Pt.2.

Peter eyed the stranger warily, unsure of how to respond to her offer. "You know our killer?"

"In a way. I dropped a house on him once." Miriam smiled at the confused look on the young detective's face. "Well, it worked in the Wizard of Oz."

"The Wicked Witch of the West wasn't anywhere close to being the nightmare this man is." Paul replied, his eyes never leaving his visitor's face. "Let's be honest here Ms. Nightbird. David Rochester is a cold-hearted SOB who never cared about anything or anyone. Why would he suddenly care about a serial killer he didn't want to discuss only yesterday."

"I haven't a clue why Mr. Rochester would wish this creature captured. It is not for me to ask such questions. I only follow orders. You understand about that, don't you sir?" She sat primly on the edge of the chair in front of the desk with her hands in her lap. On her ring finger was an ornately carved onyx band with a series of intertwining silver Celtic knots overlaying the stone. The silver caught the rays of light from the office lamp and reflected them towards the outer edges of the room. The onyx bands seemed to absorb the light, burying it deep in the stone's depths. She twisted the ring around and around on her finger, the only outward sign of her inner emotions.

Peter looked from his foster father to the tranquil woman beside him. "So, what agency did you say you worked for?"

"Peter…" Paul began, his voice grim.

"I didn't say." Miriam replied, smiling slightly. "My "organization" is of a private nature, made up of various former FBI, NSA and CIA operatives. We are called in to assist other agencies with matters considered outside the bounds of their normal experience. My specialty is creating a profile of serial killers, having received my training while with the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Division. My foster brother – who will join us on this investigation shortly – is an expert tracker. We were both members of different agencies when I first encountered our mutual quarry." She pulled a small leather wallet from her jacket and handed it to the detective, flipping it open so that he could see the identification nestled inside. "Mr. Rochester seemed to think you were asking for his help when you called him, Capt."

Paul stared back at the enigma sitting across from him for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, I suppose I was. I hadn't, however, expected him to send a person – much less two people - to assist in this investigation. I was thinking more along the lines of a file."

Miriam shrugged. "Sorry, obviously we have our wires crossed here. But I believe that my previous experience with this perpetrator would be of more help than all the files I could give you. And my brother's tracking skills will take up when my information can no longer assist. "

Paul grimly looked from his foster son to the stranger, then leaned back in his chair with a sigh. "I suppose you are right. But you are both only here in an advisory capacity, do I make my self clear Ms. Nightbird?"

"Crystal clear, sir."

Peter examined the card with care, a small voice in his head telling him to ask nothing further about where this woman had come from. "So tell us what you know about our man." Peter demanded, handing her the wallet as he pulled up another chair beside her. "Who is he and why does he do these terrible things? Better yet, how do we find him before he kills again?"

"Start at the beginning." Paul said quietly, leaning back in his chair.

"As you wish." Miriam straightened in her chair, her mind going back to that day, five long years ago, when she had first learned that demons walked the earth in the shape of men.

It had started out like any other investigation for the Section, with little fanfare and much speculation. A courier had gone missing along with his cargo, a set of the standard "very important papers". All the usual strings had been pulled and all the local agencies had been used to the limits of Oversite's tolerance but no sign had been found of the young man and his package. Operations had written him off as a turncoat and had sent out all the proper authorizations for his elimination when the notice had come in. Miriam had been away in Barbados with her brother when the man had disappeared, recovering from a joint operation with another Section. Her team leader had apprised them of the situation just before their return to Virginia, in case one of them would be needed to hunt down the traitor. It hadn't mattered much to her at the time. She was a relative "rookie", only having been assigned to them within the last year. She knew that they would have to be desperate to risk sending her on such a chase before her internship was over. And she knew that Operations distrust and fear of her foster brother would keep him from pulling him into the hunt, even if it was something he was good at.

"Miriam, you're wanted in Operations office." Burkhoff had called out to her as she entered Section headquarters, sliding his chair away from his computer terminal.

Miriam glanced back at his cubicle with a smile. The teenager stood out a mile in the Section's world of hard-ass killers. Yet his youth and inexperience was tolerated by their by the book Operations officer because of his skill in infiltration of cyberspace. "What's his beef?" she asked, setting her backpack down beside the wall. "I haven't had time to screw up yet, I've only just gotten back from vacation."

"Don't know and don't care. All I know is the Man has been giving everyone ten kinds of hell since he got a message this morning from Texas."

Miriam shrugged then walked up to the glassed in enclosure that held Operations main office. Operations was a difficult man at the best of times, riding his agents hard to be the best. It didn't help that he had been her sponsor into the Agency and had pulled strings to have her assigned to his Section. If anything, it seemed to make him colder and more distant towards his one time protégé. And having Oversight saddle him with Miram's "foster" brother hadn't made things any easier. Inside the office, the Section's leader sat behind a modernistic desk, intently studying a display on his screen. His cold blue eyes showed no emotion as he scanned what appeared to be bloody crime scene photos. "Have a nice time?" he asked, never looking up from his console.

"Like you care, old man." She replied sarcastically, standing at attention in front of the desk.

"You're right, I don't. Our errant courier has turned up in a border town in Texas. You're going down there to lead an investigation."

"Why?" she asked curiously. "If Section security is working like it should, he's dead and the body is in the ground by now. What am I investigating?"

Operations looked up at the newest addition to his cadre with a frown. "You're right. He's dead. Only thing is, we didn't kill him. Seems our young friend ran afoul of a serial killer known to the local authorities as "The Doctor". I want you to find this person and bring him in."

Miriam looked back at her employer with a puzzled frown. "Bring him in? Why?"

Operations shrugged imperceptibly. "It was suggested by one of our Psych Ops people." He turned the screen so that she could see the carnage recorded on the image. "I've been told he's quite artistic in his technique. Even more so than your brother."

Miriam struggled to keep the revulsion she was feeling from showing on her face. "I would think that sort would be too unpredictable to make a good prospect for Section." Her voice was carefully neutral, a trick she had learned from the former head of Section 1, an older woman who had been replaced by Operations only a short while ago.

"Probably, but our recruitment officers want to give it a shot anyway. And besides, there's the little matter of the package the courier was carrying when he disappeared. It's still not been found, and my guess is that our friend with the appetite for death probably is keeping it for a souvenir." He slid a CD case across the desk at her, along with a manila folder. "Here's what you'll need to know about the case. You're contact will be one of our people out of the El Paso office, a Leroy Chiao. He'll be your liaison with the police. "

"No FBI involvement?" she asked, glancing briefly at the envelope.

"They'll send a profiler if you need one. However, you won't need one. We don't want to know why he does what he does. At least, not just yet. Just find out who he is and what he did with that package. After that he's not your problem. The Bureau will play ball on this one. It's in their best interest to do so. Seems one of this man's first victims was one of their trainees." He turned away, dismissing her without a word.

"I had been with the Bureau only a few years when we received word of a serial killer working in the border area between Texas and Mexico." Miriam's hands clenched reflexively as the memories of that investigation flowed out of the darkness in her mind where she relegated all such horrors. "When I arrived, I began my own investigation. I had read the files provided by the local officers, detailing what little they knew about their quarry. They had found four bodies, all of them showing signs of torture and extreme blood loss. In each case the body was left displayed in a place of "Safety", a church or a hospital. In one case they found the body nailed to the door of a school. Each body was missing some internal organ and it was from the finesses of this surgical technique that the authorities had decided the perpetrator must have medical knowledge. Hence, the name they gave him "Doctor Death". Something about the description of what he did to his victims sounded so familiar, as though I had witnessed such events elsewhere. Even the descriptions of the victims seemed familiar."

"There seems to be no correlation between any of the victims." Paul interjected, flipping open several files on his desk. "One was a stock broker, another a housewife, and the third was a dancer in a nightclub. They didn't know one another, had no ties that we could find…"

"They had one tie." Miriam replied, reaching across the desk to look at the crime scene photos. "Before they met this monster they had been very physically beautiful."

Peter jumped up from his seat with a snort. "So you're saying this guy kills people because they're beautiful?"

"Yes, in a way. Their beauty attracted his attention, which stimulates his desire to posses and subjugate them. He needed to bring them down, make them less then he perceived them to be, less beautiful, less untouchable. This obsession led directly to their imprisonment, torture and eventual death. So, in a way, you could say that the main reason for their deaths was their beauty."

"You said his MO sounded familiar." Paul prodded, carefully pushing the rest of the files towards her. "Did you find out from where?"

"Yes. There had been a string of such murders over a five-year time span. Always the same, corpses left in public places, mutilated then drained of blood. No trace of the perpetrator, no clues as to where the crimes had actually been committed or how the victims were transported." Miriam glanced through the files quickly, noting the similarities between the present day victims and those she had examined nearly five years before.

There was as knock on the office door and Jody let herself in, her eyes automatically finding Peter. "There's been another one. Uniform guys just found her near your father's Kung Fu studio. Only thing is, this one's still alive."

Miriam rose gracefully from her seat.. "I must speak to this woman immediately. My brother will no doubt have already heard of the new victim and will probably meet us at the crime scene." She fished a folded page from her jacket pocket and looked at it thoughtfully.

"What is this?" Peter asked, anxious to be out the door.

She handed him the unfolded paper with a grim smile. "The face of the butcher I thought I had killed five years ago." She glanced down at the well-creased page coldly. "This is Doctor Death."