Let's see ... This is a Pretender/Sentinel crossover, I'm guessing it has S2 spoilers, and I don't own anything. Also, I'm not doing this for money. BTW, when I said I didn't own anything, I very nearly meant it. There's no point in suing.

*****
In a fight between you and the world, back the world.
   --Kafka
*****

   "Yes, of course I'd like that, but ... yes, I know that's the usual ... I don't see why you couldn't -- hey! What the hell was *that* supposed to mean? I'm just trying to keep you from damaging university property. Look, I gotta go. I'll talk to you later."
   There were two things to remember in these situations:
   1. Blair did not like it when I eavesdropped on the other side of his phone conversations
   and,
   2. sometimes it was hard to remember what I was and was not supposed to know. In the past, mistakes had been made.
   With those things in mind, I managed to keep my ears to myself.
   "What was that about?" I asked as soon as he set the phone down.
   "They want to put my name on the door."
   As usual, he wasn't making sense.
   "But, that's good. Right?"
   "Sure, except the usual way of doing that is to paint it on the glass window."
   That explained it. Blair loved the etched glass window in the door of his office.
   When he'd moved to that new office, I'd been impressed by the amount of room he'd been given. His office was larger than Simon's, not that it took much.
   Typically, Blair's only comment on the office was that size didn't matter. He'd said that with a big grin on his face, staring at the glass window the way tourists look at the Sistine Chapel.
   "So," I said, "where's the problem? They can just put a nameplate on the door instead."
   "That's what I said, but apparently I'm rocking the boat. This place is driving me crazy." He shook his head and decided to smile at me. "Did you come to buy my lunch?"
   "Jesus, Sandburg, do you have to actually drool? People are going to think I never feed you."
   He opened his mouth and wisely chose to shut it again before any words could escape.
   "Italian sound good to you?" I asked.
   He answered me by reaching for his coat.

*****
You're such a beautiful freak. I wish there were more just like you.
   --the Eels, Beautiful Freak
*****

   "... now he has to change his topic," Blair was telling me, hands flying over a barely touched plate of cannelloni, "because he's allergic to chickens."
   I didn't know what tickled me more ... that *Blair* was being allowed to advise someone on their thesis, or that the kid he wound up with was actually crazier than Blair at his worst. Blair's story was that he would get the weird ones for the rest of his career because he'd made the mistake of discussing magic in his thesis. I thought it sounded suspiciously like karma.
   "So if he can't study voodoo, what is he gonna do?"
   Blair stabbed at his food as if it had been trying to get away.
   "I don't know. I told him he should study tantric magic." His eyes were laughing at some private joke.
   "Okay, I'll bite. What's tantric magic?"
   He looked me over with a scientist's attention to detail. I didn't know if I should be flattered or scared.
   "I'll explain it to you in detail on Friday night."
   Before I could say anything, he sat up straight and pointed at someone with his fork.
   "Hey ... see that guy over there?"
   "Why don't you stand up to point?" I suggested. "I'm not sure he noticed you."
  
   I shouldn't have bothered. The kid was on a train that didn't stop at my station.
   "I think that's Dr. Burton."
   I looked where he was pointing. A man in his thirties with close-cropped hair and sleepy eyes was watching us in the reflection of his water glass. Not that it was obvious -- I don't think anyone else would have caught it.
   "Burton?" I said, facing Blair again. He grinned.
   "Isn't that cool? He's a guest lecturer from McGill." He studied my face for a second, then added, "That's in Montreal."
   Blair was the only academic I had ever met who didn't just assume I was ignorant. He thought I was smart, and it was embarrassing what that did to me.
   "In anthropology?"
   "Yeah. He's supposed to be some kind of big deal, but you know, it's funny -- I've never heard of him. I mean, you'd think I would have, considering."
   No arguing with that.
   "You want me to check him out?"
   Blair laughed. It would have been attractive if it hadn't been inspired by me.
   "Oh, yeah. There's nothing master criminals like better than pretending to be anthropology professors."
   "Right. And you're exactly what you seem to--" I stopped, because Blair was giving me a look that clearly meant "shut up". A second later, Dr. Burton was at our table.
   Slipping. I was slipping. I should have heard him.
   "Hi. I'm Jarod Burton. Would you happen to be Dr. Sandburg?"
   "Uh, yeah ... " Blair said. He covered for his deer-in-the-headlights look with a sheepish smile. It almost looked convincing. "Sorry. I only got my doctorate a few months ago ... I'm still getting used to it. I'm looking forward to your lecture tomorrow."
   He gestured at the chair Burton was standing beside. Burton shook his head.
   "Thanks, but I have to run. I'd like to talk with you, though. Maybe this afternoon sometime?"
   "Sure," Blair said. "I have office hours `til four. Just stop in whenever."
   "Great. Nice meeting you."
   He left quickly, and I barely heard him as he wove through the tables. Blair watched him go with more interest than I liked.
   "I can't tell from your expression," I said, "so help me out here. Are you staring because he makes you nervous or because you want another notch on your belt?"
   Blair turned innocent eyes on me.
   "It can't be both?" he asked sweetly.
   I gave him my best interrogation room look. The little bastard actually had the nerve to laugh.
   "That's cute," he said. "Wanna have sex in the truck?"
   My husband was nothing if not direct.
   "How about your office?"
   "There's a window in my door, remember?"
   "Oh, but my *truck* is private. You know, Sandburg, I'm sure people are used to seeing you have sex in your office."
   "Not lately," he countered. "I've been dating a repressed middle-aged cop."
   The kid would definitely be surprised if I laid him out across the table and made him dessert. Might almost be worth explaining the indecent exposure charges to Simon.
   Almost.
   "You know you don't have time to back up your words," I told him. "And you don't want to find out how repressed I'm not."
   "Maybe I do."
   His face didn't reveal how serious he was, but his heartbeat and the slight scent of musk told me he'd go at least as far as I would. Which was nowhere. I wasn't going to do anything. I was *not* going to let my hedonistic and very willing partner get me arrested.
   "Do you want me to check out Dr. Burton?"
   He sighed.
   "I guess it wouldn't hurt." He tilted his head and smiled. "If there's chicken parmesan waiting when you get home, can we renegotiate on the other issue?"
   I casually ran my fingers across the back of his hand.
   "If I *have* to ... "
   He laughed. His eyes always had a nice light to them when he did that.
   I walked him back to his office on the theory that I'd get a kiss when we got there, which I did. On the drive back to the station I amused myself by wondering what Simon would do if, this time, I actually told him the truth about why I was late.

*****
It can be a bit of a pointless task, learning a lot, because there's always someone who's going to know that bit more.
   --Chris Lowe
*****

   "On paper," I said as Blair washed and I dried, "he checks out fine. He's been at McGill for five years, did his doctoral work there ... which makes it strange that nobody in McGill's anthropology department has ever heard of him."
   Blair stared at me.
   "*What?*"
   "I thought you'd like that. How did your talk with him go?"
   "It didn't. He stopped by around three and said something had come up. We're supposed to have lunch after his lecture tomorrow."
   "Great," I said, reaching over Blair's head to put the plates away. "You can quiz him on australiosis or something, find out if he really knows anything about anthropology."
   "Australopithecus," he corrected absently. "Which reminds me ... " He set down the glass he'd been washing and went after his backpack. Naturally, whatever it was he'd brought home, it was stuffed into that damned pack. I'd asked him once to empty it in front of me so I could see if it held more than the laws of physics would account for. He'd smiled politely and declined.
   Now he held up an impressive stack of papers.
   "These are photocopies of articles he's supposed to have written. He's been published in ... god, *every*where. I found these posted in the lounge. We're all supposed to familiarize ourselves with his work before the lectures."
   He smiled a little. I could see why. It *was* pretty funny.
   "Can I assume nobody was familiar with his work to begin with?"
   "Yeah, but, you know ... nobody's *admitting* it. That's why academic fraud is the easiest kind."
   "Did you read them?"
   He frowned. All of a sudden he wasn't so talkative.
   "Uh ... yeah. After he canceled today I picked them up."
   "And?"
   "They're ... good."
   He avoided my eyes and flopped down in the yellow chair. I waited.
   "I'm a little jealous, actually. Anyone would be proud to have written them."
   Professional jealousy. I hadn't seen that in Blair before, probably because he'd always been so wrapped up in his work that he hadn't had time to see what anyone else in the field was doing.
   I draped the dishcloth over the tap and went to kneel in front of his chair.
   "Sorry about that, Sandburg," I told him. "I guess I've been keeping you too busy to write."
   He smiled. Much better.
   "Are you sure they aren't plagiarized?"
   He shook his head.
   "I read most of the anthropology journals, and I've never seen any of these articles before." His eyes lost focus for a moment. I could almost hear the wheels turning. "Wait a minute ..."
   He went into the den and came out a few minutes later with a copy of Anthropology Review.
   "This is the March `98 issue. His article on Cro-Magnon funeral rites was supposedly published in here, but look ... "
   He threw the magazine to me. I opened it to the table of contents. Dr. Burton's name wasn't there.
   "Okay, that settles it. He's a fraud."
   Blair sat down on the floor.
   "I wish it were that simple. If he did write those articles ... you couldn't do that without having a lot of education in the field."
   I knew the smart thing would be to drop it. Blair was right -- it wasn't as if this Burton guy was likely to be a dangerous criminal. But something strange was going on, and it was much too close to Blair. He got into enough trouble without having it practically land in his lap.
   "Is his lecture in the Hargrove Hall theatre?"
   Blair blinked.
   "Yeah. Why?"
   "I'll meet you there at noon."
   "Can't resist a mystery?"
   "Hell, it's not that. I don't like the idea of you having lunch with some handsome stranger."
   His eyes darkened, just a little. One of the fringe benefits of my senses was being able to see things like that. He slid onto his hands and knees as smoothly as a cat and moved in very close to me.
   "You're so territorial," he said approvingly.
   "Don't forget possessive," I told him.
   He rolled his eyes.
   "Now you're probably going to want to go through some kind of *claiming* ritual ... "
   From that angle, he had to tilt his head back to meet my eyes. He had such a pretty throat.
   I took my husband to bed.

*****
All I want is just a little truth, and that's it.
   --the Eels, Mental
*****

   I wasn't real happy to hear the audience still applauding Dr. Burton's lecture when I entered Hargrove Hall. Considering Blair's bizarre jealousy about Burton's writing, hearing that fraud get prolonged applause from what sounded like a full theatre was not going to be good for his mood.
   When a wave of students poured out the back doors, I pressed forward until I could see Blair. He was at the front of the room beside Burton, who had a long line of students waiting to meet him. It was a relief to see that Blair was surrounded by a fan club of his own. I'd never seen Blair so pleased to be pulled in ten directions at once.
   They were still yammering at him when I reached his side. A girl with most of her hair shaved off and the rest dyed pink was tugging at his sleeve.
   "Dr. Sandburg, could I talk to--"
   "Dr. Sandburg," I told her, "has to eat sometime. He has office hours starting at one."
   I thought she'd be upset, but she laughed.
   "Yes, officer."
   Damn. Blair had obviously been telling stories about his cop boyfriend again. Not that we were anywhere near a closet on campus, but I liked to think that I had a private life.
   I gave him a dirty look. He shrugged and faced the kids.
   "Sorry, guys. I'll talk to you later."
   They complained, but they left. I heard Burton excuse himself and come to stand behind us. Without really thinking about it, I put a hand on Blair's back.
   "They're crazy about you," Burton said to Blair. I turned to get a look at his face.
   "They recognize one of their own." I offered my hand. "I'm Jim Ellison."
   He shook hands with me. Blair, who'd just had a shot of his favourite kind of praise, was rewarding Burton with a genuine smile.
   "That lecture was *amazing*! Was that your doctoral topic?"
   Burton's heartrate sped up.
   "No. It's a more recent interest. I've seen a copy of your doctoral thesis, by the way. I thought it was fascinating."
   "I'm glad," Blair said, "but to tell you the truth, I've been living with it 24-7 for a long time, and it's not that fascinating to me anymore."
   Oh, he was going to pay for that later. I gave Blair a push in the direction of the doors.
   "Could we possibly continue this conversation somewhere I could get fed?"
   Blair looked at Dr. Burton.
   "Thai food okay with you?"
   "Sounds great."

   They chattered all the way to the restaurant. I didn't follow much of it, but I got the impression that Blair was trying to see how much Burton really knew about anthropology, and Burton was digging for something less obvious. He seemed to be trying to get a handle on Blair.
   I didn't think either of them was getting very far.
   Blair asked where Burton had done his undergrad work, what expeditions he'd been on, how one of Blair's old professors from Berkley was liking his new position at McGill. Burton answered everything smoothly, but I got the impression that he was reciting something he'd memorized. Just a list of names.
   He showed a little more life when Blair asked why he'd come to lecture at Rainier.
   "I heard Rainier was housing some interesting Columbian artifacts."
   If Burton had been fishing for an interesting response, he got one. Blair's eyes widened, the colour left his face, and his heartrate nearly doubled.
   "Um ... I think they're in the foyer of Life Sciences."
   Burton cocked his head.
   "You haven't seen them? I thought they were brought in by the Anthropology Department."
   Blair still looked sick. I wondered if he'd feel any better if I punched Burton in the face.
   "Yeah, but I ... there was an accident the night they showed up and I guess I would rather pretend they'd never arrived."
   Burton's eyes narrowed. I didn't like the intense way he was looking at Blair.
   "What kind of accident?"
   He sounded as if he really didn't know, which was a pretty good trick considering that his pupils told me he was lying.
   As for me, I really didn't have any idea what Blair was talking about.
   "A snake got in with the packing. A bushmaster. They're pretty aggressive. An undergrad from one of my fourth year classes was unpacking the crates, and ... there wasn't anything they could do for him."
   I felt my jaw drop.
   "For Christ's sake, Sandburg -- why didn't I hear about this?"
   "I figured you'd freak, and it was just an accident. I mean, the odds of it ever happening again were incredibly small. I didn't want you trying to insist that I not open any shipments, not that I was inclined to open stuff from South America at that point anyway, but ... you know how you get."
   "I still should have heard something from somewhere. This must have gone through Major Crimes."
   "It did. You were on a case. H and Rafe handled it, and I asked them not to tell you."
   I made a mental note to knock Rafe and Brown's heads together.
   "It must've been in the paper."
   Blair coloured a little.
   "Our paper got lost that day."
   Burton shifted in his chair, probably looking at my face and wondering when the hitting was going to start. If only it were that easy.
   "Sandburg," I growled. He looked miserable. I stopped myself and tried again with a softer tone. "Chief, what were you thinking? Were you the one who told that kid to open the crates?"
   He shook his head.
   "No, thank god. It wasn't my shipment, but I felt really ... aw, Jim, Mike was such a great kid. He was going to do grad work after ... " He gave me a shaky smile. "I'm sorry. I know I should've told you, but I was kind of fucked up at the time and I didn't want to talk about it."
   Burton placed a hand on Blair's arm. I resisted the urge to swat it away.
   "I'm sorry," he said. The truth, for once. "I didn't mean to upset you."
   "That's why you still have your teeth," I said under my breath.
   Blair glared at me. He couldn't possibly have made out the words, but I guess he understood my tone. Burton gave me a look that made me think he just might be an anthropologist after all. I felt like a bug on a microscope slide.
   Blair touched my hand.
   "You're gonna be late. Jarod and I can walk to the campus from here if you ... "
   In other words, he wanted to work on this guy without a bodyguard hovering over the conversation.
   "All right," I said. "I'll see you later."
   I kissed Blair, which obviously surprised the hell out of him. He gasped, and since his mouth was open I decided to be thorough.
   "Wow," Blair said when I stepped back. "You really aren't repressed."
   Burton was watching us with scientific interest. Apparently his mother never taught him any manners.
   I palmed a sugar packet from beside Dr. Burton's coffee cup and went back to work.


***********************************

   "Ellison. My office."
   Simon wasn't yelling, but there was a lot of ground between that and happy. Smart money said he was going to chew on my ass.
   "Yes, sir?" I said, shutting the door behind me.
   "Jim, I was wondering why you were running a fingerprint check when you are not actively involved in an investigation."
   Funny ... Sam wasn't normally a rat.
   "I have reason to think someone at the university isn't who they claim to be."
   Simon looked exasperated.
   "There are a lot of kids there, Jim. Odds are --"
   "Sir, this isn't just some student giving different names to each of his girlfriends. I'm taking about a well-organized fraud supported by a lot of paperwork. This isn't the sort of thing a guy would do for sport."
   Simon took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
   "What has Sandburg dragged you into this time?"
   "I understand that feeling, but this isn't his fault."
   "Talk."
   Once I'd outlined the situation, Simon admitted that it didn't smell right.
   "But," he added, "as much as I hate to say this, I have to agree with Blair. Pretending to be an anthropology professor doesn't exactly lend itself to crime."
   "He was interested in some display of Columbian artifacts. Maybe he came here to steal them."
   "All right." I couldn't tell if I'd talked him in to anything, or if he just wanted me out of his office. "Fine. I'm assigning you to this investigation, until I need you on something else. See what you can find out."
   "Thanks, Simon."
   I left in a hurry, because obviously I was late for a talk with Sam.

*****
I'm hearing right and wrong so clearly. There must be more than this.
   --Peter Gabriel, That Voice Again
*****

   It didn't take Sentinel senses to hear laughter coming out of Blair's office. Apparently no one had told them that a university was a place for quiet study.
   When I got to the door, Blair was sitting cross-legged on top of his desk. I couldn't even get my legs to do that anymore, let alone get comfortable that way. Jarod Whatever-his-name-was had parked himself in Blair's chair. He was folding a piece of paper in some complicated way while Blair gave what he probably thought was helpful advice.
   "It's interesting," I commented, "how the best educated people in America spend their time."
   Blair didn't even look up.
   "Hi, Jim. Can you believe Jarod has never seen origami before?"
   "Well," I said, dropping into one of the guest chairs, "he's a busy guy. Six weeks ago he was in Duluth, Minnesota, working for a minor league ball team. Out there he called himself Jarod Aaron."
   Blair looked at Jarod with the kind of disappointment people usually save for their delinquent kids and said,
   "Aw, man ... what're you *doing*?"
   I don't know how Blair did it, but Jarod suddenly looked about twelve years old.
   "Blair, I'm sorry. I can't tell you what I'm really doing here, but I promise you, it's not anything you should worry about."
   "I can tell you," I put in, "what he was doing in Duluth. The ball team's manager had a fatal stroke about six months ago. Everyone thought it was natural causes. Then Jarod shows up, and two weeks later the shortstop is temporarily paralyzed by some weird drug and there's evidence sitting on his lap proving that he killed the manager with ..." I opened the folder I'd brought with me, but I shouldn't have bothered.
   "Ergotamine tartrate," Jarod said. "It's a migraine medication that constricts blood vessels. Too high a dose, especially when you're not having a migraine, and you're at high risk for a stroke. You know, it isn't actually the stroke that killed him. He fell down, paralyzed, between his car and his house one night. By morning, he'd died of exposure."
   That was beside the damn point.
   "I have someone," I told him, "working to see how many place we can match up your prints. Do you want to save her the trouble and just tell me what she's going to find?"
   "Nothing useful," Jarod said. Something was bothering him that had nothing to do with me being on to his game.
   "You do this vigilante thing a lot?"
   "Somebody has to," he snapped. "I don't hurt anybody. I just get the ones you miss."
   "You have an interesting definition of not hurting anybody," I said. "That guy was paralyzed for a week. He still can't walk right."
   "After what he did--" Jarod started. I cut him off.
   "I don't care what he did. You had the evidence. All you had to do was turn him in to the police. There are reasons why we have a justice system in this country."
   "I wanted him to understand what he'd done. I wanted him to feel what his victim felt."
   Before I could think of a response, Blair spoke. He'd been so quiet, I'd almost forgotten he was there.
   "Who put the snake in the crate, Jarod?"
   I knew he'd get there eventually. Once I had all the facts it had taken me an hour, so naturally it took Blair about five minutes.
   Jarod was studying Blair's face.
   "I don't know," he said finally. "I don't even know why it happened, but I'm going to find out."
   Blair frowned.
   "How do you know it wasn't an accident?"
   "I don't know. Just a feeling."
   I didn't like the way Jarod and Blair were looked at each other.
   "So," I said, "what are you planning to do? Put a rattlesnake in somebody's desk drawer?"
   Jarod smiled a little, not happily.
   "I haven't gotten that far."
   "And you're not going to. I'll reopen the case. You finish your lectures and stay out of it. Or better yet, leave town. Tonight."
   Blair hadn't taken his eyes off Jarod.
   "You think someone meant to kill Mike."
   "Yes, Blair. I do."
   "Okay." Blair turned to me. "Go home, Jim."
   I couldn't have heard that right.
   "*What*?"
   "Go home. Jarod and I are going to have a conversation that would put you in an ethical dilemma, and I'd rather you didn't hear it."
   Having Jarod there complicated things. If I knocked Blair out and threw him over my shoulder, Jarod would probably try to stop me.
   "Chief, you don't ... you're always telling me to take the high road, right?"
   "I'm not so sure this is the low road. We'd just be giving somebody a taste of what they did. That's fair."
   "Shake your head, Sandburg! You don't even know this wasn't an accident. So he had a feeling. So what?"
   Blair shrugged. His eyes were a deep, pure blue in this light. They almost glowed.
   "I believe him."
   What could I say to that? If Blair hadn't believed me when we met, I'd be in a mental hospital, or in a grave.
   "Okay," I offered, "the three of us will look into this together. If we find out anything, it will be dealt with through the Cascade PD. And Jarod, you had better not play games here, because I've been officially assigned to investigate you, and I would hate to have to tell my captain what I've found out."
   Blair gaped at me.
   "Big guy," he choked out, "we have some serious communication problems."
   "Yeah," I said, "but the sex is good."
   He laughed so hard, I thought he was going to fall off his desk.
   Jarod patted Blair's back, then looked at me with genuinely friendly eyes.
   "I'll behave myself," he told me. "Promise." He gave me what would have been the Boy Scout salute, if he'd had the right three fingers.
   "You were never a Boy Scout," I said. He smiled.
   "We can talk about that later."