"It's crucial that we find David and who he's with," Olivia told the two women, "who are his friends here?"

"Uh…" the teacher scrambled to come up with an answer, "Anton Spencer."

Elliot looked at her and asked, "That a coincidence?"

"His grandfather founded the school."

"Why does that not surprise me?" Elliot murmured under his breath.

"Is he still here?" Mrs. Norton asked.

"I'll go check," Miss Jenkins ran out of the classroom.

"How long had David been attending school here?" Elliot asked.

"About three months ago."

"If we could get the number for David's cell phone we might be able to ping his movements," Elliot mentioned to Olivia.

"David doesn't have a cell phone," Mrs. Norton told them.

The two detectives turned to the principal and asked, "What?"

"You gotta be kidding me," Elliot said, "every 12 year old has a cell phone these days."

"Not David, his father wouldn't let him have one, he said for security reasons."

"Why's that?" Olivia asked.

"Dr. Moll received a lot of death threats, that's why he picked this school to send his son to, we have a strict no phones policy, and not just anybody can come off the streets and get in," she explained.

"Why was he getting death threats?" Olivia asked.

"His work, the idea of trial runs with cancer drugs implies somewhere during the testing phase, they're not going to work. Families who lost loved ones felt like he deliberately misled them or intentionally killed their relatives."

"He told you this?" Elliot asked.

"He wanted to make sure we understood why it was vital he come at the same time every day and pick David up," Mrs. Norton answered. "A lot of students come and go as they please, but Dr. Moll wasn't having any of it, he was adamant about David staying here until he came and got him."

"Okay, and if this," Olivia held up the photograph, "isn't Dr. Moll, can you describe him to us?"

"He's about six feet tall, late 30s…I'd say well built, he has one of those…what do you call them…buzz cuts."

"Like the military?" Elliot asked.

"Something like that, you know, the hair's just barely there and you can see the razor bumps on the back of his head."

Olivia turned to Elliot and murmured, "Definitely not the man sprawled out on the floor in Moll's home."

"Then who the hell is he?" Elliot asked.


"Yeah I know David, so what?" Anton Spencer was seated on a bench outside the principal's office as he answered the detectives' questions. He was a tall, skinny kid with a faded haircut and his voice was already starting to change. He wore the school's uniform of a white dress shirt, a blazer, a black tie, and tan pants, though it was obvious he'd grown since the beginning of the semester, the pants came up two inches short on his legs, something the detectives figured his parents would've paid better attention to since he was a legacy in the school.

"Did you see him leave school today?" Elliot asked.

"Yeah."

"Did you see the man he was with?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Was the man his dad?" Olivia asked.

"What's this about?" Anton asked.

"Do you recognize this man?" Elliot showed Anton the same picture he'd shown the women.

"Yeah, that's David's dad," Anton told them.

The two detectives looked at each other.

"You're sure?" Olivia asked. "Because we showed your principal and your teacher this picture, and they said it's definitely not David's dad."

"That was a secret," Anton said. "His dad couldn't get off work to pick him up, so his uncle did."

"Who's his uncle?" Olivia asked.

"Guy's name is Roger," the boy told them.

"What's he look like?" Elliot asked.

"About your height, with a crew cut."

"Why was it a secret?" Olivia asked.

"Man, David's dad never came here, his uncle came to enroll him, passed himself off as his dad," Anton said.

"How do you know that?" Elliot asked.

"David told me."

"Then how did you know this is his dad?" Olivia held up the picture.

"I saw him a couple times."

"I thought you said he never came here," Elliot said.

"Naw, man, at his house," Anton said.

"What'd you guys do there?" Olivia asked.

Anton snorted. "His dad won't let him have a computer, his uncle took us out to play baseball."

"Anton," Elliot said bluntly, "David's dad is dead. And now David and his uncle are missing."

"What?" the boy moved back on the bench. "No way."

"Did David ever say anything about them going somewhere?" Olivia asked.

"No way," Anton shook his head. "What happened?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Elliot said.

"Oh man," Anton ran a hand over his hair. "David's gotta be alright, right?"


"Nothing about this case is making any sense," Elliot told Cragen when they got back to the squad room.

"It doesn't even look like our case," Cragen said, "Homicide can take the dad, Missing Persons can take the son and the uncle."

"Captain, something very weird is going on," Elliot said, "all we saw were pictures of the dad and the kid, who is this uncle?"

"When everybody got done tossing the house," Olivia hung up the phone at her desk, "they found one master bedroom with Moll's belongings and his son's room with all of his stuff there, clothes, comic books, sports equipment, movies…there were five additional bedrooms with no personal effects that look like they haven't been used."

"Guest rooms, I figured a place that size would have a dozen of them," Cragen said. "So where was the uncle, camping out on the couch?"

"Either way it sounds like Uncle Roger checked out and took the kid with him, the question is why?" Elliot asked.

"What about the death threats the doctor got?" Cragen asked.

"I thought you just said this isn't our case," Munch said as he walked by.

"That doesn't mean I'm not curious, John," Cragen answered.

"TARU's going over the dad's computer, so far getting a lot of medical jargon nobody can understand but not much else," Fin said.

"I can understand wanting to protect your kid from personal attacks, but is anybody else finding it a little weird he doesn't let his kid have a phone or a computer?" Cragen asked.

"That's every parent's dream," Elliot said, "keep them unplugged so all the child molesters in cyber space can't get a chance at them. But I also know it's not practical. Kids need computers for schoolwork and no parent wants their kid unsupervised without a way to directly contact them."

"Maybe it wasn't to keep him shielded from death threats," Olivia said, "it sounds more like this guy wanted his son to have as little of a digital footprint as possible."

"Maybe Dad's just old fashioned," Cragen said.

"Captain, you didn't see this place," Elliot said, "six foot plasma TV, brand new Lexus in the driveway."

"So he's a rich bastard."

"And he's not going to spoil his kid too?" Elliot replied.

"Wait, wait, wait," Olivia thought of something, "how many cars are registered to this guy?"

Elliot's eyes widened, "There was only one car in the driveway, there are two men living there, Roger's got the other car."

"Check with the DMV," Cragen told Olivia.

"On it," Olivia said as she picked up the receiver on her desk phone.

"So what're we thinking?" Cragen asked, "Roger kills his brother and kidnaps the boy?"

"Doesn't make a lot of sense but it's not the strangest case we ever had," Elliot said.

"Get back to the crime scene and canvas the neighbors," Cragen said.

"The unis already did that."

"I don't care, do it anyway, maybe we can catch somebody who wasn't home the first time," the captain explained.


"How well do you know your neighbors, the Molls?" Elliot asked the woman living directly across from the doctor's house.

"Enough to say hi, not much else," the short middle aged woman in a housecoat and slippers answered.

"How many people living there?"

"Two men and a boy…they're brothers, you know."

"Yeah, I know," Elliot said, "how long they been living here?"

"The overall family's lived there for five years," the woman answered.

Elliot blinked. "You sure of that?"

"Trust me, after the nightmares that lived there before that, wild parties all hours of the night, people coming and going until the crack of dawn."

"None of that now?" Elliot asked.

"I never saw so much as one woman set foot in that house, they were a breath of fresh air, quiet, kept to themselves, never see that kid running around like a hooligan."

"So the doctor was divorced?" Elliot asked.

"No," the woman answered. "when they moved in originally it was the doctor, his wife and their son. Shortly after they moved in, the ambulance came for her one night. She never came home. Bout a year later her death was announced in the newspaper. That's when the brother came to live with them. The poor boy. I guess with the doctor's work hours he needs somebody to help him raise his son."

"He did anyway," Elliot commented. "Were you here earlier, ma'am?"

"No, I had to go over to my sister's early this morning, she fell in the tub and threw her back out, had to wait for her good for nothing kids to come home and take care of her, I just got back half an hour ago."

"You don't say," he replied, wishing she wouldn't say anymore. He cleared his throat and asked, "Is that the only car that's usually over there?"

"No, there's another one. A…I'm not sure about the make and model, but it was an older car, four seater, four doors, black, kind of looked like a Town car."

Elliot smiled and thanked the woman for her time. He headed down the steps and met Olivia who was coming over from across the street.

"Get anything?" he asked.

"Nobody saw or heard anything," she said, "you?"

"Yeah, the doctor's wife died four years ago, then all of a sudden Uncle Roger pops up, and the car that's missing is an older model Town car."

"Not much to go on," Olivia said.

"Better than we had," Elliot said, "let's check back in at the squad and see what the DMV came up with."


"There's only one car registered to Doctor Moll," Cragen told the detectives when they returned, "the white Lexus."

"Then Roger must own the other car," Olivia said.

"Tried that, bad news," Don said, "DMV has no record of any Roger Moll."

"That's not possible," Olivia said.

"It's not a mistake, I double checked," he responded.

"So if the doctor only owns one car and nobody else ever goes to that house, who owns the black car?" Elliot asked.

"Maybe someone else in the family," Fin suggested, "maybe Roger borrowed it off a cousin."

"Maybe it was registered in his wife's name," Olivia said.

"No such luck," Cragen shook his head. "In any case the title would've been transferred over to her husband after her death, wouldn't it?"

"Unless he's the absent minded professor type," Elliot said, "what about his finances?"

"Still checking, so far he's got enough in the bank to choke a cow with, but no outstanding debts, he doesn't seem to owe anybody money…"

"But they also didn't find any in the house," Olivia said. "Not more than a couple thousand bucks anyway."

"Nobody's going to kill over that, and if they were they would've taken it with them," Fin said.

"Well who is going to hate a cancer researcher enough to shoot him point blank in the back of the head?" Cragen asked. "If it was the family member of a patient, wouldn't they want him to suffer long enough to see it coming?"

"When we find that out we'll have the killer," Elliot replied.

Munch hung up the phone at his desk and stood up, stopping to stretch and make his back crick. "Warner called and wants you guys down at the morgue."

"She find something?" Olivia asked.

"If I knew that, you probably wouldn't have to go down there, would you?" he replied. "All the same I doubt she just wants to shoot the breeze."


"Your victim shows no sign of sexual assault, and aside from the .38 sized hole in the back of his skull, no signs of physical assault either, no hematomas, no scars, no defensive wounds, this guy never broke a single bone in his whole life," Warner told the detectives.

"Lucky stiff," Elliot commented.

"I dug out the slug and sent it to the lab for testing," she said, "with any luck ballistics will be able to match it."

"That'd be too much to hope for," Elliot said, "this is a little too neat and tidy to be some random gang hit by some thug who's already popped a few people."

"Did you find anything else that could help us identify the killer?" Olivia asked.

"All I can tell you is that the shooter stood far enough back that there's no powder burns in the wound or his clothes, no stippling, and…a toxicology report found trace amounts of gin in his system, but I plucked a few hairs for additional tests…thank his barber, hair grows an average one inch per month, last time he got it cut a few longer strands were missed, over the past month he had ingested several big dollar painkillers and sleeping pills."

"How much?" Elliot asked.

"More than moderate use, not enough or often enough to be addicted, organs showed no wear and tear from long term use, most likely just a recreational user," Warner answered.

"Being a doctor that's not a big surprise," he said.

"Sorry guys, this is one of the cleanest cut murders I've ever seen," Melinda told them.

"Doesn't make our job any easier," Elliot said.

"Can you run his DNA to see if there are any relatives in the system?" Olivia asked, "we need to find somebody in the family to talk to."

"Already did, I'm waiting to see what pops up," the medical examiner said.