This fic takes place at the end of the season in 2015 and centers mainly on events in the "Hitler on the Half-Shell" S01/E14 episode that aired February 2015.

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February 2015 …

Detectives Martinez and Hanson stood in the middle of the morgue, stopped in their tracks, stunned by the words of their ME, Dr. Henry Morgan. However, as they watched him leave, they also remained skeptical.

Mike Hanson shoved his fists against his hips. "You believe that?" he asked his official partner, Jo Martinez.

She sighed and flopped an arm up and down. "Guess I have no choice," she replied. Hanson began to protest but she cut him off. "Look, Henry's never given us anything but his best effort, his best opinion." She shrugged and looked again in the direction of the morgue's exit and said, "We can't solve all of 'em. Looks like this is one that we'll just have to let go."

Hanson reluctantly agreed while shaking his head in frustration. He did like simple. Preferred it. But not at the expense of leaving a perp out there somewhere to kill again. He relaxed his frown and nodded when Jo suggested they call it a day and quench their thirst at McSorley's.

vvvv

June 2015 …

It had been a trying but routine day for Jo and Hanson of rounding up a suspect and wrapping up another murder case. It had also become almost routine for them to whet their whistles and unwind after work at their favorite bar, McSorley's. Invariably, the lovely Latina detective and their handsome British medical examiner, Henry Morgan, found themselves seated next to each other with Hanson and/or Lucas beginning to feel more and more like fifth wheels. For that reason, they began pairing off with each other either at the bar or at a separate table while Jo and Henry enjoyed each other's company in a private booth.

This night, however, Henry had left work early to pack for his flight the next morning to Rockville, Maryland to attend the Association for Molecular Pathologists' annual meeting and expo. A three-day event, he was expected to be out of town for the better part of the week.

Tonight, it was Jo, Hanson, and Lucas, seated at their usual round table just inside the bar's main room. The discussion of the day's case led to other cases and eventually some of the stranger ones because of their strange aspects.

"Remember the woman who accidentally set herself on fire and burned to death while she was trying to torch her boyfriend's car?" Lucas recalled.

"Yeah, sad," Hanson said. "And dumb."

"And the two kids who killed their parents because they had ordered them to do their homework," Jo recalled. "Creepy kids only 13 and 15."

"I'll tell you something creepy," Lucas began. "The DNA results from that little piece of skin and eppys we removed from Julian Glausser's ring -"

"Yeah, I remember that one," Hanson interrupted. "Inconclusive." He shook his head and downed the rest of his bottle of beer.

Lucas frowned. "No, the results came through." When he saw the looks of confusion and surprise on their faces, he continued. "But they were the weirdest results I'd ever seen." He took a swig from his bottle of beer and plunked it down in front of him.

"You're talkin' about the Glausser murder," Hanson stated, seeking clarity.

"Yeah," Lucas replied.

Both detectives were stunned but also disappointed. For that meant that Henry had deliberately lied to them back then about the results. But why?

Jo was the first to speak. "Henry agreed that these results you're referring to were those of Julian's killer?"

"Yeah," Lucas replied. "Only … whoever the killer is, they've got to be the weirdest person alive," he added as he shook his head and scoffed.

"Why do ya say that?" Hanson asked.

"The ancient antibodies in his system," he replied.

"So, it was a 'he'," Jo stated, recalling that Henry had referred to Julian's killer as such at the time.

"Wait a minute," Hanson started. "What ancient antibodies?"

"I can only remember one offhand: Cyprian something or other," Lucas supplied. "That was a Roman plague way back in the gladiator days. Weird!"

Up until that moment, Jo had found herself missing Henry but now she was glad that he wasn't there to witness this conversation or to see the confusion and disappointment on hers and Hanson's faces. She fought back a feeling of betrayal like she'd done so many other times when she'd suspected he had been hiding something. She wasn't dumb; just waiting for him to trust her enough to let her in.

"One day you'll let me in," she'd confidently told him after they'd closed the Dwight Dziak murder case.

He'd also held back when he hadn't invited her or even told her about the funeral of Abe's mother. And his odd, suspicious behavior during the Blair Dryden and Xander DeSoto murder cases when he'd tried to keep that strange dagger from her. Well, from the case. She was still trying not to take that personally. She exchanged a look with Hanson and reluctantly decided that they should have a look at that report.

vvvv

"See for yourself," Lucas said as he pulled the file out from the cabinet and handed it to them.

Hanson opened the file so that Jo could read the report, as well. "Yersinia pestis, cyprian cough, per-pertrussian - what does all this mean?" she asked, confused and stumbling over the pronunciation.

"They're human antibodies," Lucas replied. "We pick them up from having had contact with those diseases."

"But I've never even heard of these diseases," she said.

"I have," Hanson flatly remarked. He closed the folder and looked at both of them. "I watch a lot of History Channel, remember? These diseases haven't been around for centuries!"

"Just what I said," Lucas interjected.

"What? Is someone experimenting on themselves?" she asked, clearly disturbed. "Making themselves into a … some kind of … bio weapon?"

"Well, according to the Big Guy," Lucas began, "the killer would have to be at least 2,000 years old. That would explain the presence of the ancient antibodies." And did he even believe that? Of course, he didn't. But he bet it would make a great short film. He studied the two detectives who looked really spooked and decided it was best to keep any filming ideas to himself.

"That's just … impossible," Jo said, frowning and shaking her head and her lustrous brown curls, as well. "Nobody is 2,000 years old!"

"Well, I do know that this Y pestis stuff -"

"Bacterium" Lucas interrupted to correct him.

"Yeah, that," Hanson replied. "It was identified from DNA they dug out of the teeth of human remains found to be victims of the Great Plague of London which hit the city from 1665 to 1666."

"Okay, um," Jo began, closing and opening her eyes and shaking her head. "Can we ditch the supernatural and just use these results to find a killer who happens to have weird antibodies and not a weird lifespan?"

Hanson rubbed the back of his neck and nodded. "We'll, uh, hang onto this for a while," he told Lucas. With that, he and Jo left the morgue.

"Okay, uh, I guess McSorley's night out is over," Lucas called after them. They nodded to confirm and he sighed and murmured to himself that he might as well go home, then.

vvvv

The Tech Lab 20 minutes later ...

"This is takin' forever," Hanson rasped as he paced back and forth behind Jo where she was seated in front of one of the computers. Thankfully, the sparse night crew allowed them to have more privacy than if they'd been conducting the search during the day.

"I know," Jo replied. "But I'm betting that only a preliminary search was made. We're going deeper."

This whole thing was making her feel sick, though. How could Henry lie to them like that? Had he deliberately misled them to keep them off the scent of this mysterious killer? Did he have a personal connection to this person that he'd let slip was a 'he'? She sincerely hoped he didn't. A fleeting thought of Abe being the killer, bent on helping him find that dagger -. No. That's too comical to be true, she told herself.

But she recalled that he had, for the most part, avoided eye contact with them while he'd claimed to be stumped and that the killer being male was just a theory. She also recalled how hurriedly he had departed from them. As if to prevent them from questioning him further. Yes, she sadly concluded, he was hiding something. And she realized this latest bout of evasiveness only added to the mystery that was Henry Morgan. The computer screen beeped and ceased its online search. Jo was astonished when she saw what the DNA matched.

Hanson peered over her shoulder at the screen then straightened up, confused. "It matched an unknown sample in a different case. Which means we're still at square one."

"Yeah, but it also means that our guy gets around," Jo pointed out. "This sample was from a bloody shaving razor found at the scene of Xander DeSoto's murder. It was ruled the murder weapon and had mostly his blood on it and a few smudged fingerprints that couldn't be identified. The killer wasn't trying too hard to cover his tracks."

"Maybe we can work with this," Hanson speculated. "Good thing the Doc is at that symposium or whatever. He can maybe bring back some new techniques for testing blood samples."

"He won't be back until the end of the week," she informed him. "Even so, I don't know how much help he could be since he obviously lied to us about the original sample."

Suddenly, the memory of him rushing past her into an adjoining room while they were at the DeSoto crime scene, played back in her mind. He'd rushed into the next room and hurriedly turned to face her with at first a look of fear on his face that had quickly changed to relief. Had he expected to find someone in that room and then was relieved when his fears were not realized? She vaguely recalled that he'd shifted his feet in an odd manner … as if he'd stepped on something. It hit her. The bloody razor. He had been trying to hide it from her. Hide it from becoming part of the evidence in the case. Why in the world would he have done such a thing? Luckily, she had stared him down and made sure that he'd left the room before she had and the razor had later been found and tagged by the CSU. The terror in his eyes, although he had tried to appear calm, had been unmistakable. She now realized that he had been deathly afraid of something or someone during that time.

"Ya think the Doc's been protectin' this guy, whoever he is, and that's why he lied to us about the DNA results?" Hanson speculated. What he didn't say was that Henry would be in a pile of trouble if that were true.

"I … I don't know, Mike." She struggled to mask the hurt and concern in her voice. "Henry is so secretive about a lot of things. He must have had a good reason to lie to us." She had to believe that but also realized that no matter how good his reason, his actions still fell outside the law.

Hanson washed his hand down over his mouth and shoved his fists against his hips again. "Like it or not, we still gotta chase this lead down," he told her.

Jo clamped her lips together and nodded, sadly realizing that he was right.

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Notes:

Information about Association for Medical Pathologists found at

Information on the Plague of Cyprian found at

/2019/03/12/the-plague-of-cyprian-249-ad-to-262-ad/

wiki/Yersinia_pestis

Slight references to various other episodes of "Forever" TV 2014-2015 show.