"I don't think anyone at that school is involved, Captain," Hoffs told Jenko later that night when she returned to the Chapel, "They all seem like nice girls, from good homes, I don't think any of them has it in them to go ambushing people at night."

"That your gut feeling?" Jenko asked.

"Yes."

"Hoffs," Jenko shook his head disappointedly, "You're not a clairvoyant, you're a police officer, and gut feelings aren't fact, they're not proof."

"I know…"

"However," he added, "One of the requirements of being a good cop is you have to know when to trust your instincts. If it's not one of the students, they might know who it is. I'm not pulling you from this assignment, Judy, stick with it until you have something more concrete to offer."

"Yes, Captain," she replied.

Busy night at the Chapel, the way everybody had been coming in and going out in the past couple hours, it might've been more appropriate to rechristen the place Grand Central Station.

Ioki came in wearing a coat and gloves and told Jenko, "I'm not in, I'm just thawing out before we have to go look for this psychopath again."

"Coffee's cold," Hoffs told him.

"Coffee's lousy too, but I still drink it," he replied, "You'd have to be a nut to go out in this weather intentionally."

"Speaking of which," Hoffs nodded toward Hanson's desk, where Terry Livingston was still slumped over asleep.

"Now there's a heavy sleeper," Ioki noted.

Judy consulted her watch and said to Harry, "It's getting late, you think we should wake her up?"

"I say poke her with a long stick, you saw what she did to Penhall," he said jokingly.

"I heard that," Terry tiredly grumbled as she sat up and opened her eyes, "What time is it?"

"Quarter to 10," Hoffs answered, "These friends of yours…"

Terry rubbed her eyes and said, "They'd be out and about by now, I'll get out of your hair." She stood up and looked around to remember which way she came in and said to them, "Tell your captain I said thanks. I really appreciate this."

"Do you need a ride?" Judy asked.

"No thanks, I'll be fine," she answered.

"Are you sure?"

Terry looked at her and said, "They're not far from here, I doubt anything's going to happen to me over the course of a few blocks."

"I'd rather not take a risk that's unnecessary," Jenko said as he came back in the room, and looking at his watch he said, "If I know Penhall and Hanson they'll be here any minute, and when they do…"

"Hello!" Doug and Tom called as they entered the Chapel still in the throes of their undercover personas as a pair of unruly brothers.

"Just the two I wanted to see," Jenko told them.

"He did it," Tom and Doug said as each pointed to the other, then they both looked at each other in disbelief.

"Penhall, Hanson," Jenko addressed them, "Since the two of you are responsible for this fine mess, you're going to escort Miss Livingston to her friends' place to make sure she gets there unharmed."

"Ah…" Penhall raised his hand like the smart aleck kid in class, "We start becoming a bodyguard service or something, Jenk?"

"You are when I decide it's necessary," Jenko told him, "Now do you have any idea how bad it would look if she stayed here in the Chapel all night, just to get strangled a block from here once she left?"

"You really think," Terry yawned, "You really think that whoever's out there murdering people is gonna come after me?"

"The odds are as good as they are with anybody else," Jenko explained, "You fit the profile."

"Profile," Terry snorted, "There ain't no such animal."

"That's for the experts to sort out," Jenko replied, and turning to the two young cops he added, "Hanson, Penhall, now."

"I resent this," Doug said to Tom as they walked out of the Chapel and out into the freezing winter night air, his words disappearing into a vapor of fog before they even left his mouth.

"Yeah well…" Tom said dismissively, "Your fault for running into her."

"The car's over here," Penhall said as he headed for the parking lot.

"I'm not getting in any car with the two of you," Terry remarked as she stopped where she stood.

Penhall turned on his heel and came face to face with Hanson and said to him, "What the hell's going on here?"

Terry kept her jacket pulled shut with one fist and told the two officers, "There's no way in hell my friends are going to see me riding up in a car with you two. I don't need the third degree from them."

"You'd rather get your vocal cords tied in a bow?" Penhall asked.

"I'm only going four blocks," Terry told them, "Or is that too far for you two to walk?"

Doug turned to Tom and confided in him, "I hate this chick."

Tom nodded in understanding and clapped a supportive hand on Doug's shoulder and told him, "That's alright, Doug, I'm sure she hates you too."

Doug glared at him and showed his teeth as he responded cynically, "Cute, Tommy, real cute."

"Miss," Tom said to Terry, trying to get her to see reason, "It's gotta be 20 degrees out here, at best, with wind it's closer to 0."

"I'm an enduring person, I can take it," she insisted, "Can you?"

Now Tom felt the sting that Doug was already so familiar with. Penhall just smirked and replied sarcastically, "Hey Tommy, I think she likes you."

"Can we just get this over with, please?" Terry asked as she started walking down the sidewalk to the corner.

The two cops realized she already had a head start on them and dashed after her to catch up.

"So these friends of yours…" Tom started to say.

"You're not going to meet any of them," she sniped.

"That's not what I was going to say," he told her, "Exactly what is it you're going to be doing tonight?"

She looked to Penhall and asked him, "Do I have to answer that by law?"

"Yes," Doug answered, figuring she wouldn't call him on it.

"Then I plead the 5th," Terry told him as she crossed her arms tighter against her chest.

Doug groaned and remarked, "You know how much easier it would make our lives if people would stop doing that?"

"Terry," Tom spoke up, "There's a guy out there who is killing people your age, and he's getting away with it, now…if we're going to catch this guy, we need people to cooperate with us, and start by not putting themselves in danger if it can be helped."

"You think I don't know that?" she replied angrily, "Why do you think I just spent 5 hours in your Chapel? Now LOOK," she addressed both of them, "I know for legal reasons you guys can't disclose if you have a suspect, if you're closing in on him, all that crap, but can you tell me one thing? Who the hell is this guy? Do you have any idea?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Tom explained.

"Alright, can you answer why? Why is he doing this? Whoever he is?" Terry asked them.

Doug cleared his throat and told her, "We don't know that either."

"Well isn't that just wonderful?" Terry sniped.

"We're going to catch him," Doug said.

"You better," she said in a tone that hinted of warning, vaguely threatening, "If this goes on for much longer and the bodies continue to pile up, people are going to start taking matters into their own hands."

"We're going to catch him," Doug repeated.

Terry slowly nodded and told him, "I hope so."

Up ahead, Tom saw a house with the outside light on and he could make out several people standing out on the porch and in the yard. "Looks like your friends are expecting you."

Terry grimaced and said under her breath to the two cops, "You guys play high school students for a living, right? Let's see how good your acting is."

Without warning, she shoved Hanson hard and screamed at him, "I told you to leave me alone, dog breath!"

"Hey!" Penhall grabbed her by the arm hard and jerked her around to face him, "Nobody talks to my brother like that and gets away with it." With his free hand he pointed to himself and added, "Only I'm allowed to talk to him like that."

"Shut up, Doug," Tom told him.

"Zip it, peach fuzz," Penhall replied.

"Shut your head, mango face," Terry told Doug and kicked him.

"Hey Tommy," Doug grabbed her where her arm hooked to her shoulder and said to his partner, "Grab the other end, let's make a wish."

"Get your hand off of me before I bite it off," Terry growled at him as she pulled back.

The two policemen chased after her a short ways and cat called after her.

"Hey chickie," Doug said as he grabbed for her but she pulled away, "You ever cross our path again you're gonna find out who you're dealing with…" Right behind him, Tom was pressing on his shoulders to use for leverage as he jumped up to be seen and made a deranged pucker towards Terry like he was trying to break through Doug to get at her.

Terry flashed a parting obscene gesture at them as she headed up the sidewalk to the house, and once she was with the other teenagers, Doug and Tom slowly turned around and headed back for the Chapel.

"That was embarrassing," Tom said.

"Oh I'm sure you've embarrassed yourself far worse on first dates," Doug replied.

Through chattering teeth, Doug heard Hanson growl at him.

"Let's just get back," Doug grumbled to him, "I'm about frozen stiff out here."

Tom half turned and looked back to the house and said half to himself, "I just hope it wasn't all for nothing."

"Eh?" Doug asked.

Tom looked to him and explained, "I hope after all this, she doesn't wind up this sicko's next victim."

Terry Livingston was not the mystery killer's next victim that night, unfortunately somebody else was. Penhall and Hanson had just started to wrap up their decoy stakeout for the night when they heard somebody screaming, and after detouring through two back alleys and around one sharp corner, they found out why.

Kenny Bradshaw had been 17 years old, average height and well built, an athlete at his school, up and coming soon to be star football player; not some steroid freak of nature, but definitely looked like he should've been able to hold his own in a scuffle. His body had been discovered on a back street, some very familiar telltale marks on his neck indicating he had gone the way of the other five unfortunate teenagers who encountered this unknown psychopath who was still walking the streets. The extreme cold made it difficult, but the medical examiner had gauged he'd already been dead at least two hours before his body had been found, two hours after the Jump Street police went out to plant themselves as random kids wandering the streets alone. His hands were found to have some small blood stains on them, especially under his fingernails, but like the others before him, the police knew this would give them little to go on in the way of finding his murderer. Blood types may have been an exact science but that was the extent of it, for any blood type that could come back from a test, there were millions of people in the city with that exact type blood, what did it prove?

The news of another senseless killing in spite of all the efforts made to catch the man responsible hit the members of the Chapel hard. Everybody came to work that morning looking half dead, with eyes wide open but seeing nothing more than usual. They took their places at their desks and for a while, did nothing, as the news gradually sunk in and hit them hard. They were already doing everything they knew and using all the resources they had to try and catch this guy, and to no avail, would anybody ever catch him?

Jenko entered the room and noticed the fine impression his cops were doing of old 1930s voodoo movie zombies and told them, "I know how frustrating it is that this creep got away with killing someone else despite all our efforts to find him. But we still have other cases to crack around here, and it's going on 8 o' clock…" he looked to everybody one by one and told them, "Get to school."

"Captain," Hanson said as he stood up to put on his jacket, "When exactly are we supposed to get these criminal headshrinkers in here to help us with this case?"

"Yeah," Penhall added, "I thought those wise guys were supposed to be here by now."

"What do you know?" Jenko shrugged, "There's a high demand for them, apparently there are a lot of sickos running around the tri-state area committing murders that don't make any sense and everybody needs these quacks to profile them so they can be caught."

Penhall grumbled as he and Tom headed for the exit.

"I've gotta get going too," Ioki said, "I'm looking at a couple of motor heads who're on 3 weeks suspension and I think might be hotwiring cars at the school and making off with them when nobody's looking."

"How're you going to keep track of them if they're suspended and you're not?" Judy asked.

"Didn't you hear?" Ioki asked, "I'm out sick," and gave a pathetic cough.

"You can do better than that, Ioki," Jenko told him, "If anybody asks about it, think tuberculosis, they'll really buy your act then."