A/N: This started out as one thing and ended up another. I hope it still makes sense. It also started off as a one-shot; it didn't stay that way.

Bobby sat the book down and flattened his hand on the empty table. He'd only been gone five minutes and the room was bare. If he moved quickly...

Running for the stairs, he wondered what in the world he was doing. He didn't want to talk to some random stranger about his pain, why was he thinking about disturbing her? He contemplated it as he descended from the third story to the first; the answer didn't come to him.

Breathing heavily, wondering when running downstairs got to be so tough, he knocked on the checkout desk to get the attention of the twitchy young man behind the desk who was scanning a computer for god-knows-what at nearly 10 p.m. on a Friday.

"Did you see a woman pass by here? Average build and height, strawberry blonde hair, straight, shoulder length, dark shirt, had an iPod, some pictures, not in the best of moods, may have checked out psychology books?" he gasped.

The young man's eyes bulged, staring at him as if he had lost his mind. Bobby was used to people looking at him that way, so it really didn't phase him. He laid his portfolio down on the desk, pulled his badge out of his pocket, slapped it onto his portfolio, then pushed, "Well?" The boy's eyes darted down to the badge, then sideways.

"You talking about the Friday Crier? Yeah, she left a little while a ago. Didn't check out anything, though. Left from the Hudson Street exit."

He put a hand down on the desk, turned his body toward the exit mentioned, and smoothed his beard as he thought about all the options she had once she reached the doors. A subway station to the left, bodegas and residential areas to the right, and on the street, any number of taxis to be hired. Too many options to try and track down the right one. He turned back to the boy behind the desk and tilted his head at the moniker the youth had slapped on the distressed woman. "Friday Crier?"

There must have been something in his tone, Bobby thought. He'd never seen anyone actually blanch before. He made a mental note to take the time later to think about the tone he'd used, to save it for a suspect when he needed it...

The pale young man called to an unseen co-worker. "Thomas, you've dealt with the Crier, right? The cop here wants to know about her."

A thinner young man with a more studious appearance stepped out from behind a shelving unit in the back. He moved to the front desk, ran his fingers over Goren's badge as if to check its veracity, then looked up at him. "I'm afraid I don't know much, Detective," he intoned. "She comes in about once a month, always late on Friday. She takes a study room on the third floor, makes handwritten notes for about an hour, then stays in the room until we close." The man crossed his arms and looked over at his co-worker. "Chase knocked on the door once, during midterms. Tried to remove her. She was... a little upset at the time. I check the rooms on Friday nights now. She's been less... demonstrative... lately." The young man uncrossed his arms, noticed the trickle of students making their way to the checkout counter. "Was that of any help?"

Bobby nodded, picked up his portfolio, and replaced his badge in his pocket. "It's more than I had a few minutes ago," he replied, as he quickly moved toward the elevators.

"Detective, the library is closing," the studious young man called.

"I left something upstairs. It'll just take a minute," Bobby called as he stepped through the closing doors.

As the elevator made its short ascent, he opened his portfolio, and scribbled down his description of the woman and the items with her, then added the information the library workers had given him. When the doors opened, he moved quickly to her study room, and looked again to see if he had missed any obvious clues there. She hadn't dropped a photo, forgotten her jacket, left a notebook... Notebook. He moved to the trash can, dumped its contents on the table, shuffled through the flat papers, and finding only doodles and notes in an Asian script he was unfamiliar with, he began opening the balled up wads.

The third one he opened looked as if it could be hers; scanning the page with his hand, he stopped midway, recognizing a passage from Bruener. Unfolding the rest of the pages, he noted two others with the same handwriting, and shoved them all into his notebook as the overhead speaker announced the library was now closed. He returned to the first floor, waited for the other patrons to leave, then walked up to the two young men again, handing over one of his business cards and asking them to call him when the woman returned. Thomas raised his eyebrows, questioning, "She's not in any trouble, is she?"

"No, I just wanted to... she mentioned that..." he fumbled. He started again, but it didn't seem to get any easier. "I had some infor... No. She's not in trouble." he finished. The boy looked at him with no small amount of confusion. Goren realized how odd he sounded, but was unwilling to try and explain more. He knocked his hand on the counter. "Well, then... Thanks." And then he walked out the Hudson Street exit, wondering where she had gone, and if she'd be able to sleep when she got there. He pondered where her children went on Fridays once a month, and if that time was the only time she allowed herself to grieve. He speculated as to why she came to a university library to think about her husband, instead of any other place on earth. He thought about whether he could get one of the sketch artists at 1PP to work off the books without word getting back to Ross.

As he rode the subway home, unwilling to look at the pages he'd gathered until he could really focus on them, he rubbed his fingers over his portfolio, trying through osmosis to absorb the information he hoped they contained.