Once again, thanks for all the lovely encouraging reviews!

Sorry I took so long to update. This next chapter is the result of long and loving research, so please overlook if some parts are off. I'm pretending Frannie Ching is the coroner because it suits my needs, but I'm not sure if she really is. If anyone knows—please don't hesitate to tell me.

Disclaimer: I don't own Cold Case or anything worth being sued for!

Chapter 2

Two hours later, back at police headquarters, Scotty and Lilly were still staring at the specimen recovered from the Feldmans' backyard.

Jeffreys, Vera, and Stillman had wandered over to join them. Lilly still wasn't able to rid herself of the slow heartache that had begun on first laying her eyes upon it. If anything, it had gotten worse. But at least her headache was gone, and no one could dispute she was wide awake now.

"So… what is it?" she finally ventured.

Frannie Ching turned around, grim and professional in green scrubs. "A dicephalus."

"A what?"

"Conjoined twins. One body, two heads. The result of an untimely separation between embryos," Frannie explained, moving over to allow their full observation of the infant.

"You mean these are two babies?" Scotty's voice was tinted with disbelief.

"Without a doubt. There wasn't much to go on, but I've recovered bits of bones from two craniums—not one. And if you take a look here, you'll see there are really two rows of cervical vertebrae—"

"No, no." Scotty stepped away sharply. "That's okay."

God… it was true.

Lilly felt a little sick. It had been bad enough when she had looked down into that horrible pit and seen what she thought was one baby—its head crushed to the point of making it nearly unrecognizable. But two...

What kind of monster would do such a thing?

"It—I mean they—look kind of small," Vera offered. "Think they're newborns?"

"Conjoined twins rarely carry to term," said Frannie matter-of-factly. "My guess is—this was a premature delivery. Probably stillborn. The fractures on the skull are consistent with the use of forceps…"

"Not sure I wanna know what that is," Vera uttered under his breath, looking a little green around the gills.

"…Or some sort of clamp," Frannie went on. "There's no way to know for sure, but I don't think these babies were ever alive out of the uterus. They probably died while still inside and someone tried to force them out the normal way, smashing them in the process. What I don't get is, why didn't their mother go to a hospital?"

"So this wouldn't be murder then?" came Stillman's question, harsh and predictable.

Frannie shrugged. "Hard to tell. But it is something to be looked into. I would check hospital records if I were you, during the past five years or so. It's not exactly easy to keep this kind of thing a secret."

"So what have you got?" Stillman asked, meandering into the main room some five hours later.

"Not much. The Children's Hospital here in Philly has been separating conjoined twins for years, but there's no record of any born in the area lately," Scotty answered, glancing up from the thick pile of papers in his hands. "In fact, last case was brought over from Poland. 1999."

"Think it could be our kids?"

"No way. These two were separated successfully and flown back, at least as far as I can tell. Anyway they were joined different—at the chest and abdomen. And they were already three months old by the time they arrived. Frannie said our babies didn't even look like term babies."

"Well—keep looking."

Scotty sighed. It had been such a goddamn long day. He usually loved new cases, but this one case was really taking its toll. There was something about it, about situations dealing with kids in general, that was absolutely exhausting. To make matters worse, they didn't seem to be getting anywhere. No ID, no record of any conjoined twin pregnancies, not even a reliable time of death. Could be any time within six months and five years. Great.

And then there was Lilly, former friend, hunched over her own desk—hostile, icy, barely cooperative. Not to mention that she really looked like shit today. Although they were barely talking to each other, he couldn't help wondering what had happened. It wasn't like her to be so slow, pale and baggy-eyed. But he'd probably get the sledgehammer if he so much as dared to ask.

Okay, so sleeping with Chris probably wasn't the best idea in the world. But what was I supposed to do? Not my fault they don't get along. And Chris is one special lady…

In fact, she was the only good thing going on in his life right now. And he wasn't about to give her up just because Big Sis over there insisted on giving him the cold shoulder. Talk about overreacting, for crying out loud.

"Oh, and Lil—Robert Feldman's just coming in. You know… Kylie's husband? Why don't you go talk to him?"

The Great Voice of Reason had once again picked Lilly over him to go interrogate a possible suspect. Honestly, it was almost like they didn't trust him anymore. And why? Sure, he'd made a few mistakes. Okay—so they were considerable mistakes. But he had cleaned himself up, got himself together. How long would it be before he was back in Stillman's good graces?

Lilly rose from her desk in what could only be described a sluggish manner, accidentally meeting his eyes on her way out. "What?" she growled testily.

"Nothin'," he muttered, sinking back into his wad of records.

Go to hell, Lil.

Lilly trudged her way into the interrogation room, trying with all her might to ward off the sinking realization that she was being a bitch. She knew she was. There was just no other way of dealing with the problem. Chris was trouble—Scotty had been warned. He hadn't listened. Not only that, but he'd lied to her face about it. He—the one person she had actually come to trust these past few months. Her partner, for Pete's sake! Worse even, he'd gone to Chris, snooping for secrets—and Chris, like a good, blabbermouthed little busybody, had told him.

That was something she couldn't get over. Something she'd never be able to forgive. It wasn't even a question of forgiving, really. She just couldn't cope with him knowing. That secret was meant to be hers, and hers alone. Chris had no business telling him. How'd she ever be able to look him in the eye again?

A man's wide-eyed, startled face swam in front of her, and she was suddenly aware of her surroundings. You better perk up, Rush—or you're not gonna make it through this day, her inner voice nagged. Leave the personal stuff home. Starting now.

"Hello, Mr. Feldman," she began, snapping into professional attitude in the blink of an eye. She sincerely hoped the potential suspect hadn't caught on to her momentary lapse. "Well, it's been five hours since we got in touch with you. Seven hours since we talked to your wife. Where were you all this time?"

"Me? I was at work!" came the indignant answer, not wholly unexpected.

Robert Feldman was a good-looking man, some 6 foot 2, from what Lilly could gather with him sitting down. His hair was light brown and short, and he had a fine tan. He looked adequately concerned—though whether over his innocence or his wife's state of mind, she had yet to find out.

Cool it, Rush. Remember he's not a suspect yet. You just wanna find out if he knows something about the kids. Don't put him on the stand. Yet.

"And you couldn't make it out before? In my world, finding a dead body in my backyard is a pretty big deal. If my wife came across one, I'd trip over myself trying to get home to her."

"Look, lady." Robert's voice was tense, but not out of control. "I don't know what you're getting at. I had nothing to do with it. And I couldn't leave work. I'm not exactly my own boss, you know. Of course I was worried about Kylie—we've been trying to get pregnant for so long, I could only imagine what it was like."

"How do you know they were babies? Kylie claims she never opened the burlap sack."

"I never said they were babies. Kylie just said it was a small package. I guess it could've been a dog or something. But she sounded so freaked out over the phone—I figured it must be more than that. We've buried lots of pets. She doesn't usually lose it. And today—well, she was almost hysterical."

True enough, thought Lilly, remembering the redhead's mad rush into the house.

"Mr. Feldman, when did you move into your house?"

"Just a little less than a month ago. Kylie wanted a bigger house. She said she was stifling in the apartment."

"Your wife said it used to belong to some couple named Bryant, whom she never met. What'd they seem like to you?"

"Yeah—Beau and Jenny Bryant." Robert's voice lost its strained tone and his eyes took on a faraway look for an instant, as if lost in thought. "Well, I only negotiated with them about the house. It's not like we were best friends or anything. But they seemed quiet—nice enough."

"Any kids?"

"None that I could see. But they had pictures on the mantelpiece. And Beau Bryant mentioned something about a son going to college. They looked like an older couple. Maybe he was the last kid to leave the house, and they felt it was too big for them. I don't know."

"They didn't say anything about why they were selling?"

"No, and I didn't ask. Didn't think it was any of my business."

Lilly withdrew, disappointed. To their misfortune, Robert Feldman seemed innocent enough. She didn't believe he had anything to do with those buried babies. Besides, if Frannie's approximate time of death held true, the infants had been there long before the Feldmans ever so much as dreamed of moving in.

"All right. We're done, Mr. Feldman. Go home to your wife." On her way out, Lilly suddenly turned around and said, almost as an afterthought, "You might want to stay in town, though."

"Why?" Robert returned defensively. "Am I a suspect?"

"Let's just say you may be wanted for further questioning."

Everyone's eyes turned toward her as she marched back into the main room—Scotty still sitting at his desk, Stillman leaning on his doorframe, Jeffreys and Vera by the coffee machine.

"Nothing, boss," Lilly barged in dejectedly, deciding to go ahead and lay the bad news on them before anyone asked. "So I guess we're back to square one. At least we can check out the last couple who owned the house. Beau and Jenny Bryant."

There was a short silence in which everyone exchanged looks.

"What?"

"We may have found our hospital record. It's not very clear, but it's all we've got. November 2002. Erica Bailey, age 36. Multipara of 2. 13 weeks. Multiple pregnancy, possible conjoined," Scotty read from one of the rearmost pages of his stack.

"13 weeks? That's like barely 3 months, isn't it? What happened afterwards?"

"She disappeared. There's no record of her anywhere," Jeffreys spoke up. "Address she gave at the hospital was fake. No current address, no phone records, nothing. She went missing from the hospital. Obviously, no record of her babies' birth."

"Great. So what do we do?" Lilly wasn't sure she could take any more dead ends.

"I guess we go talk to her doctor."

There seem to have been other, more recentsiamese twin separations after the 1999 case I mentioned, but I couldn't find any newspaper articles on them, so I chose to ignore it. Thanks for reading!