A/N: Thank you to everyone who have been so vocal and kind with their comments. I love to read them, even though I have become a terrible correspondent. I will try to catch up on the comments, and if I don't get back to you, thank you so much for reading I really appreciate it!

In this chapter I realized just how often I have made up my own characters to fill a need. It's not like I want to create an alternative universe, but sometimes you just need that character to fill a need. A new character that I am introducing in this story – into my head canon - will appear in this story and in Ho'opana'i and she has already made an appearance in one of my Rants. I've added her to my Ohana. I hope you like her.

Happy Reading!

Chapter 4: A Face in the Crowd

"So did he give you any advice?" Steve asked when Danny had ended the call with the Governor and the exchange of phones returned them to their rightful owners.

"He wants us to check up on our biggest critics, just to see if this isn't just the beginning." Danny answered. "It's a place to start."

"At least that would keep us out of the office," Steve said half heartedly. "Do you have anyone in mind?"

"I think we need to head back to the office to regroup and to see if there is any one else glaringly absent from the angry mob." Danny answered sarcastically.

"All right, let's do that." Steve said as Max came out of the autopsy bay. "Did you find anything blatantly obvious that might give us some direction on this investigation, Max?" Steve asked the scrubbed and gowned medical examiner.

Max shook his head, "my preliminary examination tells me that both victims died in the same way. The murderer snuck up on them, subdued them, somehow, and cut their carotid arteries. He then wrapped the necks so tightly with medical gauze that it nearly stopped the bleeding but it paralyzed his victims. He then wrapped them up and left them to bleed out, and eventually they did. Johnny Tao's body is still warm and rigor motis hasn't even started to set in." Max explained. "Aside for that I have to wait for the forensics detective to get here to help me un-wrap the body. I don't want to destroy any evidence - if there is any to be found - and I can't do that on my own. I need the detective to do that and to document every piece that comes off that body."

Danny and Steve nodded their understanding.

"And to think, she and I had only just finished with Lauren LaBelle when I got called out of the office for Johnny."

"She?" Danny asked intrigued.

"Yes, Doctor Mona Blainson, she's with the crime lab and is one of the supervisors there. She's a doctor and a detective to boot! She could have been a medical examiner but she likes the diversity of the forensics." Max explained.

"And you trust her?" Danny asked.

"Yes, and you're going to have to as well because she's on the case whether you like it or not," Max stated and turned back to the autopsy bay, "I'll contact you with my findings." He added and then closed the door behind him.

"Time to regroup?" Steve asked with a shrug as Max left.

"Yeah," Danny answered with a sigh and followed Steve out.

5-0

Back at HQ the front lawn had become like a ghost town. The trucks lined up on the road and were taped off and abandoned. HPD officers stood in a line along the tape and the crowd had either been relocated or disbursed. The usual faces were no where to be found.

"The one time I want them here, to look at, they're gone." Danny grumbled as he got out of the car and followed Steve into the building.

Once in the office the faces Danny wanted were everywhere on all the monitors like a silent assembly, as Toast stared on.

"Where is everyone?" Danny asked as Toast held a dry erase marker in his hand and tapped it against his teeth.

"Scanning for old case files and making a list of your biggest critics," Toast answered as he pointed first to Kono's office and then to Chin's with the marker, and then resumed the tapping.

"And you are doing what exactly?" Steve asked.

"Uploading video data and manually scanning the crowds." Toast answered as he pet the Smart table with one hand as he leaned on it. He then moved to a monitor and circled a face with the marker before returning to his spot to lean.

"Who is that?" Steve asked.

"And why are you drawing on the monitors when the computer could do that for you?" Danny added.

"Oh relax, the computer is busy and the marker isn't going to hurt anything, and that guy isn't in that image." Toast explained as he pointed from one screen to the next. "I'm just ruling out people. One image is a shot from the news paper building and the crowd outside and inside, and the other is a shot from outside this building. I'll later use some of these people to narrow down the facial search once all the info is uploaded and I'll be able to paint a full picture of their movements while simultaneously gathering and hacking into their records."

"Sounds complicated," Steve stated.

"No, complicated will be scanning previous Five-O cases for reoccurring individuals that have nothing to do with the case, but I've already written most of the code for that program. I'm really good at multitasking."

"Do you have anyone to look into yet?" Steve asked as Danny moved and stood next to Toast and scanned the images.

"Kono had one," Toast admitted, "a photographer, an Erik Pintanell. Do you know him?"

"Yeah, he's like our own personal Peter Parker. He's always taking pictures of Five-O at our worst, but we never see it coming." Danny answered.

"Well, Kono was suspicious because Erik wasn't at either crime scene and nothing has popped up by him yet involving these cases."

"He has a web site for his photography, but it hasn't been updated in two days," Kono stated as she came out of her office and joined the conversation. "I managed to get you an address in Honolulu where you might be able to find him. It's a gallery he's based out of - I'm still looking for an official residence."

"Two days, I don't like the sound of that," Danny stated and looked to his partner.

"It could be nothing," Toast said with a wave of his hand. "Maybe the guy went on vacation."

"You pray that that's what is going on here." Danny said sarcastically and followed his partner out of the office - snatching up his bullet proof vest as he went.