Elvis on the Jukebox, Crews pulling King faces over apple pie (humming Burning Love just loud enough to make her pretend she didn't know him), three cups of coffee, and no calls to her cell phone. Or his.

Elvis.

Reese frowned at him.

"Please, won'tcha help me, I feel like ah'm slippin away," he drawled, perfectly on pitch. Her eyebrows arched and she pulled his plate away with her fork, spearing a piece of thick pie crust dotted with heavy sugar crystals that shone matte in Du-Par's lighting. He'd joined her in a cup of coffee thirty minutes ago (finished and had another just to keep awake) and with Elvis rolling off his lips like goddamn honey, she was beginning to see why he stuck to tea. There were generally no Elvis outbursts when there was tea involved.

One of the waitresses passed by and tipped her coffee pot to refill his empty cup. Reese pulled it away and shoved her own out. Crews angled a Lawd almighty at her and she kept his damn pie, more amused at his dead-on impersonation than she was annoyed. He grinned at the waitress, huge, goofy, and ordered a slice of something lemony.

The woman murmured a comment Reese missed and wheeled away looking charmed at Crews's response. She supposed that was Crews being Crews. That and the woman had recognized him when they'd blown in three hours earlier.

Reese broke off another piece of crust and sighed as she nudged William Blank's file, wiping her fingers on a brown paper napkin before flipping to the next page. Prostie/junkie murders, six cops dead in the final arrest. Talk about fucked up. Maybe more than fucked. The seat creaked as Crews slid out and nudged her over so he could glance at the file.

He didn't really, though. A sideways glance told her he was half gone again, thinking in that other space, listening to the sounds around him, there and not. His long, pale fingers rested against the edge of the table like he'd forgotten they were attached and part of him. Crews shifted and there was a hint of wary uneasiness to it. She finished the rest of the crust in silence, letting him marinate in whatever thoughts were occupying him.

The lemon pie brought him back, right along with the cup of ginger-peach iced tea. He came back in snatches, his slow smile to the waitress measured, the blink afterward a little more lively, the smile a little wider as he took his first bite. Life flooded back into him in a rush as he gestured.

"This," he said, waving his fork, "this is good pie. It's lemon. You expect lemon to be tart, but it's not and this? This is still warm, Reese. Try it, c'mon, you gotta tr--" With an amused twist of her lips, she very carefully dissected a piece (a perfect square just the size of her small dessert fork) and let it sit on her tongue for a moment (there was a touch of powdered sugar, flaky, buttery crust) and he was right. It was tart-sweet and about melted in her mouth as the crust crumbled.

"S'mazing," she mumbled around a mouthful of pie before licking her lips.

Crews gestured again and a second piece found its way in front of her. She was going to regret this bullshit after a day that should have consisted of garden salads and yogurt. God. The case, they had a case, and here they were gawping over lemon fucking pie. She flipped the page and blinked.

Five years before his arrest, William Blank had killed twenty-nine prosties and junkies. Number thirty got away and lead six police officers back to Blank. All six died before SWAT got there. She read each name, her lips moving around the words in silence. Ballantine's father, Jonathan, was among the dead, right along with Kendall Wright who'd been a close friend of Jack's. Rayborn, too, she supposed. Familiar names cropping up in a familiar world of bright red violence, hedged in by the blue and gold. Reese dug out the letter, smoothed the thick pages out.

When Blank disappeared without a trace, I knew something had to have gone down. The warden ignored me beforehand, figuring his guys had it in hand, but I knew they were wrong. In a world where death threats are as common as staph infections (which are far more common than you'd think), they had to be in on it. That's the only way it would work. Guards can't love their jobs, they can't, at least most of the ones I know don't. You lend yourself to the constant sway of being a dickhead, of becoming violent, of succumbing to beating the fuck out of these prisoners, these hard, embittered, inmates who if they aren't screwed up from the shit they've done are screwed the fuck up because of the shit they've gone through inside these walls. It isn't sweet and light and fluffy in there, it's violent, ranked, and brutal. They have a pecking order, a system. The biggest motherfucker is the King in the Kingdom of the Condemned.

You want to know about it, you ask your partner, if he'll tell you. Jesus H., Reese. I don't even want to know what twelve years in this goddamn hellhole did to him or how he survived it. I should get to the point, right? I don't think I have much time anymore to essay on prison, violence, and the transformation of moral psyche on Man Imprisoned. I'm sure you'll be pretty damn relieved, sitting there, reading this shit. I'm not writing to chat, though. I'm writing because I am goddamn sure someone arranged to have William Blank moved-- probably for his parole hearing in front of the Board again (he was a Lifer, sure, but he requested a hearing every year like clockwork)--and then took him for a little ride. That ride, I suspect, took them out of state where Blank was then murdered by guards who are dead now. April 12, 2005, Blank went missing. Just dropped out of the system and off the face of the earth. I got nothing. No transfer papers, no line of custody. Nothing. Joe Blank, Joseph, put in a few very, very angry inquiries, but no one really got back to him. I saw him in town a few Sundays ago. He said he was watching me, you know, all 'eyes on you' bullshit. I told him I was looking into the matter, but the hell if he believed me.

You'll find the tapes of use, I hope. I'm just afraid they're no good. I sorta fucked up. I mean, here I am, already catching heat for investigating what's supposed to be an internal Corrections matter, and I'm prodding guards? Yeah. Uncool. The whole department thinks I need a six month vacation in the looney bin. Sound familiar?

Reese half smiled. Yeah, that sounded pretty fucking familiar after the ribbing she'd gotten when Crews was assigned to her. No good ex-junkie-fuck-up and Crews, the exonerated crazyass oh-look-I'm-a-detective-now. Uh huh. She scanned the page and moved to turn it when Crews's fingers curled around her wrist. He tapped a line.

He said he was watching me, you know, all 'eyes on you' bullshit.

His fingers brushed down a few paragraphs.

Someone's been leaving dead animals in my mailbox again and I've had more letters and email from some anonymous hacker-stalker-type in the last six months than I have in my whole career. Even after the fuck up in Narcotics. This is scary motherfucking shit, Reese, and I don't think I'm going to live through this one. Guess my number's about up. Feels like that night when Los Malos Lobos were set outside our door and all we could do was pray to God they wouldn't bust in and kill us right there. You remember that shit? That's how unbelievable this is, only I got no back up. I got nothing but you and the knowledge that if I wind up dead somewhere, I know you'll follow this through.

Her throat tightened.

"Jesus, Pat," she whispered and let Crews's warm fingers stay against her suddenly ice-cold wrist. He'd known he was going to die. Hell, he'd known it so well, he'd taken the time to write up a Plan fucking B.

Look up Jeffrey Callum. I found tapes, those tapes you have in your pocket or stashed away, I found them in his truck. He was going to blackmail the other guard about Blank's murder. I have them on record, saying they killed him in Nevada. I was going to go there, maybe with you, find his body, get an indictment--something--but I don't even have enough time to do that. I know Joe has someone watching me and I know there's someone else watching him. Logs mention Jack Reese visited Blank in 2005, shortly before he went missing. A Victor Nabbas visited after that, about three days later. Shit went down after that and Nabbas disappeared. I can't get a hit on that bastard at all, but I've included a few camera shots so you can run his face, maybe. I suppose if you're reading this and not talking to me, I'm dead.

Doesn't that shit suck hard? Dani, you be careful. Don't you end up dead, you hear me? And Crews, do what you're good at. Find the asshole who was tailing me, then find the nutjob tailing him. That's all I got for you guys. Funny, isn't it? I was so goddamned close.

She felt Crews's thumb brush across her wrist bone as she bit her lip and shook her head. The movement sent a few hot tears splattering against the lined pages. Reese murmured a soft fuck and wiped at her face, torn between anger and sorrow all at once. Her phone buzzed a second later and she glanced at Crews. His face was unreadable, closed off, the earlier sparkle gone, and his thumb was still working against her wrist as she looked at the text message.

"We got a hit on the car," she said. "It's sitting at a Motel 6 not far from us. We also have a name. Robert Fendine."

Crews nodded.

"Hey," Reese said gently, her hand closing over his. "You with me? Because I need you here."

"I'm with you," he said in a soft sort of voice. His eyes locked with hers and she saw some of the tension ebb. "Robert Fendine. Motel 6. I'm here, Reese. I'm still here."