The shrill ringer of a phone rills on incessantly.

Realizing it is his work phone, and that the ringing will not stop, Ouk kicks off his covers, and walks out to the kitchen to answer it.

Phones in the bedrooms are poison to a good night's sleep.

"Not if you're on call, and they don't stop fucking ringing!" he answers to the pestering public service announcements he sees, everyday, plastered about his office.

He knows his rejoinder doesn't really fit the wording of the poster he is recalling. No one is about to hear, but he did speak out loud, so if niggles at him.

A call at 2:30 in the morning can only mean one thing. He picks up the phone. As Ouk expected, there has been a murder.

Ouk gets a coffee at a 24 hour McDonald's on the way to the crime scene– an apartment over the west river. CSI has covered the body– a man curled up on the couch– in a plastic sheet. There is vomit on the floor and the furniture is upset. Ouk walks up to Kim, the department's liaison with CSI. "What do they say, Kim?"

"Jesus Ouk!" he says, looking around, "If you're going to stop for coffee, stop for something good."

"What do you know about good coffee?"

Coffee pleasantries sorted, Kim simply answers, "Poisoned." He picks up a plastic evidence bag containing a cotton swab, and holds it for Ouk to sniff.

"Almonds," says Ouk, after a big sniff, "Death by almonds?"

Kim looks up at Ouk.

"No, you know what smells like almonds, don't you?"

"Yeah, Kim." Ouk sighs, "But nobody is killing anyone with Marzipan." He continues in a higher animated voice, as if in imitation of Kim, "Boss, boss, it's the Marzipan Killer again, Boss. Put out an ABP, stake out all the foreign bakeries in the city. Alert the media, we need a Marzipan lock-down."

"What's the hell is Marzipan?"

"What was the time of death?" Ouk ignores the question, no longer joking.

"Between 11:30 and 1:00 am."

"Almonds at midnight, eh? Always seemed like more of a afternoon nut to me. What's a guy doing eating almonds at night?"

"Cyanide smells like almond. Or, well, almonds smell like cyanide. There is cyanide in almonds."

"So we're looking for whoever put the cyanide in the almonds. We're going to have to get someone down to the market, see who has been buying almonds."

"No!" Kim looks up, checking if Ouk is serious. "There are no almonds. He was poisoned with cyanide!"

"Nice theory, Kim, but it smells like almonds to me."

"It isn't a theory, the CSI officers said it. They tested it."

"And that's that, then?"

"That's that."

"Well if they are so smart, let them catch the killer. I'm going back to bed."