"Some good idea," Fin said as they looked over the contents from the interior of Mike's smashed up car, "One overnight bag with a change of clothes, the daily paper and his camera…this is a dead end."

"Maybe," Munch replied as he looked at Mike's camera, "Or maybe the little shutterbug got something on film that's worth more than a thousand words."

"What're you going to do, develop it to find out?" Fin asked.

"Might be a good idea," Munch said, "Mike still doesn't seem to be in much condition to get answers from."

"CSU's already been over every inch of this car," Fin said, "Nothing in here that shouldn't be, no prints belonging to anyone except Mike, no blood, nothing."

"And how often does that happen?" Munch asked him as he poked his head in through the open window on the driver's side, "You ever see a car that looks this clean? We still haven't gotten the bloodstains out of our squad car from two years ago, and look at this, there's nothing on the seats, no dirt or gravel on the floor, the floor mats are hardly out of place…it's inhuman for somebody to keep a car looking this new."

"Maybe it is new," Fin said, "Being a private eye makes more money than being a cop does, doesn't it?"

"Last I heard," Munch replied, "I wonder if I…"

"No," Fin shook his head, not even giving John time to finish his thought.

"Thanks for your support," Munch dryly remarked, "Well, I'll get this film developed and see if I can find anything, otherwise this does look like another dead end."

"This whole case is one big dead end," Fin told him, "No witnesses, no crime scene, no complaining victims who even have any recollection of being attacked, and no forensics off the rape kit, this case couldn't possibly get any worse for us."

"Well think about how bad it is for Mike," John said, "He's the one who's actually got to go through it."

"Your amnesia must be contagious," Toni told Mike when she returned to his room again, "I can't even remember now why I was out on the road last night."

"Oh yeah?" Mike cynically asked, "I find that hard to believe, good looking girl like yourself staying at home on a Saturday night."

"I didn't say I don't go out," Toni said, "I hate driving, especially at night…I don't care what they say, those high beams are nothing compared to the natural daylight, you can see forever on that light, you have a better view of what's coming and going, but at night." She shook her head, "All the drunks and crazies are out on the road especially, and the whole thing becomes a regular game of pedestrian polo."

Mike laughed and said, "We're quite a pair, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Toni said, "I can't figure out what I was doing out there last night…hmmmm, maybe all those years of drinking have finally eaten away my memory." She sat down on the bed beside Mike again and said, "So if Munch does find a new bar to buy, you think he'll ask you to be a partner there?"

"I doubt it," Mike told her, "We never had much to do with each other."

"Yeah but that was when he was here and you were in Baltimore…and incidentally Mike, exactly what the hell is so bloody fascinating about Baltimore anyway? What do they have? A famous junkie poet buried there and the Orioles, so what?"

"I don't know," he replied, "I can't even remember now why I've stayed on there."

"Boy it's a good thing you never worked in intelligence," Toni said, "So what persuaded you to leave the arson squad for homicide?"

"I was offered a job in homicide," Mike answered bluntly.

"That's it?" Toni asked.

Mike laughed tiredly and asked her, "What do you want from me? I'm not a storyteller."

"That's for sure," she replied.

"So what about you?" he asked, "What's your racket, your claim to fame?"

"I'm a writer," she answered.

"Ah, so you're the storyteller," Mike said.

"Hardly," she told him, "I just write for a magazine right now, The Coast to Coast Opinion."

Mike gave a slight nod in understanding. "I wonder what time it is."

"Must be morning," Toni looked around the room, "Don't see any windows, that's quite a claustrophobic inducement…are you claustrophobic?"

"No," Mike shook his head, "You?"

"I don't think so," she said, "Look Mike, I'm not a subtle person so I'm just gonna come out and ask this…how bad does it hurt? I mean when I was younger, I wound up in bed with a lot of people I didn't want to be, but it was just plain sex, not that weird stuff, so for comparison, how do you feel?"

He shrugged and said, "I don't know, the drugs must not have worn off completely because I still feel numb in some places."

"Thank God for small favors," Toni said.

Another hour passed and Fin and Munch still didn't return. An orderly came by Mike's room and brought him breakfast. None of the food looked particularly appetizing and Toni killed what was left of his appetite by telling him how in hospitals, the kitchens were most commonly put right next to the morgues. Still, they each found enough room in themselves to choke down something from the tray.

"So why were you in arson in the first place?" Toni asked.

"I guess I was just trying to find anything that wasn't like my father," Mike said.

"Why? What did he do?"

"He spent his whole life working in a...glass plant? I can't remember now if that's right," he said, and shook his head, "He worked there all his life, and I have two brothers who are complete screw ups, I tried to make sure I didn't follow in either's path I guess."

"We all try to run away from our pasts," Toni said and shook her head as well, "But where does it get us?"

"What's in yours?" Mike asked.

"A father who was doing life for a triple homicide, he was also a junkie, I spent my teen years whoring myself out to people in the name of survival...and if you want to believe it, the people at Special Victims still say I'm not the most screwed up case they've ever had," Toni explained.

Mike didn't say anything at first but let a sound of understanding out of his throat. Then he added, "So what's life like for you these days?"

"Pretty good actually, my father's out of prison, record expunged or whatever...when he gets back to town I'll have to introduce you to him, I think you'd like him," she said.

Mike laughed unenthusiastically and replied, "I bet."

"Well, it helps to have friends in high places," Toni said, "I know a head shrinker from the FBI named George Huang, you'll probably meet him, he'll probably want to evaluate you later on, he likes to psycho-analyze rape victims for some reason. Then there's Munch, and Fin, and Elliot and Olivia, she's gone right now with my father."

Mike chuckled and commented, "Friends in high places indeed."

"Then there's also Jack McCoy the executive district attorney, he..." Toni shot up in the bed and about fell off of it, "That's what I was doing out there last night! I was going to see Jack, and that's when you crashed into me."

"What were you going to see him for?" Mike asked.

"Oh my God, I don't remember," Toni said as she scrambled her brain, frantically trying to come up with the answer, "I remember it had something to do with one of his cases he's currently working on." She fell back on the bed beside Mike and tried to think of what it was.

The door opened and John and Fin walked in and were momentarily taken aback by the scene of Mike and Toni lying beside each other on the bed.

"Find anything?" Toni asked.

"I don't know yet," Munch said as he came over to the bed and told Mike, "We dumped your car, all we found was a travel bag, your camera with the film still in it, and the daily paper from Baltimore which is about three days old."

He dumped the items on the bed by Mike's feet. Toni got up and picked up the newspaper, "Well let's see what's going on in the 7th circle of hell today." She read over the front page and added, "Hmmmm, very interesting."

"What is it?" Munch asked.

"They're talking about you guys in here," Toni told him, "Your old homicide squad."

"What're they saying?" Fin asked.

" 'It looks extremely rocky for the Baltimore Homicide Unit these days'," she chuckled and mumbled over the next few words, "Some of Baltimore's finest have left us in the past few years, and in a variety of ways. The locals still mourn for Steve Crosetti who took his own life back in December of 1994; as well as Beau Felton, who was killed in his own home after transferring out of Homicide in 1997, also Al 'Gee' Giardello who was, yeah yeah yeah, blah blah blah." Toni skimmed down to another part, "And in recent years, the department has suffered more losses. Detective John Munch," she winked at him, "Transferred out of Homicide and Baltimore entirely back in 1999, who is currently a member of New York's Manhattan Special Victims Unit…others have not fared so well since their departures: Frank Pembleton who left Homicide in 1998 was recently hospitalized for a simultaneous stroke and heart attack, Pembleton was previously hospitalized for his first stroke back in 1996."

She, Mike and Fin heard Munch groan as he shook his head and talked under his breath.

"In other news, one Paul Falsone was suspended from Homicide after his involvement in an alcohol-related hit and run which killed a 22 year old woman."

"When did that happen?"

"In 2005," Toni said, "You really don't keep tabs on the old gang anymore, do you?"

"I was never close to Falsone," Munch said.

"You and me both," Mike laughed painfully.

"Apparently you weren't close to one Laura Ballard either, seems she's been shacked up in the booby hatch for three years after overdosing on painkillers and sleeping pills trying to kill herself," Toni read, "Let's see, also, Stuart Gharty, retired, Meldrick Lewis, transferred out to narcotics, Terri Stivers, on temporary leave, and…" Toni's eyes opened wide and her overall demeanor changed and she looked like she was going to be sick, "Oh shit." She about dropped the newspaper.

"What is it?" Munch turned to her, "What's wrong?"

Toni looked up at him and said, "Tim Bayliss is getting paroled."

"What?" Munch grabbed the paper away from her and looked over the article to see it from himself.

"Who's Tim Bayliss?" Fin asked.

"My old partner," John told him.

Toni glanced over his shoulder and read the paragraph, "Former Homicide Detective Timothy Bayliss is being reviewed by the parole board after serving seven years of a 15 years to life sentence for the 1999 murder of Luke Ryland who made headlines earlier that year as 'The Internet Killer' who brutally murdered two women while broadcasting the acts live on the Internet for millions of viewers to witness. Ryland was released due to a technicality, and was later shot to death by Bayliss who was the arresting officer. Bayliss pled not guilty to one charge of premeditated murder and was found guilty by a jury of eight men and four women in 2000 and has since been incarcerated at Baltimore Prison."

"Wait a minute," Fin said, "They wouldn't lock up the guy who murdered two women but they'll lock up the guy who executed him and did the whole city a public service?"

"That's the justice system for you," Toni said, "Bayliss was originally going to plead guilty but the D.A. Ed Danvers advised him to take his mother into consideration and spare her the guarantee of her only child dying in prison and her dying waiting for him to get out."

Munch looked at her, "How the hell did you know that?"

"I told you, John, I read the papers, I knew what was going on at the time." Toni looked down at the paper, "Seven years out of a minimum 15 year sentence, that tells me that the guys in charge didn't see the execution as that big a miscarriage of justice otherwise he wouldn't have a shot at parole."

"That's it!" Mike said as he sat up in the bed, "That's what I was coming here to tell you, John! I saw that Tim was getting paroled and I thought you ought to know if you didn't already. Because I know he was your partner and that you were closer to him than the others."

"I told him he'd be cursed if he worked with me," Munch told Fin, "I told him, something bad happened to every person I worked with, Kay, Russert, Bolander, Mike, it's me, I'm a curse to everybody I partner with."

"No comment," Fin replied.

"Alright, so we've established why Mike was coming here," Toni said, "To tell you about Bayliss…but why was he attacked then? It sounds like somebody for some reason was trying to make sure he didn't reach you and wasn't able to tell you about it…but why?"

"You think they're connected?" Mike asked.

"Well I don't know," Toni said, "But right now it seems so, you were in Baltimore your whole life and this never happened, then the day you decide to come to New York to see Munch, then this happens, and not just the day he comes to see you, but it takes place after he comes into New York territory, like somebody was already here waiting on him and knew where he'd be coming in…I don't know but they do seem to be connected somehow. I just can't see how though, but they must be. There just has to be a connection to his coming here and the attack."