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Author's Note: I just want to say another great big thank you to all of you who have left a review! You have no idea what it means to me!
Sins of the Father
Chapter Seven: Thai Perfume
"Up here." Eames stepped back from the window and watched as her partner stepped out of the ME's SUV. It didn't really surprise her to see the redheaded ME get out of the driver's side. Goren was dressed very casually, as was the ME. Eames smiled to herself but quickly hid it as the two stepped through the apartment door. If they were coming off a date there was nothing between them that gave any hint of that. Just strictly business.
"The body's in there," Eames pointed towards the bedroom in the back. She watched as Dr. Harris moved through the room quickly, giving it a once over before heading down the hallway. Goren already had his binder out and was writing down notes. "Deakins wanted me to give you his apologies for cutting into our days off but he figured since we were already on the Kapirelli case we should be here too."
"Have you talked to anyone yet?"
"Just the person, who found her, her roommate," Eames pointed over to the kitchen where a young girl was sitting at the breakfast bar, tissues wadded up in her hands. Eames continued to tell Goren what the conversation had been like. "She came in early this morning from clubbing and saw the light was on in her roommates room. She went to check on her, make sure everything was alright. That's when she found her friend hanging from the rafters."
"We have a name for the dead girl?"
"Tabbatha Lewis. Age twenty-two. Just graduated from NYU with a bachelors in English Literature."
"The roommate's name?"
"Amy Whitefield. Same age, graduated at the same time but with a bachelor's in Writing."
Goren finished his notes and moved off down the hallway. Eames noticed the photographers were still taking photos, flashes were going off intermittently around the room. Grace was standing on a chair examining the woman's neck.
"Find anything?" Goren asked.
Grace frowned. "I might have, though I can't say for sure. I need to have x-rays done on her neck." She leaned back so Goren and Eames could see the area she was pointing to. "This bruising right here, that might be from breaking the neck in a twisting motion. If she hung herself the break should be slanted somewhat, from front to back."
"Any note?"
Grace shook her head and looked at Eames, who also shook her head. Goren jotted that fact down and then something strange hit him. It was a scent. A familiar scent. Perfume he had smelled before.
"Do you smell that?"
"No," Eames answered.
Grace jumped down off the chair. "I can't smell anything."
Goren and Eames both looked at the ME with curious expressions. Grace shifted on her feet and blushed slightly.
"It's all the formaldehyde. It burned the lining in my nose."
Eames nodded in understanding and went back to Goren's announcement of the scent. "What does it smell like?"
Goren walked around the body, trying to figure out where the scent was coming from. It seemed it was strongest from around the shoulder blades. "The attacker was a woman. It's perfume I smell. I've smelt it before, just can't remember where." He stepped up on the chair that Grace had vacated. He leaned towards the shoulders and inhaled again. "The attacker did snap her neck before hanging her up here."
Eames watched as realization came over Goren's face and she didn't like it one bit. Goren stepped down off the chair and immediately started pacing. She gave him a few seconds before demanding to know what he had realized. "Goren, care to share?"
"The neck snapped that way...the perfume..."
"Who is it?"
He stopped his frantic pacing and fixed her with a mixed stare of frustration and disappointment. He huffed in aggravation.
"Nicole Wallace."
Grace shut the back doors of the SUV once the body had been loaded and looked around the crime scene one last time. Everything was loaded and now she had to run tests and examine the body back at the morgue. She stepped around the suburban and almost ran into Detective Eames.
"Sorry, Detective."
The slightly smaller woman gave her a smile. "No problem. Are you leaving?"
"Yeah. I'll send the tox screen out ASAP. Hopefully we'll get it back before this afternoon. I'll also have those x-rays for you before two."
"Is this normally your day off too?"
"Yeah but much like you and your partner, I'm on call constantly. Especially with cases like these." Grace paused by the driver's door. "Detective Eames, who is Nicole Wallace?"
Eames grimaced. "You have six hours?"
"Wow, that bad, huh?"
"Let's just say we've been chasing after her for going on three years now. She especially has it in for Goren."
Grace tried to hide her displeasure at the revelation but one quick look at Eames' face showed she hadn't succeeded. Instead, she merely slid her sunglasses on and climbed into the driver's seat. Before shutting the door she turned back to Eames.
"I'll do my best to get as much information as I can for you both."
"Will four o'clock be enough time for the tox screen to come back?"
Grace nodded. "I'll have it for you."
Eames backed away from the SUV and Grace started the engine. She watched as Eames walked over to her partner who was still writing down things in his folder. She could pull a vial of blood and send it down to the tox department and do preliminary research on the body. She was hoping to get the tox screen, x-ray and any evidence retrieval done before two so she could do some research on her own.
It was hard not to notice how that name had upset Goren. And given Eames' reaction to the name as well did not bode well for the two detectives. After seeing how Goren had treated her last night and this morning, she had a hard time believing that this one woman, Nicole Wallace, could have shook him so much. Then again, human depravity never ceased to amaze her.
Grace checked her watch. 4:03. Goren and Eames should be walking through her office doors any second. She kept her hand on the mouse, ready to close the Internet page for when the two detectives showed up. For some reason, she had a feeling that they would not appreciate her researching Wallace and her past exploits. She knew that they would especially not appreciate the fact that she had done some minor hacking into the online depositions concerning the court cases on Wallace.
She found out a quite a bit about Wallace from her preliminary research. The woman had studied at Oxford, went on a killing spree with a Frenchman in Thailand where they both were imprisoned but with different sentences. After she was released from Thailand she went back to Australia, where she killed a woman by the name of Elizabeth Hitchens and came to the US under the guise of Hitchens. After that, there was just a string of murders, mostly men, which followed her. If her main targets tended to be men, why was she killing women now?
"Dr. Harris?"
Grace hit the close button and turned off her computer screen. Eames and Goren were blocking the doorway. She gave them a brief smile before picking up the folder for Tabbitha and headed towards the door.
"Found some interesting things with Tabbitha, Detectives." Grace passed by them and started down to trace evidence. "First, the tox screen came back with traces of cocaine and meth, the same quantity and potency that was found in Sophia Kapirelli. Which means-"
"They both got their drugs from the same source," Goren finished.
"Nicole's dealing drugs now, that's new for her," Eames said.
"If she was dealing drugs there would be no reason to kill off her customers." Goren asked. "Anything else?"
"Her neck was snapped by a quick twist to the left. Here are the X-rays to show the break. The set up looks to be to the same. She was drugged enough to allow herself to be killed and strung up like she had committed suicide. There was no other evidence on the body but I did send her shirt to be analyzed. As soon as I have the results back from that I'll let you know."
"Alright," Goren said but Grace could hear the defeat in his voice. She handed him the file she was holding that had the summary of the pre-autopsy information in it. She knew it wasn't like handing him Nicole Wallace's location but she hoped, in the end, it would lead him to her. She watched as both detectives sullenly leave trace. Pulling on her latex gloves, she started the autopsy, hoping to find something to link Wallace to the killing.
Goren had left the office two hours after Eames. She had tried to get him to leave in her own gentle way but he had solemnly deflected all her attempts. He tried to concentrate on the cases of Kapirelli and Lewis but the last words from Wallace always found their way into his mind.
You took away my last chance at a real life.
Deciding it was time to go since he was one of the last people still there, he shut the folder and slid it into his binder. He grabbed his coat and headed out of the bullpen. Maybe the walk home would prove to clear his mind somewhat but he highly doubted that. Some demons you just couldn't outrun. You had to conquer them. Nicole was one such demon.
Who was he to take away her chance at a "real life?" A real life, one with a spouse, children, home, was something he wanted as well. He knew what it felt like to want something like that and never be able to grab hold of that dream. He could hear her frustration at him in her voice when she left the message on his answering machine. And for all his frustration, anger and resentment at her, he could only feel pity for her because of her loss.
His cell phone rang, disrupting his thoughts. Checking the caller ID, he found it to be the ME's office. He flipped open the phone and held up to his ear.
"Detective Goren, it's Dr. Harris. I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
"No, not at all. What did you find?"
"The perfume came back with a generic ID on it. There's not specific name but the contents found in the perfume are only found in Thailand."
"Can you fax that report over to MCS?"
"It's already been faxed."
"Great. Thanks, Grace."
"You bet, uh..."
Goren smiled slightly as she floundered. "Bobby."
He heard her let out a short laugh. "Bobby, alright."
He hung up the phone and continued on his way home. Nicole still taunted him but at least he now had Grace's voice to drive away Nicole's. He had to admit it sounded nice to hear Grace call him Bobby.