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Alex is pacing around the dining room at Candace's place. The others are all sitting around the table, flipping through the most recent case file the police have sent over to them. Maxine's rattling off the details for Walter and Candace, but Alex already knows them all.
"So, we've got a male in his early-twenties. Just shy of six foot, brown eyes, brown hair. Pretty standard," she summarizes. "Went missing from a bar downtown. No trace for over a week, until a couple of kids found the body in an alley. Cause of death was," she cringes, "a completely ridiculous amount of stab wounds. Looks like he was held somewhere, too. Ligature marks on his wrists and ankles, dislocated shoulder. Maybe worked over, too. There are lots of bruises, fractured ribs, cracked skull. As far as identification goes, he's got some tattoos, maybe we can get something from that?"
Walter stares at the picture from the autopsy when it finally reaches him. "Ugh... Did anyone else happen to notice that our John Doe looks a hell of a lot like our DaVinci?"
"What?" Candace snaps, grabbing the photo from him so she can see for herself. "Holy shit, it does."
Alex already knows that, too, though. He wanted to be sure they saw it, too, before he said anything. It had been the reason he'd chosen this case out of all the possibilities he's been considering.
This isn't Tyler, though. This body is more than a month old and Tyler had been fine as recently as a few days ago, when Alex had crawled out of his bed and left him to catch up on some of his non-forgotten network projects. This isn't Tyler, but...
"Where is Tyler?"
Candace asks the question he's been wondering himself all day. Alex sighs when all eyes turn to him, and says, "I know he's been working on some freelance stuff these last few days, needed to do some jobs he'd actually get paid for. But I'll go check on him. You two," he gestures to Walter and Candace, "go run down the lead on the tattoo. Maxine, there was a necklace that the cops let us have - see if there's anything useful there, anything they missed."
"Will do," Maxine answers, the evidence bag already in hand.
Candace reluctantly stays behind with Walter when Alex ducks outside to start the trek over the Tyler's loft. He's on edge in a way he hasn't been since Lucy went missing and it's not a feeling he missed. If anything's happened to Tyler...
But, no. He's being stupid.
Nothing's happened to Tyler. He's probably wrapped up in a project or sleeping after spending the night wrapped up in a project. It'll be fine, he tells himself. What are the chances that this would happen to him twice, that two people he cares about would be taken from him?
He finds himself stuck in traffic on the way to the loft that Tyler calls home, and it's then that he realizes they skipped over a whole method of communication that will probably yield results (and relieve the building anxiety he's feeling over this) much more quickly than fighting Chicago traffic on a Friday at rush hour will.
Tyler's number is easy to find in his phone and he's patiently waiting as it rings and rings because maybe he was asleep after all. But the ringing stops and the phone sends him to voicemail and Alex grows even more concerned and even more frustrated with the cars around him - the light is green, damn it!
It takes twice as long as is typical, and he'd swear that every terrible, distracted, slow driver that ever existed gets in his way, but finally, finally, he makes it there.
And he tells himself that there's nothing suspicious about the building, nothing suspicious about Tyler's car, still parked in its usual spot, and nothing at all to suggest that anything is wrong. But still, the walk up to Tyler's floor seems to take a lifetime and he almost dreads what he'll find.
By now, he's worked himself up into a panic. Thinking of all the crime scenes he's seen in his time as detective, the crime scene photos Grace had let him see of the dead John Doe who looked so much like Tyler. He knows what heinous things people are capable of, and the same what-if's and could-be's that wracked his brain when Lucy was gone fill it now, too.
Tyler's loft appears quiet and dark from the outside, and it's locked when he tries the handle. "Tyler!" He shouts, maybe louder than is strictly necessary. "Tyler, open up!"
"Keys," he remembers, reaching for the ring of them shoved in his coat pocket, "I have a key." Tyler had given him the spare before one of the rare occurrences they'd held a meeting here, and he'd never asked for it back. He's grateful for that now as he locates the right one, shoves it into the lock. He heaves a sigh of relief when the 'click' of the tumblers turning registers and slowly pushes the door open.
"Tyler?" He calls again, a little less loudly. "You here?"
He slowly moves through the big room, passes by all the art stuff and the shabby kitchen area. Tyler's bed - a couple of mattresses tossed on the floor, haphazardly covered in blankets - is in the far corner and Alex breathes a sigh of relief when he spots the motionless person-shaped blob there.
"Tyler," he calls again, crossing what remains of the room to stand by the bed. Alex is endlessly amazed by how much of a heavy sleeper he is.
"Mmrngh," is all the reply he gets, while Tyler rolls off of one side to lie face down on the bed. "G'way."
Alex is almost relieved. Almost convinced enough that nothing is wrong that he starts to back away. He'd been stupid, he tells himself, to worry like he had. But then he sees it. The room is dark, blackout curtains mostly drawn against the big windows, but he can still make out deep purple-black bruises on Tyler's bare back, spots another on Tyler's face, swelling an eye shut, when he moves around to the other side of the bed, notes a busted lip, too, and, "What happened?"
"Got mugged," Tyler answers, though it's much harder to understand when it's all mumbled into the pillow. "S'at the hospital all night, jus' wanna sleep."
Filled with fresh anger, fresh worry, now, he demands, "What? You couldn't call to tell someone that?"
"Stole my phone, wallet. Sorry?" Tyler must see that he's about to argue (seriously? Email? Payphone? Smoke signal?) and stops him before he can start, "Look, I'm tired and everything hurts, so if you want to stay, can you just lay down and be quiet for now? You can yell at me later, I promise."
Alex sighs, but does as Tyler asks, kicking off his shoes and shrugging out of his jacket. Tyler moves over a bit, enough to give him room on the small bed, and Alex lies down next to him.
"Thanks," Tyler mumbles, curling into Alex's side.
"Mm," Alex answers, lost in the spinning thoughts of connected cases - could Tyler's mugging have been something more? Perhaps a failed kidnapping attempt? Could he have ended up like his doppelganger? It seems like too much of a coincidence, and so many years as a detective has taught him not to believe in those. A dead man with Tyler's face and now an attack on Tyler?
"Stop thinking so loud," Tyler complains, the words lost in Alex's shoulder this time, "relax. It's fine. I'm fine. They caught the assholes."
This news calms him, just as much as Tyler's request does. Again, he does what the other man asks of him and blocks out all the what-ifs and could-have-beens that ultimately weren't. His arms tighten around Tyler's frame, though he's careful of the bruises and he focuses on the fact that Tyler is not lying dead in some back alley with sixty two stab wounds and twelve broken bones, but that he's here and alive and mostly fine, definitely not missing.
Tyler leans up and steals a quick kiss, and Alex isn't really sure how he does it, but he chases away the lingering nightmarish images of that man who thankfully isn't Tyler and the loss of that panic-fueled adrenaline just makes him want to stay here like this, curled up with his Tyler for as long as he possibly can.