1West Manhattan Cemetery.

6091 West 82nd Street.

1:30 P.M..

"Who the hell would dump a body in a cemetery?" I demand, huddled in the black leather of my coat and gloves, trying not to freeze to death, even though the weather is stubbornly trying to ensure I do just that. It's windy, today. The gusts of wind that push against my front and whip over my face and through my hair are icy and biting. Plus, it looks like it's going to snow. I might as well just go live in Canada - it's the same type of crappy weather, here on the East Coast, in winter.

"Doesn't seem like he's trying to hide the body - it's more like he's trying to tell us something. Have to see where he dumped the body." Elliot muses. "Cold, huh?"

"No shit." I respond, glaring at him.

"Ouch. Someone's PMS-ing today."

"Shut up, okay?"

"You don't like winter?"

"Elliot, I'm starting to think you didn't hear me - shut up."

"What's the problem with winter?"

I glare at him, again. "You work foot patrol when there's ten inches of snow down and it's about ten degrees and then you tell me how much you like winter."

"Who'd you piss off in the brass?" My partner questions.

"No one. We were short a couple of guys - boss made me go out. I could have killed him by the end of the day."

We walk down to the section of the cemetery where the body was found, by the caretaker. I know my mother and her younger brother are buried here, but it could be just coincidence. There's no crime scene tape up, because there's nothing to attach it to. A couple of uniforms are beginning to set up wooden police lines, as we step over. For some reason, I'm reminded of another winter day, in this place.

One of the uniforms directs me to the caretaker who found the body. The man's evidently shaken up, so I ask questions, take a few notes and go over them, trying to think if there's anything else I need to ask him. "Liv!" Elliot catches my attention. When I first started talking to the man, he was talking to one of the guys from CSU. Now he's crouched down, an inch or two off the ground. "C'mere."

I nod to the man, tuck notebook and pen back in my coat pocket and walk over. "What?"

My partner looks up at me, his blue eyes sick. I look down, seeing the young woman lying there - maybe mid-twenties, white, with long dark hair. She's naked and strangled, her body lying over someone's grave. I happen to look at the headstone and swallow hard, my heart beating overtime against my ribs. It's a family one. My family's. I close my eyes, willing myself not to see the name carved into the top. Could be a coincidence. People have the same last names and they're not related. I try to rationalize it and kneel down, to look at the engravings on the lower part of the stone. The Police Department logo's carved there, just above the first name. Charles J. - May 12, 1949 - June 11, 1987. Shit. That's my uncle Charlie, the cop, my mother's younger brother. The newest carving there catches my eye. Linda A. - April 21, 1951 - August 1, 2004. I swallow, trying to pull myself together. Linda was younger than Charlie - she used to tease him about it. I push aside the flowers someone laid there, recently and bite my lip. There's no doubting that this is the grave of my relatives, this time. Serena M. - January 25, 1946 - February 16, 2001.

I get up, shoving my hands back into my pockets, going back to the car. I can't do this. Someone's got it out for me. Dumping a body in my grandparents' old house, then dumping a body on the grave of three of my relatives? Someone's definitely got it out for me.

I'm sitting there, huddled in the car, the engine running for heat, when there's a knock on the window. Elliot. Typical. Why doesn't he just go the hell away? I realize that he's got no way to get in the car - I locked the doors just for that reason. I shake my head and he scowls at me, reaching into a pocket and coming out with his cell. A silent threat for a call to the boss. What the hell can Cragen do? I reach over and put down the window. No way in hell am I going to let him sit here with me. Not now.

"Can you let me in the car? It's freezing."

"Go away."

"Olivia, it's too damned cold for this. Unlock the door."

"Are you ever gonna listen to me? I said, go away."

We lock eyes, both of us stubborn, neither one giving in. "Do I have to call the boss or will you stop acting like a ten-year-old?" Elliot demands.

I roll my eyes and unlock the door. He can sit here - I like him enough that I don't want him to freeze - but he'll have to really fight with me to get me to talk. "Do you think it's coincidence?" My partner asks me, as I turn my head and hand him the keys to the car.

"A body dumped in the room where my mother was raped, almost thirty years ago, and a body dumped on the grave where my uncle, my aunt and my mother are buried - it's not a coincidence." I stare out the window.

"You never told me your uncle was a cop." Elliot muses, quietly. "How'd he die? He wasn't even forty, when he died."

"He died in the line. It was the '80's - everything was crazy. He tried to convince me to go back to school, stay off the streets till things had calmed down, when we had some control over things - we had AIDS, and we had cocaine and all that other shit on the streets."

"Did he have a family?"

I nod. "Un-hm. Linda's buried with him - she just passed away last summer, and when he was killed, his son, my cousin Brian was seven."

"Is the kid on the job?"

"Brian? Two years criminal justice at Columbia, on Charlie's pension and the Feds grabbed him. He pushes paper for the FBI in Boston."

"That wasn't a family plot. Where are your grandparents buried?"

" Over in Brooklyn. After Charlie died, we buried him here and planned to bury Linda beside him - a lot of people do that, to make things easier for their families. And Mom and Charlie were close - I thought that might have been what she wanted. Let's go back to the house."

Elliot glances at me, once, then starts the engine.

"Did you piss someone off recently?" Cragen demands, running a hand over his bald head, pacing a slow circle in front of what I've come to call the evidence board. There's no other name for the damned thing.

"I tend to piss a lot of people off, Captain." I rub my eyes and see him glare at me. "You know what I mean."

"I haven't pissed anyone off who would be out of a prison cell committing two murders, no."

"This is too much for coincidence." Munch jumps in.

"It's personal." I put a hand over my eyes. "Why am I always the target of these wackos? Why the hell can't they stalk someone else, for once?" I realize I sound like a kid and wince. It does get frustrating after a while and this time, it's more personal than it's ever been.

Dr. George Huang, our forensic psychiatrist, the shrink that works our cases joins the circle. "You're a woman. Most of your perps target women. Of course they're going to single you out." He puts in, softly.

I shake my head. "Gee, thanks, Doc. That's reassuring. When any one of the psychopaths I put away gets parole, I'm screwed."

"Any chance the second body could be just a coincidence?" Elliot questions, interrupting me.

"He didn't try to hide her. He's trying to make a point of something."

"Trust me, he already did." I shake my head. "But what kind of sick freak dumps a body in a cemetery?"

Huang shakes his head. "He's trying to get a point across. But I can't see what it is."

I listen, absentmindedly, as Elliot takes a phone call. "That was Warner. She's got something she wants us to see - now."

The ME, Melinda Warner shakes her head, as we look down at the body of our new victim on the steel table. "You got something, Doc?"

"When I brought her onto the table, to look her over for any kind of identifying mark, I noticed something on her back. It looks like a new tattoo." She rolls the woman's body to one side and I lean in to look at her bare back. I see the black ink on her right shoulder blade, aware of the fact that I have an NYPD tattoo on that exact same spot. I had it done when I graduated from the Academy. My uncle Charlie almost killed me, when I put on a bathing suit about a week after, down on the Jersey shore and he saw it.

But the ink on her shoulder is fresh. It looks like it was still bleeding when she was killed. Two sets of numbers. 9619 - for some reason that seems familiar, but I can't remember why. The four numbers beneath that are definitely familiar, forced into my brain at the Academy, when I got my badge - 4314. My badge number.

I quietly point this out to my partner, who sighs. "Anything else?"

"Well, these were done pre-mortem - see the dried blood? She was still bleeding from the tattoos when she was killed. I took the rape kits from her and the victim from earlier this morning - no fluids, but heavy genital trauma and bruising. I got skin from under their nails - it's being run now. Tox screens are both negative. Your first victim was dead between ten and twelve hours before she was found. The second - no more than four to six hours."

"This guy's good." I murmur. "Cause of death?" I have to ask, even though it's obvious.

"Strangulation. I might have more, when I open her up."

"Thanks, Doc." Elliot nods and steers me out. "Liv. You. Protective detail."

"No."

"Do we have to go through this again? I get you a detail or you come stay with me."

"I said no." I shake my head.

"What the hell is wrong with you? The guy knows your badge number, where your grandparents lived in the '70's? He murdered a woman you went to college with - he's out for something."

"And when he decides just what he's out for, I'll be ready. I can take care of myself." I tap the nine-millimeter strapped to my hip. 9619 - I can't get that number out of my brain. It means something to me. Something flashes through my head. Going through my mother's closet, after she died, I came across a small box. Curious, I opened it, and came up with a silver NYPD badge. Shit. I don't know for sure, but one of those sets of numbers tattooed into that girl's skin might be my uncle's badge number.

Back at the precinct, I brush off my partner and kneel down, opening the bottom drawer of my desk. I grope through old papers and files, coming across a small blue box. I open the cover and swallow. There it is - silver badge, with it's owner's assigned badge number engraved on the bottom. "Damn it. El, call the lab and tell them not to bother running those numbers on that girl's skin. I found out what the first set is." I hold up Charlie's badge which, somehow, after my mother died, wound up in the bottom of my desk.

"What happened?" Cragen demands.

"Warner brought the new dead girl onto the table to look her over for any kind of tattoos, scars, birthmarks, and found this." I poke my partner, until he shows Cragen the Polaroid he took of the numbers tattooed on the girl's skin. "It's fresh." I murmur. "It was still bleeding when she was killed."

"Bottom one's your badge number - what's the first one?" The boss frowns. I silently hold up my uncle's badge. "My mother's younger brother, Charlie was on the job - killed in the line, back in '87." I decide to voice the theory that came into my head, at the morgue. "But where he placed the numbers, when he tattooed them on her - I have an NYPD tattoo in the exact same spot. Could be coincidence, but after this morning, I'm starting to doubt that." I turn around, to poke my right shoulder blade. "It's right there."

Elliot looks at me, startled. "You do not seem like the type for getting tattoos."

"It's not some cartoon character or anything. My mother dated this guy who had a Smurf tattooed on his arm."

"Okay. Why'd you do it?"

"Out of a burst of pride, the day after graduation and, to piss my mother off. I was the rebel child of the '80's - I did stuff to deliberately piss her off. Charlie almost killed me, when he saw it."

"I would too, if one of my girls came home with something tattooed on her shoulder." My partner looks at me.

I shake my head. "It's not that big. It could be just coincidence that it's there

or he could be trying to make a point."

"Got any bitter ex-boyfriends?" Elliot picks up a pen and begins to chew on it.

I roll my eyes. "No. El, I'm normally the one that gets dumped. I should be the pissed off one."

"It's not a scorned lover." Huang puts in quietly and I jump, startled. That guy can disappear and reappear without anyone noticing. "An angry lover would have gone directly for you, Olivia. It's personal, but someone who doesn't know you well. Not on an emotional level."

"That still leaves us fishing." I murmur, leaning on my desk. "I did ten years as a beat cop - I met a lot of people. Even now, I still meet a hell of a lot of people. Seriously, Doc, do you think he's after me?"

"The first victim - you went to college with her?"

"Yeah. But that was twenty years ago." I protest. "We were in the same sorority - I maybe saw her twice since I graduated."

"He knows you're an only child. You don't have a sibling he can go after - so he went after the closest thing he could find - a woman you were in a sorority with. He's building - I don't think you're at any kind of risk right now."

"So what do we do?" Elliot glances toward Cragen.

"We go fishing."

I look up, startled.

"Go through your cases, old 61s and arrests, to see if anything looks suspicious. And we get you a protective detail." He shoves his hands in his pockets, fixing me with a hard stare, daring me to argue.

I roll my eyes. Here we go again.