Warnings for language, and other disgusting scenes.
That was a twist she hadn't expected. She suspected it would be the first of many unusual things about working with Bobby Goren.
She went through the files. Three men, all of the same physical type – Goren's type. Two had used prostitutes, but hadn't made a habit of it. They'd never visited the same prostitute. The third was gay. They'd been killed by a single knife stroke, from behind, across the arteries in the neck. Then the killer had taken a good long time to defile the bodies.
"Motive?" she asked.
"None that I can see." Goren told her. They'd taken over an empty office in the Major Crimes squad room, and had spread out all the files. Goren was scribbling something on a whiteboard. "Here," he said, leaning over, and pointing out something in one of the files. "there's no connection between the three of them at all, except the way they look."
"Yes, I can see." She said, annoyed for a second that he had though she needed that pointing out. He glanced over at her suddenly.
"Sorry." He said, sensing her anger. "I talk out loud, I know. I tend to use my partners as a sounding board. I know it can be annoying." He said meekly, praying he hadn't lost her already. He found himself liking this spiky, angry woman. She had a strength he felt he could lean on.
"I'm not annoyed." She said. "Talk out loud all you like.". She was more angry at herself for misinterpretating him - and surprised he'd seen it. She looked up at him, and nodded for him to continue. He smiled suddenly, briefly, and it was oddly sweet.
"So, no clues." She said. "The motive could be sexual."
"I doubt it."
"Sexual serial killers do tend to go for the same type." She insisted.
"But it's based on attraction." He told her, standing up, pointing down at the pictures. "Pretty young women, mostly."
"Well, these all men all seem attractive to me." she told him, not looking up. It was only a second later she realised that she'd just admitted she found him attractive. She swallowed, suddenly nervous, as she became aware that he had become very still, his normal nervous fidgeting frozen. She couldn't believe she'd been so stupid. She'd had more than a few male partners, and had never found any of them remotely attractive. Why she had to suddenly fancy the station-house nutjob was beyond her.
"But we'll go with your theory." She said, looking up, her voice sounding unnaturally bright. Best just to ignore it, pretend she'd never said it. "So, serial killers normally start with what they know, right?"
"Umm, right." He said, turning back to the whiteboard. He was pretty sure that he was reading something into what she'd just said that she'd never meant. It wasn't that women never found him attractive…he just couldn't imagine why Alex Eames would.
"I thought we'd go back, question the families and friends of the first victim." He told her. She got up and walked to the board, beside him.
"I get it." she said, hands on her hips, smiling at the deviousness of his plan. "You think the killer's one of them. And you're going to be around them a lot, looking like the dead guy, disturbing things…"
He nodded, sipping his coffee and trying to speak at the same time. It seemed like there were never enough minutes in the day for Bobby Goren, he always had to be trying to do at least two things at once.
"I'll provoke the reaction, you observe." He said, stuffing the files into the battered cardboard wallet and snapping an elastic band around it. she followed him out, smiling.
This was going to be interesting.
The first victim was Steven Sherman, and Eames and Goren started at his parents house. Bobby Goren stood awkwardly in the family room, amongst the collection of delicate porcelain figurines that covered every table. He looked huge in the over-crowded room, towering over them all. Mrs Sherman looked terrified that the large policeman would clumsily step in the wrong direction and send one of her precious porcelain dolls crashing to the floor. She was constantly darting forward to sweep ornaments off any table Goren threatened to tip over, although Eames noticed, with amusement, that although Bobby appeared to move without any of his usual grace, he in fact managed to just miss knocking over or destroying any of the tiny fragile objects.
Apart from the delicate objects the room was littered with (and which appeared even more tiny against Bobby's bulk), the room was stuffed with people. A mother (too old for the killer, Eames thought), a father, a sister, a brother-in-law, a cousin – Steven Sherman had a huge family. There were lot of people here for Goren to provoke in his own inimitable manner. Smirking inwardly, Eames perched on the arm on the sofa and watched Bobby work.
He started by asking if any of them had known that Stephen visited prostitutes. That certainly got a reaction. Like all the dead, Stephen had taken a mantle of sainthood, and his family hated Goren for reminding them he had been a real, living, flesh and blood person with faults and needs and weaknesses.
But then again, the chances were good that at least one person in the room had known of Steven Sherman's faults and punished them, so Goren, seemingly unaware, blundered on, asking his questions with a carefully finessed clumsiness.
Alex watched their faces closely, noting all the responses carefully. Eager, disgusted, helpful, hidden. They paid no attention to the little woman in the corner, focusing only on the great blundering bear of a man, barging into their lives and trampling over their grief.
"I keep telling you, Stephen was well-loved. No-one would want to hurt him."
Bobby paused, one hand in the air, and Alex instinctively recognised her cue.
"Yes, well-loved, right up until the moment someone sliced him up. I'd say that was an act of someone who didn't love him wouldn't you?" she asked, disdainfully.
A stunned silence fell. Bobby turned round to face her. He smiled at her, not with his lips, but deep down in his intense dark eyes.
"You'll have to excuse her." He said to the room. "She doesn't really…she lacks tact." He continued in an undertone.
Eames understood the game. He had been upsetting the family, but now he needed to bond with them, to get closer to them. Eames would be the bad cop and they and he would team up against her. Fine by her. She played bad cop very well, and she enjoyed it.
"Tact is just a way of covering up the truth." Alex continued. "You all claimed to have loved him, but one of is lying, because one of you killed him."
"We have no proof of that." Goren said, making eye-contact with each of the family in turn, offering them empathy. Eames stood up.
"His throat was slit, his chest carved up, his genitals removed and stuffed into his mouth and someone here knows who did all that." She insisted, as if she was arguing with Goren. She was enjoying this, playing the game with a partner who gave her exactly the right cues, and let her take the harsher role. This was so different.
"But I thought it was a serial killer?" the sister – Rebecca- ventured, meekly.
"How do you know that?" Bobby said, suddenly turning on her again. She glanced nervously at her husband. "That fact hasn't been released to the media."
"In other words, only the killer would know about the supposed 'serial killer'" Eames said.
"No!" Rebecca shrieked. "The other policeman, the one you bought before, he told me!"
Goran sighed. His previous partner had never believed one of the family was responsible. No doubt he had been trying to be comforting, letting them know Stephen was killed by a stranger.
"Thanks, I'll see myself out." Goren said. Eames paused, looking back once over the room. Rebecca had panicked herself into an asthma attack, her husband, with audience-aware patience, helped her with her inhaler.
"Thanks." Bobby said, once they were outside. "Sorry my old partner screwed things up, but you were good in there."
"It felt good." She told him. "I'm enjoying this."
Later, they sat in the office they'd taken as their own room, going over the files falling out of the shabby cardboard folder.
"I'd say you stirred them up." Eames said, satisfied, going over her notes of her impressions. The father had barely spoken at all, but had glared at Goren with a still, burning hatred. The mother had hated him too, but she expressed it in subtle, biting little insults she thought Goren was too stupid to catch. The cousin – David- had never looked at either of them, keeping his head down and his shoulders hunched. It could have been grief, guilt or just shyness.
"Oh, I'd better give you these." Goren said suddenly, handing over a set of keys to Alex. She looked puzzled. "Keys to my apartment."
Alex took them dubiously. She'd had partners before who'd insisted they swap keys to each other's apartments 'just in case', and ended up drunk and trying to get in at 3am.
"Well, if the killer takes the bait…I mean, if I don't turn up tomorrow morning…" Goren said, stammering to a halt, trying to find a way to deny what she was plainly thinking without admitting he'd realised it.
"You want me to come looking for you." She said slowly. He nodded, satisfied. He leaned over the table, staring intensely at her.
"See, when I saw you…I knew the minute I met you, I knew you were the type that would never stop looking and never let anyone stand in the way."
"I'd never stop looking for you?"
"No, the killer." He said, standing up and gathering the files together as if he hadn't just said the most accurate insight into her character she'd ever heard.
"What if you're the one in the way? Between me and the killer?" she asked, shaken and curious.
"Then I'll expect you'll just go straight through me too." He said, leaving, trying to stop the files falling out of the cardboard wallet.
She sat there for a moment, stunned…then smiled slowly. She'd been called a ball-breaking bitch before, but never with such admiration. He liked it. Whatever it was that other detectives didn't like about her, he liked it.
And, grabbing her coat, Eames decided, in spite of all the reasons why she shouldn't, she liked Goren too.