DISCLAIMER: Doesn't belong to me. Ever. Sorry. I wish.

If you don't like, sorry, review anyway. Flames just make me laugh...

***

He banged his head against the steering wheel. It was too early... he had been hoping to get some sleep before getting back into work - it had been a late night with a drug deal gone bad that turned into a triple homicide and he hadn't even gotten home till about one in the morning. If he closed his eyes he could still see them, lying on his table. Adam groaned, and turned off the ignition. The sun hadn't even come up yet, as if it too was dreading the idea of having to go through another day. He checked his watch, which confirmed his suspicions - it wasn't even five in the morning yet.

"Adam, Adam, Adam... you look like shit." he mumbled to himself. His face stared back in the mirror. His five o'clock shadow was prominent, as were the dark circles under his eyes that were making him look like he was wearing eye shadow. He brushed his hair out of his face, noting that the scars from the cigarette burns were fading, even if the nightmares that kept him up weren't. He blearily scrubbed his eyes again, then stepped out into the crisp New York air, grabbing his lab kit as he went. There was a middle-aged man lying in a lot, blood pooled and congealed under and around his head; or more accurately, the half of his head that didn't look like it had been bashed in with a baseball bat. Adam sighed, ducked under the yellow tape, and approached the body and the detective . "Hey Flack." he said, without enthusiasm. "We got a name?"

"Hey Adam. Sorry about this." Flack flicked through his memo book. "No name, no witnesses. A routine patrol car found our John Doe like this about half an hour ago, called it in." He sighed. "Basically, we got nothing, except what you can give us." Adam stared at the body lying in front of him.

"Well, no obvious weapon. The blood is congealed, and lividity marks are evident, but not pronounced. I would say he's been here for about four hours, give or take." he said, lifting the dead man's neck, which flopped slightly. "It would also appear that his neck is broken. Maybe post-mortem? I'll know more once he's back at the lab." he finished distractedly.

"Hey, you set here for a few minutes? There's a coffeeshop just around the corner, and I've been up for the past three hours. I'll grab you some, if you like." said Flack, getting up off of his knees. "Seriously, my eyes feel like they're fallin' out."

"Yeah, yeah." replied Adam, never taking his eyes off of the body. "Sure... uh, milk, no sugar, please. I'll pay you back?"

"Don't worry about it." said Flack. He stuck his book back in his belt, and jogged around the corner. The coffee shop had just opened, and no one but the owner was in there. "Two coffees." he said, tapping the counter with his fingers impatiently.

***

Adam stepped over the victim to kneel at the other side of his body. From this angle he was looking directly into the wound on the head of the victim. "Looks like a splinter, or something." he said to no one in particular. "Probably got his head smashed in with some sort of wooden club, or maybe a branch, or something.

"Hey," called a voice coming from the pre-dawn gloom.

"If I could just maybe get it out..." Adam concentration was unbroken as he pulled the splinter out of the dead man's brain.

"Hey, Mister! I got a question." The man's face was hooded by a red sweatshirt, but his voice was clear. He ducked under the yellow tape. "Hey!"

"No, n-no, sir, you need to get out of this, this roped-off area!" shouted Adam as he fervently wished that Flack were back by now. He got up from the crime scene hurriedly, going to cut off the man who was trampling his evidence. Adam was exhausted as well as almost done with his preliminaries, and all he wanted now was to get back to the lab, confirm his results, and finally get some sleep. "This is a crime scene, sir. I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Adam put his hands out in front of him to block the other man who put his hands up in mock surrender.

"Sorry man, sorry. I just have one question." The hooded man drew a pistol from his waistband and held it right in front of Adam's face. "You wanna do this the hard way or the easy way?"

"W-what?" stuttered Adam, reaching for his phone with trembling finger and the intent of dialing Flack, when the man in front of him raised his hand and clubbed Adam in the head with the end of his pistol, laying the younger man out unconscious on the ground, his phone tumbling from his senseless fingers.

"Dammit." muttered the man, kicking the body out of his way. "What the hell are we supposed to do now?" he yelled.

"Just take the damn lab rat too." said a voice from behind him. "Hurry up, or you'll have to face down a cop. I assure you that he won't be as easy to assault." The voice came from a second man, dressed in an identical red sweatshirt. "Hurry up, dammit. At least now we might have a tool to ransom with. At least we will as soon as we get him into the truck."

The two men worked silently and quickly, first moving the John Doe into the van they drove, then dragging Adam. In about two minutes, the only thing to say they were ever there was the broken crime scene tape which fluttered sporadically in the early breeze, another blood smudge, and the complete lack of any body in the chalk outline.

***

"Sorry Adam, I forgot the milk." came Flack's voice as he rounded the corner. "You should try it black anyway, this is some of the best tasti-" his voice died as he looked at the scene in front of him. "Adam?" He said. "This is isn't funny, Adam. What did you do?" He looked around him, then set down the coffee on the top of his patrol car. "Adam?" he yelled, while pulling out his cellphone. He punched in Adam's cell number, then held it up to it's ear.

"Hi. This is Adam-" said a voice on the other end.

"Where the hell are you, Adam?" hissed Flack.

"I'm not here right now, but you can leave a message, and I'll be sure to call you back." The beep sounded in Flack's ear as he swore and slammed his cell closed. He started walked towards the place where the body was when he noticed something at his feet. He knelt, and picked up Adam's cell, sticky with blood.

"Dammit, Adam," he swore under his breath and grabbed his radio. "11-99, I repeat, 11-99, officer involved. Need back-up and a CSI down here now." He put the radio down as it crackled back into life, cops talking fast back and forth. Flack listened to it for a minute or two, then satisfied that it was proceeding, grabbed his cell phone again. "Mac? Dammit, Mac. It's Don. You need to get here - something's happened to Adam."

***

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