"I found a way to figure this shit out quickly without calling in FBI assholes."

"Agents," Norgaard corrected.

Nolf ignored him. "I phoned a friend."

Klocke quirked a brow at this. "And?" Did you okay this with Chief?

Nolf waved a dismissive hand. "Tilly was pretty chill about it. My friend actually majored in anthropology, so she'll definitely help put this case to rest a little faster. Got her credentials all checked and everything. She'll be here sometime next week, give or take."

Klocke snorted out a surprised laugh. "'Tilly'?"

The African American grinned unashamedly. "He didn't seem to mind too much."

Klocke quirked a brow again. So basically, Tillmon kicked Nolf out of his office. Again. He looked over to where Norgaard was holding a skull in one hand. He half expected his partner to say something along the lines of "to be or not to be," but instead he said, "Hey, Golf." He set the skull down into the bin with the other bones belonging to that body. "You shouldn't call people names. It's not polite."

Nolf sent Norgaard a flat stare, to which the man merely replied with an innocent smile. Not that Norgaard could pull off such a look, but that didn't stop him from trying.

"So what did you dudes find in the crypt?"

"Dust, paper, more dust, cardboard boxes with paper in them, cardboard boxes with dust in them — and did I mention there was a lot of dust?" As Norgaard spoke, he crossed his arms over one of the rather large stacks of files they'd carried up from the basement. Norgaard had dropped his pile on top of the chaos that had once been Connolly's well-organized desk. Klocke had set his load next to his partner's, being careful to keep it from toppling and creating an even bigger mess. Obviously, Nolf was not as neat as his predecessor. "Not to mention paper and cardboard boxes. Oh, and shelves. There were a few of those, too."

Klocke laughed, but Nolf just scowled and waltzed towards Norgaard and the stack he was leaning on. Nolf shooed the taller man away, snatching up the first file and paging through it. His dark eyes darted back and forth across the words as he scanned them. "Well," he said, picking up the next one and flicking it open. "It's a place to start, at least. I'll let you dudes know when I find something."

Klocke nodded to him, and Norgaard gave him a pseudo-friendly slap on the back, which made Nolf wince slightly, though he tried to hide it. Then they started for the stairs.

"Happy birthday by the way!" Nolf called after them. Or rather, after one of them.

"Fuck you!" Norgaard called back, not bothering to slow or even look over his shoulder as he walked out the door.

{ { o } }

School was not canceled.

Tom didn't really know what to think about that.

On the one hand, it meant he didn't have to be at home, and that was always a good thing. On the other, it meant he had to be around a bunch of people he didn't know, and that was never a good thing. And it certainly wasn't helped by the events of their first day.

And to make matters worse, they were now confined to the school building during lunch. Once they got to school, they weren't allowed to leave until the final bell rang. And there was a bell. The building was huge, but there were barely any of them. The staff only just outnumbered the student body. Which — again — was not worth mentioning. Eleven students. Huge ass school building.

Yeah. Cuz that makes perfect sense. His old school had been big too, but at least it had enough people in it to make it reasonably sized.

And then there was the bell. Huge-ass building, old-ass bell. And it wasn't just old, it was also annoying beyond all reason.

Tom flopped down into the desk that literally had his name on it. His full name was written in permanent marker on a sticky note secured with clear packaging tape. He felt like he was in fucking elementary again.

Thomas J. Engelman. It sounded stupid when you wrote it like that.

And — of course — he was stuck sitting next to Sydney M. Cheslock. Joy of joys.

"I'm not happy to see you," she said by way of greeting.

He rolled his eyes. "The feeling is mutual."

"Shut up!" Mr. Hougan grumped from the front of the room. Two weeks had done nothing to cool the tension between everyone. And Tom came to realize that Fred and Suzanne weren't the only ones who seemed to know each other from before. Alan M. and that copper-skinned girl, May, seemed to know each other. If only by name and face. They probably came from the same school, just like Fred and Suzanne.

Beyond that though, they were all strangers. Two weeks hadn't done much to change that. The only one who seemed at all interested in trying to make friends was Eddie, but damned if Tom knew why.

It was stupid, really.

"I imagine none of you finished your homework? Aside from Suzanne, of course," Mr. Hougan said. At the front of the room, Tom could see Suzanne's shoulders visibly tense. The attention was obviously not something she'd wanted.

Now that he thought about it actually, Tom wondered if she truly was the only one who gave a shit. Why else would she bother?

Mr. Hougan didn't take well to silence, and launched into yet another tirade about the importance of a good education, and a college degree, and a job, and so on, and so forth. Tom ignored him and picked up where he'd left off on a particularly inappropriate doodle on the stone surface of his desk.

And the days just dragged on.

{ { o } }

"I'm pretty sure it's them. These eleven people are your three-and-a-half decades old bones," Nolf's anthropologist friend said, offering him a small stack of files.

Klocke accepted them from her with a polite nod. He couldn't bring himself to think her name. She'd practically been stalking him since she got here at the beginning of last week.

Needless to say, he'd be more than happy to see her back when she finally returned to California.

He flipped briefly through the files. It came as no shock to him that it was the eleven from 1964 that had disappeared on the same day. So what about the group from 1963? Where were they?

"I've labeled all the skeletons, so you'll know which is which. And since I haven't got much else to do right now, I was thinking—"

"Thank you, but I've got plans," he lied. He was going to kill Nolf for informing her of his 'single status.'

It wasn't that she was ugly, or had a bad personality, exactly... She was the opposite — pleasant on the eyes and intelligent — but Klocke liked his space. And this woman had obviously never heard of such a thing as 'personal boundaries.' It drove him nearly up the wall.

And Ana, of course, had only laughed at him when he'd asked for her help. Not that that was particularly surprising, really. It was a special kind of torture.

"Good news? Bad news?"

Klocke turned, finding Nolf returning from the bathroom. Klocke raised one hand and tilted it back and forth in a 'so-so' sort of gesture. A bit of both.

He held up the small pile of missing-persons reports. "She finished ID-ing," he said, gesturing vaguely to the woman who was currently glaring ineffective daggers at him. He ignored her. He had no interest in a meaningless fling, which is exactly what a date with her would be. That, and she was a little too pushy for his taste.

Nolf grinned from ear to ear. "What'd I tell ya, dude? She's brilliant!"

Klocke quirked a brow. That depends on your definition of 'brilliant.'

"You'll let me know if you find anything? This case is looking more and more interesting the longer I look at it," the woman said.

Klocke snorted, but nodded. He tilted his head, tapping the files to the brim of his non-existent hat in a brief farewell salute. Then he started up the stairs.

The elevator was broken again. Hardly unusual. On the way up, he opened the first file. He'd only glanced at them before. He hadn't actually read any of them, in case the bodies were completely unrelated.

The first one was Emily Mossburg. A young woman, seventeen years old. She'd been reported missing by her parents the week before her birthday, near the end of the school year. Klocke winced, but flipped through the other files.

They were all kids. All seventeen or eighteen. All of them.

Eleven teenagers who'd been dead for thirty-five years. A lot can happen in that much time. He wondered what kind of people they would've been. What they would've accomplished.

How did their parents handle it? How could these cases have been unsolved? Did no one even notice? They'd all disappeared on the same day, they were the same age, and they even went to the same school... So how? How was it that they had just now been found? 1964... Klocke hadn't even been born yet, but all the same...

Why hadn't they tried harder to find these kids? This was the kind of thing that made the news, was in the papers. Eleven kids from the same graduating class disappear on the same day and no one says or does anything?

Klocke realized that he'd come to a complete halt on the first landing, and he was staring at the picture of one of them. May Gibson her name had been. There was a girl by the same name going to school out there now. May Jacobi.

Klocke snapped the file shut, the audible slap echoing slightly in the stairwell. He sighed, rubbing at his face.

First step: tracking down and informing relatives. He grimaced at the thought. This was a part of the job that he'd never been good at. He wasn't sure how he was going to tell these kids' families. Especially after all these years.

He found himself wondering if all of them were even still around.

Worry about that later, he told himself. Focus on finding them first.