Eames rolled over in her sleep. Warm and comfortable, she slept soundly. Physically spent and emotionally exhausted, she'd drifted off quickly in a loving, though unfamiliar embrace. She rolled again as her mind drifted toward wakefulness. Drawing a deep breath, she stretched from head to toe and yawned. Her eyes perused the room, which she did not remember from the previous night. Aside from the big, comfortable bed, there wasn't a lot of furniture. A bedside nightstand, a large dresser, and a comfortable chair beneath a nice reading lamp pretty well finished off the room's décor. She was surprised not to find a Lucien Freud painting hanging over his bed. Even more surprising, she found nothing but empty space. The walls were bare. No paintings, no pictures, nothing to personalize the room and make it his own.

She sat up, finding a t-shirt draped over the foot of the bed. Rising, she pulled it on over her naked body and went in search of her elusive partner. The welcome scent of fresh coffee filled the apartment, along with the lingering, familiar scent of soap and cologne. In front of the coffee pot, she found a cherry danish and a note. Be back shortly was all it said.

She poured herself a cup of coffee, took the danish and sat at the small table in the alcove sectioned out of kitchen space for dining purposes. Her thoughts drifted, and she smiled as her body flushed at the memories that floated through her head.

He had started out rough, but after a struggle to control himself, he'd become very gentle. Gentle, however, was not what she wanted, not immediately. She had no trouble coaxing him back toward rough play, but she could still tell he was holding back. Nothing she did could loosen his control of himself, but that was her only disappointment. She made up her mind to work on that. If this was the beginning of something between them, she wanted all of him, or it would not work, not for her.

She heard the door and rose to greet him in the living room. He set her overnight bag by the couch. "You said you kept a bag in the trunk. I brought it up for you."

In his other hand, he held a small box, which he held out to her. She took it, puzzled. "What's this?"

"Just...something for you."

Nestled in the box was a glass ball set on a wooden stand. Inside the ball was a perfect red rose. "What is this for?"

"It's for you, that's all...to say thank you."

"For what?"

He stepped closer, and when she didn't step away or show any sign of fear or regret, he leaned in and kissed her, softly, tenderly. The fingers of his left hand buried in her hair, and his right hand settled on her waist to draw her against him. She set the box down, then melted and surrendered to him.


Nestled into his side, Eames was close to dozing off when he kissed her and murmured, "We should be going."

Making a soft noise of protest, she said, "It's Saturday. Rodgers and the body will wait for us."

"But Ella won't," he replied as he slid from the bed.

Ella...? The funeral...right... She wasn't aware he'd planned to attend her funeral. "Bobby..."

"It's okay if you'd rather not go. I can meet you at 1 PP later."

"Do you really think Nicole will be there?"

He hesitated, as though the thought hadn't occurred to him. "I...I don't know. I just...I wanted to pay my respects to Ella and her family. I feel..."

When he trailed off as he laid his suit over the footboard, she slid from the bed and stepped into a hug. "You feel responsible," she completed his thought.

"Partially, I do, but not completely. You...You don't have to..."

Reaching up, she placed her hand against his mouth. "Let's hurry up and shower so we're not late."

His brown eyes darkened and his mouth relaxed into a small smile as he let her lead him into the bathroom. One way or another, she was determined to wash Nicole Wallace out of his head, and he was willing to let her try.


Elizabeth Rodgers had expected Goren and Eames much earlier, surprised that Goren wasn't breathing down her neck as she performed the autopsy. She looked at the clock. "I expected you with the sun."

"Ella Miyazaki's funeral was this morning," Goren answered as he bent over the body to look more closely at the victim's neck wound.

Rodgers watched him, surprised by his obviously lighter demeanor. Gone was the dark, brooding leviathan from the night before. He was animated as he wandered around the body, returning once more to the throat wound. He drew circles in the air above the injury. "Is it human?"

"The bite or the victim?"

He looked up sharply. His boyish face was both interested and amused at her answer, and Rodgers smiled at the change in him. She had not missed the effect Nicole Wallace had on Goren's psyche, how far down the devil woman dragged him when she played her malicious games with him. He seemed to have recovered in record time following this last encounter, and she was surprised. She glanced at Eames, appreciating the petite detective's difficult role of playing intercessor between Goren and the world at large. She wondered how Eames managed to draw her brooding partner from his funk, deciding ultimately that some things were best left to speculation.

Goren's face relaxed into an easy smile. "Either," he answered gamely.

She laughed. As annoying as he could sometimes be, she honestly liked Goren. "Both are human, detective. But this bite is interesting." She pulled a binocular dissecting scope over to the table and positioned it above the body, projecting the magnified image onto a computer screen so both detectives could examine it.

The two detectives focused on the image. Rodgers picked up a probe, gently reflecting back the tissue to reveal what she had found. Goren's head cocked, his brow creased in concentration. Two furrowed channels ran along the deeper tissue of the neck. "The macerated tissue above..." he began.

"...was hiding that injury," Eames finished. "But what made it?"

"That's a good question," Rodgers answered. "Goren?"

He shook his head. "Did the same person who made these also tear out her throat?"

"I would say yes. I took samples from different areas of the wound. I expect the saliva to be the same."

"And these furrows?"

"I don't know what to make of them. I took biopsies and samples for cross-section and toxicology."

Goren looked at the medical examiner. "What else did you find?"

Rodgers got the feeling, as she always did, that he knew things about the body she had yet to discover and he was testing her. Working with Goren always challenged her, and she appreciated that. Because of him, she had to keep a sharp edge, and that made her better at her job than she might otherwise be. As annoyed as she sometimes got with him, she liked to watch him work a corpse. He would have made an excellent coroner. His eyes missed very little, he was extremely thorough without taking days to gather his information and nothing that could possibly be found inside an adult body or out of it bothered him.

She answered, "She had a good meal, shortly before she died. Salad, chicken, a vegetable medley, wine...I doubt she ate alone. There are no defensive wounds, no bruises. That throat wound occurred at the time of death or shortly after. It was not a contributing factor to her death."

"So what did cause her death?" Eames asked.

"Ex-sanguination, although I'm not sure where the blood went or how it got out of her. She had no other injuries, no internal bleeding."

"What about time of death?"

"Shortly before midnight, probably about the time she was left in the alley. She was found quickly." She looked down at the body. "I'll let you know when I have more infor...mation..."

She trailed off as she and Eames watched Goren do another slow circuit of the body, leaning down closer to the woman's chest. He sniffed for a moment before moving to her face. His face was a mask of concentration. "He would have made a great bloodhound," Rodgers remarked to Eames.

Goren lifted his gaze to the women. "Obsession."

"Yes, we know," Eames responded.

Confusion crossed his face. "You know...what?"

"That you have a tendency toward obsession."

He considered her words for a moment, his thoughts derailed. He quickly set them back on track. "No. Obsession, the perfume." His index finger drew a circle in the air about her breasts, then settled into a straight line, up and down, between them.. "She wore it here." He paused to take a sniff of her wrist. "And on her wrists." His hand wandered over the Y-incision Rodgers had made down her belly. "Probably straight down..." He stopped between her navel and her bikini line. "...to here."

He returned to the victim's head. "You said wine. I, uh, I smelled something else."

Rodgers allowed him more latitude than she gave anyone else, particularly since his ability to examine the body at the scene the night before had been so limited. She was thorough and meticulous, but even at that, Goren often picked up on small but ultimately important things, or he gave something a different, but equally valid, interpretation. He looked at her. "There was a small amount of hard liquor in her stomach, yes?"

She nodded with a small smile. "Yes. Gin and vermouth...an after-dinner cocktail, I presume."

He studied the woman's face. "Nicely applied make-up..." he said as he tipped his head to look at Eames.

She nodded in agreement. "Her clothes were not expensive, but not cheap, either. Something in the same range I would wear," she said as she walked to the counter where the victim's clothes lay. She sorted through the pile, then lifted the woman's lacy red bra and panties. "She wasn't wearing these to go watch the Mets play."

Rodgers nodded. "She was hoping whoever she was with would get to see that lingerie."

Goren lifted the victim's left hand and examined it. "Did he?"

With another brief smile, she replied, "Presumably, yes. There was spermicide in the vaginal cavity, but no semen, so they used a condom. No bruising or tears, no signs it wasn't consensual."

Goren moved to examine her feet. "She had a recent pedicure and manicure," he said as he held her foot. His thumb moved over her big toe to her instep. "No callouses. She didn't wear heels too often."

"She was five-eleven," Rodgers said. "She'd need a date your height before she'd wear heels."

Goren nodded, looking up and down the body. "One hundred and thirty pounds?"

"One thirty-seven."

He bent at the waist near her knee. "More perfume. She put a lot of time and effort into preparing for this date. It was a special date--maybe a first one?"

Neither woman debated that conclusion. It made sense. He looked at the woman's face again. "Any leads on identification?"

"Not yet. No hits on her prints. We're running her DNA through the databases."

Goren slowly ran his gaze up and down the victim's naked body. Then he did one more circuit of the body before he nodded, "Call us as soon as you know anything."

Rodgers nodded. "Count on it."

He followed Eames out of the morgue.


As they got into the elevator, Eames said, "Snakebite."

He shifted his gaze toward her, the corners of his mouth raised in a small smile. "Snakebite?" he repeated. "You think a snake bit her?"

She jabbed his side sharply. "Don't be obtuse. Of course it wasn't a snake, but that's what that hidden injury looked like."

"A snakebite," he mused. "That would have to be one hell of a big snake."

She knew from the look on his face that he was giving the suggestion serious consideration. She felt a need to divert his train of thought; she hadn't been serious. She should have known better than to think out loud that way, knowing how open-minded he was about almost everything. "Like a basilisk?" she asked, teasing.

His smile broadened a little. "A basilisk," he mused. "Not exactly what I was thinking."

"But you do have something in mind."

He nodded slowly. "Something, yes."

"Something I'm not going to like," she asserted. That was always how it was when she had to pull teeth to get anything out of him.

He shrugged. "Something you might not believe, in any event."

"Don't tell me this is some kind of fairy tale and we're looking for dragons and unicorns."

He laughed, a laugh of quiet amusement she'd always found endearing. "A fairy tale? No, Eames. There are no princesses to be rescued from fire-breathing dragons." His smile faded some. "A nightmare might be more accurate."

"What's traipsing through that head of yours?"

He leaned a little closer, his voice a bare whisper. "You mean besides you?"

He caught her completely by surprise and her cheeks reddened. She smacked his arm as the elevator doors opened and she marched off to their desks. Wearing a self-satisfied grin, he followed her, keeping a discrete eye on the annoyed sway of her hips. He made a mental note to annoy her more often as they got off the elevator.

He sat down opposite her, still amused. She focused her attention on her computer as he folded his hands on top of the file folder in the middle of his desk and leaned forward. "So what do you know about basilisks, Eames?"

Her cheeks reddened a little more and her hands hesitated above the keyboard. She raised her eyes to look at him over the computer screen. "A couple of my older nieces and nephews are really into Harry Potter. The last movie featured a basilisk."

His expression was open and interested. "I, uhm, I didn't see it, but I read the book." He diverted his attention to the file beneath his hands. " I don't think we're looking for something out of Harry Potter."

She crumpled a paper into a ball and threw it at him. "I didn't think we were, ass."

He laughed finally, and her irritation faded. She was glad to see him settling back to his normal self. Unbidden, her mind wandered, back in time a few hours, and she felt her entire body flush with desire. Returning her attention to her computer, she sought some kind of distraction from her roaming thoughts. She forced herself to focus on the king of serpents. "A direct stare can kill," she said randomly.

He looked up from the file, which contained the photos from the crime scene and preliminary reports from the lab. His mind had moved on. "A...what?"

"A direct stare can kill," she repeated. "From a basilisk."

He nodded his head slowly. "Yes. That's what they say." He tilted his head a little to the left. "I still don't think that's what killed her."

She opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the captain's approach. "All right. What do we have?"

"Besides a dead girl, nothing much," Eames answered. "No ID and a cause of death we can't explain."

"That gaping hole in her throat might be a good place to start."

Goren leaned back in his chair and replied, "It would be, if it wasn't a post-mortem injury."

"So this mutt kills her, and then he rips out her throat?"

"Apparently. According to her autopsy, she bled to death, but she has no wounds to account for that blood loss, no internal bleeding, no way to explain it. There wasn't enough blood at the scene for her to have been killed there, regardless of how the blood got out of her body."

"Wouldn't the rain have something to do with that?"

With a shake of his head, Goren answered, "The rain would not have washed away four-and-a-half quarts of blood. There would still have been plenty of blood around, if she'd been killed there. According to Dr. Rodgers, she died shortly before she was found, so she was killed and dumped right away."

Deakins frowned. "So somewhere in or near Crown Heights is a gallon of blood waiting for us to find it?"

Goren tapped his pen on the folder in front of him, then looked at the captain. "It should be that simple. The rain would definitely have washed the blood away by now, and if she was killed indoors, clean-up is finished, I'm sure."

Eames grabbed a pencil from the mug between their desks. "So we're stuck with a freshly washed dump scene, courtesy of Mother Nature, and a body that's holding tight to her secrets."

Her partner nodded. "If we get no hits on DNA or prints, we'll have to go to the media, see if anyone recognizes her."

Deakins let out a slow breath. "Let me know and we'll release a sketch. I've already received calls from the Chinese embassy and the mayor's office. Mr. Quan is concerned about his nephew's livelihood. The papers have already sniffed out the discovery of the body and he does not want it associated with the restaurant. So try to keep a lid on it, and let's move it into the solved pile as fast as we can."

"We'll do our best, captain," Eames assured him.

As the captain walked off, Goren returned his attention to the photos. The illuminated images revealed much more than the naked eye had been able to see in the rainy night.

Forgetting their teasing banter about snakes, dragons and basilisks, Eames asked, "Do you have any ideas about this guy?"

"No. Not yet."

"Do you think this throat wound was a rage thing?"

He shuffled to the pictures of the victim. "No. I don't get any rage from this killing. There are no other marks on her, no bruising, pre- or post-mortem. If it were rage, we would see bruises, lacerations, maybe bone fractures."

"Don't tell me he tore out her throat in a fit of passion."

"No. She would have been alive for that. I think this was...calculated, done for a reason. Perhaps some kind of ritual. When we figure out the reason, we'll be closer to figuring out the killer's mind."

"A religious ritual?"

"Perhaps. Or some kind of personal ritual. He may not have meant to kill her."

He returned his attention to the photographs as she slowly shook her head. Getting inside the heads of the monsters they pursued was so important to him, and that worried her. Like most cops, she just wanted to find the perpetrators and put them behind bars, but he was further driven by a need to understand them. For reasons she could not fathom, it was important to him to get into their heads, to learn what caused them to do the horrible things they did. As they sought the 'who', he applied the same drive and determination toward understanding the 'why'.