A/N 1: TYVM for all the feedback. This is a short chapter, but the next one will be longer.

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CHAPTER THREE: COLORADO CITY

"Eames."

"Hello, Eames."

It was Bobby, calling her on the burner phone just as she finished watching the first round of the Mr. Big sting video.

According to the casefile that Agent Coffey sent her, twenty-one years ago, Leroy Dutson had been a young teenager in the FLDS breakaway Mormon community in Colorado City. With no useful family connections and apparently little respect for authority, he had no hope of escaping the fate of becoming a Lost Boy – the moniker given to the swaths of young men who were excommunicated for no good reason other than that the community, with its emphasis on plural marriage, couldn't support a gender-equal population.

In other words, Alex thought to herself as she read, the power-hungry horndogs who got off on exploiting multiple 'wives' didn't want the competition.

Underage, uneducated and with no skills outside simple construction, Dutson eked out what could barely be called a living doing odd jobs and sleeping rough. Then, when he was sixteen, the Bishop's first wife and her three oldest daughters were found dead… beaten, their arms and legs broken, left to die of exposure in the unwelcoming scrub outside town. A horrible crime that shook the insular religious community as well as Colorado City proper, local officials always suspected the troubled young man had killed them to punish the man who had expelled him, but after a grueling investigation the case had gone cold.

In the ensuing years, Leroy Dutson had not distinguished himself in any way. Drifting between little towns in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, he built up a substantial sheet for petty crimes, as well as evidence of a problem with alcohol and crack cocaine.

Now, with a special Federal Prosecutor investigating a range of remedies for what was deemed to be an intolerable clash of religious freedom and exploitation in the community, the spotlight had shone on the crime once again and the FBI had been brought in to try to finally make the case.

"Bobby!" Alex rolled her eyes at herself both for her formal phone-answering mojo with a cell that only one person knew she had, and for the way she fairly gushed his name.

"Hey…"

She waited a few seconds for him to continue, but when nothing was forthcoming, she forged ahead. "I just finished watching the video. Very impressive, Mr. Big."

He laughed. "Yeah well thanks. Um, I'm not used to running an operation with an ear piece, that's gonna take a bit of getting used to."

"Yeah, I think I could tell when you heard something you didn't like. You should work on that."

He laughed again, and she was absurdly happy to hear it. "Oh no, really? What did I do?"

She queued up the video and with great relish described the combination of tics that she was sure succeeded an unwelcome comment. She then held her breath as he did the same, almost giggling at the bearish expulsion of air that she knew signaled concession. "The one-eyed squint is fine, but then you unfocus your eyes and look like you're almost but not quite shaking your head, that could bite you eventually."

"Hmmm… thanks Alex, that's really helpful. I dunno how Carolyn missed it."

Hearing her own name in his sweet voice made her feel warm, but mention of Carolyn reminded her why they were speaking in the first place. Her Bobby wouldn't call for no reason.

"So, Bobby. Good job gaining his confidence. It was spot on, perfect even."

"Well, the team did a great job of groom, uh, grooming him. They've been doing the real work, months of it."

The word didn't feel right to her, and she knew Bobby felt the same, from the way he'd stumbled over it. In their world, good people didn't 'groom', and real perps didn't need grooming. She decided to prod a little. After all, he really didn't need her help with this operation, but he must have chosen to include her for a purpose. And prodding was what she did.

"So those murders. He's not exactly a prince among men, huh? Revenge motive?"

"It was a brutal crime."

"And a young man like that, raised so sheltered, then thrown to the wolves… You and I have seen people like that break before, in similar ways."

"Yeah…"

"Four bodies, and no evidence at all to connect him to the crime?"

"Nope, not a shred. Getting a confession is the only hope for ever closing the book."

"Well, that's what you do."

"Yup."

"And… that man, streetwise but not sophisticated. Carolyn, the FBI, the local police, they're all convinced he did it."

He grunted.

"Are you?" She already knew the answer… she'd seen it from the footage. Carolyn must be shitting bricks right now, unless she'd turned into a numbskull in the past 5 years.

Another sigh. Then, she heard a phone ringing at his end. "Hang on a sec, Eames. Goren. Yeah, hi. Um… sure, can I call you back in a few minutes? Nothing, just, uh… Yeah thanks, Carolyn. Listen Eames I gotta go, thanks for, um… can I call you tomorrow same time?"

"No, uh, I'm going out after work actually." A lie. "Call me later on in the weekend."

"Okaaay… you'll be around Saturday morning?"

"Probably."

He sighed again.

"Well," she said briskly, "I have a couple of ideas I can look into here. If you like?"

"I would like, Eames. As long as it doesn't cramp your style?"

Pretty please review? Reviews are like sugar to me!

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A/N 2: Hmmmmm… doncha wonder what Bobby did in that interview? Next chapter. And what's Eames gonna do?

WORDS: 973 UPLOADED Tuesday, October 1, 2013