A/N: Hello, gentle, patient and forbearing readers! As it turns out, I have not been kidnapped by aliens with no wifi, just supremely distracted by Real Life. (In good ways! Still—distracted and not writing.) My sincerest apologies for the massive lag since my last update—it's not how I usually roll. I offer you this super-sized chapter as a peace offering/bribe.

A big, Death Star-sized thank you to idelthoughts (truthisademurelady on Tumblr) for her incredible beta and cheerleading skills. She practically deserves a co-author credit for all she's done to knock the rust off and get this story moving forward and making actual sense.

Now back to our story that started long ago in an update far, far away...

Jo and Henry stood in the elevator facing the doors, watching the floor numbers tick by as they approached the OCME's floor. Henry was fidgeting.

"Did Lucas say what evidence Dr. Borgen found, exactly?"

Jo didn't turn her head. "No, but maybe she'll let you back in the morgue now and you can find out."

"Hmpf." He began unbuttoning his coat and adjusting his scarf with clipped movements. A less loyal partner might say he sounded petulant. A less indifferent partner might secretly find it adorable.

They stepped off the elevator into a morgue that was more active than usual for nearly four in the morning. In addition to the usual skeleton crew, Jo saw Lucas standing next to a woman in a lab coat who could only be Dr. Borgen. Two lab techs also hovered nearby, apparently just to bask in the presence of a forensic celebrity. They were all gathered around Carl Snyder's blackened skeleton, but unlike the motionless stare-off Jo had witnessed earlier that day (or was it the day before?), Dr. Borgen was picking up various bones in turn and pointing out things to the techs, who nodded enthusiastically, and to Lucas, who was trying to hide his enthusiasm.

Without looking up, she called to Jo. "You must be Detective Martinez. Come on over—and bring Henry with you."

Jo could tell by the flexing muscles in his jaw that her partner was clenching his teeth, and out of loyalty to him she managed to stifle her grin at the woman's casually dominant manner.

As they crossed the room, Jo looked with curiosity at the only person, to her knowledge anyway, who had ever ejected Henry from his own domain. Dr. Borgen was shorter than either Henry or herself, but the confident alignment of her posture gave her the illusion of greater height. She was probably in her mid-fifties, with shoulder-length white hair drawn back into a practical ponytail, and her skin was aging very well, probably from all the time she spent out of the sun in labs and morgues. She glanced up as they joined the circle around the bones. Jo saw that she had piercing blue eyes and a no-nonsense expression underpinned with what she suspected was very dry wit.

"Thanks for coming on such short notice, Dr. Borgen. Henry tells me you're the best in your field."

"Please, call me Grace. And I'm happy to help."

Jo could sense Henry bristling slightly at the friendly exchange, but he sucked it up and smiled politely. Henry was good at polite—when he chose to be.

"I hope this late night won't affect your participation in the conference tomorrow, Doctor," he said.

"Nah, my keynote and the really interesting sessions were today anyway." She paused her examination to give him a frank look. "Come now, Henry, no hard feelings. You know I have nothing but respect for you. Some people just weren't made to work with partners, and I'm one of them. I always thought you were too, actually." She turned to Jo with probing curiosity.

Jo suddenly thought she knew how these bones felt, if they could feel anything. Another minute and every secret she had would be pulled out by this woman's powers of perception. It reminded her of Henry's uncanny abilities, except that Grace had enough distance to cast an impartial eye on Jo and Henry's partnership. Jo didn't think she was ready to know what the woman saw.

She cleared her throat. "Lucas said you found a lead?"

"Yeah, and we never would have guessed," Lucas added enthusiastically, but then caught the look on Henry's face. "I mean, I would never have guessed. Maybe other, smarter people would have deduced based on..."

"Oh, for God's sake, Lucas," Henry said in irritation, "what did you find?"

Grace suppressed a grin and redirected her attention to the victim before them. "What your very loyal assistant is trying to say is that we discovered a small rotator cuff impingement here," she pointed to a spot on the bone under the magnifier, "and here." Henry leaned in to look, his earlier pique gone. Grace continued. "This particular type of bone spur injury is often known as—"

"Polo shoulder," Henry finished, and she nodded.

"Snyder played polo? We hadn't come across that yet." Jo started to move. "I'll go upstairs and start digging, but I doubt we'll be able to get polo club membership rosters at this time of the night. Morning. Whatever."

"I can't give you a roster," Henry offered, "but I do have one name for you."

Everyone turned to him in surprise. "What? Who?"

"Based on the half-healed blisters on his right hand and the way his stride indicated he was nursing a groin pull, I'd say the young assistant at Empire Pharmaceuticals has recently taken up polo. It's a rather rare pastime in the city, and the connection hadn't occurred to me until now." He nodded to Grace in acknowledgement, and she graciously nodded back.

"Keith the lackey?" Jo said incredulously. "Huh. Maybe he took the fast track from minion to villain after all."

Jo had mercy and waited until five a.m. to call in Hanson to help with the background check. He arrived with a large cup of coffee in each hand, and she accepted one with a grateful nod. She hadn't told him how little sleep she'd actually gotten, or that those few hours had come in the form of a nap on her couch next to Henry, but they'd been partners long enough for him to catch the signs of a sleepless night.

"Do we really like Keith for this?" Hanson logged on to his computer and waited for it to wake up, just like the rest of them. "He doesn't strike me as having the stomach for chopping up his boss."

"We'll see," Jo said with a shrug. "There are two polo clubs in the area, but neither of their offices open until ten. I've been running his employment and legal history but nothing's popped yet."

"I'll take family background." He took a bracing swallow of coffee and turned to get started. "So how did Henry do with sharing his toys?"

"They worked it out eventually. Let's just say the morgue isn't big enough for two geniuses."

Jo had left Henry squinting with interest at a clavicle that Grace Borgen was holding as she pointed out some minute detail, his ruffled feathers forgotten in his enthusiasm to learn how she had made her discovery. No doubt he was filing the technique away for future use.

"Okay, here we go. Keith Prentice…" Hanson read off his computer screen, squinting slightly as he scanned the information in front of him. "Parents John and Olivia are retired and living upstate…one older sister living in Queens by the name of Sally Ferguson, a younger brother who moved to—"

"Hold on," Jo interrupted. "Why is that name familiar?"

"Who, Sally?"

"Well, Ferguson anyway. I could swear I've come across that name lately." Jo opened a file in front of her and shuffled through it, then closed it and opened another.

On her third try, she gave a triumphant "ha!" and turned the file to show Hanson. "Here, on the list of firemen who died in the line of duty while using Firebreaker products. One of the class action plaintiffs was the family of Christopher Ferguson, formerly of Queens."

Hanson was already searching records online as she spoke, and he nodded when the result appeared. "Good catch—it's the same Ferguson. Looks like Keith's widowed sister got screwed out of a settlement by our first victim and his team of legal bloodsuckers."

"And as victim number two's personal lackey, Keith certainly had opportunity there." Jo picked up the phone and punched a button. "I'll have uniforms pick him up."

"This is crazy! Why would I kill some random guy from the polo club?" Keith ran a hand through his hair, dislodging the last of the carefully gelled style it had once held.

"But it wasn't just some random guy, was it, Keith?" Jo slid a photo across the table of the interrogation room to rest squarely in front of her suspect. "Can you tell me who that is?"

Keith only had to glance at the photo and he blanched. "That's Chris. My brother-in-law."

"You're telling me it's a coincidence that a kid from Queens not only takes up a hobby as chi-chi as polo, but joins the same club as the guy who screwed his family over? Even though it's twice as far away as the other two clubs in the area?" She didn't elaborate, just waited for his response.

It didn't take long. "Yes, alright." Keith looked away, not from the detective, but from the convicting stare of his sister's late husband. "Chris was a good guy, and a good firefighter. Sally and the kids got cheated. I met Snyder at a polo match that Mike dragged me along to."

"Mike Lovitz, your former employer?"

He nodded distractedly. "I'd been to court with Sally. I knew who that asshole Snyder was. I thought that if I joined the team…I don't know what I thought. I could get inside information, maybe. The Good Ol' Boy network is alive and well, you know."

"Polo is not a cheap hobby," Jo offered.

"Tell me about it!" Keith burst out. "Two hundred bucks for an overgrown croquet mallet? I think rich people get off on spending money just for the hell of it."

"You must have been furious when Sally lost her suit. All that time and money for nothing."

"No." Keith shook his head emphatically. "That's not what happened. I already told you, I was grocery shopping when you say that schmuck was killed."

"Yeah, you did say that." Her tone was mildly skeptical. "We're still looking into it."

As if on cue, there was a sharp rap on the door.

"Excuse me." Jo stood up and walked to the door, leaving Keith to sweat privately.

Hanson was waiting outside. "The minion's alibi checks out. He paid with credit at Whole Foods right around the time Carl Snyder was getting barbecued."

Jo let out a sigh, but she wasn't surprised. "Any corroborating witnesses?"

"A cashier remembers him. He signed up for the newsletter, which nobody does voluntarily. Trying too hard to be the Whole Foods type, if you ask me."

"But not a murderer," Jo added. "Thanks, Mike." She returned to the interrogation room. Even if Keith wasn't a serial killer, she had the feeling she could get a little more from him. She walked back to the table but didn't sit down. She gave him only a cursory glance as she gathered up the papers and photos she had used in the course of her interrogation.

Layered on top of his spooked, nervous look was now confusion. "So…are we done? Can I go?"

"Sure, you can go." Jo straightened the papers inside a file folder and shut it, still not looking at him. "But don't go far. We know you didn't kill Snyder or Lovitz yourself, but you were certainly in the right place at the right time a lot. We'll probably have to pull you in for questioning at least two or three more times before this is all done, looking for other suspects. I wonder how you'll spin that on your resumé?"

"What?! What do you want to know?"

At this hasty concession, Jo schooled her features to remain stern. Apparently, six months as a soulless corporate lackey had left Keith with a pathological fear for the safety of his resume—that and about twenty minutes' worth of backbone. She casually stopped what she was doing, looked up, and after a beat pulled out a chair and sat down.

"Did you see any familiar faces besides Snyder at the polo club? Anyone who was connected to your boss, besides you?"

"No, nothing like that. I didn't know anyone in that crowd."

When he didn't go on, Jo sighed. "This is not my idea of helpful, Keith."

"I'm trying!" He was actually sweating now, and Jo almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

"Try a little harder."

"Yeah, okay. Um, you probably know about the parking ticket in Chinatown already, but I swear I was only there for dim sum. Whatever happens in that back room is none of my business."

Jo stared him down. "Do I look like a meter maid to you?"

"No." Keith shook his head gravely. "No, you do not."

"One more chance, Keith, and then I need to go find some actual leads."

His face brightened. "Oh, hey, I got a really weird email yesterday!"

Jo waited for him to elaborate. He didn't at first. "Sounds fascinating. I got weird email yesterday too—some Nigerian prince who needs money." She stood up. "So, would you rather go home or hang out in holding overnight? Rough company, but it might be less awkward than all the visits from cops to your workplace, your apartment, your friends..."

"Wait." He held up one hand. "I'm just...I'm not sure how to describe it."

"Who sent it?"

"At first it looked like spam from some ambulance-chasing online law firm. 'Have you been unjustly targeted by the police?' Stuff like that. I don't get a lot of spam through the filters, so the timing was pretty spooky, now that I think about it. The word choices were what really struck me as weird." Keith frowned, trying to remember details. 'Don't delay! The police are in the Dark, but we will Force them to see the Light.' Stuff like that."

Jo frowned. "You received this yesterday? Do you still have it?"

"I deleted it, but it should still be in my Trash folder."

"Show me."

Henry was waiting at her desk when Jo returned.

"I came to check on your progress with Keith. Hanson says you've found something?"

"I think our killer emailed him yesterday." Jo leaned over her computer and logged in. "Tech is seeing what they can pull from the metadata, but here's the text."

Henry leaned over next to her and quickly read the message.

Have you been unjustly targeted by the police? Don't delay! They are in the Dark, but we will Force them to see the Light. We've brought justice and balance before, and we'll do it again very soon. Bea certain that putting your Life in our hands will win the Day.

"You say Keith received this yesterday?"

Jo nodded. "Our killer is familiar enough with the players in this case to know we would suspect him. Maybe he even set him up. Or maybe he's watching."

"But why send this message and risk being tracked through it?"

"To taunt us? Prove he's smarter?" Jo speculated. "But that's not all. Here." She pointed to a sentence in the middle. Henry nodded, already on the same page.

"'We've brought justice and balance before, and we'll do it again very soon.' How soon, I wonder?"

"I don't know, but this was sent over 24 hours ago. I have a sneaking suspicion that the clock is ticking for our third victim."

Henry frowned as he read the next sentence. "I can see why Keith assumed it was one of those internet swindlers: 'Bea certain?' Atrocious grasp of modern English."

Jo gave her partner a dry look. "Yeah, atrocious."

"One thing is certain." Henry straightened and gave Jo's computer screen an adversarial look. "The killer is confident we won't find him in time." With that, he turned and began striding away.

"Where are you going?" Jo called after him.

He barely slowed as he half-turned to face her. "To prove him wrong."

Several hours later, Henry and Lucas were still encountering nothing but dead ends in the morgue. They had reexamined every butchered piece of Mike Lovitz, every charred bone of Carl Snyder. Henry had even insisted they take a closer look at Al the alpaca, but nothing. No new details presented themselves—nothing that gave them somewhere to look next. No way to catch the killer, or prevent a third murder.

Instead of staring thoughtfully like the night before, Henry was restlessly examining piece after piece of the bodies in increasing frustration. After he dismissed Lucas's third suggestion in a row with a quelling look, the younger man sighed.

"Okay, so maybe asking the closest astrophysics lab about cloaked spacecraft isn't the way to go. Maybe this guy really didn't leave any trail for us to follow."

"I refuse to believe that." Henry's mouth was set in a grim line as he reached for a blackened rib bone.

"How are Jo and Hanson coming on the email?" Lucas ventured.

"Nothing yet. Apparently the killer masked his email's origins quite effectively."

"What did it say again?"

"Some nonsense about Dark and Light and Force, obvious references to the mythology of the films." Henry finally looked up and pointed at his assistant with the rib he was holding. "For all we've credited this killer with intelligence, he didn't even spell 'be' correctly."

"'Bee' as in 'buzz buzz'?" Lucas asked with a frown, confused as to how this related to Star Wars.

"'Be' as in 'To be or not to be,'" Henry clarified, "only with an extraneous 'a' at the end." He returned his attention to the remains before him, but Lucas did not. He stared, unfocused, mouth half open, until his thoughts coalesced into a sentence.

"No. Not 'be' as in Shakespeare. 'Bea' as in Arthur."

"I beg your pardon?" Henry looked up again. He was accustomed to Lucas's perplexing references and usually ignored them, but this seemed somehow related to the case.

"Bea Arthur. The actress? Golden Girls?" He shook his head at Henry's blank stare. "Never mind. Show me the exact text of the email. Um, please?" He tacked on the last word in response to the very boss-esque look he was getting. So much for online assertiveness training.

Henry removed his exam gloves and logged into the nearest workstation. Jo had forwarded the text to his email. Lucas read it through once, then read it again.

"Huh."

"What is it?"

Lucas straightened his lanky frame and looked from the screen to Henry. "You should probably get Jo down here. I think I found something."

He managed to maintain the gravitas of the moment for about three seconds before an elated near-giggle escaped him. "I've been waiting three years for the chance to pull off a line like that."

Henry didn't think he had pulled it off, really, but he graciously kept that to himself.

Five minutes later, Jo and Hanson had joined Henry and Lucas gathered around the computer screen.

"Right here, see?" Lucas pointed an excited finger at one section of the email. "'Bea certain that putting your Life in our hands will win the Day.' Life and Day are capitalized. Get it? Life Day?" His big reveal was met with three sets of blank stares. "No? Hey, that's okay. I knew that one day my wasted youth would pay off. It's another Star Wars reference."

Henry frowned. "I'm sure there was no mention of a 'Life Day' anywhere in those films."

"It wasn't from the trilogy," Lucas qualified.

"All of you insisted that the killer would give no credence to the more recent prequels," Henry said a bit defensively, "and that I shouldn't waste my time studying them."

"That's true," Lucas said, "but this is from the Holiday Special."

There was a moment of silence following his pronouncement.

"Wait, you mean that gawd-awful made-for-TV disaster?" Hanson asked, his lip curling in distaste.

Lucas nodded. "Guest starring Bea—that's B-E-A—Arthur, after Maude and before The Golden Girls."

"I've seen parts of that," Jo said, frowning as she recalled a few faint impressions. "Luke is wearing more makeup than Leia, and Leia looks as high as a kite. Didn't George Lucas practically disown it?"

Lucas held up his hands. "Hey, it might be a train wreck, but it's canon, baby."

"Canon?" Henry huffed. "I was unaware that Star Wars had become a religion."

His statement did not have the expected impact. Lucas, Jo and Hanson all shrugged their shoulders slightly.

"Yeah, it kind of is," Hanson said. "For the hard-core fans, anyway."

"Which this guy obviously is," Lucas said, turning back to the screen, "and that's why I'm sure he knows that Life Day is generally accepted by fans to be November 17, the day the Special first aired. The number 1117 sparked a memory from one of the case files I looked over while Henry was staring at—that is, examining the remains," he quickly corrected. "Except, I can't remember which one."

Jo perked up, happy to finally catch sight of the point. "Eleven-seventeen...yeah, I saw it too. It was an address…"

Hanson snapped his fingers. "Keith the lackey! That's his street number."

"Is he involved after all?" asked Henry.

Jo shook her head. "I don't think so. Not directly. But that address is an apartment building. And one that our killer might be drawn to." She looked at Hanson and Henry, then cocked her head toward the elevator. "Shall we?"

Henry turned slowly to scan the apartment walls, taking in one Star Wars movie poster, signed photograph, and authentic prop reproduction after another.

"This looks promising."

"Ya think?" Jo said with distracted sarcasm.

"Oh, wow." Lucas approached a glass-fronted shadow box displayed on the wall and spoke with a tone that bordered on reverence. "The original 1978 Obi-Wan Kenobi action figure with double-telescoping lightsaber. One of the rarest Star Wars collectibles in the world."

"Get a room, you two." Hanson quipped dryly. "Some of us are trying to work." He passed Lucas and headed into the next room, but not before sneaking a peek at the figurine in question to make sure he didn't have a gold mine sitting in his parents' attic. Alas, wrong lightsaber.

The NYPD/OCME foursome had started with the apartments on Keith's floor, systematically working their way down the hall and asking the residents if they knew of any neighbors who were major Star Wars fans. They had gotten some odd looks from most, but the fifth person they had talked to nodded emphatically. He was the kind of retired busybody who noticed everything, and he had complained that he heard the music from "those damn movies" coming out of a unit two doors down "every damn night." When there was no answer at the door he indicated, they had appealed to the super to get in.

"Hey, get in here, you guys." Hanson's voice called to them from the next room.

Jo, Henry, and Lucas followed the sound to where Hanson stood bent over a small desk in the bedroom.

"Check this out." He nodded to the array of newspaper articles and online printouts he had fanned out from their neat piles with one gloved hand. The headlines announced breaking developments in the Firebreaker class action suit, as well as exposés of Empire Pharmaceuticals featuring photos of Mike Lovitz looking either villainous or rich and pretentious.

"He did his homework," Jo commented. "Hold on. What's that?" She walked past the desk, bent down, and picked up a long, slightly curved black object that had been hidden under a dresser. It would normally have been out of sight, but it was visible thanks to the low angle afforded by leaning over the desk, its lacquered wood finish shining in the bright light of the reading lamp.

She stood up, holding the object flat with both hands. "Is this what I think it is?"

"If you think it's the empty saya, or scabbard, for a katana, then yes," Henry confirmed.

"Uh huh." Her tone said it all: they'd found their killer.

"The name on the lease is Blake Walker," Hanson filled in, checking the tenant list they'd gotten from the super. "I'll see if our buddy Keith is home, and how neighborly he is with this guy." He headed for the hallway.

"What's this?" Henry asked. Jo returned to the desk and followed his gaze as he slid the articles aside to reveal a recent issue of Forbes on the bottom of the pile. It featured a handsome man with subtle but distinguished grey streaks in his dark hair. He was smiling with self-assured welcome and standing in the doorway of a TrusMart Superstore.

"Oh yeah, I read that article," Lucas commented. "Pretty interesting guy."

"All Hail the Discount King: Ron Trussell and the Rise of an Empire," Jo read aloud from the cover.

"Under the circumstances, that is a very unfortunate choice of phrasing," Henry commented.

"Trussell's stores are notorious for running local businesses into the ground," Jo commented. "If this guy Walker thinks he's fighting the Dark Side by taking out powerful men who pick on the little guy, he couldn't find a better target."

"Sure, it's a soulless corporate chain," Lucas argued, "but they have some good stuff cheap. My kitchen floor hasn't been the same since they pulled Glo-Wax off the shelves."

"What was the story with that stuff again?" Jo asked.

"It was a TrusMart exclusive, and there were some, shall we say, questionable results in lab rats a few years back. But hey, sometimes you take a risk," he added with a shrug. "Low-rent linoleum needs all the help it can get."

"That's not the only thing that needs help right now," Jo added. "Trussell lives right here in Manhattan. Very convenient target." She pulled out her phone and immediately called dispatch to send officers to the CEO's home and office.

Henry glanced out the window at the darkening sky. "The killer's email suggested that his next attempt at 'justice' would happen today. Let's hope that 'lives' is still the correct description for Mr. Trussell."

The next (and final) three chapters are 90% written and edited, so rest assured that I won't leave you hanging again! Thanks again for coming back. :)