Eyes Wide Open

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This story is on an AU track.

Chapter 2: The Expert's Legacy

"Most people would just pick up the phone."

The big man smiled. "I know. But I wasn't doing anything, and I admit I was curious. I hadn't heard anything about a crime in the building or the area, and I didn't see cards in any of my neighbors' doors. In other words, this wasn't a canvass for witnesses. you were looking specifically for me."

Olivia couldn't help but smile back. "Sit down, and I'll explain." She sat in her chair, and he took another chair facing her. "You're familiar with Dr. Declan Gage?"

Goren's face hardened a little at the name. "I was. I haven't spoken to him for the better part of a decade, and I have no intention of changing that fact."

"Understood," Olivia said quickly, "but this concerns something he might have told you before that. His work on the Sebastian case?"

There was no denying he reacted to that. A flash of recognition, a flinch suggesting the name was associated with an unpleasant memory. "His white whale case. It wasn't the only case he ever had that went cold, but it was the only one he couldn't let go of." She saw realization flash across his face. "You have a case you think is Sebastian?"

"We're almost positive," she told him after a moment's hesitation. It wasn't like she could hide that from him once she started asking more questions. "We not only matched the MO, we matched the DNA on the body."

His eyes widened. "Wow. Just like that, after twenty years?"

"Looks that way."

"So why come to me?"

"We went to Dr. Gage first, but he wasn't making a lot of sense and wasn't responsive to our questions."

Goren nodded sadly. "Permanent, irreversible brain damage, that's what the experts said. And he was never entirely connected to the rest of the world to begin with. So, how did you find me?"

"He sort of pointed us in your direction."

"Sort of? Let me guess. Dropped some sort of obscure hint as if you knew exactly what he was talking about despite having zero context and you spent an hour or more chasing it down to me?" He gave a soft laugh at Olivia's shocked look. "There was a time Declan and I were close, I know how he is. If you don't mind my asking, what was the hint?"

"He mentioned your first name - Bobby - in connection with a Sebastian copycat case involving someone named Jo, and said something to suggest that the 'Bobby' in question was familiar with the original. We went through all the files on Sebastian copycats and found your name on an arrest report."

"Jo Gage," he said knowingly. "Declan's daughter. I took her confession."

"From there, all I had to do was call personnel for the address. And so, here we are."

"And you want information on Sebastian."

"Anything you can tell us. Ideally, I'd like you to have a look at the file and fill in any blanks you notice. I don't want to take up a ton of your time -"

"I don't mind, really. I did this kind of work for a long time, and I enjoyed it." He took the file from her and began to scan it. "In fact, I still do some consulting work from time to time."

"For the NYPD?" Olivia asked hopefully.

"And the FBI, and the DA's office once in a while," he said a little distractedly. Then he seemed to catch up to what Olivia was asking. "You want me to work this case?"

"If you'd be willing. I'm not trying to pull you away from another jobs -"

"I'm between assignments right now," Goren replied, "and I'm perfectly willing. I'm just not - my usual experience in consulting for NYPD is that the Brass or some captain asks for my help and the primaries on the case are very grudging about the situation. There have been exceptions, I still have friends in the department, but most cops seem to think that my leaving was the best thing that happened to the NYPD in a long time."

"What happened, if you don't mind telling me?"

He shrugged. "Well, I was never all that popular to begin with. My methods weren't exactly standard, and a lot of people didn't know what to make of it. If you knew how many partners I went through before I found one who stuck with me - anyway, it really got bad when I managed to do the near-impossible and cross both the Brass and the good-old-boy cops simultaneously."

"Dare I ask how?"

"A cop got shot, and his partner IDed a guy they'd been trying to bust - they were protecting a witness, the surviving partner was on a bathroom break. Something about the partner's story seemed off to me, so I pushed it a little further. Turned out his bathroom break was a break to screw his girlfriend in a car up the block, and his ID was made up to cover the fact that he was partially blind. But yeah, if there's a way to get both those groups angry at the same time, that would be it."

"But the ID really wasn't valid?"

"Not even close. He IDed an Asian gang member in his thirties. The actual doer was a seventeen-year-old Hispanic kid whose father had gone to prison for murdering a cop based on another questionable ID, this one from the officer the kid murdered - I cleared that one too," he added so offhandedly Olivia had to wonder if he even realized he was bragging. "But everyone seemed to get stuck on what happened with the original suspect, and then it just went downhill from there. I got fired, and then asked back by a Captain who thought I got a raw deal - he was a good guy, but the whole situation was awkward and uncomfortable to say the least. I had well over my twenty years by then, so I put in my papers, told them I'd be willing to consult if they wanted me, and left."

Olivia didn't know if she was more surprised by the story itself or the fact that this man had been willing to tell that story to a virtual stranger whose reactions he'd have had no way to anticipate. "Well," she said finally, "I don't see any reason to have a problem with you. If the guys you pissed off had gotten their way, there'd be a cop killer walking free and an innocent man in prison."

He smiled. "Okay, then. Give me the paperwork."

xxxxxxxxx

"Who on Earth gave you this? I don't think I've ever seen a file this sparse on the details."

Olivia had gone to speak with Murphy while Goren took a look at the file, and she'd been shocked to discover that the squad Lieutenant harbored a trace of the attitude the former detective had expected from her. Fortunately, the ideas didn't seem to have been entrenched, and Olivia had been able to persuade him that they needed to take advantage of Goren's expertise and familiarity with the case. She'd come back to find him still studying the file intensely.

"FBI got territorial," she told him. "That's all they handed over. You said you've consulted for them; any chance you might have some hooks that would help us get the complete file? Our Lieutenant's been pushing at it all day and nothing's changing."

He sat in silence for a moment, clearly deep in thought. "I don't know about people I've worked with in consulting, but there is someone, a former colleague of mine who's with the FBI - she's been bounced between them and NYPD a lot. In any case, she was just recently transferred to work with someone I'm still close with. I can make a call and that might give me a way in."

"Make the call," Olivia said quickly. "If we can get that file, it might really help."

"The only thing is, I'd probably end up having to explain what's going on. I understand wanting to keep it internal, to prevent a panic, but I can't - I can't lie to her, to either of them really. I never could. I promise she's not the kind of person who'd leak a case file."

One look at Goren's eyes was all Olivia needed to know he was sincere. He fully knew that his connection, whoever she was, would not leak the file. "Okay."

xxxxxxxxx

"Barek's working on that file for me," Goren told Olivia. "One way or another, we ought to have it soon enough."

"I've filled the others in that you're working with us," Olivia replied. "There are only five of us including Lieutenant Murphy. I think you know Detective Tutuola -"

"Yes, we were in Narcotics at the same time." He shook the other man's hand warmly.

"And this is Detective Amaro, and Detective Rollins."

Goren shook each of their hands, and then Olivia called the focus back to the case. "So right off the top, what can you tell us that isn't in the version of the file we have?"

"Well, most of the basic details are here - the MO, the names of his victims, the dates and locations of each murder. What isn't in here is a lot of the more subjective work, like what Gage was contracted to do. His profile isn't in the file."

"Do you know it?" Amaro asked hopefully.

"Not word-for-word, but the general sense of it. The most notable thing is that Gage believed Sebastian was toying with him - not with the cops in general, but with him in particular. Now, some of that might have been Dec having a persecution complex, but if he's right on any level, that tells us something. It isn't unheard of for serial killers to personalize their relationships with the cops hunting them - I dealt with one myself who did, and let me tell you it's not pleasant - it's not common either."

"So what does that mean?" Rollins pressed.

Goren bit his lip, thinking hard. "Profiling is as much an art as a science, but I'd say it means he gets as much pleasure out of the hunt as he does out of the murders themselves. Nicole did," he added half to himself. "Killers like that take pleasure in the fact that so many people are putting in so much effort to find them, and even more so if they can pick an individual to mess with. If Sebastian did toy with Dec, I'd have to say he enjoyed the fact that he could get under the skin of a professional and throw his head out of whack. Gage's meltdown would have been the ultimate victory for him." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I wish I had his notes. Hopefully, they'll come with the file."

"You think they'll be coherent?" Amaro asked skeptically.

"I know how he thinks - how he thought, anyway, before the brain damage, and honestly I'm not so sure he's different now, he just lost any impulse control he had. In any case, I can follow his trains of thought for the most part, even if they seem nonsensical. I have his abridged notes on Sebastian from the Jo Gage case, I'll share them, but I couldn't help but get the sense that there was something he, ah, abridged out."

"What?" Olivia asked.

Goren shrugged. "I have no idea. I feel like the answer is in the Jo Gage case somewhere, but I've been over and over it in my head, and I can't put my finger on it."

"Why Jo Gage?" Rollins asked, confused. "She couldn't have been the real thing."

"But she was good enough to convince her father that she was. Profilers are usually the first people to make a crime as a copycat, because they spend so much time analyzing and trying to get into the killer's head. I know the Pierre LaRitz was part of it, but there had to be something more..." He sighed, rubbing his neck again. "I'll figure it out eventually. If Sebastian's original timeline holds, we have five months before we get another victim."

"That's good, anyway," Olivia commented. "I'm not saying we can afford to relax, but if you knew how many times we worked on countdowns of a matter of days..."

"I've done it more than a few times myself," Goren replied. "Believe me, I get it."

"Look," Murphy added from the doorway, "it's already quitting time, and I don't see anything we can do right now, not without those files. Why don't you guys go home, look at it with fresh eyes in the morning."

The detectives nodded their assent, all starting to get up and gather their things. Fin and Rollins spoke quietly, and then the blonde turned to her colleagues at the next desk. "Fin and I are going to grab a drink. Any of you guys want to come?" She looked from them to the tall man next to Olivia. "Goren, you're welcome too."

"Appreciate it," Olivia said, "but honestly, I just want to get home."

"Don't you know?" Fin added, teasing. "She's married now. Has to get home to the family."

She blushed a little but laughed too. "It's been two months, are you guys ever going to let that slide?"

"Not as long as you keep acting like a newlywed," Rollins teased. "Nick? Goren? You in?"

"I am," Amaro said, giving the blonde a smile. Fin and Olivia exchanged a knowing smile of their own. Rollins and Amaro's relationship wasn't exactly a secret.

"Sorry, I can't either," Goren replied. "I need to check up on a friend. But I appreciate you asking, I really do. Maybe next time?"

"Damn, man," Fin said lightly, "you're making me the third wheel here."

"Shut up, Fin," Rollins said lightly, slapping him on the arm. "Come on, let's go."

xxxxxxxxx

Goren was less than surprised to see a light coming from under his apartment door. He was even less surprised by the blonde woman who was curled up in his large armchair, apparently asleep. He stood there for a moment, just looking. God, she's so beautiful.

She turned her head, letting out a small whimper in her sleep, and he was instantly at her side, running his long fingers through her hair. "Shh, shh, it's okay now. I'm here."

Her head jerked and her eyes fluttered open. "Oh, hey." She straightened up a bit. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"It's okay. If you fall asleep while you're just sitting there, it probably means you needed it. Besides," he added, smiling, "I like watching you sleep. How are you doing?"

"I'm -" his deep, intense gaze stopped her from saying okay. "I'm a little shaky," she admitted. "I hate this so much. She's as good as dead; why does she still get to affect me like this?"

"Come here." He opened his arms and she fell into them; he cradled her close. "Oh, Alex, I'm so sorry I had to get you involved."

"No, I know why you did it," she replied, resting her head on his shoulder, letting his warm embrace make her feel safe. "You need that file, and Carolyn's your best hope of getting it, and now that she's working with me, I'm your obvious link to her. If that information can save a life, it's worth all this."

"I just wish there had been a better option." He carefully gathered her little frame up in his arms and slid into the chair, still holding her close. "I'm still so sorry I let that happen to you."

"It's not your fault," she whispered into his ear. "You know, Logan and Ross told me all about your interrogation of Gage. The second it looked like he might be responsible, you turned on him, you were ready to stop at nothing to get the truth out of him. I can't think how many people in your position would have insisted it couldn't have been him, he'd never do such a thing."

He ran his fingers through her hair, cradling her head to his shoulder. "Even then, you mattered more to me than he did. And now...now you mean even more."

"Remind me why it took us so long to get here?" she asked with a small laugh. "You and me, together - I think everyone in the world saw this happening before the idea crossed either of our minds."

"I'm glad we never became more than friends when we were working together," he admitted. "You know they would have split us up if we had, and after having you as a partner, I doubt my working with anyone else would've gone well. Just ask Bishop." He smiled, and his heart was warmed by the smile she gave him in response.

"Agreed," she whispered back. "I'm just sorry it took us so long to get here after you retired and I transferred."

"I guess by then, we'd gotten so used to denying our feelings that we'd started believing it ourselves." He kissed the top of her head. "When you called me two months ago and asked to have dinner, I barely dared to hope...I was on the verge of convincing myself that I was misreading your intentions through the lens of everything I wanted, that it wasn't really a date."

"Bet that illusion disappeared within the first five minutes of that dinner."

"You always did hate beating around the bush." He smiled into her hair. "But even so, just saying out of the blue that you had just come from the wedding of two cops who used to be partners when you called me and that you called because you thought we should give it a try...well, that's pretty blunt, even for you."

"Are you sorry that I did it?"

"Not in the slightest." He brushed her hair back, tipped her chin up, and gently kissed her. "This - this is something I stopped letting myself hope for for so long."

"Can I - can I stay the night?" she asked softly. "I'm afraid...nightmares."

"Of course." He bent forward, kissing the top of her head. "You're always welcome here, don't you know that?"

So yeah, they're a couple now. No prizes for guessing whose wedding Alex was at that gave her the idea!

I got a couple of anonymous reviews on the same topic, so I'm just going to address them here. I don't update on any sort of schedule, but an update every 2-3 weeks is fairly standard (maybe a little more frequent if I'm on a roll). For people who are primarily Criminal Intent fans (or, like me, fans of both), I suggest you check out my straight Criminal Intent story A New Reality.

This chapter references the CI episodes Blind Spot and Amends.

Please review.