A/N: Hello, gentle readers! This fic began life as a Tumblr prompt, but it grew into an actual casefic. If you're worried about The Force Awakens spoilers, rest easy! Only original trilogy references here. Many thanks to truthisademurelady for both the prompt (which never mentioned Star Wars) and for being my beta (which requires much Star Wars expertise).

May the Force (of Henry's charm and Jo's kickassery) be with you!

A log crackled warmly in the fireplace as Henry settled back into his favorite chair. Strains of Wagner drifted through the apartment as side B continued to tell the epic story where side A had left off. Henry picked up the tumbler from the end table beside him, held it under his nose, and swirled the amber liquid gently. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and exhaled with a satisfied sigh. This was shaping up to be a perfect evening at home.

"Hold it right there!"

Henry froze with the the glass against his lips. He opened his eyes to find his son standing before him, glaring accusingly.

"Is that the '81?"

"Hello, Abraham; you're home early. How was the auction?"

"Don't change the subject, Henry!" Both of Abe's hands were planted on his hips. "That's the last glass of the Macallan '81, isn't it?"

"And an excellent year it was, too—for them, anyway." He looked from glass to man with a mild expression of surprise. "I'm sorry, had you intended to drink this tonight?"

"Nice try." Abe's narrowed eyes showed that he wasn't buying the innocent act, but he let it go. "Well, never mind. At least there's still lasagna in the fridge. I'm starving." Abe started to turn toward the kitchen, but the guilty twitch between Henry's eyebrows halted him. "Come on—seriously? The lasagna, too?"

His father looked honestly contrite this time. "I am sorry, Abe. I thought you were meeting the Frenchman for dinner after the auction."

"She has the flu, so I came straight home for leftovers and fine scotch."

"And instead, you find yourself victim to the sins of the father." Henry smiled apologetically. He didn't surrender the glass, though.

Abe took in the tableau his father presented, cocking one ear toward the record player. "Sounds like I interrupted an epic night in. Haven't heard you play Wagner in a while."

"I was in the mood for complex and dramatic—blame the scotch, perhaps. We can open the '94," Henry suggested as a peace offering. "It's good in a pinch."

"Yeah, sure, why not," Abe said dryly. "It'll go perfectly with the peanut butter on white bread I'm about to make for dinner."

Henry was about to chide his son for being more melodramatic than Tristan und Isolde when the phone rang.

"Please, don't get up. Allow me," Abe crossed the room to answer the call. "Hello?" After a moment he held the receiver out in Henry's direction. "It's Jo. Other people's tragedies continue to pile up around you."

"Watch your step, Henry." Jo tracked her partner's progress as he stepped onto the ice rink and made his way cautiously toward their crime scene.

"Welcome to the freakshow," Hanson added.

Henry came to a sliding stop between the two detectives and got his first good look at the situation. His eyes practically twinkled at the sight.

"You were right, Jo." He turned to her with the hint of a smile. "This was well worth surrendering a glass of fine scotch."

"I thought you'd like this one. Now you and Abe both win." She returned his half-smile, enjoying her moment of victory before returning to business. "The victim and his…companion…were discovered an hour ago when the rink attendants showed up to resurface the ice. The rink was officially closed for maintenance today, but it's hard to keep people out if they're determined." She gestured to the chest-high boards that formed a flat-sided oval wall, the only thing separating the outdoor rink from the snow-covered ball fields, playgrounds, and groves of trees in the park beyond.

"This is a new level of blood and violence, even for hockey." Hanson glanced around them. "There's more red than white in here. And what's the deal with the llama?"

Henry walked slowly around the edge of the bizarre scene, taking in each unlikely detail. The vivid red gore stood out in stark contrast to the white sheet of ice below it, but despite Hanson's description, the blood and remains were mostly contained within one area: the blue ring of the face-off circle at center ice.

"Alpaca."

"Bless you," Hanson responded.

"No," Henry clarified, "alpaca. It's a species of camelid first bred in the Andes Mountains of South America. Related to llamas, but smaller and raised for their hair. I had a very fine alpaca scarf once…" He got a fond, slightly distant look in his eyes, and Jo and Hanson exchanged a glance. Hanson's half of the exchange included a long-suffering eye roll.

Jo turned back to Henry. "Fine neckwear aside, how did a mountain-dwelling animal end up on an ice rink in New York, not to mention sliced wide open and stuffed with human body parts like a…" She struggled to land on the right description.

"Turducken?" Hanson offered.

She shuddered at the thought. "Remind me to never eat Thanksgiving dinner with the Hansons."

Henry had completed his circle around the victim―victims, really. "Local ordinance does not permit alpacas to be raised within city limits, but this time of the year they're common enough in parks."

"Due to…migration?" Jo offered.

Henry pointed to a banner strung between two poles halfway across the park; it featured cheerful red and green wording and cartoonish pictures of farm animals wearing Santa hats.

"Christmas petting zoos."

"Hanson, you wanna―"

"―contact the zoo people and see if they're missing an alpaca?" Hanson finished for her. "On it." He gave Jo and Henry a parting nod and shoe-skated to the edge of the rink, flipping around halfway across and finishing the distance backwards. "Did I mention I played peewee hockey? Still got it." With a flourish, he hopped through the opening in the boards before picking his way more cautiously down the plowed but icy sidewalk toward the petting zoo sign to look for contact information.

Jo turned back to the grisly sight at center ice. The echo of a familiar image was tickling the edge of her brain. She frowned in thought and stepped back from the bodies for a wider perspective. After a handful of seconds, she gasped. "Holy crap. It's Luke Skywalker."

"You knew the victim?" Henry looked up with interest from the task of donning elbow-length exam gloves. "How did you recognize him by his left foot?" Other jumbled chunks of flesh were also protruding from the creature's belly, but only the foot was recognizable as human to anyone other than Henry.

She shook her head. "No, I'm talking about the staging. Big animal sliced open, person stuffed inside, icy backdrop…it's Luke Skywalker." Henry was still looking back at her blankly. "Star Wars?" she prompted. "Empire Strikes Back? Ring any bells?"

"Ah yes, of course." Henry nodded.

Jo waited. She knew her partner.

He didn't disappoint her. "Would that be Star Wars the Reagan-era defense program, or Star Wars the motion picture space opera?"

"Space opera." She crossed her arms, looking skeptical. "Come on, Henry. Even you must have seen Star Wars."

"Abe saw it often enough for the both of us." He cocked his head in interest. "How did you come to be so well-versed?"

"Long story."

She didn't seem inclined to go into it now, so Henry returned his attention to examining the body. He carefully extracted the foot with attached shin and turned it over in his hands. "I don't know if the victim was named Luke, but he was male, probably late 30's." He set the foot down, reached in again, and pulled out a red lump of flesh. "He had a healthy liver."

"Luke or the alpaca?" Jo considered the corpses. "That's not a very big body cavity to hold an entire adult male, chopped up or not."

"Very observant, Detective," Henry complimented. "Even if the animal had been entirely gutted, only about half of the victim could be present here, based on volume."

"So I still have half a body to find."

"I'm afraid so." Henry adjusted his gloves and plunged one arm back into the alpaca. He reminded Jo of a large animal veterinarian assisting with a birth, only instead of newborn calves, he was pulling out human feet and livers. It was creepy.

"I'll need both the human and animal remains transported to my lab as soon as I separate them. Under the circumstances, an I.D. and cause of death will be easier to determine from there."

Jo flagged down a member of the CSU staff and relayed the request, which the woman accepted with a nod of resignation. It was going to be a late, messy night for everyone.

"Detective, would you hand me a small evidence bag?" Henry reached one bloody, gloved hand toward her, fingers clasped around something. Jo pulled a bag from her coat pocket and leaned in to hold it open while Henry dropped in what looked like either a partial tooth or some undigested feed corn. This close to the body, her senses got a much stronger dose of the scene than she'd gotten before.

Her nose wrinkled. "They really do smell worse on the inside."

"Pardon?" Henry was once more up to his elbows in matted hair and gore and only half listening.

"Never mind."