It was a cold night in Purgatory. The temperature had plummeted considerably when nightfall fell. A police squad car sped across the dirt road leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. Officer Collins and Officer Ryan had been called out at this god forsaken hour to a domestic disturbance out on the Brookes homestead. This had been the third call this month. Once old Mrs. Brookes had gotten into the bottle she liked to rip into her husband. All three previous calls had resulted in Officer Ryan and her partner having to forcibly separate the two before they killed each other. Despite this the Brookes refused to leave one another. People were real strange around here thought Officer Ryan. The police car pulled up in front of a ram-shackled cabin which looked completely deserted. They both got out of the police car and noticed something unusual. Usually they could hear the caterwauling of Mr and Ms. Brookes from miles away but now it was dead silent and there were no lights on inside. Officer Ryan looked over at Collins wondering how they should proceed. They had been partnered together for four years so they didn't need to say anything to communicate with each other. Officer Collins indicated that they should unholster their weapons. Something wasn't sitting right with either of them. Maybe they had finally killed each other but Officer Ryan doubted it. Officer Collins approached the property silently. He pointed his flashlight at the building and noticed the large slash through the wire door that hadn't been there the last time they'd called. He waved to indicate it was safe for Officer Ryan to follow. They both entered the property together, guns up.
"Mr Brookes, you called the police!" Officer Ryan called out to the apparently empty house. "We need you to identify yourself!" There was no answer.
"Mr and Ms. Brookes?" Officer Collins called as he looked through to the hallway and the back bedrooms.
A spark of light in the corner of the living room caught Officer Collins and Officer Ryan's attention.
"Mr Brookes?" Officer Ryan questioned the dark figure. But she knew that this man sitting in the arm chair even in the veiled darkness wasn't fat enough to be Mr. Brookes. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
The light of the match he lit briefly illuminated a handsome moustachioed face as he lit a pipe that hung at the side of his mouth.
"I called to report a domestic disturbance" the figure addressed the two officers; he spoke in a southern accent but from where Officer Ryan couldn't guess. The man casually sat in the armchair smoking his pipe.
"You called it in?" Officer Ryan questioned. "Where is Mr and Ms. Brookes?" she tried not to appear as unnerved as she felt on the inside and was glad to hear that her voice didn't shake when she asked the question.
"That is a question for a priest" he calmly replied, expertly blowing a smoke ring with his pipe.
Officer Ryan gave Collins a sideways glance but never allowed the shadowed man to be out of her line of vision. Neither of them liked the man's answer.
"Sir I gonna need you to put your hands up and come over here" Officer Collins directed. His gun was pointed at the shadowed figure's chest.
"Now I called you with a complaint and you don't even have the decency to answer it, I swear the law enforcement today is not what it used to be" the man drawled as he pulled out his pipe and pointed it at them.
"Sir, you need to come over here right now or I will shoot you!" Officer Collins ordered with renewed toughness.
What the hell was going on here? Officer Ryan wondered. Was he some sort of mad man?
"Okay, okay," He put his hands up to calm Collins down. "I only called because my brother and I had an argument, it got real heated like," He got up from his chair. His eyes looked strangely luminescent with the moonlight reflecting on them. "I swear it came right near to blows".
The man got up and walked casually over to Officer Collins who swiftly handcuffed the man. Officer Ryan let out a sigh of relief; the situation had seemed to have defused itself. She was surprised that Collins had managed to handcuff him, for a few seconds she had the crazy idea that this guy wasn't a solid being at all but an apparition. She almost laughed at herself for thinking of something so ridiculous.
"Where is your brother? Is he Mr. Brookes?" Collins questioned.
"He left after the disagreement Officer" the man calmly replied.
"What was the nature of your disagreement" asked Officer Ryan. Ryan observed the man more closely in the light of Collins flashlight. He wore old timey clothes that she saw regularly worn by Wyatt Earp groupies who came to town.
"Well you see, it was over which one of us was going to get to kill you two" he rakishly smiled.
Out on the fields from miles around there was the sound of two guns shots coming from the Brookes house. There was nobody around except for the animals to hear it.
"Now I'm going to ask you one more time and you'd better give me an answer" Wynonna Earp threatened. "Blueberry or Chocolate" she pulled out two muffins offering them to Agent Dolls.
He continued on with his paper work as if she didn't exist. His lack of humour was irritating to say the least in Wynonna's opinion. Maybe they sucked it out of him in the army; although she had met enough army guys to know that there were plenty who were up for all kinds of fun.
"You need to finish the paper work, you're the one who's generated more than half of it" Dolls ordered.
"It's not my fault the guy decided to play chicken with me and he lost" Wynonna replied, lounging in the office chair eating a chocolate muffin.
"He lost two toes you mean, its good you're a lousy shot or I'd have to explain to the Division the pile of bodies you leave in your wake" He glowered. "These accidents create unnecessary paperwork when we should be out their looking for Revenants".
"Hey you point me in the direction and I'll smoke them, me with my trusty..." Wynonna looked at her boot but her gun was missing. Where the heck was it?
Dolls returned to the paperwork "You left it next to the mayo in the fridge"
"Yeh well... it works better cold" Wynonna shirked over to the fridge to retrieve Peacemaker.
"Anyway it's been dead for five days now. No action, no gunfights, no mud wrestling, no..." Wynonna was interrupted by the appearance of her impossibly perky sister. She was quite literally a bottled ray of sunshine. While Wynonna was more of a bottle of something alcoholic.
"Did you hear?" she was practically vibrating with excitement. "I just heard on the police radio... not that I was eavesdropping or anything, I was just getting a cup of coffee and over heard it, you can't get arrested for that, can you?' Waverly wondered.
"Focus Waverly, what did you hear?" Wynonna questioned.
"Four bodies were found out by the Brookes place" she answered in a rush.
Wynonna fondly remembered the times when they were kids and Waverly would rush up to her brimming over with excitement to tell her about a cute squirrel or a baby duck and not newly discovered murdered corpses. Ah, the good old days.
Dolls quickly abandoned his paperwork "Sheriff Neadley is supposed to keep us informed if new bodies are found". Dolls looked piiisssssed.
'Yeh well, he hates your guts' Wynonna informed him of the obvious truth.
"Come on let's go" he got up and took his jacket. 'And don't forget the gun!' he shouted as he left the room.
"He's in a bad mood" Waverly observed.
"No," Wynonna pulled on her leather jacket and holstered her gun. "That's just his mood".
Wynonna and Dolls arrived at the Brookes homestead which was brimming over with police personnel. They got out of the car and Dolls immediately approached Jessica Tanner, the Chief Medical Examiner of the district who was dictating a number of things to her underlings. Wynonna walked around the house and it's out buildings to inspect the scene. There was nothing that looked particularly amiss on the outside except for the slash in the front wire door.
"Wynonna Earp, what the hell are you doing here?"
Wynonna turned around to see a furious red-faced Sheriff Neadley.
"Bird watching, you know I think I saw a red breasted cock somewhere around here, you haven't seen it have you?" she wisecracked.
"You know something Wynonna," Neadley sneered at her. "Just because you've got a John in law enforcement that's willing to give you a badge in exchange for a blowjob doesn't make you a cop".
"Really?, cause from what I've heard that's how you got the job from old Sheriff Remming, tell me what do old man balls taste like?".
Neadley's face started to blow up like one of those toads you'd find in the swamp.
"Sheriff Neadley," Agent Dolls interrupted what Wynonna considered to be one of the more polite conversations she'd ever had with Sheriff Neadley. "The Division expects you to keep me and my associates-" Dolls gave Wynonna a long warning look "abreast of the situation in Purgatory, if you don't do your job, I can't do my job and measures would be put in place to make sure that never happens again" the last part came off as an implied threat.
At this point Wynonna could practically see the fumes coming off Neadley in his rage.
"Two of my officers are dead, I'm doing everything I can to catch the basterds responsible for this" he hissed.
"Pity you didn't have the same concern when it was those women who were getting killed on the highway," Wynonna countered. "But then again they were 'just prostitutes' like you said" she looked at him with deep disgust.
His eyes narrowed. "A badge doesn't change the fact you're a crazy cu-"
Wynonna was about to jump into action when Dolls stepped in. "I suggest you get in your car and go home Sheriff, you've done all you can here" Dolls was being completely civil but there was a palpable threat to his words that was quite frightening.
The Sheriff looked like he wanted to retort but he realised he was outmatched and outranked "Just find them" he retorted and left.
"Nice guy" Dolls watched the Sheriff leave in his car.
"The best," she quipped. Wynonna gave a sideways glance at Dolls. "We're you trying to defend my honour?" she said the last part in her best impression of a southern bell.
"Get in the damn house, Earp"
They entered the house to find the place completely ransacked. The furniture was flung across the room, the curtains ripped to the ground, lamps and picture frames smashed.
"Looks like there was a party and I wasn't even invited" Wynonna whispered to herself. "What exactly happened here?"
"Some kind of altercation with Officer Ryan and Collins" Dolls examined the room. "Collins managed to fire two shots before he was killed, they found the casings in that wall" Dolls pointed out.
"What about Mr and Mrs. Brookes?" Wynonna looked around the place and noticed the lack of bodies.
Dolls walked down the short hall way to the main bedroom and opened the door "I'm guessing the Brookes were killed in their sleep, although it's hard to tell".
Wynonna walked into the bedroom behind Dolls. "Jesus Christ!" The bedroom looked like it had been painted by Picasso, if Picasso had used real human body parts in his paintings. Wynonna gagged and left the room. She was bent over double trying to control her stomach. "You could have warned me!" She shouted at Dolls.
Dolls displayed the countenance of someone coolly unimpressed. Wynonna had seen some crazy shit in her life time but this sickened her. She wondered what atrocities Dolls had seen to make him so unmoved.
"Where are Collins and Ryan? because I think I only counted enough body parts for two" Wynonna tried to stop breathing through her nose to avoid smelling the remnants of Mr and Mrs. Brookes.
"They were hung up around the back in the forest" Dolls walked out of the house and Wynonna reluctantly followed. She was not going to be able to keep down the contents of her stomach for much longer she thought.
In the patch of trees a little way from the house hung the bodies of Officer Ryan and Officer Collins. The police photographer was taking pictures and Wynonna noticed among the officers there that she was not the only one who looked ashen faced.
"Now according to the medical Examiner these guys were hung after they were dead, they both died-"
"From a single bullet wound to the head" Wynonna could see the marks on their foreheads.
"We need to go back to the office and look through Waverly's files to see if these deaths fit any of the Revenants " Dolls ordered.
"Yeh..." Wynonna was only half listening as she read the sign that had been hung around Officer Ryan's neck. She could practically taste the muffin she had had earlier in her throat.
The sign read: The Lawe is Dead.
'