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Corbett stood up from the chair and stretched, surveying the room that he'd just spent the last six hours in. Two pizza boxes and an empty soda bottle rested on a folding table off to the side with a small stack of paper plates on the edge. Two well-used mugs sat on the table between the keyboards.

Sylvester had a sense of just how much coffee two cops could drink in a day and both mugs were of the oversized variety that put any normal coffee mug to shame. He'd already impressed Corbett with the mugs, but when the inspector saw the size of the brewing apparatus that he'd wired up in the house, he thought about giving Sylvester the entire suitcase of money from the trunk to get him to set that up in his own house.

Then he realized that he wasn't going to be going back to the house again, and that brought his spirits crashing down.

It had been hours since Sylvester started combing through the data from the cameras and they'd gotten many hits, but none of them had been anything special. Just other doctors and some nurses coming for lab reports.

Corbett yawned and walked nervously around the room, noticing that it had gotten much warmer since they first started that morning. He could hear the fan in the attic struggling to keep up with the heat that was building up from all the computer equipment working overtime.

As he was about to start toward the door for a step outside into the fresh air, a loud beep signaled yet another find on the footage. After so many that they'd found so far, Corbett wasn't holding his breath on this one, but he stopped anyway, figuring that he should at least take a look. It might be a few minutes until the machine found another match. He could put off his walk for long enough to rule out the new piece of video.

Corbett leaned closer to the main monitor where the new footage was beginning to play and his brow furrowed as he watched.

The video showed Amine at his desk typing at the computer while a figure moved across the shaded office window. Corbett knew from watching the other footage that the window looked out into the main hospital lab, and that a walkway ran right in front of that window. It wasn't all that uncommon to see the staff walking by that window, but shortly after the figure crossed the window, the door opened and she stepped into the office.

Corbett and Sylvester both had a pretty good idea by now of the people that were frequently in Amine's office, having looked at so many different scraps of footage that they could almost identify who the visitor was by their walk and the way that the entered the office, and they could do it within a couple seconds of the footage starting.

This visitor, though, didn't look like any of the others, and she wasn't in hospital attire. No scrubs, no lab coat, and no suit. In fact, she was dressed so very unlike a hospital employee that it was striking she was allowed in at all. Quickly, his eyes flicked to the time stamp on the footage. 21:48:36 was the readout in the bottom corner of the screen.

"Who the hell-" Corbett started to ask.

They'd found that the camera was almost perfectly positioned for facial recognition, situated directly above Amine's desk with a wide-angle view of the office, so when the new person walked into the office, they could see almost a straight view of her face.

Corbett leaned a little closer still towards the screen as Sylvester started up the facial recognition software. The video paused when they had the clearest view. The visitor was obviously female with the softer features that implied. Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail behind her head. The footage was black and white, so they couldn't tell the hair color, but it was dark. She was wearing a short skirt, knee-high boots, and a jacket that looked familiar to Corbett.

It only took him a moment to place it as the letter jacket from the high school near the hospital. He and Jennifer had been by to look at the place when they were discussing what they wanted to do to once Angela got to the point of starting high school. Jen wanted to send her to public school and Corbett wanted to send her to private academy, and they were each trying to change the other's minds.

Nothing had been worked out, but he did get a pretty good sense of what the high school uniforms were, as well as the coveted jackets.

And that meant that the girl in the video was eighteen at the very latest. His practiced eyes were telling him, though, that the girl was nowhere near as old as that. He was betting on sixteen, seventeen on the outside.

"You stupid son of a bitch," Corbett whispered as the video began to play again.

On another monitor, a readout of the facial recognition software began combing through all of the records in central that had attached photos of faces. Sylvester had already keyed in most of the relevant details that would narrow down the search. Corbett noticed that they were of the same mind on the girl's age, as Sylvester had put in a range of fourteen to eighteen.

As he watched, the girl walked into the office and closed the door behind her. Without any hesitation, she walked around the desk and smiled at the doctor. The sound was turned off on the video to save bandwidth on their connection, but it didn't take a lip reader to know what was being discussed. Corbett watched as the girl threw her arms around the doctor and slid herself into his lap.

After only enough time that he could verify that everything he suspected was true, he turned his eyes away from the monitor.

"Turn it off," he told Sylvester.

The other officer quickly stopped the footage and the monitor went blank.

"Well, now we know what Lewis had on the doc," Sylvester said. "What do you want to do about it?"

Corbett didn't have to think for very long.

"Make me a copy of that. All of it. And then get me the name on that girl. I think I need to go have a chat with the good doctor."

With a few keystrokes, Sylvester started the copy while the software continued to work through the data. Sylvester hadn't limited it to the high school only, figuring that it might be another student's jacket.

Even so, by the time Corbett had downloaded all of the data from the feed into his tablet, the computer beeped, signaling a match. When he looked up into the monitor he stopped and stared, noticing out of the corner of his eye that Sylvester was doing the same. The name on the screen was something that he would never have expected in a million years.

"Stephanie -" Sylvester said.

"-Amine," Corbett finished. "Stupid, perverted son of a bitch."

"My God," Sylvester said, shaking his head while he copied all the data to the inspector's tablet. "His daughter?"

"Step daughter," Corbett corrected. "From what the record says, he married her mother a few years ago, back before she was in high school." He shook his head again, "Lewis had him good."

"Jesus. You're not kidding. All right, Pack Rat, you've got all the data, including the bio on Stephanie and the doc. Hope you can do something with it."

"We'll see," Corbett said as he gathered his keys and tablet off the desk. "Make sure you keep the trackers down on the car. If I'm not back in three hours, get out of here and make sure that Jennifer and Angela get out."

"You got it, inspector. I'll see what else I can dig up in the meantime. Good luck."

Corbett nodded and walked out the door into the afternoon sun. After so long in the house, it took him a minute to get used to the bright outdoors again. That gave him a minute to pause outside the door and collect his thoughts. He tried to make sense of everything, but it just wouldn't fall into place. It was just one giant shit storm that had all come together perfectly for the senator. The senator seemed like the kind who would make his own luck, though, and probably didn't need the perfect storm that had actually happened to make sure that he wouldn't suffer politically for what his kid did.

Now he just had to figure out how to get the doc to sign off on the original lab results so that he could add them to his case. There had never been a condemnation that was overturned before. He just hoped that with enough evidence, he could make it happen anyway.

He took a breath and headed to the car, tucking his tablet into its holster as he walked. He opened the door, slid behind the wheel and then pulled out of the driveway, heading to the hospital.

---

It didn't take much talking to get into the lab or into Doctor Amine's office once Corbett arrived at the hospital. All it took was a flash of his badge and a mutter of "official business" to get him wherever he needed to go. The hospital had a good working relationship with the police department and no one there wanted to jeopardize that. After he got turned around once, he even found an orderly to take him right where he needed to go.

The doctor looked up from the microscope on his desk and Corbett could see the color drain just a little from his face.

"Inspector. I didn't expect to see you here. What can I do for you?"

"We need to talk, doc. I think it might be better somewhere a little less public," Corbett said, flicking his eyes to the camera in the corner. After so many different pieces of footage, he knew exactly where it was.

Amine saw where Corbett's eyes looked and he nodded. "There's a nice garden path outside the rehab unit. It's nice and shady."

Corbett nodded and watched the doctor carefully as he stood and led the way out the door and down the hall. The hospital was built wing after wing, sprawling out over two city blocks, each part added onto the last. The lab was in one of the outer additions, away from the older building in the center, and it only took a couple minutes of walking for them to emerge into a quiet garden area. Corbett could see the patients through the glass in their rooms, working with their therapists. Some were walking, some were merely re-learning to stand. It seemed an odd place to have the discussion that was coming, but none of the windows were open to the garden, so they wouldn't be overheard.

"What the hell are you doing coming to my office, Inspector?" Amine demanded once the door had shut behind the two of them. "I told you, I can't help you any more."

"I know why that is now, doc," Corbett said, stopping to face the irate Amine. "Tell me about Stephanie."

Amine's face turned a whiter shade of pale, but his eyes hardened. "My daughter?" he asked, "What does she have to do with anything?"

Corbett could hear the slight waver in the man's tone that told his experienced ear that he was hiding something. It was always a sure thing when he heard that.

"You ever bring her to work with you? Show her all the interesting things that you do here?" Corbett's voice stayed even and conversational, sounding for all the world like he was just shooting the breeze with a friend.

"What? No. She doesn't have any interest in what I do, inspector." Amine glared at Corbett, "Now why are you asking me about my daughter?"

Corbett didn't answer right away. He pulled his tablet out from the holster and pulled up the footage that they'd found. Without another word, he started it playing and handed the tablet to the doctor.

Amine swiped the tablet from Corbett's hand and looked at it. Corbett watched as the doctor's face fell into a scowl and then he watched the remaining color drain from the man's face as the video played on.

"This is what Lewis has on you, isn't it, doc?" Corbett asked.

Amine sighed and nodded, not able to speak with his eyes locked on the footage. His mouth opened like he wanted to say something, and then shut again. The doctor just stared at the tablet screen until finally he found his voice again.

"Not this tape specifically, but yes. He knows about my relationship with Stephanie."

Corbett could see the fear in the man's eyes.

"I have the proof on the lab results, doc. I found the original entry, the one that says Kincaid was negative for C."

"How did you-" Amine stopped and stared at the inspector, "I never signed that, and Lewis' goons were supposed to erase it. How did you find it?"

"Determination, doc. That and I hate when someone goes after my family." Corbett took the tablet back from the doctor and pulled up the lab results.

"You have all the information, then, Inspector. Why are you here talking to me?"

"I need you to sign the original lab results, doctor. It's no good without your signature. And I need a signed statement from you saying that you altered the results. I'd prefer you told the whole story about who made you do it, too."

Amine's fists clenched and he turned away back towards the door. "I can't do that, Corbett. You know what will happen if I do that?"

"The same thing that's going to happen to me, doctor. I know that if I do this, I'm never going to work on the force again. My career is going to go down the drain. And I'll have Lewis to deal with, too."

Corbett walked ahead of the doctor and put his big hand on the door to keep Amine from opening it.

"This is going to come out, doc, one way or another. Either I'm going to put it out there or Lewis is. You're in the middle of something huge, and I'm sorry you're in the crossfire. Go out with some honor, doc. Don't fizzle out and let Kincaid die because you don't have the spine to fess up and take your lumps."

Corbett put all the emotion he could into his voice. Everything that he had felt over the past few days he let seep into his voice as he pleaded with the doctor.

"You can at least make something good come out of this, doc. You can save the Kincaid girl."

"Lewis will kill me, you know. Him or his goons."

"I can get you out of here and out of his range, doc. But it's a limited time offer. I'm going to be just as much a target as you before long, and when that happens, I'm taking care of me and my family. What do you think that Lewis is going to do to you when his leverage evaporates?"

Corbett held out the tablet again.

"Because I guarantee you that if you don't help me, all the news stations in the city are going to be playing this non-stop for a week. You're going to be a liability either way, so let me help you."

Amine tried to pull open the door, but Corbett kept it closed, staring at the side of the doctor's face, intense gaze fixed while Amine looked pleadingly at the door handle, as if he could convince the door to open without looking at the inspector.

Finally, the turned and sagged against the door.

"All right, Corbett. You win."

The doctor's eyes rolled up to meet Corbett's.

"I've got the paperwork in my office. Come with me, and I'll sign the lab report."

Amine took another deep breath and the ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. "I even have the statement. I wrote it up a couple days ago in a fit of conscience." He laughed, and Corbett winced at the harsh sound. "I didn't have the balls to do anything about it."

"Now you can, doctor. And I'll get you out of here before I do anything with it, I promise."

Corbett knew that he could get Beanpole to go along with his plan, and by the end of the day, the doctor would be out of the city and somewhere that the senator couldn't find him. He let up on the door and stood back so that Amine could open it.

Without another word, the two of them walked through the hallways back to the doctor's office. True to his word, Amine pulled out a thin file folder with the original results and a typed document inside. Both were already signed.

"You're doing the right thing, doc. Thank you."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't have if you hadn't shown up here, Corbett. Get out before I lose what little spine I've found."

Corbett nodded and then turned and walked out the door. He had one piece of the puzzle, but it wasn't enough. He needed more before he could go and visit the magistrate and make his case. He still had some work to do.