Sorry for the delay. Was away this weekendand didn't get to post the new chapter until now ...


They headed for Parker's apartment first. When they walked down the long corridor towards his door, Francine felt increasingly on edge; an almost ominous sense of foreboding. She didn't know where it came from. It was an ordinary corridor, the lights weren't particularly dim and they didn't flicker. Something just felt wrong. Maybe because she knew Parker was dead.

She glanced at Beaman. He felt it, too. His right hand was slightly raised, ready to reach for his gun. She had tried to break him off that habit but so far, her efforts had been in vain.

As they drew closer she thought she detected a faint smell that didn't fit in with the other smells. She wasn't sure if she wasn't just imagining it but it sent a chill down her spine.

Death. It smells of death.

She immediately pushed that thought away and chastised herself for being such a drama queen.

The lock on Parker's door was broken.

Francine drew her gun and gestured to Beaman she would enter first. He frowned but didn't object. When they had first started working together they'd had endless discussions about situations like this. It had taken a session at both the range and the gym to convince him that Francine wasn't only a better shot but also outmatched him in hand-to-hand combat and thus, should be the one to enter potentially dangerous situations first. At least until he had improved his skills - which he tried but since Francine did the same, so far, nothing had changed. Beaman didn't like it. Not at all. But as long as he didn't argue that was quite alright with Francine.

Gun at the ready she gave Parker's door a nudge with her foot. It swung open with a soft creak.

Francine couldn't pretend she had been prepared for the gruesome tableau presenting itself. It wasn't totally unexpected though. After seeing those photos of Parker's mangled body, she had known there would be a lot of blood at the scene of his murder. She heard Beaman take in a sharp breath. She herself tried to breathe as little as possible. And to keep a tight grip on herself.

At least, I didn't imagine the smell …

It definitely was there, the cloying, sweet metallic smell of blood, even though most of it must have dried by now.

For a moment Francine remained where she was, still with her gun in her hand, taking in the mess before her and telling herself she wouldn't scream or gag or do anything else unprofessional. Even though this was worse than anything she'd ever seen before.

There had been a fight – that much was sure. A brutal and relentless fight for life and death. Whoever – or whatever – had come for Parker, he hadn't done them the favor of rolling over on his back and dying quietly.

The furniture had been knocked over. One of the chairs was reduced to splinters. Blood – a whole lot of blood – had soaked the carpet dyeing it a dark rusty red. The walls were spattered with it. In two, three spots, it had even reached the ceiling.

Some of the details, Francine knew she wouldn't forget again anytime soon. The dark red splashes on the beautiful white orchid on the window sill. Five parallel cuts in the armchair's upholstery. The filling was spilling out. Similar scratches across the wall to her right.

"The neighbors must have heard something," Francine said.

"Yes. Let's go and ask them."
She felt Beaman start to move.

"No. First, we check Parker's apartment and call in for a forensics team."
She hesitated for a second.
"Stay right behind me and watch my back," she told him. "I don't think there's anyone here but …"

She didn't finish. If whoever had killed Parker was still here they were as good as dead.

She carefully started to pick her way across the room avoiding the blood-stained part of the carpet as best as she could. Behind her, she heard Beaman check the bedroom and the bathroom.

"Nothing," he told her.

Francine put her gun back in her shoulder-holster and scanned the room for the phone. She found it on the floor by the window. The cord had been ripped out of the socket but it looked undamaged so she plugged it back in and checked if the phone was still working. She got a dial tone. She exchanged a look with Beaman who was waiting by the bedroom door and dialed Billy's number. He picked up almost at once.

"Billy, it's me," she said before he had a chance to speak. "You might want to send a forensics team to Parker's apartment. He obviously was killed here."

"Right, I'll send someone right there. Stay until they arrive."

"You also might want to warn them," she quickly went on before he could hang up. "This place looks like something right out of a horror movie. Think cheap midnight screening splatter."

A pause at the other end of the line.
"Will do. You and Beaman okay?"

Francine again glanced at her partner. He looked a little pale – but then, she supposed, so did she.
"I don't know. Guess we won't find out till later."
She would have to wait until tonight to see if any of this caused any nightmares.

"Just hang in there. Forensics should be there soon."
Billy hung up.

Francine carefully put the phone down where she had picked it up and turned to Beaman.
"Let's wait outside."

"One moment."

Beaman stepped over to the wall to take a closer look at the scratches. There were five, just like on the armchair, parallel, with the lowest one starting and ending a little after the other four.

"Do you see that?" he asked. "I don't know what made these but it definitely wasn't a bear. They're too close together and five instead of four."

Francine knew she didn't have to point out that a bear wouldn't have bothered taking Parker's body and dumping it elsewhere, either.

Beaman raised his hand, curled it into a claw and mimed striking at the wall. Francine was perfectly aware that if he really struck the wall like that he would leave marks similar to those scratches.

Still, she shook her head.
"Wouldn't work. Look at how deep they are."

"Metal claws?" Beaman suggested. "Worn on your fingers?"

"And fake teeth for the bite marks? Why would anyone kill Parker in such a way?"

Beaman shrugged and turned to her.
"Maybe to leave a message?"

"When you want to leave a message you don't try to hide the body. You leave it where it can be found easily."

"Didn't your CIA pal tell you Moran was a lunatic? Maybe he's lost it."

"So he's – what? Running around dressed up as some kind of monster with fake teeth and claws, killing people who might be on to him?"
Again, Francine shook her head.
"I find that hard to believe."

"Well, it's the weekend before Halloween. He wouldn't draw much attention, if any at all."

"We don't even know if he's still alive," Francine pointed out.

"Yes, there's quite some things I'd like to know about the good doctor and his experiments. Especially his experiments."
Beaman frowned.
"Do you think you could get more out of your friend if you went out with him?"

"Oh-ho!"
Francine raised her eyebrows.
"So suddenly he is my friend and it is okay to go out with him."

"You know which kind of 'go out' I mean …" Beaman said with a small smile.

"It doesn't matter. It wouldn't work. He doesn't talk about his job. Too many secrets to keep or so he always used to say."

Beaman nodded. He stepped away from the wall and cast a glance at the room.

"Let's wait outside," he suggested.

Francine wasn't going to argue with that.


When the forensics team arrived Francine told them they probably would find traces of her and Beaman in Parker's apartment. Talking to Parker's neighbours didn't yield any new information. Two weren't home and the third one was working night shifts as a security guard so had been out when Parker had been killed.

"Check out that address?" Beaman asked when they left the building.

Francine nodded. She glanced at her watch.
"And we mustn't forget to call in with Billy in an hour."

She didn't want him to worry. Especially not with the report on the crime scene forensics was about to give him.


"Oh – it's that one," Beaman said when they reached their destination.

"You know it?"
Francine looked at the house at the end of the street.

Talking about horror movies …

It was a creepy old house, there was no denying it – not even when you didn't believe in ghosts or other things supernatural. Once, it must have been a beautiful house, painted white and with a slate-grey roof. Now, most of the paint was gone or peeling off in large flakes. Tiles were missing on the roof. The window panes that weren't smashed reminded her of a blind man's milky white eyes. They were staring at her. Francine was sure of that. The house was looking right back at her.

The garden wasn't in any better shape. Weeds had taken over a long time ago, suffocating whatever flowers once grew there. The trees had shed most of their leaves. The bare, black branches reminded Francine of bony skeleton fingers.

The only thing missing to turn it into the very cliché of a horror movie house was a flock of vultures circling above it.

"The kids call it Bates' Motel," Beaman answered her question.

"Nice. And so original."

It could indeed have been the home – or former home – of a psychotic serial killer. Or the lair of a mad scientist.

"Doesn't look like anyone's been there, recently," Beaman went on.

Francine glanced at him.

"If you had gone into hiding and had chosen an abandoned house as your new base of operations you would hardly advertise it by fixing it up and tending garden, either," she pointed out.

"Of course not. But I see no sign of anyone having been there. Like trampled grass, for example. If anyone had been in or near the house they must have stepped somewhere, right?"

"Just because we can't see anything that doesn't mean there isn't anything."

"Let's go check?" Beaman suggested.

Francine hesitated.

She didn't like that house. It was staring at her, no matter how silly that sounded. And it wasn't doing so in a friendly way.

It's just an empty house, she told herself. You're being paranoid because you know how Parker died. This house might not even be connected to that. For all you know he could have been looking for the perfect location for his Halloween party.

Still –

"You go check," she told Beaman. "I'll stay here and watch your back. If Moran's still alive and this really is his new base, you don't want to run into him."

"Francine. No one's here. No car, not even a bike!"
Beaman sounded slightly exasperated.

"He might come back while you're checking out the house."
She knew he couldn't possibly argue with that.

Still, he tried.
"There's no one there. That house has been just sitting there since its last owner died, way back when I was ten."

Francine folded her arms across her chest and glared at her partner.

"Alright, alright." He sighed. "Let's do this your way, then."

He made a great show of checking his gun before he got out of the car and slammed the door with a little more force than necessary.

Francine watched him slowly walk up to the house. She cast a glance in the rearview mirror to see if anyone might be watching him. The street was empty. Well, even if there had been people, Beaman hardly would have drawn any attention. He was from the area – people around here probably knew him.

He stopped by the fence, turned towards the house, as if lost in thought – childhood memories maybe – but Francine knew he was carefully checking the house and garden for signs of someone living there. After a moment, he continued up the driveway and to the house's front door. He knocked and waited. A minute or so passed. He knocked again, then grabbed the doorknob and gave it a twist.

Francine straightened in her seat.

"Don't you dare enter that house alone," she murmured.

If he went in there she would have no way of warning him if anyone arrived here. And besides, she didn't want him to go in there alone. She told herself that she was being perfectly rational about it. The house had been abandoned for a long time. Long enough for floorboards to rot through - or ceiling beams. There were about half a dozen things she could think up that could happen to him in there and none of them required anybody else's presence.

To her relief he let go of the doorknob again. Instead, he slowly made his way along the side and then the front of the house, at first on the porch then in the garden. Francine watched him struggle through the high, withered grass and tangled weeds leaving an all too visible trace. He rounded the house's corner and disappeared from her sight.

She waited. For quite a while. Forcing herself not to check her watch.

He was taking an awfully long time to come around the house.

Of course she knew – well, the rational part of her mind did – that only a few minutes had passed since she had lost sight of him but time always seemed to pass much slower when you were waiting.

She tried to ban all thoughts of Parker's apartment and the photos she had seen of his mutilated body from her mind. Because if she thought about those things too closely now she might just start to imagine Beaman running into Parker's killers while he was out of sight.

Where is he? What's taking him so long?

Long, as it turned out when she did check her watch now, was a relative term. Three minutes could seem an awfully long time. Half an eternity.

Francine scowled at the house and settled deeper into her seat.

She should have gone with him. Staying here had been a stupid idea – how was she supposed to watch his back when she couldn't see the back of the house?

In the end, it took Beaman a full ten minutes to get around the house. By the time he approached the car Francine had decided she wouldn't let him get close to that house again under any circumstances. Next time, she would go. No matter how much it creeped her out or how much she felt it was watching her.

Beaman opened the door and slid into his seat.
"Nothing," he said. "As far as I can tell, there's no one in there."

"As I told you," Francine pointed out.


Beaman gave his partner a long, thoughtful look. She seemed almost annoyed at him. Come to think of it, that seemed to happen a lot, lately. Her tone and general attitude were similar to when they first had started to work together. Back then, she had made it quite clear she was only putting up with him because she wanted to get back in the field and Mr. Melrose wouldn't let her without a partner.

They gradually had started to get along better – or rather, Francine gradually had come to realize that when he wasn't drunk and trying to hit on her he wasn't a complete idiot. Now, Beaman considered them something like friends. Not quite friends, yet. For that to happen, Francine would actually have to admit they were friends.

Not exactly what he wanted but it was better than nothing and one hell of a lot more than he had thought he would ever get. Recently, though, it looked like they were heading back to square one – at least where the more personal side of their partnership was concerned. He didn't expect her to change her opinion about his capability as a field operative.

Francine glanced at him with a slight frown.

"Why are you staring at me?" she asked.

He blinked and smiled.
"Sorry. It's nothing, just thinking."

And he better not tell her he'd been thinking about her or else she would try even harder to distance herself from him. For that was what she was doing.

It wasn't that he didn't understand why.

First of all, keeping to yourself and not letting anyone get too close came with the job. Now that he was working in the field himself he finally understood. It was a dangerous business – being shot almost counted as death by natural cause. He himself was still relatively new to this part of the job but he knew there must be a point where you simply couldn't bear to lose yet another friend. So the logical thing to do was to not make any more friends. Or even like people.

He also knew that, so far, his partner hadn't exactly been particularly lucky with the men she had chosen to get serious about. There had been that thing with Stetson – Beaman had witnessed some of the fall-out personally. It hadn't been pretty and for quite a while, Francine hadn't even been on speaking terms with the great Scarecrow.

Then that Stone guy. Yes, alright, so he had come back to apologize and you probably had to give him bonus points for wanting to help his ex-fiancée when he thought she was in trouble. But in Beaman's eyes he lost those bonus points again because he actually had been the one to get her in trouble and, well – the guy was an idiot. Francine seemed to have been willing to give him another chance. That she had returned from their vacation together after one week instead of the intended two had spoken volumes – at least in Beaman's opinion. Long story short, Jonathan Stone had disappeared from her life again, this time – Beaman was pretty sure– with Francine's blessing. But not before he had managed to do a great deal of damage.

Since he knew all this he kept telling himself that he had to be patient. Which wasn't easy when you knew exactly what you wanted. He had known that ever since he had first realized she was just as smart as she was beautiful. One week into their basic training he had known she would go far. He had also known that she was way out of his league. He was good with computers so that was what he had specialized in. She had moved on to train to become a field operative. One of the "cool kids".

For years, he only ever had dared to approach her at the Agency's Christmas parties and only when he was drunk enough to make a complete fool of himself. Then, fate – or rather, Billy Melrose – had thrown them together as a team and suddenly, she wasn't as unreachable anymore. Yet, in a way, she was still as unreachable as ever. Being friends seemed to be okay with her. Being more – he didn't dare to even hint at it. He didn't want her to ask for a new partner after all.

It was like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey's nose.

A hand appeared in his field of vision. Hers.

"Earth to Beaman."

She waved her hand before his eyes.

He turned his head to look at her.

"Would you mind to stop thinking about whatever it is that you're thinking about? I'd like to discuss what to do next."

"Sure."
He pushed up his glasses slightly to rub the bridge of his nose.
"Sorry. – What do you suggest?" he asked.

"Well, we have two options: One, return to the Agency and tell Billy we didn't find anything. Or two, stay here for a while and watch the house."

"I'd like to stay and watch the house," Beaman said at once. "Parker must have been interested in it for a reason."

Francine nodded.
"Yes, I think so, too. So I'll tell Billy we will be here for a while when I call in."

At least, they wouldn't have to go looking for a phone. The car was equipped with one. Too bad really, Beaman thought. A short walk might have helped him to clear his mind.

Francine looked at him with a slight frown.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yes. I just have a lot on my mind recently."

If he was lucky she'd attribute it to Parker's death and their current assignment.

She sighed.
"Same here."

He waited for her to continue but she didn't.