"Hawks, you got anything on the suicide note we found in Jessie's hand?" Mac asked as he went into the graphology lab.

"You still think this might be a suicide?" Hawks asked with a frown

"I don't know… on the one hand the roommate said she seemed preoccupied lately maybe even depressed, on the other hand we have a bullet saying there was another individual in that ally…"

"Being preoccupied or a little depressed doesn't automatically mean suicide… I mean do you remember being 22? Everything is depressing when you're 22…" Hawks argued earning a chuckle from Mac

"Which is why I'm looking to the evidence to give us a definitive answer…"

"Ok, so I compared the handwriting in the suicide note we found in our victim's hand to the handwriting from the journal Danny found in her room" Hawks pulled the two images on the monitors in front of them "The suicide note was written in capital letters which made the comparison a little difficult but luckily for us our victim is very careful about using capital letters in her writings. I matched letter for letter - and I have to say - the two handwritings are very different. The pressure points are all different, the lift points are in completely different places…"

"So she didn't write the suicide note…"

"The thing is Mac, the suicide note itself had inconsistencies in it. Look at the letter 'A' in the word 'can't' and the letter 'A' in the word 'had'…" Sheldon zoomed in on the two letters in question "The pressure pattern in the two letters is different. Every person has a distinctive handwriting, a distinctive way to write each letter - these two A's were written in a completely different way"

"So the note was written by two people?" Mac asked in confusion. This case was beginning to feel like a weird kind of dance - one step forward, two steps back.

LATER THAT NIGHT

She found Mac standing outside Jessica's room in the hospital, watching her through the glass as she lay motionless in her bed. There were several kids by her bed, some of them holding hands, some of them crying. From Flacks description she could recognize one of the girls as the roommate, Allison, and the others must have been classmates. She didn't say anything as she came and took a position by his side, but she could tell from the small curving of his lips that he was aware of her presence almost immediately. She looked at the girl for a moment and had to swallow the lump in her throat – the whole situation, standing here in this hallway with Mac – it all brought back that awful day of the bombing when they spent hours waiting to see if Flack would survive his injuries.

"How is she?" She finally asked, her voice a mere whisper.

"No change yet" he finally un-glued his eyes from the girl and turned to face Stella "Have you got anything?"

"Maybe" She replied and handed a file over to him ""Maybe" She replied and handed a file over to him "I went over her journal, the only guy mentioned by name in there is a guy named Michael. From what she wrote the two of them were more then just good friends. Listen to this "I spent the night at Michael's, things are going so good, he makes me feel so good in spite of everything."

"So maybe this Michael is the one who left the DNA sample on our victim" Mac agreed "Seems like we should talk to this guy"

"Flack already talked to the roommate. Seems like the only Michael she can think of is a guy named Michael Hobbs, but as far as she knows - Michael and Jessie were just 'good friends'. Flack tracked down his ID, he works as a graphic designer for an ad agency"

He opened the file she handed him and examined it for a second "Michael Hobbs, 24, has a pervious juvenile record that was expunged when he turned 21 … Doesn't really seem like the murdering type…"

"He was sleeping with her, maybe they had a fight, things got out of hand. She has bruises on her face that are a few days old – maybe he smacked her around and she got tiered of it…" she offered with a shrug. The truth was, considering the criminal record on the Hobbs guy, which consisted mostly of petty crimes that were non-violent in nature, she had her own doubts that the guy would turn out to be their attacker. But like Mac always said – everything is connected – and the evidence indicated that Michael Hobbs knew their victim, intimately. It was worth checking in the very least.

"Let's go find Mr. Hobbs and find out!"