"Should I be worried you didn't put up a fight when I said I was tagging along?" Kelsey asked Michael from the passenger seat of his car.

They were a few minutes away from Louis' house, close enough that Michael could see police car lights flashing blue and red just up ahead. He turned off his navigation system and said, "I didn't want to waste time arguing with you when you'd eventually find your way there anyway."

Kelsey leaned back in her seat, considering his answer. "You're planning on dumping me in a ditch, aren't you?"

"I do have an ulterior motive for bringing you with me. But don't worry, it's not dumping you in a ditch."

"And the words 'ulterior motive' are supposed to make me feel better?"

"I'm just keeping an eye on you so we can avoid the mistake you made last time you went to a crime scene."

She groaned. "You are never going to let that siren thing go, are you?"

"I'm just acting as your guide to being a better person in the world of law enforcement."

"Like a compass?" Kelsey asked wryly.

"A moral compass, yeah."

"My very own North Star. Whoopee," she said sarcastically.

"North Star has a nice ring to it," Michael said, smiling genuinely. The smile barely lasted a second when he finally drove up to Louis' house.

To say the place was a circus was an understatement. The squad car that was meant to pick up Louis was parked on the curb, lights on and siren off. Next to it was the coroner's van that sent a shudder through Kelsey when she spotted it. Several people were standing in the street, some quietly observing, others wreaking havoc while a uniformed officer tried to keep them as far away from the house as possible.

Much to Michael's annoyance, an H.B. Media news van was parked down the street. A camera crew was set up near the house where a reporter was making a statement, occasionally gesturing at the house behind her. And of course the reporter was none other than Kimberly Yates-another bane to his existence.

"Great," he muttered, parking the car as near as he could without trampling any by-standers. He and Kelsey headed for the house, ducking under the police tape that had been set up around the perimeter. Both of them ignored Kimberly when she tried to catch their attention.

The house was fairly simple. Not too small, with a verandah on one side where a round table was set up with three large garden chairs around it and a vase of flowers in the middle. The flowers were wilted to the point of being completely dry and a few petals had fallen onto the table. Thick vines covered the walls of the house, giving off an eery vibe in the darkness of the night.

Kelsey swallowed down her dread and pushed herself to keep her feet moving before Michael could see how freaked out she really was. She was already two steps ahead of him while he was taking a look around the area. The slightly open door let out a loud creak when she pushed it further open. Before she could step through it, Michael held her back with a firm hand on her shoulder. She turned back, giving him a questioning look.

"There's a dead body in there. Are you sure you can handle that?" he asked.

She nodded grimly. "I've seen my fair share since I switched over to criminal profiling. I'll be fine."

He searched her face for any sign of discomfort and only found grim determination. "If at any point it feels like too much, walk out. Don't try to be brave."

"I'm good. I promise," she said with a smile that seemed a little forced. He didn't call her out on it.

She turned to walk into the house again but Michael stopped her once more, this time pulling her back so she was behind him.

"What now?"

"I have the weapon, I go in first," he said, stepping past her and through the doorway.

"And here I thought you were a gentleman."

"No room for that at a crime scene, Harris," he said over his shoulder. "Safety before chilvary."

She laughed as she followed him in, feeling a lot less nervous than she'd been a few seconds ago.

The interior of the house wasn't much either; just a couple of rooms separated by cream-coloured walls. The paint on a lot of those walls was chipped. It was so bad at one point of the passage leading into the kitchen that there was a gaping hole showing the concrete wall beneath. Some colourful lines marked the space and when she bent down to take a closer look, she realised it was the name "Annie" written crudely in different coloured crayons.

She followed Michael through the kitchen filled with the basic appliances. Apart from a few dirty dishes in the sink, the kitchen looked clean. A second uniformed officer ushered them into the living room before going outside to join his friend.

Kelsey had prepared herself to see a body, but what she found in there threatened to overwhelm her. She must have made a sound because Michael glanced back at her, a worried expression on his face.

"Harris?"

"I'm okay," she whispered, eyes glued to the scene in front of her.

As Michael had suspected, Louis was indeed dead. Blood stained the brown carpet he was lying on from a bullet wound on the side of his head. To his surprise, a gun was in his hand. Suicide had been the furthest thing on any of their minds.

The other nasty surprise was the dead woman on the couch. She looked around Louis' age and Kelsey guessed she was probably his wife. Unlike Louis, she was in a sitting position, a little keeled over to the side. The backrest of the couch was stained with blood that seemed to be coming from the back of her head. Kelsey couldn't see if she'd been shot too and she didn't dare step any closer to check.

Michael was already inspecting the woman's wound, careful not to get too close or touch anything in case he contaminated the crime scene. Her dark brown skin was already paling to a dull, grey shade so he assumed she'd been bleeding out for a while. The grey hair on the back of her head was matted down by blood, but he couldn't tell if the wound was from a gunshot or something else.

Meanwhile, Kelsey had wandered as far away from the bodies as she could in the small living room. She was standing in front of the TV stand, looking at the framed photos set up on the wooden structure. Almost all the pictures had three people in them; Louis, his wife, and another woman who looked like a younger version of Mrs Hughes. A few of the pictures looked more recent and had a fourth person in them-a girl who didn't look much older than Keisha. She guessed the little girl was probably Annie from the crayon writing on the wall.

She stared at the pictures, wondering where Mrs Hughes junior and Annie were. Part of her felt relief that they weren't part of the slaughter, but another part worried how they would survive the terrible news of their family's death.

"Murder-Suicide?" Michael asked, surveying the bloody scene with a frown.

Kelsey forced herself to look at the bodies again before saying, "I don't know about that, Chief."

He eyed her curiously as she finally walked around the bodies, partly impressed at her composure. "Why's that?"

"From a psychological point of view, it makes sense that this would be a murder-suicide. Louis' finances weren't all that great, with his tannery being shut down and people stealing his equipment. I can see how the financial stress could contribute to a state of mind where he'd choose death instead, and take his loved ones with him because he didn't want to leave them behind to suffer alone."

"So it is a murder-suicide then?"

"I'm not done," she said sternly, to which Michael rolled his eyes. "If it is a murder-suicide, then why did he leave the others?"

"Others?"

She pointed at one of the pictures she'd been looking at and Michael went over to check it out. "Possibly a daughter and a granddaughter. Suicidal murderers aren't really known for leaving survivors behind. Plus, our other evidence suggests he committed homicide, which is odd because a lot of studies have shown that those who commit murder-suicide have more in common with a suicidal person than a murderer."

"Stop talking like a textbook," he said, shaking his head. "And anyway, weren't you just saying you don't believe he murdered Jane Doe?"

"I don't, but I also don't think he did this."

"Based on some vague theories from a book?"

Kelsey sighed exasperatedly. "Those theories are backed by facts."

"I agree with her," a voice piped up from behind them. They both spun around and found Luke standing behind them with his camera hanging from his neck and a duffel bag in one hand. He walked past them rolling up the sleeves of his windbreaker with the letters CSI printed on the back.

"You do?" a surprised Michael asked while Kelsey smirked at him.

"Yes. But not because of her theory," Luke replied, crouching down near Louis' body. He set the bag on the ground and pulled out some gloves and a plastic bag of yellow evidence markers from it before continuing.

"At first glance, it kind of looks like a murder-suicide," he said, getting straight down to business with his camera. "But only because it was made to look like that, in an amateur way."

"Anything to support that theory?"

He stopped taking photos and pointed at Louis. "Louis' body is near a wall, right? So if he shot himself in the head, there would be a blood splatter on the wall. We'd be able to tell if he'd really shot himself based on the position of the bullet entry hole and the trajectory of the blood splatter."

Kelsey looked at the wall. "But that wall is completely clean."

"Exactly."

"He didn't die here?" Michael guessed.

Luke nodded and moved on to Mrs Hughes, carefully lifting her head and feeling for a wound. "She did though. Probably blunt force trauma."

"How can you tell just from looking?" Kelsey asked curiously.

"The amount of blood, its position and distribution relative to the wound."

"Okay, your job is really gross because of the blood and stuff, but definitely interesting."

"You were just drooling over Lydia's job less than an hour ago. Should I be worried you're going to switch careers on me again?"

"Only if I start drooling over yours."

Michael sighed and turned his attention back to the body. "This was obviously a murder covered up to look like a suicide. But why?"

"My theory is that someone killed Jane Doe. Louis saw who it was, and maybe got threatened to stay quiet. But then Jane went topside on his property and he panicked and decided to call the cops before anyone else found the body. The real murderer got pissed, killed Mrs Hughes for revenge and then killed him too to keep him from talking."

"Interesting theory, Harris, but how do you explain his fingerprints on the murder weapon?"

"I've given you plenty. If I have to solve the whole case on my own, Chief, you might just have to seriously worry about me going after your job."

"Since you're shadowing Daniel who is lead on this case, solving it is your responsibility. Where is Daniel anyway?"

Kelsey shrugged.

"Anyway, back to Jane Doe. Maybe she saw something she wasn't supposed to and ended up dead because of it," Michael suggested.

"Something like what?"

He stared at the ground, deep in thought for a while before saying, "You mentioned finding the camera in a sludge pool at the end of the process line and how you thought it was weird that everywhere else was completely dry."

She nodded.

"After you pointed that out, I did some digging on Louis and his tannery. It wasn't just shut down because he didn't have money to keep it running anymore like he'd led us to believe. An environmental agency came and shut him down because he wasn't properly getting rid of all the toxic waste coming out of his factory.

He built the proper waste system after that and they let him re-open, but then later discovered he was bypassing the waste disposal system and dumping all the untreated waste at the end of the line to make it look like it had been treated. They shut him down permanently after that."

"But the fresh waste I found would suggest he was still running the plant even now," Kelsey said catching on.

"Exactly. Jane Doe might have found proof of that, which might explain what she was doing there in the first place. But this theory suggests Louis killed her then exposed the crime by leading the cops to the body. And maybe this murder-suicide was a result of his guilt."

"But Louis clearly didn't kill himself," Luke rejoined the conversation.

"And we don't think he killed Jane Doe either."

"My head hurts," Kelsey groaned. "And the stench of blood filling the air is not helping."

"I did ask you if you could handle being in the room with a dead body and you said yes," Michael said pointedly.

"Body, yes. I didn't sign up for the 2-for-1 bloody special though."

"Maybe we should add spending a couple of hours in the morgue to your training program?"

She stared at him, jaw dropped until her phone started ringing. "Hold that thinly veiled psychotic remark while I take this," she said, going outside to take her call. She went round to the side of the house to avoid the chaos upfront.

"How do you stand being around blood the whole day?" she asked Liam as soon as she answered.

"Well, as a doctor, I generally focus on making sure the blood stays in the patient. And besides, I see plenty of non-blood related injuries too like sprains and broken bones etcetera."

"Oh. Thank goodness for the broken bones then."

Liam chuckled. "Where are you?"

"Crime scene on Wentworth. So bloody."

"That explains the question about blood. Will you let me know when you're done so I can pick you up?"

"It looks like we'll be here for a while and you have an early shift tomorrow. Go home and get some sleep. I'll catch a ride with someone from here."

"Are you sure? I really don't mind."

"I don't want to be the reason you fall asleep in the middle of a surgery and leave a scalpel inside someone's gut. I'll be okay, I promise."

He laughed and eventually gave in. "Text me when you get home?"

"I will. I love you."

Just after she hung up the phone, a rustling sound from the bushes behind the house caught her ears. A small shriek escaped her lips when a man emerged from there. He froze, then started moving towards her.

"Stay back!" she yelled with a confidence she didn't feel while fumbling through her pockets for something she could use as a weapon. All she had was a small hair pin she'd coaxed away from Keisha earlier, her phone and some crumbling cereal flakes.

"Kelsey?" the man approaching her said in a voice she immediately recognised.

"Daniel?!" She sagged against the wall of the house in relief. "What the hell? You freaked me out."

"Sorry. I didn't think there'd be anyone back here."

"Why are you back here anyway?" she asked, still trying to calm her racing heart.

"I figured I'd come in through the back gate and avoid the press and all the spectators up front," he replied. "Don't want to give Michael another reason to get pissy with me."

She nodded in understanding. "He's kind of in a better mood now." She jerked her head towards the front of the house. "Come on, I'll fill you in."

***

Naomi and Charles arrived a little while after Daniel and Kelsey went in, and Michael asked them to look through the rest of the house. After getting Daniel up to speed, Kelsey wandered back to Michael who was asking Luke to send pictures of Louis' daughter and granddaughter to someone at the station so they could try and track them down and make sure they weren't in any danger.

"Does it ever get easier?" she asked him when they were done.

"What?"

"Seeing dead bodies."

"I wouldn't say easier," Michael mused. "It kind of becomes less shocking. Like how you'd feel if you watched the same horror movie fifty times in a row." He glanced at her. "You handled this pretty well actually."

His phone rang and he frowned at the caller ID flashing on his screen before answering it. Kelsey took a couple of steps back to give him privacy but she could still hear his end of the conversation.

"Did you call her doctor?" he asked, then after a pause, "Thank you, Hilda. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

He walked past her, hardly sparing her a glance. She was still staring after him when he suddenly turned around and walked back to her. The abruptness of his actions caught everyone's attention.

"Is everything okay?" she asked in a low voice when he'd been standing in front of her for a number of seconds, silent and wearing an unreadable expression.

She saw fear flash in his eyes before he answered her. "Can you get a ride with someone else? I have to go."

Surprised that he'd been courteous enough to turn back just to tell her that, she answered with a nod and he left right after, barely acknowledging the others and leaving her a little worried.

***

Michael parked his car outside the house at the end of Casterly Drive. Unlike his earlier destination, this house looked quite lavish like all the others in the neighbourhood. Another car was parked in the paved driveway, but it wasn't the one he was hoping to see. He turned the car off and leaned back in his seat, taking a moment to compose himself.

It took longer than a moment. Every time he thought he was ready to get out of the car, his heart started pounding faster and his body refused to move, keeping him rooted in his seat.

He finally managed to force himself out and headed for the house, pushing down his emotions. As soon as he turned the door knob and went in, his feet turned to lead and all he wanted was to go back to his car.

Somehow he found the strength to keep moving until he reached a door near the back of the large house and knocked softly. Foootsteps approached the door then it clicked open revealing a short, stout woman with kind, brown eyes and a warm smile.

"Hi Hilda," he said.

She greeted him back with a hug and led him to the plush bed in the middle of the room.

"Look who's here," she said, gently shaking the bundle under the covers. The bundle rose slowly into a sitting position with Hilda's help. Unlike Hilda, the woman on the bed was all skin and bones. Her face was pale, even in the dim lighting and though her cheeks were hollow and her eyes were sunken, there was still some beauty to it.

"Is it Victor?" she said, hope filling her eyes, but the hope dimmed when she saw Michael. She still managed a feeble smile but he knew he wasn't the one she really wanted to see.

"Hi, Ma," he said with a small smile of his own.

"Hi baby," she said weakly, patting the empty space next to her on the bed .

Michael went and sat with her and she stroked his cheek with shaky fingers before he hugged her gently.

"I'll be in the next room if you need me. The doctor's writing out some new instructions for me. Do you want to talk to him before he leaves?" Hilda said.

"That's okay. You can fill me in afterwards. I want to spend some time with her."

"I just gave her medicine so don't keep her up too long, okay?"

Michael nodded, turning to look into his mother's tired eyes. "Hilda says you're having trouble with your legs?"

Tears filled his mother's eyes. "My legs won't move."

"Maybe you just need time to rest. I know you haven't been staying in bed as much as you're supposed to."

She sighed. "I'm never gonna dance again."

"Don't say that."

"Guilty feet have got no rhythm."

Michael blinked. "Did you just quote Careless Whisper?"

"Yep," she said, smiling cheekily at him.

He shook his head, allowing a little chuckle to escape. His mother's smile brightened at the sound.

"There it is," she said, cupping one side of his face. "I haven't heard you laugh in a long time. You're always so serious now."

"I laugh," he argued.

She laughed at the indignant look he gave her. "No you don't. You can't even smile properly anymore." She pinched his cheeks, pulling his lips into a comical smile.

"Ma!" he said, scooting away from her and it only made her laugh more. But then the laughter gave way to coughing until she was wheezing and out of breath. Hilda rushed in and put an oxygen mask on her until she was breathing properly.

Michael sat next to her again, holding her hand as she battled to stay awake and talk to him.

"You know how I met your father?" she asked him, fighting a yawn.

"Love at first dance. I remember," he said, trying to keep the anger he felt at that memory out of his voice.

She yawned again. "How will he love me now when I can't dance?"

***