By ten am, the Homicide bullpen was mostly empty, as was the rest of the building. Cops would be out in full-force today since it was the biggest drinking day they faced all year. That meant bar fights, pedestrians not paying attention to traffic or other pedestrians, game fights, and other sundry debacles to be handled by New York's finest.

As Ryan, Adam and Watkins were working with the feds, they were excluded from such fine festivities to focus on what had become a harrowing look at the seedy underworld Melissa McGyver was involved in.

'I never thought I'd say this,' Adam sighed he replenished his coffee with Ryan and Watkins, 'but give me an honest Saint Patty's mugging or brawl right now, please. Let me go knock some heads so my brain doesn't turn into jam over paperwork.'

'I've never done Saint Patty's patrol,' Watkins commented with a shrug as she stirred her steamed milk.

'Wait until next year, or maybe even later today if K-Pow needs you, and think back on this case, and you tell me what makes you feel more like a cop.'

'We've found another nine women, which brings to a close one calendar year of Melissa's sideline of human trafficking,' Ryan reminded them both. 'That's nine women who were stripped of their dignity as humans and treated like custom-order wife-bots.'

'But...' Watkins trailed off, shook her head as they headed back to the conference room.

'But?' Adam prompted her.

'Well, usually we are standing up for the victim of the homicide, not her victims.'

'Watkins,' Ryan told her, 'there are times when you have to stand for both.'

'But isn't that like protecting Melissa and her business of selling women?'

'No, it's not. You're right, a dating service shouldn't be Buy-A-Bride in disguise, but neither is it the right of another human being to decide she should pay for it with her life. Only God, Yaweh, Buddha, whoever you believe in, that's who has the power. That's why we are working with the FBI, to bring both guilty parties to justice.'

'Melissa is dead, how can those women have justice?'

'Ever heard that Homer Simpson line, Marge it takes two people to lie, one to lie and one to listen? This is no different. The woman who sold those women

'Calling her a woman is an insult,' Watkins sniffed. 'That bitch deserves a whole new word for what she is.'

'That's the spirit.' Adam said, turning into the conference room and studying the board.

As Ryan said they'd found nine more women that morning and that was only year one. Who knew how many more they would be looking at before the day was out. He sniffed, paused then sniffed again. 'I know that smell.'

'Oh, man, what is that?' Watkins sighed in delight. 'I think it's coming from that thermal bag over there.'

'That's Meredeth's cooler bag, which means...' Ryan turned around and grinned when he saw his partner returning from the head, freshly tanned from a week in the tropics. 'Dude! Welcome back!'

'Hey bro.' Esposito caught him in a bear hug, slapped his back.

'When did you get here?'

'Just a few minutes ago. I brought Meredeth's cooking. She made waffles.'

At the sound of 'Meredeth' and 'waffles' in the same sentence, Adam appeared like a dog hearing the dinner bell. 'Meredeth made waffles? Is there jam and fruit and cheese?'

'Man, you are worse than this guy,' Esposito laughed, slapping his shoulder. 'He's gotten so spoiled. And yeah, she sent a little fruit and cheese platter to go with waffles.'

The 'little fruit and cheese platter' turned out to be strawberries, pineapple, honey-dew and mango mixed in a light lemonade sauce, and there was three kinds of jam including Adam's favourite - lingonberry - and when the containers were put on the conference room table, Bryan and Claire looked at them with the same curiosity as children hoping they could be part of the cool kids' lunch-party.

'You guys are invited too,' Esposito laughed, handing Bryan a reusable picnic plate. 'Dig in. Can't work on an empty stomach.'

They tucked into waffles, and the feds were barely two bites in before Bryan was telling Esposito he had serious competition for his wife. By the time the waffles were done and they were nibbling fruit and cheese while they got back to work, Esposito and Bryan were fast friends bonding over the fact their women were amazing cooks as Claire called them back to attention.

'Detective, thank you for breakfast, it's delicious. Now that we've fed our bellies, we can feed our brains. So far we have a total of twelve women in the first twelve months, and in looking at the financial records it means that her business was clean but for one woman every month, whom she sold into marriage. Adam, Bryan, Watkins, what can you tell us?'

'Three of the women - Ava Sayers, Elisha Dumas, and Noreen Benjamin - were all first generation Americans, born into working class families. Sayers is an ECE, Dumas is a piano teacher, and Benjamin is a nurse,' Watkins began. 'Another four - Mila Yevtushenko, Naomi Takihara, Yvette Beaufort, and Indira Nayyar - were straight off the plane into college. They all worked in extraordinarily different professions as well. A business major, an engineer, an art teacher, a tailor, a journalist and a computer programmer.'

'Anyone else seeing a pattern here?' Esposito said asked.

'They're all college educated,' Adam said. 'Highly different fields but all educated at a post-secondary level. Some even have post-grad degrees.'

'Not just that, they're community essentials. Women who can make contributions not only to keep the commune running, but educators too, to raise the children.'

'I recognize her,' Ryan said softly, pointing to the picture of Yevtushenko. 'She was the one we saw when we drove in Adam, with the children.'

'Yeah. Athena Costas and Monika Van der Sloot, which with the other women we found before and not including Jessica Brahms-Bell, that makes an even dozen,' Adam agreed. 'Which means if Melissa was doing this for nearly twenty years, a dozen women a year means we're looking at nearly two-hundred and fifty women.'

'Are we certain they are all women,' Claire asked, knowing it was her job to be the skeptic in the room. 'Would she have sold any men?'

'It's doubtful,' Watkins replied, then blushed fiercely when all eyes focused on her. 'I just mean they seem to be all about having women to be servants to the men and the children, putting their own ambitions on the backburner. Plus a lot of the women are either legal immigrants or first-generation Americans, which means educated or not they're probably not native English speakers.'

'What does that have to do with no men being sold?'

'I mean that a woman who doesn't speak the language probably isn't familiar with the laws either so they'd be more easily threatened or coerced...and that sounds horribly racist of me, and sexist too.'

'Unfortunately, you're also right.' Claire shook her head. 'I've worked in sex crimes for nearly seven years now, and the amount of what you just described that I see makes up about seventy-five, eighty percent of the business. Those women become targets because of all the things you just said, Watkins. So I agree, we are less likely to find males sold by Melissa than women.'

'Doesn't mean it's impossible,' Esposito pointed out, then pressed a button the ringing phone that sat in the middle of the table. 'Conference room, this is Esposito.'

'Hey Javi!' Lanie's voice came through loud and clear, 'good to have you back, brother! Everyone's there?'

'Yes we are, Doctor Parrish-Robbins,' Claire replied. 'What do you have for us?'

'I did the analysis of the tattoo on Melissa McGyver, and it is roughly four months old. I also did a cross-check on any tattoo parlours doing White Rock, and there are three in Manhattan. There is Skin-Deep on West Eighty-Seventh, Blackline in Alphabet City and Painter's Parlour on East Twenty at Second Avenue.'

'Thanks Lanie,' Ryan told her. 'Did you get anythign else?'

'The lab came back with a match on the hairs found at the came back to a Carson Creed. Does that name mean anything to you?'

Esposito looked to Ryan and Adam, who looked like a pair of Wile E. Coyotes terribly proud of his latest scheme to catch the Roadrunner. 'I'm guess by the looks on Ryan and Adam's faces that means a great deal to them.'

'Lanie, you're a treasure.'

'Anything else you need, just holler.'

She clicked off and Ryan slapped Adam in the chest. 'Time to roll out. We need Carson Creed's home address. His Saint Patty's Day is going to get a little less celebratory this year.'

'What about me,' Watkins asked, 'don't you guys need backup?'

'Keep going on those records with Esposito and Bryan,' Ryan told her. 'We need to know those names so when we hammer Carson in interview, we've got as much ammo as we can to break him down.'