A/N: I don't own any of the Cold Case characters and I am not making any money from writing this.

Please forgive any minor spelling or grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.

This is a case fic, no shipping in any way, just an occasional friendship and it focuses mostly on the case and character's dynamics (more of the later in chapters that will follow), so keep that in mind. It takes place post season seven, kinda my version of season eight premiere.

~The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.~

(2000 Light Years Away by Green Day)

May 2nd 1992

The bright sun beams peeked through the glass door of the small bookstore in Philadelphia suburb, currently occupied by a single customer. Tracy Smith, young African American woman with long black hair and dark eyes, smiled politely before handing the book over to a middle aged brunette standing behind the counter. The woman took it, returning the smile, and looked interested as she examined the cover.

"Here you go," Tracy exclaimed. "I hope that you will enjoy it."

"I'm sure I will. Thank you."

Tracy's smile widened. "You're welcome."

She put the money in the cash register before checking her watch. It was already ten minutes pass the end of her shift. She took the purse laying near by, put it over her shoulder and turned to face Jack Stanworth, the eldery man who owned the place and was standing near by at the moment, big round eyeglasses on his face while he was examining some old receipts.

"Goodbye, mr. Stanworth," Tracy said before heading for the door.

"Goodbye, Tracy," he said, smiling warmly. "Take care of yourself."

Tracy returned the smile. "I will," she promised upon stepping outside.

An hour later, Tracy was still sitting in her car, halfway home. She sighed and leaned back in her seat, feeling really frustrated. She had been stuck in traffic for almost an hour, and she was just driving back home from work when that jam formed. She just wanted to go home and take some rest, but at the moment, that wasn't a possibility, and it looked like it would not be for a while. It looked awful and static: all those cars and trucks in one long, seemingly endless line, not moving at all.

Tracy shuddered at the loud sound of a car door slamming closed near by and. She pulled the driver's side window down, peeked outside and looked around. She saw a young Caucasian man standing at the side of the road, with his back against the grey Ford parked right behind her own vehicle. He was about 5'9, average weight but slightly build, with short brown hair and brown eyes. Drops of sweat glistened on his face and neck. It almost unsettled her (though she didn't register that at first) how tense he looked. Like he was about to loose it.

One of the reports on the car radio caught Tracy's attention. "Still no good news regarding the current situation in Los Angeles," the young anchor read in a cold, professional tone, and Tracy felt herself shiver. "As of this morning, the body count has risen up to forty. So far, forty people have been murdered during the long ongoing Los Angeles riots, sparkled by the release of the video tape of Rodney King beating, and subsequent not guilty verdict regarding the nine police officers who had participated..."

Tracy groaned before turning the radio off. She hated hearing about all those incidents happening in Los Angeles, and just wanted it to be over already. She couldn't believe what some people were capable of and how fast that... crimes and hate kept escalating. Not to mention that her brother had been living there. The mere thought of that made her gut wretch.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound that she longed to hear for an hour: a sound of a car driving away. The one at the end of the other lane, the lane right next to the one she was stuck in. She smirked and began carefully driving into the opposite lane, that suddenly became more likely to move forward soon.

But, after almost an hour of sitting in her small car during a hot weather, Tracy was really tired and her attention had dropped. She took one more look at the empty spot, too long of a look, and ended up bumping into the car parked behind her. The one belonging to that nervous guy. She shivered at the sound of car lights breaking and gasped silently, quickly pulling back into the lane. She heard the driver, albeit faintly, cursing outside.

Tracy leaned back in her seat, afraid to look outside. But she was able to hear his footsteps. And his voice.

The owner of the grey Ford, that she had just bumped into, approached her. And he was angry. "What the hell do you think you're doing...", he growled, leaning over to look through her driver's side window. As soon as he did, his eyes widened and he stopped in his tracks, he even stopped talking. It took Tracy a couple of seconds to dare to face him: her heart skipped a beat at his facial expression. It wasn't an annoyance, not even an anger... it was more like a disgust.

"I'm sorry..." she started apologizing, her voice suddenly lower than usual.

She stopped upon seeing something that baffled her, even unsettled her. The man (whose name, she would later learn, was Alan Grey) no longer looked disgusted. He looked... smug. And intimidating.

"It figures," he commented.

Tracy frowned, tilting her head to the side. "What..."

When Tracy was in the middle of a sentence, Alan opened her driver's side door. Before she could react, he was holding her by her T-shirt, pulling her out of the car and getting into her face, breathing heavily, his jaw clenched. Several people gasped, some just started at the confrontation in shock, but nobody stepped in to break things off. At first.

"Your people just can't fuction in the civilized society, can't you?", he growled at her. She felt her heart thundering against her chest. "My people?" she asked.

"You know what I mean," he hissed.

A tall, heavy set guy finally got out of his car, with a disgusted look on his face. His muscles were bulging at the white T-shirt that he had been wearing, his walk fast and sterm. "Hey!", he yelled out, making Alan turn his head to face him.

"Maybe you should let the girl alone," the guy ordered more than suggested, glaring at Alan.

The guy was almost twice the Alan's size, and looked deadly serious. Still, Alan didn't look at all scared once he locked eyes with him, giving him an icy stare.

He didn't notice Tracy's hand reach slowly through the opened driver's side window and into the car...

"Maybe you should mind your own business if you don't want to get your ass kicked, pal."

The guy stared at Alan for some time, but eventually just shook his head and went back into his car.

Once Alan turned to face Tracy, he froze, widening his eyes. Tracy had a gun pointed to his head, Smith&Wesson .38. Her hand trembled a little, but the look in her eyes was determined.

"Let go of me."

Alan smirked, trying to remain calm. "You don't have the..."

"Let go of me!"

Alan tried staring her down, but that didn't work. Eventually, he simply scoffed at her and took a step back.

"This isn't over!" he promised, walking back toward his car. "You're going down, bitch."

He got back into the car, slamming the door closed before gripping the steering wheel tightly, still staring daggers at Tracy. Tracy took one last look at him before returning into her car, breathing heavily and ignoring the shocked looks from other drivers. Her hands were still shaking once she put the gun back into the glove compartment, just about the time when the cars started moving again.

#

June 3rd 1992

Tracy's dead body was lying face up on the ground in the dark alley, her big black eyes still wide opened, but dull and lifeless.

Alan Grey's lifeless body laid four feet away, his .45 caliber gun still in his right hand. A trail of blood starting from the gunshot would to his forehead was running down his cheek, forming a pool of blood on the floor.

It was only five hours later that their bodies were discovered.

A week later, late at night detective Jonny Ford walked down the evidence locker, a box in his hand. He placed the box with "SMITH, T." written on it on one of the shelves and gave it one more sad look before turning around and walking away. On the lid, it read "CLOSED".

#

September 17th 2011

It was an unusually cold, but surprisingly sunny September morning. Several light sun beams shined upon the building of Philadelphia PD, many cars already driving down the near by road, the typical city noise spreading throughout the neighborhood.

And, several floors above, in Cold Case Division, detective Lilly Rush was walking down the hallway, followed by her colleague Will Jeffries, who had been catching her up with the new case that their team had just been assigned to.

"Double murder," he explained, handing Lilly her copy of the case file. She stopped to examine it as Jeffries turned to face her. "You probably heard about it at some point. 25-year-old Alan Grey was found found dead in the alleyway, single gunshot wound to the head. Tracy Smith, 20, was found dead only four feet away, two gunshot wounds to her chest. They were both lying face up on the ground, and had a gun in their hands. Within a week, the case was officially closed. It was concluded that they had shot each other. It was never determined who shot first, but judging by the amount of blood on the scene, it took longer for Tracy to die, and Alan died almost instantly, so it was believed that he shot first."

"Autopsy showed that Tracy died as a result of two gunshot wounds to her chest, between nine and eleven pm the previous night," Lilly read, growing interested. "Ballistics linked the bullets recovered from her with the gun found in Alan's hand. Only his fingerprints were recovered on the gun. Alan died as a result of a single gunshot wound to his head, also between nine and eleven pm the previous night. Ballistics linked the bullet recovered from his brain with the gun found in Tracy's hand. All thr usable fingerprints recovered on it matched to her. They both had traces of gunshot residue on their right hand, and their clothing. There were no other signs of violence found on the bodies, no signs of a sexual assault, nothing under their fingernails, all tox screens came back clean. They both had the gun in their right hand, and family and friends of both victims confirmed that they were both right handed."

Jeffries sighed. "It was also revealed that Alan was hardly a man who would randomly run into a black woman in the dark alley and offer her a safe walk home."

"Both guns were legal; .45 was registered to Alan and .38 was registered to Tracy," Lilly read. Then she looked up at Jeffries. "What did you mean by that?"

Jeffries sighed, his face falling. "Alan's mother abandoned him, his father and his younger brother when he was ten, took off with another woman. His father was a lifelong member of the KKK, as well as his grandfather. Got killed in a bar fight when Alan was fifteen. That guy hated everyone: gays, Jewish, African Americans, Muslims, immigrants... you get the idea." He sighed. "And, at the time of his death, Alan was also a murder suspect."

Lilly frowned. "A murder suspect?"

"Yes," Jeffries confirmed, letting out a heavy sigh. "An African American boy, Steven Jonson. Ten years old. Found stabbed to death in an alley, two miles away from Alan's apartment. Over thirty stab wounds to the chest, face, stomach, arms, genitals... It happened a month before Alan's death. A racial slur was found written on a near by wall, in boy's blood."

"Why is this case getting reopened?" Lilly asked, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach.

"Because of a single photograph," Jeffries exclaimed.

It was just about then that Lilly stumbled upon the copy of the said photograph, placed inside the file, among several police reports. She picked it up and examined it closely. The photograph featured Alan and Tracy standing next to each other, grinning and posing for the camera. Judging by the background, it was night, and they were on a fair or an outdoor party of some sort.

"Alan's house changed several owners since the murder, but the newest owners are the only ones who decided to completely re decorate it. As a result, the metal box was recovered underneath the floor boards on the place where Gary's room was. Among other things, a photograph was found inside. This one. Woman read about the case several times in her past, even lived in the area at the time of the murders and knew that it was concluded that Alan and Tracy had killed each other, that the murders were believed to be racially motivated. She recognized them on this photograph. Concluding that it casts a different light on the case, she turned it over to the police. Several experts confirmed that the photograph is authentical and that people on the photograph really are Alan and Tracy."

"This definitely... changes the perspective," Lilly noted, still looking at the photograph. It was almost chilling, how... happy they looked. Especially with the crime scene photographs in her mind.

Jeffries nodded his head in a sign of agreement. "Does this look like a racist and an African American girl at each other's throats?" he commented more than asked. "And according to the date, that was also proven to be authentical, the photograph was taken after that infamous confrontation on the road."

Lily frowned. "And judging by that position, neither of them could have taken the photograph, so who took it?"

Jeffries shrugged. "Maybe they had a camera with a timer?"

"Maybe." She closed the file and looked up at Jeffries. "But again, this photograph doesn't prove that the original theory was completely wrong, only that the detectives were wrong about the motive. Maybe it wasn't something race related, but a lover's quarrel."

"But it makes for a new perspective on the case and raises some questions," Jeffries concluded. "And Stillman thinks that is enough reason for us to re-open the case."

Lilly frowned and sighed silently before taking another look at the case file, the crime scene photograph a chilling contrast to the one recently recovered. "What happened to them?" she whispered.

~OPENING ROLES AND CREDITS~