6 Months Later

The crime scene was being eaten by mother nature. Trash, leaves and everything else not bolted down tore across the courtyard and buffeted against the workers frantically chronicling every detail. It was the kind of wind that took the breath and moved the body. Everyone cowered inside the collars of their coats. Goren had a different perspective. Yes the wind was pushing at him too, but he was in the zone. His jacket hung open and his hair was parted and plastered against his skull with the force of the gusts. He crouched low over the prone partially clothed body of a woman. She was wearing black fitted pants, running shoes and nothing else. No pockets. No purse. No jewellery.

"It's a dump." he shouted over the gales.

"Lividity..." was all he heard Eames say from somewhere over his shoulder, but knew she was on the same page. The ugly purple impressions on the body didn't match her position, which was flat on her back in a basketball court in the South Bronx.

He leaned in closer lifting the victims hand bringing it to his nose. Alex watched him sniff the digits. It had taken close to a decade but she was mostly past her revulsion at the way he manipulated dead bodies. But today (unless he was a bloodhound) her money said there was no way he got a whiff of anything from it, not in these conditions she could barely breathe. Just as the thought occurred, he shook his head in annoyance.

"Can't get..." she heard him bellow in frustration and she nodded in understanding. He stood and raised an arm above his head twirling a long pointed index finger at the medical examiner. Wrap it up. Alex thought, and like a good translator turned and shouted the sentiment directly in the ear of the mildly annoyed man. The coarse fabric of her coat scraped her lips as they curved into a secret smile. Bobby didn't care about anyone or their feelings at a crime scene. She'd been running interference long enough to know that everyone - even her, his partner of twelve years - was a means to an end when there was a dead body in the vicinity. She'd watched him scale a CSI and use his head for balance. She'd lost count of the times he jostled or tripped over professionals to get at a body. And sometimes he'd clear everyone off a scene with an impatient sweep of his arms like he was Moses and they were the Red Sea (she'd seen an EMT flip him a double bird behind his back for that), but her favourite had to be when he tossed an investigator his shoes so he could straddle a corpse. He had no limits.

"We'll get more at the MEs." she yelled over the gale force wind.

He nodded and gave a insolent roll of his head and eyes. I'm being too obvious for his highness she thought smirking on the inside. She knew the problem. Like a child Bobby wanted what he wanted, and he wanted it right now.

"Twice as many pictures." he shouted. If he couldn't smell, flex, poke and prod he needed something to fill the dearth of information.

Alex looked at the body dispassionately. There was no sensitivity here, no 'love'. The victim had bruises on her neck, obvious bold impressions from a large hand and there was a gaping a chasm in the chest where the heart should be so that spiked Alex's interest, but just a little. The vics eyes looked up eerily pleading. Was it wrong that the look was familiar now? Was it wrong that that the dead's desperation was something she'd seen a hundred times before? This should never be common, but it was a little.

She glanced back over her shoulder. Searching for Bobby hoping that his dark gaze would ground her a little. She ended up doing a full revolution scanning for him. His large form (which was usually the most prominent thing in any crowd) was gone, just gone. No. Not gone. She marked movement out of the corner of her eye, he was slipping through a rusting metal door into a tenement low rise. She didn't even bother to call out she summoned a couple uniforms and followed.

They all looked like ants, Robert Goren thought from his vantage atop the roof. He could breathe up here. Figuratively not literally. If the body was going to keep secrets then maybe the scene would tell the story. From the ground it was distracting, all flying garbage and writhing bodies. Up here he saw it with the perspective of a God not a man. This chance to shuck his mortality had sent him tearing up the rusty stairwell of 864 Morton Street. He felt a rush, a zing he'd come to realize over the years he had done this job was a heady mix of inspiration and adrenaline.

"The court is out of use." he muttered out of habit, maybe to Eames, usually to Eames, but Eames wasn't there. Where the hell is she? He thought distractedly. No bother, right now he didn't care if anyone heard really, he just wanted the observations to have weight and presence. Inside his head the ideas were like vapour. "The hoops are completely missing off their backboards." he expanded aloud "Two ways into the courtyard from the east and to the west." That accounted for the wind tunnel effect. He moved closer to the edge of the roof. "All these buildings are like a front row seat." and his gaze travelled an old rusty chain link fence running around the perimetre.

The sound of footfall on metal echoed as Eames tore up the stairwell after him. She called out clattering through the old rooftop door. She was used to being an afterthought to his passions but she usually got something, some indication that he was about to go off. Her stomach knotted at the picture he painted standing there leaning against the gusts, one leg raised on the ledge of the building, listing into the unsecured 4 storey drop. Step back from the edge she screamed inside her head. He looked over at her swaying slightly. He caught her eye and with a lift of his brow he moved back onto the asphalt.

"... running off?" he heard her ask.

"...told you." she heard him shout back into the wind.

She grabbed her ear and shook the lobe, mildly exasperated. I can't hear you mumbling that you're headed to the roof in the middle of a tornado she would have snarked if she'd had an audience. But she didn't, so instead Alex peered over the edge. She could see the scene, the navy blue uniforms, the slow rotation of red and blue made by the silent emergency vehicles. She could see the body of the slain woman now covered by a midnight blue plastic tarp. The yellow tape cordoning the area off. The white coroner's van. It looked like just about every scene she'd visited with Goren over the last 12 years. Granted outside of a handful of jumper (or was that pushed) cases she had never looked at it quite like this, she tilted her head channelling Bobby.

"Spell it out." she said at last close enough to him that her voice was just above normal.

"It looks like thunder dome. Someone had a front row seat."

Alex looked from building to building to building and the square they created around their crime scene. Then she looked to the perfect rectangular windows, hundreds of them row on row, staring like glassy eyes.

Work. All she saw was work.