Author's Notes: This story is for the Halloween Fanfic Challenge on the Closer Forum.

I throw flowers at the feet of my beloved editor, LadyFey. Thank you for everything.

Chapter 1

Failure tasted bitter in Brenda Leigh Johnson's mouth. She liked to win, to get the job done, to be the golden girl, to save the day. Times like this were thankfully rare, but she felt like her soul was caving in on itself. She took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose, hoping to stop the low thrumming in her temple from blossoming into a full-blown headache. She closed her gritty eyes from the persistent glare of the fluorescent light in her office, and it felt good to shut out the world, like closing velvet stage curtains to separate the actors from the crowd who just demanded more, more, more…

She jerked awake a moment later with a sharp knock at her office door followed by the entrance of someone too impatient to wait for her permission to come in. Her blurry eyes flew opened to find Lieutenant Provenza standing in front of her, holding a bag of Halloween-size candy bars. He held them out as an offering.

"Sorry for disturbing you, Chief, I just thought that maybe you could use a little pick-up after the last couple of days we've had."

Brenda rubbed her face. "Candy's not gonna make things better, Lieutenant. I think if I have one more bite of sugar my pancreas is goin' to explode." She couldn't remember the last time she had any food that didn't come out of a wrapper.

"There's only one way to test that theory." Provenza reached in the bag and held out two small Snickers toward Brenda. The exhaustion she felt was mirrored in the older man's face and was made more pronounced by his wrinkles. She could see the pain in his eyes and for a second forgot her own sadness. What must this be like for someone who has kids?

"Put the candy bar down slowly and no one gets hurt," came a deep voice from the doorway. Despite Brenda's mood, she couldn't suppress a slight smile at Fritz's unexpected arrival He was always instant comfort to her, an emotional salve, and he had a way of making even the worst situation feel a little more bearable. He came around the desk and knelt beside her, putting a warm arm around her thin shoulders and lightly squeezing. "How are you doing?" he asked softly.

"Well, I guess you heard our critical missings aren't missing anymore," Provenza said, his words heavy with a bitterness known only to cops that have been on the job too long. "I guess that's one thing we got going for us. We know where those two sisters are now. With Dr. Morales. And their parents."

Brenda's head suddenly felt too heavy on her neck, and she dropped it on Fritz's available shoulder. Fritz fluffed her hair gently. "I have no idea why twin six-year-old little girls, whose parents were probably murdered in front of them, were taken from their nice home in Hidden Hills and killed in a pay-by-the-hour hotel in Van Nuys along with some drifter, probably their kidnapper. No idea at all." She shook her head, knowing that in order to solve the children's murders, she had to move beyond the sickening feeling of disappointment she had about not finding them alive. Looking back does nothing but give you a crick in your neck, she told herself, as her headache turned up a notch.

"Well, I don't think you are going to get any answers tonight, honey, so I'm here to take you home." Brenda started to protest and Fritz talked right over her. "You've been up for 48 solid hours on this case, Brenda, looking for these kids, not to mention investigating the parents' deaths at the same time. If you don't get some sleep, you're going to start making mistakes. Rest up tonight and start fresh tomorrow, okay?" Fritz took her hand in his and put on his best "how-can-you-say-no-to-this-handsome-face" expression.

Provenza nodded his head vigorously. "That's what the candy's about, Chief. I was buttering you up so you would let the squad go home. There's nothing more to do tonight. Morales is working on the kids and the adult victim, and he won't have anything for us until tomorrow morning. We don't have anything but a name for the dead guy, Mr. McStabby—no financials, no property, not even a driver's license, so it's going to be a lot of work to tie him to the Bannon family. And everyone out there is wiped out. Critical missings that turn out this way—" his voice trailed off.

Brenda nodded and waved Provenza out, conveying her permission for him to dismiss everyone. She turned and buried her face further in Fritz's neck. Critical missings usually end with a rebellious teenager being dragged home or a non-custodial parent being spotted in a hotel room with a contented but confused child inside. It's rare that they lead to the type of drama that ends up splashed over the front page of the paper. But two mornings ago, as Brenda tried to block out the wailing of a hysterical housekeeper as she stepped over the bludgeoned bodies of Naomi Davis-Bannon and Roy Bannon, she had grave doubts that the Amber Alert for their twins would render two whole, healthy children.

What she didn't expect was for their bodies to be found two days later in a filthy hotel curled up peacefully on one of the stained beds as if they were sleeping, blood dotting the walls like finger paint and the stabbed body of a 49-year-old drifter who was last seen in Missouri on the floor next to them. It didn't make sense.

Fritz pulled her up gently and got her purse. "You're thinking too hard," he said, gently tapping her head. "Come home with me and let me give you a little TLC, Brenda. Give that brain of yours a rest." She nodded mutely and took his big hand, following him out of the office as she intentionally turned her face away from the murder board. She couldn't look at their pictures any more tonight.

Brenda, who was sure she had no appetite, just finished off her third helping of chicken pot pie when the phone rang. "Ug, if it's Momma, I'm not in the mood to talk," she said to Fritz, as he reached for the phone. A long hot shower and a delicious meal, and just being with Fritz, had made great strides in returning her to her previously human state. She was warm and loose and just a little less awful, and she planned to head to bed in a few minutes for what she prayed would be several hours of dreamless sleep.

Fritz squinted at the caller ID. "Charlie." He looked at her with a raised eyebrow, wanting to know how to proceed.

Talking to Charlie always cheered Brenda up. Brenda gave Fritz a nod and he handed her the phone.

"Charlie Johnson! What are you doin'? Surely a Georgetown freshman has better things to do than to be wastin' time talkin' with her borin' old aunt," she said, in a voice she hoped would cover up the exhaustion and sadness pulsing through her. Brenda took the phone into the living room and wrapped herself up in her favorite chenille blanket, tucking her feet underneath her. Within seconds, Joel jumped into her lap and curled up.

"You okay, Aunt Brenda?" Charlie said cautiously. "You usually only sound this chipper when something's wrong."

"Oh, pish," Brenda said, both annoyed and proud that her niece was so perceptive. "Tough case is all, nothin' new, you know how it goes. I got Fritzy fussin' over me so I don't need anyone else."

"What's the case?" Charlie asked.

"Oh no no no. I'm out of the office and I want to be entertained 'bout all the goin's on at my alma mater and with my favorite niece. Tell me everythin' that's happenin' with all your classes and all. Boyfriends, I bet you are beatin' them off with a stick. Oh, Halloween is comin' up! You gettin' dressed up and goin' to some wild party?"

"Actually, no, Aunt Brenda. I'm going to a Samhain ritual."

"A sow-hoo?"

Charlie giggled. "It's spelled 's-a-m-h-a-i-n' but it's pronounced 'sow-when.' It's a Celtic festival of the dead, on October 31. My roommate's friend Jackie is a Wiccan. Samhain is the most sacred festival for witches, so we were really lucky we got invited to a ritual at someone's house, being non-witches and all. I'm really excited!"

Fritz sat down next to Brenda and was listening in, an amused smile on his face.

"Y'all gonna fly around on broomsticks or somethin'?" Brenda could only imagine what her mother would think about Charlie hanging out with a bunch of witches on Halloween.

"That's a terrible stereotype, Aunt Brenda. Pagans—that's witches and a bunch of other people who are into ancient religions—believe that on Samhain, the veil between the worlds is the thinnest."

Brenda frowned. "What veil? What worlds?" Mythology was never much her thing.

"The veil between our world and the Otherworld, between the living and the dead," Charlie explained, "Samhain is all about honoring your ancestors and asking them for help and stuff. I've been reading up on it. The ritual and the meaning behind it is really cool."

Fritz whispered in Brenda's ear, "Tell Charlie if they start sacrificing virgins, it's time to leave."

Brenda covered the phone with her hand and suppressed an exhausted giggle. "Oh Fritzy, she's got nothin' to worry about."

Brenda got into work at 7AM the next morning, and then waited…for a whole lot of nothing.

The autopsy report was as expected. The children were smothered with a pillow found at the crime scene. The man was stabbed several times by a short right-hander who he couldn't fend off because his blood alcohol level was through the roof. There was too much DNA at the no-tell motel for any of it to be useful. Even the dead man didn't have his DNA on file. Only his prints were useful.

"Kenneth Gregory Kinsky. Age 49. Arrested for petty theft, public urination, drunk and disorderly…minor charges that were all dropped, in different areas in Iowa, Missouri, and North Dakota, and all took place over a decade ago," Tao said, referring to the file in his hand. "There were few employment records on him, and even fewer hits for past residences. The man appeared to be a drifter. And there was no record of him for ten years. His fingerprints, though, matched ones found in the Bannon home."

"Damn damn damn!" Brenda cursed. "No one heard this couple bein' murdered in the middle of the night, and no one saw or heard two 6-year-old girls bein' dragged out of the house, probably caterwauling at the top of their lungs. Not a soul at this sleazy hotel notices a couple of little kids hangin' around the place, where they should have stood out like a sore thumb. There is not one thing I can find in the Bannon's financials or from talkin' to anyone in their personal life that would make someone want to hurt them. And this Kinsky guy…what the hell connection does he have with this nice family?" She was letting her frustration get the best of her, and that was never good. But it was a matter of time before Pope started to breathe down her neck about his case, and she had nothing to show for it.

"We know Kinsky wasn't a patient of Dr. Bannon's," Flynn said. "The shrink's office had no problem with HIPAA telling me stuff, since Kinsky is dead. And as far as they can tell, he's not a relative of a patient either."

"Keep checkin'," Brenda snapped. "Kinsky's not a threat anymore, but someone killed him, and the Bannon family. Kinsky might be of a disturbed patient." Flynn nodded.

"Chief?" Sanchez asked, hesitation in his voice. He approached her slowly, as if she might bite. "I just rode up on the elevator with someone who said she had some information about the case," he said, extending a cup of coffee toward her. "She wants to speak to the person in charge of the investigation, and won't talk to anyone else. And she won't give me her name."

Brenda frowned. "I don't have time for the Halloween crazies, Sanchez." Big cases often drew in people who had "tips" of some sort of another, but mainly served the purpose of allowing the person to feel important for a few hours while cops wasted valuable time.

Sanchez shook his head. "She didn't strike me as wackadoo, Ma'am. Not at all, and seeing as how we have nothing else, I think you should talk to her." He gestured to the board. "It's not like we have a lot to go on anyways."

Brenda huffed. "Well all right then. I guess my time or input isn't so valuable that I can't go talk to any old person who just wanders in. " Brenda flounced past Sanchez and into the office, prepared to tell off whatever nutball dared to disturb her.

She stopped short when she opened the door to find a nice-looking young woman around 30 pacing nervously around her office. She was as petite as Brenda but even shorter. Her dark-brown hair cut in a chin-length bob was the same color as her almond-shaped eyes that shown intelligently behind gold wire glasses. Her skin was almost unnaturally pale, like someone who didn't get out in the sun often, which was very unusual in SoCal. She wasn't particularly pretty and wore little makeup, but was neatly put together, with an expensive brown pinstripe suit and a fine leather briefcase near her feet. Brenda had to agree with Sanchez: this one didn't feel like a garden-variety attention-seeking weirdo.

The young woman turned around abruptly when Benda opened the door, her fingers twisted together in an obvious sign of nervousness. "Oh, uh, hello, are you…?"

"Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson. And who might you be?" She didn't want to offer the woman a seat yet. Once someone sits down, it becomes nearly impossible to extract them, and she didn't want the other woman to get too comfortable.

The visitor nodded and reached down for her briefcase, pulling out a business card and handing it to Brenda. "My name is Katie LeGuin. I live in Studio City." She gestured to the card she just handed Brenda. "I'm giving you my card because I imagine with big publicized cases, you get all kinds of people claiming they can help, especially this time of year. I guess I'm just trying to prove I'm not one of those people. Accountants are not known to be crazy."

Brenda looked down at the card. "Katherine M. LeGuin, MBA, CPA. Powell, Keating & Partners Financial Group. Offices in London, Tokyo, Sydney, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. "

"Impressive," Brenda said. "But I don't remember callin' upon the services of an accountant."

Katie shifted from one leg to the other, clearly uncomfortable. "I have information about the case you are working on. The Bannon children." She looked at her shoes.

Brenda watched her closely. "Alright then. Let's you and I go down the hall to one of the interview rooms, shall we?"

To her surprise, Katie shook her head no and sat herself down at Brenda's conference table, crossing her arms and looking Brenda directly in the eye. "This is fine right here, Chief Johnson. I'm not making an official statement and I don't want our conversation recorded. We can talk right here." Her small chin jutted out in a show of defiance.

Brenda didn't know what to make of this woman. "This isn't how we usually…"

"Believe me, Chief Johnson, what I have to tell you is going to take you very far away from how you usually do things." Katie's voice was shockingly harsh when she said this, and it took Brenda by surprise.

Brenda walked over and sat across from the accountant, who seemed to have recovered from her "Xenia Warrior Princess" moment and had settled back into meekness. "Alright, Ms. LeGuin. Tell me what you have to tell me. I'm all ears."

Katie looked at her, defiance and anger in her eyes but her voice just a harsh whisper. "I don't want to be here. I want to make it perfectly clear from the start that I don't want to be here, I don't want any part of this, okay? Please understand that."

Brenda nodded slowly. "That's common for people to feel when they end up part of a criminal investigation, Katie, I understand," Brenda said soothingly.

Katie laughed to herself. "If only it were that," she whispered. To Brenda, she said, "I need you to listen to me, please. Let me finish without interrupting and without dismissing. You will make this so much easier for me if you can do that. This…is extremely difficult." Anguish bled from the girl's eyes.

Brenda simply didn't know what to make of Katie LeGuin. She had five dead humans she was responsible for, and more than enough things to do. Yet she felt drawn to the young woman, intrigued by her, and she didn't have it in her to be rude to the nervous, bird-like accountant who was biting her lip. "Tell me whatever you want, and I'll listen, I promise," Brenda said, trying to sound as nonjudgmental as possible.

"The last time I did this it almost cost me everything, and I can't let that happen again, I just can't." Katie looked off into the distance, eyes unfocused.

The last time? Brenda thought. Now she really wanted to hear what the woman had to say.

"Go ahead, please. There are two dead children, Katie, and maybe you know somethin' that can help them. Please." Brenda smiled, trying to look reassuring.

Katie stood up and began to pace, and after several deep breaths, she said, in a low voice, "four years ago, when I lived in New York, I got into a serious car accident. I sustained a head injury and was in a coma for three months." She shuttered.

"I'm sorry," Brenda murmured.

Katie waived her off. "When I woke up, I had to relearn a lot of things. How to brush my teeth, get dressed, and the like. A lot of my language was affected. I was in rehab for a year, it was horrible. But I got everything back, my speech, my memory, my accounting knowledge." She shook her head slowly. But I wasn't the same."

Brenda remained silent. She knew intuitively that they were finally reaching the important part.

Katie wrapped her arms around herself. "This is the part where you start to think I'm some head-injured waste-case. That's why I showed you my business card, so you know where I work, what I do. That I'm intelligent and high-functioning." The defiant look was back in her eyes.

"Go ahead, I'm not judgin'," Brenda murmured.

With great reluctance, as if the words didn't want to leave the safe confines of her mouth, Katie said softly, "I started hearing voices. No, that's not the right way of putting it." She shook her head. "I started seeing people, talking to people, that I knew no one else could see."

Oh. Here we go. I should have bet Sanchez $20 on the crazy thing.

"At first, I thought I was insane." She ventured a look at Brenda who was wearing her patented "impassive" face. "But then, things started to fall into place. A friend would be telling me that her grandmother just died, and one of these—people—would show up, and say things like, 'tell Miranda I love her, and the diamond and onyx ring is meant for her.' And I'd ask my friend about the ring, and she'd start crying, and say yea, it was the ring Grandma wore every day, how did you know?"

"You're tellin' me you see ghosts." Brenda knew she should stop the interview now, kick this girl out for wasting her time, but something stopped her. She had to hear the story through.

Katie looked out the window again and chewed on her thumb. "I don't like that word, but I guess that's what they are. People who aren't alive any more. All of a sudden, after my head injury, they decided I would make an excellent messenger."

"That must have been quite a shock to you." Brenda fought to keep her voice bland and open.

Katie shrugged. "I appreciate your attempts to hang on to neutrality. Please strengthen your grip for what's coming up."

Brenda nodded at Katie and she continued.

"A couple of years ago in New York three Latino boys were murdered in Brooklyn. I didn't really follow the case, but you could say the case followed me. One of the kids, Dante, showed up with information about who killed him, and he wouldn't leave me alone. He wanted me to go to the police to get justice for him and his friends. He stalked me for weeks. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep…Dante was everywhere. It was hell."

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? I gave in. I went to a detective at the police department. Told him what Dante told me, about the gang initiation he and his friends had witnessed, what the shooter looked like, and of course without realizing it I let out some detail that hadn't been released to the press." Katie's voice waivered in the face of a bad memory. "And then all hell broke loose."

"Hell?"

"The detective I talked to, Chuck Reardon, didn't believe a word I said about Dante and instantly assumed I had something to do with the murders. He turned my life upside down." She turned sharply to look at Brenda. "Do you know how unpopular it makes you at an accounting firm when the cops show up because you are under investigation for murder? They asked all my family members how long I'd been 'hearing voices' and 'seeing figures' and if I've ever been locked up before."

"Oh my."

"All this going on and I had this 13 year old dead kid nagging at me to make sure the cops investigated this and that. Like the cops were really listening to me. It wasn't until I lost it one night on Dante, until I told him I was about ready to kill myself and cross over to his world because thanks to him, mine had become unbearable, that he brought me some new information. Something one of the other victims knew about his uncle. I brought it to Det. Reardon and begged him to check it out, pleaded, and he actually listened to me. That afternoon the uncle's illegal dogfighting ring was broken up, and they found all this evidence that tied them with the gang that killed the boys, including details I told Detective Reardon about but he hadn't believed before. After that, Dante went away. For good." Katie sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. " Detective Reardon, well, he got a promotion and all kinds of kudus for solving the case."

Brenda was surprised to find herself feeling sorry for the young woman. "You must be angry about that." Brenda knew all too well, thanks to her ex-husband, what it's like to have your life turned upside down with ugly accusations.

Katie shook her head. "I should be. I had to leave New York and move to LA, start new again where no one knew me, thanks to him. But when Detective Reardon realized I wasn't guilty, and I wasn't lying, he felt really terrible. Of course, he then wanted to turn me into his own personal police psychic, and I had to tell him a billion times it didn't work that way."

"How does it work, then?" Brenda wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.

Katie looked at her impatiently. "Haven't you been listening? They come to me, Chief Johnson. I don't ask them, they just come, and they won't leave me alone until I deliver their little messages about lost jewelry or wills or goodbyes or…or…" she trailed off, wrapping her arms around herself again and hanging her head.

"Or murders," Brenda finished. Katie slowly nodded.

"I listened to your story, Katie, without judgment and with a great deal of patience, I might add, something I am not known for," Brenda said. "Now you need to be honest with me. Why exactly are you here?"

Katie straightened up and slowly walked back over to the table and sat across from Brenda. She stared down at her hands.

"Andrea and Kerry came to me."

"The Bannon twins," Brenda said. She knew this was where this was leading, but to have Katie say it out loud…She was so tired it was all she could do to not burst out in hysterical laughter.

Katie nodded. "There's something they want you to see."

Later, as Brenda sipped lukewarm coffee and ate a Ho Ho, she thought about how grateful she was that Fritz had forced her to come home the night before. There was no way she would have been able to sit though that dramatic performance with an extreme case of sleep deprivation.

And it was so…anticlimactic. If dead people are going to come and whisper in your ear, the least they can do is give you all the information. Brenda was expecting a name, address, serial number…for heaven's sake, with a source like that, you should get a lot of information!

But that's not what she got. After more impassioned pleas not to wreck her life like the Brooklyn PD did, she told Brenda her message, and she nearly groaned with disappointment.

Look in the parent's closet. Hidden high in the parent's closet is important information about who the twins are, and that will lead to the killer.

The closet? Really? A psychic could tell Brenda she had important information in her closet too, and she'd probably be right: a lost credit card statement under a pile a shoes, her birth certificate stuck between two books she'll never get around to reading. Who doesn't have private crap in their closets? That's what closets are for.

She thanked Katie and said they would be in touch, but Katie wasn't fooled. "Chief Johnson, whether you believe me or not, please look." She reached into her briefcase a second time and came up with a rumpled business card. It read, "Detective Lieutenant Charles H.J. Reardon, Brooklyn Police Department."

"Call Detective Reardon if you don't believe me. Because the twins won't let me get back to my life until you do."

Brenda picked up the phone in her office after Katie left, then hung it up. She couldn't bring herself to call this detective. What would she say? "Did you work with a psychic accountant who sees dead people and is she legit?" She shook her head. She'd sound like an idiot.

Two phone calls from Pope demanding updates she didn't have followed soon after. There was nothing on Ken Kinsky and no evidence to show who killed the kidnapper. The autopsies showed nothing interesting. She was stuck.

Brenda was taught in the CIA to investigate every available avenue when in a tough situation. She refused to tell the squad who the young woman was, so they would have no idea where she was headed when she told them she would be back in a couple of hours. Gabriel, who long ago decided he was her human GPS/personal assistant/overbearing mother, asked several times where she was going, and it wasn't until she bit his head off did he take the hint andleave her alone.

The drive over to the Bannon's large house in Hidden Hills took 30 minutes, and each minute Brenda felt more and more foolish. At least there was no one around to see her folly. There was an officer on duty guarding the property, but SID was long gone. She smiled at the officer and ignored his lingering gaze at her legs as she wandered through the large house to the master bedroom. The closet had been gone through, for the most part, but no one knew how to take apart a room like ex-CIA.

It took three hours, 12 Reese's mini-peanut butter cups, a hammer, and a stepladder dragged in from the utility room, and even then, Brenda felt rather than saw the panel cut into the side of the wall of the very top of the closet shelf. She removed the panel by feel and reached in to find a plain metal lock box. She pulled it out and carefully climbed down the ladder one-handed.

Finally, on terra firma, she picked the simple lock. She wasn't thinking about whether or not this proved Katie's story was true. She wasn't in the mood to grapple with big questions like that. She just hoped she was holding a clue that would move this case out of its "neutral" position to the right direction.

There were just a handful of items in the box. A receipt for $25,000 to a man named Simon Cleo. A withdrawal slip from the bank for $30,000. A few pictures of two sick-looking, underfed babies. And an envelope that read:

"Adoption" Papers

April 28, 2006

Inside the envelope was a single typewritten paper. It read:

I, being of sound mind, relinquish my twin daughters, born on August 13, 2005, to the permanent custody of Roy and Naomi Davis-Bannon. I have entered this agreement freely and have not been coerced. I will not, at a future date, seek to regain custody of my children, nor will I contact them in any way, and I am aware that if I try, my drug use will be reported to the police, along with other criminal behavior. I was paid $30,000 for my time and effort.

Signed... Date...

Brenda looked at the signature. She squinted, twisted the paper, turned it upside down. And for the life of her, she couldn't read the name of the person who signed the document. Mestef Yoodel? Nurbll Tibruz? Brenda hoped there was a "bad handwriting" specialist at the LAPD.

Brenda put her glasses back on and reread the makeshift adoption papers and the mystery signature, stopping to stare at those two sickly babies who could only be the Bannon twins, and her temple began to throb in an uneven, painful beat.

End Chapter 1

More to come...

Reviews are welcome. Thanks!

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