Disclaimer: Law and Order: Criminal Intent and its characters are the property of Dick Wolf and NBC. No copyright infringement is intended, and no money is being made. This fanfiction is written for entertainment purpose only.
Author's Notes: Third chapter up! Reviews and feedback are greatly appreciated, especially if it's in any way constructive. Enjoy!
Major Case Squad – One Police Plaza, New York
The rain had come down on their way back to the offices of Major Case. Only the few seconds it took for them to get from the parked car and in the door of the building had left them well on their way to being drenched in water. Once well inside they all discarded their jackets, and Goren was quickly over by his desk, smiling when he found what he was looking for – the autopsy report for Damien Huntley.
"The C.O.D was the stab to the heart. Straight through, he died immediately. But Damien Huntley may have been living on borrowed time anyway. He had cancer…leukemia."Silence, just long enough for it to be noticeable, and an exchange of looks between the two detectives, that Miriam saw but couldn't decipher.
"23 years old and you're diagnosed with leukemia. That's got to suck…"
Miriam had settled in a chair on the other side of Goren's desk, where Eames already stood beside him. The last statement came from Miriam. Eames, it seemed, didn't bother stating the obvious, and instead asked;
"Was he in treatment?"
Goren nodded. "Yeah, says here he'd probably been receiving it for some time."
"It explains why he had morphine in his apartment, and in his system."
"The amount in his system was so high that we're beginning to talk about an O.D. If he was trying to commit suicide, then it could be that someone walked in on him and instead of trying to help him decided to finish the job."
"It still points to someone who knew him though. Maybe someone was waiting for the perfect time."
Miriam had been listening to the two detectives talk about cause of death, overdoses and possible motive for murder. But there was one thing that bothered her more than all of this.
"Why pose him? If one only wanted Damien Huntley dead, for whatever reason, why bother to pose the body like that, and scribble obscure symbols on his body?"
Goren looked up from the autopsy report, which he was still holding, and looked straight across the desk at her. "To send a message. To tell us something…"
"A message would logically be easily understood by those who read it. This is not. The majority of people in this country have no idea what runic symbols look like. So why use them?"
He was still looking at her, studying her features and seeing the frustration in her eyes. "Maybe whoever is trying to get a message across, isn't trying to get it across to us, but to someone else… If we find out who, then that brings us one step closer to finding the person who did this."
A split second after he had finished the sentence, he broke their eye contact and turned to Eames. "Let's try going talking to his parents. I want to know if they knew their son had cancer."Quickly he got up, and prepared to follow Eames out the door of the Major Case offices once again.
Miriam sat there, watching as they both ignored her, and disappeared out the door. She didn't even bother being angry, or wonder why. It didn't take a genius to figure out that this was just the way the two of them worked. She was a disturbance to them, however well they had managed to mask it. The reason she wasn't angry or insulted, was that she knew how that was. To have an almost secret code of conduct with the one you worked with, having to work around any disturbances from the outside. It was one of the best kinds of working relationships she knew about, and there was really nothing she could or would do to change it. Instead she decided to dig into what she knew best; the symbols. She had kept the pictures from the folder that the captain had first shown her, and she knew the pictures on the wall of the victim's apartment by design. What she needed was some references, which, she wasn't surprised to discover, the Major Case offices didn't have. What she needed instead was the New York library, and a way to get there.
She found her phone in one of the side pockets of her backpack, and searched the phone's directory until she found the name she was looking for. Even though she had never been to the city before, didn't mean she didn't have friends there. After four rings someone answered on the other end. "Fran, hey, it's Miriam. I need you to be my GPS over New York, can you do that?"
Just as the door slammed shut, Alex Eames turned to her partner.
"You don't think that was a bit rude, just leaving her here?"
"She doesn't need to see what a couple of distraught parents look like."
"You're trying to protect her?" When her partner didn't answer, Eames smiled to herself.
"You like her, don't you…?"Still no answer and Eames let it go, like she usually did. If there was anything she had learned about being partner with Robert Goren, it was that there was no use trying to get any more information out of him than he was prepared to give you. If you did try, he would normally close up like a clam, and then you would have hell trying to get anything out of him.
The Home of Damien and Sonja Huntley – Carnegie Hill, New York City
The atmosphere in the home of Damien Huntley senior and his wife was just the kind of atmosphere Eames and Goren had met so many times before, but regardless of that neither of them had gotten used to it. It was the kind of atmosphere that is in a place where parents have found that they will have to bury their children, and not the other way around. They where met at the front door by a manservant, who escorted them both into a living room, impeccably furnished, but a far cry from the glass and cement apartment that their son had occupied. Mr. Huntley stood to greet them, and they shook hands. Mrs. Huntley on the other hand seemed not to notice them, it was instead as if her eyes were staring at something that only she could see, something in a very different time or place from where her living body were, sitting in a sofa, slumped among the pillows. She said nothing to them as they settled down in the chairs offered them, but kept staring at something that was beyond her reach.
Damien Huntley sr. cleared his throat, signaling very well without using a single word, that he would like for them to get started on whatever business they had there. Goren took that as his cue to say something.
"Mr. and Mrs. Huntley, we're detective Goren and Eames, with Major Case. We're investigating your son's death, and it would be helpful for us if you could answer a few questions."
Mr. Huntley gave a small nod, as if giving his permission for them to continue. Goren and Eames looked at each other, in an effort to figure out who would be asking the questions. Eames decided, with a small, almost unmarkable, nod to Goren, to take that job upon herself.
"We need to know if Damien had any close friends that you met, or know of?"
The husband and wife exchanged looks, and the husband took immediate control of the answer. "We didn't know any of his friends. We weren't…close, with our son."
"I understand that, Mr. Huntley," said Eames, "but are you sure your son never mentioned any names to you at all? It would really help, if we could track down some of his friends, to ask them some questions."
The father looked like he was about to give a negative answer again, and with that declare the matter definitely closed, but suddenly it seemed that the mother snapped back into the real world just long enough to say; "There was one, a girl. I think she may have been his girlfriend…"
This made both Goren, who had disregarded the rules of politeness, and was wandering slowly around the room, and Eames, who still sat in a chair facing the two Huntleys, sharpen their senses."…her name was Kaye Kegler. I met her briefly, once. She's the only one I know about." And with that she seemed to drift away again, to somewhere only she knew.
"Thank you, Mrs. Huntley, that's very helpful." said Eames quietly, as if not to scare the older woman.
Goren had stopped wandering, and turned towards the two sitting in the sofa.
"Your son's autopsy report showed that he was sick, that he had leukemia. Where you aware of this?"
Huntley senior looked sharply at Goren, as if he really wanted to throw him out just for approaching the subject.
"Yes." The word was uttered strongly and precisely, almost as he spat it out of his mouth, giving the impression that there was nothing Damien Huntley didn't know about his son, even though he had admitted that he wasn't close to him.. Robert Goren had worked long enough to know that this usually signified the exact opposite.
There was nothing much more useful information to pick up from Damien Huntley's parents, and judging by the way they had acted, the felt that they had given the police too much to work with already. All things considered, and also taking into account that Damien Huntley senior had pulled a great deal of strings to crack the case fast, the family seemed less than eager to help solve the murder of their oldest son. Goren and Eames only consolation as they left the Huntley estate, was that they had gotten one more name, one more person, and one more possible link in the chain. Still, it wasn't half as much as they could, and would, have hoped for.
Darkness had fallen when they came back to Major Case, and they debated for a while whether or not to track down this Kaye Kegler right then, or let it wait until the next morning. They decided on the last, an unspoken understanding of the need to call it a night between them, settled the matter. Eames was just on her way out the door, when a remark from Goren made her stop.
"Eames…," his voice called, unusually hesitant, "where's our code breaker gone?"
She turned, and was surprised to find a worried look in his eyes.
"She's probably been a bit smarter than we are, and gone to find somewhere to sleep tonight. Don't worry, Bobby, she's a big girl, she can take care of herself."
Eames gave him one last, reassuring smile, and disappeared through the door.
Robert Goren leant back in his desk chair, and took a deep breath. This case was going forward so slowly that he wasn't really sure it was going forward at all. Damien Huntley was dead, his family had nothing to say, nothing to say that brought them any closer to the person who killed a defenseless twenty-three year old man. Except one thing, the name of a possible girlfriend, now their only new lead. So, tomorrow would either bring a breakthrough, or they would be back to square one.
The opening of a door brought him instantly back to full awareness. Closing the door behind her was Miriam, who smiled when she saw him.
"Hi. I didn't expect anyone to be here this late, but I thought I'd check."
"Where have you been?" He realized just a second too late that his voice had sounded a bit stricter than he had intended it to. What exactly was he thinking, anyway? Eames was right, there was a grown woman standing in front of him. What business was it of his, where she had been? It didn't stop him from being curious though.
"Nice to see you too." she countered.
"Oh, and it was very nice to invite me with you, when you went to see Huntley's parents, by the way."It was the fact that he sounded more like a parent than an equal that had set her off just there. She hadn't really minded that he went off with his partner, without her. It was his job, after all. But that didn't mean that he had any right to question her about where she had been or what she had been doing. She wasn't one of his suspects, she was here, trying to work with him, and trying to help.
"What good would you have been there? Could you have lured anything out of them that Eames and I couldn't?""No! But I have been called in from Washington to be a part of this investigation, so I would appreciate to be included. If you don't need me, then tell me to get on a plane home, and I'd be only too happy to go. I'm just sitting here twiddling my thumbs anyway!"
Right then, Robert Goren understood that he wasn't the only one harboring frustration at their lack of progress. He rose from his chair and walked slowly towards her, holding his hands in what was meant, and what he hoped she would interpret, as a calming gesture.
"Hey, hey…I'm sorry. It wasn't meant like that, ok. I just didn't think you needed to see what parents who have just lost their child look like.""You could have asked. What do you know of what I have and haven't seen?"
He looked at her. They were standing close now, so close that if he had reached out with his arms, he could have held her. He felt a sudden urge to do just that, but he didn't. Instead he saw aggression in her eyes, anger of being left out. But it was mixed with something else…sadness, or sorrow.
"I'm sorry," he repeated.
She shrugged, and as she did so, the look in her eyes changed back to normal, and almost unreadable.
"Never mind. I'm the one who should be sorry. I don't usually get that carried away by my line of work." She smiled. It was meant to be disarming and to make him forget what he had just seen. But he couldn't do that, he wondered what she had seen, what he had seen for a brief moment, in her eyes.
"It's alright," he said, "It's been a long day."
He took a few long steps back to his desk, and picked up his coat. Turning back to her, he smiled, and said; "Are you hungry?"
"That depends," she said back, in a teasing manner, very different from the anger and frustration she had exhibited only a few seconds before, "are you inviting me out to dinner?""Yes," was the short answer.
"Let's go."She swung her backpack back onto her shoulders and headed for the door. Goren put on his coat and followed suit.
"Miriam, you never did answer my question. Where were you, while we were at Huntley's parents'?"
