It would be well into the afternoon hours before Mike got to see his partner again, the sudden and unexpected change in pace when it came to the DiBarolo case altering their day drastically.

Not that he begrudged it one bit.

Too many innocent people had fallen prey to Vincente's criminal conduct over the last decade and way too many hours of police work had been wasted trying to indict the mafia boss and stop his reign of terror.

While Adrian's admission might not be enough to win the war, his immediate future in a prison cell certainly felt like a battle won against his father. One son dead, one in prison, only one more to go before Vincente's house of cards would begin to crumble.

Even the sun seemed to agree with him, as it finally showed its face through the wall of clouds that sat over the Bay.

He'd just finished a fresh sinker when he saw Steve stroll through the glass-walled vestibule, casually carrying his beige overcoat over his left shoulder, his expression having lost that anxious tension of the last few days.

Apparently, without knowing so, Adrian's slip up was the defining event they'd all been needing.

Once he arrived at his desk, Steve briefly checked his inbox, then draped his coat over his chair before walking into the inner office, his smile widening as he reached down to unbutton the cufflinks of his navy dress shirt.

"Lieutenant, lieutenant…I see you are finally down for a break. I thought I'd come by to share the news before you hear it from somebody else. You won't believe what I found…", the young inspector began, then took a moment to stretch his back and walk over to the water carafe.

"Let me take a wild guess…"

With a wily smile, Mike grabbed his reading glasses and a handwritten note that had sat on his desk for the past couple of hours.

"You found…a duffel bag with airport tags going to LAX within the timeframe of Joey's murder and also a set of…brown…dress shoes with blood on them. Does that about sum it up?"

Loosing that gleeful attitude and feigning disappointment, Steve poured himself a glass of water, then shook his head as he swallowed.

"Wisinsky tell you that?"

"He did. Yeah."

"Aw man, here I was looking forward to seeing your face when presented with case-breaking evidence."

Leaning back in his chair, with his hands resting in his lap, Mike waited until his partner sat down across from of him before speaking up again.

"I hadn't heard from you in a while, so I was getting worried. Wisinsky said you were busy after finding all that evidence and waiting for the lab crew to go through the place."

"Turns out that Vincente's guys hadn't had enough time to take the villa apart and hide all the evidence, so we got lucky. I am about to call up a friend from TWA, see if they can pull the passenger lists to prove that he was on that flight."

Mike nodded patiently, his eyes drifting over to the now empty interrogation room to the right, then back over to his partner.

"You might be able to save yourself that phone call, buddy boy.", he replied, seeing the puzzlement in Steve's features, "He's currently busy negotiating a plea bargain with the DA's office."

"He's what? He…what is he pleading guilty to?"

"Manslaughter…"

Letting the word sit out there for a moment made Steve fall quiet, visibly upset by the outcome of their short-lived victory.

"Needless to say, Vincente's lawyers filled up the interrogation room faster than a flock of pigeons going after leftovers. He had three of them here, trying to tell me we interpreted his comments wrong. Halfway through, they requested a moment of privacy and when we came back, he had prepared a statement explaining what happened in Pasadena."

"Oh?", the young inspector mocked, then ran a hand across his face in undisguised frustration.

"He wanted to meet with his brother to make things right. But instead, they argued, tempers flared, he drew a knife and stabbed Joey several times. Then he panicked and ran off."

Letting the words sit out there, Mike ran a hand over the bandage hiding the gash on his temple, still in pain even though he tried to hide it.

"And Adrian honestly expects people to believe that? That's right out of one of those romance crime novels."

"And it is frustrating that we can't do a whole lot about that.", Mike added soothingly, "Even with your evidence, we can't prove that the murder was premediated. Unless the good lord sends down a witness willing to testify against the DiBarolo family and proving that Adrian flew to Pasadena to kill Joey, there isn't be one singular thing we can do about that."

When he saw that Steve was getting ready to rebut, he slowly raised his hand to calm his partner down.

"I have Conden ready to pop a bottle of champagne just for getting Adrian to this point. With his plea bargain, he will serve a mandatory ten-year term, which is more than what we would get with a botched trial that could end up in a dismissal altogether. Ten years gives us plenty of time to find some dirt on Ricardo and Vincente and break that family up once and for all. Gerry has cancelled all his appointments for the rest of the day to finalize the paperwork with Adrian's lawyers as we speak."

"I am surprised he bucked so easily. You'd think he'd try harder to prove his innocence."

"That'll be hard to do with the insight knowledge he had of the cause of death and the location. And I did use every chance I could to remind him that his villa was being taken apart piece by piece, that it would only be a matter of time before more evidence would turn up. I think he realized that ten years in the slammer is a small price to pay for preventing us from digging deeper into this thing and exposing everything that family has done over the years. He's already shamed Vincente by making this mistake and I am sure under the circumstances; prison is a safer place."

"Small victories, eh?"

"That's right. Sometimes that's all we can ask for.", Mike reassured him with a genuine smile, "But Conden is happy, Olsen is happy, the DA's office is happy, and best of all, Vincente is extremely unhappy. And that, my friend, makes me very happy."