Disclaimer: See the prologue.

A/N I: Thank you Celadon for beta-reading and for your support. :-) I made a few assumptions based on the props that were shown on the show – see the prologue.

800 Miles To Remember

Part 1: Two days earlier

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Chapter 3: Colby

Upon our return to the office, David and I found Megan and Charlie in one of the conference rooms. They were outlining the chronology of a case on a board.

"Is there anything new on Don?" I asked in lieu of greeting. My boss and I might have hit a rough spot not so long ago – following the Michele Kim's case – still I considered him one of the finest men I ever worked with and a good friend. I didn't like the idea of him being MIA one bit.

"They found his cell phone through its GPS chip. It had been discarded on the hospital parking lot," Megan reported.

"So it's safe to assume that Don was at the hospital when he called SAC Hatfield," I stated.

"Something really bad must have happened," Charlie voiced everyone's fear. He was calm, yet his concern for his brother's wellbeing was written all over his drawn features. "It's not like Don to disappear like that."

"Yeah, that's what Laurie was saying too," I pointed out.

"Laurie?" Megan raised an eyebrow.

"Laurie's and her husband Marc are Don's next door neighbours," David clarified. "Apparently, they're good friends of Don's."

"They call him D.D," I added. Obviously, I was still bothered by not knowing what the nickname stood for.

Charlie and Megan exchanged a quizzical look.

"It seems Don has been friend with them for some time," David continued.

On his part, my partner had been somewhat annoyed by the fact that he had never heard Don talked about his friends and neighbours during all the time they had worked together. Sure Don had mentioned doing stuff with some friends before, but those occasions were rare. We had both fallen in the habit of thinking that when our Team Leader left the office, he was going straight to Charlie's place.

"What do we really know about his personal life?" David had asked me in the car.

"What personal life?" I had retorted. "Even at Charlie's he ends up working on one case or another. I'll admit I don't know much about what he does in the little spare time he has other than the fact that he likes to watch sports on T.V. Yet the guy finds the time to stay in shape. We know now that he goes jogging with his neighbour. For some reason I always thought he did stuff like that alone."

"His neighbours went to Santa Fe along with him." David's explanation brought me back to the present. "Laurie said that Don left a day ahead of them. He was planning on doing a detour against his better judgement – his words."

"Don was on vacation," Charlie stated. "It's not unlike my brother to cut his vacation short because of a case. Although, this time he had promised Dad that he wouldn't do that. Maybe I shouldn't say so, but- well, it may be important- Don really needed the time off. He was such in a dark mood lately that Dad fears he might be burning out. I think Don's aware of it too. Going down to Socorro and looking into that case might have gone against his better judgement and the promise he had made to Dad."

"It's possible, Charlie," Megan agreed. "It's also possible that he decided to follow on the case without any backup or that he thought it was a waste of time."

"Possible, but unlikely," Charlie refuted. "I don't think Don would have gone so far out of his way if he hadn't had at least a hunch. We looked into this case together before he left. He didn't let on that he would be following up on it. The case had surfaced in a conversation he had had with some friend in Albuquerque as he was planning his trip. He had me take a look into it as a favour to his old team. I helped him in narrowing down the possibilities of where and when the killer was more likely to hit. That said, we didn't come up with a solid lead."

"Or he didn't share any of his leads with you if he had one," I remarked, thinking that Don wouldn't tell his brother that he was about to break the promise he had made to their father's.

"We looked into this case before Dad made him promise to stay away from work during his vacation. I didn't think about the case again since – as I said – we had come up with nothing conclusive. But that could stand from the fact that Don didn't give me all the facts. He didn't show me all this…" Charlie said, referring to all the gruesome pictures outlined on the board.

The bodies on the pictures were so mutilated that I understood why Don had naturally kept them away from the mathematician. My boss never liked to expose his younger brother to graphic stuff more than he needed to.

"He probably didn't have all of this here in LA," Megan said. "Those are part of the material SAC Hatfield had forwarded to us."

"So, what do we know about this killer?" David inquired.

"Not much," Megan replied. "We suspect he's a white male in his mid-twenties to late thirties with a high level of education. He's really meticulous. He doesn't leave much behind. He disposed some of the bodies in very remote area where he had to carry them. So he's in good shape. He has been at it for at least eight years. He made twelve victims that we know of so far – boys and girls, age ranging from eight to eighteen. There were years during which he hit twice and years during with he didn't hit at all. We don't know what his trigger is. He doesn't follow a clear pattern except to leave a bouquet of yucca filamentosa on the bodies of his victims. The yucca is actually the New Mexico's state flower."

Charlie brought up a graph on the screen. "Don and I determined that he would most likely kill again at this time of year because it's blooming season. But again the killer hit in other periods of the year and did so across the state." Charlie brought a map of New Mexico on the screen. Twelve white dots were contrasting with the dark bleu background. "Interestingly, in seventy-eight percent of all cases, the victims were found along the Rio Grande from Albuquerque as far down as Truth or Consequences."

"That's quite a stretched," I remarked. "Are we assuming we'll find Don along the Rio Grande?"

"It gives the people over there a place to start," Megan said. "As for us, let's start by going through these reports as if we would bring our findings to Don. It might give us an idea of what he might have clued in."

"You want us to try to get into Don's mind," I rephrased.

"Now that's a scary thought," David stated.

"That's for sure," Charlie agreed. "Considering that Don's mind's a bad neighbourhood to be in, especially once a case over."

"Well, this case isn't over and Don's life might depend on what we find," Megan reminded us. "Don's been missing for more than five hours. Time isn't on our side."

She was right. The more time passed, lower were our chances of finding Don alive – assuming he still was… I kicked myself mentally. Of course Don Eppes was still alive. He had to be – he had to be…

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TBC

A/N: More is coming in Part 2: Current day