Alex stepped into the observation room a few seconds later and quietly shut the door behind her, giving the room's other two occupants a smile as she made for the coffee pot.
"Quite a show you two are putting on in there," Deakins told her with a smirk.
"Yeah," Barek agreed. "Watching Goren let you walk all over him is almost satisfying enough to make me forget about killing my own partner."
"Not another fight," Deakins groaned, dropping his head into his hands. "What now?"
"Logan decided that he and Norman Young really needed to talk man-to-man when they interviewed him this morning," Alex volunteered over her shoulder as she poured a dollop of cream into her coffee and stirred. "So he kicked Barek out halfway through." Turning back toward them, she took a sip of coffee and shrugged philosophically. "Look at it this way, Carolyn - at least you're not the only interview reject in the room. I stand before you a partner-abusing bitch, remember?"
Barek snickered. "Yeah, but at least you volunteered for it. All I got was an elbow in the side and a muttered, 'Let me handle this, ok?'"
Deakins rolled his eyes and said, "And here I was starting to believe you'd gotten him under control, Barek. Eames, I always knew you had some secret methods of controlling Goren, but this is a new one. Was that improv, or did you work it out beforehand?"
Alex, who had been busy scowling down at her coffee, which, as usual, tasted like it had been baking in the machine since the night before, blinked and looked up. "What? Oh, uh, it was half-and-half, really. We knew we'd need to use a light touch with her, and when Goren made that crack about me being cranky in the morning, well . . . the stage was set."
Barek raised her eyebrows. "From what I hear, you are cranky until you get coffee in you in the morning."
"Been listening to office gossip again?" Eames asked her teasingly. "You should know better than to believe anything that comes out of Bobby's mouth about my moods."
"You have moods?" Deakins said ingenuously, managing a fair imitation of real astonishment.
Barek, ignoring his crack, grinned at Eames. "Who, me? Gossip? Wouldn't dare!"
"You know, speaking of her partner," Deakins interjected, "why don't we direct our attention to him and his guest for the moment?"
"You mean you don't want to hear more about my moods?" Alex said, widening her eyes.
Deakins glared at her for a long second, then waved a hand at her in exasperation. "I'm staying far away from that topic. Now, let's watch the interview, shall we?"
"So your mom didn't like Tony, huh?" Goren was saying as he lounged back in his chair, looking for all the world as if having Eames gone allowed him to relax. "She thought he didn't treat you well?"
Claire nodded reluctantly. "She kept trying to get me to break up with him, telling me he didn't 'treat me right' and 'oh, you could find someone so much better than him' . . ."
"But . . . you didn't listen to her."
"I'm an adult, Detective," she retorted, giving him a hard look. "I don't have to do everything my mom tells me to anymore."
Goren nodded slightly. "Well . . . was Tony nervous that you might listen to her? I mean, assuming he knew about what she was saying."
"Tony loves me," Claire said firmly, "and he knows I love him. I have no reason to hide anything from him."
He gave her a pointed look. "That doesn't answer my question, Miss Young. You just acknowledged that he knows your mom doesn't like him," he countered, making an effort to speak in the present tense about her mother, as she had been. "So even if he wasn't worried about you . . . was he worried about her?"
"I'm the one who makes the choice to date him, not my mother," Claire replied stubbornly. "What does it matter what she thinks . . . thought?"
Goren, giving her a look of mild surprise, took a moment to ponder that. "Well, I guess you are right about that," he admitted after a second. "Your mother couldn't make you give up Tony any more than my friends can make me give up my partner. But," he added with a halfhearted laugh, "I have to say, I've had some pretty underhanded, uh, tricks played on me by friends trying to do what they think is best for me."
"Tricks?" Claire echoed, looking slightly more interested. "Like what?"
"Well, you know," he said with a shrug. "Spur-of-the-moment plots, mostly. One guy keeps trying to get Detective Eames to spend more time with him, to keep her away from me."
Claire smirked. "Sounds more like he wants her for himself, to me."
"Possibly." He glanced quickly over his shoulder at the mirror, wondering what his audience was making of his hastily-constructed stories, then looked back at Claire. "Then there was the guy who threatened to tell my boss that she and I were . . . well, you know."
"Ouch," Claire said, sympathy obvious in her voice. "That's playing dirty. Would you get fired if someone told your boss that?"
"Probably, yeah." He shrugged. "But I talked my friend out of that one, at least."
"Everyone seems to think they know what you need, huh?" she said with a nod. "I guess it's universal."
"Your friends too?"
"Everyone I know, pretty much," Claire said with a roll of her eyes. "My friends, my parents . . ."
"Been playing tricks on you?" Goren said, nodding his understanding.
Claire shook her head as if she couldn't believe it, herself. "You could say that. Jess and Kathryn took us out to a club one night and tried to bribe another girl to hit on Tony, to make me angry."
"That's low," he agreed.
"My mom . . . she . . ." Claire stopped and sighed. "Maybe I shouldn't be saying this, you know? She was a good person, it's just . . ."
"She was a mother," Goren supplied reassuringly. "No matter what she did, she . . . she did it because she thought it was best for you. I don't think that can be held against her."
She shrugged. "Yeah, I know. It just feels like I shouldn't be saying anything about her mistakes."
"Well, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Goren offered, trying to inject just enough sympathy into his voice to make her feel like he was pitying her. "I have no right to ask."
Claire's eyes softened slightly as she looked at him, shaking her head. "No, you're right. You're probably the only person I'm going to get to talk to who does understand it."
Rather than make a response, he just leaned back in his chair, fingering his pen distractedly as he kept his eyes on the girl across the table.
In a more depressed version of his movement, Claire slumped down in her chair. "My mom was always coming up with reasons . . . things she said she saw or heard . . . for why I shouldn't stay with Tony. Once she said Sophie - that's one of her friends - saw him buying drugs in Chinatown. Another time she said she noticed money missing from my checking account that my dad handles."
Goren nodded slowly. "And those weren't true?"
"No!" she said indignantly. "I asked Tony and he said no, first of all. Plus I . . . I went through his stuff when she told me about the drugs, and there wasn't anything like that!"
"Hmm." He leaned forward to make a note in his portfolio, then looked back up at her. "How recently was that?"
Claire blinked, surprised by his question. "Uh, I don't know . . . maybe two weeks ago?"
"Did Tony know you went through his things?"
Her face paled slightly. "He . . . he, uh, came home while I was doing it."
"Did he get angry?" Goren pressed.
"Wouldn't you?" Claire shot back. "If you came home and found someone you loved searching your stuff because they didn't trust you?"
He leaned forward again, ostensibly to make another note but, in reality, more to hide the expression of frustration that was about to appear on his face. At that moment, he would have done just about anything to get Eames back into the room; it would be difficult to catch Claire sufficiently off-guard by himself. "Is that how he reacted?" he asked Claire. "He thought it meant you didn't trust him?"
"Well, it did."
He allowed that point to slide, in favor of moving on: "How does he act when he gets mad? Eames, she . . . she, uh, stops speaking to me."
Claire gave him an understanding smile at that. "Tony yells a lot. I think I like that better than getting the silent treatment."
"Yeah, I think I would prefer yelling, too." He paused, trying to decide exactly how to deliver the next part of his question. "Does he ever get physical with you, when he's mad?"
Claire jerked her eyes away from his, looking around the room as if she suddenly found it incredibly fascinating. "Tony wouldn't hit me," she managed, not sounding totally convinced even as she said it.
"I know he wouldn't," Goren agreed immediately. "But hitting isn't the only thing I consider physical. Does he ever, I don't know, grab your arm hard enough to leave bruises? Back you into a corner?"
She stiffened a little more at every word he said, and when he was done, she kept her gaze away from him. "I don't know what you're trying to get me to say, but Tony doesn't like to hurt me. Or anyone else."
"Doesn't like to?" he repeated impassively. "I do a lot of things I 'don't like to' do."
"Why are you doing this?" she hissed, jumping to her feet. "I thought you understood!"
"Miss Young, please," he said, holding out a calming hand. "I didn't mean to upset you." Yeah, right. Sure I didn't. But now I've got you where I want you!
She sat back down, but kept her wary eyes on his face, as if waiting for his next attack.
Goren stifled a sigh, recognizing the determination on her face. He needed to put another card on the table, but all he had left was something, well . . . less than realistic. "Look, Claire," be began, then added, "uh, can I call you Claire?"
She nodded wordlessly, still glaring at him.
"Thanks. Look, Claire, like you said, there's not a lot of people who understand the type of situation you and I are both in. The trade-off, as you phrased it. So I . . . I, uh . . ." He looked down, trying to seem embarrassed. "I was kind of hoping to find out from you whether my relationship with Detective Eames is 'normal,' for this type of, uh, situation."
Claire blinked, looking confused. "What do you mean, 'normal'?"
He glanced over at the mirror again, coughed, and unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt.
In the observation room, Alex couldn't quite suppress something that resembled a yelp.
"That noise mean you know what he's doing?" Deakins asked, continuing to stare curiously at the scene on the other side of the glass.
"Yeah, Eames, do tell," Barek said with a grin. "What's he going to show her?"
Eames just stared in horrified fascination as Goren displayed the scratches she'd left on his forearm during their activities of the night before. She didn't have to listen to know that he was telling the girl that Alex had left the marks; she was a whole lot more interested in what excuse he provided and whether her companions in the room bought the explanation.
A moment later, Barek looked at her with raised eyebrows. "His punishment for looking in your desk, huh? I knew you were territorial," she added, shaking her head, "but this . . . this is going a little far."
"Shut up," Eames snapped. "You know I wouldn't do that to him."
"Well, they do look female-sized," Deakins contributed thoughtfully. "You sure you didn't do it?"
Tossing her hair, she gave him what she hoped was an offended look. "Why would I scratch my partner? Come on, guys, do I even look like the type of person who'd scratch instead of punch?"
"Ok," Barek allowed, "you have a point there. I think Claire's buying it, though . . . check it out." She gestured to the window that Alex had turned away from.
"Those are man-sized," Deakins said, staring hard at the marks on Claire's upper arm that she was now showing to Goren. "Damn, Eames. How do you two do this?"
She shrugged and smiled, glad attention had shifted away from Goren's injuries. "This is all him. I just helped with the set-up."
"Well, then how does he do it?"
"Pure talent. Now listen to what she's telling him," she ordered.
"He didn't mean to hurt me," Claire insisted to the detective sitting next to her. "Just, you know, he was worked up from seeing me go through his stuff, and when he grabbed me, he used too much strength."
He nodded encouragingly. "I know. My partner certainly didn't intend to leave marks on me, either." Oh, if only you knew how true that is, he thought, wondering what kind of chaos was going on around Eames in the observation room right then. "May I say something else?" he asked. "Something you might not like?"
Claire's eyes narrowed, but she nodded carefully. "I guess."
"Thank you. You should . . . you know, you should try to protect yourself. Your boyfriend is much larger than you, and even if he doesn't mean to hurt you, he could. I . . ." He shrugged. "If I were you, I'd consider getting a little training in self-defense, and staying with your father or a friend for a few days while you do it."
"Self-defense?" Claire repeated. "You mean like hurting him?"
"No, of course not," he said, wishing he could just shake some sense into the girl but knowing it would blow the uneasy rapport he'd built with her. "I want you to learn to keep him from hurting you. You don't necessarily have to hurt him back in order to do that."
She shook her head, but looked thoughtful. "Detective, I don't think I really need to . . ."
Goren patted her hand, realizing with amusement a second later how fatherly the gesture must have looked. "You don't need to decide now, ok? Here's my card." He slid the card across the table to her and smiled. "Call me if you need help or if you decide you want to learn." He paused a second and then, unable to restrain himself any longer, added, "I . . . I'm serious, Claire. If you need any help . . . with Tony or anyone else . . . you call me, ok?"
She nodded and gave him a weak smile as she stood up. "Ok. I will. And you . . . maybe you should stop letting Detective Eames have her way so much, huh?"
Ushering her to the door of the room, he grinned. "I'll think about that. This officer will escort you downstairs. Thank you, Claire."