The U.S marshals parted as Angel cleared the way for Near to pass through. His snow white hair reflected the sun off of it brightly. Heavily darkened sunglasses covered his eyes, a simple grey silk button up shirt gently moved in a strong gust.

One of the marshals leaned over to a local officer. "Must be the guy. Is every high ranking detective a snappy dresser?" The policeman wordlessly shrugged.

Near knelt down to the newest discovered body and slipped on blue sterile gloves while speaking into a recorder Angel held. "Female, Hispanic, possibly late twenties to early thirties." He gently started inspecting the body. "Deep bruising around the neck, suggested strangulation." He lifted his camera and snapped a multitude of photos from different angles.

Rolling the body onto her back, the crowd gasped and some turned from the smell. Near crinkled his nose. "It's hard to tell with the amount of heat, but I'll bet she hasn't been dead long." Moving articles of clothing to spot for other clues other than the carved open chest. Raising an eyebrow, Near smirked. "Bingo." He lifted a hair with tweezers from underneath a nail and held it at eye level. "Complete with root." Dropping the hair into a bag that was held out for him, his charcoal eyes shot back to the body. "Hold on…"

He lifted her shirt away from the seam of her pants. Raising both eyebrows in interest he dropped the shirt then stood with lightning speed; pulling his gloves off he stormed to the car as he lifted his phone. "W. I need to speak to R and J."

The coroner walked past him as the phone rang for a three way call. "Our cases are the same. Every single one of them are connected… maybe. They're being abducted from the Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee areas. Some I bet are as far north as lower Ohio and some as far south as northern North Carolina. They get medically processed in Florida and are tortured along the way. But to where? There isn't any anomalies here in Texas." He shifted his eyes around as he spoke hushed. "Where are the males going? Or even coming from? Every victim has been female. Are they even targeting males? However, it seems they're being sterilized, so this isn't a baby making operation. They're mutilating them, so the likelihood of them being sex trafficking is low."

Glancing his eyes to his phone. "B is calling? Hold on. I'll call again once I've figured more out." He ended the call and switched lines. "This better be important." A moment of silence passed before Near's eyes widened. "What do you mean? An anomaly in the census?" Near could feel the pit of his stomach drop. "Only males are going missing…" A moment of silenced passed. "What do you mean as far north as San Francisco?!" Near paced slightly. "We need more ground covered. Alright. Just focus on your lead. I'll fill you in tonight in conference." He ended the call and turned to see Angel in close proximity to him. "Good thing I have a federal agent on my team." He smirked slightly as he motioned his head towards the car.

-x-

Angel sighed as she read over the file they had compiled. "But where are they going?" She took a long drink of coffee. "Who is doing this? Why are they doing this?"

Staring out the window at the seemingly endless darkness. "Focus on one. We need to narrow our focus or we'll get discouraged."

A rhythmic beeping sounded from Near's computer. Sighing loudly the detective tapped a key on his keyboard as the other detectives connected. Peaking out of curiosity, Angel laid eyes on the mysterious detectives. "Whoa…" She fidgeted with her fingers for a moment. "I can't believe it!" Along the top row, "I can't believe it's really THE Beyond Birthday! You're much more handsome than the photo they released in the papers!" The ravened detective blushed slightly and itched the back of his head. She glanced to the next photo. "Unbelievable! Former Syndicate operative Reaper! You were all over the Australian news! You took down an entire wing of the Syndicate!" The blonde detective shifted uncomfortably on the screen. She narrowed her eyes slightly at the final member on the top of the screen. "Now, I'm not sure who you are. But you!" She pointed at Light in the first panel along the bottom. "You're Raito Yagami! You helped solve the Kira case in Japan!" She happily clapped as she went along the bottom. "Fiery red hair, associate of L, you must be the notorious hacker, Red13!" Her eyes landed on the final panel along the bottom. "Messy onyx hair, looks like he hasn't slept well in weeks," she took a shallow gasp in, "You're L. Like THE L. The greatest detective in the world."

Mello groaned almost childishly. "Man! Everyone here is famous except me!"

All of the detectives shared an uneasy chuckle with the exception of L, who stared into the camera with a bored face and spoke with an equally unamused tone. "Seems you have quite the detective on your side, Near."

Angel blushed brightly at the somewhat compliment, "Oh no. I'm not a detective. I've just been following you since the release of the Kira case, and I've studied all of your previous cases. I'm just a U.S Marshal that's a little too fascinated by mysterious detectives. Just a really big fan of all your work. Uh, sir."

Rolling his stormy eyes, Near shoved Angel out of the way. "To the point. I believe my case is linked with J's case. We knew from the beginning that R's and mine would coincide. But, B, please tell the others what you discovered."

Clearing his throat, Beyond spoke smoothly. "I was looking for anything that I could latch onto at all with my case. I've been finding the killings to be less and less like the first initial murders. After hours of pouring the any information I could get my hands on, I'm finding somewhere around 300 men have gone missing between Los Angeles and San Francisco alone in the last year. After compiling the data and comparing them to trends in the housing markets and death rates reported to the cities. I found that there is still an unaccounted 127 men. With a 3% margin of error and a 2% margin of unreported findings. Which would leave room for approximately six to seven men. Meaning, 120 to 121 men are still missing. After triangulating the dates of the missing with current traffic flows all signs point to them being migrated east."

Sayu crinkled her brow as she processed the information. "So… if the females are being transported through Texas, and the males are being transported east… Where are they going?"

The group fell silent before L spoke. "Somewhere inconspicuous. Likely, with a high traffic pattern. Where it wouldn't be out of place to see large groupings of people moving together, or large passenger vehicles."

Sayu flipped through some pages of notes. "It seems like these people aren't exactly taken from whatever place they're already at, there hasn't been any reported struggles, and most of the people that have been reported missing by families have not been reported missing by employers… They likely had taken time off…"

"The Grand Canyon…" A hush fell over the group as Caspian spoke. "They were lured. More than likely received some sort of information of a trip or a vacation of sort, I've seen it done in the past."

Mello snapped his fingers and blurted out. "Like a sweepstakes's! Or some sort of lottery they don't remember… Maybe an email? Like how some scammers will say you've won some lottery that you know damn well you never entered!"

Chuckling quietly, Matt started tapping on some keys. "I'll start trying to track that down. Near, send me the information you found on your victim and I'll see if I can't locate her online."

Near nodded to Angel as she transferred the data to Matt. "You'll have it soon."