Here's a big THANK YOU to all my reviewers for reassuring me. To all the others I repeat: feel free to join any time.

The ringing of Mac's cell wakes Stella. "Why do I have the feeling that you never left," she mumbles sleepily.

Retreating into a corner, Mac answers the call. "Morning, Hawkes. What's up? Are you making progress already?"

"Yeah, on the odd occasion you're not the only one who doesn't sleep."

Mac smiles at this, especially when it dawns on him that he has slept very well in spite of being cramped into a hospital chair.

"Have you been to see Stella? How is she?" Hawkes asks.

"I'm with her right now and she seems to be fine, she's giving me that mischievous smile again."

"Okay, we found the owner of the gun, a Michael Bloom. Flack is bringing him in now." Mac raises his eyebrows, that sounds almost too easy. "Sid is starting on the DBs. I'll put Danny on the fingerprints as soon as he comes in, that will keep him busy for a while. I'll continue with the gun and the knife."

"Good, I'll join you soon," Mac says.

"Off to work then?" Stella asks.

"Yeah, I'll see you later," Mac replies, chilled by the sensation how much that just felt like saying good-bye to Claire.

--

"Michael Bloom, do you know why you are here?" Flack asks the suspect sitting opposite him.

"Something about a gun you found?" The man is shifting nervously.

"Your gun, to be exact, and on a crime scene. Care to explain that?"

"Eh, it was stolen …"

"How very convenient!" Lindsay's voice is dripping with sarcasm, "and you didn't think of reporting that?"

"I … I only … noticed this morning," Michael sounds embarrassed.

Flack and Lindsay look at each other. "Are you telling us you bought a gun and neglected to look after it? Two people were killed and one officer wounded with your weapon!" Flack explodes. Michael's eyes go wide at this.

"Okay, let's say we believe you. Where do you usually keep your gun? Who could have had access?"

"I don't really like to have a weapon in the house, so I left it in a locker in my shed."

"And who can get into your shed?" Lindsay asks, and seeing the man hesitate continues, "no, don't even say it, the shed wasn't locked." The man nods weakly. "And you didn't notice that the locker had been forced open?"

"Well, it's not like the door was standing wide open. It was only a small padlock, still hanging in its place, and the door was pushed closed again."

Flack is fuming at Michael's stupidity, "Okay. But don't think of leaving town, you're not off the hook yet."

--

Sid is getting to work on the corpse of Frank Carson. While cause of death is obviously the gunshot-wound to the head, he is looking for the background story now. He checks the hands of the victim first. Frank Carson's hands are not those of a hard worker, but they are smudged at the tips and Sid doesn't want any evidence to be compromised by the ink when he takes the fingerprints. He bags the swabs for the trace lab, and turns to Marina Carson's body. Her hands are clean, but under her fingernails he finds skin tissue. Samples go to DNA, two sets of fingerprints to Danny.

--

Danny eyes the table before him. He has been on it for some time now, and the pile of unidentified fingerprints doesn't appear to be getting any smaller. Fingerprints from the doors, from a number of windows, fingerprints from anywhere near the dead bodies, and also from Iota's room. He doesn't really want to imagine how many people had helped the family move. With a sigh he scans yet another fingerprint.

Lindsay comes in, "Hawkes just gave me these." She hands him an envelope with fingerprints Hawkes pulled off the gun, the bullets, and the knife. He makes a face.

She sits down next to him, "Found anything yet?"

"Other than that the family had many friends, no." He sounds frustrated.

She pats his knee and asks, "What's with the different stacks?"

He points to a small stack on the left. "These are so small they must be children's, probably Iota's. These" he points to two other stacks, "belong to Frank and Marina Carson. And these…" his finger moves along a line of stacks on the edge of the table when the computer makes a faint bleep to get their attention.

They look at the screen. A match, his face lights up, drops again, another print that is only in the system because he scanned it earlier that day. He marks it and puts it on one of the stacks he has lined up on the table's edge. The stack topples and falls. They both sigh.

--

Hawkes finds Lindsay and Danny in the break room. "Hey, has either of you seen Mac?" The two shake their heads simultaneously. "Strange, he said he would join us soon."

"Maybe he got held up on the way," Lindsay suggests.

"But that was this morning, what could keep him so long?" They look at each other and shrug.

"Anyway, Danny, have you identified the fingerprints on the bullets yet?"

"Yeah, they all belong to Michael Bloom."

"All the ones that were there anyway," Hawkes says and continues when he sees his colleagues' questioning looks, "Strange thing is that there were no fingerprints on the three bullets that had been loaded last. It could well be that someone else put them in there."

"That would corroborate Michael's story," Lindsay remarks, "Personally I don't think that he's smart enough to plant misleading evidence. I'm pretty sure though, Flack would love to hold him anyway, and not just for carelessness."

Sid joins them. "Marina had quite a story to tell. I found bruising on her wrists, her shoulders, her thighs and her back. All from different times, the oldest ones on her thighs, the most recent ones on her wrists. So I'm thinking domestic violence, or a rough love life. You know, I once dated a girl who …"

"Eh, Sid?" Hawkes interjects, but of course that can't stop the ME.

The others share glances and grin as he rambles on about former dates. They look up in surprise when Sid stops mid-sentence of his own accord.

He looks out the door, "Mac?" They all look in the same direction.

Mac is pacing the hallway, an envelope in his hand. His face is frozen into a mask. He looks up when he sees the members of his team file out of the break room, but doesn't say a word. They gather around him.

"What's the matter?" Lindsay asks. He looks at her in silence, but something is at work in his eyes, bitterness and anger. "Mac! What happened?" she urges him.