The door to the coroner's office looked so cold. Matt stood there, he looked so lost. Hoyt had gone in to see if C.J. was indeed there and if he could go in. His eyes went down to the floor and he closed them. How? How could this be happening? Not 24 hours ago he was holding her. He never told her he loved her back but he did tell her he wouldn't let anyone get to her, he just kept saying over and over "Please don't let her be in there…Please" praying she wasn't in that room. This was truly it. It hurt, it hurt so bad…it went way beyond an emotional pain, it was a physical pain in his chest. He almost wished his heart would stop. Hoyt came out and motioned to him. "Are you ready?" he asked. All Matt could do was nod.
The room not only looked cold, but all these instruments, saws and knives. For a second he thought, he just needed to grab her and get her out of there before they hurt her. But he closed his eyes trying to take in the reality of what had happened, still praying everyone was wrong but Hoyt led him over to a cold steel table with a body under a thin white blanket. Hoyt pulled it back and there she was, the love of his life, his best friend…
"No!" he cried out as he reached out her, pulling her hair away from her face, the bruises so fresh and her neck, he could see the ligature marks. He took her body in his arms, holding her as close to him as he could, praying she would just wake up "Oh, C.J! CJ! Please!" he kept crying out as he willed her to begin breathing again…she didn't feel that cold, maybe, just maybe, but Hoyt, the Coroner and another man were pulling him off her. "No, let me go! She's still alive, I know she's still alive" he was screaming as they forced him to release her.
Hoyt grabbed him and handed him her wrist. "Feel there, there's no pulse…Houston." Matt did frantically try to feel for something. "And the sheet isn't moving, she's not breathing" Hoyt said through his own tears. Matt looked back at the sheet. Hoyt was right, it wasn't moving. He held on to her hand with both of his, rubbing it harder than he ever had before, tears streaming off his face "No C.J. No" he barely said through them. Then Matt felt something, a prick. The other man who was holding him back from her with Seth on his name badge told him to just relax and he felt himself get tired all of a sudden. Hoyt and the two men tried to take Matt upstairs. But Matt was still trying to fight them to get back to where she lay, "C.J., C.J." he tried to yell only it was faint. In the Lt.'s office where Roy was waiting to take him home, he had decided his own home was the only place they could really go. C.J.'s memory was too fresh everywhere else.
After they left Seth walked over and checked the I.V. hidden under the table. He and another man rolled her stretcher out to the back of the building, careful to make sure everything attached to her remained that way and then they left to go to the safe house. He had seen husbands lose their wives before, but what Matt just displayed was beyond anything he had ever seen before and he knew when C.J. woke up, she was going to have a few words for him for letting it go this far.
Back at his apartment Robert was livid. He started throwing things. It was all going so well…he was choking her and bringing her back to and choking her and then he stabbed her once in the side, not even that far, just enough for a little blood flow, ok a lot of blood flow, so he could show her, her own blood….only another hour of choking her and the rape was next and then the beating…but no. He heard the car tires and knew someone else showed up before he could finish. She might have died already, it just wasn't the same though. He wanted it to hurt a lot more and take a lot longer.
Suddenly Robert heard someone in his apartment and turned around to see Judge Newman holding a gun. "Ouch that looks like that hurts," he said referring to Robert's nose.
"Here is the information you wanted…I found it in her purse when I had her out cold. I told you I could handle this so put the gun down." Robert said as he handed the judge the papers and then put his hands up.
Judge Newman took the paper and looked it over, "Did she say anything specific to you about ABC Electric? Does she know about my financial connection to Drayton Zoyer?"
Robert kept his hands up, "No she didn't. Like I said, she was the only one who had made that connection. No one else knows that ABC Electric was owned by you or that you and Zoyer have been in business for years now. You can take that money now and invest it in your campaign for state senator. I will be vindicated in the court system, right? And return to tv bigger than ever." Robert was clearly hoping he was convincing Judge Newman how everybody won in this operation so he would put the gun down. "I will of course, endorse your campaign and that should all but assure your victory. I'm not even asking that much in return, just your availability."
The judge just looked him over, "But you made one key mistake Robert…you phoned me repeatedly from her house. That ties me to her death. However, if they find you dead, here, in your apartment," Robert started to sweat, "especially with a gun registered to one, Matt Houston, then I can claim those calls were a blatant attempt to try to thwart my running for senator by people wanting to accuse me of a heinous crime." He looked thoughtfully at the gun he still had in his hand. "That case was so long ago when they confiscated his gun, Vince Novelli should have made sure he got it back, and I'm sure Houston's forgotten all about it now." He got that politician smile on his face again and he took the safety off the gun and pointed it directly at Robert, "I do want to thank you for your support, even going so far as to demonstrate the rage Mr. Houston must have felt as he threw around your belongings before finally giving in to his baser passions doing this."
Then he fired and with that one shot Robert Tyler fell down dead. The judge then wiped the prints off the gun thoroughly and calmly walked out of the apartment, going out the back way. He knew exactly what to do, he's done it before, and the death of one C.J. Parsons just took care of his two other problems, at least that's what he thought.
The sedative that guy gave Matt knocked him out, it didn't just make him tired. So Matt passed out on a bench in the interrogation room, they didn't make it all the way to Hoyt's office. Hoyt told Roy to go get something to eat and he would keep an eye on Matt. It would be easy to watch Houston as that room had a camera with a link to a tv in Hoyt's office. All Hoyt had to do to get the monitor on was push record on the camera. Hoyt looked over some files on his desk, but his heart just wasn't in it today. Seeing C.J. like that downstairs in that room…well…he had seen his fair share of bodies before, young lives ripped away at the hands of some evil entity still out there, but this was different. She was his friend too. He thought back to when Houston had gone off to Cambodia to rescue his cousin and he and C.J. worked as a team to get them home. He would never forget the way she took care of Anne, his wife, when their daughter went missing, or the times she snuck in some food for him in the hospital when he was injured helping Houston on a case. He chuckled as he remembered her bringing him a healthy little vegetarian wrap when he asked for a breakfast taco with extra peppers, and she had him fooled until he took that first bite. Dirty trick, he told her, and she just laughed and said, at least I got one good healthy bite in you.
When he found that journal he didn't know if he should show her or not, but she was so insistent, wanting to make sure that the case against him was solid, she needed to see any evidence so she could assess its credibility in court. Usually her and Matt remained on the sidelines once they handed over any potential evidence to Hoyt, but this was too personal she said.
He remembered watching her drop to the floor as she read it, he thought she had started to faint, but motioned to him that she was ok, just in shock. He helped her anyway to a chair as she looked up to him and said, How? How could I be so wrong about one person? Turning her eyes back to the pages and then to the floor she had mumbled, I'm such a fool, how could I not see this? How could I be so stupid? He put his hands on her arms and looked back at her and told her it wasn't her, that this was just one evil man who had conned an entire city nightly that he was a stand up guy, and when he tried to tell her that Houston would make sure he kept her safe she stopped him right there and made clear that he could never know about this. She loved him so much, Hoyt thought as he remembered back to that conversation, she would do anything to protect him, even if it meant dealing with something like this alone, just so Houston wouldn't go off and get himself in trouble.
Hoyt looked back at the monitor as Houston lay on that bench like couch, tears still coming even in his slumber. He put the files back down and decided to get himself a cup of bad coffee from the machine at the end of the hallway. As soon as he opened the door, he saw Roy who hadn't left yet, just sitting on a chair looking at a picture he held in his hand, running his thumb over the middle of it. "Roy, you ok?" he asked.
Roy just kept staring, "I remember when we took this. C.J. and Matlock had just gotten back off that boat of his and were carrying a whole bucket of fish for dinner, enough to last a week I told them. I asked who caught the most and my nephew just looked C.J. who had the biggest smile on her face and said he lost count and didn't remember, but it was clear she won their little contest. I told them we needed to capture the moment for posterity, the first of an annual competition. A nice young lady walking by took this picture for us. I knew…" he said tearing up and his voice breaking, "I knew they should be together, and I tried to tell them, both of them, before it was too late…but now, now…" was all he said before he broke down completely.
Hoyt put his arm around him as Roy had done when they thought Hoyt's daughter had been killed, C.J. was like a daughter to Roy and Hoyt knew what he was feeling. He wished himself, more than anything, that he could have figured out what Tyler was doing before he got to her. He was the chief lieutenant, he was the one responsible for every citizen's safety and he let her down. As he held Roy he wept himself.