Adam watched out the window as the Crown Vic slowed to a stop. He swallowed tightly and tried not to fidget. He'd known if Beckett was telling him it would be a bad one, it would be a bad one but when he saw the location of their crime scene, his sensibilities were offended on a whole new level.

'A school? We have a murder scene at a school?'

'I told you our vic was a teacher.'

'Yeah, Wayne Hill, thirty-eight, math professor at Calliope Thrace.' Adam recited the bullet she'd given him. 'You neglected to mention that it happened at the school.'

'Unfortunately yes.' Beckett shut off the engine, saw the children ages six to sixteen milling around in little groups on the sidewalk. Some were crying, others looked shell-shocked and numb. 'Karpowski already called in our best uniforms to handle the crowds, counselors for the kids. We're meeting with the principal, she should be waiting for us right inside those doors.'

Adam slipped on his sunglasses, not just to guard against the bright September morning but also to try and keep Beckett from noticing the squirmy look in his eyes. He'd hated high school a lot - he'd gone to a similar private school thanks to scholarship money and a part time weekend job while the majority of his classmates complained about how they were being forced onto another cruise again this year for Thanksgiving and how they were so sick of always spending New Year's Eve in Thailand or Hong-Kong or the Caribbean. Adam hadn't gone on his first trip on an airplane until he was eighteen, after he'd scrimped and saved the forty-five hundred bucks together for his school's rugby trip to Australia in May of his senior year.

'Amazing, isn't it?' Beckett said to him as they approached the doors.

'What?'

'Once you go back into a school all the memories are flooding back to you.'

'You went here?' Adam asked, wondering for a brief, fleeting moment if his boss had been the kind of girl who would have made his teenage years a living hell.

'Oh, God, no. I was a public school kid through and through,' she replied on a laugh as she looked around, saw the well-dressed Asian woman in a chocolate brown suit and chunky gold jewelery that looked almost comical on her slight features. 'I asked my parents about it once, they said they'd rather take all that money and save it for sending me to university, which they did. I made it through two years at Columbia before they had to take out a student loan for me.'

'Trust me, I wish my parents had done the same thing some days,' Adam murmured.

Beckett opened her mouth to reply, but the woman in the suit had reached them by now, her arm outstretched; as she was closer now, she could see her almond eyes were red and puffy from weeping.

'Thank you for coming so quickly, Detectives. I'm Anna Leung, the deputy headmistress here. Our headmaster is at a Department of Education meeting in Rochester until Friday so I'm in charge for the time being.'

'Detective Beckett, Detective Brennan,' Beckett replied by way of introducing them. 'Please lead the way.'

'Who found the body?' Adam added as Leung took them towards a broad sweeping staircase with real oak banisters and parquet flooring.

'Two of our senior students, Nicholas Tomasi and Sarah Ritter. They both have Wayne as their second-period algebra and geometry professor, and he is their independent study sponsor as well.' Leung gave a little sniffle. 'It was so like Wayne to take on that extra responsibility when he had so many other projects on the go.'

'He was popular?'

'Oh immensely. Tough, certainly, but he enjoyed that reputation because he pushed the students to the best of their ability.'

Leung turned them down a corridor that to Adam's frame of mind looked more like the corridors at City Hall rather than a high school; she continued, 'Wayne was also the coach of the girls volleyball team along with Miss Witt, he was the male vocal coach for our glee club, he sat on the parents council as the staff representative and he was also organizing our Cops for Cancer bike-ride fundraiser. How he had the time to do all of that and teach five classes a day was mind-boggling. It's...it's what makes it so awful. He's leaving a huge hole in our community.'

The woman stopped outside the doorway of a classroom, pointed. 'He's in there. One of the medical examiners is already with him.'

'Thank you, Ms Leung, we'll want to talk to the two students who found him shortly,' Beckett said by way of dismissing the woman and wasn't surprised as her quiet sobs echoed down the hall when she retreated. Crossing over, the stench of death hit her like a brick wall in the warm room.

Sprawled face down, his head turned towards the neat rows of desks, was Wayne Hill. His arms were outstretched like he'd tried to push himself up, then collapse from lack of strength; his eyes were wide and fixed, staring at the empty seats in his room. Beckett imagined he'd been handsome once, but now his smooth cocoa-coloured face was bloated, his tongue protruding from puffed lips. Crouched beside him, taking measurements was Shane looking very depressed.

'Morning Doctor Son-in-Law.'

'The same to you, Detective Mumum-in-Law,' he replied without his usual cheerfulness.

'What's his story?'

'At this time cause is unknown, because I want to be damn sure my instincts are right. What I can tell is this man bit the chalk-dust at approximately nine-thirty this morning.'

'That's pretty specific,' Adam commented, and Shane delicately lifted the man's wrist, showed off the Swiss-made wrist-watch.

'Mister Hill crunched his Zaufmann when he collapsed, broke the springs to keep it going.'

'It could have just stopped on its own?'

'No frickin' way.' Shane shook his head. 'My dad's a clock-and-watch guy, I grew up with him talking about time-pieces the way some men talk about muscle cars. A Zaufman is like Rolex's kid brother, they are designed to last so if this thing is dead in the water, which this one is, that means he'd have to fall hard and fast without any chance to break his fall.'

'Like someone having a heart-attack or stroke?' Beckett asked. 'They're disoriented, dizzy, don't know their bearings.'

'Could be but the signs of a stroke or coronary aren't presenting. I'd rather take him with me, get him sorted out before telling you what's what.'

Adam nodded, looked around; he could actually feel the walls closing in around him as memories of being called Beggar Brennan came screaming back to him so he cleared his throat and said, 'I'm going to head back down to the principal's office and see about our two witnesses.'

'In a moment, Detective.' Beckett held up a finger. 'Shane, are you sure you can't give us any idea?'

'I don't want to be wrong,' Shane replied quietly, 'because if I'm right, you're looking for one very cold-blooded sociopath.'

'Alright, fair enough. Adam, can you head downstairs and tell the principal that the ME is ready to move the body, that having the students outside isn't going to be in their best interest?'

'Sure.'

Adam went back the way Leung had escorted them to the second floor and found her outside what appeared to be the general office talking to two other staff members, one a greying man with penny-lens spectacles and a silver push-broom mustache, the other, a blonde with a pixie cut whom Adam would have mistaken for a student had she not been in three inch heels and a Laura Ashley blouse and pencil skirt.

'Miz Leung, our medical examiner is ready to move the body, so we need to ask for your assistance in moving students back into the school so that they won't have to witness their teacher in black plastic,' he said to the trio of educators. Adam knew it was a little more blunt and harsh than he would normally have been but he also knew these kind of people - protocol was the official party line, that and keeping all the makers of the trustfund babies happy. Being slightly brutal to them was sometimes the only way to get through the dense sense of propriety.

'Of course. Gregory, Liz, could you assist me?'

The other faculty members nodded, and when they'd gone a few steps away, Leung added quietly to Adam, 'I've sequestered Nicholas and Sarah in the nurse's room, separately of course, each with one of your officers. Who would you like to speak to first?'