centerpiece in people's homes."
Scratching the side of his face, Maes has to ask, "What do you spend four hours a day watching?"
Reid shrugs. "Don't look at me. I don't own a TV."
"Junk," Rossi chimes in. "Trust me, you're better off without it." He joins them by the mantle. "See anything interesting here?"
"It seems like the parents were playing favorites with my counterpart," Maes says. There are several pictures of not-quite-him, grinning his grin, in graduation images, one in a uniform that Maes doesn't recognize but must be military—military uniforms just have that feel to them. There are a couple of him younger with a Tucker who looks up to him with open adoration.
He catches Reid prop his chin on his fist for a moment, frowning. "Actually, I'm surprised to see so little of Tucker Maes represented here," he says. "Deputy Crawford told us that Tucker was the Maes's late-life miracle child. Usually children like that, especially with such a large age gap, get a lot of attention and devotion. Yet, it's clear from the pictures here that Hugh was the favored child."
"Given what became of Tucker, that's not that surprising, I don't think," Rossi contradicts. "I'm sure if we found photo albums, we'd find a more even weight in their pictures when they were young. It's probably only as Tucker grew older, was antisocial, awkward, didn't quite fit, that I would have expected the favoritism toward Hugh to show up."
Maes frowns at the pictures. Even as a child, Tucker doesn't look especially happy. The only one he's even showing the barest sliver of an actual smile in is a picture with the brothers together. "Are we sure he didn't remove pictures?" he asks, looking for gaps in the dust, only to realize that there isn't more than a few days' worth. "Wait," he says.
Reid must recognize it at about the same time because he takes a quick glance around and then looks at Rossi. "Did Tucker clean the kitchen?"
"No," Rossi says flatly. "Tucker Maes was not a great housekeeper. It looks like he lived off of takeout and junk food. The oven and stovetop haven't been touched in probably years, but the microwave looks like it saw regular use… not that Tucker ever cleaned that either." He adds the last bit with a decent amount of judgment, but then he appears to notice what Reid and Maes have already seen. "He cleaned the mantle."
"He must have," Reid confirms. "It's the only place in the room that isn't dusty."
"But if he cherished the photographs, why leave them there? Why not take them up to his room?"
There's a beat of silence, almost eerie in the empty house, before Reid says, "It's a memorial. He didn't take it up to his room because he didn't want it in his room. He wanted to be able to come here and view it when he wanted to, but he didn't want it constantly staring him in the face. This room is connected to the next room, but you don't actually have to go through it to get anywhere. The hallway runs down the way and directly into the kitchen on the other side of the wall. He could choose not to see it or have it staring at him whenever he wanted."
"We should check out his room," Rossi says, sounding a little concerned.
"Do you think this place has a basement?" Maes asks first.
"There should at least be a cellar," Rossi says.
"In my experience, most alchemists keep their labs in the basement. That's probably where we want to check for any signs of alchemy."
Rossi and Reid exchange a look before Reid says, "Most cellars in this area are more likely to be root cellars. They won't be insulated or the basements finished, and they aren't usually very large."
"So basically, let's check the bedroom first before we split up?" Maes asks, which isn't at all what they said, but he's pretty sure it's what they meant.
Rossi shrugs. "Not to discount your experience with this, but before we go down to the most likely culprit, I'd like to finish sweeping the upstairs."
Maes shrugs. There's really no reason to argue, so he follows them upstairs. There are three bedrooms, one of which is clearly the parents' bedroom. While Rossi pokes his head in there, Maes finds what was clearly his counterpart's room.
"Well, someone didn't exactly move on," he observes.
Reid turns from the other door to stand at his shoulder before they both go in. A distinct layer of dust coats everything evenly. If the pictures downstairs were a memorial, this place has been forgotten. The room is neat to a fault, which Maes thinks is probably more of the parents' doing than it was his counterpart's, at least if they were anything alike. Maes is organized, not neat. He has a place for everything, and everything in its place, and his system is usually completely incomprehensible to anyone except Gracia. And it never mattered with her at home because she kept the house neat and gave his things places to live that worked within his system without leaving clutter around. At work, the clutter and apparent disorganization was strategic.
That did not appear to be the case here. Maes recognized a bed that had been made to military spec, and the closet was closed. The desk holds a couple of frames, some pens, and pencils, but nothing that looks specifically out of place, and yet…
He's still staring at it when Reid finishes rummaging through the closet and a few drawers.
"Two pictures," he says thoughtfully, intelligent eyes moving around quickly. "There should be three," he says, which makes Maes jolt.
"You're right," he says, realizing what was bugging him. There's a spot on the desk that is conspicuously empty where it feels like there should be something there. Reid bends over and digs around in the waste bin next to the desk that Maes hadn't seen. He coughs as some dust is kicked up and pulls out a broken frame. It's a picture of his counterpart and a younger Deputy Crawford. "It looks like Tucker Maes came in here and threw out the picture but never bothered to actually take out the trash."
"The parents definitely never moved on," Maes points out. "Except for the dust, it looks like he could come any moment."
"It was the parents' memorial," Reid says. "Downstairs is Tucker's. This wasn't a place he was often or spent a lot of time with his brother."
It makes sense, but it's also kind of sad, in a way. Of the two pictures remaining on the desk, one of a family picture, the other looks like an older picture of his parents, when they were young. They look happy. It's something of a relief that the parents in the picture don't look like Maes's parents, but he also notices something else. "Dr. Reid?"
Reid hesitates at the door. "Yes?"
"Was Hugh Maes adopted?" he asks.
Something thoughtful comes into Reid's eyes, and he pulls out his phone, dialing something and putting it to his ear. "Hey, Garcia. Can you look into something?" He pauses, listening. "Can you check and see if Hugh Maes was adopted?" He listens again, then says, "Thanks. Let us know." He hangs up and refocuses on Maes. "What made you think that?"
"Aside from the fact that the Tucker in my world and I were decidedly not related?" he asks, picking up the family picture and holding it up for Reid. "These aren't my parents. Now, that might mean nothing…"
Reid takes the frame from him, looking at it intently before looking back up at Maes and concluding, "But they don't look like you either. There's a definite familial resemblance between the Maeses and Tucker, but you're right—Hugh Maes doesn't belong in this picture."
"Do you think that Tucker knew?" Maes wonders aloud.
"Oh," Rossi says, coming to stand in the doorway, holding up some papers that Maes can't read. "I think it's safe to say he knew. And he was not happy."
Reid frowns again. "That doesn't make sense though. They must have been even more overjoyed at having a child so late in life if they had resorted to adoptions," he says. "Tucker Maes should have been loved and adored."
Maes snorts, taking the picture back from Reid and setting it back into its place with care. "Take it from me: some people are just born bad." Once he's sure he's returned it to its rightful place as best he can, he turns his attention to Rossi. "Anything else interesting?"
"There's a bunch of papers I didn't touch that look like they may have alchemy circles drawn on them," he admits.
"We should see if we can find a journal of any kind," he says. "Even if we can't make heads or tails of it, Roy should be able to."
"A journal like this?" Rossi turns his hand, showing a leatherbound book of some kind. "It's full of a lot more of the same. I didn't touch any of the circles themselves, but it doesn't look like Tucker Maes felt he needed to hide anything."
Maes sighs. "Okay. Let's go check the basement," he says.
The three of them tromp down into the basement, and the sense of damp and cool is immediate, followed closely by the scent of death and decay. It's a small miracle that the smell hadn't permeated upstairs. There's a light switch in the stairwell, but at the base, it's dark and invisible. Rossi goes first, pulling out his gun with a light in a tube that Maes hasn't seen before but seems very convenient. Maes goes second with Reid bringing up the rear, mimicking Rossi.
It takes a moment for Rossi to turn on a light in the basement and as soon as he does, Maes sees the array on the floor, grabs his shoulder, and jerks him back.
"Don't stand on it," he says. "Don't touch it. We should try to break it if we can."
"What in God's name happened here?" Rossi more demands than asks as he looks around. There are cages around the perimeter of the room, explaining the smell. In the cages are what must have been animals at some point… before Tucker experimented on them.
"We should probably burn this place to the ground," Maes says, grim, noticing the dead eyes of an animal staring at him. Nothing moves. Nothing is alive here.
Reid steps carefully around the array and gets a closer look at something that looks like something between a deer and a dog. "How did he do this?"
"In our world," Maes begins, trying to breathe through his mouth, "Shou Tucker was known as the Sewing Life Alchemist. He specialized in what we called 'chimera,' in putting animals together. It looks like he had the same sick curiosity here."
Turning to look at them, Reid says, "I don't think we can let people find these."
Judging by the grim look on Rossi's face, he doesn't like it, but he doesn't disagree. "I think we may have to impose on your Mr. Mustang if we want to make sure we don't start a forest fire. If he can do that…"
"He can," Maes assures. He rubs a hand up under his glasses and down his face. They lock the basement and go back out, locking up the house again.
Once outside, Rossi says, "You took that remarkably well."
"Compared to what we found in Shou Tucker's laboratory last time? This was downright tame," he admits and starts walking toward the car.
There's a hesitation, then Reid and Rossi catch up to him. "What did you find last time?" Reid asks.
"In our world, Ed figured out that Tucker was experimenting on humans when he fused the family dog… with his daughter." He didn't wait for a response before getting into the car. The agents seemed to sense his mood because when they slid into the car, they didn't say anything. The car is silent as they drive back to the police station.
As they pull up, Reid's phone goes off, and he checks it. "Looks like you were right," he says, looking back at Maes. "Hugh Maes was adopted. Garcia found the records."
Maybe it's petty, but Maes is relieved he's not actually related to a monster like Tucker, even in another world.