Chapter 4: Liable To Tax

After John had shown him his FBI badge, the hotel receptionist showed them up to Dr. Moore's room in a hurry in case any of the other guests had seen the incident, "Dr. Moore had checked out an hour ago, but if you wanna see for yourself..."

"Was the cleaner in yet?" Grace asked the important question.

"Not as far as I know," the middle age woman with an apron who showed them up opened the door for them.

"Did you notice anything unusual about him? Anytime he was staying here?" John asked.

"No, but this was the first time I had actually seen him. I was working in another hotel of the chain before."

"Do you think you could look it up who was on duty when he stayed here before?"

"Certainly."

"Thank you, that is all," John dismissed her, giving her an encouraging nod of the head, then started looking after the others who had disappeared in the rooms of the large apartment.

"The razor was still in the bin," Grace arrived showing up a plastic bag, "we can check his DNA. Otherwise I think the apartment is clean. He took everything. There's nothing else we could find here. Sam?" They looked for their co-worker.

The profiler was kneeling down next to the bed, touching the phone and an empty envelope next to it, "he left very upset, he was urgently opening some letter, than called somebody to check something about it."

"Well, I don't know, maybe we will know more after I get to the lab," Grace suggested, "Sam, you could go back to the surgery and pick up Jason from Liz's care, will you?"

"Since I don't think John should show up anywhere near Christian just now, I'll go with that," Sam agreed.

"Fair enough," John nodded, "I'll talk with the workers around here. We'll meet at our accommodation."

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"You missed Sean," Liz greeted Sam when she arrived back to the surgery, "he had to go to the police station urgently. And I asked for the afternoon off to be able to spend some time with Jason. I already told Grace."

"Oh, we don't seem to be very successful today," Sam sighed, "do you know what the police wanted?"

"Something to do with his son. He gets into trouble quite a lot these days."

"Anything in particular?"

"Matters of my son's behaviour are no business of yours," a strong voice made her turn around to face the tall surgeon.

"Eeo...we were talking about your partner's son," Sam defended herself, but immediately thought something was wrong as Liz made a funny humphlike noise.

"Matt is biologically my son, and it's a long story I don't wish to share with you."

"I see..."

"You see nothing Ms. Walker. You live hundreds of miles away. How can you judge our situation?"

Sam gave a little smile to the man so obviously tied up with the fear of rejection. Not only he is afraid of finding out about his birth family and why they have abandoned him, not wanting to experience a repeat performance now that he was able to feel it utterly and completely as opposed to the little baby he was when they first got rid of him. But that one event that he didn't even remember has influenced his every decision. Sam felt her being rejected by him the same way, in self defence. The less people he let in, the less it was possible to get hurt, "I see quite a lot actually. Call it a gift. Beyond the normal, explainable, most would say. I have the ability to see behind the scene, to notice and feel connections nobody else would ever think of. And I try to stay in a certain way distant from the cases, so I don't judge. I was hoping we could continue our conversation with particular interest to some developments we..."

"Communicating is sharing trash. Seldom an inspiring experience," Christian pushed her away once more, clearly still disturbed by his earlier incident with the team.

"This is the point I opt out," Liz hurried out the door.

"Oh, yes, we could do other things, like hack into your systems further more to find out about your cases, but I prefer to talk. I believe there is fragrant somewhere behind the words, even if it is trash otherwise. "

"That is a pretence. I do it too, quite a lot, when I'm in the mood. But it's only keen self negation. Sex is a mode of communication I prefer. But you already must know that from your snooping around everybody, looking for a criminal around here. Now sex, that tells you a lot about the other person."

Sam looked around confused now that they were alone in the surgery. Nevertheless, Christian stood at the other side of some chairs from her, with his hands in his pocket, not even mustering her. The sentence wasn't meant to be a pick up line, she concluded, even if the last bit was said very softly and teasingly.

"I have a girlfriend," Christian explained himself, clearly amused by the confusion he caused. It was one of his methods to get to a girl's pants that happened to have worked before on occasions, but he didn't intend it like that this time. However, making the woman befuddled lightened his mood, "all right, what do you want to know?"

"What do you know about Dr. Barrett Moore?"

"Not much. He's a sad and disillusioned man."

"What did he help you with when he was here at the surgery?"

"He? We kinda helped him meet up with his long lost wife."

"How did the wife react?"

"It was more like a long overdue final good bye."

"Did you meet him on other occasions as well?"

"No."

"Did he seem surprised about finding his wife here?"

"He said so. I never seen him overly emotional about the discovery though. What does he have to do with the Carver?"

The profiler's cell stopped her from responding, "Sam Waters. Aha...really? Are you certain?...Can we be sure he left the country?...Yes, thanks very much, Grace, that is really great. See you soon," she looked towards the man who's curiosity about developments made him step closer to her so that they practically shared the same bubble. His fragrance, his off-handish, poised stance, his deep stare, was nothing like John's boyish behaviour in intimate situations with women. She had to remind herself that she was in a steady relationship herself for a couple of years now since she dared to have a boyfriend after Jack. She had to step away from him to be able to talk, especially considering what she was going to say to him, "well, that should count as one of our shortest investigations ever. DNA evidence suggests that the Carver is in fact Dr. Moore. We assume he long knew about his family being here and he lived out his frustration over the situation with the attacks. Unfortunately he and everybody had just found out that his son is dead, you must already know that if you know why Matt McNamara is at the police station? He says there supposed to be some plane tickets there for Paris. And guess what we are told from the headquarters? Dr. Moore is on a plane to France. It's up to the French police now, I don't assume he's going there to leave his son's death unredeemed...it was a pleasure to meet you Dr. Troy," she gave him one more little moment from her precious time with which she still juggled, in between family and work commitments, "I gotta go, they have the plane ready for us," she nodded, trying to give him all her sympathy. She met many troubled people and she knew it couldn't be easy to be Christian Troy either. But it wasn't her place to do anything about that, so she went, although sometimes she felt like it would be nice for a change to run a psychology practice and not after madcap criminals. She turned back from the door,

"but Dr. Moore...the Carver, he wasn't here at the time of your attack. I'm sorry, but that was just somebody else the local police will have to deal with. Good luck," she let the door swing shut behind her.

tbc