Bobby POV

"When did you start smoking?" I asked Logan as we rode down in the elevator.

"What?"

I looked over at him and was surprised to see him sniffing himself. Which meant that he'd heard my question and was instead stalling for time.

I didn't repeat myself, but rather just waited for him to formulate whatever fabrication he was going to offer.

"I don't smoke," he said. "When did you turn into a bloodhound?"

I raised my eyebrow at him, but remained silent. Surely he recognized the contradictory nature of his words.

"It was cram-packed on the subway this morning and I was jammed up against some guy who'd been smoking like a freight train," he said at last. "I guess I picked up his scent."

"Oh," I replied, not believing him for a second. He had my curiosity piqued as to why he would bother to lie about something like that, but I let it go for the time being. "I wonder if Rodgers will be able to find us any trace evidence on the anonymous lover."

"It might not do us much good, unless it's someone in the system," he remarked, seemingly relieved by the fact that I'd dropped my line of questioning.

"True," I agreed. "Although if she does find something, then after we get a name on the lover, the DNA will let us confirm it."

"You mean if it's someone who wants to deny it?"

"Uh huh," I said. "It could be someone who's still in the closet."

"I'm not sure that this angle is going to get us very far. We both agree that it's not a crime of passion."

"Yeah, but I'd still like to talk to the guy. If Adam had trouble with his father, then maybe he shared his feelings with the lover."

Thirty minutes later, we discovered that talking to the lover was not going to happen.

Not without a Ouija board.

"I was just getting ready to call you," Rodgers said amicably when we walked into the morgue.

And she seemed so uncharacteristically cheerful, that it got my hopes up.

But her news was incongruous with her tone.

"I've got a John Doe that matches up to the DNA found on your vic," she stated.

"Come on, Doc," Logan said. "You're supposed to be on our side."

"Sorry, boys. I don't make the evidence. I just find it. After I realized that I did a shoddy job on this guy yesterday, I started again first thing this morning, going over him with a fine-toothed comb. I scraped skin cells, did another pass under the nails, and checked for hairs. I pulled specimens from two different individuals. One matched up to the John Doe in my freezer."

"The lover?" Logan guessed.

"Considering what I found, I'd have to say yes. I told you yesterday that there was no semen, and I thought I'd checked thoroughly for any other evidence, but I missed a hair. In my defense, it's the same color as the victim's, but still…I hope you'll forgive the oversight."

"So it was a…"

"Uh huh. And when I ran the DNA through the system, imagine my surprise when I got a hit from someone already in the morgue. The John Doe came in yesterday morning."

"Which means it's actually good that you missed it the first time around," Logan remarked in her defense. "Otherwise you would've run the hair before the guy was in the system."

"I suppose," she agreed reluctantly.

"We're going to need the full report on the J.D.," I told her. She walked over to a nearby table and picked up a folder.

"I already printed everything out," she said.

Logan reached for it, but she opened it up to point something out, so he looked at it over her shoulder.

"The time of death is approximately nine o'clock Sunday evening," she stated. "Only an hour or two before McIvor."

"COD?" I asked from my position near the exam table.

I couldn't seem to take my eyes off of Adam McIvor's body. I kept waiting for him to somehow speak to me.

Could his father really have done this to him? Was the councilman that homophobic?

"Manual strangulation," Rodgers answered. She closed up the file and handed it to Logan and then moved back to where I was standing.

"You said that there were two different specimens," Logan questioned as he walked around to stand across from us. "What about the second one?"

"The other is as yet unidentified."

"So it could be our killer," he said, bringing his eyes to mine.

"Or, it could be his roommate or a relative or someone he bumped into in line at Starbucks. It was saliva."

Logan raised his eyebrows at her and she smiled and shook her head.

"Not that like that. It was on his neck, and it was just a trace amount. He could've been sneezed on."

"Or spit on," Logan suggested.

"There should've been a lot more if that was the case."

"Unless he wiped it off," I said. "And just missed a little bit. Did you check his clothing?"

"You mean did he swipe his sleeve over it?" she asked with a nod. "I'll check with the lab. If they haven't done it, I'll make sure that they do."

"Okay," Logan said. "Thanks, Doc."

"Any time."

We left the autopsy suite, but were only halfway down the hall when Logan stopped suddenly, patting down his suit pocket.

"Give me a minute," he said, handing me the file. "I left my pen back there."

"In the autopsy suite?" I asked. "You didn't have your pen out."

"I know I had it when I got here," he argued. "And now I don't. I'll be right back."

I watched him curiously as he trotted down the hall and went through the doors, but then I shook my head and opened up the file.

So the lover was dead.

The naked body of our John Doe had been discovered face-down in the mud in Riverside Park.

This definitely put an interesting spin on things.

Strangulation was more a crime of passion.

Had Adam killed him?

And then someone got revenge on him?

Or had the same person killed both victims?

But if it was the same killer, then why two different methods? Especially considering the short time span.

And why waste the time and energy to strangle someone if you had a gun?

And there was no bruising on Adam. No effort had been made to strangle him, just the single gunshot wound.

Did that mean that the John Doe was actually the target, and maybe Adam had just been witness to something he shouldn't have been?

If that was true then we were going to have to go back to square one.

And we definitely needed to learn his identity. I hoped like hell that Riley would be able to shed some light on things for us.

"Okay, I'm ready," Logan said as he trotted down the hall to catch up with me.

"Did you find it?" I asked him.

"Find what?"

"Your pen."

"Oh. Yeah. Um…no. I must have lost it somewhere else."

"What's going on with you today?" I asked him.

"What do you mean?"

"You seem off."

"Nothing. I just didn't get much sleep last night. I was worrying about the meeting with Eames this morning."

"That's it?"

"Yeah."

"So we're good?" I checked.

"Yeah, sure," he said confidently. "Let's go talk to Riley."

I shared my thoughts with him about the latest development as he drove us over to NYU.

"We'll need to call up to the 2-4 and take over their case."

"I'm sure they'll be sad to see that one go," he remarked. "A John Doe in the park? They'll probably hand-deliver the file."

I also sent a text to Alex to let her know that we had another body and that we'd be taking over another precinct's case.

She replied fairly quickly.

I'll call ahead. You can pick it up after NYU.

She was probably glad to get to deal with another captain, other than the woman at the 6-8.

Captain Alonzo.

Actually, I would've preferred if our case had ended up in the 6-8. I would love to go meet that woman face to face. Although, it sounded as though Alex had handled it nicely.

"What do you think, Goren? Do we want to take Riley in or talk to him here?"

"You think he's hiding something?"

"No," he answered after a moment of thought. "No, I think he was honest with us. Let's see how it goes and if he starts clamming up, we'll haul him in."

We found Riley in the library. It took us more than an hour to track him down.

"He's not alone," Logan mumbled as we walked toward a back table on the second floor.

Riley and another guy were sitting close, very close, and seemed to be studying each other more so than the books that were opened in front of them.

"How's it going, Riley?" Logan greeted.

"Look, I told you guys everything I know already."

"We thought maybe you might remember something else today," Logan told him. "You know, since you're sober."

"You're coming here to bust my balls?" he asked belligerently.

"No, Riley. We just wanted to ask you a couple more questions," I said, eyeing the friend who was glaring at us. "Alone."

"This is Eric," Riley said. "Anything you have to say to me, you can say it in front of him."

"Okay," I agreed. "Eric, did you know Adam McIvor?"

"Yeah, I mean, I spent a lot of time at Riley's and Adam was there, so…yeah."

"We need to know about the boyfriend."

"What boyfriend?"

"Come on, Riley. We know that Adam was seeing someone."

"No, he wasn't. Not that I know of anyway. From what I could tell, he was seeing lots of someones. He hadn't been out for very long, and I guess he was trying to pick a type."

"So who was his type lately?"

"Um…it's probably been a couple of weeks, but...Trevor Myer…Bailey Reynolds…Mo Easley…"

Riley trailed off and looked at Eric, who then picked up the thread.

"Brayden Kershaw…Tyler Barnes…"

"Okay, we get it," Logan said. "So he got around."

"But it was all good," Eric said. "I mean, he didn't spout any lines, you know what I'm saying? They were just hook-ups and as long as both people know it going into it then there's no harm done."

"Any of those guys you mentioned have blonde hair?" I asked him. I had the picture of the John Doe in the file, but I wasn't ready to pull it out just yet.

"Trevor," Riley said. "And Brayden."

"Have you seen either of them today?"

"Look, I'm telling you. Neither of them could've killed Adam," Riley insisted.

"We're not saying that's what happened," Logan said, glancing at me and giving me a nod. I pulled out the morgue photo and put it on the table, face down.

"I'm going to show you a picture," I warned them. "I need to know if you recognize the man in the photo, okay?"

Neither of them recognized the photo.

I'd hoped that we would be able to ID our John Doe, but apparently that wasn't going to happen yet.

We did manage to get two email addresses that Adam used, so we'd hopefully be able to pull his correspondence from the server.

"Guess which one his parents knew about," Logan joked when we got back in the car.

One email was an AOL account using the name adammcivor.

The other was gmail. That name was onesexmachine.

"I can't believe anyone would actually use an email address like that," I remarked. "I've always been of the belief that if you have to say it…"

"Then it's probably not true," he finished.

"Exactly. Okay, so the 2-4?"

"Let's do it."

The trip to the other precinct caused my blood pressure to sky rocket. Although it started out decent enough, it went downhill fairly quickly.

"Is this all you've got?" Logan asked the detective who handed off the file.

"My partner's getting the crime scene photos from the conference room. But yeah, otherwise this is it. You know, we just got it yesterday," he stated.

"Yeah, but still…"

"No ID, his prints aren't in the system, no distinguishing marks, no witnesses, no personal affects. You want to tell me what I should've done differently?"

"No," I said quickly, not wanting to make waves. "This is great."

"Thank you," he replied, his mood changing when he realized that we weren't criticizing him. "So it ties into a Major Case?"

"Uh huh," I agreed. Logan's phone started to buzz, so he stepped away for a moment while I made nice with the detective.

"Hey, so how's Yuille doing?" he asked me.

"Yuille? Um…I don't really know. Yesterday was my first day back, and he wasn't there when I left last year."

"Oh, that's right. You're the guy who went undercover in the FBI, aren't you? I thought your name sounded familiar. With the new captain over there, right?"

"That's right. Captain Eames."

"Yeah," he said with a grin. "Hey, do me a favor and send her the next time you need a file, would you?"

"You want me to send my captain to pick up a file? It doesn't exactly work like that."

I was trying to convince myself that he wasn't actually saying what it sounded like he was saying.

It wasn't working.

"Yeah, but we're all brothers, right? I mean, come on. Yuille said that she is one fine-looking piece."

I took a step closer to him as anger flooded through me.

"A piece? You're going to talk about a police captain like that?"

"Hey, I don't mean any disrespect."

"You don't mean…how is that not disrespectful?" I shouted.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Logan was hustling towards me, but I ignored him and took another step toward the detective.

"Goren, relax," the detective continued. "I was just wondering if she was as hot as Yuille said."

"What's going on here, guys?" Logan asked.

"Goren's getting his panties in a bunch because I was asking about that firecracker Major Case captain," the detective said.

"You're talking about Eames?" Logan fired back.

"Yeah," the detective said with a laugh, obviously not realizing how close he was to death. "Yuille said he'd like to handcuff her to the…"

I couldn't stop myself.

I grabbed onto the front of his shirt and rammed him up against the concrete stanchion.

"You need to stop talking," I bit out. "Right now, or I'll file charges of harassment against you on her behalf."

"Jeez, Goren," he sputtered. "I didn't mean anything…"

"Hey!" another detective called out as he ran towards us. Logan, who had been standing back while I had my moment, stepped up to intercept the approaching partner.

"Your partner here was insulting our captain," Logan told him.

"Arnie, what the hell?"

"I was just repeating what Yuille said," the detective responded. I was still holding him firmly against the column, and no one else in the room seemed interested in what was going on.

"Well, there's your mistake," the partner scoffed. "I'll apologize for my idiot partner. He used to work with Yuille in the 6-8, but they both got transferred out last month."

"You pulled the 2-4 and Yuille landed in Major Case?" Logan asked as I finally relaxed my grip.

My mind was piecing together a larger scenario than just this one.

Yuille used to work for the 6-8?

The place with the captain who was giving Alex such a hard time?

Interesting coincidence, especially now that I learned Yuille was talking about Alex like that.

Just wait until I ran into him again.

I stepped back from the detective and gave him a little shove in the direction of his desk.

"Here are the crime scene photos," the partner said, handing them to Logan. "Good luck with the case."

Which was his way of telling us that it was time for us to leave.

And that was fine.

I didn't want to look at that other guy for another second.

"Are you okay?" Logan asked me once we were back to the car.

"Did I over-react?"

"No. Hell no. I wanted to plant the guy myself."

"You know, the 6-8 captain has been riding Eames," I told him. "And now we find out that Yuille's been talking about her behind her back and he's from the 6-8."

"What do you want to do about it?" he asked me. "Whatever it is, I'm in."

Despite my anger, I couldn't help but smirk at his enthusiasm.

"I'm not sure yet," I admitted. I leaned back in the seat and focused on breathing for a minute to settle myself down.

"We can break into his house this weekend and..."

"No," I said, and now I was laughing. Only Logan would suggest a B & E to get back at somebody. "But that reminds me, Alex's dad wants you to come to dinner with us Saturday night."

"Her dad?"

"Well, I mean, we want you, too. But he specifically asked for you to join us. He's excited that you're my partner. You know, because of your legend status."

"Legend," he said, shaking his head. "The Crossley thing?"

"Johnny Eames likes a man who puts justice over politics," I said.

"Then I think I'm going to like Johnny Eames," he replied. "Okay, sure. I'll be there."

"Why don't you bring a date?" I suggested. "Maybe the girl from last night?"

"No," he said quickly, and I was glad to see that he didn't deny that there had been a girl last night.

"Why not?"

"Dating isn't exactly what we do," he said carefully.

"Oh."

"Yeah," he said with a grin.

He started to say more, but then my phone rang.

It was Alex.

"Guess who just walked into the squad room," she said when I answered.

She sounded in too good of a mood for it to be bad news.

"Do I get a hint?"

"Maggie McIvor," she told me. "She's in a conference room drinking coffee as we speak."

"She came to us?" I repeated, catching Logan's eye. I gave him a nod and couldn't stop the slow smile. "So she's ready to talk."

"Maybe. I don't know. Either that, or she wants to blast you two for scrapping with her husband yesterday. Where are you?"

"We just left the 2-4. Can you tell her we'll be there in twenty minutes?"

"Sure, but I can't keep an eye on her. I have to help Yuille and Wyatt with an interrogation."

"Yuille," I ground out without much thought. Just the name pissed me off.

"Yeah, what about him?"

"I just learned something interesting about him today. I'll fill you in when I see you."

I wanted to tell her to not be alone with him.

To not bend over anything when he was in the vicinity.

To button her shirt up to her throat.

But those would be boyfriend things to say.

"Something bad?"

"Something you need to know. Thanks for the heads-up on Maggie. We'll be there as soon as we can."

"Bobby," she said quietly.

And I read her mind perfectly.

I love you.

She must have sensed that I was in a mood about something.

"Yeah, I know. Me, too."

TBC...