the wolf at the gate
Albert Fish, New York City, 1934
L&O:CI, gen
~3,500 words
Have you ever noticed how death seems to follow you around? Written for the Halloweenathon.
Note: Imagine this existing slightly to the left of canon. Call it a 'taking turns of phrase literally' AU.
"You wouldn't know my first address. I go a long way back."
Harlan Ellison, Mephisto in Onyx
Any cop can get a confession. A threat, a bribe, a lie, a punch, all the things they've never quite been taught but know how to do anyway. New York City is a losing battle, and as long as the arm-twisting, planted evidence, pullover for a broken taillight never hit the news, well, who cares? This is the war on crime, and rules change. Except confessions can be recanted, and lawyers will find weaknesses, and cases fall apart. The real trick is to make the perp want to confess, get inside his head, bring him to the breaking point, be his confidant, his father confessor.
This is why the New York DA's office has a hardon for the Major Case Squad. Detectives Eames and Goren are the kings of the plea deal, and the rest of the department does its best to keep up. Cases with only the smallest scraps of physical evidence, and the bastards keep pleading out. No fuss, no muss.
Ask Detective Eames why their solve rate is so high, and she'll say something about hard work and a little luck, with a sidelong look at her partner. She's a good cop, maybe a great one, but it's like someone holding the leash collaring a pitbull: everyone knows what the real threat is. She works with evidence, her partner works with instinct. He gets the confessions, and that's where their cases are closed.
So ask Detective Goren why these people give everything up to him, and he'll say, I know human nature. I see the fear in people.
He'll say, I see the darkness in them.
"You're right," the man says. "I do feel better now. Having confessed - knowing others now share my burden." He grins, skin stretched at the corners of his mouth, teeth shining in the fluorescent light.
"Burden?" Goren slides the documents into his binder, squeaks his chair back.
"The truth of what I've done. And on this day, of all days. It's fitting."
"Is today something special?" There's an impatient tap on the mirror, and he agrees; he isn't one to shut a perp up, but he's tired and Eames had promised him a drink afterward.
"You don't remember?"
"Mr. Edwards, I don't have time for this."
"It's an anniversary. Think."
With a lurch in his stomach, he does. Jesus, how could he possibly-
"The day you found out who you really are. And now you know who I am. Like I said." Spreading his hands, leaning back, smiling. "It's fitting."
Outside, Eames, not knowing how to react. "This department leaks like a sieve, Bobby. Don't worry about it."
Ross nodding. Edwards being led down the hall, handcuffed.
Eames, still unsure. "How about that drink, huh?"
Later that night, falling into bed, he tries to shake the unease. There are rats in the walls, he knows that much (half the time everyone assumes it's him, and he hasn't forgotten the miniature murder scene in his desk drawer), and things get out, make the rounds. Maybe this is how suspects feel when he unearths some buried secret of theirs, something he has no right to know; at least now he's sure it's effective.
He's braced for another sleepless night, insomnia being more the rule than the exception in his life right now, but he passes out around two. Dreams about a house that's familiar but constantly changing, rooms not where he left them, hallways curving and contracting, everything leading him down to the basement, where with absolute, arbitrary dream-logic, the thing is waiting.
He wakes up the next morning with no memory of the dream. The best night of sleep he's ever had, feels like, and he waves to the pigeons waddling around the fire escape outside his window, hums a snatch of something off-key as he makes coffee, knots his tie. (This action he does with the mindless assurance of routine, and he doesn't even realize what he's done until Eames leans over, gives it a tug, and says "Good, I was afraid you were gonna devolve into sweatpants and t-shirts.") It's a beautiful day, and he's ready for it.
It's the next case when things start coming easier. Everything makes sense. Ross thinks it's the husband, Eames thinks it's the lover, but he can feel it, can smell the blood. It's the sister, he sees it in her eyes. Fuck evidence, he just knows.
He has to wait, bite his tongue, let Eames think it's just the usual intuitive leap. Lets her find the life insurance policy, lets the techs spray Luminol where he already knows the blood is.
It makes him giddy, everything in its place and everything open to him. He tells himself it's just his subconscious doing gymnastics, just years of police work giving him shortcuts. The fog that surrounded him after his brother's murder, the slowness, boredom, depression, that's all gone. Crystal-clear widescreen vision, and he can't wait for the next one. He hasn't been this excited in years.
It happens again, and again. Ross congratulates him, puts in a commendation, looks like he finally gets why Goren has a reputation as one of the most feared detectives in the force. Nichols gives him a high-five, but keeps him at arm's length; he's got his own reputation to preserve. Eames stops looking at him like she's afraid he'll kill himself. The cockier lawyers jump at a chance to work against him. This is the stuff of legends.
All he needs is the interrogation. Just get them in that room, and fuck their lawyers, because he sees all the cracks, all the weaknesses, knows just where to slide in the knife. He tells Eames as much as he can, but he can't tell her everything, and all she's doing now is slowing him down. She doesn't get it. It's still about the puzzle, but now he knows what the picture is, and it's just a question of finding enough pieces to get the arrest warrant.
The perps, they don't know what hit them. Ross is falling all over himself to get Goren assigned to cases. Eames is starting to resent doing the gruntwork, more than she ever did, and he does his best to keep her in the loop, in the cocoon they've created for themselves, but it's becoming harder and harder, and he doesn't want to stop.
When he tells her it's the neighbor, she turns to him and bites her lip and says, "You're leaving me behind here. How do you know? How do you know any of this? This is getting weird, Bobby."
"Eames. Alex." In a rare move, he reaches out to take her hand. "I just know. Isn't that enough?"
She pulls her hand away. "Not for me."
The headaches get worse. The pills don't make him groggy, but they don't really help, either. Eames is starting to worry. She checks his desk and coat pockets for medication (just the Tylenol), follows him around during searches, takes notes. But there's nothing wrong with him, can't she see that? He's never been better. Aside from the migraines, which are sporadic and when they come he can deal with them, and the bad ones only happen when he's not on the hunt. He feels like he could move a mountain, run a marathon. He's eating less (he's hardly ever hungry), and it's not like he couldn't stand to drop a few pounds, but she nags when he skips lunch, gives exposition on the danger of diet pills (he's not taking anything, doesn't she get it?), leaves bananas on his desk (he puts them back on her side).
She corners him in an available office, closes the door, pulls down the blinds. "I'm worried about you," she says. He's thinking about the case. "Is anything wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." He tries for flippancy, but he can tell she's scared, and when she's scared she won't back down, and she won't be brushed off. "I'm fine, really. I swear. There's nothing wrong with me."
"Bobby. You're not eating, not sleeping, the headaches...you look like hell. I think you should see a doctor. And if you're worried about the money, I'll help with the bill, I just...I feel like I'm losing you, and it scares the shit out of me."
He searches her face, and something inside him tilts. She could be right, part of him says. She's Eames and she knows you. Remember how much she means to you. So he says, again, "Nothing is wrong," but then, "But, I'll. Get tested, if it would make you feel better."
"I'll make the appointment. And I won't tell Ross, okay?" She pauses, puts a hand over his. "Until then, promise me you'll take care of yourself."
"Promise," he says.
A week later, they're waiting for results. Or Eames is waiting, and he can't bring himself to be concerned. One of their cases has reached trial, the defense working for not guilty by reason of mental disease. They put him on the stand. He knows to stick to the facts. The reliable, no-nonsense detective. Just the facts, ma'am.
The defense attorney calls him back after the court breaks for the day. Jonas Martin, in a suit that probably cost more than Goren made in a month.
"Let me buy you a drink," Martin says.
"I'm a witness for the prosecution."
"I know. This isn't about the case. One drink, that's all."
Something makes him agree. They stop at a bar he vaguely remembers from one of the few times Carver stopped being pissed at him long enough to celebrate a victory; a lawyer bar, everyone suited and smug.
He's preparing to say it's just that I'm not looking for a relationship right now when Martin leans over and whispers,
"I know what you are."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"They say you can read minds."
"I can read faces. And books. It's just psychology, and experience. What is-" His head is spinning. "What-" he tries again, then stops.
"You're like me," Martin says. You're like me. In his head, and a rush -
Three AM, a noise downstairs. He knows how to stay close to the wall so the stairs won't creak. Tip-toeing down, towards the light in the kitchen. His mother at the table, waiting for him; old wiring in the lamps, and flickering light, and her hand around a cross so hard it draws blood. Saying, don't think I can't see what you really are.
The cold of South Korea in winter, the first body's shown up bloody against the perimeter fence. It's his first murder scene. The searchlights picking up every detail, and he can't look away.
Those big doe eyes. His Social Security number. How old were you when you first realized your mommy wasn't like all the other mommies?
Even Eames doubting him, seeing something wrong in him. Of all the people to go to bat for. Something he can't explain to her, how he feels the loneliness in this man, sharp as a knife. How he knows that desperation.
The book buried beneath spring's first flowering, his shovel hitting plastic and paper. Her photograph. A third execution, and there is nowhere else for him to go.
Blood on his knuckles. This isn't for the case anymore, this isn't about Donny. This feels automatic. Throwing everything he's got into each punch, teeth and blood and bone. William Brady, his fathers' son. It takes three of them to drag him away.
Declan in the interrogation room, the air draining out and he can barely breathe, barely think, something deep inside him snapping. "When you met him, didn't it all make sense?"
There's no bullet in the gun, but there might as well be.
Paul Develdis cowering before him. Each crime scene clear in his mind: this is an ancient evil, an old failing. Dirt and bone and the word. Preying on the weakness in him. Say his name.
The mental ward, the hum and howl of the prison walls. Declan again. "Have you ever noticed how death seems to follow you around?"
Goren, folded awkwardly into the tiny metal chair, hides the almost involuntary eye-roll with a hand over his face. "It doesn't follow me. I follow it. And that's not exactly-"
(Sorry, that one hasn't happened yet)
This is-
Stop it
This is who you are.
He comes to in a diner, head pounding, stuffed into a booth, the coffee in front of him cold. Something cutting into his palm: one of his business cards, and written on the back in an unfamiliar hand, Be mindful.
The tests come back clean, and now Eames is looking at him like he might be crazy. He knows the diagnostic manuals backwards and forwards, and there's a few things he might have (there's certainly a family history), but why would he want to be cured of this? He's alert, on point, efficient. He's fucking brilliant. And the headaches, circles under his eyes, clothes hanging loose, so what? His body is secondary. As long as his senses work, what's it really matter?
And it's just rampant curiosity that makes him look up his friendly counselor in the system, find a place of work, show up uninvited.
He insinuates himself into Martin's office, finds a comfortable chair, and waits. Fifteen minutes later, Martin walks in.
"Mr. Martin, what the fuck was-"
"Hello to you too, detective. I read minds. So do you."
"I don't-"
"You read minds. You get inside people's thoughts. It's not like the movies, people don't think in complete sentences. A person is just this mess of emotions, actions, reactions. People like us, we find a way into that mess.
I call it diving. You evidently don't even realize you're doing it. You're just fumbling around, detective, and you keep running into the worst this city has to offer. Looking for the evil in people."
"This is bullshit," Goren says, but it's not particularly convincing.
Martin steps close, bends down to whisper in his ear: "The hateful, the violent, the lost. All the places you could go, and you're in the sewers." He steps back. "You like that little move? I got it from you."
"You got a client off today by reading the jury. And you know he's guilty."
"And you're the crusader for justice, aren't you? Just remember this. It's not a clean connection. You go in, you leave something there, and they leave something in you. If you lose control, or never even attempt to have control, like you're doing, it can kill you."
"I am in control." Nothing's wrong.
"Look, detective, I don't like you enough to tell you to be careful, but from one diver to another, just some advice: keep track of yourself, or you'll get lost. Now if you don't mind?" Martin gestures to the door. "I have a meeting in five minutes."
The next case he knows before it even happens. He feels it. The argument, the anger, hands around her neck, the knife sliding against bone. He can taste the blood in the back of his throat. The call comes early morning, before his alarm goes off, but he's already awake.
"Helen Walter, 23, late of the Upper East Side. Found by a garbage man." Eames is following him around the body, watching him.
"Yeah," he says. "We should start with the husband," though that's a lie.
The husband is a nervous 30-year-old limp wrist who hasn't admitted to himself yet that he's a fag. Goren feels sorry for him. Eames takes lead on the questioning, Goren wanders around the apartment looking at photographs, flipping through magazines, twiddling his thumbs.
When they leave, Eames jotting down notes (he wishes he could tell her it's a waste of time), he stalls in the doorway and turns back.
"Take this as an opportunity," he says. "You're not the marrying kind. That guy at the gym is single, you know." He closes the door on Mr. Walter's surprise.
Back in the squadroom, he flips through books until he finds research to support what he already knows, that the killer will strike again. He waits for the next body.
4:35, something in him slips. He wakes up three hours later pulled over on the shoulder of a road he doesn't recognize, streetlights pooling yellow around him, the sense of something feral in the trees beyond. He GPS's himself back to civilization. Thinking, he needs another brain on this case. Someone who knows enough to help, but not enough to be dangerous. Someone like -
The mental ward, the hum and howl of the prison walls. Declan again. "Bobby! What a pleasant surprise. Is it a case?"
"It's a case."
"You need my help."
"I could use it, yes."
Declan purses his lips. "Another case. All these murders, Bobby. Have you ever noticed how death seems to follow you around?"
That sinking, slipping feeling again. "What did you say?"
"If I say something that sounds crazy, it's most likely because I am crazy. Pay it no mind. Now, give me the rundown."
There's a sudden, obscure memory of his mother. Things repeating themselves. Seeing things that aren't there, but might as well be. He wrests himself back to the present. "The same m.o., over and over, but one person couldn't have done all of the murders. So we start looking for the person responsible for each individual attack. We get one woman confessing to killing her ex-lover, one psychopath who looks good for two more, another confession for the last one. Three different people, five murders. There's no record of any of their paths intersecting."
"And that means?"
"Means they all have the same partner."
"Maybe someone who doesn't realize what he's doing." Declan pauses, scrunches his face. "Sorry, no, that didn't make any sense. Lucidity comes and goes, sadly, and when it goes it's replaced by gibberish. So. What is the-" (Here a few seconds of jazz hands) "-the modus operandi? If I may ask?"
Goren, demonstrating on an invisible victim, "Restrained with a hand to the throat, then a knife between the ribs. Quick, efficient, no fluids or fingerprints, no recognizable ritual."
"Just a kill."
Goren nods.
"It sounds familiar." Gnawing on a dirty fingernail, eyebrows drawn together. "D'you remember that first case? When you were in the army, and I was still a respected criminal profiler."
"How could I forget."
"We caught that bastard, remember? You and me together. We were a force to be reckoned with, Bobby. Some of the best years of my life, I mean that."
"You're saying it could be a copycat?"
"He has the same m.o., doesn't he? Maybe one of your enemies, one of mine. I'd say it was Nicole, but..."
Back in the interrogation room, sitting across from a nameless boy barely old enough to vote. "I don't know why I did it," he says. "I just did." He's calm, cool. He smiles. "I've seen you before," he says.
"We're from the same neighborhood." Goren can feel Eames on the other side of the glass, watching him, can feel her tense worry, her love. She loves him, he knows that now.
"No, it's not that. It's something more intimate." Still smiling. "I've seen you." Looks straight into his eyes, into him -
He knows. He knows, and this is the point where it all comes crashing down. A slip, and he remembers:
His flashlight on a Korean man, the pale stillness of death, bruises purple on his neck. Declan coaching him, teaching him, get inside his head. Think like he thinks. The hunter needs to understand his prey.
The faultline in the city, the open wound, falling in and witnessing every frailty, every failure, every compulsion. Finding guilt with a perfect aim. No profile, no evidence, just the space between him and them growing smaller and smaller. Everything falling into place.
The grave yawning below and the city waiting to tumble in, hearing the white noise of it, every gunshot, every scream. Carrying them with him, leaving traces behind. The twist of cause and effect, dream before crime, feeling the knife in his hand, the warm rush of blood. Looking out and seeing what he wanted to see, finding things he'd already found.
Finding what he'd made.
He should be laughing, really; Dec had told him it was an old enemy out for revenge, and hasn't he always been his own worst enemy? Hasn't he always known he'll bring himself down one day? The one person he could never catch.
"I'm yours," the boy says.
The knife bagged in front of him, shining in the fluorescent light. He takes it out, turns it around, the edge and glint, the weight of it. He puts it back down, slides it across the table.
"Don't think you're the first one," the boy says. "It's happened before. It's ancient. You know, you won't admit it. You know what it is and you know it won't stop until it's through with you."
The knife between them. Eames behind the glass, heart sinking. This is the point where he has a choice.
He says, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize."
He says, "I know what has to happen."
And, "Today's an anniversary, you know. It's fitting, I guess."
The boy smiles again, and picks up the knife.
L&O:CI, gen
~3,500 words
Have you ever noticed how death seems to follow you around? Written for the Halloweenathon.
Note: Imagine this existing slightly to the left of canon. Call it a 'taking turns of phrase literally' AU.
"You wouldn't know my first address. I go a long way back."
Harlan Ellison, Mephisto in Onyx
Any cop can get a confession. A threat, a bribe, a lie, a punch, all the things they've never quite been taught but know how to do anyway. New York City is a losing battle, and as long as the arm-twisting, planted evidence, pullover for a broken taillight never hit the news, well, who cares? This is the war on crime, and rules change. Except confessions can be recanted, and lawyers will find weaknesses, and cases fall apart. The real trick is to make the perp want to confess, get inside his head, bring him to the breaking point, be his confidant, his father confessor.
This is why the New York DA's office has a hardon for the Major Case Squad. Detectives Eames and Goren are the kings of the plea deal, and the rest of the department does its best to keep up. Cases with only the smallest scraps of physical evidence, and the bastards keep pleading out. No fuss, no muss.
Ask Detective Eames why their solve rate is so high, and she'll say something about hard work and a little luck, with a sidelong look at her partner. She's a good cop, maybe a great one, but it's like someone holding the leash collaring a pitbull: everyone knows what the real threat is. She works with evidence, her partner works with instinct. He gets the confessions, and that's where their cases are closed.
So ask Detective Goren why these people give everything up to him, and he'll say, I know human nature. I see the fear in people.
He'll say, I see the darkness in them.
"You're right," the man says. "I do feel better now. Having confessed - knowing others now share my burden." He grins, skin stretched at the corners of his mouth, teeth shining in the fluorescent light.
"Burden?" Goren slides the documents into his binder, squeaks his chair back.
"The truth of what I've done. And on this day, of all days. It's fitting."
"Is today something special?" There's an impatient tap on the mirror, and he agrees; he isn't one to shut a perp up, but he's tired and Eames had promised him a drink afterward.
"You don't remember?"
"Mr. Edwards, I don't have time for this."
"It's an anniversary. Think."
With a lurch in his stomach, he does. Jesus, how could he possibly-
"The day you found out who you really are. And now you know who I am. Like I said." Spreading his hands, leaning back, smiling. "It's fitting."
Outside, Eames, not knowing how to react. "This department leaks like a sieve, Bobby. Don't worry about it."
Ross nodding. Edwards being led down the hall, handcuffed.
Eames, still unsure. "How about that drink, huh?"
Later that night, falling into bed, he tries to shake the unease. There are rats in the walls, he knows that much (half the time everyone assumes it's him, and he hasn't forgotten the miniature murder scene in his desk drawer), and things get out, make the rounds. Maybe this is how suspects feel when he unearths some buried secret of theirs, something he has no right to know; at least now he's sure it's effective.
He's braced for another sleepless night, insomnia being more the rule than the exception in his life right now, but he passes out around two. Dreams about a house that's familiar but constantly changing, rooms not where he left them, hallways curving and contracting, everything leading him down to the basement, where with absolute, arbitrary dream-logic, the thing is waiting.
He wakes up the next morning with no memory of the dream. The best night of sleep he's ever had, feels like, and he waves to the pigeons waddling around the fire escape outside his window, hums a snatch of something off-key as he makes coffee, knots his tie. (This action he does with the mindless assurance of routine, and he doesn't even realize what he's done until Eames leans over, gives it a tug, and says "Good, I was afraid you were gonna devolve into sweatpants and t-shirts.") It's a beautiful day, and he's ready for it.
It's the next case when things start coming easier. Everything makes sense. Ross thinks it's the husband, Eames thinks it's the lover, but he can feel it, can smell the blood. It's the sister, he sees it in her eyes. Fuck evidence, he just knows.
He has to wait, bite his tongue, let Eames think it's just the usual intuitive leap. Lets her find the life insurance policy, lets the techs spray Luminol where he already knows the blood is.
It makes him giddy, everything in its place and everything open to him. He tells himself it's just his subconscious doing gymnastics, just years of police work giving him shortcuts. The fog that surrounded him after his brother's murder, the slowness, boredom, depression, that's all gone. Crystal-clear widescreen vision, and he can't wait for the next one. He hasn't been this excited in years.
It happens again, and again. Ross congratulates him, puts in a commendation, looks like he finally gets why Goren has a reputation as one of the most feared detectives in the force. Nichols gives him a high-five, but keeps him at arm's length; he's got his own reputation to preserve. Eames stops looking at him like she's afraid he'll kill himself. The cockier lawyers jump at a chance to work against him. This is the stuff of legends.
All he needs is the interrogation. Just get them in that room, and fuck their lawyers, because he sees all the cracks, all the weaknesses, knows just where to slide in the knife. He tells Eames as much as he can, but he can't tell her everything, and all she's doing now is slowing him down. She doesn't get it. It's still about the puzzle, but now he knows what the picture is, and it's just a question of finding enough pieces to get the arrest warrant.
The perps, they don't know what hit them. Ross is falling all over himself to get Goren assigned to cases. Eames is starting to resent doing the gruntwork, more than she ever did, and he does his best to keep her in the loop, in the cocoon they've created for themselves, but it's becoming harder and harder, and he doesn't want to stop.
When he tells her it's the neighbor, she turns to him and bites her lip and says, "You're leaving me behind here. How do you know? How do you know any of this? This is getting weird, Bobby."
"Eames. Alex." In a rare move, he reaches out to take her hand. "I just know. Isn't that enough?"
She pulls her hand away. "Not for me."
The headaches get worse. The pills don't make him groggy, but they don't really help, either. Eames is starting to worry. She checks his desk and coat pockets for medication (just the Tylenol), follows him around during searches, takes notes. But there's nothing wrong with him, can't she see that? He's never been better. Aside from the migraines, which are sporadic and when they come he can deal with them, and the bad ones only happen when he's not on the hunt. He feels like he could move a mountain, run a marathon. He's eating less (he's hardly ever hungry), and it's not like he couldn't stand to drop a few pounds, but she nags when he skips lunch, gives exposition on the danger of diet pills (he's not taking anything, doesn't she get it?), leaves bananas on his desk (he puts them back on her side).
She corners him in an available office, closes the door, pulls down the blinds. "I'm worried about you," she says. He's thinking about the case. "Is anything wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." He tries for flippancy, but he can tell she's scared, and when she's scared she won't back down, and she won't be brushed off. "I'm fine, really. I swear. There's nothing wrong with me."
"Bobby. You're not eating, not sleeping, the headaches...you look like hell. I think you should see a doctor. And if you're worried about the money, I'll help with the bill, I just...I feel like I'm losing you, and it scares the shit out of me."
He searches her face, and something inside him tilts. She could be right, part of him says. She's Eames and she knows you. Remember how much she means to you. So he says, again, "Nothing is wrong," but then, "But, I'll. Get tested, if it would make you feel better."
"I'll make the appointment. And I won't tell Ross, okay?" She pauses, puts a hand over his. "Until then, promise me you'll take care of yourself."
"Promise," he says.
A week later, they're waiting for results. Or Eames is waiting, and he can't bring himself to be concerned. One of their cases has reached trial, the defense working for not guilty by reason of mental disease. They put him on the stand. He knows to stick to the facts. The reliable, no-nonsense detective. Just the facts, ma'am.
The defense attorney calls him back after the court breaks for the day. Jonas Martin, in a suit that probably cost more than Goren made in a month.
"Let me buy you a drink," Martin says.
"I'm a witness for the prosecution."
"I know. This isn't about the case. One drink, that's all."
Something makes him agree. They stop at a bar he vaguely remembers from one of the few times Carver stopped being pissed at him long enough to celebrate a victory; a lawyer bar, everyone suited and smug.
He's preparing to say it's just that I'm not looking for a relationship right now when Martin leans over and whispers,
"I know what you are."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"They say you can read minds."
"I can read faces. And books. It's just psychology, and experience. What is-" His head is spinning. "What-" he tries again, then stops.
"You're like me," Martin says. You're like me. In his head, and a rush -
Three AM, a noise downstairs. He knows how to stay close to the wall so the stairs won't creak. Tip-toeing down, towards the light in the kitchen. His mother at the table, waiting for him; old wiring in the lamps, and flickering light, and her hand around a cross so hard it draws blood. Saying, don't think I can't see what you really are.
The cold of South Korea in winter, the first body's shown up bloody against the perimeter fence. It's his first murder scene. The searchlights picking up every detail, and he can't look away.
Those big doe eyes. His Social Security number. How old were you when you first realized your mommy wasn't like all the other mommies?
Even Eames doubting him, seeing something wrong in him. Of all the people to go to bat for. Something he can't explain to her, how he feels the loneliness in this man, sharp as a knife. How he knows that desperation.
The book buried beneath spring's first flowering, his shovel hitting plastic and paper. Her photograph. A third execution, and there is nowhere else for him to go.
Blood on his knuckles. This isn't for the case anymore, this isn't about Donny. This feels automatic. Throwing everything he's got into each punch, teeth and blood and bone. William Brady, his fathers' son. It takes three of them to drag him away.
Declan in the interrogation room, the air draining out and he can barely breathe, barely think, something deep inside him snapping. "When you met him, didn't it all make sense?"
There's no bullet in the gun, but there might as well be.
Paul Develdis cowering before him. Each crime scene clear in his mind: this is an ancient evil, an old failing. Dirt and bone and the word. Preying on the weakness in him. Say his name.
The mental ward, the hum and howl of the prison walls. Declan again. "Have you ever noticed how death seems to follow you around?"
Goren, folded awkwardly into the tiny metal chair, hides the almost involuntary eye-roll with a hand over his face. "It doesn't follow me. I follow it. And that's not exactly-"
(Sorry, that one hasn't happened yet)
This is-
Stop it
This is who you are.
He comes to in a diner, head pounding, stuffed into a booth, the coffee in front of him cold. Something cutting into his palm: one of his business cards, and written on the back in an unfamiliar hand, Be mindful.
The tests come back clean, and now Eames is looking at him like he might be crazy. He knows the diagnostic manuals backwards and forwards, and there's a few things he might have (there's certainly a family history), but why would he want to be cured of this? He's alert, on point, efficient. He's fucking brilliant. And the headaches, circles under his eyes, clothes hanging loose, so what? His body is secondary. As long as his senses work, what's it really matter?
And it's just rampant curiosity that makes him look up his friendly counselor in the system, find a place of work, show up uninvited.
He insinuates himself into Martin's office, finds a comfortable chair, and waits. Fifteen minutes later, Martin walks in.
"Mr. Martin, what the fuck was-"
"Hello to you too, detective. I read minds. So do you."
"I don't-"
"You read minds. You get inside people's thoughts. It's not like the movies, people don't think in complete sentences. A person is just this mess of emotions, actions, reactions. People like us, we find a way into that mess.
I call it diving. You evidently don't even realize you're doing it. You're just fumbling around, detective, and you keep running into the worst this city has to offer. Looking for the evil in people."
"This is bullshit," Goren says, but it's not particularly convincing.
Martin steps close, bends down to whisper in his ear: "The hateful, the violent, the lost. All the places you could go, and you're in the sewers." He steps back. "You like that little move? I got it from you."
"You got a client off today by reading the jury. And you know he's guilty."
"And you're the crusader for justice, aren't you? Just remember this. It's not a clean connection. You go in, you leave something there, and they leave something in you. If you lose control, or never even attempt to have control, like you're doing, it can kill you."
"I am in control." Nothing's wrong.
"Look, detective, I don't like you enough to tell you to be careful, but from one diver to another, just some advice: keep track of yourself, or you'll get lost. Now if you don't mind?" Martin gestures to the door. "I have a meeting in five minutes."
The next case he knows before it even happens. He feels it. The argument, the anger, hands around her neck, the knife sliding against bone. He can taste the blood in the back of his throat. The call comes early morning, before his alarm goes off, but he's already awake.
"Helen Walter, 23, late of the Upper East Side. Found by a garbage man." Eames is following him around the body, watching him.
"Yeah," he says. "We should start with the husband," though that's a lie.
The husband is a nervous 30-year-old limp wrist who hasn't admitted to himself yet that he's a fag. Goren feels sorry for him. Eames takes lead on the questioning, Goren wanders around the apartment looking at photographs, flipping through magazines, twiddling his thumbs.
When they leave, Eames jotting down notes (he wishes he could tell her it's a waste of time), he stalls in the doorway and turns back.
"Take this as an opportunity," he says. "You're not the marrying kind. That guy at the gym is single, you know." He closes the door on Mr. Walter's surprise.
Back in the squadroom, he flips through books until he finds research to support what he already knows, that the killer will strike again. He waits for the next body.
4:35, something in him slips. He wakes up three hours later pulled over on the shoulder of a road he doesn't recognize, streetlights pooling yellow around him, the sense of something feral in the trees beyond. He GPS's himself back to civilization. Thinking, he needs another brain on this case. Someone who knows enough to help, but not enough to be dangerous. Someone like -
The mental ward, the hum and howl of the prison walls. Declan again. "Bobby! What a pleasant surprise. Is it a case?"
"It's a case."
"You need my help."
"I could use it, yes."
Declan purses his lips. "Another case. All these murders, Bobby. Have you ever noticed how death seems to follow you around?"
That sinking, slipping feeling again. "What did you say?"
"If I say something that sounds crazy, it's most likely because I am crazy. Pay it no mind. Now, give me the rundown."
There's a sudden, obscure memory of his mother. Things repeating themselves. Seeing things that aren't there, but might as well be. He wrests himself back to the present. "The same m.o., over and over, but one person couldn't have done all of the murders. So we start looking for the person responsible for each individual attack. We get one woman confessing to killing her ex-lover, one psychopath who looks good for two more, another confession for the last one. Three different people, five murders. There's no record of any of their paths intersecting."
"And that means?"
"Means they all have the same partner."
"Maybe someone who doesn't realize what he's doing." Declan pauses, scrunches his face. "Sorry, no, that didn't make any sense. Lucidity comes and goes, sadly, and when it goes it's replaced by gibberish. So. What is the-" (Here a few seconds of jazz hands) "-the modus operandi? If I may ask?"
Goren, demonstrating on an invisible victim, "Restrained with a hand to the throat, then a knife between the ribs. Quick, efficient, no fluids or fingerprints, no recognizable ritual."
"Just a kill."
Goren nods.
"It sounds familiar." Gnawing on a dirty fingernail, eyebrows drawn together. "D'you remember that first case? When you were in the army, and I was still a respected criminal profiler."
"How could I forget."
"We caught that bastard, remember? You and me together. We were a force to be reckoned with, Bobby. Some of the best years of my life, I mean that."
"You're saying it could be a copycat?"
"He has the same m.o., doesn't he? Maybe one of your enemies, one of mine. I'd say it was Nicole, but..."
Back in the interrogation room, sitting across from a nameless boy barely old enough to vote. "I don't know why I did it," he says. "I just did." He's calm, cool. He smiles. "I've seen you before," he says.
"We're from the same neighborhood." Goren can feel Eames on the other side of the glass, watching him, can feel her tense worry, her love. She loves him, he knows that now.
"No, it's not that. It's something more intimate." Still smiling. "I've seen you." Looks straight into his eyes, into him -
He knows. He knows, and this is the point where it all comes crashing down. A slip, and he remembers:
His flashlight on a Korean man, the pale stillness of death, bruises purple on his neck. Declan coaching him, teaching him, get inside his head. Think like he thinks. The hunter needs to understand his prey.
The faultline in the city, the open wound, falling in and witnessing every frailty, every failure, every compulsion. Finding guilt with a perfect aim. No profile, no evidence, just the space between him and them growing smaller and smaller. Everything falling into place.
The grave yawning below and the city waiting to tumble in, hearing the white noise of it, every gunshot, every scream. Carrying them with him, leaving traces behind. The twist of cause and effect, dream before crime, feeling the knife in his hand, the warm rush of blood. Looking out and seeing what he wanted to see, finding things he'd already found.
Finding what he'd made.
He should be laughing, really; Dec had told him it was an old enemy out for revenge, and hasn't he always been his own worst enemy? Hasn't he always known he'll bring himself down one day? The one person he could never catch.
"I'm yours," the boy says.
The knife bagged in front of him, shining in the fluorescent light. He takes it out, turns it around, the edge and glint, the weight of it. He puts it back down, slides it across the table.
"Don't think you're the first one," the boy says. "It's happened before. It's ancient. You know, you won't admit it. You know what it is and you know it won't stop until it's through with you."
The knife between them. Eames behind the glass, heart sinking. This is the point where he has a choice.
He says, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize."
He says, "I know what has to happen."
And, "Today's an anniversary, you know. It's fitting, I guess."
The boy smiles again, and picks up the knife.