Mike exhaled loudly, his head dropping back onto the pillow as he closed his eyes. Steve leaned forward, running his left hand over his eyes then into his hair. The others looked down and away.

Eventually Mike lifted his head and cleared his throat slightly. "I'm, ah… that's good news," he said softly. "I'm glad you did… at least the poor bastard can have a proper burial now."

Beside him, his head still down, Steve nodded.

"It's already been done," Powell said gently. "We, ah, we located an aunt of Mr. Kowalczyk's, living back east – Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She had the… the body cremated and the ashes have been sent to her. She's eventually going to inter him next to his parents…"

Steve's head came up. "But we don't have all the body parts yet… right?"

Olsen shook his head, jumping into the conversation for the first time. "No… we told her that… She understands."

"Was the M.E. able to determine a cause of death?" Steve looked at Powell, who nodded.

"Blunt force trauma to the head… a baseball bat, he thinks. We haven't found it yet but we're still looking."

A reverent silence filled the room for a few long seconds then Mike asked, looking at Rios, "I'm sorry, Jay, I interrupted you earlier… You'd mentioned something about you guys tracked Scott's movements to and around San Francisco after Kowalczyk's murder…?"

Rios sat up at little straighter and nodded. "Yes, that's right. Well, from what all our departments," his eyes swept the small group, "have been able to piece together so far, it looks like that after Scott killed and dismembered Kowalczyk in that second farmhouse… and hiding the head in the root cellar for some reason…" he paused, "he, ah, he put the remaining body parts in the trunk of his car… in a duffel bag or a large garbage bag or something similar... We haven't been able to find it yet so we're assuming that might be what the other two body pieces are concealed in somewhere."

He paused again, eyeing Mike and Steve closely before continuing; this was a lot of information for the recovering detectives to be absorbing at one sitting. But they both seemed focused and stoical, so he continued. "That was the car we found behind the third farmhouse. Blood, and a lot of it, was found in the trunk, and it's been matched to Kowalczyk. It seems that sometime after that, Scott drove to San Francisco, stopping when he could to throw body parts to the side of the highway… And we're assuming he did so at night when he could do it without being spotted. And, obviously, he was successful at it."

"What about the leg we found in The City?" Steve asked.

Rios glanced at Powell and Walker before turning back to the curiously frowning detectives. "Well, our guess is, he got to The City… and who knows why, maybe to return to the Church of Satan or just to hide, who knows…? And we think at some point he opened the trunk and found a body part that he'd missed… maybe in the dark it fell out of whatever he used to haul it around in… a plastic bag or whatever… and panicked. He knew he had to get rid of it so maybe he drove around until he found an out-of-the-way dumpster… And it was his bad luck that some homeless guy wanted to use it for shelter…"

"Thank god he did," Olsen offered quietly and there were nods from everyone.

Walker glanced at Powell before facing Mike and Steve and clearing his throat. "We, ah, found out a little more about Scott's background too. You guys interested in what we found?"

Both pairs of eyes staring at him widened; Mike snorted in the affirmative as Steve nodded, "Yeah…"

Walker smiled briefly. "Well, there's not much to report about his mother, she was a housewife, no record… she didn't even drive," he shrugged. "We couldn't find any evidence that she ever had a driver's license. But his father was a different story."

Mike frowned. "I didn't see anything in the reports I was given…"

"Well, it seemed Ronald John Scott had a secret life… that he lived in Nevada. We just sorta stumbled onto it by accident, but it might shed some light on what drove his son to… well, not to become a murderous cult leader but, let's say, to have a troubled life…"

Walker dropped his head briefly and took a deep breath. He glanced up at his boss and Powell nodded encouragingly. "Sorry…" he apologized to the room in general, "ah, this hits a little close to home. My Dad went through the same… personality change when he returned from the war too… but I went into law enforcement and James Scott definitely did not…"

Rios, sitting beside Walker, patted his back encouragingly and the Vacaville sergeant shot him a grateful smile. With a clearing of his throat, Walker continued, "It seems Scott senior spent a lot of time in Las Vegas. He'd leave his wife and son and disappear for days at a time… we're not sure if he went there to gamble or for the prostitutes or what… but the family was never short for money so we don't think he gambled his money away. He was a heavy smoker, we know that, and that's probably why he died of lung cancer so young.

"But what we also know is, he was a drunk… a mean drunk. In the state of Nevada he was arrested eight times for being drunk and disorderly, and another five times for assault on top of being D&D, one of which was coupled with a charge of threatening. Now the police report, for some reason, doesn't state what kind of weapon was used for the threatening, but it could've been the Thompson. There are a lot more gun dealers that ply that kind of trade over there than there are here, believe it or not, especially back then.

"We don't have any domestic abuse reports on file, but we all know that doesn't mean he never touched his wife… or his kid. Two of the Nevada assault charges were filed by women he roughed up. And from what we can tell from the reports, these women weren't one-night-stands with him; they were women he was carrying on affairs with. So he was not exactly an ideal parent for the kid, any kid."

"So both parents died by the time he turned thirty," Steve mused aloud, "and he had no real male role model… so that's why he turned to Anton LaVey?" He looked at his partner with raised eyebrows.

Mike looked at him with a facial shrug. "We look for mentors where we can get them sometimes, don't we?"

"And some get luckier than others," Olsen added gently, glancing subtly at the young man sitting beside him and smiling.

"Still," Steve continued, seeming not to notice the oblique and appreciative scrutiny the pair were receiving from the others, "how in the world did he go from LaVey to Charlie Manson? I mean, there has got to be something we're missing… right?" He looked at his colleagues with a furrowed brow.

"Well," Olsen sighed, leaning forward, "I think that's something we need to leave to the psychiatrists. That's their job. Ours is just to stop these lunatics before they cause harm to anyone else. And, in this case, I think we did our jobs." He turned to his two detectives. "Mike, Steve, I hate what happened to you… neither of you deserved this and it should never have happened. And I am grateful you're both going to be going home soon and both of you will be able to return to work in a few weeks and continue to help keep our streets safe.

"But, and this is a very big but, I also know that, if it wasn't for you and what you did – risking your lives in that fog to make sure you got to that third farmhouse – well, you two saved lives." He paused and fixed them with a narrow, uncompromising stare. "I am convinced that, if it hadn't been you two that stumbled onto Scott, chances are it would've been somebody else… I don't know, a lost driver, a delivery person looking for the right address – and they wouldn't've been so lucky. Now I know you didn't do it deliberately – hell, nobody would deliberately walk into an ambush, except maybe Dirty Harry," he scoffed, "and he's a psychotic megalomaniac that wouldn't be allowed in any police department I know of…"

Despite the seriousness of the moment, the others laughed; Mike and Steve both snorted dryly and looked away uncomfortably.

"Oh, you all know what I mean," Olsen grumbled and the others laughed even more.

Mike looked at his old friend affectionately. "Thank you, Rudy," he said with a sobering sincerity, then finished with, "and it's good to know you won't be hiring Dirty Harry anytime soon." He managed to swallow his chuckle; the others weren't as successful.

Steve glanced warmly at his partner and frowned slightly; even if the others couldn't, he could see that Mike was starting to tire. He turned back to the room, raising his eyebrows quizzically. "You guys have done an amazing job, thank you…" he began, and the others looked at him questioningly, realizing they were subtly being asked to wrap things up.

Powell glanced from the younger partner to the older; Mike had closed his eyes, his head back against the pillow and he had slid his right hand under the blanket after pulling it up to his chin. With a slight understanding smile, Powell met Steve's stare and nodded. "Yeah, we're, ah… we've pretty much told you everything we know for now _"

Mike raised his head and opened his eyes. "The money…" he said almost unsteadily and Steve's head snapped around, worried. Mike shot him a quick reassuring smile. "Did you guys find the money?"

Rios looked at Powell with a curious frown as the police chief shook his head. "Nope, not a sign of it. And we tore those three places almost apart. That's why we have feelers out everywhere trying to find out if Scott or Kowalczyk or 'Jerzy Carlyle' bought any more properties in California. So far it's been a bust but we're still hoping."

"Try Nevada too," Mike said softly, and Steve could tell he was running out of steam.

Rios's eyebrows shot up. "Of course! God, yeah, of course… if the Dad had a secret life there…" There was a chorus of approving and impressed nods all around then Powell got to his feet.

"Well, we'll get out of your hair and let you get some rest," he said warmly, taking a step towards the bed. He glanced at Steve. "I'll be talking to you guys again soon, maybe tomorrow. Take care of yourselves, okay?" He patted Steve's right shoulder.

"Good to meet you both," Rios said from the door as Olsen opened it to encourage their departure.

Walker, realizing this might be the last time to see the San Francisco detectives for awhile, took Powell's place at the head of the bed as Steve got to his feet. "Lieutenant Stone," he began with a smile, "it's great to see you doing so well. It was pretty scary there when we finally found you… you were so cold. I'm just glad we got to you in time."

Mike managed an increasingly weak but genuine smile. He slipped his right hand out from under the blanket and shook the sergeant's. "I'm glad you were too," he chuckled softly.

"I knew there was something wrong that last time I talked to you in the car, when you told me he," Walker nodded towards Steve, "had passed out and you didn't know what to do…"

Steve snapped to attention; it took every ounce of control not to turn to his partner in anger. He knew Mike had lied to him.

Walker snorted softy, almost sadly. "If I'd known you were going to get out of the car, I would have told you not to… I didn't know and I'm sorry, I really am…"

Steve could feel the blood pounding in his ears, his chest heave and his left hand begin to shake. And he knew he was losing control.