December, 1999

"I found Tim and Melody a good twenty yards away."

Klocke stared at his partner. Norgaard remembered every detail so perfectly, though there were bound to be some things that weren't quite so on the dot. All the same...

He doubted that Norgaard realized it, but there were tears in his eyes.

And that, more than anything else, scared Klocke. He'd known this man for eight years, give or take. He was like the foundations of the Golden Gate Bridge, like the cables and steel girders that kept it from joining the London Bridge in the history books. He kept it together. To say he was tough as nails was like calling the oceans a bit of water. It was an understatement that went beyond simply being an understatement.

Klocke had seen Norgaard laugh and smile, seen him joke around in his own humorless fashion. He'd also seen the man raging at the world, the unfairness of it. He'd also seen him yell at the Chief when the world didn't feel like listening.

He'd seen his partner stand stock still at the funerals of brothers in the field. He'd even seen him drink whatever sorrows he might've felt into a cursing drunken heap, and that had only happened twice that Klocke could recall.

He'd seen Norgaard at his very best.

And until that moment, he'd thought he'd seen his friend at his very worst.

But he had never — never — seen that industrial steel cable cry. Not once.

Now there were tears in his usually calm, clear blue eyes. Eyes that saw and assessed everything. Eyes that were never unfocused.

Eyes that now we're glistening with pain and grief, and were lost in some distant place that Klocke couldn't reach.

Klocke realized then that he didn't really feel like he knew his partner anymore... If he ever had.

"Tim had been shot here," Norgaard pressed his two middle fingers to his left shoulder, near his throat. "Melody had been shot here," and he moved those two middle fingers to tap the crease between his brows. Right between the eyes. "He was still alive, but I knew from the amount of blood that she'd hit something vital. Maybe the carotid. I admit I didn't pay as much attention to the autopsy report as I should've. Last thing he said to me was, 'How's the leg?' He was lying there, dying, and that fucker asked about my damn leg? Only Tim was that much of an asshole. Too damn nice for his own fucking good."

Klocke said nothing. What was there to say? He wasn't — nor would he ever be — a talkative person. So they sat in silence. Silence that gave Klocke the chance to let it all sink in.

Only to find that his questions hadn't exactly been answered.

The bodies had never been found, but killer had been caught. After a fashion, in any case. So why the feigned ignorance? Why the lack of actual records? And what about the wolf? How on earth did Melody pull something like that off? And from Norgaard's description, the thing should've been too weak from starvation to move, let alone attack Goodman as viciously as it had. Nothing made any sense.

Norgaard still hadn't told him anything that he'd wanted to know. In fact, Klocke now had more questions than he'd started out with.

After a moment, he asked, "What else?" What aren't you telling me?

Norgaard blinked, seeming to finally return to the here-and-now. He gave Klocke a long, thoughtful look. He raised his hand, and hailed the bartender. "One last shot for the road, Rick. But water it down for me, if you would. I got places to be."

Rick frowned at them. "You've only had two shots of vodka, man. What're you worried about?"

"I guess I'll just stick this five-dollar-tip back in my—"

Before Norgaard had finished speaking, Rick had placed a watered down shot before him. Though not without a brief look of amusement. Klocke couldn't help the slight smile that curved his lips. Despite what most would think, Norgaard was a lightweight when it came to alcohol. Hell, Klocke could drink the man under the table if he felt like it, and he rarely drank.

Norgaard downed the shot in one go, then slapped it down on the counter. He left the money and promised tip under the glass, then stood. Klocke followed him outside to the truck.

Klocke opened his mouth to ask again what Norgaard wasn't saying, but as soon as Norgaard opened the driver side door to his truck, they heard the radio.

The radio that was trying to get ahold of them.

"This is Norgaard and Klocke," Norgaard said. "What's got your panties in a twist, Sill?"

"Got a shitton of phonecalls from a bunch of worried/pissed-off parents and other folks. The entire staff and student body of that so-called 'trouble school' has gone missing. No one knows where they are. They kept asking for you."

For a moment both men were stunned to silence. "Trouble school, as in where we found those thirty-some-year-old bodies a few months back?"

"The same."

In the dim light from the small bar behind them, Klocke could just make out how Norgaard's adam's apple bobbed up and down, and how his stone mask of a face went pale as a ghost. He almost looked as if he'd seen one.

"Tell me," he said to Klocke, "how many kids go to school there?"

Klocke did a quick mental count. He was good at remembering details, and he listed each name in his head, counting them off on his fingers. "Eleven," he said.

Norgaard's eyes snapped to his, and Klocke was startled by the level of panic that was in his eyes. Even in the dim light from the bar, he could see the shock on his partner's face.

"Get in," he snapped. "We're going to the school."

{ { o } }

Earlier that day...

Tom was just outside the door when he heard the scream. He jumped a good ten feet in the air, his heart suddenly deciding it wanted to visit his throat. He swallowed it back down, his eyes fixed on the door that he had just been passing.

He knew he wasn't the only student who wandered to this side of the building, and he certainly wasn't the only one who came up to the top floor. Still, that scream hadn't sounded like a pleasured cry, whilst having sex. He'd heard plenty of those from his mom's room on nights that she was working.

This scream... He'd never heard one like it before.

But he thought he knew what kind it was.

So the question was: What did he do about it? With his ears still ringing, he couldn't tell if there were any other sounds coming from inside.

He pressed one ear to the door, his heart still beating a mile a minute. It took a bit for the ringing in his ears to fade, but when it did he heard... something... He closed his eyes and held his breath, focusing all his attention on the sounds.

Whimpers, crying. And... tearing? Ripping? Some sort of squelching-like sound. He frowned. What made noises like that?

His mind wandered to when he'd been on a hike and found a wolf munching on a fresh-killed deer. The wolf hadn't had much interest in him, and he'd started slowly backing his way back down the path. He didn't turn and run until maybe thirty or forty yards later, when the path had mostly leveled out.

The sounds he heard beyond the door reminded him of the sound of the wolf chowing down on his dinner.

Tom's stomach flipped and twisted, and he felt sick. A dead deer was one thing. You saw those all the time, by the highway, or hanging out to bleed. Tom was himself rather fond of venison, but if the scream was anything to go by, the meat being torn into wasn't a deer.

It was human.

Shit! Damn it all to hell, what the fuck do I do?

Tom swallowed, his heart still pounding painfully in his ears. He pulled a sharpened pencil out of his back pocket, the closest thing to a weapon that he had, and opened the door.

The room was nearly pitch-black, only bits of sunshine piercing through the drawn blinds. He could see the dust floating about the room, having recently been stirred up.

He felt along the wall until he found the light switch.

His eyes widened and he stumbled back into the hallway. His breakfast decided then to make an unscheduled reappearance.