The ceiling lights in the bullpen were off; the ones in Mike's office were still on.

Healey glanced at his watch, his eyes shooting wide. "Good lord, it's almost 10. I better get home or I'll never hear the end of it." He started to roll his left sleeve down.

Leaning back in the desk chair, Steve stretched with a slight groan. "Sorry, guys, I didn't mean to keep you here so long but –"

"What the hell are you three doing here?" a gruff voice interrupted him and they all jumped slightly before looking to see Olsen standing in the open doorway.

"Geez, Rudy…" Haseejian whined, his right hand on his chest, "you almost gave us a heart attack. Are we gonna have to bell you or something?" He finished with a chuckle as he got to his feet.

"Oh, sorry," the captain apologized cavalierly.

Healey was staring at him with a frown. "We're bringing Steve up to speed." He nodded vaguely at the young man behind the desk. "What the hell are you doing here at this hour?"

His eyes sliding from Steve, whom he acknowledged with a quick nod, back to Healey, Olsen growled, "Meetings… Oh, and, ah, I saw the lights on in Mike's office here through the door as I was walking by… thought it might be Roy. Uh," he looked at Steve, "how's Mike doing?" He knew it was a moot question; Steve wouldn't be here if anything was wrong.

"He's doing good," Steve acknowledged with a smile. "His fever broke this morning, they took his right arm out of the sling and we had dinner together tonight."

"Oh," Olsen muttered, "that's, ah, that's great. Well, ah, give him my best when you see him again, okay? Ah, tomorrow?"

Still grinning, Steve nodded. "Yeah, tomorrow."

The captain turned to leave.

"Rudy," Healey stopped him. "Anything we should know about, ah, you know…?" He rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb upwards in the universal sign for 'the brass upstairs'.

Olsen frowned and then brightened. He shook his head. "Nah, nobody knows what you guys are doing yet. But the second you tell me you've got it wrapped and tied with a bow, then I have to let them know what's going on."

Both sergeants nodded. "You got it," Haseejian confirmed.

"How, ah, how close do you think you are?"

After an exchange of looks with his partner, Healey shrugged. "A few days, we're hoping… a week at the outside."

"Good, good. The sooner we get this whole mess behind us, the better."

As Olsen made his way across the bullpen, mumbling to himself the entire way, Healey and Haseejian looked at Steve, and all three laughed softly.

# # # # #

"So I got a call from Dan this morning. The car arrived just before midnight and Charlie's started working with it already. "

Mike, wearing a light blue fleece robe over the hospital gown, was lying back against a stack of pillows on the raised bed, staring at Steve with a warm and amused smile. His right arm was no longer in a sling but he was holding it close to his side, his forearm across his stomach. There were dark circles under his eyes; he looked tired but was trying hard not to show it.

"So what's Charlie gonna do?" Mike asked with a low chuckle. "Crawl inside the trunk and try to get out like the Pinelli girl did?"

Steve started to laugh. "You know, I never thought of that. I can't wait to find out." He glanced at his watch. "Listen, ah, I'm gonna go talk to Sean Whiting, see how he's coming with those other possible victims." He looked at his partner grimly, raising his eyebrows. "This could end up being a lot bigger than we thought."

Mike, the smile now gone, nodded. "Yeah. I keep thinking, if that little bastard hadn't run, and we hadn't chased him, we probably would never know about the rapes… and all those poor girls."

"Yeah. I hope that's the way the brass and the D.A. see it when all this lawsuit, excessive force crap goes to court… if it gets to court." He held up his left hand and crossed his fingers with a slight chuckle.

Mike cocked his head and laughed gently. "Yeah, well, I'm hoping it doesn't. But who knows."

Steve started to get to his feet.

"Hey, ah, Rudy hasn't tried to ban you from the building, has he?"

Steve froze momentarily, frowning. He shook his head. "No, why?"

Mike shrugged carefully, mindful of his right shoulder. "No reason, I just thought maybe because of the lawsuits he'd be a little hinky having you hanging around."

"Well, I think if I was 'aiding and abetting' Norm and Dan he'd object but so far all I've been doing is listening." He turned towards the door then looked back, chuckling. "And as far as I know, he still doesn't know we were sitting in on the Pinelli interview yet."

Mike rolled his eyes and laughed. "Good. Let's keep it that way."

Steve pulled the door open and looked back at the bed. "Get some sleep and I'll see you at dinner."

"Steve, you don't have to come back. I know you have things to –"

"We have an 'it-turned-out-better-than-I-expected pot' roast to finish, remember?"

The older man frowned.

"I made up a couple more plates and I brought them in, and they're in the fridge in the nurses lounge. And I've already checked with them and they are more than happy to let us use the stove again. So there." Without waiting for a rebuttal of any kind, he grinned, winked and left the room.

# # # # #

"Phil and Terry have already talked to two of the girls," Sergeant Sean Whiting confirmed, leaning back in a wooden swivel chair and opening a manila file folder. He glanced up at his visitor. "Their accounts are so similar, not only to each other but to Patterson and Pinelli, that it's disturbing. These little bastards really have a pattern."

Frowning, Steve leaned forward and reached for one of the other files on the desk. He raised his eyebrows. "You mind?"

Whiting looked up. "No, no, of course not. Help yourself."

Steve picked up the file and opened it. "So have any of them said why they didn't report their assaults?"

"The Monroe girl." He hefted the file in his hand. "The others said they were scared of retaliation. She was different. She said she didn't say anything because she didn't think she'd be believed."

"Why would she think that?"

Whiting's face took on a doleful expression. He flipped the pages in the file back into place. "She's, ah, she's not what you'd call a member of the cheerleading squad… or one of the prettier girls in school…" He turned the file around and handed it to Steve.

The Homicide inspector looked at the school portrait photo paperclipped to the inside front cover of the manila folder. It showed a bespectacled, slightly overweight young woman with straight mousy-coloured hair and an insecure smile.

Steve could feel his rage building and fought to keep it under control; it was one of the first things he had learned from Mike, and one of the most valuable. "Those cunning little bastards…" he growled under his breath. He looked up at Whiting. "They knew she wouldn't say anything. I wonder how many girls like her are out there?"

Whiting raised his eyebrows with a facial shrug. "That's the real question, isn't it?"

Steve looked at the report. "She was assaulted a year ago?"

"Yeah. The others – the ones that we know about so far – go back as far as two and a half years and as recently as a month ago."

"God damn it…"

"I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, Steve. And I know its gonna sound really weird, but if you and Mike hadn't chased that car as…well, as misguided as it possibly was at the time… if you hadn't stopped that car, we wouldn't know anything about this… and as bad as that bank robbery was, and I'm not disrespecting that security guard who lost his life… I think that this," he pointed to the file in Steve's hand, "is a much bigger and much more vile act."

Steve nodded slowly. "I think you're right."

"I know I'm right," Whiting spat out almost bitterly. "I've been doing this a long time, Steve, and this has the potential to be one of the most disgusting cases I've been involved with. I'm just sorry you and Mike are being raked over the coals because of what happened."

With an ironic and somewhat grateful smirk, Steve snorted dryly. "Well, this," he hefted the file in his hand, "might be the thing that gets us off the hook."

Whiting smiled. "We can only hope. But you can count on me and the entire Personal Crimes team to do whatever we can to help you guys out, believe me."

"Thanks, Sean, that means a lot."

With a confirming nod, Whiting leaned over the desk. "Look, ah, I've got some more leads to track down. Why don't you use my desk here, make yourself at home and go through these files? You might be able to ferret out something we've overlooked… you know, fresh eyes?"

"Yeah, that'd be good. Thanks."

Whiting got up and started towards the door. "Ah, I'd tell you to help yourself to the coffee but you might want to go down to Missing Persons and try theirs; it's so much better," he snickered as he grabbed his suit jacket from the rack and left the room laughing.

# # # # #

"Okay, I have to say it again," Mike chuckled after swallowing, "this roast is really delicious, buddy boy. You really outdid yourself." He stabbed another piece of beef with his fork, grinning.

With a wide smile, Steve accepted the compliment with a nod. "Thank you again. Of course, it was your wife's recipe. I just followed it to the letter, literally."

Continuing to chuckle as he chewed, Mike stared at his partner with bemused awe. "And I still can't believe you talked the nurses into heating the plates for us."

Still sitting at Whiting's desk reading through the files at four o'clock, Steve had called the hospital and sweet-talked one of the nurses into putting the plates of leftovers into the oven for warming. When he had arrived a little over an hour later, everything was ready. Mike had been more than just a little impressed, once more acknowledging the easy and seductive charm his young partner seemingly exuded without any effort whatsoever.

Eventually pushing the rolling table with the now empty plate away, Mike sighed with a heavy inevitability. "So, what did you find out from Personal Crimes?"

Washing down the last of the roast with a mouthful of coffee, Steve put his plate on the floor at his feet and sat back. He inhaled deeply then looked at the older man. He told him about the new cases they had uncovered, and the possibility of more. The longer he talked, the darker his partner's expression became; when he finished, Mike closed his eyes, exhaling loudly and angrily.

"Sons of bitches," he muttered under his breath.

Steve chuckled mirthlessly. "I've started calling them the DLB's – despicable little bastards. It's shorter."

Mike chuckled with a brief, dead smile and shook his head once. "So you think they were going after some of the, ah… the plainer girls, knowing they would keep their mouths shut?" he asked, a dispirited tone colouring his words.

Nodding almost sadly, Steve leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs. "Yeah, I do. It's almost like it was some kind of game for them… like they were making notches on their bedposts, you know…?"

"Yeah, I know exactly what you mean." Mike raised both hands and rubbed them over his face. "God, Steve, I want to nail those… what did you call them?"

"DLB's."

"DLB's," Mike nodded, smiling slightly, "I like that, yeah…"

Steve chuckled. "Don't worry, we will. We don't just have Norm, Dan and Rudy on our side right now… we have Sean Whiting and the entire Personal Crimes division. And take my word for it, they're just as angry as we are."