Rated: PG-13
1999
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Chapter 3
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April 28, 1999
2:30 am
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"That was Harry. He wants us to go home and get some sleep," Cassy informed her partner as she hung up the phone in the interrogation room where they had been all night.

"I can't argue with that," Tom couldn't even find the energy to nod.

"How about I drive you home and pick you up in a few hours. I don't think you should drive," Cassy offered as she picked up her coat and purse.

"Yeah," Tom sighed and rubbed his bleary eyes before forcing himself into a standing position and dragging his jacket on.

"So what time do you want to come back?" Cassy asked a few minutes later as they headed through the desolate night in her Boxster.

"Want? We should come back at seven," Tom snorted as he slunk further down in the passenger seat.

"Try and get some sleep tonight all right?" Cassy opened her window to let the cool air keep them both awake.

"Then I should stay at your place," Tom mumbled under his breath, but not low enough so that Cassy didn't hear him.

"You're more than welcome," Cassy offered without a hint of the discomfort that flashed across her face betrayed in her voice.

Tom looked down at his hands and thought for a moment. With an expression of resignation he looked over at his partner and accepted her invitation.

Cassy listened to his acquiescence with a heavy heart. Teasing and joking about Tom's sex life with another woman was one thing, to be thrust into the middle of it was quite another. And to know that her house was now considered the safest place by Tom to get some sleep to avoid sex with another woman might have been something a friend could deal with in stride. It was not something, however, that Cassandra St. John was finding very easy to accept in the wee hours of the morning.

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"You can use the phone to call Virginia if you want," Cassy offered awkwardly as she locked the town house's door behind her and Tom.

"She's probably asleep already," Tom declined the offer with a shake of his head as he too stood awkwardly in the dark living room. The only light was the moonlight reflected on the ocean that came through the french doors.

"I'll go make up the guest room," Cassy finally broke the stalemate and moved past Tom towards the stairs leaving Tom to remain standing in the room alone. With measured steps she forced her tired body up the stairs.

"Wait," Tom suddenly appeared behind her as she stood at the linen closet and was gathering together the linens. "I know where everything is, I'll do this myself. Go to bed."

"Good night Tom," she said, her heart pounding as their bodies slid across each other as she moved away from the closet door and let him take her place.

"Wait," Tom's warm hand closed around her bare arm and stopped her progress away from him down the corridor. Hoping her face and body didn't betray her she turned back and looked at her partner questioningly. She didn't think it was possible but her heart began to beat even faster as his hand remained wrapped around her arm and he studied her face. She wondered what he saw and what he was looking for.

"Will you wake me up?" he asked as he dropped her arm and averted his gaze.

"Of course," Cassy whispered, suddenly feeling bereft of his touch.

'I'd better get used to that,' she reminded herself as she closed her bedroom door.

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Tom finished his haphazard effort at making up the guest bed in Cassy's town house and with a relieved sigh he began to peel off his clothes. In his exhaustion he let them fall where they landed before crawling under the cool sheets clad only in his underwear. Closing his eyes he breathed in the scent of the clean pillows and reveled in the feel of the soft bed underneath his aching body.

As the different noises of the house, different than what he was used to at his and Virginia's apartment, he let the strange sensations heighten his senses. On the other side of the wall he heard his partner and ex-wife go through her nightly ritual of getting ready for bed. Somehow he was comforted by the familiarity and certainty of the sounds. No matter how tired she was Cassy always fully prepared herself for the sleeping experience.

'Not always sleeping,' a voice in Tom's head reminded him and teased him with images of a time long ago when he had been responsible for changing some of Cassy's nightly routine. Sometimes there was no nightgown. Sometimes she didn't get to crawl in between the sheets as soon as she might have expected.

The image of a sheer negligee, the same color as the yellow suit Cassy had been wearing that day, balled up on a carpeted floor burned behind his eyes.

Tom's exhausted body both surprised and betrayed him. He restlessly shifted underneath the blanket suddenly feeling wide awake. With a frustrated grunt he punched his pillow into a ball before flopping back down on it. This was almost exactly why he had decided to risk his fiancé's wrath and stay at Cassy's and try to get some sleep.

'Wonderful,' he grimaced and forced his body to remember it was exhausted and needed sleep.

All too soon he was awakened by Cassy knocking on his door and announcing it was time for him to wake up. While he could swear he hadn't gotten any sleep a look at his watch, which he grabbed from the bedstand, confirmed that it was eight-thirty in the morning. Cassy had obviously made the smart choice to let them get some modicum of a decent amount of sleep. He briefly wondered if she had engaged in another of her morning rituals and worked out on the treadmill before waking him up.

"Wait, that's in this room," he remembered when he looked at it as he sat up. As tired as he was the night before he was pretty certain he would have heard that.

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"Do you want breakfast?" Cassy asked when Tom appeared in the living room.

"Let's pick up something on the way," Tom suggested.

"Sure," Cassy nodded as she picked up her keys and purse from the counter and headed for the front door. Before she could open the door the doorbell rang startling both partners. "Who in the world?"

Tom swallowed a lump in his throat and prayed that it wasn't Virginia. While he was planning on telling her later where he had spent part of the night, he didn't want to deal with it now. Or explain why he had an extra set of clothes at his partner's place. While it wasn't out of the ordinary for most partners, he didn't think Virginia would understand, especially since he had returned Cassy's clothes, along with an apology, when he was moving in with Virginia.

He could swear his heart skipped a beat when instead of looking into a pair of flashing brown eyes he found a pair of tired and smiling gray ones.

"Brett!" Cassy exclaimed with obvious pleasure.

"I didn't think I'd find you home," Tom heard the man say as he slid his arms around Tom's ex wife.

"We shouldn't be, we were at the station until half past two and I decided we should get a little more sleep this morning or we would both be useless today," Cassy told him. "What are you doing here?"

"Good morning Tom. I was on my way home from the hospital and was just going to drop this off," Brett pulled an envelope out of his suit coat and handed it to her.

"The ballet!" Cassy's eyes widened and Tom could swear he heard a squeal trying to come out his normally staid partner's throat.

"I hope you can make it," he lifted her hand and placed a gentle kiss on her palm, his light brown hair fairly shimmered in the morning sun.

"Friday night, I hope so," Cassy's fingers held onto Brett's hand as he brought it back down to waist level.

"I'm sure we can spare you for a few hours on Friday night even if we haven't closed the case by then," Tom interrupted, partly to remind the grinning pair that he was still standing there.

"We have to go and you should get some sleep," Cassy slid her hand out of his and pushed some hair off his forehead.

"Listen, it was nice to see you Brett, I'll meet you at the car Cass," Tom excused himself and moved past them and out the door.

"You can ask," Cassy said in a low tone after Tom had disappeared from view.

"I just want to be sure you're all right," Brett leaned in closer.

"I'm fine. He needed to get some sleep and it probably wouldn't have happened with that shrew waiting for him at home. She makes me look like Donna Reed in the wife department," Cassy said uncharitably.

"If I hadn't met her myself I might accuse you of sounding jealous," Brett observed.

Cassy sighed and looked down for a moment.

"It's just a hard adjustment. It's like she's become a part of our working relationship instead of just Tom's personal life. She doesn't understand the demands of the job. Not like you do," Cassy pressed her lips to his cheek.

"We'd better say goodbye so you can get to work," Brett said with a little disappointment tinging his voice. Before he had finished speaking Cassy's lips were on his and they shared a steamy kiss before Cassy pulled away, this time the disappointed sigh fell from her lips.

"Go make the streets safe," Brett ordered her as he pulled the door closed behind her and watched her lock it.

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"There's nothing from VICAP yet, it's probably a localized killer. Doesn't stray far from home," Cassy announced as she re-entered the interrogation room that had become their home away from home.

"That's a lead, a killer who likes women on the Atlantic coast of southern Florida," Tom said snappishly.

"Did something happen since I left the room?" Cassy looked at her partner curiously.

"No, nothing has happened. We've been at this for seven hours straight and we're no further than we were before and I haven't seen my fiancé in two days and probably won't see her again tonight, awake at least. But I shouldn't be taking it out on you, I'm sorry," Tom had stood up and began to pace as he went through his monologue.

"No you shouldn't, but apology accepted. Why don't you meet her for dinner?" she suggested.

"That's a good idea," Tom's mood lightened.

"Why don't you go arrange it and then you can calm down and take a look at these lab reports from Miami, Stuart and our latest victim," Cassy held up the sheets of paper she held in her hand and waved them around.

"Did they find anything?" Tom asked eagerly.

"You bet they did. Just as we suspected, it seems that all of the women were drugged, raped and then died of an overdose, except the one woman who seems to have missed the party and died before she could be raped. Seems our killer is a regular pharmacist. We have flunitrazepam, otherwise known as Rohypnol, diazepam, GHB, ketamine and MDMA, otherwise known as Ecstasy. Sounds like he had a regular rave," Cassy read the results of the various tests out loud, adding her own commentary along the way.

"You might be onto something," Tom said as he took some of the pages from her hands.

"What am I onto?" she asked.

"Rave, pharmacist," Tom waved his hand as he studied the reports.

"Do you think it could be a teenager or someone going through a mid-life crisis and is trying to have his own rave?" Cassy's brow furrowed as she considered ideas.

"Maybe a pharmacist. Most of these are all controlled substances, except for the roofies and ecstasy which aren't even given out by prescription. A pharmacist could probably make them and anyone could get them. A pharmacist would also know how much to administer to cause death," Tom continued the train of thought.

"So how many male pharmacists are there in southeast Florida? Unless it's a female pharmacist helping a male friend?" Cassy's face showed that she discounted the theory before she even finished articulating it.

"I don't know, but let's find out," the fire in Tom had been relit now that there was something to go on.

"Aren't you going to call Virginia?" Cassy asked as Tom left the room to get back to his computer.

"No. If we can solve this case ASAP we'll have plenty of dinners to look forward to and you can get to that show!" he said excitedly.

"The ballet is not a 'show'," Cassy corrected as she followed him.

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An hour later Tom's frustrated expression was back. He hadn't realized there were that many pharmacists in South Florida. There were over seven thousand licensed pharmacists in the retirement capital of the world.

Cassy sat on the corner of his desk her own expression as serene as ever.

"What if it isn't a single person committing these crimes?" she mused out loud.

"What do you mean?" Tom looked over.

"What if it is a rave? What if the dosages of these drugs are too high and causing these deaths, but there is just one person dispensing the drugs at raves, nude raves maybe, and other guys who are using them on women and ending up with dead bodies on their hands that they just dump on the nearest beach?" she mused out loud.

"That doesn't solve the problem of there being too many pharmacists out there to check out," he reminded her.

"We should start with pharmacists who have lost their licenses or gotten in trouble starting in the Stuart area first. And if we can find a rave it would be somewhere else to start," she told him. The first death had been in Stuart, then the criminal had moved to Miami and began working his way up the coast. "Let's have Engler and Mason start checking out the pharmacists angle while we try to find out what raves go on around here Monday nights. These things travel too."

"You seem to know a lot about raves," Tom said with raised eyebrows.

"I still get out and about," she shrugged and flashed her partner a smile that said there was more that she wasn't going to tell him.

"Naked raves?" he called out across the bullpen as she sauntered towards the doors causing a few conversations to stop and all eyes to turn towards the attractive blond woman.

"You're so dead Ryan," Cassy grumbled just loud enough for Tom and everyone to hear as she exited.

With a chuckle Tom grabbed his jacket and phone and went to follow her.

End of Chapter 3