See end of chapter for details.

Cain paged through the Lauderdale file again, rubbing absently at his forehead. The bullet Dr. Raffit had so graciously retrieved from his abdomen didn't match the one the coroner had pulled from Gilford Lauderdale's skull. He wasn't sure if this was what he wanted, or not. The case was too easy, in the end. It fit together too neatly. Besides which, the defendant just… didn't seem like a murderer. She was too calm on the stand, too collected.

There was just something about this case…

The door opened, and Cain jumped, rounding to glare at his secretary. "Sheila, I have told you before-"

She waved one manicured hand carelessly. "I was just letting you know I'm taking off," she told him. "Seeing as it's nearly six and we all should have been gone an hour ago." Sheila frowned and approached him to lean over his desk. "Especially you, Cain. You still look a bit peaky. Are you sure you're okay?"

Cain scowled at her. "Thank you for your input," he said, tossing the witness reports back onto his desk to join the rest of their useless brethren. "But as you are neither my mother nor my doctor, it shall be ignored."

"I expected nothing less." She laughed, and perched on the edge of the desk, crossing her legs. "Shall I tell Dom you say hello?" Sheila remained the only person Cain had ever met who could get away not only with using Crehador's first name, but a shortened version of his first name. Really, it just went to show how much he cared for her…

"I'd rather you remind him of the money he owes me." Cain leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms and trying not to smile. He raised one eyebrow for good measure.

Sheila remained unimpressed. "He's not going to pay you back, Cain."

"I consider the money lost," he assured her. "Nevertheless, remind him. I may need to call on him soon."

"That's the only reason you keep paying his bail, isn't it? You just want someone else to do your legwork." Sheila laughed, absently flipping through the coroner report.

"In the disreputable neighborhoods where I stick out like a sore thumb no matter how I dress? Yes." Dominic Crehador was a useful connection-and a good friend, though Cain would sooner cut out his own tongue than admit as much.

"Cain…" Sheila chided. "Play nice."

"Sheila…" Cain mimicked, "your fiancee dresses like a pimp. Gabriel has better fashion sense, and that's saying something."

His secretary smiled, and Cain knew he'd misstepped somewhere badly enough to lose this skirmish. "Oscar is a fine gentleman…"

"And an idiot," he said. Coupled with a scowl, the reaction was almost instinctive to the redheaded lout. How that had managed to graduate from law school…

"Isn't Merry dating him?"

The question was innocent, but the blow was low. Cain glared. "Don't even. I thought you were going home?"

Sheila laughed. Well, damn her anyways. "No need to sulk, Cain. I'm going. Seriously, though, don't stay too late. If you were sick enough to miss work, you must really need the rest." She tilted back to her feet, slung her purse over her shoulder, and sauntered out of his office. Cain made a face at her back, but turned back to the file, desperate to find something to justify his instincts.

Five minutes later, the phone in the lobby rang. Cain sighed. This was Sheila's job, but she'd already left to meet up with her shady con man boyfriend and, of course, it was only after she'd left that there would be a call. Gritting his teeth, Cain got to the phone before it's fourth ring and picked up. "Hello, Hargreaves Legal," he greeted, trying not to be angry and sound cheerful.

"Oh, um-hello? I'm looking for Mr. Hargreaves…" The man sounded surprised to have reached anyone. Cain glanced at the clock. Given it was six-thirty and the posted hours were five, it wasn't any wonder.

"I'm Cain Hargreaves," Cain said slowly, sitting in Sheila's chair. "Why are you looking for me?"

"Oh, thank God, I thought for sure-no, sorry, I'm Riff-um, Dr. Raffit? I was hoping to speak for you." Cain was startled, but he most certainly was not blushing. He turned away from his reflection in the computer screen.

"All right," he agreed. "Where do you want to meet?"

"Well, if the doors to your office are still open, I can be there within fifteen minutes. It would be most convenient for you, wouldn't it?"

"That should be fine. I'll make sure the doors are open for you," Cain promised, and hung up. For a moment, he let himself be pleased. It was a welcome distraction from a case file that was giving him no help, and Raffit was attractive and charming and… Cain buried his face in his hands with a groan. And asked difficult, intelligent questions. What were the chances Raffit was just going to grill him about how he'd gotten shot? High enough that no self-respecting bettor would sell odds. This man was not going to be good for his health.

And he was going to make sure the door was unlocked anyway, wasn't he? It was the week of poor decision making, apparently.

As promised, Raffit was in his office within ten minutes. He looked even more tired than the last time Cain had seen him, an accomplishment given that last time it had been nearly three in the morning. He'd loosened his tie slightly, and one of those horribly tacky reusable grocery bags was slung over his shoulder, filled with file folders and a handful of loose papers. Exhausted or not, his smile was warm. "I wanted to check on your side," he explained, placing the bag at his feet. "Have you been taking those iron supplements I recommended?"

"Yes," Cain lied instantly. He crossed his arms. "I don't see why you couldn't have asked that over the phone. What are you really after?"

The doctor laughed and shook his head. "Why is it that every conversation with you feels like a cross examination?" It wasn't a question that expected answers, which was good as Cain wasn't about to give any that easily. "I'm still trying to figure out how you managed to get shot. I thought I'd develop a few theories of my own and see what you'd admit to." For once, Cain wished he hadn't been right. "I decided that it's most likely connected to your current case. Your prosecuting the Lauderdale murder, aren't you?"

"It could have been revenge," Cain pointed out, leaning against his desk. "Someone I put in jail."

Raffit shook his head. "The timing's wrong."

"They could have only just gotten out," Cain insisted.

"That hasn't happened, I checked."

"In three days?" Cain was almost impressed in spite of himself.

Raffit waved it off. "Unimportant. No one you've prosecuted successfully has been released, and there's no reason for cases you've lost to bear a grudge against you."

Especially as the majority of them were dead… but if Raffit hadn't learned that Cain was not letting him know.

"And you wanted the bullet for evidence yourself. If it was some revenge related incident, you would have gone to the police and put them back in jail, but you haven't. Besides, all of this is pointless conjecture and makes the scenario overly complex." Raffit was watching him closely. "You're trying to distract me."

"All right, fine. I'm in charge of the prosecution on the Lauderdale case. What of it?"

"Well, I tried to connect the two."

"It could have been an accident," Cain countered immediately. "Unrelated happenstance."

"If that was the case, you would have gone to the hospital instead of phoning me in the middle of the night. No, whatever you were doing was probably illegal. But you're a lawyer, you wouldn't break the law for no reason, so it had to be related to your work. Mr. Hargreaves, is there something wrong with the case?"

This Cain didn't have another solution for, which meant deflection. "What makes you say that?"

"You came after me when I was acquitted. You're not the sort of person to take facts at face value. You have to check, you have to know what really happened. You probably went back to the scene itself, to start at the beginning… Because you think there's something wrong with the case." Cain colored. "Am I right?" Raffit asked again. "I mean… All of the clippings I've read present the case as perfectly straightforward… Why don't you think so, too? Isn't it a good thing, if it's easy?"

"It's too easy!" Cain snapped finally. "It doesn't make sense!" He rounded on his desk, flipping again through the evidence, witness testimonies, and police report. "There's something wrong with it, somewhere, but I can't find where." He slid a file towards Raffit. "I've gone over the medical report so often I can practically recite it from memory. Victim identified as thirty one year old Gilford Lauderdale. Cause of death, a gunshot to the temple from a .22 caliber handgun. Bullet markings matched a handgun found in Mrs. Edith Everett's possession, though no sales record for the gun can be found. BAC was slightly over the legal limit, he had eaten well about four hours before death. Preliminary testimony from Miss Meridianna Everett, daughter of the defendant." He flipped the relevant file open again. "Miss Meridianna has admitted that she had had a sexual relationship for the past several months with Mr. Lauderdale. The night in question, they had eaten dinner together, then returned to his apartment, where they drank wine and conversed. During this conversation, Miss Meridianna told Mr. Lauderdale she was pregnant. They fought over the subject, and Miss Meridianna left the apartment and went straight to her mother's house for comfort. After taking care of her daughter and sending her to bed, Mrs. Everett left the house-this was around on o'clock-and, apparently, went straight to Lauderdale's apartment, where she found the door open, walked in, and shot him in the head while he was in bed."

"And that's what killed him?" Raffit asked, inspecting the evidence photos from the autopsy.

"Yes! I already said that!" Cain threw his hands into the air in exasperation, then lowered them to run distractedly through his hair. "We have three different witnesses to the sound of the gunshot, at the time of death given by the coroner. The defendant then called 911 and informed them of the murder. We have the tape, too! Everything fits, every last little thing. But it doesn't-goddamn it all, it doesn't feel right. I've looked at the evidence backwards and forwards, but it all matches up. It's driving me crazy-"

"It should be," Riff agreed quietly. He was still holding the file, and Cain belatedly remembered that there were rules of confidentiality about that, though he was too frustrated and angry to care at the moment. "It's wrong."

Cain scoffed. "It's a murder, Dr. Raffit, of course it's wrong."

The doctor blinked and looked up at him again. "What? No, I'm sorry, that's not what I-it's wrong. Factually, I mean. The bullet couldn't have killed him. He was already dead."

"What?" Cain whispered. His left knee had gone weak, and he leaned against the desk again.

Riff passed him the photograph he'd been inspecting so closely. "I could be wrong, but I think the gunshot was done postmortem."

"Would you swear to that on the stand?" Cain demanded immediately.

"Not right now, I wouldn't. This isn't my field of expertise, it's just a hobby-"

"A hobby to examine dead bodies?"

"I'm interested in forensic pathology, but I thought I'd rather help the living to heal than the dead to get justice," Riff explained. "I'd have to check a few sources, but…"

This was the breakthrough he'd been struggling to find for the last week, he wasn't going to let it slip away because of Raffit's uncertainty. "But you'd at least question the validity of the medical report?"

"Mr. Hargreaves, you're getting far too ahead of yourself. You should have the medical file double checked, assuming that's possible. Who was the examining coroner?"

"Clarence Nash, Dr. Clarence Nash."

Raffit frowned again, and went back to the file. "Really?" he asked, looking at the file notes again. "Maybe you should talk to him. I knew him in school-he was a lab partner of mine. I'd never seen notes as detailed as the ones he took. We were always last in the lab because he insisted on detail. These are… sparse. At best. That's not like him… He may have changed since I knew him, but it's still strange." The doctor sighed, flipping the file closed and handing it back to Cain. "I should go. I've got paperwork of my own to do."

"Wait, the bullet wound-" Cain protested.

"I'll see if I can't turn any information up, and check my facts. Come by my clinic on Friday? Or just call. You havemy number, after all."

It wasn't exactly the answer he was hoping for. "And you'll be certain by then?" he demanded.

"I'll at least be more certain." Raffit shrugged. "At the least, it's something for you to think about. If the bullet didn't kill Lauderdale, what did?"

"Of course," Cain agreed reluctantly. Friday night… Perhaps he could suggest dinner out, to discuss the case further? "If I've satisfied you, then…"

"No, actually." Raffit interrupted with a smile. He lifted the tote bag again, pulling out a pill bottle and setting it on Cain's desk. "You were lying about the iron supplements. If you want to recover fully, you should reexamine your diet. I'll also be looking at your own wound when you come by on Friday."

"Yes, good, great," Cain grumbled. He had the horrible feeling that Raffit was laughing at him. "Get out of my office."

A/N: ...I actually have a murder plot for this. Oh my God. This is significant, guys. I write fantasy, not detective stories. I'm really excited about this. Which means, by the way, that this has blown up into a significant universe and will not be done in a handful of chapters like I expected. ...Whoops.

There's not really much else to say here, aside from a thank you for all the reviews I've been given and an apology for not updating anything for a month... This chapter's shorter, too, which is a little sad.

No anonymous reviews this time, so no anonymous review responses!

Thank you all for reading, and please read and review.

(I'll make another plug for poisonandperfection's story "A Case of Blackmail." I helped beta it, it's really good, guys. Really. Please. I need more people to love this story as much as I do so she'll actually write the last part of it. Though I admit that might be as much my fault as anything else, but that's beside the point. Go love it, it's good.)