Deakins came out of his office and approached Goren and Eames at their desks. "We have a body over in the Village. Councilman's daughter. Treat this one with kid gloves, guys."

He handed the address to Eames and watched the partners leave. He didn't miss the hand that Goren lightly rested on her back as he let her enter the elevator first, and he smiled to himself. After Eames had returned from her honeymoon, Goren had acted like she was a stranger. He didn't have any idea where he stood with her. It had taken more than six months and a lot of gentle work on Eames' part to draw him out and settle him back into the familiar friendship they had shared before she got married. But the captain still noticed something not-quite-right with his star detective. His Mondays certainly seemed to be off. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but in any event, he would leave it to Eames and Logan to straighten him out, if indeed anything was wrong. He had no idea that Eames was unaware of anything seriously amiss with her partner, and Logan was struggling to save the man from the path of self-destruction he was carelessly wandering down.

Eames parked the SUV amid the marked cars in front of the brownstone that was their destination. Goren stopped and looked around after he got out of the car. There was something familiar about the neighborhood, but he dismissed it. He could probably find something familiar about every neighborhood in the city. He followed Eames into the building and up the stairs to the second floor, fighting an overpowering feeling of deja vu.

A detective from the local precinct met them at the door. "The ME puts the time of death sometime between midnight and noon on Monday." It was Thursday. "We called you guys because she's Councilman Vogler's daughter."

Eames frowned. "Three days and no one noticed she was missing?"

"The councilman said she calls him every Wednesday night, and when she didn't call last night, he got concerned. He waited until this morning and then he called us to check on her."

"No one missed her at work?"

"He said she's between jobs. He's been handling her expenses. The body's in here."

They went in to the second floor apartment. Eames shivered. "Someone cranked up the air conditioner."

Her body lay in the middle of the kitchen floor. His eyes were riveted to her as soon as they entered the room. He stopped and swallowed hard. Eames sensed that he had stopped and she turned to look at him. She had never known a crime scene to shake him up. Ever. "Bobby?"

He shook his head and yanked a pair of gloves from his pocket, pulling them on with a snap. She was a pretty woman, tall, slender. Her long dark hair was arranged around her head like a halo before it draped over her shoulders. He circled the body twice before he dropped to a knee beside her. "Strangulation..." he said quietly, gently pushing her hair back from her neck. His fingers traced the ligature mark and he had to consciously still the tremor in his hand when it hovered near a bruise at the side of her neck where it joined the curve of her shoulder.

Eames leaned over to look at the bruise. "A bruise from the perp's finger? His thumb maybe?"

"Uh, no. I don't think so." He moved his hand, deliberately redirecting her attention to the downward angle of the ligature mark. "Um, whoever did this was shorter than she was...or at an angle lower than her shoulders."

He examined the body, clad only in underwear, and he had to suppress another tremor, this one stirred by a memory. Nancy... her name was Nancy... Oh, God... a councilman's daughter... he'd had no idea...

As they headed back to the SUV, giving the medical examiner leave to remove the body, Eames asked, "Is something wrong, Bobby?"

Still shaken, he replied, "No. Why?"

"You just act like something's wrong...something more than just this murder."

He climbed into the passenger seat and rubbed his forehead. How the hell could he tell her this? No, he couldn't. Not this. He just waved a hand in the air. "It's nothing, Eames. Let's go back to the squad room."

As they pulled away, a petite figure stepped from the shadows of the doorway in which she'd been hidden. She'd seen his shaken look, and she smiled. With a satisfied smirk on her features, Nicole Wallace walked away from the brownstone where she had taken the life of Nancy Vogler a few brief hours after Bobby had left her apartment before dawn Monday morning.