Once again, thanks to illman for betaing.

-

The sun was beginning to make its slow descent down the sky, lighting the soccer field with a purplish haze. Amidst scattered applause from the parents welcoming their children off the field, Vivian, Sam, and Jack stepped out of the car and strolled up to the center of the playing field.

"Okay, next week we're here at seven-thirty," a middle-aged, mousy man was announcing to the one of the teams beginning to depart from the field. "Don't forget to bring your registration forms for the upcoming tournament!"

"Mr. Winters?" Sam asked as she approached the man. "I'm Samantha Spade, FBI. These are my fellow agents Jack Malone and Vivian Johnson."

Ed put his clipboard down by his bags as he looked at the three agents nervously. "What can I do for you?" He was a small, skinny man, a whistle dangling from his neck.

"This has to do with the disappearance of one of your players." Jack began. "I'm sure you heard about Trish Eliot."

"Yeah." Edward nodded.

Vivian broke into the conversation, her tone cold and impersonal, unlike the more congenial tones Jack and Sam had been using. "In the time span of six years, you've moved three times. Each of the towns you lived in previously had a kidnapping almost identical to this one. Both times the girls ended up dead, and now it's happened a third time."

Edward shifted his weight from one foot to the next uncomfortably. "That's a very remarkable coincidence," he finally stammered.

"Coincidence?" Vivian asked incredulously. "That's not going to stand up well in court, Mr. Winters. Do you have another explanation for this?"

His face was draining of color as he glanced around nervously, wringing his hands as he struggled to find words. Eventually he decided upon: "Do I need to get a lawyer or something?"

"You're not under arrest," Sam reassured him sternly. "We'd just like to take you with us to ask you some questions, all right?"

Jack and Sam led him to the car as Vivian followed, casting a lingering glance at the soccer field before catching up with them again.

-

Danny was on his third cup of coffee, trying desperately to rid his face from the dark lines underneath his eyes.

"Trying to beat Martin's record?" Sam quipped as she entered the office.

"Huh?" was all he could manage to say, snapped out of his sleep-deprived daze.

Sam smiled as she approached him and leaned back on his desk, next to his computer. "You seen how much coffee Martin drinks in one day? You look as if you're trying to drink more than him." Her smile faded as she noticed Danny's tiredness, the look of sleeplessness that was apparent on his face. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah." He sighed. "I haven't been getting much sleep lately, that's all." Running his fingers through his hair, he was surprised when Sam placed her hand on his shoulder.

"If you need anything, you can call me, you know, right?" she said reassuringly, squeezing his shoulder comfortingly.

He smiled. "Yeah." Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Thanks."

She stayed there for a moment longer after she removed her hand from his shoulder, and then gathered up the folder she had come for before heading towards the interrogation room.

-

"I watch all those cop shows." Ed was saying as Sam walked into the room, casting Jack an apologetic look as she handed him the folder and sat down. "I know my rights. I want a lawyer." His body language indicated nervousness, his fingers restlessly intertwining with each other as he fidgeted in his seat.

Vivian sighed, annoyed. "We called him, Mr. Winters. He's on his way."

Sam tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and leaned forward. "Ed?"

Upon hearing her voice, he looked up briefly. Confident, she continued: "We just want to ask you a few questions, all right? You've seen cop shows. We don't have any evidence against you that will hold up in court right now. So why not let us eliminate you as a suspect by helping us?"

Edward opened his mouth briefly before shutting it. "I, um . . . sure." Then, after a brief pause, he added, "But not a lot. I want a lawyer before I -- "

Raising his hand to keep the suspect from repeating the phrase that was going to make him lose it in a minute, Jack wearily sighed, "Yes, we know." He was actually beginning to look forward to the lawyer's arrival, even if most attorneys were a pain.

Sam's face lit up with the phoniest smile Jack had seen all day. "Thank you for your cooperation." Pausing to regain her composure, she folded her hands and placed them in front of her as she leaned forward a bit more. "So did you know the other girls who had been kidnapped from those other towns?"

"Yeah." Breaking under Vivian's long gaze, he hesitantly added more. "They were on my soccer teams. Good kids. I think Camilla was goalie and Katie played defense."

"And Trish?" Sam asked, hoping to make him more comfortable so he would keep talking. She was trying to use the 'more flies with honey' tactic that worked well with more fragile, nervous suspects in interrogations, unlike Jack's preferred method of bludgeoning them with rapid-fire questions. She hoped he wouldn't interfere now, as she wanted to keep from unnerving Edward.

"She was defense, too." His nervous air was beginning to dissipate as he became more comfortable. "There's going to be a tournament in a few weeks, she was really psyched about that."

"And you don't have any contact with her outside of practices and games?" Vivian asked, less harshly than she had been before.

Edward nodded, puzzled. "I live on the other side of town. I have another job, you know. I work at the bank on West Chestnut Street. I used to coach because my son was on the team, but after he left it was too much fun to give up."

"Have there been any suspicious people hanging around the field lately?" Jack inquired.

Shaking his head, Ed replied, "No."

"Has Trish been acting strangely lately?" Sam asked gently. "Has she been anxious, worried, depressed? Anything like that?"

Again, he shook his head. "No, she was fine."

"Was?" Jack practically pounced on Edward, as Sam mentally chastised herself for not replying to that before Jack could. Noting Ed's confused look, Jack stood up and walked around the table. Face-to-face with the soccer coach, he continued. "You've been saying 'was'. That would imply that she is no longer alive." Raising his eyebrows, he locked eyes with the silent suspect and very quietly asked, "Is there something you're not telling us?"

The mildly threatening way in which the question was delivered completely unnerved Edward, who sat silently, fishing for words and coming up with none. Jack continued to hold his gaze on Ed, one that was broken only when the door opened loudly.

"Don't say anything else to them, Ed," the lawyer commanded. As Jack stood up and backed away from his position where he had been cornering Edward, the lawyer continued, "What is going on here? If I find anything has been going on here you can expect to find several harassment forms sitting on your desk by tomorrow morning -- "

"It's all right," Edward interrupted. "I'd just like to go home." As he rose to his feet, Sam gave him a faltering smile. Shit. We had him.

The lawyer gave Jack a glare that implied several more meetings under unpleasant circumstances as he escorted Edward out of the interrogation room. Vivian swore under her breath as the door clicked shut and soon headed out of the room herself, wordlessly.

"We had him," Sam muttered as she buried her head in her hands, frustrated.

"It's not my fault," Jack responded somewhat stubbornly as he sank into the empty chair previously occupied by Edward Winters.

Sam sighed. "If you had let me continue, we would have had him still here with us. I was doing great, Jack."

He turned to face her. "There are others ways of finding out information, you know. I was taking advantage of the situation, and if that lawyer hadn't walked in we would have had an answer from him. You have to do that in cases like this."

"If I hadn't intervened, you wouldn't have gotten anything out of him at all," she said fiercely, staring at him.

"All I'm saying is . . . maybe for once you could have tried a different approach."

"Like what?" Sam demanded.

He shrugged. "Do you have to . . . " He struggled with his choice of words for a moment as Sam gazed at him expectantly. "Do you have to seduce every suspect we get in here?" he finally asked.

She uttered a short, joyless laugh. "I don't seduce them. Manipulate, maybe, but seduce?"

"It's not protocol."

"Neither is your approach, Jack. Please don't be a hypocrite," she replied defiantly before standing up and exiting. He thought he could hear a faint undertone of hurt somewhere, but she was gone before he could even apologize. Silently he chastised himself for allowing his jealousy and anger to blind him from the fact that she had hardly done anything wrong, and then he leaned back in his chair, alone in the interrogation room.

-

She hated getting attached to cases. It seemed so unprofessional and amateur to get so distraught over another murder, another disappearance, when it was easier to accept the facts and move on to another case. There was no point in getting hung up about something in the past when it wouldn't happen again, because the guy who did it was behind bars.

But serial killing -- it made her feel so powerless against those arrogant criminals, who toyed with her and her team as they struggled to piece together clues that would amount to nothing in the end. Only another destroyed family and the sense of dread that gnawed continually in the pit of her stomach as she waited for him to strike again.

Sitting on the bench by the river, Vivian quietly watched the water wash up against the shore and then back, ebbing and flowing in a graceful, continuous motion. A perfect cycle, one that remained beautiful while uninterrupted. The moonlight cast an eerie glow on the water as she casually she tossed a stone onto the water's surface, watching it skip twice before sinking. The ripples spread from the point at which the stone had sunk to the river's edge, where the tide became confused and washed randomly against the bank in a sloppy, uncontrolled fashion.

It took her a moment to realize that skipping stones wasn't going to help the Elliot family at a time like this. Standing, she wrapped her coat more tightly around her and began to head back home.