Theory #1: Roger Overland wanted a clean break from his former life as a htiman and was successful for five years, until he accidentally killed Claire Kincaid while driving drunk. He had to pay off several people in prison in order to keep his secret; after fourteen years, someone wanted more money, and Overland couldn't supply it.
Theory #2: Roger Overland was in the same line of work he'd been in back in England, and he was hired to kill Claire Kincaid and make it look much more like an accident than a hired hit. Overland decided he wanted a fresh payoff from whoever had hired him all those years ago, and the unknown conspirator couldn't supply it.
As Eames mapped out these two theories on a piece of notebook paper while she sat on her sofa at home, she was certain that she and her detectives lacked sufficient evidence for either one. The D.A's office, the M.E., CSU – they'd all sing their "where's the evidence?" theme song. It was probably Bobby Goren's influence that was keeping her awake, struggling to interpret the modicum of evidence they did have.
After Captain Ross was killed – she couldn't bear to think of it, his leaving two teenage sons behind, and so near the end of his career – Goren decided to retire, citing exhaustion, though Eames knew it was more than that.
"I hold you back, Alex," he'd said, one of the rare moments during which he'd addressed her by her first name.
Their partnership had become tense in its last few years, though they'd regained some ground before Ross's death. There was an incident, a moment, a night shortly after they'd put away the right shooter for Joe's murder, and Eames didn't like to think about that moment either because she didn't want to admit to herself that it had happened. She'd slept with Goren, her longtime partner. In the NYPD, and between friends, working partner sex fell into the "that's not cool" category (as she'd once heard Mike Logan label it). It was just once, though.
"Eames, you deserve a much better companion," Goren had told her the next day. She didn't see it as a brush-off because, as his closest friend, she knew he actually believed that.
After they'd wound up barrel-to-barrel in a mob-owned apartment – Goren had gone undercover without telling her – Eames felt that the Goren she'd known, the offbeat and troubled but charming and fiercely ethical Bobby Goren, was gone for good.
Even as he slowly managed to regain her trust, she continued to miss her old friend, who had disappeared under the weight of his mother, brother, and nephew, and the serial killers Nicole Wallace and Mark Ford Brady. So when he retired and began working as a crime lab consultant in Central Pennsylvania, where he could spend time with distant relatives and his nephew's mother, Eames felt a guilty sense of relief.
Her landline rang, and she jumped up to answer it when Caller ID announced that it was her younger brother Johnny.
"Alex, have they called you yet?"
"What, is it Mom?" Her thoughts immediately went to her mother, who'd suffered a stroke some years back.
"No. I'm in the hospital with Mom and Dad. Liz is in emergency surgery. Her car – your car, Alex, your car -- burst into flames half an hour ago."
She'd lent her sister Liz, the mother of the nephew she'd carried as a surrogate, her car for the night, as she often did when Liz didn't want to take her cumbersome minivan to meet with social work clients in Manhattan.
"Is she going to be all right?"
"She's in surgery right now, but … the surgeon was honest with us."
Eames placed a hand over her mouth and gasped. "One of her clients?" she asked, trying to play the detective role in which she was comfortable.
"Get down here."
"I'm on my way."
"They think it has to do with you, not her. Whoever did this wanted to kill you."