Mal was taken back at how perfect the code was, how as Natara was tortured she was still able to think of this brilliant code. He was also confused, these were random words. 'THEY KNOW'. He took that 'they' were the Flores's. That they knew something about Genevieve. 'SANTA CRUZ'. The Santa Cruz was a mountain range not far from here. But as for 'WEST. SWATARA. SNAKE. BED. DOOR.' that was a mystery.
Amy and Mal simply stared at the screen, as if a spell had come over the two, they were unable to take their eyes off the words. "It's amazing" said Amy eventually "That she was able to recall how to write this after she'd been tortured. Mal remembered Natara's wild and untamed eyes. How in her last minutes of sanity she's deliberately put herself in more pain just to get this message to them. Then he realized, he hadn't killed Natara. Natara had been long gone before that bullet had pierced her heart. Her last words of sanity had been when she'd whispered "Kill me…" or when she's slipped the paper into his jacket. The woman who had recoiled at his touch, had yelled and screamed to be killed, that wasn't her. The real Natara had left before she had died, and the real Natara had begged for death before her mind betrayed her body and broke. Had maybe asked for a gun, and had been granted one because they knew, at that point, she wouldn't break. She'd held back her insane outbursts until she was away from them so they didn't see her weakness. And this may have been the cause of her deteriorating into madness. They sat for a long time, together trying to understand what it meant. Looking over papers and evidence, maps of the Santa Cruz mountains. Nothing came up, but after a while Kai and Ken both walked in, shocked at their appearance. Mal realized, he had been so engrossed in what he'd been working in he'd missed the fact that morning had come. He and Ken made brief eye contact, a thick awkwardness fell over the room, made worse by silence. Eventually Kai broke it, and Mal was shocked at the calm and seriousness of his tone. "Natara's mother called, they want the body for burial soon."
"We can't release it until the full investigation is over" said Amy. And that was how it was, Natara would never be laid to rest until they had figured out what she wanted of them. With that thought in mind, Mal picked up more papers, reading over them for anything that could have relevance to those few stray words: ''WEST. SWATARA. SNAKE. BED. DOOR.'