Hey guys, I am so sorry for the late upload. I was swamped with my dissertation and later on work.

I hope (I won't make promises) to finish this story by the end of the year :D

Gail's POV

"So, who are we going to question today?" Nick asked as we entered the station.

"Well, considering our visits with Allie's mom and friend Paula, I have a feeling we'll get more out of our victims' friends then their parents."

"I think you're right. Shall we visit Mrs. Kaiser's friend Aileen Gerald? She's just a few blocks from where we were yesterday."

"Okay, let's check in with Detective Widmer before we head out."

We drove to Aileen Gerald's flat that was located in one of the popular suburban areas of Toronto.

"Hi Mrs. Gerald, I'm Officer Peck and this is Officer Collins. May we ask you a few questions about Maureen?"

With a simple nod, Aileen invited us into her ground level flat and led us into the living room.

"Mrs. Gerald, do you know if Maureen was having an affair?" Nick asked pointedly. If Aileen was shocked, she didn't show it.

"No, I don't believe she was," Aileen shook her head. Maureen loved her husband to the moon and back. There argued a few times and she spent the nights here, but she would leave early in the morning to go home and talk things through with him."

'

"Why would she choose to stay here?" I asked.

"Officer Peck, don't get me wrong but I think the time apart helped them both. I supported Maureen's decision, and she knew she could stay here as long as she needed." Aileen said. "They argued, like most couples do.I think the fought more after seeing that couples therapist.

"Do you know what their fights were about?" Nick asked.

"Before they went to the therapist, it was mostly minor disagreements. Things like jealousy or forgetting to go to the grocery store. But ever since Maureen told me about their therapy, their fights changed. BILL started to question Maureen more and more about her whereabouts. He even accused her of cheating on him, and once of mentally abusing him," Aileen said.

"Do you know what made him think this way?" I asked, but Aileen shook her head.

"So what you are saying is that instead of helping, their visits with the therapist made things worse?" I asked, and Aileen sadly nodded.

"Ms. Gerald, do you think Bill may have assumed Maureen was having an affair with you since she spend several nights here?" I asked carefully.

"Look officers, I don't care what anyone assumes. Maureen chose to stay the here.," she said looking at me.

"Thank you for your time, Aileen. We appreciate your help." Nick said after a quick nod at me.

"No need to thank me. Please catch that asshole as soon as possible. That's all I want," Aileen said sadly while she got up.

"We'll do our best," Nick said and I politely smiled.

"Man, can you imagine a couple therapist who actually makes a marriage more miserable than it already is?" Nick asked after we left Aileen's home.

"That just shows how crazy the doctor see a therapist to get help, and this guy just makes it worse," I answered sadly. "Shall we head back to the station, or do you feel like questioning someone else?" I asked Nick once we were in the squad car.

"I think we should talk to the friends of the other two female victims," he answered.

"Well, it looks like victim B, Claire Hunter's friend, lives about a 15 minutes from here." I said as I check our file.

"What's her friend's name?

"Adeen Banks."

"Well, let's see what we can get from Ms. Banks," Nick said with a smile.

"Ms. Banks,did Claire or Walter ever discuss their couples therapy with you?" I asked. Adeen averted her eyes and pulled on her lower lip, as she thought about my question.

"This may sound funny, but they had a wedding contract that stated they agreed to seek marriage counseling before deciding on divorce. No matter what the reason for the divorce might be," she answered.

I was surprised at her response. They had a wedding contract?

"So, they wanted a divorce? Do you know why they wanted to end their marriage?" I asked.

Adeen sighed and stared down at her hands in her lap.

"Ms. Banks, I know this is difficult. Do you have any idea why would Claire and Walter choose to divorce?" I asked again.

"I don't know," Adeen started softly and began to sob. She averted her eyes and tried to look away from Nick and I. "Because Claire and I were close," she all but whispered.

"Can you elaborate, Ms Banks.,"

Adeen took a deep breath to compose herself.

"We never thought we would fall for each other, but I guess after all those nights at the hospital together, we formed a special bond. During our last Christmas party, we got so drunk and woke up together in the break room. We admitted having feelings for the other and have been a couple ever told Joel shortly after we started seeing each other. At first he was furious but after he calmed down a few days later they sat down to talk it through. He seemed to be okay with her sleeping with someone else but couldn't understand her having feelings for went to couples therapy and it seemed like he came to terms with them seperating until about a month before they got killed he started telling her he'd fight for her. No matter how often she told him that it was too late, he did not want to give up," Adeen said.

"Did Claire live with you before she died?" Nick asked.

"No, she lived with Joel but they stayed in separate rooms. Do you think our relationship was what got her killed?" Adeen asked tentatively.

"We are investigating all possibilities, but it's too early to say. We don't have a motive, yet," Nick answered her. Adeen nodded, but it was obvious she was not satisfied with Nick's response.

"Officers, just please catch the guy. Claire didn't deserve this," Adeen said with pleading eyes.

"We will Mrs. Banks. Thank you for your help," I reassured her."We'll keep you updated on any developments with the case." We thanked Adeen and said our goodbyes before we left her place and walked over to our squad car.

"How about we drive over to Mrs. Kowalski, according to the first questioning Det. Widmer did, she was Ksenia Angjelov's best friend," I suggested.

"Ksenia's husband Marjan is also Mrs. Kowalski's husband's cousin, so maybe we get an insight in their family relation," I continued while scrolling through the file. Nick started the engine and looked at me.

"Let's head over to city center then," he said and swiftly drove us through Toronto traffic towards Mrs. Angjelov's friend Arina Kowalski.

I knocked on the door of Mrs. Kowalski's residence, which was quickly answered by a big, grim looking man who stared down at me.

"Can I help you?" he grunted.

"Hello Sir, I'm Officer Peck and this is Officer Collins. Is Mrs. Kowalski home? I asked him politely. He turned around and called out for someone in the house. His accent was thick. Eastern Europe? Maybe Russian?

A woman came down the stairs dressed in a robe above a worn shirt and sweat pants. "Hello, how can I help you," she asked tiredly with the same heavy accent and the man.

"Hi, Mrs. Kowalski. We have some questions about Ksenia and Marjan Angielov. Maybe you can help us?" I explained to her.

"Oh, okay sure. I hope you don't mind my appearance, I just went to bed after my nightshift," she said as she ruffled her hair and yawned. She went over to the kitchen and poured herself a coffee, her calm appearance was confused me a little. But as she lifted her mug I could see her hands shaking some more, so I assumed the calmness was just on the outside.

We followed her to the kitchen and she sat down on one of the barstool for a second she put her head in her hand an then looked at us.

"Okay Mrs. Kowalski, I assume you know why we're here. We'd like to ask you some additional questions to Detective Widmer's prior ones about Ksenia and Marjan Angjelov's death. We hope you can help us with it," I explained to her as I sat down on the chair beside her.

"I'm afraid there's not much I can tell you. You know I was out of town the night they were... ," she trailed off and I could see tears forming in her eyes. "You know that night. I was in Belgrade for my mother's birthday and just came back a few days ago. I jumped into the airplane as soon as my husband told me," she explained to us her accent getting weaker and weaker with every word she said.

"That's okay Ma'am. So you say your husband wasn't with you?" I asked.

"No, he stayed back. He and my Mom don't get along well, Ksenia wanted to join me, but she got called back to work last minute," she cried quietly.

"I wish I would have tried harder to convince her to join me," she sobbed.

"Mrs. Kowalski, please don't ever think that's your fault, because it's not. How was your relationship to Ksenia and Marjan like?" I asked softly

"Oh you see Marjan is my cousin in law. After Ksenia moved here five years ago she and I became best friends. My husband always joked that we are more likely to be relatives than he and his cousin," she said sadly and laughed through her tears.

"Yeah I know what you mean," Nick said smilingly, "were you spending a lot of time at their place or vise versa?"

"You know we had a water leakage about a month ago and my husband asked me to stay at their place until he could find that leakage and replace the pipes. Seeing as I was working nightshift and basically wasn't able to sleep here with all the maintenance going on I agreed with him and stayed at Ksenia's until I went to Serbia and they got.. you know," she trailed off.

"We understand Mrs. Kowalski, thank you for your help. I hope we can come back to you with good news soon," Nick said as we got up.

"Thank you," she answered sadly and walked us towards her door.

As we stood outside I looked at Nick and whispered to him, "he definitely did not do his research here. Might be possible it gets a little out of hand and he will react less calculated now."

He nodded at me and unlocked the car ready to drive back to the precinct.

"So, what did you both find out?" Detective Widmer asked when we arrived at his office.
"Our first victims Allie and James Naden, as well as our second victims Claire and Jake Hunter were in a relationship with their best friends, which brings us to the conclusion that Dr. Mahr was interested in women who had extra marital affairs. Although, it was different with the last two victims. Maureen Kaiser stayed at her best friend's when she and her husband fought, and Arina Kowalski said she was living with the Angjelov's for about a month before they were killed," I said and Nick nodded in approval.

"Okay so you know what that means, we have to built up something that makes it look like you Gail were doing something like this too, but I don't want to introduce that to him just now, Let's think about a story for a few minutes. Brainstorm for a few minutes and call me so we can talk about write your report and go home," he said as we were already getting up to take our stuff.

He left the room and Nick and I were left alone.

"So tell me, how would you cheat on me?" he asked me. I had to think back of how things ended with us.

"Thin Ice Mister," I said with a stern look. I really did not want to talk about our old relationship or rather old mistakes.

"I'm sorry, I just wanted to know if you have an idea for the backstory," he said.

"Well I think the first thing we have to decide on is whether or not I am having an affair with a woman or not," I explained while I was already mentally listing all our female officers. None of them seemed to be an appropriate affair and it took me all my willpower not to gag as I was thinking about kissing any of them.

"Well would you be up for it?" Nick asked and I could see he was trying to hide a smirk.

"Wouldn't you want to know, huh?" I answered challenging.

"Well…" he started but trailed off.

"Perv," I said laughing.

"Well fun aside, I think it would be our best chance to get to him," I answered.

"Yes I think so too," Nick answered and started writing down names of female officers. I was surprised to see he didn't put Andy on the list but considering what happened between them I wasn't surprised. Well and the fact that he had feelings for her while he was still with me.

"Nick let's agree on a backstory rather than feeding your pervy fantasy," I said while I took away the pen.

He just smiled and leaned back in his chair. "Okay, so Jessica has an affair with X. So what do we have to think about. Let's brainstorm for a minute. We have to know how they met," he said.

"How long they've been together," I added.

"How she keeps it a secret from Marc."

"How it all started from meeting to affair."

"Oh also when they meet and how often," Nick said while he wrote down these things. We added a few more ideas to it and worked out our backstory. I just hoped we wouldn't need it.

We called Det. Widmer and told him our plan. How Jessica had an ongoing affair with one of her fellow colleagues who got transferred to Toronto while Marc was still away. At first they were just friends but the longer Marc was gone the closer they got until eventually they ended up having sex the night before Marc came home again. After he was home Jessica and X tried to spend less time together but couldn't stay away from each other so they decided to meet up twice a week and whenever Marc was having some drinks with his friends.

"Okay we have to consider a few more things. One, who will be X if we need to bring that person up, two we have to think of ways on how to drop hints, without dropping hints," Det. Widmer said once we were done.

"Well, for starters I think we did pretty great the other day. Anyway, how about you complain more and more about me being at work on specific days. Like every Thursday or something. Also occasionally when you come home after being out drinking I behave even more moody," I suggested looking over to Nick. He nodded and wrote it down too.

"That's great Officer Peck, but that still leaves the first question open, who would be the Officer you'd have an affair with? Think about a female colleague you're close with until tomorrow," Det. Widmer said.

"Okay, I will. Let's write our reports and go home so I can think about that," I said towards Nick who could barely contain his . Widmer gave me a reassuring smile before he turned over to Nick, "Officer Collins if I were you I wouldn't be too happy about it. There must be a reason your wife rather spends her nights with someone else."

Nick looked at him dumbfound while I just laughed out loud.

After a few seconds we got up to write our reports. As I sat at my desk still smiling to myself I realized Holly wouldn't be home when I came home, so I couldn't even bitch about my day to her.

God, when will her nightshift's be over.