In wartime, Mulan had seen her fair share of dead bodies. Created dead bodies too, by arrow and by sword. It didn't make war any easier, which she was thankful for. Her father told her once, after she came home, that the moment you stop feeling anything when you kill is when you stop being human.

Whoever did this couldn't possibly be human. Mulan killed out of necessity, out of loyalty to her country. This monster killed for the mere pleasure of it. When she entered the room for the first time, Mulan choked back her tears. It wasn't the first time she'd seen the body of a elderly woman. It was the first time she'd seen a human being slaughtered as if the killer was a hunter and the poor old woman a deer.

Mrs. Prince had been everyone's grandmother in the small, close knit community. She baked apple cobblers that went for big bucks at the annual town goods auction to raise funds for the children's home. She had the endearing habit of showing up at her neighbor's houses and cleaning when the residents went on vacation. It was the kind of place where people didn't lock their doors.

Her husband was a local lawyer, prominent before succumbing to heart disease five years ago. He publicly spoiled his wife with jewelry and other nice things, saying that he was giving her a piece of happily ever after. Mulan was thankful that Ferdinand hadn't lived long enough to see his beloved wife in such a state.

Outside the bedroom, Mulan could hear stifled crying. Mrs. Prince had been principal of the elementary school for as long as anyone could remember. Phillip Kingsley, one of her deputies, was one of Prince's students. Mulan let him have his tears. She knew tears didn't make a man or woman weak.

"Merida, call Doc and let him know we need an autopsy pronto. Tell Meg to hold this story for as long as possible; I don't details getting out before we've processed evidence."

Her red-headed officer nodded somberly, stepping out to make the calls. Mulan knelt down next to the body. Those wide blue eyes were still open and staring at the ceiling. Mulan whispered "Don't worry, Snow. We're going to catch this son of a bitch." Her eyes caught her reflection in the giant mirror hanging from the wall. The sick bastard had written on the antique mirror in Snow's own blood: "Who's the fairest in the land?"

Within her skin, Mulan could feel her blood burn and boil. "I promise. I will catch him."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Mulan gave her head a tiny shake. "You know I can't talk about an ongoing case, Kida. Not even to a friend."

Kida pushed a plate of food in front of her despondent friend. "I don't want to know about the case. I want to know how you're doing."

Though her stomach rumbled in a way to suggest otherwise, Mulan couldn't eat. Food made her think of Snow White Prince's apple cobbler.

"I just...I can't believe she's gone. I remember coming home, everyone treating me like I was a war hero, like I was different than I was before. I just wanted to get back to normal life, I didn't want parades. Mrs. Prince didn't treat me like a celebrity. I saw her at the grocery store a few weeks after I got my medal, and she said "Ms. Fa, did you bring that boy back with you because you wanted to, or because you knew that's what your daddy wanted?" Kida laughed lyrically while Mulan smiled for the first time all day.

"She was right, of course. She was the only one who wasn't surprised when Shang left. And she's gone. No more sweet but stern old lady wisdom with apple cobbler."

Kida thought of her own memories of the lady. "She would sing, every morning. I asked her once why she sang, and she said singing led her to her true love, and she never stopped singing after that. I remember I thought that if I could one day be half as happy as she was, I'd still be happier than most people in the world."

Mulan rubbed her eyes. "I only really came back to grab a change of clothes. I've been in the office all night. I sent Merida and Phil home hours ago to get sleep, but I can't stop knowing that the killer is out there."

Kida nodded. She'd learned long ago not to argue with her roommate's workaholic nature. "Well, I should let you know that it's already all over town. Mrs. Prince was supposed to be at the museum this morning to help with the history of Disney Town exhibit. Milo was calling around all morning trying to get in touch with her; finally got a hold of Tiana."

Mulan cursed. "Phillip goes to Tia's every morning to pick up those powdered donut things for the office. He must have said something. And if Tia knows, Lottie knows. Which means..."

Kida finished her sentence. "Meg won't have to write a story. Everyone knows."

"Sheriff Fa, the Anaheim Daily just called. They want to cover the story. I told them they'd have to wait for you to get into the office."

Mulan nodded grimly. "Thanks for stalling, Nani." She paused before her secretary's desk. "Listen, I know Mrs. Prince meant a lot to your sister. If you need to take a day off to be with her, I'd understand."

With a grateful smile, Nani declined. "I haven't had a chance to talk to her about it, in person, but I called the school to check up on her. She knew something was up because the vice principle was going classroom to classroom talking to teachers. I told Lilo that something bad happened to Mrs. Prince and she demanded that I stay here and help with the investigation."

Mulan chuckled. "That kid. Okay, but if you change your mind, I'm sure we could find a temp. The office would fall apart, but we'd try and survive."

When Nani came to town a few years back, Mulan had taken her under her wing. She gave Nani a secretary job at the station knowing that Nani didn't know the first thing about office work, but correctly assuming that the girl was a hard worker and a quick learner. Little Lilo occasionally said that Mulan was a part of their "Ohana" which was sweet of the strange girl. Mulan never had siblings (unless you count her dog Little Brother) and she looked at the two Hawaiian girls as her own sisters.

After settling into her office, Mulan grimaced as she prepared to make the call she'd been dreading. "Yes, hi, this is Sheriff Fa. Could you put Meg on the phone? Thanks, Lottie."

"About time you called, Fa, I was about to send reporters to the station to bug you."

Mulan frowned. "Meg, we found her around ten last night. It's barely 8:30am now. It's a weekly paper you're running, not a daily."

The snarky reporter would not be dissuaded. "News is news. And this, this is big news. Was Mrs. Prince really killed? Do you think it's a serial killer? Is-"

"I'll send Merida over in a bit with the information you can publish. We'll be keeping some information private for the time being to help the investigation. And listen, tell that Lottie of yours to quit gossiping about this. She's going to have this whole town panicking."

Meg was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. "Snow is dead. Shouldn't we be panicking?"

Tiana's powdered donuts sat on the conference room table, untouched. No one in the station seemed hungry. The body lying in the makeshift morgue of the local hospital drained the officers of life, Phillip Kingsley thought.

He and his wife had lived in this town their entire marriage; nearly twenty years. His Aurora drove twenty minutes every morning and evening to the city, where she was a professor. She taught classes on fairy tales and folklore. To this day, Phillip didn't know how he'd attracted such a smart, wonderful lady. She, the intellectual, he, a simple cop. Though he'd been at the station the longest, he was never promoted higher than deputy. This worked out nicely for him. It wasn't that he lacked ambition, it was more that this is where he was comfortable. He was content with his life, job, family. Their son was a freshman at an out of state college, but he visited frequently. Aurora's aunts had left her a small house when they died, where James Kingsley stayed while at school.

Everyone in this town felt like family to him. He had his routines, the people he saw every day. He didn't like change. But now, his family, his routine, was broken. He'd never help Mrs. Prince around her house as he'd done every Saturday without fail since her husband's death.

He could hear Mulan talking to Nani in the hallway, but he wasn't listening. He kept seeing the apples strewn on the floor of Mrs. Prince's kitchen. The killer had broken in, catching her in the kitchen. She ran into the bedroom, trying to close the door, but she didn't stand a chance.

Mulan cleared her throat, finally getting Phillip's attention. "I know everyone is shaken up. This is a hard case, hard on the entire town. Which is why I've decided to request the help of the FBI. I believe-"

"No." Phillip stood up, shaking. "No way in hell. Mrs. Prince was one of us. We all loved her. We're going to catch this monster, together. We don't need any outside help."

"Phil, I understand how you feel, but we can't handle this on our own. This isn't traffic tickets, this is murder. Out of all of us, I'm the only who'd seen a dead body before. We are out of our depth."

Phillip's fists were clenched. "Please, Mulan. Give us a week. If we don't have a viable suspect in a week, call the FBI. Just give us a chance to solve this."

Mulan glanced around the conference room. Merida's lips with thin, anger clearly reflected on her face. She'd just graduated from university with a degree in criminal justice; this was her first real job in the field. This was her first case. The three of them were more than capable of handling the normal petty small town things. The worst they'd seen was when some of the high schoolers started selling weed. She hesitated. Logically, she knew that they wouldn't be able to solve this on their own. But a week...a week couldn't hurt.

"Fine. We have a week. Phil, work with Nani and go through the files of anyone in town with a history of violence or anyone with a grudge against the Princes. Merida, go to the paper and drop this folder off to Meg. Afterwards, go to the elementary school and talk to Prince's coworkers. Maybe someone saw something out of the ordinary. I'm going to see if Doc and Sweet found anything in the autopsy."

Sweets was like a giant out of a fairy tale standing next to the small body of Mrs. Prince. A former army doctor, he now worked the Disney Hospital. Doc was normally a pediatrician, but he'd offered to assist Sweets with the autopsy. Sweets thought bitterly that while a nice gesture, Doc wasn't much help; he'd been friends with Mrs. Prince for decades. Doc was unprepared to see his friend as a cadaver.

Doc and his brothers had lived in this town their entire lives. They'd been some of the original wards of the Disney Children's Home. When they were teens, a little girl from an abusive family came to the home. She was fourteen, with skin as pale as snow and hair as dark as a raven's wing. The boys took care of her, and she them.

The boys grew up and got jobs, always sending her money, until a barely eighteen year old met a boy in the woods when she was picking flowers. That boy was a recent law school graduate, coming home to take over his daddy's firm. They married soon after. It didn't bother Ferdinand that his bride was unable to have kids. Instead, they fostered children from the home, providing lost souls with a friendly stop along the way to their forever families.

Sweets excited the makeshift morgue, exhausted. He noticed a catatonic sheriff in a gray plastic chair in the hall of the hospital. She must have fallen asleep waiting for the autopsy results. He wished he had more to give her.

"Uh, Sheriff?"

Her eyes fluttered open. "Oh, I'm sorry! It's been a long night. Or day." She coughed, embarrassed slightly. "Did you find anything of note?"

Sweets shook his head. "Just what we suspected. Blunt force trauma, and you were right earlier. He gutted her." He hesitated, brow furrowing. "He took her heart."

"Okay, Nani, it seems no one had it in for the Princes. The Miners were close family friends, Snow's abusive mother died years ago, her husband's dead. I don't see any connection, anything that could lead to someone doing this." Phillip slumped in his chair, mussing up his grating hair.

Nani sighed, organizing the files again. "Maybe you guys could gather up all the usual suspects and interrogate them, see if they know anything?"

Phillip shook his head. "We can't hold anyone without a reason, and the typical shady sorts won't talk to us anyways."

"I think you underestimate how much Mrs. Prince meant to this town," Nani said, softly. "Either way, I hope Merida is having better luck than we are."

"Did Mrs. Prince ever tell you that someone made her uncomfortable, or scared her? A parent, or another teacher maybe?"

Ella Austen's eyes were full of tears, and Merida wasn't getting anywhere with questions. "No, no, she loved everyone! Even mean people! She was a real Christian lady. We'd been best friends for thirty years and I don't think I ever heard a harsh word from her!" At this, Mrs. Austen looked away suddenly.

"What is it, Mrs. Austen? I promise, anything you can think of could help."

"It's just...she didn't ever mean anything by it..." Mrs. Austen bit her lip. "She would lecture people. Snow believed in true love and if she thought two people didn't love each other, she told them. Saved alotta people from bad relationships." She sniffed. "And she thought Father Frollo was creepy. She stopped going to church around two years ago, said it was due to her health, but I knew it's because she didn't like his fire and brimstone talk."

"I think the whole town shares her view on Frollo," Merida said kindly. It wasn't a lie; his pews were emptier than Merida's date calendar. "Did she ever, er, lecture someone who didn't take too kindly to it?"

"I remember she was on the little French girl for months to leave that big brutish fellow, the pushy one? His name escapes me. But he stalked that poor dear for awhile, 'till the good sheriff stopped him. That was before you moved here. Most people got their happy endings through Snow."

Ella Austen smiled weakly. "I know I did. I was a poor kid who got kicked out of my house. Snow found me and she and Ferdinand helped me get into college, though they weren't much older than I was. And at school, I met my charming husband." The tears were falling freely now. "I don't know how the kids here will recover. I can't fill Snow's shoes. No one can."

As Merida was leaving the school grounds, she say a splash of red in the corner of her eye. "Lilo, shouldn't you be in class?"

The ten year old girl ducked out from behind the tree. "How'd you know I was there?"

Merida smiled. "I was once a rascally run-about lass myself."

Lilo fidgeted under the redhead's gaze. "Did Mrs. Prince get eaten by vampires?"

Merida knelt down next to the sad child. "Lilo, I think this is something you should talk to Nani about. What happened was bad and I don't know how much Nani wants you to know."

Lilo's eyes were wet. "When we first moved here, the school wouldn't let my dog Stitch come with me to class. Mrs. Prince told me that every time I got an A on an assignment, I could have Stitch come to recess. She said it was good to have old friends when you're somewhere new. But she told me that the kids here are nice and I could make friends here too." Lilo wiped her eyes with her pudgy hands. "Just say it wasn't vampires, okay? If it was vampires, I want to know."

Merida hugged Lilo close. "It wasn't vampires."

Hello, everyone! This is my first Disney fanfiction and I hope you enjoy. I know that in most disney fanfics, the characters are high school/college aged. In mine, most everyone are adults. I can put up everyone's ages if there is interest. Please review, especially if you think you know who the killer is!

DianaKeep