Hi so here is my first fanfic for this fandom that I literally just stumbled across. I love this fandom I love Adam. S1-6 are hand downs the best.

This story and all stories coming from it exist S1-6.

I do plan to write series of this story so if that's something your interested in let me know.

I do have an A03 account under a different name, this story will be posted there as well in case you come across it.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine,

Please Read and Review.

And I swear in my works. If you don't like don't read.

This is part of a series, this isn't episode related. Neither is this series. Assume everything is S1-S6

Any inaccuracies please let me know.

I might add to this...I'll leave it up to you.

Please be aware...some triggers.

PLEASE BE AWARE OF TRIGGERS IN THIS CHAPTER ESPECIALLY!

Running To A Standstill

Chapter 6-And Then You Die

As a search is underway for little missing Ivy Cartwright a strange man meets Roy Coffee in his office looking for answers. AKA an Ode to Roy Coffee. Some Trigger Warnings.

Roy Coffee had known Ben Cartwright for many a year.

Hell he had known the man when he had been a newly wed to Marie, had known him though the entire shit show that had been Little Joe's birth when Marie had battled childbed fever and the Doctor had come out and told Ben in no uncertain terms that if he wanted to keep his wife with him in the land of the living then he was going to have to get his brain around no more children and fast. He had even been there when Marie had died and there had been an investigation into what would make a horse bolt that much and that fast enough to throw off an experienced rider to the point where she had cracked her whole body into pieces.

Ben had been an old man that time.

Now he looked even older.

Roy didn't want to say that anything untoward had happened. Firstly there was no evidence and secondly there had been nothing to dissuade the idea that little Ivy Cartwright was lost somewhere in the woods. He did not want to tell Ben that every instinct in him was screaming at him that there was something wrong. Not when he could see it reflected back on Ben's face.

It was made all the worse by the fact that he had known Ivy Cartwright since she was a baby, since when Ben had shown up at his office, thrown his horse to the side and told him that he needed to get drunk and get drunk fast and could he book himself a night in jail because Adam had come back from college with a baby girl, no wife and no indication on who the mother was or if she would be stopping by in the future.

Roy had hurried to the Saloon to grab a few bottles of whiskey from Cosmo and to tell Jackson that he was in charge for the next two days due to an emergency situation that came with not asking questions and double pay because when Ben got that look in his eye he usually meant business.

And so the two of the had gotten drunk in Roy's little house and then three days later he had rode back to the house to see Adam sat outside in the rocking chair with the little babe in his arms an expression that Roy had never seen before simply because he was not a father and did not wish to be one. It was not something that he had regretted. He was comfortable in the life that he had.

But then little Ivy Cartwright had blossomed into a toddler and then into a small child and more than often he would see her blonde hair glinting in the sun looking at the dirty old town that was Virginia City with her big dreamer eyes as if nothing bad existed here and it was almost enchanting. Roy had never looked at the world with any kind of innocence and he supposed not having children of his own he had never seen fit to see it through any child's eyes either. But then along came Ivy Cartwright and so he was looking at the world through a prism almost.

And now she was missing.

The pain in Adam Cartwright's face was almost too much to bear.

It did not help that May Mitchell had gone missing just the same way that Ivy Cartwright had and that her body had been found in the lake. Roy didn't have the courage to say to Ben that maybe now was the time they started thinking that way. The girl had only been missing two days and he really did not think that his jaw would remain the same if he voiced such an opinion in earshot of Adam Cartwright. He chewed his bottom lip and then carried on regardless promising Ben that he would come back the second he got more men for a search which meant waiting until the right moment to go into the saloon and start asking for volunteers. Short of help they might not be but Roy rather wanted them sober while they helped. Otherwise the would be searching for two people before the hour was out.

So he had gone back to the peace and serenity of his office to call up his deputies and to organise a search properly but thee issue was there was already someone in his office when he got there.

Someone that he had never seen before.

He was young Roy thought pausing by the door. Youngish anyway, younger than Roy. He had dark hair with a dark beard and he had the look of a man confined to saddle and hat for too long. His boots were caked with mud and when he turned to stare at Roy when he came in he noticed that he had a sort of melancholy to his eyes…as if this was a man that had once smiled quite a bit but now didn't smile at all.

"Hello?" he said taking off his own hat. He didn't generally like to leave the station unattended but this had been a fluke thing. He did not know what to make of this man who had come into his office and had by all accounts helped himself to coffee. Fortunately the jail cells had all been empty when he left and if the winds of fortune billowed in his favour then it was going to stay that way.

"Sherriff Coffee?" he asked standing up. He looked like a man ready for action but that might be because Roy was just bone achingly tired and longing for his bed. Sometimes he really did feel like he was getting to old for this job but as he had told himself—and had Ben tell him more than once—who else was gonna do it?

Also he was not entirely sure what he was going to do. It wasn't like he had a wife and children to come home too.

"Yeah that's me"

The man stuck his hand out.

"Samuel Wylde"

"Okay…what can I do for you Mr Wylde?"

"It's more like what you can do for me. I heard in the Saloon you might have a missing girl."

"Yeah I do"

"Blonde, blue eyes, big dreamer eyes I'm guessing, somewhere along the lines of six or seven years old?"

Roy paused in the processes of pouring himself a cup of coffee. He didn't know what to make of this but something was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He had been doing this job for a long time and he had known when something was wrong nine times out of ten because in this kind of job you lived and died by your instincts and something was terribly wrong now. He could feel it in his bones.

"How'd you know that?"

"Answer the question"

"Not until you answer mine"

For a second the man worked his jaw and then he sat back down again fiddling with something in his hand. It took Roy a moment to realise that he was holding a bullet running it through his fingertips as if it was the only thing going which made him look for his gun which was on the edge of the table as if he had known that was the first thing that Roy would look for.

"I know who your looking for" he said finally. "I just don't have a name. I have a face, I just don't have a name"

"I don't understand."

"Sherriff how many girls have gone missing recently, children, six or seven years old?"

"Two that I know about"

"And one's turned up dead?"

"Yes"

"Drowned?"

"Yes"

"You need to have that lake searched properly"

"I don't understand"

"Your not looking at one dead girl, my guess is your looking at two, you got an orphanage ran by some church group not far from here about nine miles, look there for missing girls—"

"Can you tell me what the hell is going on?" he asked his voice getting sharper. Samuel Wylde looked at him for a long moment and then.

"I'm originally from Tennessee" he said and now that he had said that Roy could apricate the accent that was as thick as the pines that made up the Tennessee landscape.

"You've come a long way friend"

"I've waited a long time" the man said bitterly. "Sherriff do you read anything coming out of New York?"

"Not unless it pertains to a case"

"Then you don't know about the term they've coined up there. Serial Killer"

Roy put down his cup of coffee.

"I had heard of that one yes."

"You know what the word preferential mean?"

"Son what is this? An exercise from McGuffie's reader? I know what a preferential serial killer is. This is Virginia City, this is not the moon"

Something flickered across the other man's face that might have once been amusement but Roy got the impression he had not laughed in a long time. He leaned back in his seat and his guest did the same.

"The man that killed May Mitchell is the same man I'm looking for, I think" he said casually. "If I am right then there is one more girl dead, Ivy Cartwright makes three. All blonde, all blue eyed, all six, all turn up drowned. I know because he struck in Tennessee and most of the states on the way down in the past year. All of them are the same pattern, three girls, once a week apart. And he makes sure that he can slip from grasp."

Roy stared at him, he felt faintly sick.

"How many girls are we talking about?"

"Dead or presumed dead?"

"Does it matter?"

The man smiled again that bitter, hard twisted smile.

"Sixteen"

Roy suddenly was very glad that he had sat down before he heard that bit of information because he was fairly certain that had he been standing his legs wouldn't be able to support him.

"Oh" he said once he had worked his throat well enough to make words. Samuel Wylde gave another one of those terribly devastating smiles as if this was the reaction he had been expecting. Then he stared Roy down as if he was trying to figure out what Roy was going to do and Roy wondered from a long way away what kind of reception this bit of dare one say it crucial bit of information had gotten out of other members of the fraternity of law enforcement.

"So what makes you think Ivy Cartwright is the third victim and not the second" he said carefully.

"I know that the orphanage is missing a girl"

"It's outside of my jurisdiction"

"I know" he said easily. "But it's near that lake, he doesn't go by jurisdiction he goes by a convenient dumping ground. Lakes, marshes etc. And there young enough where all of them can be explained away by drownings. It's not until they get the autopsy report back that they realise that something is wrong and that's if the Doc is on the ball. Then by that point the girls are all buried and there's no evidence to use and the guy has slipped away. Like smoke" he said bitterly. "The whole thing is like catching smoke in your bare hands"

"Are you a lawman?" Roy asked and he got a shrug in return which was not very helpful. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask just who this man but then again before he could he spoke again.

"May Mitchell was she interfered with?"

"I don't know" Roy confessed. "There's evidence that she was held down by something but the Doc didn't know if that was tree branches. The lake she was found is rife with them"

"Your Doc take samples?"

"Yes but…but the body wasn't in good shape…and her mother was asking it for it back"

"Why?"

"Burial."

"She didn't want to know what happened?"

Roy thought of May Mitchell's mother and shrugged. "She didn't seem able to speak that well to be honest. Grief. I didn't judge her for it at the time. May was her only child"

Samuel Wylde twisted the bullet in his hand and then gripped it tight to the point where his knuckles turned white He was still staring into space for a long second and then…

"I am joining your search" he said quietly. Roy had to admire the confidence of the man but he was not too proud to admit that he needed help.

"Alright. One condition"

The man sighed. "There's always the one" he said quietly and Roy knew what he thought that Roy was going to ask and so very carefully he did not ask what he knew this man would not do.

"I want you to promise me that you will let me tell this story to Adam Cartwright"

"Why?" he asked turning back to Roy.

"Because I know Adam Cartwright and he is likely to go off like a firework when hears this" Roy said grimly. "And I don't want you making it worse. I also don't want you going off with him on some vigilante thing. You don't go up to the Pondarosa talking about draining that lake and you don't talk about serial killers interfering with little girls. How long does this maniac keep these girls before the bodies turn up do you know?"

"Five days"

Roy calculated. They had three days left.

"Okay" he said standing up. "Let's go"

The smile he got was nothing short of dangerous and Roy once again wanted to ask why this man was obsessed the way he was but as he saddled up his horse and Roy went to call Deputy Longhorn to call up the men he had to admit that it was quite a personal question.

And to be honest he was not sure he was going to get an answer even if he did.

And there you go, see you next time.

Next Chapter-In which Adam does go off like a firework. Meanwhile Ben wants to know just who Samuel Wylde is.