[Mmmm, banter. And some background, though I'm not sure if maybe it's too late in the book to be adding in background at this point]

Chris and Steve sat at the back of the scruffy conference room. There were two dozen people in it with them. Some of them were other detectives from the city, some of them were detectives from the state police, there were a couple of guys from the Attorney General's office, and some PR guy from the state. They always got one of those whenever something that might end up on the front page of the papers for more than a day happened.

Chris took a sip of his coffee and waited. His good mood from the morning had evaporated. This was yet another briefing, to get everyone up to speed. The third damn day of briefings, and he was tired of it. It wasn't helping that he and Steve had put the case together well enough that these jokers felt the need to step in and take it away.

Steve wasn't nearly so bothered. This stuff happened, and as far as he was concerned, if they found the guy and got him off the streets before someone else died that was good enough. Getting to laugh at the pompous little guy who couldn't get the video projector working was a bonus.

"So," Steve said, "looks like someone had a good night last night."

Chris snorted. "Yeah," he replied, waving his coffee cup at the guy at the podium. "Handed him the case on a f**king silver platter. Probably beat off thinking about the promotion he'd get."

"It wasn't him beating off I was thinking about," Steve said with a smirk.

"Then you really need to talk to Mary about that little problem of yours."

"Not so little, my friend."

"I know your friend isn't little," Chris said, tapping himself on the chest. "It was your dick we were talking about."

"Perving on my dick? What would Joe say?"

"'Is that it?' probably."

The lights dimmed at that point, and the projector in the back of the room flickered on.

"Right," the small man at the front of the room said. "It looks like we have a psycho of some sort out there. We've done a profile of the victims so far, and it looks