On scene, the chaos hadn't abated much with time.

Sam navigated through the maze of vehicles and people to get to the center of the action, Dov following. They spotted Traci talking with somebody from ETF near the command truck. They leaned up against the truck's side and waited for her to finish. When she did, she turned around and acknowledged them, "Come to help out?"

"Yeah, we heard you were down here with Ward, running this," Sam said. "Oliver told us the driver here was a POI in a case for you."

"A banger, Wallace Starks, got beat up, we think it was with a gun."

"Like, hit him with the gun?", Dov asked.

"Yeah, that's what the bruise patterns indicate. Mr. Starks didn't remember anything when we talked to him, or o he claimed."

"What's the connection to your vic and the girl today?", Sam asked.

"Well," Traci led them over to the vehicle, now a burned-out husk, "this vehicle's registered to Mr. Starks. And, from what we've been able to gather, though Stark himself wouldn't comment on it, Cynthia Perez used to hang around with him."

"And the girl that was in there," Sam pointed at the car, "was Cynthia."

"Correct. Ward's in the back of the command truck talking with her mother. We're trying to nail down an address because the one on her license isn't correct any more. Andy's back there with them."

Almost o cue the door opened and the three of them came out. Andy led the mother to a squad car opened the door for her, and the car left.

Ward walked over to the three detectives, "So, she gave us the last place she knew her daughter stayed. It's different than the license so it's a possibility."

"She didn't know for certain?", Dov asked.

"They haven't been all that close since her brother."

Sam raised an eyebrow and Traci realized he didn't know. "We killed the brother. Well, not we as in us, but we as in the Service."

Sam nodded, "Oh, boy."

Andy walked up, "Poor woman. She has nobody left."

Nobody knew quite how to respond and let it hang in the air for a bit. Oliver came by and said, "We're wrapping up here. Nash? Ward? You two got what you need?"

"I think so," Traci said. "There wasn't much to actually get."

"We got an address to check out," Juliet opened her notebook. "It's a boarding house or something that rents rooms out like by the week."

"Let me see that," Oliver tilted the notebook towards him and glanced at the address. "Yeah, I know the place. Epstein, you should too. It's the dump we found Rainey in all those years ago. Remember Snake Face?"

"Yeah, he was my first collar."

"Those were the days, when the rookies were still the rookies," Oliver reflected.

"And you still had some hair," Dov joked.

"Watch it Epstein," Oliver warned with a smile. "Ah, well, good. So you guys going to check that out?"

"Yeah, we might as well," Traci said.

"Good, take a couple uniforms with you," Oliver instructed. "With that place, you can never be too careful. Sammy what about you two?"

"Well…," truth is, Sam didn't really know. As far as this went, he didn't really have a hand in it.

"Actually sir," Traci said, "I was hoping that if you didn't have them on anything else, I could have them look into the incident that got the brother killed. I just have a feeling about it, like it's a part of this."

"Okay, yeah, go ahead. If Nash has a gut feeling we should check it out. I'm going to be at the hospital getting an update on our guys. McNally, get back on the road once you have the paperwork on this wrapped up on this. Same goes for the rest of the uniforms, okay?"

"Yes sir," she said. To Sam, "I'll see you later."

"Take care McNally." They shared a look between the two of them and Andy left.

Uh, Staff," Juliet spoke up, "What's the last you heard on Bailey and the others?"

"No dead, so that's good. Some have some pretty bad burns though and are in rough shape. Bailey, on that front got the least because he had moved away from the car when it blew. But he has a concussion and they are trying to prevent some internal bleeding."

Traci sighed deeply and looked around. "Could have been a lot worse. A lot worse, if they didn't move the perimeter back."

"Speaking of that," Dov said, "Do we know how the bombwas set off?"

"Yeah, we think," Traci said. I was talking to a bomb squad guy from ETF before you guys and he said that the deice was on a trigger activated timer. They think Cynthia, the driver, activated the timer sometime before shooting herself. But pretty close to it, knowing that the police would flood the vehicle and check on her. Then they'd be caught in the blast."

"So, she was targeting us," Dov concluded. "You're right, her brother has something to do with this. If nothing more than the motivation, that's still significant."

"Figure this out you guys," Oliver said. "Send me updates, I'll do the same."

After a bit of strong-arming and threatening the boarding house owner with charges of obstructing and accessory after the fact, he handed over the key to Cynthia Perez's room. Nick opened the door and he and Gail cleared the small space before Traci and Juliet went in.

"Just look around, let us know if you see anything significant," Traci instructed.

So that's what they did. Nothing too out of the ordinary was turning up. The most interesting thing was a bottle of prescription Oxycontin, not in Cynthia's name. All in all, though, that wasn't even that surprising or irregular. There was no note anywhere, a suicide note is often not present. Only about a third of the time at best probably. There really was nothing incriminating there. No guns, no books on bomb making. They couldn't find any pictures of Cynthia and Wallace together. This was turning into a strikeout.

"One thing we know, Traci said when it was clear they weren't getting anywhere, "someone isn't going to shoot themselves and blow up cops for no reason. If it's about her brother, I get the anger towards us. But why kill yourself? That doesn't make any sense. They pondered and Gail said, "Maybe she felt guilty about it."

"What?" Traci was caught off guard. She wasn't thinking on that track. "She feels guilty about her brother," Traci repeated. "Go on."

"Well, I don't know. Maybe she was involved somehow, or she knew he was going to and doing whatever it was that got him killed. Something like that."

Traci though it over. "That makes sense. I like it. So now we need to find out what exactly happened."

"And, hopefully," Juliet added, "how Wallace Starks fits into this. His car ties him onto this, we just need to know how and then we got him too."

"He goes from being your victim to a potential suspect." Nick said. "That won't make him too happy if you pay him a visit next."

"Hopefully it's soon, that is if Swarek and Dov had any luck," Traci said.

"I think I'm on to something," Dov said.

"Let's hear it," Sam set down the file he was reading. So far, they'd gone back through the incident. It happened in 34 Division. Ricardo Perez was killed after he turned what appeared to be a gun on two patrol officers. Turns out the gun was a pellet gun but it was black and without the orange indicators of a toy. According to the report, the officers were in the area after taking a call about a person, with varying descriptions, casing cars. Perez, when the officers rolled up was bent over a car, looking through the window. The report goes on to say the officers ordered Perez away from the car which he complied with. However, the butt of the gun was sticking out of his waistband and one of the officers noticed it and ordered Perez's hands up after they had drawn on him. He hesitated and said something but neither officer was sure what. Then he reached for the gun, albeit slowly, and began to draw it. That's when the officers shot him. He died at the scene. The shooting had gone through full SIU review and both officers had been cleared of any wrong doing and fully re-instated. It was a tough situation but Sam and Dov, along with any other officer, would have reacted the same way.

"So, I kept getting hung up on why there were so many different descriptions for one guy. I went back to the 911 calls and broke down the descriptions. If I take out some outlying characteristics, they mainly break down into two different descriptions. And roughly half of them go for each one and one of them lines up pretty well with Perez."

"Okay."

"So, I got to thinking, maybe there was two people. That this second group of descriptions aren't just bad descriptors but descriptions of a second guy, a guy that got away without anybody knowing he was involved. ON a hunch I pulled up Wallace Starks, the guy from Traci's ADW case. Now, these second descriptions are: shorter male, with about shoulder-length dark hair. Caucasian, and a couple even think they saw a tattoo on the left side of his neck. Now I'll show you Wallace Starks." Dov turned his monitor around toward Sam.

Sam only needed to look for a second and he could see how well he fit the description. And the selling point was the neck tattoo, noticeable in the mug shots on file. "We got him. Great work Dov, Great work. Let's call Nash. This will make her day."

"What will make my day?"

Sam looked over his shoulder to see Traci and Juliet walking to Sam and Dov.

"Epstein, you cracked it, why don't you tell them."

"Dov you are a rock star," Traci told him when he finished going over it all again.

"This actually makes a lot of since with what Gail said back at Cynthia's place. She had this theory that Cynthia blew up the car to attack us for killing her brother fine. But she Shot herself because she felt guilty about her brother. And, you know what, she assaulted Wallace because he was with her brother that night and bailed. This is coming together."

"That's good, but it may be more," Sam said. "I'm looking at Stark's rap sheet and it's littered with B&E's GTA's and so on. Perez had one offense listed, a misdemeanor marijuana possession."

"So not only was Wallace involved, he was the instigator," Traci said.

"That's what I'm thinking," Sam said.

"So, to retaliate," Juliet said, "Cynthia gets the drop on Wallace and beats the hell out of him, then can't live with the guilt because she's the one that brought Wallace into the picture. Without her, Wallace and her brother probably would never have met."

"I buy it, but how do we convince a jury?" Dov asked.

"Right now," Sam said, "We don't even have enough to bring Wallace in. I'm not even sure there's anything to bring him in on, evidence or not."

"Sadly, I think you're right, Traci said. "He didn't actually commit a crime that night, or at least we have no proof of anything. After that he's a victim. He gets beat up and gets his car stolen."

"The jerk's gonna walk." Juliet shook her head. "Isn't the justice system great?"

"He's not going to help us with the ADW because to do so could possibly tie him into all of this and he know it. He's free right now and he's not going to risk that."

"So, what do we do now?", Juliet asked.

"We suspend the investigation. Reason is we have no conclusive leads," Traci said. "Then we move on to the next one. Thanks for the help boys, you cracked this one, you really did. If only we could have done something with it. I'll call Oliver and tell him the news. Why don't we all call it a day."

"I think that's a good idea," Sam said. He shut down his computer, put the files back in the box they came from, and closed it.