A/N: If you don't remember where Slow Burn left off, you may want to go back and read at least the last portion of the last chapter. This picks up a few hours later.

Bobby POV

"Tell me what happened."

"Get him out of here first," the kid responded petulantly. I glanced over my shoulder to where Ross was standing near the door.

He didn't want to leave, I could tell.

But I also knew that he trusted me with his son.

He stared at me for a solid minute and then he looked over at Jeremy briefly before walking out of the room.

"Okay, Jeremy," I said once the door was closed. "It's just you and me. Now tell me what happened."

I sat back in my chair and held the boy's gaze.

"So how come the chief trusts you with his most prized possession?" he asked me cynically.

"Prized possession. That would be you?"

"What do you think?"

"I don't think he considers you a possession. You're his son. He loves you."

"What do you know about it? You're the cop who was banging my mother."

That was about the last thing I'd been expecting him to say and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to mentally recover.

"Jeremy, I barely know your mother…"

"Like you gotta know a woman to fuck her," he interrupted.

"That's how you talk about your mother?" I fired back as I got up from my chair. I leaned over the table, putting my hands flat on the surface. "I think you need to show her some respect."

"She ain't here," he said with a shrug.

"That's a good thing. She's already dealing with the fact that her son was arrested for murder. I'd hate for her to have to stand by and watch while you act like a spoiled, ungrateful brat."

"Brat? Is that the best you can do, Detective?"

"You know what? I just drove four hours after being up all night so that I could try to help you out of a jam, but I'm starting to think it was a waste of my time."

"It was. See ya."

"So that's it? You just want to stay in here and take your chances with the Baltimore PD? You know that Maryland has the death penalty, right?"

He paled slightly when I mentioned the death penalty.

His bravado was all an act. Maybe not the resentment of his father, or possibly even of me since he had obviously heard the rumor about me and his mother, but he was definitely scared.

I walked around the table and sat down on the edge, so that I was seated right next to his chair.

"My personal life is none of your business. But just so that we can clear the air, I'm going to tell you something. I'm not the cop who had the affair with your mother. I know your father believed that for awhile, but he knows the truth now. And however you feel about your dad is irrelevant to the situation you're in right now. You realize that, right? You're in a world of shit at the moment. My partner and I are here to help you, but you have to be willing to help yourself. And I'm not going to tolerate any more disrespect from you, are we clear?"

He thought about my words for a minute, maybe two, and then he finally gave me a nod.

"So where's your partner?"

"She's talking to the officers who arrested you so that we can get the whole story. She's getting their side. I'm going to get yours. So what do you say?"

"She? Are you still partnered with that hot chick?"

"Remember what I said about respect?"

"Yeah. Sorry. But it's Eames, right?"

"It's Goren. My hot chick partner is my wife," I told him. "Now can we get down to business because the clock is ticking and BPD is itching to throw the book at you."

He stared at me for a moment longer and then slouched over the table, stretching out one arm and then laying his head on it.

"I know," he said as he closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. "And I know I'm being a tool. Look, I've got the hangover from hell, okay? I've been sitting in this room for more than seven hours and then Dad had to come in and read me the riot act."

"What did you expect him to do?"

"Not that," he said like it was obvious. "He's always gotta act so high and mighty, like everyone makes mistakes except him."

"Jeremy, let's talk about you, okay? Tell me about last night. You got drunk?"

"Yeah. Me and some buddies hit up a frat party."

"On K Street?"

That was the scene of the crime.

That was where Jeremy had been found with the victim.

"Right. It wasn't happening, but my girl wanted to stay, so…"

"Your girl. That's Kelly?"

He sat up in his chair again and his eyes filled with tears. This kid was all over the map.

"Uh huh. We've been hooking up for a couple of months now."

"Hooking up," I stated. "You mean having sex?"

I'd seen the police report.

The victim, Kelly Farrar, had been raped and then stabbed to death with a screw driver.

"Yeah," he said, once again looking at me like I was stupid. "I'm nineteen. I have sex with my girlfriend."

"That's fine. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page," I said soothingly. "So walk me through last night. You went to the party. Did Kelly go with you, or did she meet you there?"

"She came later, with a couple of her friends. It was maybe ten-thirty when she showed up."

"And you got there at...what time?"

"Eight thirty. Or eight forty-five. Something like that."

"Were the two of you fighting?"

"No," he said quickly. "Nothing like that. She was high when she showed up and so she was really…you know…amorous."

"And you were…amorous, too? Or were you upset that she'd been smoking weed without you?"

"I don't do that stuff, man."

"Come on, Jeremy. You know the cops are processing your drug test as we speak. You honestly expect me to believe that it's going to come back negative?"

"I dropped some E," he admitted quietly.

"That's it?"

He paused for a minute and then looked down at the table.

"Are you gonna rat me out?'

"You need to get over that," I told him. "All of your secrets are going to come to light now."

"We were kitty-flippin', okay?" he said reluctantly.

"Okay," I said evenly, although on the inside, I was hurting for Ross.

This had to be killing him.

And the fact that Jeremy was high on a mixture of ketamine and ecstasy wasn't going to help his case.

"And you were drinking. Beer? Liquor?" I asked.

"Both. There was a keg, but someone was passing around a bottle of Wild Turkey, too."

"So Kelly showed up feeling amorous and…"

"We worked the room for an hour or two and then we went upstairs."

"To have sex."

"That was the plan, yeah."

"The plan. So you didn't? What happened? Did she change her mind?"

"No," he said, but then he furrowed his brow and looked up at me. "I mean, I don't think so. She said something about Kenny and I…"

"You what? Who's Kenny?"

"This guy on her hall…he's been working it, but you know, I'm not trying to be all jealous or nothing because she's not into him."

"She's into you," I clarified.

"Right," he said. He looked like he wanted to say more, but then he shook his head and went back to studying the table.

"What did she say about Kenny?"

"She said he was creepin' on her," he said slowly, as though he was just remembering the conversation. "And I…I think I asked her why she kept him danglin', you know? I think…"

"You were mad."

"Yeah."

"Was this before or after you had sex?"

"I don't know. I think we started, but then…I'm not sure."

"So you don't remember any more about what happened after you went up into the bedroom?"

"I know I woke up when the cops dragged me off of the bed, down onto the floor and shoved my face into the carpet. They put the cuffs on me and I…I didn't even know what was going on. They pulled me to my feet and that was when I saw her…"

He paused when someone knocked on the door and after a second, Alex opened the door and came inside.

"How're you doing, Jeremy?" she asked.

"I've been better," he replied, and I was glad to see that his belligerence was gone, at least for the moment.

"What've you got?" I asked her, nodding my head toward the file folder in her hand.

She gestured for me to join her at the door, so I got up from the table and crossed the room, putting my back to Jeremy.

"The semen in the victim is a preliminary match to Jeremy," she whispered.

"It was his girlfriend. They may have had consensual sex."

She shook her head and then handed me the file so that I could open it.

On top was the initial coroner's report.

I glanced over it quickly, taking in words like tearing and excessive bruising and abrasions.

"This is more than rough sex," she said, pre-empting my suggestion of the possibility that maybe they'd just gotten a little carried away. "And the tox report shows that the victim tested positive for cannabis and ketamine."

"He admitted to doing drugs, too. And he told me that she was high when she got to the party."

"There's more," she said, reaching over to flip the pages. On the next page, she ran her finger down to the middle of the report. "Here."

My heart sank as I read the words.

Jeremy's prints were on the murder weapon.

I closed the file and caught Alex's eye, each of us with our backs still to Jeremy.

"This is bad," she said softly. "What's his story?"

"He doesn't remember."

"We need to make him remember," she replied, and then we turned around to face him again.

"What's it say?" he asked in concern.

"The evidence doesn't look good," I answered vaguely. "We really need you to think hard about what happened."

"I told you," he said as he got up from his chair. "I told you everything I remember."

"Was it just the two of you in the bedroom?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so."

"Did you lock the door?"

Because the door was locked when the police showed up.

One of the roommates had called 9-1-1 because he couldn't get in and he couldn't get either Jeremy or Kelly to answer, even after pounding on the door for nearly half an hour.

"I don't know."

"You went in there for privacy," I reminded him. "Wouldn't you have locked the door?"

He shrugged and said, "It wasn't a priority. Sometimes people walk in. It happens."

"Did you know the guy whose room you were using?"

"No, not really."

"Had you been in that room before?"

"No."

"He had a toolbox under his desk," Alex told him. "Do you remember seeing that?"

"A toolbox? I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Was it red?"

"So you did see it," I stated. "Why? Why would you notice a toolbox when you weren't sure if you even locked the door?"

"I…don't know."

"You were mad at Kelly, right? For leading Kenny on?"

"No. Not really."

"A few minutes ago, you said you were mad," I reminded him.

"Look, he was a loser, okay? She was never gonna get with him."

"But she wouldn't tell him that. She kept letting him think he had a chance."

"Well, yeah. I mean, how hard was it to just say no, you know?"

"You had a fight about it," Alex said, having caught up to the scenario.

"Maybe," he said. Then he nodded and said, "Yeah. She even put her shirt back on because she was mad that I was mad. How fucked up is that?"

"So you were making out, you started arguing about Kenny, she got pissed and got dressed again, and then…"

He stared at the floor for a long time and then he looked up, first at Alex and then at me.

"I don't know."

"Sit down, Jeremy," I said, walking over to the table. I pulled out a chair and sat down across from him. He kept his eyes on me as he slowly eased into the chair.

"What is it?"

"Your prints are on the murder weapon."

"Mine? No. No way. I couldn't…I would never…"

"And you definitely had sex with her," I added. "So your story's not adding up."

Now his face flooded with fear and he broke my gaze so that he could look at Alex.

"I didn't do it," he said adamantly. "I didn't."

"Okay. But we need you to remember," she told him. "We need to know everything about her life, your life, the party…everything, so that we can find out who did this."

"My prints are really on the screw driver?" he asked, and that was when I really started to feel sick.

"Screw driver?" I asked him.

To my knowledge, no one had told him what Kelly had been stabbed with. The tool had been found under the bed after Jeremy had been taken away.

"How did you know the murder weapon was a screw driver?"

TBC...