"Nash, check this out"

Traci rolled her chair over to Juliet's desk and took a look at what she was analyzing.

"Cynthia's Phone records just came in," Juliet said.

"That quick? It hasn't even been 24 hours…"

"I put a little pressure on them, considering the situation."

"Well done." Traci wasn't surprised, Juliet had proven herself many times since she came back from Vancouver. She'd make detective in no time, if she wanted to. "What did you want to show me?"

"Well, she and Wallace had some interesting text chains. But this one, 5 days before the assault on him, she asked him if he knew anybody that was good with explosives."

"Wow, just threw it right out there." Traci read on through the chain. Wallace indicated that he may know somebody and would be in touch. There was no further talk in the chain about it. In fact, there was very little else said between the two after that. "What about calls?"

"There were a couple after this, later that day and then one the next, both pretty short. Then nothing."

"Did she make any calls or contact anybody outside her contacts?"

"Like the explosives person? No. In fact, she didn't talk to anybody else really."

Traci considered the problem. She felt in her gut that this is where the explosives came from, somebody Wallace knew. But proving that was another thing. "Wallace never confirmed, at least in the information here, that he did know anybody with explosives. Only that he might."

"You think he'll remember exactly what he said," Ward asked.

"You talking a bluff?"

"What else do we have to lose? And it's not a complete bluff. We go in there with the phone records and tell him that if he doesn't give us the name of the bomb guy, girl, whatever, we'll stick him with accomplice charges."

"That's good, is he still in the hospital?"

"Let me check," she picked up her desk phone and called down to memorial. "Hi, this is Officer Ward, 15 division. I'm checking on the status of one of our victims, Wallace Starks?" Juliet waited and listened for a minute than thanked the other end and hung up. "He's out, released this morning."

"Great, now we have to find him again. I'll put a BOLO out." Traci went back to her desk. "Find us a couple of unis and we'll take a stroll by his place first, just in case."

An hour later, Traci and Juliet were outside of Wallace Starks' address. Nick and Chris were with them.

"Nice digs, Nick said when they met between their two cars."

"Yeah, right up there with Cynthia's," Juliet said.

"What do you need Detective?", Chris asked.

"Nick and Juliet around back. You're with me on the front door. We're looking for Wallace Starks. You've both seen his picture?" They nodded confirmation. "Good, he's fresh out of the hospital, still got some wounds from the assault, so he should be easy to identify. But that's why Juliet and I are splitting up, just in case. We just want to talk tom him. He's not a suspect, per se, so take it easy. We get him back to the barn and we talk to him there."

"And if he doesn't comply?", Nick asked.

"We make him see that it's in his best interest to," Juliet said. "Threaten to charge him in connection to the bombing. He's not stupid enough to take the fall if he didn't do anything."

"Probably," Traci added. "Let's go." The pairs broke off and went to their assigned spots. Both Traci and Juliet were in vests, you never knew what would happen in gang land. Better to be safe than sorry. By the time Traci and Chris reached the porch, the neighborhood had come out to see what was going down, many had cell phones out, recording no doubt. Others were conspicuously trying to hide their hands or their faces.

"Not getting a real friendly vibe here," Chris said as he stepped up in front of Traci and pounded on the door a couple times. They didn't hear anything from inside to indicate anybody was home. Chris got on his radio, "No luck up here, you two have anything."

"Negative on the house," Nick said back. "But it looks like there's a garage off the alley in back. We heard a faint sound of an engine."

Chris shared a quick look with Traci and they went around back to meet Nick and Juliet. They agreed on the sound. "Let's go around back," Traci instructed and they went back to their cars and around the block." The neighbors had begun to murmur and shift around to get a view on what was happening.

When they got to the back and out of their cars, they could confirm that there was an engine running and the door was closed. Nick wet around the side to look through a window but it was mostly obscured by dirt and various items in the garage. When he returned to the group, "I couldn't see much, but there is definitely a car running in there. I don't know if there's a person in there or not."

Traci shook her head. "Doesn't matter, it's cause, possible life in immediate danger. Let's get this door open. With luck, the door on the garage was unlocked, but rather heavy. Chris took one side, Nick the other while Traci and Juliet drew and aimed their weapons, just in case. After opening the door, the officers were almost overtaken by the fumes from the exhaust. Nick and Chris scrambled away to get some fresh air and they all waited a bit for the garage to air out. In the meantime, Traci got the fire department rolling, just in case.

"What now?", Nick asked.

"We need to make sure there is nobody still alive in there. You think you can get in there to check?"

"Nick sniffed the air near the garage, still had some fume but not nearly as much. He felt confident.

"We can do it," Chris said. "You check for a vic, I'll get the car off."

Nick nodded and they entered on the count of three. IN the end it turned out fine. Both of the officers could breathe well enough and didn't feel any effects. Chris was able to get the car off without incident. And Nick found a person, but he was long gone. Nick didn't know how long the car had been running but did know it only took minutes for someone to die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Chris had noticed the body as well and, when Nick popped back up, asked, "Anything?"

Nick shook his head, "Nope, he's gone." Nick and Chris walked out of the garage and back to Traci and Juliet. Feeling confident since Collins and Diaz made it in and back out safely, Traci decided to have a look at the body for herself. One look and she knew it was Wallace Starks. He was laid across the back-seat head to the side. She looked around a bit more, no new bruises or wounds, no signs of struggle. Looking down to his wrists she saw a hospital ID band. The name was 'Starks, Wallace H.' "It's him. It's Starks," Traci said when she came back out of the garage.

"Murder?", Juliet asked.

Traci considered, "I'm at 99.9% murder. The way he was positioned, no signs of a struggle. Everything about it screams foul play. Ward, call in some backup and CSU. Then call Anderson. Daiz, Collins, start asking neighbors if they saw anything, get some other uniforms to help. I'm going to call Memorial and see who picked him up when he was discharged. We need to start building a timeline."

"Well, he was only released a few hours ago," Juliet said. "Not too much time to fill in, shouldn't take that long."

"Knock on wood."

It actually didn't take that long. The hospital got back to them with a name of Phillip Brock. Traci ran him through the system and got back no significant returns. Just a few tickets for speeding and such. The system also indicated he was a grad student at Kempton University. Homicide was on scene and doing it's thing which would take a while so Traci decided to dig a little deeper on Brock, just to see what she could see. After all, this didn't seem like the guy that would hang around with a petty criminal with gang ties.

She ran his name through a search engine along with the school's name and got several hits back. Apparently, Brock was a good student, very good. He had participated in several expos and fairs representing the school. Most of them seemed science related. But the article that piqued Traci's interest most was the one where he identified himself as a chemical engineering student. A chemical engineer would certainly know how explosives work and about the killing properties of carbon monoxide. Traci felt deep in her gut that she was on to something. She looked at her watch, it wasn't too late yet, she could still pay Brock a visit.

First, though, she tracked down Frankie and updated her. "Wow, that's good stuff Nash."

"Yeah, I thought so too. I was going to swing by and see what he has to say."

"Do that. I got to stick around here a while longer until the techs are done with everything."

"I figured. Well, I'll take Ward and give you a report."

"Good deal, Nash."

Traci found Juliet talking on her phone a little way away. Juliet saw her coming and finished the conversation. "Nick says that nobody has anything solid. Either nobody knows anything or nobody wants to tell us anything."

"What a surprise," Traci remarked. "Listen…," Traci filled her in on what she found and what the plan was.

Brock lived off campus in a modest house in a decent enough neighborhood, It was probably a rental. Traci led her partner up to the door and rang the bell. Shortly, a well-dressed young man, Traci recognized him immediately from the photos in the articles, opened the door.

"Phillip Burke, This is Officer Ward, I'm Detective Nash. Metro Police, Guns and Gangs."

"Officers how can I help you?"

"May we come in."

"Uh, yeah, sure. Just please forgive some of the mess. Grad school has been a bit chaotic lately."

Traci took the opportunity to confirm what she already knew, just to hear him say it. "Oh, your're in grad school. At Kempton or…?"

"Yeah, at Kempton."

"What are you studying?" Juliet asked

"Chemical engineering," Brock replied quickly.

"Kudos man," Juliet said. "Chemistry we not my thing in school.

"Yeah, well, it's definitely not for everyone. You have to have a knack for it, trust me."

"I'm sure," Traci said. "You must make your parents proud."

"I try to. But I'm sure you have something more important to discuss with me. Please, have a seat on the sofa. I'll try my best to help."

So, they sat and Traci got started. "Did you pick up a Wallace Starks from Memorial today?"

"Yes, but I'm guessing you already knew that. That's what brought you here. Yeah, I picked him up. He insisted on driving after we left so I let him. We went to a McDonalds down the street because he said he was tired of the hospital crap. Then he went home and we went our separate ways. So, what did he do now? Jeez, a couple hours out of the hospital and he's already in trouble."

"Actually, Mr. Brock, Wallace Starks is dead."

From the way Brock reacted Traci either thought that was a genuine surprise to him or he was a very good actor.

"Dead? You're sure? I just saw him and…," Phillip trailed off.

"Yes, we're sure," Juliet said and you're the last person we know that saw him alive. We're trying to build a time line and you're the last person we know he saw, so we came to you.

"Am I a suspect? Do I need to get a lawyer?"

"I can't tell you that, Mr. Brock," Traci said. Do you want one?"

"I think I should talk to one, just in case. If you leave a card, I can get back to you after I talk to one. Just in case…"

"Okay, if that's how you want to do it, it's your choice." Traci handed him one of her cards and they walked back to the front door and out to their car.

In the car, Juliet asked, "McDonalds?"

"Yep, he said down the street, I assume he meant from the hospital. If so, I think I know what one he was talking about. Let's go see if we can get any camera footage."

It turned out Traci was correct and the manager on duty remembered the two from two photos Traci showed her. After explaining the situation, the owner consented to let Traci and Juliet view the security footage from the time, just to confirm a time stamp. After jumping around on the tape for a few minutes, they located Starks and Brock walking from the counter and selecting a table. Traci wrote down the time and the owner sped it up to double time. A couple live minutes later, so around 5 minutes video time, Starks got up, and left the table. Bathroom? Maybe. But Traci was more interested in what happened at the table. Brock grabbed Starks' drink, popped the lid and dropped something in before quickly replacing the lid and returning the cup to where it was. He had plenty of time until Starks got back to the table.

They watched the rest of the video and also confirmed that they left in the same car. Brock definitely lied about that, and never mentioned that he slipped something in Starks' drink. Traci and Juliet thanked the manger profusely for helping them so quickly and went back to their car. Traci called Frankie to give her the update.

"So, Brock slipped something into Starks' drink.? That's interesting because the ME people seem to think Starks' was passed out before the carbon monoxide poisoning."

"Well, he's lawyering up. It's going to be difficult now to get anything from him and this whole thing is pretty light on conclusive proof."

"We can still scare him. Murder of Starks, accomplice to terrorism for the bombing. Even if we can't make it stick, we can scare him a plenty. I'm gonna head over and bag him up. You want to meet me there."

"Yeah, sure. You're closer than we are by quite a bit, so you might have to wait," Traci said.

"Hmm, just don't make it too long."

So, Frankie sat in her car, down the street, watching the house of Phillip Brock. Waiting. And waiting. What was this kid? A grad student? Chemical engineering? She could handle a science nerd, she thought. Nash and Ward would miss the bust but Frankie was tired of waiting so she got out of her car and approached the house. She checked the straps on her vest and pulled out her gun, checked that she was loaded with one in the chamber and re-holstered it. She climbed the front steps and rang the bell.

Then the porch blew up.