I am so, so sorry for keeping all of you waiting. With school and then the holidays life got a little crazy. But after all that, here it is. Let me know what you think.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

Wallander found the scene before him repulsive. Jimmy, the boy who just hours earlier had possessed a reserved yet skittish energy, was now sprawled out on the floor devoid of any type of vitality. His eyes were open wide with terror, and his mouth hung slightly agape in a grotesque imitation of what was surly his last intake of breath that the shock of facing his murderer would no doubt have caused. Like Linda, John had been displayed on a tasteful area rug in the Sorn's living room; his hands tied and lying on his lap. The most disturbing part, though, were the splattered specks of red that stood out brightly on the once clean white walls. It looked like a strange piece of modern art, both captivating and abhorrent to Kurt's senses.

There was one striking difference between the two murders. Where Linda had been strangled John had been shot. Almost point blank, right where his heart was. Serial killers tended to stick to the same method, but it had already been made clear that this was a case of revenge. The note from the Tourneau house had made that pretty clear. The change in tactics merely reaffirmed the assumption, but still, why the change?

"The missis is ready for you now, sir," the call came from Brigham, the taller of Chief Schmidt's lackeys that Kurt was finally able to remember the name of.

Straightening up from the bent position he had been in to examine the body, Kurt made his way into the parlor room, skimming it with his eyes as he walked. Mrs. Sorn was sitting on a small settee next to which a hand crafted lamp was casting a pale light upon her face. Kurt had already been informed that her husband was away on business. Her back was straight, pulled taut, and her right arm was rigid against the armrest. Her left hand was positioned delicately on her lap.

"I know this is hard," Kurt began but was instantly cut off.

"Save your petty condolences!" the ferocity of the statement took Kurt by surprise. Gone was the seductive charm of the wealthy heiress Kurt had spoken to that afternoon. In her place was a bitter, angry woman imbued with rage. "It is supposed to be your job to catch this damned murderer. He is not supposed to be running free to commit other murders! Because of your incompetence my son is dead! I swear to you that you will be – "

"You swear?" Kurt sprang hastily to his feet. "Exactly what is it you swear? Do you swear to tell me what it is you and your son were hiding earlier?"

"That does not concern you!"

"Oh, oh it doesn't?" this was too much. "Because I think whatever it is you and this entire bloody town are all keeping secret is the very thing that is getting your children killed."

"You go too far!" she was on her feet now.

"And you haven't gone far enough!"

For a tense moment they glared at one another in what felt like a demented game of chicken. This was insane. What secret could possibly hold any importance after her son was killed? Then Kurt saw something in Mrs. Sorn's intense almond eyes that caused him to blink first. It was a protective look but it wasn't for herself, it was that of a mother protecting her child. The detective remembered it from his ex-wife Mona's gaze as she cradled their only daughter after the incident with the pills. He let out a sigh to clear his head and addressed the woman again in as gentle a tone as he could manage. "Look, you don't have to tell me everything, just give something I can work with. Anything that could point me in the right direction, please."

She looked at him for some time, the silence becoming uncomfortable for the detective. "I can't help you," she finally said and then sat back down in her previous position, averting her gaze from Wallander. Kurt huffed and dropped his head down to his chest. Shaking his head he began to walk toward the door. He wasn't going to get what he wanted from her. There was no use pushing any harder. Then, "Detective." The call made Kurt turn halfway back to her expecting some sort of warning he didn't really care about hearing. "You had asked my son about John Tourneau. " Now she had his full attention. "He is in Karlstad."

WWWWWW

It was passed midnight when Kurt and Magnus were able to return to the hotel. The moment their heads hit their pillows they were both dead to the world, so it came as a rather sharp annoyance when a bird had begun chirping in their room. Or at least Kurt had thought it was a bird, and it took him a full minute after waking to realize that the odd sound emanating at steady intervals to his right was coming from his cell phone. He had never used the alarm function on his cell before and felt like a right idiot when Magnus had to show him how to work it. Now that it was going off he realized that it was possible to hate a sound more than his actual ringtone. After groping around blindly for the infernal device, he brought it about an inch from his face and blinked bleary eyes at the fluorescent numbers. 4:01 a.m. it read and Kurt growled.

Reluctantly he scrunched the blankets away from his body and rocked forward. A small hiss leaked from his lips at the discomfort of his still stiff hip, but it lasted a mere moment before he was able to propel himself off of the mattress. With lead feet he shuffled himself over to the second full sized bed and levied himself into the chair beside it, remembering to be wary of his hip this time.

"Hey," Kurt pushed at Magnus' shoulder eliciting a mumbled groan from him as he rolled his body away from Kurt.

"Come on, I don't feel like playing games," Kurt said, shoving the shoulder harder.

The blonde puff rolled back over to reveal a very aggravated face. "Aren't you the one who was pushing me to get sleep?" Magnus asked.

"Yeah but I'm not the one who got a concussion," was Kurt's reply.

Magnus huffed, "Fine ask your stupid questions then."

"Name?"

"Humpty Dumpty."

Kurt glared at his charge, "I told you I'm not in the mood."

"Huh, are you ever?" Magnus quipped then noticed that the glare only grew harsher. "Magnus Martinsson," he finally answered.

"What's the date?"

"Really? People actually care about that at," Magnus lifted his head to stare at the small alarm clock next to his bed, "Ugh, 4 o'clock in the morning?"

"Magnus!"

"Alright! September 22, 2011."

"And where are we?"

Magnus dropped his head back on the pillow answering with a definitive "Hell."

Kurt stared for a moment. "Alright I'll give you that one," he said.

"Great, will you let me go back to sleep now?" Magnus waited for an answer but when it didn't come he grew concerned. "Unless there was something else you needed," he pressed.

The senior detective waved off the concern. "It's nothing, I was just thinking," he replied.

"About the case? What?"

"It's just… the woman in the Tourneau house. Why didn't she kill you? I mean not that I'm saying she should have, I just,"

Magnus quickly cut in, "No, no, trust me, I thought the same thing. I was totally defenseless. She had a gun, why not take the shot?"

"Mmhm, and she probably had plenty of time to shoot us in the hallway as well," Kurt agreed.

They both sat in silence, Kurt with his hand rubbing at the scruff on his chin he hadn't been able to shave and Magnus propped up on his elbow, caught in private contemplation. It was Magnus who eventually spoke up. "So, if she wasn't trying to kill us then what, she was trying to scare us?"

Kurt nodded, "That sounds right. Everyone here is hiding something. It seems to be one big skeleton in the town's proverbial closet. Maybe she was trying to throw us off it."

"But I was assuming that we surprised her," said Magnus. "If she was there for us, how did she know we'd be there?"

"Now that's the question we need to answer," Kurt said but before he could think on it any further, his phone began to ring.

"Ugh!" cried Magnus as he folded the pillow over his head to drown out the noise. "That ringtone is worse than listening to a dying cat."

Kurt only grinned as he flipped open his phone. "Wallander," he chirped. It was the chief. "Yeah... got it… okay," Kurt said as he listened to the other end. "Right, we'll be there around eight then." Kurt shut his phone and turned back to his roommate. Turns out the police in Karlstad are much more efficient than the force they were currently working with. They found John Tourneau and were going to ship him out in a few hours. He wasn't going to arrive until sometime in the late morning or early afternoon, so there wasn't any point in them going in now. Kurt was going to tell his partner this but when he turned back he found him already asleep, the pillow the kid had pressed over his head had flopped back down in the now loosened grip.

Kurt smiled a soft genuine smile. They were detectives. The world around them could be an endless parade of nightmarish events and they had chosen it to be that way. Their current case was evidence enough of this. But sleep, whether full of strange images or dreamless, could bring them peace. So for now he would let Magnus have that peace and let the nightmares of the real world seem like the far off dreams Kurt sometimes wished they were. Well, for the next two hours at any rate.