A/N 1: This chapter is dedicated to Weathergirl, who is a great gift to the fandom.

~.~.~.~.~

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT

Las Vegas
10:15PM Monday evening

"Do you know anything about the room designations?" Bobby dropped himself heavily into the same chair next to Patsy Isle that he'd occupied earlier. He tried to resist the temptation to bury his head in his hands, instead resting his elbows on the blue and white ruffled catering tablecloth and rubbing his knuckles over the pulse points on his temples.

He needed to get himself down to the precinct where Eames was being held. But he was finding it hard to leave the scene of one of his most emotionally draining interviews.

"Of course," she said, with a nervous smile.

But while he was here, he really should try to answer some of the questions that Becker had managed to avoid answering. Eames, I needed you in there. "Do you know who was responsible for putting Eames with Carruthers?"

"Responsible?" Her eyes tightened a tiny bit at the corners. "Well, I was the one who finalised the room assignments, but…" Patsy frowned and looked away.

"Someone asked you to put them together?" Bobby spoke slowly and carefully, belying his newly-awoken interest… it was clear that this woman was easily spooked. "Who?" He asked softly, but she winced as if he'd shouted. He tried to shrink down to make himself seem smaller… her nervous twitches, baggy clothes and insincere affect spoke of a history of insecure, possibly abusive relationships.

Patsy shook her head and smiled. "Nobody." She sucked in her cheeks and looked down, running her fingers along the beaded hem of her heavy cardigan.

Bobby was frustrated. She was obviously covering for someone, and part of him wanted to grind the name out of her. But he couldn't stop thinking about Becker.

O.O.O.O.O

"Do you want Detective Eames to be convicted of murder?"

"My girlfriend was just brutally killed in her bed, Detective. What I want… has nothing to do with Alexandra Eames."

"Your girlf–" Bobby's voice hitched on the word, and he looked down at his shoes with a scoff. Bland, smugly nice, but with a tinge of self-righteous meanness, being alone in the room interviewing Lieutenant Becker was making Bobby squirm with discomfort. The man Eames had given herself to was being obstructive and increasingly hostile, clearly aware of the superficial resemblance that had drawn Eames to him, and canny enough to notice every time Bobby had to resist the urge to slam him into the wall and cuff him for ever touching her.

Bobby's game plan at the outset had been to play the detached investigator. Play up the antagonism that supposedly still existed between him and Eames, and most importantly, to not betray his feelings for his partner with inappropriate questions or displays of emotion.

Becker's arrogance and needling had quickly forced that game plan out the window. Bobby had wasted his advantage asking rote procedural questions when all he wanted to know was how the Lieutenant had fucked his partner, why he'd dumped her, and had she ever told him she loved him? In the vacuum of power, Becker had not missed the opportunity to go on the offensive.

Bobby was still trying to figure out how to get that advantage back. "What did you hope to gain from gossiping about Detective Eames?" He knew he'd made a mistake the moment he spoke; he'd shown weakness, and Becker picked up on it instantaneously. "Did you…" Bobby trailed off, tongue-tied by his own vulnerability.

Becker looked at Bobby thoughtfully. "Detective Eames? Get your facts straight, Goren. Nobody was talking about Detective Eames. They were talking about you. Your many deficiencies. As a cop, as a partner." As a man.

The words hung in the air.

O.O.O.O.O

"Did you know Nina Carruthers?" Bobby looked down at Patsy's book, trying to appear less threatening. A little ways down the hall, one of the larger rooms had been turned into a disco of some sort, and a steady stream of conference attendees were being disgorged from the elevators and ushered therein.

"The dead woman? I saw her, a couple of times, this year." Patsy Isle gazed blandly back at Bobby. He was sorely tempted to blurt something about Becker, but he knew it was just a way to ease the overwhelming tension the interview had left him with, and to salve his pride.

Suddenly her mien changed microscopically, shifting from indifferent to distant and wary. Bobby intuited that she could see him drifting away, into his own mind. Drawing upon the self-control he'd honed out of necessity the past few years, he pushed Becker out of his thoughts and focused gently but fully on the woman next to him. "And before that?"

"Probably. I've been a volunteer organiser for donkey's."

Bobby smiled a little. Her self-contained demeanour, dry humour, businesslike attitude, reminded him of Alex. Maybe that was why he didn't feel like getting up. He relaxed a tiny bit in the oasis of relative quiet.

O.O.O.O.O

"What's the purpose of this interview, Detective Goren?"

Holding court from the podium like a smug guest lecturer, the Lieutenant remained cool and unruffled. Bobby, on the other hand, was having trouble containing his agitation. He knew, intellectually, that interviewing a seasoned investigator who was by no means cooperative was challenging at the best of times, but Becker had intimate knowledge of both Bobby and Eames; he was easily gaining the upper hand.

"Because from over here," He gestured from his pride of place, "It's a bit unclear. Are you trying to frame me? Clear your partner? Or just satisfy your curiosity? Whether it's because of jetlag or because you've never been in the same room with someone who's fucked her, I'm having a hard time following your train of thought."

Bobby looked past the rage that roiled in his stomach and actually left spots in front of his eyes, to recognise the irony of Becker's words, considering that every question Bobby had asked, he'd answered sarcastically or not at all.

Bobby tried to take control of the tempo with a big sigh and a shrug. "You're right," he said with a self-effacing laugh, "It could be either one or both. I do feel a need to satisfy my curiosity, and I intend to clear my partner." He shook his head and looked around the room. "As to the, the – other thing, I think that was an, um, poor choice of words." She gave yourself to you. How could you throw her away like a piece of garbage?

Becker looked down for a long second. "Perhaps. She was more than just…" Bobby waved it away. He didn't need to hear that again, even with more polite words. "But you're not the only one who's curious," he whispered.

Bobby bristled. "I've been given official status, Lieutenant; I'm not obligated to satisfy your curiosity."

"You already have."

O.O.O.O.O

"Probably?" Bobby allowed just a hint of scepticism to shade his charming smile. His interview with Lieutenant Becker had been so muddled and out of control, it was tough to separate the wheat from the chaff, but there was something he'd said that had piqued his curiosity… nothing overt or definite, but he followed the instinct to continue to gently prod Patsy Isle.

Patsy shrugged. "I don't – notice people, Detective," she murmured, staring at a spot on the table. "We don't all make the choice to engage."

"What about Detective Eames?" Bobby had sat silently while Patsy helped a couple of people who'd come to her table with questions. To a woman, they'd approached defiantly, focusing on him as if staring him down, as if he would question their right to be there monopolizing the help desk personnel's time. He found the attitude grated on him, fracturing his patience and concentration. What was happening to him? Was it because he had to do this without Eames, that the hostility from every quarter was getting to him so much? Was it even real? Or was he imagining it?

"Yes, I knew her. She was hard to miss." Patsy's sharp words drew him back, and he noted the subtle change in her demeanour. Was she angry? Or just focused, awake.

"So you do notice people. Some people?" Bobby made his tone firm, pushing her a bit to try to draw out whatever his mention of his partner had started brewing.

"Detective Eames… carried herself with great dignity." Isle looked balefully at him, ignoring the jab. "And she always seemed very sad."

Bobby felt like he'd been punched in the gut. It had taken him years to see that sadness. Or at least, to acknowledge it. At first, he'd been uninterested, then too fragile in their relationship to risk admitting her fragility, then too wracked with guilt over the possibility that he was the cause of it. It was one of his great sources of shame, actually. One of the things he beat himself up about when he was in a mood to convince himself that he was a bad person; essentially uncaring, essentially selfish.

It was as if Patsy Isle read his mind. "The cheerful stoic with the secret pain. That makes her both stronger and more fragile than she appears," she murmured.

He felt a lump rise in his throat. It was her, exactly. He struggled to avoid revealing the feelings her words had invoked, but it was for nothing… she wasn't even looking at him. As she stared at her book, not reading, it appeared, he tried to pursue the point. "You said she always seemed sad. But not when she was with B-Becker?"

She glanced back, her face pinched. "No, not then." Bobby let her trail off, holding the silence to prod her into continuing. She did, speaking softly, almost hypnotically. "She was happy, but with a whisper of pathos. Like a schoolgirl at a funfair on the last day of summer. Trying to squeeze every drop of departing joy out of the chill air as she twirled on the merry-go-round."

Isle's description was striking. The image of his Eames, moving in an enticing pattern but going nowhere, trying to re-capture fading happiness, was both vivid and accurate. It left him oddly comforted, although he had asked the question to pick at his own wounds.

Isle had caught the essence of his partner in a few words. She must have noticed more about Nina Carruthers than she was saying.

"What about Nina? Did you ever see her with – Phillip?" Bobby wondered if the use of their first names would elicit a different response.

Isle twisted her neck and rolled her jaw. The movement was faintly reminiscent of Eames when she was uncomfortable. "No, I never saw them together."

She was lying.

O.O.O.O.O

Bobby had tried several tacks on Becker, all with the same result – nothing useful. Becker played games at every turn, deliberately misconstruing this question, throwing that one in Bobby's face, answering the other with a facetious confession.

It was nothing he hadn't dealt with a hundred times, several hundred… But he could admit, at least to himself in the privacy of his own mind, that this one time, he was out of his depth. On the one hand, yes, being in the same room with the last man Alex had… been with… and knowing their history, was galling almost to the point of nausea. And his evasive or non-responsive answers to questions he should have known were important left Bobby feeling like he was dancing with Carruthers' killer, but yet…

He felt for Lieutenant Becker. It was clear – despite his wish to have it not be so – that the man cared both for Eames and for his dead girlfriend. There was no mistaking the helplessness and anguish in his demeanour when he recounted his last communication with Carruthers, and despite the veneer of hostility, the Lieutenant's comments about Alex were tinged with regret and affection.

In addition to that, there was something about him and Dreyfeus that was setting off alarm bells…

O.O.O.O.O

"So Carruthers, she wasn't hard to miss?" Bobby was still pushing her… that was her second lie. The odd thing was, she wasn't very good at it, and she didn't really seem to be hiding anything.

Patsy Isle bristled. "That's not what I said, Detective. You won't get very far with your goal putting words in people's mouths."

"My goal? I've been brought in because of my experience with interrogations, to help move the investigation along to a conclusion."

She looked at Bobby with undisguised scepticism. "Yes, that's why you were brought in. But is that what you're doing?"

"I don't know, is it?" Bobby retorted.

"What you're doing is trying to clear your partner, as well as finding out as much as you can to sate your curiosity about her. Judith Dreyfeus is an idiot, otherwise she'd have sent you a plane ticket to Timbuktu rather than Las Vegas." Isle's nostrils flared as she rolled out her speech; the longest and most animated of their interaction.

Did everyone know about his plan with Eames? "You know Judith Dreyfeus?"

"I've met her, recently." Recently? As in, after the murder? Why not say so?

"Since Carruthers died?"

"Yes. Since she… died."

Bobby tilted his head to the side and scrunched down more in his chair. He plastered a friendly, unthreatening expression on his face and asked, "Officer Isle… Patsy… I – don't think it's true, that you, uh, never saw them together. I mean, how could you not? Um, Phillip, was parading Nina around to everyone, wasn't he?" He watched her carefully, but she didn't flinch or twitch.

After a moment she nodded. "Maybe."

"What were they like together?"

Isle shook her head. "She was happy. She didn't know… what it felt like to be loved."

For a moment, Bobby wasn't sure if she was finished or not. After having spoken to her for these past minutes, what was most interesting about Officer Patsy Isle and her peculiar mode of expression was the fact that she assumed – rightly – that he would understand her quixotic turns of phrase and non-sequiturs. Did she always speak like this? If so, she must be a lonely, lonely girl. Now, he saw comparisons to himself in her, rather than Eames. "Except when she was with Becker?"

"When she thought she'd found it, she opened like a flower." She looked at him almost wistfully.

"And Phillip?" Bobby hoped she'd open up with more eloquent character analysis.

Her wistful look twisted into something vaguely ugly. "Phillip Becker is very adroit at pleasing women." Bobby tried not to cringe at her words. "He makes women love him not because he's a bad person, but because he's afraid of being alone."

His next question was the one he didn't ask. Do you think Detective Eames loved him?

Again, she seemed to read his mind. "There are many forms of love."

Bobby sat, mute, while Isle hummed something under her breath. She had a nice voice. Eventually, he recognised the song.

"Did you?" She eventually asked, staring at the chewed nails and cuticles in her lap.

"Did I what?"

"Thank him."

O.O.O.O.O

"Let's just get this over with, Lieutenant Becker. I don't want to be here any more than you do, but you know I can't leave without answers." Bobby had finally made peace with both his anxiety and his hostility, and he was ready to bargain for the information he needed.

Bleary-eyed, finally showing the effects of the late hour, Phillip just nodded and stared into space.

Bobby stepped to the front of the room and sat down. "OK, um…" He felt like a green recruit on his first big case. "Number one," he looked up at Phillip and prayed for a straight answer, "Do you know who killed Nina Carruthers?" Becker just stared at him. Bobby sighed. "Do you have any suspicions, ideas, or leads? Anything?"

"Whatever I think, I've already communicated to Judy Dreyfeus." Predictable, if unhelpful. Another non-responsive answer, but he wasn't writing the guy off just yet. But why Dreyfeus? Couldn't he have confided in someone else? And since when did an ADA take statements from material witnesses?

"When was the last time you saw the deceased, and under what circumstances?"

"The last time I saw Nina I was in an elevator, at around four o-clock, rubbing Alexandra Eames's nose in my new relationship."

There was a lot Bobby wanted to say about that comment, but he let it go. For now. "How did Dreyfeus learn so much about Detective Eames's personal life?"

"I have no idea where Judy gets her information…"

"So you deny that she got it from you?" Bobby shook his head sceptically. Becker just shrugged. After a moment, "Do you think Detective Eames is guilty?"

"It would be the most expedient possibility." Not from where Bobby sat. With effort, he tamped down his irritation and tried asking the question a different way.

"If it's not Detective Eames, then who?"

"As if you would ever think it was Eames."

"Would you ever think it was her?" Bobby's quiet voice drew Becker's attention, and for a second his mask fell and Bobby saw… something… it was gone before he could make sense of what he'd seen.

"Not unless it was convenient to do so."

O.O.O.O.O

Bobby was silent for a few moments while he processed Isle's words. As the lyrics in question rolled through his head, he found himself growing angry at the dishwater blonde would-be Lady Oracle sitting next to him. Insights delivered in charming metaphors were fine, to a point, but he balked at her latest characterisation. "You think Detective Eames needed him? To – to heal something, in her?"

"I think that Lieutenant Becker was better for her than you can imagine, and if she hadn't had him, a lot of things would be different, for her and for you. And not in a good way."

Surprisingly, Isle wasn't backing down even though Bobby was making no effort to quell or disguise his irritation. He knew how intimidating his anger was to most people (everyone, actually, except one person…), and he'd expected this timid, damaged woman to quail. Instead, she'd seemed to grow bigger and straighter in her chair, staring at him implacably and with a hint of defiance. Feeling confused and a little off-balance, he went on the offensive.

"And what about Nina Carruthers. Did he heal something in her?"

"Not yet," she said archly.

"Not yet?"

"Not ever," she mumbled.

Now that he had her talking about the victim, he was hesitant to change the subject, even though he was curious about what she'd just said. "So besides Phillip Becker, was there anyone else that you noticed Nina palling around with here at the conference?"

Patsy Isle's face twitched; she was still staring at the messy pile of photos. "No, not as far as I know. She really didn't have time for anyone else."

"Did you see her… with Detective Eames?" Isle shook her head. Bobby leaned down and caught her eye, looking earnestly and gently at her. "And what – what do you think Nina would have thought of, um, Detective Eames? Being Becker's ex-girlfriend and all?" He allowed his voice to rise in pitch, just asking a friendly question.

Isle grimaced. "I don't know, but, I doubt she'd have wanted anything to do with her."

"That bad, huh?" He purposely mimicked Eames's intonation from when she'd said the words to Harry Mulrooney months ago. "I'm surprised," he said. "From what you said before, it sounded like you… admired her."

"She's an creditable female, and a catch. A lot of people find her alluring." She stared balefully at him. "I don't admire that." Then she muttered, almost to herself, "Just because I understand some people doesn't mean I care about them."

"Care?" Bobby repeated. He opened up his portfolio and withdrew some of the photos he'd examined on the plane, including some of Nina Carruthers: her academy graduation, a couple of candids, and the morgue picture. "Do you care about anything regarding this case?" He spread the pictures out like a kid shuffling a deck of cards. "Do you care about the disruption it's caused? The disrepute it's bringing upon the event? Do you care that Phillip Becker's a free man now?" He held Carruthers' academy photo up in front of Isle's face. "Do you care about the dead woman at all?"

His eyes were glued to Patsy Isle's face, which was completely blank as she stared at the photo he held. He lowered it onto her clenched hand, and she took it and held it just off the table. The silence that ensued was almost peaceful; Bobby looking at her looking at Carruthers. When she spoke, her words were unexpected.

"You can't believe that he went from your partner to this." She held the photo up, almost weakly like an old woman, and fluttered it. He took it back and stared down at the plain, careful face. He exhaled heavily, but didn't reply. "I can tell from your expression that you can't understand the draw," she murmured. He couldn't deny it… it was literally true. "I personally can't see the draw with your partner." Bobby looked up in surprise, but she was miles away. "Tina was very beautiful, actually, in real life… she just wasn't very photogenic."

"You've seen pictures of her before today?"

O.O.O.O.O

"What do you think of me being here?"

In the city of prize fights, after going 13 rounds, like two tired boxers Bobby and Lieutenant Becker were spent, metaphorically leaning on each other for a few moments' rest.

"In Vegas?"

Bobby shrugged non-committally.

"I'm surprised you didn't show up sooner."

Bobby frowned. "I came as fast as I could."

Becker shook his head. "No, I mean, not… today, I mean sooner like four years ago. Al– According to your partner, you hung the moon. I kept expecting you to come out and mark your territory."

Bobby felt tremendous sadness at the Lieutenant's words. He hoped that he hadn't missed his chance. "I… tried…"

"Not very hard, obviously." Becker looked at him speculatively. "But, better late than never, I suppose," he said. His expression morphed into mild contempt. "I had high hopes, actually. Haven't been impressed thus far. I'm glad you're being impartial, at least."

"Impartial? All night, I've been accused of the opposite."

Becker shook his head again. "I can't imagine what you'd do if it turned out Eames was guilty. But if she's not, at least you won't let yourself be used. You'll really try. To find who – who killed Tina."

Bobby found himself staring into space, the gears in his head finally turning unencumbered. "Why? Do you have someone you like for it after all?"

"I…" Bobby stared Becker down, and the Lieutenant blanched under his gaze. "Like I said, I'm not surprised that you're here." He shrugged and stood up, ready to dismiss the visiting Detective.

"But?" Bobby said to his back as they both walked towards the door.

Becker snorted. "But I'm surprised that you were invited."

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A/N 2: Bobby understood Isle's question; did you? Virtual milk and cookies to anyone who guesses right! And if you need a hint, PM me and I'll give you one.

BTW, yet another Good Wife / CI connection, albeit 2nd degree: Skipp Sudduth, who fronts the band Minus Ted, which Kate Erbe sometimes sings with, and who wrote a song about her daughter, has a recurring role on The Good Wife.

WORDS: 4111 UPLOADED Wednesday, February 9, 2011

My dear faithful ficcers, thank you for taking the time to read this fic… I hope you are enjoying reading it a fifth as much as I'm enjoying writing it… if so, please review!