Chapter IX

Gibbs had sent him to the hotel again to play connect the acquaintances, but Marie Bayer's death seemed to ring in his ears, distracting him. His nose felt horribly tender and his eye had grown too colorful and too puffy to successfully hide behind the glasses. After testing the speech a few times in his head, Tony worked it out: he would have to leave the hotel to go buy some aspirin to make his bruises stop protesting. It was a decent enough excuse to leave things the way they were, and he even scrawled a note on the back of a rape charge: Gone to get some painkillers. Be back soon. P.S. – I took all of the booze out of the mini-bar as hazard pay. He signed in with a flourish. Never let it be said that he wasn't willing to hammer his own coffin shut.

He had forgotten Emily Bayer. Hell, he wasn't even sure if she was Emily Bayer now. She might have shaken off the name as easily as she had shaken off the man himself. Tony hoped that, for his own sake, she had kept it: she had told him her maiden name once but it kept slipping between his fingers. He should have been the one to go and tell her, the way he had been the one to tell Lucas - - the department would have only sent a uniform, still so green he would have sap dripping from his enforced-sympathy smile. It would have been a slight. Emily had been a detective's wife, once, and they would have wrapped around her tight if Marie had died then. If Marie had died then, it would have been the damn chief himself at her front door, holding his cap in his hands, but she had walked out, and the cloistered department was just as willing to play wounded lover as Lucas had been.

Tony didn't owe Emily the way he owed Lucas, but he was still the one that should have been there, and he was willing enough to turn his other cheek for her if she grieved the way her ex-husband had: quick and violent, with no room for melancholy.

The operator he reached was ridiculously slow and he found himself gritting his teeth and wishing passionately for a switchboard. Eventually, though, she managed to spell Emily's address out to him in ridiculously obscure phonetics. The little house he found was far enough away from the Lachers and the Kellys for the staggering to seem intentional - - the killer ensuring that no simple Neighborhood Watch program would turn him up.

He could turn the addresses over to Pete, who could probably force them onto some kind of Cartesian plane to give them meaning and direction. It would be a shot in the dark, with just the three points, but, like the address book cross-references, it was worth a try.

Not that he'd spared even five minutes for the address book and the Kelly stationery since the thought of finding Emily had first come to him.

"Selective focus, Gibbs," he said to the silence of the car. The feeling of guilt still knotted in his gut, misplaced - - he had never claimed to be Gibbs's wingman.

You promised to follow orders.

Okay. Sure. He'd done that and he'd even meant it. He would splice together the names the second he was back in the hotel, and he would even share the liquor if Gibbs asked very nicely, but t his had to come first. Because they had come first, Lucas and Emily, who had thrown him a first-year anniversary party with a cookout and sparkly fireworks the cracked open and spilled lightning confetti across the sky. They were part of his past and even if Tony always left, he always said goodbye first. No point in leaving loose ends.

To his surprise, the door opened as he climbed onto the porch. Emily stood back in the shadows, propping the screen open for him with one foot, and he accepted the invitation silently. The house was clean, the floorboards smooth and sleek with polish. The furniture all had rounded, childproofed corners. He followed her winding path, but she stayed ahead of him, never turning around. He was left with her back - - her small shoulders and her bobbing blonde ponytail. She made her way to the sink and held a glass under the already streaming faucet, then offered it to him a moment later.

Only then did she turn around to look at him. Her eyes were pinkish, her mouth tight.

"I thought you might show up," she said tonelessly. "I'm just surprised you didn't get here before the meter-maid."

"I'm sorry," Tony said. "I - -"

"Went to Lucas," Emily said. Tony let her believe that, because it was easy and almost true. "I guessed that one." She gave him a long look and he knew that she was seeing the black eye, the skin on his nose that was rapidly turning plum. "But I knew you'd make it here eventually. You were always one of the good guys."

The water was warm and metallic. "You were always the only woman I knew that believed it."

He put the glass down on the counter when she came closer. She leaned against him and he put his arms around her, feeling her heartbeat at his own chest. Lucas should have been there, holding her, Lucas or some boyfriend, but she only had him, and he held her as tightly and as best as he could. Her face was dry against his shoulder. Stronger than Lucas. Stronger than him. He wanted to introduce her to Gibbs, almost. He breathed in the scent of her hair: expensive shampoo that smelled like raspberries.

"I used to be a little bit in love with you," she said. He didn't answer. It was nothing he didn't already know. "Do you remember your first year here? The party we had?" He nodded against the slight curve of her cheek. "The kids bullied you into playing Slip-n-Slide and you said you'd have blisters on your stomach for weeks. I was with you when Lucas set off the fireworks. I wanted to kiss you. I should have. You would have taken care of her, Tony. You would have been able to keep her safe. A good father."

He kissed her on the cheek. "I would have been a shitty father, Emily," he said. "And the wrong choice for a husband, too."

She pulled back and looked at him steadily. "A good friend," she said.

"Maybe," Tony said. "Maybe that. Sometimes."

The sudden noise outside startled him, made him flex his fingers in anticipation of reaching for the gun strapped to his hip. The footsteps on the hollow wooden porch echoed so loudly through the little house that he understood why Emily had been waiting for him at the door. There would have been no chance of any lover entering silently here - - this wasn't the Kelly house, insulated and warm and safe from harm. They must have stood so frighteningly vulnerable against the man who had wanted to hurt Marie. His jaw tightened and he headed for the door, stopping her from following him by throwing out a hand.

"It might be - -" How to explain Gibbs? "It might be someone I know. Let me check."

"It's the press," she said hollowly. "They've been coming by all day."

"Then I can make them leave."

In truth, he expected Gibbs to have that kind of awful and uncanny timing. He even felt his muscles relaxing at the knowledge that he had been caught at his own game. Gibbs had smacked him with a folder in the hotel and might do it again, given provocation, and Tony was pretty sure this qualified as provocation. Necessary and right, but still.

He was so completely expecting Gibbs that even when he saw the face through the screen door, and even as he swung it open, he saw that bad military haircut and those steel eyes right until the moment the man on the other side dropped his camera and started to run.

Tony had no time to think. He kicked the camera out of his way, into the house, and picked up the pursuit. He could already hear his heartbeat pounding: he had been running on catnaps and candy bars since the first body and now it was coming back to take a vicious bite out of him. He made himself stretch harder, press his feet deeper into the pavement and take longer steps, as if he could make the distance between himself and the rapidly-diminishing figure shrink instantly. But it was too late - - getting the camera out of the way had cost him precious seconds. If it had been a vehicle pursuit, he might have had a chance. Right now, the man running before him had more sleep, more food, and more fear. He would run faster.

And he did - - until Tony could no longer see him.

He braced himself against one of the cars that lined the street and called Gibbs, no longer caring about the note he had left or the people he might be leaving behind. He waited only for the answering bark before he said, "We had him, Gibbs. We had the son of a bitch. It's Prestor. Max Prestor, the peeping tom who left us standing on his goddamn porch."

- - - - -

Under other circumstances, he would have asked what Dinozzo had been doing halfway across town on the losing end of an on-foot pursuit, but Gibbs knew who owned the house. And under other circumstances, Dinozzo would have earned himself a real ass-chewing for disregarding orders, but it was hard to argue with his results. He had gotten the APB out on Prestor as quickly as possible and then gone to rendezvous with Dinozzo. Given the point-blank instructions to wait, he wasn't surprised to find Dinozzo's car still parked on the street. At least it was something. Dinozzo wasn't flying solo . . . not yet, anyway.

Not yet, but he was getting there. He was entirely kinetic by the time Gibbs arrived - - Dinozzo seemed to either be all rest or all motion, and the enforced stillness had made him twitchy and irritable - - and he had his hand on Emily Bayer's shoulder, his fingers drumming against her breastbone in unconscious, rapid taps.

"We had him," Dinozzo said again. Gibbs had next to no patience for people who thought that repetition made things more significant, and he scowled at Dinozzo with no effect. "But no, no, he didn't act guilty enough."

Something about the way his hand tightened on Emily's shoulder then told Gibbs too much - - Dinozzo was twisting under the weight of knowing how close they had been so early on. It was bad enough for Gibbs to remember the door swinging shut in his face and knowing the two bodies that had come after that, but he had never played uncle to any of the victims. He had taken the hit from Bayer and now probably didn't even regret it. Idiot. He hadn't been the one in charge. It hadn't been his call to make.

"Your nose is bleeding again," Gibbs said brusquely. "Go clean yourself up."

With a dull nod, Dinozzo detached himself from Emily and wandered down the hall.

"I don't know you," Emily Bayer said. She had surprisingly cool eyes, letting him see nothing. "I thought I'd met everyone in homicide at some point."

As much as he could, he elaborated on Ellie Lacher and Alex Kelly and how he had ended up steering an investigation headed straight for hell with Dinozzo playing tour guide. He couldn't console her - - she seemed unreachable. Dinozzo might have been able to withstand that wintry façade, but if she was softer underneath, she wasn't going to show him that. By the time Tony made it out of the bathroom with his face damp and scrubbed pink, still clutching a handful of tissues, Gibbs had not even made an indentation.

"APB?"

"What do you think, Dinozzo?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

He needed Dinozzo out of the house - - the kid had no more business questioning Emily than he would have had questioning his partner - - but their priorities had shifted too rapidly. The names back at the hotel had dropped in significance and the APB out on Prestor had instructions tacked on: all the calls would go to Gibbs, personally. The only thing left was to send Dinozzo to Prestor's house with a hastily-cobbled warrant and hope he could turn up Buttercream and Seconal. But Gibbs couldn't send him in without backup, not after how things had gone so far. It was one thing for him to run a scene without anyone guarding his six, it was something else for Dinozzo to do the same.

He chose a different tack. "I have some names I need you to run," he said. "Seconal."

Tony took the slip of paper without objection. "You'll call me if you need me, right?"

No wonder Dinozzo kept those sunglasses with him all the time. With his eyes revealed, his bare face was one overlarge question mark: do you still trust me? Are you pissed off?

"As soon as I'm done," Gibbs said. "Now get out of here."

When he was gone, Emily said, "I was glad that he came to see me." She sounded very quiet and very slightly remonstrating. "But I know you didn't want him here. Lucas always said that questions could get messy, even when he wasn't with a suspect. And you want to keep Tony's hands clean . . . for now. Don't you?"

"He's been a cop for years," Gibbs said. "He knows how things work." He flipped open a notebook and uncapped his pen, settling in to the familiar ritual as if Prestor wasn't outside, slipping further and further away from them. The APB had better work. They could confirm Prestor's involvement if Dinozzo could place him buying Seconal, but confirmation would be no good without the warm body. "Is the name Max Prestor familiar to you?"

"It is now."

"Before," he said.

"No," she said. "Never. But Tony told me what he looked like, and I . . . I know his face. He'd been coming by all day. They all had."

"Mrs. Bayer?"

"The reporters," she said, and her voice hardened. "I was a cop's wife for long enough that I know nothing makes the news like fresh blood. I should have known that the feeding frenzy would start . . . but I couldn't think of it then. I went to the door and there were two or three of them, photographers and cameramen in tow. He was one of the photographers. He broke the flowerpot at the bottom of the steps."

"He wasn't a photographer," Gibbs said.

"I guessed that much. But you can't tell me who he really is, can you?" She stood and turned, walking over to the low, unlit fireplace and fondling one of the small pottery knickknacks on the mantelpiece. "Because you don't want me to be able to find him. Shouldn't you be more worried about what you tell Lucas, Special Agent Gibbs? Or did Tony walk into a door earlier?"

He could have told her the truth: that if protecting Max Prestor were his first priority, she would be the one he would guard himself against. Lucas Bayer burned too brightly for long plans. In another day, his rage would vanish and he would be staring at Dinozzo's battered face and wondering how he could have done it. Bayer was dangerous, but it was the kind of danger that could easily be snuffed out between his fingertips. Gibbs knew better than to dismiss a woman's anger: and Emily Bayer seemed all too patient.

"We haven't told Detective Bayer, either," he said.

"You should," she said. "He loved her, you know. Not me, not all the time, but always Marie. And Lucas blames anyone he can. You'd do better to make sure it's someone you don't mind losing, Special Agent Gibbs."

- - - - -

"I don't know how comfortable I am using something you dug out of the evidence fridge as an icepack, Pete." It was token resistance, however, and Tony didn't fight the hand that closed around his wrist and pushed the so-not-an-icepack up to his eye. "Anyway, it's not like the eye's swollen shut or anything."

"Oh," Pete said, "well, if the eye's not swollen shut, then you must be perfectly fine. And anyway, that's not even evidence. It's something Joss put in the evidence fridge for God only knows what reason."

"I feel so much better."

Pete extended his hand. "Names. Drug lords. Now."

"We don't call them drug lords if they deal Seconal, Pete. We call them bastards who couldn't get their hands on coke." Still, he produced the paper. "I was under the impression that since you work Trace I'd be the one feeding names into a computer. Or is this another one of those things where you don't want me to speak Italian because you're afraid women's underwear slide down because I can fake an accent?"

Pete crossed his arms. "This is actually one of those things where I'm very busy but still making time for you to be an asshole."

Tony handed the paper over. "I don't have any cash on me. Just so we're clear. I mean, there's no way for me to call you in a pizza or magical Red Bull delivery service at this point."

"Every once in a while," Pete said, already settling down at the computer, "I throw you one for nothing. Now stop bleeding and let me work."

"I feel all warm and fuzzy inside," Tony said, and spun his stool around. The still-not-an-icepack smelled like his high school locker room. "This is TLC right here."

"Do we need to talk about this?" Pete asked without looking up from his keyboard.

"About what?"

"About Lucas punching you in the face. Because that really sucks and under normal circumstances, I'd ruin his life for you or something, but . . . not really appropriate right now. But that doesn't mean that this isn't hard for you and I didn't know if anyone had, you know, asked if it was. So."

Tony carefully moved the icepack down. "Are you asking me if I want to talk about my feelings?"

Pete, finally facing him, looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Yeah."

"No."

"Oh, thank God," Pete said, "because I had no idea where I was going with that." Still, he stayed facing Tony, still looking ill-at-ease but oddly determined. "Hey, Tony? I know you said that things were bad before and then they took a nosedive, and you were already talking about leaving, and I just wanted . . . I'd do more than this for nothing. You're a good friend. And keep that icepack up, you moron."

Tony obediently moved it. "You're the second person today that's told me I'm a good friend."

"Tony, you're opening up to me."

"Sorry," he said. "I won't do it again. Tell me when you've got something, okay?"

He closed his eyes to Pete saying something about how if he'd been thinking about keeping key facts of the case entirely himself just for fun, and even though he tried to think about Gibbs promising to call him and Pete and Emily saying he was a good friend, his head still saw the bigger picture: the girls whose fragile bodies had built the stage he was standing on.