O'Reilly saw a lot of awful things on this job. Things that would work their way under his skin, affecting him long after the scene had been cleared, the reports filed, and the prosecutors and lawyers had entered the realm. Terrible things that would sometimes haunt his nocturnal hours, so that he tossed and turned in his bed and woke bathed in a sour sweat. It went with the territory.

You learned to cope with being faced with the worst aspects of human nature, or you burned out quickly and looked for another job. The detective had learned to deal with the horror and the senselessness of loss and the ugliness of the worst of human nature.

But there were some things that were so emotional, so close, that they not only affected O'Reilly, they changed him.

He didn't like to rank human pain and suffering, or his reaction to it. Every tragic case that involved other human beings was a terrible thing. You learned to cope...but you never got used to it. Sometimes though, it was impossible to distance yourself the way you needed to, to avoid being sucked into the ugliness and the darkness. It was one thing when the victims and perpetrators were strangers. It was another when you knew them as individuals before tragedy had ensued.

The first and probably worst experience, when his personal and professional lives had crossed over, had been fourteen years ago, when O'Reilly had still been back in Boston. He had been called to the aftermath of death and carnage that had left him with depression and night terrors so awful that for the first and only time in his career, the grizzled detective had sought the counselling available to him as one of the benefits of the job.

A cop that O'Reilly had worked with on occasion, and socialized with now and again at one of the small Irish pubs that Boston had no shortage of, Mickey Dennehy, had lost it one night and killed every one of his four young children. Their deaths had been savage and brutal. Dennehy had slit their throats with a kitchen knife, while they slept tucked into their beds in the one place on earth they should have been safe...the warmth of their own home.

He had taken his wife hostage after she had woken to check on her offspring, and to see why their five month old baby girl hadn't woken for a night feeding. Her soul-splitting screams had alerted the neighbours, who had called police. The first cops to arrive had found Dennehy barricaded inside the house, threatening to kill his wife before taking his own life. The S.W.A.T. team had been called in, and after a tense six hour stand off, one of the sharp shooters had ended Mickey's life, and for the first time officers had learned the true extent of the horror as they entered the quaint, family home.

O'Reilly had arrived at the scene after the fact, as the bodies of the children were being brought out. Colleen Dennehy had stood on the front porch, numbed to the reality. The detective remembered that the shirt of her lilac-coloured pajamas had been wet and stained, the milk that her body had still been producing for a child who would never suckle again, mixed with her baby's blood.

Ranging in age from five months to seven years, Dennehy had had three daughters and one son. O'Reilly had met the whole family just six months earlier, at the department's Christmas party, where he had donned a red and white suit and played the role of Santa. Mickey's wife, Colleen, had still been pregnant then, her belly burgeoning with the couple's fourth child.

The detective had held each of the three other children on his lap one at a time, while he encouraged them to tell him their Christmas wish lists, and promised that Santa would do what he could. They had all been impossibly cute children, with pert, upturned, freckled noses, masses of dark hair, and big, blue eyes. Miniature versions of Mickey Dennehy. As O'Reilly had watched their covered bodies coming out on the stretcher, and then had stepped into their rooms, and seen their small beds covered with their coagulating blood, for the first and only time he had lost his composure at a scene.

He had had to flee the house, and ended up outside by the side fence, retching helplessly. O'Reilly had managed to regain control, and had even been able to go back inside and finish his job. But he had been a different man after that day.

No one had been able to determine why Mickey Dennehy had snapped that way. Why he had taken the lives of the children he had, by all accounts, adored and been a model father to. Friends and family had expressed later that for the past year Dennehy had seemed depressed from time to time, but nothing unusual. He was stressed over finances, like most people were. Concerned that the house was becoming too small for his growing brood. But there had been no red flags that anyone who knew him looked back at afterwards and said, 'We should have seen this coming.'

It was no surprise to anyone when two months later, Colleen Dennehy, unable to rise from the black pit of her grief, or to make sense anymore of a world bereft of her beloved children and a life partner it seemed she hadn't really known at all, had taken an overdose of prescription pills and ended her pain.

Yeah, that one had been bad.

Racing to the address out on Prospect, the detective driving, and Special Agent Art Fontaine buckled into the passenger seat, O'Reilly had found the old images swarming to the front of his thoughts. This situation was entirely different in just about every way. There were no children involved, of course. And the detective wasn't coming in after the fact...he was racing the clock, trying to prevent the horror this time. O'Reilly didn't even know what they would find at seventy-four Prospect. But the feel of things was the same.

That same sour spasming in his gut. All of O'Reilly's senses were heightened. The adrenaline coursed through his body and he navigated the streets of Las Vegas with the stoic federal agent sitting silently next to him. The worry for the lives of people he knew. Jim Brass. Catherine Willows.

O'Reilly had a tremendous deal of respect and affection for Brass. The other man made him laugh, with his understated sense of humour and his often biting sarcasm. And he was a hell of a detective. O'Reilly had learned a thing or two about interrogating a suspect, from Jim Brass.

When O'Reilly had first learned what Brass had been up to, he tried to put himself in the Captain's place, and thought that maybe he would have done the same thing. It had been lousy of Mobley to pull Brass from the case in the first place. Surely even though protocol had been breached, there were extenuating circumstances.

O'Reilly knew the biggest question on everyone's mind was...how? How had Brass uncovered the identity of the serial killer? It was a complete mystery. Part of O'Reilly cheered the other man for his resourcefulness, while the other part chastized him for taking matters into his own hands.

The burly detective had always liked Catherine Willows. She was probably his favourite CSI. In the beginning, when they had first worked together, he hadn't given her enough credit for her brains and her ability to do the job. In truth, he had been floored by her sensual beauty. O'Reilly would love to watch her work a crime scene as she moved about gracefully. He never tired of staring at her face, at the incredibly high cheekbones, the flawless porcelain skin, and those impossibly blue eyes, framed by that silky, red-gold hair.

He had heard that Willows used to be a stripper, and there were times in the past when O'Reilly would have to fight to concentrate on the tasks at hand, and to stop trying to imagine Catherine in spiked heels, in various stages of undress, curving her nubile body around a pole for the viewing pleasure of a testosterone-filled room.

The longer he had known her and the more opportunity he had to work with her though, the detective had come to respect Catherine Willows as a competent criminalist. He had discovered that she had a sharp mind, and unerring senses when it came to recreating a crime scene. O'Reilly began to look forward to having her assigned to his cases not because he wanted to engage in fantasy, but because she was a damned awesome CSI.

He had been surprised to hear Catherine had come rushing to Sturney's on her own after Brass. O'Reilly knew the two were close...at one time he'd even wondered with a pique of jealousy if there might be something going on between them...but this kind of headstrong, foolhardy action wasn't something he would have expected from her. From Jim Brass...yeah. But not from Catherine Willows.

When he had turned onto Prospect, he had spotted the criminalist's Denali parked at the other end. He didn't see Brass' sedan anywhere, but if Willows was here, Brass would be too. Cutting the lights, O'Reilly had coasted down the street. The air had been thick with the tension.

The detective had been startled by the shots that rang out. He didn't even waste time turning off the engine, he had simply braked, slipped the car into park, then got out, rushing towards Sturney's residence. Fontaine had bolted past him, moving so quickly that O'Reilly was left feeling like he was taking a casual stroll through the park. He had a moment to regret his propensity for bacon cheeseburgers and fries.

As they had hurtled into the house, both men with guns drawn, the detective's mind had tried to process everything he was seeing. Fontaine stopped short, putting out his left arm to keep O'Reilly from tripping over the prone form of Catherine Willows. At first, the detective thought with dread that the criminalist had been the one to take a bullet. But then he realized that she was propped up on her elbows, her gun between both hands, still aiming at the spot where Dean Sturney had stood just a second ago.

The killer had collapsed backwards, his right leg twisted awkwardly beneath him, blood spattering the front of his white t-shirt, and already pooling behind the back of his head. Sturney was dead, O'Reilly knew it from one look at the man's pale, wide-eyed, unseeing stare. But Fontaine kept his gun trained on Sturney, as he advanced towards the man's fallen form.

Jim Brass and another person were sprawled just a few feet away. O'Reilly was stunned to know that there was a fourth person in the house. An accomplice of Sturney's? They had expected only the killer, Brass and Catherine.

Fontaine was already on the phone, calling to find out where the emergency personnel were. Even as the agent was making inquiries, O'Reilly could hear the sirens of the paramedics and the ambulance, and knew that patrol cars would also be racing to the scene.

Brass moved then, apparently unhurt, though looking dazed, getting to his knees and bending over the body of the fourth person. Oh Christ, O'Reilly realized, it was the novelist, Cecilia Laval. What the hell was she doing here! There was a small hole in the front of her pale, yellow blouse, the edges darkened with gunpowder and blood. O'Reilly had watched as Brass reached for the woman, slipping his arms under hers, and pulling her torso towards him. Disregarding all emergency procedures.

As the detective did so, O'Reilly saw the blood that gushed from the ugly, gaping wound in her back, where the bullet had exited with a hell of a bigger statement than it had entered with.

Brass keened raggedly as he buried his face against the writer's dark hair and rocked the woman in his arms. The sound was so agonized, so mournful, that O'Reilly wanted to clamp his hands over his ears to shut out the heartbreak. He felt as though he was violating the other detective's privacy, witnessing Jim Brass in the throes of his all-encompassing grief. It was gut-wrenching, and O'Reilly's heart bled for the other man.

As Fontaine kicked a .44 Magnum Redhawk out of Sturney's reach, he bent to touch the killer's neck and check for a pulse. At the same time, O'Reilly moved towards Brass and Cecilia Laval.

"Jim," O'Reilly said, touching his shoulder, trying to move the other man away so that he could assess the situation and administer first aid. If it wasn't already too late.

Brass swung his head, seeming not to comprehend who O'Reilly was or what he was trying to do. His eyes had a vacant, empty look that worried the other detective.

"Jim, come on, let her go. Let me help her," he spoke softly, encouragingly.

Brass just pulled the woman tighter. O'Reilly watched as two federal agents entered the house then, and with them two paramedics. "Her first!" he ordered, pointing at Cecilia Laval. Sturney could rot in hell. Then to the two agents, "Check the rest of the house. Secure the scene." Guns drawn, they began to move systematically through the interior.

It didn't seem that Brass was going to allow the paramedics to do their jobs. As much as he hated doing so, O'Reilly had to pull the other detective away, and physically restrain him. Initially, Jim put up a struggle, but then he seemed to notice the blood that covered his forearms, and he sagged against the other man.

Catherine came to them. Seeing the disconnected shine in Brass' eyes, she touched his cheek with the open palm of her hand, and gazed into his face. "Jim," she said quietly but insistently, trying to bring him back.

The detective seemed to recognize her as he focused on her familiar features. He looked away, to Cecilia, where the emergency workers were doing CPR. Without warning, Brass grabbed then for the gun that hung at Catherine's side, loose in her left hand. His eyes glinted with murderous rage as he spun towards Sturney. Jim raised the gun and pointed it at the other man, laying on the ground, staring sightlessly towards the ceiling.

"Detective!" Art Fontaine's voice rang out authoritatively. If Brass put a bullet into a dead man, it really would be all over for him, the agent knew. The detective would never wear a badge again. Brass hesitated, looking from Sturney to the FBI man. "Captain...Sturney is dead," he said levelly.

Brass dropped the gun, and Catherine picked it up again, this time reholstering it. O'Reilly knew he would have to confiscate her firearm, but there were more pressing matters at hand. Brass turned away from Sturney and Fontaine, back towards Cecilia, and the trio stood there, watching the paramedics work feverishly to bring the writer back from the brink and stablize the woman enough for transport.

CSICSICSICSICSICSICSICSI

For the second time, Catherine Willows had taken a man's life. And under eerily similar circumstances, she realized. She didn't regret killing Dean Sturney, and she would do it again in a heartbeat under the same conditions. But that didn't stop her body from trembling in the aftermath, as she stood with O'Reilly and Brass, watching the paramedics try to save Cecilia.

Catherine would never forget Dean Sturney's name now. Just as she had never forgotten Sid Goggle's. She would carry the faces of the dead men with her forever, locked in the shadowed recesses of the attic of her consciousness. She knew she would be seeing Sturney every now and then, just as she saw Sid Goggle. Crossing the intersection while she waited at a traffic light. Ahead of her in line at the coffee shop. In the produce section of the grocery store.

Another man would share a similar physique, or would move the same way, or his voice, or facial profile would remind her of one of the dead men. And for a heart-rending moment, Catherine would feel the rush of adrenaline, and a moment of fear, until she remembered that it was all over. The enemy vanquished.

Everything had happened so quickly. Brass had called out to Sturney as the other man taunted and threatened Cecilia, the detective's voice strident and impassioned. Sturney had turned towards Brass and then only a second later it seemed, he was pointing the gun at Cecilia again.

Catherine had watched Brass vault forward, giving a guttural cry. She had seen the determination in Sturney's icy eyes, knowing he was going to pull the trigger. The criminalist had thrown herself to the ground, reaching for her discarded gun, and bracing her elbows against the linoleum. She took only a nanosecond to line up, firing before Sturney even tried to get off a second round.

Catherine was a decent enough shot, but standing and calmly taking aim on the firing range was an entirely different thing than being in the heat of battle under such stressful and physically difficult circumstances. She had held her breath until she saw Sturney's head rock back violently, and she knew she had gotten a hit. She had lain there, poised to shoot again if necessary, when Fontaine and O'Reilly had arrived.

Watching Jim hold Cecilia, listening to the misery that welled out of him, while he clutched her to his chest, was devestating. The guilt washed over Catherine. She should never have allowed Cecilia to accompany her under any circumstances. It wasn't the same as when the novelist had shadowed her to crime scenes previously. This was too personal, they were all too involved, and Catherine should have known that if Cecilia thought Jim was in danger the other woman was likely to react blindly. Catherine barely felt qualified enough to go after Brass on her own, and she knew that Cecilia was incapable of handling a situation like this.

It also came to Catherine then the why of why Jim had suddenly pushed Cecilia away and seemed to be disinterested in the writer. It was so obvious now. His attitude had changed upon his receipt of the letter from the killer. Knowing himself a definite target now...Brass had been worried that his status might put Cecilia in danger as well. Rather that talking to her about it, the detective had simply turned her away. To try to protect her.

And Catherine had unwittingly delivered Cecilia right to the killer. Putting her in Sturney's pathShe didn't know if Jim could ever forgive her. Watching her friend's seemingly lifeless body now, Catherine didn't know if she could ever forgive herself.

There was so much blood. Catherine was aware that even a small amount of spilled blood could seem like a lot. But she was also experienced enough to realize that the bright red arterial blood that flowed from Cecilia's back, as one of the paramedics turned her on her side, was life-threatening. Wordlessly, Catherine watched them work to try to staunch the flow.

Jim was kneeling down then, even as the other paramedic was trying to get him to stay back, pleading with the detective to remain out of the way and let them work. But Brass muscled closer, taking one of Cecilia's limp hands in his. He had gotten over the initial shock that had gripped him in its grey claws.

"Come on, Sweetheart," Jim was saying now, and his voice was so strained, so bereft, that Catherine wouldn't have recognized it. "You've got to fight. Please, Cecilia, don't leave me." He looked plaintively at the emergency workers, his face crumpling. "Don't let her die."

Catherine watched the two paramedics exchange a glance. They were doing everything they could to help Cecilia, she knew. But she needed to get to a hospital. Now. And even then, there were no guarantees. Catherine saw the helplessness that passed between them.

The ambulance attendents were bringing a stretcher through the door now, preceded by two uniformed officers. One of the paramedics spoke quietly and hurriedly, giving his assessment of Cecilia's condition. The attendent nodded gravely. Working together, the four emergency personnel shifted Cecilia carefully onto the stretcher, then quickly raised it and began to hustle her out of the house.

"I'm going!" Brass insisted, moving to follow after them.

The female attendent shook her head. "Sir, I'm sorry, you can't..."

"I have to be with her," the detective repeated. "She shouldn't be alone."

One of the patrol officers stood blocking Brass. "Captain, please Sir, let them do their jobs." The young man looked uncomfortable standing up to his superior, but determined nonetheless.

"Jim," Catherine said then impulsively, "come on. We'll follow. I'll drive."

"Catherine..." O'Reilly spoke regretfully, "...I can't let you do that." His blue eyes were compassionate, but his tone was firm.

Of course, Catherine realized. She was evidence now. Both she and Jim. O'Reilly would have to get their statements. Someone from CSI would be coming to photograph the scene. The detective would have to take her gun. A man had been killed...a civilian...by her hand. Catherine was positive that Sturney was their serial killer, and she had only been trying to stop him from killing again, but until that had been proven...for now he was just a man whose house had been broken into by a rogue cop and criminalist. Without a warrant. A man who had been shot to death in his own livingroom. Internal affairs would have to be involved.

Brass stood there, his feet planted slightly apart, his arms hanging at his sides, ending in his balled fists. He looked so lost, so broken, that it made Catherine's heart ache just to look at him.

"Detective O'Reilly," Special Agent Fontaine was saying now, moving closer towards the three. "I can transport Captain Brass to the hospital."

O'Reilly looked at the FBI man in confusion. Surely the agent would understand the protocol. O'Reilly couldn't let either Willows or Brass leave the scene yet. It wasn't that he wanted to be a hard ass, or that he couldn't feel the pain that was etched in every line and crevice of Jim Brass' middle-aged features. But he had a job to do. And there had been enough skirting of the rules already. That was partly what had gotten them all to this point.

"I see you've sustained an injury, Captain," Fontaine went on, observing the other man's blood-staiined collar and craning his neck to assess the damage to the back of Brass' head.

"I'm fine," Jim remarked dully. The small gash and the headache were nothing. Meanwhile, Cecilia could be dying.

"Detective, this man should be receiving medical attention," Fontaine said coolly to O'Reilly. "And the medical needs of anyone on scene takes precedence over procedure."

Catherine understood then what Art Fontaine was doing. She could have hugged the tall, dignified agent. "I think you should take him to University Medical Centre," she suggested.

Fontaine nodded knowingly. Catherine was telling him where they had taken Cecilia Laval.

"Do you know how to get there?" O'Reilly asked, looking at the federal agent with new respect.

"I'll find it," Fontaine said confidently. If they hurried, they could follow the ambulance in. "Let's go, Captain."