Robert Goren had been working with the Major Case Squad for only three months before his first true run in with the DA's office. "I'll walk off this case if you send him to death roe!"
"Detective Goren, might I remind you that—"
"I know what he did, Counselor and the ambassador's death is not his fault!"
"Do you have proof, Detective?"
"The ambassador was poisoned. Lunstroth killed the others with a pistol. His mind is stuck in the time of dueling. He would have been up front about it! He wouldn't think of hiding behind secrecy in order to show his hate."
"That is very interesting but it is not concrete proof."
"He didn't do it!"
"I am sorry, Detective but I have to follow the evidence." Goren didn't look back as he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
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Alex Eames was sitting at her desk avoiding paper work when her new partner flew into the room in a fit of rage. "Goren, what happened?"
He gave her a look that showed his anger; not towards her, she had done nothing wrong, but towards the "higher ups" he had to appease. "Carver. That is what happened." He replied as he grabbed his coat and turned away.
"Goren! Just the person I wanted to talk to." The voice of Captain Jimmy Deakins was not at its most cheerful rendition as it reached Goren's ears. He turned and silently dared his captain to start up the conversation. "You are not walking off this case. You do and you're fired."
"I will not help that man convict the wrong person."
"Goren, my office, now." Goren threw his coat violently back onto his chair and followed the other man into the office. Eames sat frozen at her desk until a moment later when her head whipped around in the direction the two men had walked off in.
She didn't believe her partner. Lunstroth probably decided to kill the ambassador on the spur of the moment, at a time when he didn't have his precious pistol and so used anything on hand—namely poison. The ambassador was a strange man and had a fetish with collecting poisons. Eames thought his death was more than slightly ironic. Her phone rang just then and she took one last look at the closed blinds blocking her view into the window-covered office before picking up the receiver. "Eames…Thank you." She placed the phone back in its cradle and immediately turned to the computer. A minute later, she too was making her way into the office
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"Whatever you're doing, stop. Lunstroth did not kill the ambassador."
"Eames, I know you like working with Goren, but his profile is not conclusive. As of now he is on temporary suspension." Deakins turned his gaze on Goren as he finished this thought, an indication to Eames that this was the first Goren had heard of his future plans.
"You can't put him on suspension! I need him to help me with this case. No one else knows enough about it to jump on board. Hell, I don't know anywhere near as much as he does about this Lunstroth creep. You make him leave and you make me leave too." Eames had not had this kind of fit in defense of Goren before. He was flat out stunned that she was standing up for him.
"Eames, I cannot let both of you leave now."
"Than let both of us stay." She glared at her captain and he glared back. They remained that way for several moments before Deakins started up again.
"You two have twenty-four hours to find me some proof that Lunstroth is innocent of this one crime or Goren is out of Major Case and you," he pointed at her to emphasize his point, "are on temporary suspension."
Goren froze in the corner. Out of Major Case? Could he go back to narcotics? Maybe homicide would take him… He didn't want to think of what that would be like. Instead he looked at Eames who was, rather quickly, gaining a new level of respect in his eyes.
"Rogers just called. Seems like we should work with the profile until we get the evidence needed to tweak it. The Argentinean ambassador died of cyanide poisoning shot through a vein in his arm at 4:53 in the afternoon at his home. We were interviewing Lunstroth, here, from 3:30 until 5 o'clock that same day. He physically could not have killed the Ambassador."
Goren quietly spoke up. "It's true. Cyanide only takes a matter of minutes. He left the ambassador's presence when we picked him up at three." He didn't look up to read his captain's face.
"Come on, Goren. Let's go figure out who did kill the ambassador." Eames grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the office. Their slightly annoyed captain wordlessly let them go.
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Except for answering persistent questions about the case from Eames, Goren stayed silent for the rest of the day. That evening he invited her to his place for dinner so they could continue their search for clues from a comfortable location. They ordered Chinese take away and settled on the couch in his living room. "That was amazing. Thank you."
"What?" She looked up at him, her hands still taking files from the messenger back she had brought from the office.
"Today, in Deakins' office. You cut through his argument…like, like a knife cutting through overgrown vines. Your words…your physicality… I felt like I was witnessing the wrath of a god—or goddess—in my defense. My mind shut down, I froze up in there. But you came in…and you were like a guiding light. You saved my job…pulled me back into the game. I don't know if I can ever show you how much it means to me…what you did in there." Their eyes locked as he finished recounting his feelings.
Eames sat for a beat. The pause stretched out for several moments and Goren began ripping his gaze away in acute discomfort for laying out his soul to her just as she came up with a response. "You can eat all the water chestnuts out of my dinner and stop referring to me as some sort of divine spirit. Then we're equal." He smiled as she handed him the box.