A/N: Now, where do you guys get the idea that I'm going to damage poor Don? Unless it's true that you always hurt the one you love…

Chapter 6

Don had the ME's reports side by side in front of him. He had read them over a half dozen times, but he couldn't recall a single word. His eyes were drawn relentlessly back to the board where the three crime scenes were pictorially laid out in chronological order, his own youthful image flanking each body shot.

Don Eppes, this is your life.

He thought he could have handled it if they had been current photos - he was used to seeing pictures of himself at crime scenes, in protective gear, carrying a weapon - it was seeing those early images of himself, so separate in his mind from his current life, intermingled with what he had become, that somehow stopped his breath in his throat every time he looked at them. Deep inside, he was starting to hate somebody for putting them together. He stopped gently rocking his chair from side to side, suddenly struck by a thought. Wait a minute.

"They're chronological."

"What's that?"

He glanced over at David's desk, realizing for the first time that he'd spoken aloud and remembering with a start that, while Megan was gone, Colby and David were still there.

Megan had taken off shortly after his return to the viewing room. He had opened the door with some force, almost as frustrated with his progress with Ms. Petts as Megan had been, only to see his entire team jump as he shut the door behind himself with a click. He'd leaned a shoulder into the wall to study their guilty expressions.

"So. I'm guessing nobody was actually following the interview? If you were going to play poker in here, you could at least have dealt me a hand."

"We were discussing the case," David had interjected hastily.

"Uh huh." Don straightened. "Should my ears be burning?"

"Maybe just a little toasted." Megan had tried on a smile. "I'm going to take a look at your high school and college classes and your Rangers team. Do you remember anybody at all who might have been connected to all three?"

Don shook his head. "Do my parents count? No, that's a good idea, Megan. I'm going to give Ms. Petts a ride home."

"I'll do it." Megan's smile had looked genuine this time. "I'd like to take one more crack at her. And I can't have you guys compromising your virtue for the job."

"I think you could put our collective virtue in a thimble, but thanks anyway. Let me know if you pry anything else loose. Not that I'm convinced there's anything else to pry."

"What's chronological?" David's patient voice brought him back to the present.

"Oh. The memorabilia. My pro-ball days, college, then High School. They're in backward order. Except Quantico's missing. Wonder if that's intentional, or if it's just too hard to get info from there?"

"Could be a coincidence," Colby pointed out.

"Yeah, well, I'm ready to shelve the whole coincidence aspect for now. Let's just assume nothing is a coincidence until we've got some kind of thread to follow. Consider everything significant." He caught sight of the clock on the opposite wall and whistled. "Man, it's late. I didn't realize. Why don't you guys take off? We'll start fresh in the morning."

He registered their mutual looks of weary relief and the beginning motions of packing up for the night before turning back to the board.

Backward order. Maybe it meant nothing, but maybe it meant something. Great, if this kept on long enough, everybody would probably get to enjoy his baby pictures, too. He turned away to take another stab at the coroner's report, was surprised to see David and Colby still at their desks, deep in work.

"I thought I told you guys to go home? Come on - it's late and we were all up early. We've beat this up enough for one day."

There was a moment of silence, then David cleared his throat. "Well…I have all this paperwork to take care of - nothing worse than facing a big stack of unfinished paperwork first thing in the morning."

"And I'm tired of him showing me up by having all his paperwork done first," Colby interjected. "Big kiss up."

Don blinked. "Since when? Come on - call it a night."

They both looked at him, then at each other.

"You leaving?" David asked calmly.

"Yeah - sure. I'll be right behind you. Just want to take a quick look at these coroner's reports."

David and Colby exchanged another look, then simultaneously returned to their paperwork.

Don wrinkled his forehead, puzzled, then leaned back in his chair as realization dawned. "Oh, okay - I get it. Look, guys, I appreciate it, but I'm a trained federal agent, packing a sidearm. In a secure federal building, full of other trained federal agents, also packing sidearms. I'll be fine. Go home. Get some sleep."

David cleared his throat again. "Here's the thing. Boss's Day is come and gone and I didn't get you a thing. So I figure it's the least I can do to make up for it."

"And I didn't even know there was a Boss's Day," Colby contributed solemnly. "Imagine my feelings."

Don shook his head with half a laugh. "Okay, okay, I get the message - so if I don't go home, nobody goes home, is that it?"

David and Colby looked at each other again.

"Yeah," Colby nodded. "That's pretty much it."

"Okay - you win." Don flipped his file closed. "Grab your jackets and call an elevator. Let's get out of here." He was still half-smiling when the elevator let them off in the parking garage. "Um - this is it, right? You aren't planning to follow me home and tuck me in or anything?"

"No," David pointedly turned right to walk him to his car. "But a thoughtful person would call to say they got home all right."

"Man, you sound like my mother. I'll call." Don hit the button to unlock his car and shook his head again as they patiently waited until he was inside. He pushed the key into the ignition, then pressed the control to drop the window. "Oh, and guys?" He leaned out to catch their attention, and they paused in turning to go to their own cars. "If I see a card from either of one of you for Boss's Day? I'll shoot you both."

David smiled. "I was thinking more along the lines of flowers anyway."

Colby grunted in disgust. "See what I mean?" he complained. "A big kiss up."

000

"So, what have we got?" Don's voice sounded pallid, even to his own ears.

He had phoned David as soon as he'd stepped into his apartment last night, locking the door behind him and asking, a little sarcastically, if he was expected to call Colby as well. David, unfazed, had assured him cheerfully that he would let Colby know and had told him to sleep well. Which had certainly been his intention.

He had slipped into sweats and a t-shirt and flipped the top off of his long-awaited beer, sifting idly through the mail and carrying it with him to the back of the apartment, intending to skip the television he usually switched on to unwind and go straight to crashing instead. Of course, he'd have to finish his beer before he could brush his teeth…so he found himself digging into the closet in the meantime, looking for the box he mentally labeled "things too embarrassing to remember" and then dragging it out.

His yearbooks were near the bottom and he flipped through them one at a time, half expecting to find the pages with his photos on them cut out and missing. They were there, though, and intact - looking just like he remembered. Just like they did in the plastic evidence bags.

He closed the books slowly and stacked them with his mother's baseball album, returning the rest of the box to its place in the closet. They weren't exactly evidence, but they might jog something useful loose.

He left them on the nightstand when he finally turned out the light, switched on the light again a short time later and leafed through them once more, looking at the other faces now, trying to find one that appeared in both of them. The only even vague connection he could find was Charlie.

Yeah, maybe it's him, he told himself sarcastically, decisively clicking off the light this time and closing his eyes determinedly.

It was no use, though - images and memories crowded his brain, whirling much too fast to allow him to relax. In the small hours of the morning sheer stubbornness forced him to drop off at last, and a short time later his alarm roused him from a vague dream where his child-self wandered from bloody crime scene to bloody crime scene. He was half-relieved to be awake.

But now he was dragging, cruising on a hopeful wave of caffeine.

"You said they're chronological," David re-capped.

"All three lived alone," Colby put in.

"Yeah." Don added those to the list, then stepped back for a better view. "No sound to attract the neighbors for Motta, though. That's new."

"Ms. Petts said she had a standing appointment," Megan offered. "So if the killer knew that, then there'd be no need to attract the neighbors. She'd discover the body and call the police."

"Yeah, that's good." Don scribbled it under the others. "So it looks like he watched these people first. Found out about their habits. He or she?" He gave Megan a questioning glance.

Megan sighed. "Men still greatly outnumber women as perpetrators of violent crimes, but women are gaining, so we can't rule it out."

"Go, equality," Colby cracked.

"Yeah, makes a girl proud." Megan made a face. "And speaking of proud…nice hair, Don. Especially the bangs."

"Go ahead and laugh. I'll bet you had great, big hair and carried an economy-sized bottle of hair spray in your purse, just like every other girl I knew."

David and Colby both snickered and Megan glared at them. "I did not." She looked demure. "I had spiral curls."

"No." This time Don laughed. "Man, I'd give a lot to see that."

"Nobody is ever going to see that."

"Yeah." Don blew out a slow breath. "That's what I thought."

There was an uncomfortable silence, then Colby jumped in hastily, "Hey, look on the bright side - at least it's not a mullet!"

Don and Megan both turned to look at him. "It was 1989, Granger, not 1982," Megan said a little indignantly. "Just how old do you think we are?"

Colby looked flustered and David leaned in to murmur, "This is where a wise man would take the fifth."

Colby grinned. "Yeah. I think I'm gonna take the advice of my lawyer, here."

Megan snorted.

Don pulled the High School yearbook page from the board and looked at it, moving to the nearest chair to sit down. "I brought in my old yearbooks for you, Megan, and a box of Stockton Ranger stuff…I didn't get anything out of it, but maybe you will." He studied the photo.

Cocky kid - on the surface, at least. Underneath, kind of unsure. Still…college. Striking out on his own. He'd been pretty excited. He turned the page over.

Charlie's photo was on the reverse side, with long hair tied back. It had faced Val Eng's in the yearbook - Charlie had told him he had believed it to be destiny. V. Eng and C. Eppes in a spread, turn the page and D. Eppes and…? He couldn't remember who, and he'd looked at it just last night. Nobody significant, then. He sighed. High School. Did anybody ever really enjoy it?

He stared at his own grinning image again - a kid with a baseball scholarship - turned it back over and looked at Charlie's - a kid heading to Princeton. Somehow, having Charlie's photo posted at a crime scene, even inadvertently and face down, bugged him even more. He wondered if he should tell him.

"Don?"

"Hm?" Don massaged one eye and then the other, willing them to work better. It took a second too long to recognize the questioning note of concern in Megan's voice. He stood up. "I'll get you those boxes." He made eye contact with first David, then Colby. "You guys keep plugging at Meyers and Alderman, okay?"

"What are you going to do?" Megan sounded just a little apprehensive.

"I'm going to try to track down Charlie." He ignored his own photos this time and looked from murder victim to murder victim to murder victim.

"You told Charlie about it?"

"Huh? Oh, no." Don grimaced. "I meant to, but my dad came in every time, and I'm just not ready to get into it with him, before I can answer any of his questions." Like, what does it mean? I don't know, Dad. What are you doing about it? Everything I can think of. He knew his father didn't mean to, but his concern sometimes felt a whole lot more like pressure. "But maybe I can get Charlie without Dad around. It's worth a shot." He went to the board and replaced the photo page, stepping back to look at it. "Who knows? With a little luck, he might have a few more blue houses up his sleeve for me."

TBC