Jo stepped off the elevator into the morgue, her curiosity piqued by the cryptic summons that had brought her here.
"Four years working with Henry, and I've never seen him do this."
"Do what, Lucas?"
"It's more fun to hear it from him."
Henry and Lucas were positioned over the charred skeleton they had discovered several hours earlier, but neither man was touching it. Instead, they were standing half a step back, arms crossed, brows furrowed in thought, eyes staring intently at the victim's skull.
No, Jo amended, it was mainly Henry who was doing the furrowing and staring. Lucas's eyes kept bouncing between the remains and Henry as if he were watching a heated debate and wasn't sure who was winning. As soon as he spotted Jo, Lucas gave her a significant look that seemed to say, See? I told you.
Jo frowned. Henry was constantly staring at bodies. What was the big deal?
"Hey, have you got something for me?"
"Dental records confirm that this is, indeed, Carl Snyder." Henry's voice was casual and even as he relayed the information, but he still didn't look up.
"Okay." Jo drew out the word, waiting for one of them to continue. When neither of them did, she prompted, "Was there something else?" So far, they could have told her this over the phone and saved her the trip.
"Lucas's theory was correct," Henry continued. "Two separate sets of striations on both anterior and posterior segments of the ribs indicate that not only was Mr. Snyder stabbed through the liver, he was also shot at close range with a 9mm handgun before his immolation."
"Talk about overkill," Lucas added. "But if you want that authentic stormtrooper look in your murder scene, you need to shoot people."
"So we're calling it a 'theory' now? Not wild speculation?" Jo knew she was needling Henry, but she couldn't help it. A little needling was good for him. Besides, if she was being honest, he was cute with his hackles up.
Sadly for her hackle fetish, Henry seemed unperturbed by the comment. "Given the volume of circumstantial evidence, I grant that our killer is likely drawing inspiration from the Star Wars films. After all, serial killers have been modeling their actions after literature and popular culture for hundreds of years."
And you would know. Henry glanced at her. His expression gave nothing away, but she knew he had heard her retort in spirit. That made her grin a little before she swallowed it back.
She turned to Lucas. "Did you call me all the way down here to show off that Henry is finally on board with the Star Wars thing?"
"What, that's not big enough news?"
Jo called his bluff and started to turn back toward the elevator, and Lucas threw up a staying hand. "Okay, fine. There's more." He looked expectantly at his boss. Henry, in turn, continued to stare down at the bones.
"Don't let me rush you." Jo crossed her arms and gave Lucas an impatient look, but it was Henry who finally broke his stalemate with the skull.
"I've called in an expert to consult on this case." He looked up to meet Jo's surprised look with schooled ease. "Lucas seems to find this cause to stop the presses."
"Well, you have to admit, Henry: you don't ask for help very often." She gave him the friendly version of her interrogation room stare.
He shrugged. "I am glad to acknowledge the greater expertise of a colleague when it occurs."
Jo's eyebrows arched up and she looked at Lucas. His expression told her they had both heard what Henry didn't say: It just doesn't occur very often.
"What brought this on?" She pressed. "Is Carl Snyder's skull refusing to blink in this staring contest you seem to be having?"
"Cause of death was simple enough to determine—severe blood loss after the initial stabbing—but we need more. We need something that will lead us to the killer. Finding trace evidence on remains with this degree of incineration is extremely difficult, and not a specialization I have mastered—yet." He couldn't resist adding the last word.
"So who is this magical creature who knows more than you about something?"
Henry ignored her bait. "Dr. Grace Borgen is one of the foremost forensic anthropologists in the world, and she happens to be in New York this week for a conference. She graciously agreed to consult on this case. I suggest you go home and rest, Jo. Dr. Borgen and I will call you when we have more information about our killer."
Barely more than an hour later, Henry stood on Jo's door step and pressed his forefinger into the buzzer with more force than was strictly necessary. He turned up his collar against a chill wind and waited. He suddenly wondered if she had made other plans for the evening. Grocery shopping, visiting a friend…even a date wasn't outside the realm of possibility. He hadn't thought to call ahead, he'd simply assumed she would be here. Maybe he should just—
The curtains shifted slightly, followed by the click of the deadbolt turning and the easy swing of the door on its hinges. He made a conscious effort to clear the dark clouds from his features and put on a pleasant smile.
"Henry." Jo had changed into a pair of leggings, a long sweater, and fuzzy socks slouching around her calves. Henry was suddenly conscious that he rarely saw her wearing such a soft style, and it made her look...different. Younger. She also looked surprised to see him, but not displeased. "What are you doing here?"
"Sorry to intrude, but I was wondering if your offer of a movie night still stands. We have a serial killer to catch, and I want to be as informed as possible."
She gave him a curious look. "What about your consultation with Dr. Borgen? Did you two find something already?"
"Not yet, I'm afraid. This sort of examination is more art than science. I didn't wish to interfere with my guest and her methods." He tried to hold his smile in place, but a spark of amusement flashed in his partner's eyes as she easily saw past it.
"She kicked you out of your own morgue, didn't she?"
"It's all ridiculous, really!" His mask slid right off at his outburst. "I merely made a suggestion or two regarding her methodology, and the next thing I knew I'd been dismissed. She is a very…idiosyncratic person."
The spark in Jo's eyes spread into a full-blown smirk. "Well, it takes one to know one." Henry hunched his shoulders against a gust of cold wind, and she stepped back to make room in the doorway. "Come on in. I can even offer you dinner with that movie, if you don't mind Thai takeout straight from the carton." Henry brushed past her into the entry hall, grateful to be out of the elements.
"This seems to be a night for firsts."
They started with A New Hope over shared boxes of chicken pad thai and vegetable curry. Despite her earlier threat, Jo retrieved two bowls and two forks from the kitchen, but Henry gamely stuck with the disposable chopsticks he'd found in the delivery bag. He said something about it "taking him back" but didn't elaborate. Jo was about to ask how far back he meant exactly—Vietnam War? Boxer Rebellion?—but he seemed intent on "getting this over with," as he unflatteringly put it. She shrugged, pulled the DVD off a shelf in her living room, and loaded it into the player. After settling on the couch at a friendly distance from Henry, she pushed play.
They were barely ten minutes into the movie when he asked for the third time, "Are you sure your phone is charged?"
She rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm sure."
"And the ringer is properly turned on?"
"Henry, relax. Lucas promised he would call as soon as Dr. Borgen learns anything, right?" He nodded hesitantly. "So as long as he doesn't piss her off and get ejected like his boss did, he'll call."
"Yes, but—"
"Do you want to watch this or not?"
"Yes. Sorry."
Henry quieted after that, although she caught him glancing at her phone from time to time where it rested on the coffee table in front of them.
He remained distracted until the movie came to the stormtroopers' attack on Luke's family, the scene that the killer had used to stage his first crime scene. On seeing that, Henry leaned forward with sudden interest and pointed a finger at the screen.
"Ah—right there! Pause it, please." Jo hit the button, and the eerily familiar image of a charred skeleton froze before them. "I see now why Lucas made this connection so quickly. Note the curvature of the spine, the positioning of the limbs. Our killer's staging of Snyder's body was quite accurate, based on this image."
Henry had a familiar gleam in his eyes. Jo saw it every time he was on the trail of a new theory. In her experience, the gleam was followed by a manic burst of energy and focus, but it usually occurred within the confines of the morgue or his home laboratory. It had never happened in her living room before.
Fascinated by the process, she simply asked, "What are you thinking?"
"I had originally decided to view these films for the cultural insight they might provide into the mind of our killer. I hadn't considered the more concrete possibilities."
"I'm not following."
"If the killer is adhering this closely to what he sees on the screen, then the films may provide us with ersatz crime scene footage of sorts."
"And how does that help us?" She was skeptical but curious.
"Each on-screen death has the potential to help us interpret real evidence we've found, or have yet to find." He leaned back slightly, but his posture was alert. "Continue the film, if you please. I have visual autopsies to perform."
Henry's new perspective on the movie was making all the difference in his interest level, but it was now the oddest movie night Jo had ever been part of. Her partner was no longer restless and eyeing her phone, but he wasn't really watching the movie, either. Not the way normal people watch movies. And also not the way two eligible people usually have a "movie night" without watching the movie, she thought wryly.
Henry was paying rapt attention to the screen, but only to the deaths. Each time a character was killed, he rattled off possible causes of death, debating with himself over the real-life equivalents to the science fiction elements, and occasionally asking Jo to pause or replay a section. Occasionally she would volunteer a piece of information about what a death meant in the bigger picture, and Henry would nod with interest. He wasn't writing anything down, but she could see the way he was neatly filing away bits of information for later use.
At last, the end credits were rolling, and Henry allowed himself to lean back into the couch with a sigh.
"Fascinating."
"Which part?" Jo allowed the DVD to continue but turned down the volume, pushing John Williams's operatic soundtrack into the background.
"Of all the deaths depicted in the film, I would think Obi-Wan Kenobi's the most significant, yet our killer chose to recreate a different scene entirely." Jo had to suppress a giggle when Henry's careful British pronunciation of "Obi-Wan Kenobi" sounded like a baritone version of C-3PO's fussy tones.
"What?" Henry cocked his head at her sudden amusement.
"Nothing." Jo turned sideways on the couch to face him, one elbow draped comfortably over the back. "Maybe it has something to do with his relationship to the victim. In his mind, Snyder didn't deserve the honor of getting the same death as Obi-Wan."
Henry turned his head toward her and considered her for a moment before speaking. "There was no Yoda."
Jo's brow wrinkled at the non sequitur. "No, he shows up in the next movie. What about him?"
"I can't pick him out of a lineup yet, but I am still curious."
"About my Star Wars history?" she finished. He nodded, and she sighed in capitulation. He turned to face her fully then, mirroring her posture with one arm over the couch back, entirely focused on whatever she was about to tell him.
"It was my dad's fault. I was young when the movies first came out—probably too young for him to be taking me to see Return of the Jedi in the theater—but he took me anyway."
"Did you enjoy it?"
"I don't remember much about the movie from that first time, besides a lot of Ewoks and a creepy old guy with lightning hands. But he took me, not my brother, and that felt special. It became our father/daughter bonding thing." She gestured to the screen, which was still rolling towards the end of the credits. "They used to play this movie on TV every year. He wasn't always around when he should have been, but we never missed watching it together. There was even a year when he was locked up, but he sweet-talked the guards into playing it in the common room. So at least we were watching at the same time."
Jo glanced over to see how Henry was reacting to her story. Sympathetic faces and empty platitudes were the big reasons she didn't talk much about her family; she didn't want sympathy.
Thankfully, Henry wasn't offering any. He merely nodded. The only sign that her story was more than just facts to him was the understanding she could see deep behind his eyes—not the tear-jerk reaction of someone looking forward to pitying her, but the kind of sympathy that comes from living through tough times, through them and out the other side, and knowing they are not what define you.
"Do you still watch it every year?"
"It's not an annual 'network television event' like it used to be, but yeah, I do," she admitted.
"Does he?"
"I don't know." She refused to look away. hiding behind a brave face out of habit. She didn't give an explanation out loud, but Henry seemed to hear it anyway: the natural barriers that formed between a criminal and his police officer daughter; the "don't ask, don't tell" that gradually gave them less and less to talk about; the stupid choices she couldn't ignore; the polite but necessary distance they maintained most of the time now.
Henry saw. In fact, the look on his face had slid to vague, and Jo suspected he was seeing more than just her story. The credits had finally given way to the endless looping menu screen, but for several minutes, neither of them noticed.
He was still looking far past her when he finally responded.
"The sins of the father never do fade quickly."
New York City, 1977
Henry strode across the living room to answer the insistent knock on their apartment door.
"Abraham! This is a surprise. Come in."
"Hey, Pops. Thanks, but I can't stay. I've been trying to call, but you never seem to be home this week. You're harder to track down than Son of Sam."
"I'm sorry, your mother and I have been spending some time away."
"Let me guess: someplace no one knows you, and you're painting a lot of white into your hair?"
"Something like that. Are you sure you won't join us for dinner? Let me get your mother." Abigail was currently in the bedroom unpacking and sorting clothes, where Henry had also been before Abe's arrival.
Abe quickly reached out a hand to stop his father. "No, don't bother her. A home-cooked meal sounds great, but I can't. I'm supposed to pick up Maureen in a few minutes. We're seeing Star Wars again."
"Again?" Henry frowned in vague disapproval. "How many times have you seen that film?"
"Oh, a few. But that's not why I stopped by." His son looked a little unsettled, and worry lines creased his forehead.
"Is something wrong?"
"No no, everything's fine," Abe answered quickly, then revised, "Well, probably fine. It's just, I met a guy through work yesterday, and he recognized my name. Said he knew you in the War, that you patched him up in a field hospital in Germany once—saved his life. He remembered because you mentioned me, and he had a boy named Abe at home too. Fellow by the name of Stan Weiss."
Henry nodded slowly. "Yes, I remember Stan. Well, there's nothing too alarming in that—"
"There's more. I told him I'd give you his best."
"That was kind of you."
Abe shifted restlessly and sighed. He glanced up and down the empty hallway before stepping past Henry into the apartment and closing the door.
"Pops, he saw you die. Remember the unexploded ordinance behind the hospital?" Henry was silent for a moment, but it was a confirmation, not a denial.
"I didn't think anyone saw that."
"He described it just the way you tell it in your story, right down to the time of night and the garden hoe you were using to search."
"My patients were in danger!" Henry said a little defensively, then he forced his voice into calmer tones. "I transferred field units the next day just to be safe, but I never knew of any witnesses."
"Henry, I'm sorry. I messed up." Abe looked at his father but looked down immediately, and his face was lined with guilt. Henry grasped him by the shoulder.
"Don't be ridiculous. Abraham, none of this is your fault. Besides, you already have a full-time job. You don't need another one as my caretaker." The grasp turned into a pat. "Now go on. You mustn't keep Maureen waiting any longer. I doubt she appreciates that."
"No, she doesn't." Abe smiled at Henry's knowing comment and turned to open the door. Before he left, he turned back to his father. "Just keep an eye out, will you? Stan was giving me a very suspicious look when I left. I don't think that's the last we'll hear from him."
New York City, present day
Jo woke up to the sound of a DVD menu looping in the background, and the awareness that Henry was asleep next to her. His head was resting back against the overstuffed couch cushions, tilted slightly toward her. She tilted her own head to face him. They weren't touching, but their heads were closer than usual. She didn't know what time it was, but she'd been fast asleep. Henry still was, although she didn't know when that had happened.
After the first movie, a quick call to Lucas had revealed only that Dr. Borgen was still "communing with the bones," as he'd put it, so she and Henry had continued on to The Empire Strikes Back. Henry had approached the second movie with the same investigative fervor as he had with the first. He did look over at Jo with a triumphant grin when Yoda first made an appearance, though, even though no one died.
By the time Empire had finished, Henry was comfortable enough with the DVD remote to "do his own damn pausing," as Jo had mumbled from her half-conscious state, and he'd pressed on into disc three. She was pretty sure she had fallen asleep within the first thirty minutes of Return of the Jedi.
The remote was now resting loosely in Henry's slackened hand, threatening to tip onto the floor with the slightest movement, though at the moment he was still. Over the course of the evening, he had shed his suit coat and loosened his tie, and that's how he appeared now: in his vest and shirtsleeves, and unconscious. She realized with surprise that this was the first time she had ever seen her partner sleep. She knew in theory that he slept, that he was still human, but seeing it for herself caught her unawares.
He looked younger when he was asleep. She knew this was true for a lot of people, but it was different with Henry. Physically, he never looked a day over 35, and possibly he never would. He was incapable of wearing out or looking older. At least, it was never anything a good night's sleep or a quick death and rebirth couldn't fix. Still, there were long-gone decades folded into his manners, and centuries lurking behind his eyes. She had thought of him as an old soul long before she'd learned how true that was.
When he slept, all of that fell away. Or maybe it was just hidden behind closed eyelids and relaxed muscles. She suddenly wondered if he was dreaming of his life two hundred years ago, and that's why he looked younger. She shook that off as fanciful—but she still let herself enjoy the view. He was just so damn handsome.
Her phone rang, and she jerked forward to pick it up off the coffee table. She heard Henry break the regular rhythm of his breathing and knew he was awake—and since it was Henry, he was probably wide awake and alert already. She answered the call as quickly as she could and hoped he hadn't noticed her open staring.
"Martinez."
"Hey, Detective." Lucas's voice sounded a little bleary.
"Lucas? What time is it?"
"Three sixteen a.m.," he answered, and a wide yawn followed.
"You're still at the morgue?" Jo look over at Henry. As expected, he was alert and listening closely.
"Yeah, I'm still here. This is personal, you know? The killer is using the power of Star Wars for evil. Not okay."
"What do you have?"
"Not to diminish Henry, but Dr. Borgen is a certified genius. She's got a location."