Amanda Collins opened the door of her apartment and peered down the massive hallway outside of it. The San Francisco Chronicle lay just a little over seven feet away from her doorway - both ridiculously close and impossibly far away.
Stretching out a foot, Amanda tried to grab the paper and drag it to her - it was too far away for her foot to reach, not that she'd expected otherwise. She took a step out into the hallway, her doctor's words ringing in her ears.
She actually managed to take a second step before her breathing began to change - it grew increasingly rapid and shallow with each passing moment, despite her best efforts to stay calm.
Another couple steps and the wall she was clinging to suddenly seemed to elongate, stretching off into the distance at an exaggerated perspective as she flattened her sweaty palms against it for support. The errant newspaper suddenly seemed impossibly far away and equally impossible to retrieve - Amanda felt a sudden flash of anger at herself and her weakness as she once again vacillated between deciding the paper just wasn't worth it and finally caving in to her condition enough to start a digital subscription.
She snapped the rubber band on her wrist repeatedly as she slid down the wall to the hallway floor. That floor took on its own nightmarish aspect, seeming to pitch and roll underneath her until she grew dizzy from the imaginary movement. She was hyperventilating now, skin sweaty and mouth dry, and it took everything she had to stand up and walk back to her door instead of just crawling.
Once she was finally back inside the safety of her apartment, her knees buckled and she slid down the inner side of her door. She allowed herself a few minutes to just sit there, knees tucked up under her chin, as she waited for her pulse and her breathing to even out. That was when she realized that her eyes were watering - she refused to acknowledge it as any form of tears or crying, she still had that much pride left - and the flare of anger that provoked pushed her the last little step back into herself.
Pulling herself back onto her feet, Amanda marched resolutely into the kitchen, where she retrieved a broom from the pantry. She practically marched herself back to the door, broom in hand, before throwing the door open and glowering at the offending newspaper. It took a few tries, but the broom finally snagged its target, and Amanda pulled the newspaper close enough to snatch up and take into the apartment.
Taking it back into the study, she spread the paper open and glanced over the headlines as she sipped at her morning tea. The primary front page headline stared up at her in bold black and white: POLICE BAFFLED IN DEATH OF THIRD WOMAN.
It took everything she had not to hurl her expensive bone china tea cup against the nearest wall as she snarled into an empty room. "IDIOTS!"
{*****}
In the wake of Jennifer Lyle's homicide, every confession addict in San Francisco - at least - was vying for attention and the chance to confess. The homicide division's bullpen at Nikita and Owen's precinct wasn't exactly spacious on the best of days, most of its space allotted to desks, plants in various stages of dying, and old filing cabinets that were somehow still in use.
Today, it was packed to overflowing.
Detective Inspector Michael Bishop sat in an interview room with Harvey - a serial confessor and frequent visitor who nonetheless needed to be taken seriously until they confirmed he didn't know anything useful. For all Harvey's insistence on confessing to the Lyle murder, Bishop knew for a fact that the man wasn't violent or dangerous.
Still, protocol had to be followed, and no one in the department was going to pass up even a slim chance of getting a lead. "Alright, Harvey. You followed the woman home - and then what?"
Michael's voice had a distinct rasp to it, something he had deliberately cultivated over his years as a cop because he knew it could be intimidating. Harvey, however, didn't seem to be the least bit phased when he replied. "I killed her."
Michael seriously doubted that, but he still had do the legwork to prove it. "Alright. Where did you kill her?"
"In her house," Harvey obligingly supplied. "In the bathtub."
"I see," Michael replied. "Why did you kill her?"
Harvey was on a roll now - or so he seemed to think. "Because she was dirty. She was a very dirty girl."
Michael, recognizing the ritual from Harvey's numerous other confessions, moved to gather what he needed to shut the conversation down. "Do you remember how many times you stabbed her, Harvey?"
Harvey actually pondered that for a moment. "Uh - eighty seven? Yeah, eighty seven."
Stopping the recorder, Michael signaled for another officer to join them. Once there was someone else present to keep an eye on Harvey, Michael went back to his desk to dig out the number he kept handy for Harvey's family.
His internal 'why me?' grumbling - nothing against Harvey, really, but this was a bad time for the extra work Harvey always brought with him - must have become external at some point because Nikita just chuckled at him without even looking up from her computer monitor. "Must be your winning personality."
"Or the fact that you sound like Batman," Owen quipped as he walked up to join them.
There was something less than friendly under the seemingly harmless jibe - not at all unusual with the two men - and Nikita just rolled her eyes as she tried to get them both back on task. "Did you and Mercer find anything, Owen?"
Owen shook his head. "We went through everything - bills, receipts, medical records, social media, anything we could get access to check. Nothing in common with our other two vics."
Nikita knew there had to be something there - some common link - even if they didn't see it yet. "No mutual friends or acquaintances?"
Another head shake. "As far as I can tell, the only thing these women had in common was the fact that they all owned vibrators."
Nikita laughed, albeit quietly. "That's not a common factor, Owen - that's a fact of survival."
Owen just shook his head and laughed - equally quietly - before walking away to start an interview. Michael watched him go, an unfriendly glint in his eyes.
Nikita didn't even need to look up to see it, either, and she didn't bother to hide her annoyance. "Don't start with him, Michael. I'm not in the mood for it today."
Before Michael could reply, Nikita's phone started ringing. Nikita sighed as she checked the caller id. "Again? This is what - the third call today?"
And that wasn't counting the previous calls that Nikita had missed. Looking around, she failed to find the information she was searching for. "No one's completed that trace for me yet?"
There was no help for it right at that moment, so she answered the phone. "Homicide. Inspector Mears speaking."
Without introduction or preamble, the caller started speaking. "I think your serial killer is on a lunar cycle. The first two victims were killed twenty eight days apart, and this third one -"
Nikita hated interrupting her - the woman's voice was pure ear candy, and there was a decidedly sharp mind behind it - but she really didn't have the time for games right now. "That's a very interesting theory, Miss -?"
As expected, the caller hung up - exactly as she had all the other times someone had tried to get her to identify herself.
Almost as if planned, Gigi - a baby-faced police clerk - walked up to Nikita holding the results of the trace she'd requested a couple days ago. Nikita eyed the name written on the slip of paper and went pale. "Shit."
Owen wandered back up just then, snatching the paper from Nikita's hand as she sat there stunned. "Who's Amanda Collins?"
"Who's Amanda Collins?" Nikita just blinked at Owen like she couldn't believe he had to ask that question. "Doctor Amanda Collins, PhD - probably one of the top three forensic psychologists in the country, and the top expert on serial killers."
"At one point, maybe," Michael corrected, jumping into the conversation. "She's been out of commission for the last year. There are rumors she had problems going back even before that."
"Shit," Owen said, recognition finally dawning. "She's the shrink Daryl Lee Cullum fucked up, isn't she?"
Nikita resisted the urge to slap Owen upside the head. "Show a little empathy, Owen. Even better - go to the morgue and get me those autopsy results. We should have gotten them by now."
Not really caring if Michael and Owen started bickering on her absence, Nikita locked her computer and headed straight for the precinct library. A few minutes later, she was seated at a table piled high with material on Amanda Collins - she had Research pull all the available video on the Daryl Lee Cullum trial, plus whatever press clippings and biographical info they could find.
A copy of Collins' last book - Our Sons, Our Killers: Profiles Of The American Serial Killer - sat off to one side. Nikita had set that aside for later in favor of looking over Collins' Curriculum Vitae instead.
The career it recounted was beyond impressive. Amanda Collins had done her undergraduate work at Columbia, moving to Berkeley for her graduate work, where she'd earned her PhD and been awarded a professorship.
In the last fifteen years, Collins had published four books and numerous articles - including her PhD thesis - and had become one of the few in her field to obtain status and recognition outside the academic and professional community.
There had even been a two-year stint where she'd been affiliated with the FBI's prestigious Behavioral Science Unit. They'd flown in her as an expert witness during the Andrei Chikatilo trial - Chikatilo had ultimately been convicted of the sex-related murders of fifty two women and children.
She'd traveled all around the world, and - just before the Cullum incident - had been in Australia consulting on studies of the spike in serial killers there. There didn't seem to be a mass murder or lust killer trial in the last decade that she hadn't consulted on - all while returning to Berkeley to teach whenever she was able.
The press clippings, once Nikita began to sort through them, painted a slightly different picture. Amanda Collins was unquestionably - and even scarily - brilliant, but she was also opinionated and pushy and self-righteous. She'd stirred up a great deal of controversy - and quite a bit of animosity - by holding a hardline stance against capital punishment. Her notion of opening up a special Federal Corrections Institute just for felons convicted of serial rape, serial murder, or mass murder - the better to pick their psyches apart - had not won her many friends.
The Daryl Lee Cullum trial seemed to be where it had all really gone south, though. Collins had been working with him extensively for several months before his trial, and Nikita got the impression that Collins had been almost obsessively preoccupied with Cullum. The mistrial had lost her the few friends she had left among law enforcement, though none of them had wished what happened next on her - not when it also cost the life of a good cop, and not even when it let them recapture Cullum.
Still strangely raw from the Lyle crime scene, Nikita just skimmed over most of the info on Cullum's attack. She also refused to waste time speculating on what Amanda Collins had done or become in its aftermath - she was much more interested in the woman Collins had been before that.
And Amanda Collins was very interesting indeed, as Nikita discovered while scrolling through video footage of the last few days of the Cullum trial. The woman was a force of nature on the witness stand - Nikita had seen consultants and expert witnesses break under the badgering of a ruthless defense attorney, but Collins never gave an inch. An intense and formidable woman by any definition, Collins held her own without even trying - Nikita honestly wasn't sure which was more striking, Collin's blue eyes, her voice, or the fierce intelligence behind them both.
The defense attorney tried again and again to tear Collins down, to no avail.
One part of the trial in particular just pissed Nikita off. The defense was trying to damage Collins' credibility by baiting and belittling her while she was on the stand.
"In your evaluation," the defense attorney had begun, "you characterized my client as a sexual sadist because he satisfied four out of the ten criteria of the DSM-IIIR. Is that correct?"
"Yes." Collins' face said that she sensed a trap but couldn't quite see how to avoid it.
"Four out of ten?" The defense attorney shook his head. "That's forty percent. When I was in school, Ms. Collins, forty percent was a failing grade."
The bastard had deliberately ignored Collins' title to discredit her and diminish her authority. Collins hadn't let him get away with it. "It's Doctor Collins. And the DSM-IIIR isn't something you can assign a letter grade to - though I understand if it's not something you're entirely familiar with."
Skipping forward, Nikita watched another block of Collins' testimony. "...Individuals suffering from aural hallucinations hear voices in both ears. The defendant reported that the voices he heard always spoke in only his right ear."
Nikita - impressed and admittedly a little mesmerized - skipped forward again. "...Was not driven by mad impulse. It was - and is - my conclusion that Daryl Lee Cullum meets the M'Naughten rules for sanity. At the time of the murders, he was aware that his actions were both morally wrong and unlawful."
Nikita jumped and scrambled for the pause button as Ari Tasarov suddenly placed a hand on her shoulder. Smiling a little, Tasarov held out the manila envelope he'd brought with him. "Lab results. No sperm, exactly as we expected."
"Surprise, surprise," Nikita sighed, running a hand through her hair. "So we do have a serial killer after all."
"Neither of us said that word," Tasarov reminded her with a frown. "And why are you investigating Amanda Collins?"
Feeling oddly awkward under Tasarov's scrutiny, Nikita just shrugged. "She's been calling. I thought she might be useful."
Tasarov made a face and shook his head, "She's not worth your time. You're better off working the clues."
"What clues?" Nikita demanded, looking around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. "We have no clues and no one here has ever worked a serial case. We need her help."
Tasarov was normally better than most, but even he had his prejudices - though Nikita gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed his issue was with Collins' behavior at the trial rather than with her being an independent, intelligent woman in typically male field.
Before Tasarov could reply or elaborate, Gigi the clerk materialized out of nowhere. "I'm sorry to interrupt, sir, but the Commissioner is on Line Two."
That seemingly benign statement only added to the churning in Nikita's gut - and completely explained Tasarov's presence there in the library. Bringing her the lab results was go-fer duty - any number of people at the precinct could have been pulled to play fetch and carry.
The fact that Tasarov had brought them to her himself meant that he'd wanted an excuse to talk to her in private - probably to remind her yet again not to let slip that this was a serial case. He wasn't normally one to hide things like that, which meant that he was being pressured by his bosses to keep quiet - probably to present a good face for the Festival Of Love event, regardless of the cost - and was certainly not going to welcome the introduction of a wildcard like Amanda Collins.
The problem was that they needed her help, and badly - or the help of someone like her. She hadn't been exaggerating when she'd pointed out that none of them had ever handled a serial case before. Before she could argue any of this, though, Tasarov turned to head back to his office.
"Work the clues - and forget about Amanda Collins," Tasarov reiterated, then left quickly enough to ensure that his was the last word.
Nikita turned back to find that she'd somehow left the trial video playing. She was just in time to watch the camera pan from Amanda Collins to Daryl Lee Cullum - who grinned pleasantly at Collins as he mimed drawing a knife across his throat.
{*****}
Of all the major cities in America, the City By The Bay was certainly among the most dramatic in its beauty and among the most colorful in its history. Perched atop a mass of hills, the city looked out over both the bay itself and the splendor of the Pacific coast. The famous Golden Gate Bridge - glowing in International Orange as it hovered over the water to the north - connected the city to the green hills of wealthy Marin.
San Francisco was one of the great tourist meccas of this century, and the one before it, and would likely continue to be so on into the next one. Each month alone, thousands were drawn to the exquisite restaurants, amazing opera, and numerous museums - not to mention the famous streetcars, historical North Beach cafes, and the city's exceptional parks.
Haight-Ashbury with its famous Victorian houses had been the birthplace of the hippie movement. The so-called Paris Of The West had inspired authors from Mark Twain to Dashiell Hammett, and had been the home of notorious figures ranging from Charles Manson to Jim Jones to the fictional Harry Callahan.
In short, San Francisco had been a cultural and physical paradise for something like two centuries. It had also been a magnet for death and destruction.
On the morning of April 18th, 1906, an earthquake measuring 8.25 on the Richter scale hit the city. The earthquake destroyed several vital sections of the city and killed many of the inhabitants. The firestorms that afterward finished the job, devastating the wooden city and killing hundreds more. Many of those who survived became refugees in their own country.
Once the fires were out, though, those who called San Francisco home rebuilt her from the ground up. This set the pattern for the ongoing cycle of destruction and renewal that would repeat itself again and again. Some have said that this is the gods warning the city - if so, no one has listened yet. Whether out of love, loyalty, or sheer idiotic stubbornness, the city's residents have refused to give up on her, come hell or high water.
And they've certainly endured both.
On November 28th, 1978, an unbalanced former city supervisor assassinated Mayor George Moscone along with Harvey Milk, the city's first openly gay supervisor. Homophobes and the overly religious might posit a biblical cause to it all, but one thing was certain - from that moment on, a series of plagues and disasters hit the city one after the other, pushing it to the breaking point.
Torrential rains hit northern California in the early 1980s, triggering mudslides that cost lives and destroyed homes. Wildfires swept through the local mountains in 1985, burning thousands of acres of land. Fire struck again in 1991, chasing thousands of Oakland residents from their homes.
This dance of fire and water has continued on into the present day.
The discovery of AIDS in the early 1980s - mistakenly believed at the time to affect only the gay community - hit the city's thriving LGBTQA community hard. Apart from concerns about the illness itself, rampant fear and misinformation further stigmatized an already marginalized community. As if the prejudice and loss of life weren't enough, that fear also served to further damage an already struggling tourism industry.
Then - at 5:04pm on October 17, 1989 - things got even worse. The San Andreas Fault shifted during the middle of a historic World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. The initial fifteen-second long earthquake that shift produced left a hundred-mile swath of disaster the likes of which had not been seen in California in eighty years.
Buildings shattered and twisted and burned. A fifty foot piece of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge crashed to the deck below it. A mile-long piece of the upper deck of the Nimitz Freeway did the same, crushing cars and passengers.
Not far from Amanda Collin's Fort Mason loft, a large chunk of the Marina District - built on top of a filled-in portion of the bay - imploded. Buildings were shaken off their foundations and fires raged.
At least sixty five people in the San Francisco area died as a result of the quake - over three thousand were injured. Damage estimates were in the billions.
But the point of this grim litany was a simple one: the city survived. With each new disaster, the city rallied and rebuilt. Eventually, the damage was repaired, the ignorant fear of a stigmatized illness faded, and the tourists came back to help the city thrive.
It took the city a while to understand and leverage its historic role in the Sixties beyond tours of the Haight. Local entrepreneurs and city officials saw the profits raked in by things like Woodstock II and other events exploiting the nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, and started looking for ways to claim their share.
The Festival Of Love - two years in the making, advertised and hyped beyond all reason - was the latest of these enterprises.
The last thing anyone wanted - or needed - now was a serial killer turning it in the city's next disaster.
{*****}
Doctor Amanda Collins sat in the den watching television - or pretending to - as she idly picked at the fabric on the cushion of her chair. She was wearing something other than a nightgown and robe, for a change, but the loose sweater and jeans and messy ponytail were still a far cry from the designer wardrobe and perfectly coiffed hair she'd once worn like some sort of armor.
The sound of a familiar footstep in the kitchen pulled her onto her feet and into the other room. "Finally! Where have you been?"
"Nice to see you too!" Balancing a set of bulky grocery bags, Alexandra Udinov couldn't do much more than make a face in response to Amanda's fussing.
Alex - a pretty, blue-eyed brunette in her early twenties - set her bags down and went over to give Amanda a hug. The way Amanda held on just a tad longer normal - not to mention the earlier grumbling - told Alex that it had been a rough few days during her absence, even though Amanda had known exactly where she was and could have reached her at any time.
The two women were really the only family they had left - and were family by choice rather than blood. Alex had been orphaned at thirteen after her parents died in a car accident, and Amanda - a family friend and Alex's godmother - had found herself the unlikely legal guardian of a teenaged ward. Somehow, though, it had worked for them - Amanda had had surprisingly little trouble showing Alex the warmth and affection she seldom gave anyone else, and Alex, in turn, had gotten to see a side of Amanda Collins that no one else ever really had.
Granted, these last thirteen months had been hell on both of them - Alex, for her part, was just happy Amanda was still alive and insisted she could handle anything that Amanda's recovery process threw her way. Alex made it all mesh together somehow, balancing college with looking after - in Amanda's own words - 'a medicated diva with a PhD and an acute anxiety disorder.'
If asked, Alex simply joked that occasionally being able to get the upper hand with Amanda for a change had done wonders to strengthen their relationship. (Amanda, for her part, just rolled her eyes - and laughed, if it was one of her good days.)
Alex started moving around the kitchen, making small talk as she moved around the kitchen. "I had the top down on the car driving home. It's like seventy degrees out there right now, and the breeze off Ghirardelli Square smells like chocolate."
The kitchen they stood in featured the same blond wood found throughout the apartment, and had an array of electronic gadgets that rivaled the study. They mostly sat idle these days - Amanda had tried to continue cooking for herself at first, but medication and alcohol were an unforgiving combination, and she'd eventually stopped trying.
Alex kept the kitchen - with its various high-quality pots, pans, and utensils - as spotless as Amanda always had before, and quietly looked forward to the day when Amanda would be recovered enough to take back over the kitchen she loved.
The twang of a rubber band snapping repeatedly filled the silence once Alex stopped talking, and she stopped putting away groceries to get a good look at Amanda. There was no disguising Amanda's underlying agitation from her familiar eyes, and she walked over to put a hand on Amanda's shoulder. "Hey, what happened?"
They'd fought bitterly before Alex's brief trip - Amanda's need for at least some small semblance of autonomy pitting itself up against Alex's concerns at leaving Amanda alone for several days - but it had all seemed settled, and Amanda had even been genuinely excited about the short seminar Alex had been invited to attend.
Amanda couldn't quite meet Alex's eyes, though that in itself didn't always mean much given Amanda's fierce pride. "I had another nightmare. Do you think you could call and check...?"
"Amanda..." Alex hesitated, not sure whether to indulge the other woman or insist she face her anxieties by making the call herself.
"If a three-year-old tells you that there's a monster under the bed-" Amanda began.
"You look," Alex finished, having heard this particular statement many, many times. "I know, I know - you're three years old, and you need me to check for you."
Amanda sniffled a little, and looked so adorably petulant about the sniffling that Alex couldn't help smiling and pulling her in for another hug. "It'll be okay."
She got a good look at Amanda's hair as they parted and made a disapproving noise. "The clothes are better than usual but the hair..."
Amanda actually chuckled a little. "Is still a mess, I know. Maybe you can do something with it later while we watch your shows."
Alex was about to make a teasing retort about Amanda only pretending disinterest in prime-time programming when the doorbell rang unexpectedly. Amanda froze at the sound repeated, eyes wide and panicked. "Alex..."
Taking Amanda's hand, Alex stretched the other to reach the nearby intercom. "Who is it?"
A woman's voice answered. "Detective Inspector Mears and Detective Inspector Elliott with the San Francisco Police Department. Is Doctor Collins available?'
Amanda leapt from alarmed to just short of hyperventilating, and Alex forced her to sit down in one of the kitchen chairs. "I have to go see what they need - it could be important. You stay in this chair and do your breathing exercises. I'll be right back, I promise."
Alex hurried to the door as quickly as she could. Checking the security display near the front door, she saw a small, dark-haired woman and a man with spiky sandy blonde hair. They both fairly screamed plainclothes detective, but she wasn't taking any chances. "Let me see your badges first."
They didn't question the command, given via intercom, and had no trouble spotting the security camera in order to hold their badges in front of it. Everything looked legit, so Alex let them into the foyer. "Can I help you?"
The woman spoke first. "I'm Inspector Mears. I need to speak with Doctor Collins. Is she available?"
"This is... not a good time," Alex finally said, after taking a moment to weigh her answer. "If you tell me what this about, and leave your card, I can-"
"He's escaped again," Amanda's voice came suddenly from behind Alex. "Hasn't he?"
Nikita, caught off guard by Amanda Collins' sudden entrance - and by the dramatic change in her appearance - just blinked in confusion. "I'm sorry-?"
Irritation and impatience flashed across Collins' face, giving Nikita a glimpse of the woman she'd seen in the video files. "Daryl Lee Cullum. I'm assuming you're here because something has happened with him. Has he escaped?"
Nikita understood the question well enough now, and felt bad for further alarming the other woman. "I'm sorry - I don't have any information on Daryl Lee Cullum. I'm here to talk to you about the calls you've been making to our precinct."
"What calls would those be? I'm not in the habit of randomly calling police precincts." Amanda's feigned confusion would have fooled anyone but Alex, who could also tell that Amanda was not as recovered from her earlier attack as she was pretending.
"Why don't we take this into the living room," Alex interrupted. "I think everyone will be a little more comfortable there."
Alex marshaled everyone into the correct room and got them situated, mainly by sheer force of will. It was a trick she'd learned from the best - namely, Amanda Collins herself. The inspectors declined her offer of something to drink, but Amanda requested a glass of water - to which Alex mentally tagged a request for a dose of her medication.
Amanda seemed a little calmer by the time Alex returned, but she still took the pill along with the water. Something in her eyes challenged the detectives to think less of her for needing it, but neither of them even really seemed to pay it much attention.
Their attention was focused on the phone calls Amanda had apparently been making for several days.
Inspector Mears didn't seem especially convinced by Amanda's denials of the phone calls, or especially interested in helping Amanda maintain them - it made Alex like her a little already. "I know you've been calling my precinct, Doctor Collins. We spoke just this morning - you do remember that, I hope?"
Amanda sighed, a flash of irritation on her face at being challenged while unable to win. "Of course I remember. There's nothing wrong with my memory."
Something in Mears' eyes as she nodded in acknowledgment said she was pondering exactly what was wrong with Amanda, but was too sensitive to say as much. "If you like - before we get started - I can call and confirm Daryl Lee Cullum's whereabouts for you."
It was clearly a peace offering - and perhaps an apology for inadvertently adding to Amanda's anxiety - but only the fact the it was offered out of sympathy that held no pity whatsoever kept Amanda from bristling at it. Well, that and the fact that she could look at it as having regained the upper hand a little. "Please do."
A few minutes later, Amanda had her confirmation that Cullum was still securely behind bars. She also had her confirmation that Mears, for whatever reason, didn't seem to view her as something broken and pitiable - those brown eyes still held only understanding.
Amanda was finding those eyes very hard to look away from, actually - it had been a very long time since anyone except Alex had looked Amanda directly in the eye without an undercurrent of pity or disappointment that made her want to slap them across the face.
Mears' partner Inspector Elliot wasn't doing a bad job in that regard either, but he seemed much more interested in the fact that Amanda and his partner couldn't - or wouldn't - break eye contact. Still, business was business, and he cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "So, Doctor Collins - you called us. There something you want us to know?"
Amanda considered the question a moment. What had she expected her call to accomplish? "I - I honestly don't know that there is."
Smiling a little ruefully, she did her best to explain herself. "I called because I don't understand why the San Francisco Police Department insists on hiding the truth."
A sharp glance between the two Inspectors told Amanda that she'd struck a nerve. Something in that shared glance also gave the lead back to Inspector Mears. "What do you mean?"
"Please." Amanda couldn't help rolling her eyes. "There's a serial killer at work, right here, right now, in San Francisco. Don't you think the public has the right to know?"
Another shared glance, another confirmation that Inspector Mears was still running the interview. "Even if there were a connection of some sort between the three cases, nothing conclusive has been released to the press. What makes you think they're connected?"
There was flash of the old Amanda then - the one that Alex hadn't seen in over a year now - as she stared directly into the Inspector's eyes. "I don't know. Twenty years of experience and twenty years of serial killers on the brain?"
Oddly, the scathing sarcasm in that statement made Mears smile a little. It also apparently helped her make the decision she'd been weighing since the phone call earlier. "Doctor Collins, would you be willing to consult with us on this? I hate to admit it, but we're a little out of our depth here."
"Absolutely not." The sudden ice in Amanda's tone got everyone's attention - though only Alex picked up on the note of panic under it all. "I'm damaged goods - we all know it, so I may as well say it. That's why I retired."
Mears wasn't buying it. "'Retired' doesn't have you calling the station fourteen times. I really think you could help us here - we can keep your name out of it, I promise."
Amanda looked over at Elliot. "Does she she try this wide-eyed routine often?"
Elliot just smirked a little. "All the time."
Amanda couldn't help a slight smile at that, despite her irritation. "And does it actually work?"
The smirk widened into a grin. "Most of the time. Never works when I try it, though."
Mears opened her mouth to jump in, but Amanda cut her off. "Don't bother with the usual song and dance, Inspector. Even if you do happen to know me well enough to actually admire me and my work, I can't help you. I won't help you."
"Fine. " Mears' tone indicated that she was running out of patience. "If you won't help me, then help them."
She set a file folder on the coffee table between them, jostling it a little in the process. Crime scene photographs and autopsy reports spilled out and Amanda fought not to visibly recoil from them as a sudden flood of panic threatened to overwhelm her. "No. Not here."
Looking a little confused, Elliot tried to smooth things over. "We can go to the station, if it'll be more comfortable. I'll even drive, if you want."
It was exactly the wrong thing to say - though the Inspectors couldn't possibly have known that - and before Alex could intervene, Amanda had jumped straight to hyperventilating. Ignoring Mears and Elliot, she moved to get Amanda out of the room before she passed out completely - Alex's only concession to their visitors' presence was an unspoken command to stay right where they were until she got back.
Amanda insisted on going upstairs to her room, so it took a little longer than Alex had intended, but both Mears and Elliot were still there waiting on her. Elliot was still sitting on one of the chairs, waiting calmly, but Mears was pacing, looking genuinely upset but not quite understanding what had gone wrong.
As soon as she saw Alex, she stepped toward her. "Is Doctor Collins okay? Do you need us to call anyone?"
"The files triggered a panic attack," Alex said simply and without shame or apology. "She's agoraphobic, too, so the offer to go to the station just made it worse."
Elliot swore softly and Mears winced in embarrassment. "That wasn't our intention."
Alex shrugged - it wasn't like they could have known. "The attack will pass. Just... walk softly when you work with her."
Mears looked a little startled at that, but Alex just grinned. "She hasn't left this apartment in over a year. She's bored and restless and needs something productive to do - that's why she called you."
She held out her hand to Mears, gesturing at the file folder the Inspector still held. "If you really want her to look at those, leave them with me. I'll make sure she gets them."
Mears hesitated for a moment, then handed the file over along with a business card. "Only if it won't cause any trouble, you understand?"
Alex nodded then escorted them out into the hallway. Neither detective said a word to the other on the long walk to the elevator, or the ride down to the ground floor.
"Fuck," Owen said once they were safely in the car. "We blew that one big time."
Nikita said nothing. There was nothing she could have said to make Owen understand how terrifying it was to see another woman so completely broken because of a man...
High up above the car and its occupants - several stories up in a building catty corner to Amanda Collins' apartment - another man stood in a darkened room, his expensive new camcorder trained through a window onto the parking lot below. The camcorder had all the latest bells and whistles, and had cost the man a pretty penny.
After the detectives drove away, the man trained the camcorder back onto his original location, panning up from the parking lot and over to the side. Once night fell, he'd have a clear, perfect view into Doctor Amanda Collins' apartment.