After Upton had left the BPD, Mike had send him a list of friends and acquaintances of Miriam's at the time, which he had requested early that morning.

"So? What do you think about our friend Harry Upton now?" he asked while looking at the list of names.

Nikki sat down at her desk opposite him and took a deep breath. "I don't know. It's not like he's making a very clever move, as smart as I made it sound to him, and you know it, Mike. After all, it puts him in the game voluntarily. And then there's the thing with the blood in Diana Martiny's apartment... If he wants to kill Miriam Labo, why does he do it in an apartment where the blood traces are bound to be found? It would be much easier in a hidden place where he can bury the body afterward without having to drag it through a stairwell and across the street."

"Affection!" Mike replied without looking up from his list. 'They had an argument.'

Nikki shook her head. 'No, I don't think so. Let's assume that the two of them actually met in Martiny's apartment. For whatever reason. And then there was an argument --' She paused briefly. "You saw for yourself what it looks like there. It must have been a terrible slaughter. Would someone do such a thing in the heat of the moment?"

Mike looked up from the sheet. 'That's the wrong way to look at it, Professor. You can't ask yourself questions in such cases with 'one.' These crazy guys don't think and function like everyone else. If they did, they wouldn't kill anyone. We don't know what goes on in the mind of a murderer at the moment of the act because we can't put ourselves in their twisted world of thought."

"I see it a little differently. Tons of scientific papers and personality studies definitely put us in the position --"

"Yes, yes, I know," Mike interrupted his wife. 'Scientific papers like Kate's.' He rolled his eyes. 'Nikki, I think it's great that you're into this modern, theoretical stuff. It certainly puts you ahead of us ' regular' cops. Unfortunately, you seem to forget to remember the most straightforward fundamentals of our job. For example, If something looks like a duck and quacks like it, you should first assume it is a duck. And that's before you think that someone might have modified a lion in a complicated process and changed its nature so that we believe it's a duck."

They looked into each other's eyes without saying a word until Nikki couldn't help but smile. "That's pretty much the stupidest example anyone has ever given me as an explanatory model."

"But you understand what I mean?"

"Yes, sure."

Now Mike grinned, too. "Then it worked." He slapped his thighs and stood up from his chair. "So, let's go and speak with Miriam Labo's friends."

Nikki rose, too. "Okay. Shall we start with her boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend? She had a boyfriend?"

"Yes, a musician. A rock musician. Calls himself Joe Replay."

"How do you know that?"

"From the old file. I looked at it yesterday afternoon while you were with Nick."

Mike took a long look at the list of names in his hand. "But the name doesn't appear anywhere here."

"Look for Andrew Mayer. That's his real name."

"Yes, it's here. And how do you know that Andrew Mayer and Joe Replay are the same person?"

Nikki walked up to him, grinning broadly, and touched his shoulder. 'Google, Michael. Even we professors use it.'

Mike looked after her and couldn't suppress a chuckle.

xxx

They had been on the road for a few minutes. This time, Nikki was driving, which was relatively rare.

"You're wrong if you think I don't use the internet for research. You seem to have forgotten how I came into my wealth."

Nikki couldn't help grinning again. She would have bet that her husband wouldn't leave it at that. "I know that, Mike. As you hopefully know, Quantico didn't turn me into a theoretically lost academic who has no idea about police work."

A few seconds passed before Mike finally nodded with a smile.

Andrew Mayer's apartment was on the fourth floor of a five-story building. When Mayer opened the door for them, he wore drainpipe jeans and a black T-shirt with a brightly colored motif at chest height. His blond hair, probably dyed, was parted in the middle and fell to his shoulders.

"Hi," he said, eyeing the detectives up and down. 'Let me guess: you're officers.'

"No, we're not," Mike replied sharply.

Nikki would have liked to have pointed out to him at that moment that it wasn't wise to drive a wedge between yourself and the person you wanted to know something from right at the beginning.

"No?"

"No. We are detectives of the homicide division. Detective Mike Fisher and Detective Veronica O'Laighin."

Mayer shrugged. 'That's what I said.' With that, he turned away and left them standing.

"Airhead," Mike whispered, entering the apartment, followed by Nikki, who closed the door behind her.

She wasn't quite sure how she had imagined the apartment of a rock musician. However, what she saw in front of her when she stood at the living room door, she would have classified in precisely this direction, even without having seen the owner before.

The dominant color in the entire room was black. The couch, armchair, two walls... black. The rest varied between shades of gray and brown. Only a bright red electric guitar leaning against the wall provided a colorful contrast.

Mayer plopped down in a worn armchair, crossed his legs over the armrests, and looked at them provocatively. He didn't offer them a seat, which Nikki didn't take particularly severely.

"And now you want to know if I killed Mira, right?"

"How do you know we're here for Ms. Labo? And what makes you think she's dead?" Nikki asked in puzzlement.

Mayer let out a laugh. "Do you think I'm stupid? The internet is full of stories about an entire apartment smeared with her blood. And on Facebook, I saw that this journalist guy – covered in blood from head to toe – was walking around Boston. One and one equals two."

"That doesn't mean that she's dead."

"Yeah, right. And just because I scratched between my legs doesn't mean I was itchy." Mayer laughed nastily.

"You know Harry Upton?" Mike interrupted him.

"Upton? Of course. He started drooling when he saw Mira somewhere."

"You think he hit on your girlfriend?" Nikki wanted to know.

"You think he hit on your girlfriend," Mayer mimicked her. "Man, just relax and talk like a normal person. Of course, he hit on my Mira. What else?"

Nikki took a deep breath and raised her eyebrows a little. "And that didn't matter to you?"

Mayer swung his legs down from the armrest and sat up straight. "Shit, no, I cared. That's why I told the guy there would be trouble if he didn't leave Mira alone."

"And? Did he leave her alone after that?" Mike followed up when Mayer made no move to continue.

"I don't know," Andrew Mayer's voice dropped. 'We broke up shortly after that.'

Although she had read it in the reports, Nikki asked, 'When was that?'

Mayer rolled his eyes. 'Man, you're exhausting. I've already told you all that. It was about a month before she disappeared.'

"Was that the reason for the breakup?" Nikki didn't let up.

"Man, I really don't feel like going through all that shit again. You can read all about it."

"Do you know where Ms. Labo might have disappeared at the time?"

"Mayer slid forward on his chair a little more. "Mira didn't just disappear like that, that's for sure. She had just received a great offer for a role in a movie. As career-oriented as Mira was, she would never have let that go to disappear. She was murdered, for sure. She would never have passed up a film role on her own. Especially not for a movie that would open doors for her in Hollywood. But I already told all of that to your buddies back then." His legs landed back on the armrest so that he was hanging at an angle in the chair.

"So where's her blood coming from, you clever guy?" Nikki would have liked to ask him, but she left it.

Instead, she looked at her husband, but he didn't seem to have any more questions. So she turned back to the musician. "Thanks for the friendly information. Hang on, we'll make it out on our own."

"What a fucked-up guy," Mike grumbled as they descended the stairs, whereupon Nikki shot him a surprised look. He still surprises her every now and then.

Questioning Miriam Labo's circle of friends revealed something new for the two investigators in only one respect. When asked about Harry Upton, it was hinted several times that he was no child of sorrow, especially regarding women. However, everyone avoided the question when they explicitly asked whether something had happened between him and the actress. Nobody knew anything. Only one of Labo's fellow actresses thought she could imagine it. She knew from her own experience what made Upton tick.

It was already a little after seven pm when they had worked through the list.

"What do you think of a nice steak?" Mike stroked his belly. 'I've been rumbling for hours.'

Nikki didn't feel like sitting in a possibly overcrowded restaurant, but she didn't want to reject Mike's suggestion. She also felt a nagging hunger in her stomach. "Yes, good idea."

"My point. And while we're there, we'll think hard about an unanswered question in this case."

"How convenient," replied Nikki. "Then we can add breakfast to the list."

xxx

Mike grinned from ear to ear and took a deep breath. "Just like old times," he murmured.

Laying next to him in bed, Nikki looked up at the ceiling with a frown and licked her lips. "It's not like Quantico is on the other side of the world, Mike. You could have come by anytime."

He closed his eyes and licked his lips as well. "When you left, you said you needed a break, some distance."

She frowned and turned to her husband, looking him up and down. "From Boston, from the BPD, Mike," she whispered into the dim room, "but not from you."

Mike smiled, but it wasn't a relieved smile. "That sounded different the day you packed your things without talking to me."

Nikki looked at him for a long time and raised her eyebrows. "I told you back then that Kate invited me to stay with her for a year so that I could refine my investigative techniques. And I decided that I would become so good that all paths would be open to me."

Mike snorted. "Well, you've certainly managed that."

"Yes, because I love my job, and I'm obviously not blessed with the same gifts as Ma, Kate, Ben, or Ash, so I took my chance and worked with Kate on my investigative work. The more I know as an investigator, the better my chances of seeing through the criminals and bringing them to justice. That's why I decided to spend a year at Quantico."

"Okay," Mike sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "Okay, but how does that apply to our current case? What use has all your theoretical knowledge of personality analysis and criminal profiling been to you so far?"

Nikki slid closer to her husband. "Not much," she admitted. "But I'm convinced we won't be like this for much longer. We need one more puzzle piece to see the bigger picture."

He sighed heavily. "There is still an interesting formulation in this case."

Nikki grinned. "And you have the advantage that you can still benefit from my knowledge of the latest scientific methods. The classic win-win situation."

"You can call it what you like," Mike replied with less humor than Nikki had thought. "It would be nice if we had something that would help us in this case. At the moment, regardless of your high theoretical and practical knowledge, we are floundering around rather aimlessly."

"Yes, I know," she sighed, laying her head on his chest. She listened to his heartbeat for a few seconds with a frown. "What happened after I left?"

Mike took a deep breath. "Shortly after that, we had a case involving a ten-year-old girl who had been severely abused and killed. It quickly became clear that the perpetrator must come from the family environment. As it turned out, it was the perpetrators. We stumbled upon an incredible mess. The parents had abused the girl together with one of the father's brothers over a long period. Then they rented her out by the hour to guys with similar tastes and collected money for it. One of these customers couldn't control himself and killed her during his perverse expressions of love."

Nikki could feel that the memory was still bothering her husband. 'I remember the case. It was all over the media,' she said, touching his chest.

"Yeah. When the mother caved and gave a full confession..." Mike paused and swallowed several times. "She described to me in detail what they did to the child – she, her husband, her brother-in-law – as if she were talking about a fucking Sunday stroll. I thought I knew the depths to which people could sink, Nikki, but what I heard back then --"

"Was unimaginable," she whispered and closed her eyes.

"Yes," Mike replied after taking a deep breath. After a few seconds of silence, he kissed her head. "I'm glad you're home again, Nikki."

Nikki wrapped her arm around his middle tighter and nodded in agreement. "Yeah, me too."