Lupo POV


"This is some seriously crazy shit."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"No, I mean, dude. Seriously. Crazy. Shit."

"Yeah, Mulder," I said with forced patience. "I get it. Can you tell me who sent it?"

"Dude, are you listening to me? That's what's crazy."

I looked up at the ceiling and counted to ten in my head.

It wouldn't do me any good to show hostility. After all, he was working pro bono. He didn't have to tell me anything.

"Hang on," he muttered as he continued typing like a man possessed.

Then he started up a whole stream of dialogue, and I was glad that he only seemed to be talking to himself, because I wouldn't even know where to begin to try to decipher it.

"You call this covert, you kermitnick wannabe? This is romper room. Fucking twister. Do you know who you're dealing with here? I'm the gate-keeper, beotch, so take that shit to someone who don't know, right? Oh, yeah. Uh huh…so suck it, haxor."

"Um…Mulder?"

"Yeah, I got ya, dude. You said your chick is an ADA, right? In Manhattan?"

"That's right."

"Well, this email was sent from her office."

"What do you mean it was sent from her office?" I asked sharply as I walked closer to his computer screen.

"See? Crazy. But yeah. And I'm not saying that your guy didn't try to hide it because he did, but you know he can't hide from me, man. He can freemason that shit all he wants to, but I'm like the GLE, you know what I'm saying?"

"No," I said. "So does this mean he was actually in the DA's office? Or that he routed through their IP?"

"Routed through…" he repeated with a grin. "You holding out on me, man? Shit, you do know. And yeah, he was there. I mean, I can't say where in the building, but he was in the building. And he had the nerve to try to make it look like it was coming from outside the building. As if that weak-ass leet shit was gonna fool me."

"He was in the building," I mumbled, mostly to myself. "At three o'clock in the morning."

"Nah, man. Not three o'clock in the morning. He slipped this one the mickey, right? Like, a roofie?"

"He stalled the delivery?" I guessed.

"Uh huh. Twelve hours. You're looking at three o'clock in the afternoon."

I left Mulder's home in Secaucus and headed back into the city.

It gave me the creeps thinking about that guy being in the building with Connie.

And here I'd been insisting on her staying inside.

Great, Lupo.

Keep her trapped inside with the stalker.

I cleared the tunnel and then pulled out my phone to call Bernard.

"What've you got so far?" I asked him.

"I'm working on nothing, Lupes. No one in your building has seen anyone suspicious. If he's been lurking around outside, he's doing a good job of blending in. Did your guy have anything?"

I told him what Mulder had said, although I spoke in plain English.

"We'll go there now and pull the security tapes. Have you thought about telling Cutter?"

"I'm definitely telling him," I said. "I'll meet you there, and we'll go through the tapes together."

I hung up with Bernard and then called Cutter, asking him to meet me.

"I'm already at the office, Detective," he told me amicably. "Come on down."

When I finished talking to him, I considered calling Connie, but then I decided to hold off.

She was safe in Baltimore, and it didn't make any sense to worry her with this latest news.

Not right now, anyway.

With any luck, we might find something on one of the tapes, although considering we had no idea what he looked like…it was going to be a challenge.

As I thought about Connie, my phone buzzed with an incoming text.

I'm here, safe and sound. Stop worrying.

Yeah, that was going to happen.

It was almost three in the afternoon when I got to the DA's office, and I ran into Bernard and Hayes in the parking lot.

"We've been hashing this out," Hayes said to me as they fell into step beside me. "I don't see how this guy is the killer."

"I'm listening."

"Well, the other two victims were killed within three days of each other. There's no evidence of prior stalking or threats of any kind…and now it's been more than a week since Gingrich was killed."

"She's right, Lupes. Killers don't usually increase the amount of time between kills. If anything, it normally decreases. And the urge to inflict fear prior to killing…we just didn't see that with the other two."

"But with only two victims, can we really determine a pattern?" I posed.

"Maybe not," Bernard conceded. "But there's also the email...the way it's worded."

"What about it?"

"It's an odd choice of words, if he's the killer," Hayes explained. "He says it's a shame one wasn't you. Don't you think the real killer would've said something more like it could've been you? And he also said maybe the third time's a charm. Maybe. If he was the one responsible, he wouldn't have needed to say maybe because he'd know."

"You're going to argue semantics on the writing of a murderer?"

"I'm just saying…I don't think we're dealing with the same person. Of course, that doesn't make it any less dangerous. I think that for some reason the stalker has fixated on Connie. And then he probably read about the murdered ADA's in the paper, and he associated them with her. He figured it would make her even more afraid of him if she thought he'd already killed two people."

"Besides," Bernard added. "We still think our killer's motive is personal as opposed to case-related. I mean, we've got two victims, both males in their mid-thirties, both ladies' men…what are the odds that they were both killed and yet it had nothing to do with the fact that they were both banging the same woman?"

"Which would also point to the fact that the stalker isn't the killer," I admitted.

This was exactly why I'd wanted to call Bernard about the email.

Normally, I would've seen all of the reasons they just explained to me, but I was having a lot of trouble being professional when it was Connie's life at risk.

"We'll still help you go through the tapes," Hayes offered as we cleared security and headed for the bank of elevators.

"That's okay. I'm going to let Cutter know what's going on and maybe he'll look at the tapes with me. He'll be able to better recognize anyone out of place."

"It could be someone who works here," Bernard reminded me. "Just because he's a wacko doesn't mean he isn't gainfully employed."

"That's true," I agreed. "But I have to start somewhere."

"You know, he probably does work here," Hayes said. "Your computer guy said that the effort was made to hide his tracks, right?"

"Uh huh."

"And the threatening phone call came during the business day, but from a payphone only two blocks away. Someone could've easily taken a break and slipped outside to make the call."

She definitely had a point.

I looked at her approvingly, but she was staring at Bernard. It was impossible to miss the look that passed between the two of them as we rode up to the fifth floor.

With all that was going on, I'd completely forgotten that he'd given her a ride home last night.

I wasn't going to ask him about it in front of her, but I would hit him up later.

"I appreciate you two helping me out today," I said, suddenly feeling like a fifth wheel. "I know it's Saturday and…"

"Since when don't we work on a Saturday, Lupes?" Bernard deflected easily, although it took him a few seconds to shift his gaze to mine. "It's no problem, right, Hayes?"

"Right," she agreed. "Since we're here, I'm going to ask Cutter if I can use a computer. I want to run a quick cross-check to see if Connie's name hits with our two other victims. Just to be sure."

"She said that she never worked with them," I told her.

"Yeah, but even if they don't have a case in common, maybe they have a criminal in common. You know, like if he committed a crime in Manhattan and then did something else on the island."

"Or it could be two perpetrators," Bernard added. "Working together to get payback. I mean, we think it's only one, but we don't know for sure."

"It can't hurt to check," I agreed.

The fifth floor was dimly lit, with only a handful of employees at their desks. No one even glanced up as the three of us walked through the room and headed for Cutter's office.

"They all think they're safe in here," I commented quietly. "No one ever thinks that the trouble will come from within."

"You know, it's possible that Connie knows her stalker," Hayes suggested. "If he works in this building, maybe she rebuffed his advances or something."

"That's true," Bernard agreed. "Nothing in any of the threats indicates that it's professional. I mean, we've all kind of assumed that because of what she does, but maybe it's a guy with an unhealthy crush."

"That would explain why he hasn't been in a hurry," I said thoughtfully. "If it was someone she put away, or the relative of someone like that, then they wouldn't play games. They'd just come after her."

"You need to check with her and find out if anyone in the building has been talking to her lately."

I nodded and knocked on Cutter's door.

"Come on in, Detective," he answered. "Or rather, Detectives," he added when he saw all three of us. "I didn't know this was going to be an official meeting."

"Mr. Cutter, this is my temporary partner, Lauren Hayes," Bernard introduced.

"Temporary," he repeated as he shook Hayes' hand. He nodded at me and said, "Did you two have a spat?"

"Hayes and Eames were working with the Gorens on a case and then Bernard and I picked up a case which turned out to be a conflict of interest for me, so the chief assigned Hayes to work with Bernard and Eames to work with me," I explained quickly. "Temporarily."

"Right," Hayes said. "I'm supposed to be out of the 2-7."

"With Eames. Is that Detective Goren's brother?"

"Uh huh."

"And what's the conflict?"

"We're working the Staten Island ADA case," Bernard told him. "Lupo threatened one of the victims."

"Let me guess. Lee Gingrich," he stated.

"You know about him?" I asked in surprise.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the fact that Cutter knew something so personal about Connie, something I'd only very recently discovered.

I take that back.

I did know how I felt about it.

I didn't like it one damn bit.

"What's there to know?" he replied ambivalently. "He's an asshole. Or was an asshole. I'm sorry if that makes me sound insensitive, but I can only guess you two are working through countless potential suspects considering how many people he's pissed off."

"Oh," I mumbled as I realized that he really didn't know anything.

"What'd you think I was talking about?" he asked as he waved at the chairs in front of his desk, offering for us to sit down. "I mean, the other guy – Powers. He was a marshmallow. Good in the courtroom, but everywhere else he was a doormat. I can't see him provoking a threat from a house cat."

"Yeah, it was Gingrich," I said, ignoring the fact that Bernard was now staring at me. I knew he was curious about the purpose for what had gone on between the two of us, but I also knew that he wouldn't ask. "So anyway, you know about the phone call Connie got last week, right?"

"From a payphone down the street," he said with a nod. "Is there a new lead on who made the call?"

"No, but she got an email last night."

Together with Hayes and Bernard, I brought Cutter up to speed on the email, its origin, and how it may or may not relate to the ADA case.

"I tend to agree with Bernard and Hayes," Cutter said when we finished. "Even though the stalker tried to make it sound related, it definitely seems like two different people. So your computer guy…he's sure it came from this building?"

"Uh huh. And he's good," I assured him.

"And that, combined with the closeness of the phone call…" Bernard said leadingly.

"You think it's someone who works here," Cutter said slowly.

"Which would make our suspect pool…"

"Hundreds," he responded as he picked up his phone. He punched a button and paused for a second before saying, "Bring me the personnel files of everyone who works in this building."

He covered the phone briefly and asked, "Are we sure it's a man?"

"I heard his voice on the phone," Hayes said. "It sounded like a man, but I guess it's always possible…"

He nodded and went back to his call.

"I'm in my office. Bring them to me as soon as you can, along with the check-in log from yesterday."

He hung up the phone and said, "We'll cross-match the files with who was on the premises on Friday afternoon. It won't narrow it down significantly, but it will weed some of them out."

"I appreciate this," I said. "We'll get the files and then get out of your hair."

"I don't think so, Detective. One of my own is threatening another one of my own? This is my territory. I'm going to help you find him."

TBC...