"I am not disagreeing that he admitted to going to the festival…but at no time during our interview did Luigi say anything about that car. In fact, he referred to her as broke and needing rides all the time."

Leaning against the corner of Steve's desk, arms crossed over his chest, Mike pointed his chin toward the file.

"I say it's nothing but a decoy. She never stole that car. Nobody did."

"But why the elaborate plot? It doesn't make any sense, Mike."

With his battered leg carefully propped up on the small file cabinet below his desk, Steve's mood hadn't improved much after getting pulled through the wringer by Devitt when it came to his ability to perform his job duties as needed considering the injury.

Lucky for him, the pain meds Jules had given him were still working well enough to allow him to walk almost normal, except for a slight limp. Keeping the explanation of what exactly had happened to that leg as vague as possible to avoid having his partner grounded on desk duty, Mike had pushed the limits of his own comfort zone repeatedly when it came to doing things by the book.

But he also knew that keeping Steve by his side was vital to close the case, and a much-needed booster to the young man's pride after everything they'd been through.

"It does if you're a novice trying to plot a murder. Come on now, Buddyboy, think! This isn't our first triangle. If our killer knew all along that he or she would kill Sarah eventually, there would be plenty of time to set the stage to make it look like she'd stolen the Skylark to go up north, get raped by Jules and then have Jules follow her back here once he finds out about the possibility of a pregnancy and then kill her. It's absolutely perfect, if you ignore the lab findings and lack of any of her finger prints on the steering wheel for a moment."

Steve smiled faintly when Mike reached forward to tap his temple as if to get him to think. Then, with a theatric sigh, the young Inspector pointed to his black office phone.

"Now are you going to let me get Gerry involved and bring the Roberts in for questioning?"

"Not yet.", Mike countered with a wide grin and leaned back, "First I want you to check with the DMV and bring that file back up on the Skylark. I want to see if it says anywhere in there what the latest mileage was. Could be an oil change receipt or anything Roberts may have contributed. Charley couldn't find any dirt or gravel anywhere on that car and granted, the water could have washed some of it off, but there had to have been traces of that dirt road somewhere inside or outside of it. Comparatively, our car looks like it came straight from the wild west."

Steve's eyes narrowed instantly, the defiant expression returning to his face, as he shook his head.

"No."

"No? What do you mean no? We need that file."

"Then you go and grab that file, Michael. I have had it with mad women coming after me for erotic favors and some misguided wilderness lunatic ramming psychotic drugs down my throat. What you call an adventure is commonly referred to as brutal assault. I am not even done bleeding yet from your last idea of "checking out that campground up north". No. I have had it this week. Enough."

Raising his hands in a calming gesture, hoping to quiet down his partner when he noticed both Tanner and Sekulovich glance up suspiciously, Mike tried a reassuring smile.

"Okay…okay…it's alright. Just calm down, okay, Buddyboy?"

Symbolically taking a step back when Steve's glare threatened to cut him in half, Mike kept up the smile, as he put down his coffee cup.

"Tell you what, partner. How about I get you some aspirin for the pain, see if that gets rid of your…your edge this afternoon. And then I will head downstairs and grab that DMV file, while you rest that injured leg of yours. I'll even refill your coffee. Deal?"

When Steve nodded in unmasked mistrust, his eyes never leaving the Lieutenant, Mike returned to his office to grab some pain pills from the top drawer of his desk, then filled a glass with water from the carafe on his file cabinet before joining his partner again.

Waiting until Steve was in the middle of swallowing the pills, he grinned broadly.

"I still think you're making all this stuff up about the DMV. Guess I'll be the first to know, eh?"