Detective Milnes smells like onions and has little regard for personal space.

He's fat and balding, with a bad comb-over and sweat stains that seem to spontaneously erupt all over his shirt whenever he gets excited, which is often.

Detective Jacobson, on the other hand, is clean-cut and wears an unoffensive aftershave. He has short-cropped blond hair and spectacular posture. Compared to Milnes he's just about the most calm, reasonable person you've ever met in your life.

It's a weird version of good cop/bad cop, but even though you're aware of it, the onion breath seems to be doing its job and you find yourself a lot more talkative whenever Milnes leaves the room to attend to some "errand."

Milnes is clearly getting more and more frustrated.

"There were over 150 people in that town," Milnes says, his phlegmatic voice cracking. "Half of 'em we found dead, the other half disappeared. This doesn't happen without answers. I know you have answers, 'cause you're the only people still alive, which leads me to conclude that if you don't start coming clean, you're all hiding something. Enough about spirits and shamans and all that crap. Tell me what happened, or you're all being charged with conspiracy, kid-napping, and I don't know how many counts of homicide. Let's start at the beginning again."

He stands back up, resting his hands on the back of the wooden chair in front of him.

"You were all at the diner when you heard about the first murder. What happened next?"

Tom wasn't paying much attention to it when the words first ran through his ears.

He looks up from his newspaper and gives the person who had relayed the news a look, like he'd just told Tom that he'd been cursed by the sky fairy Twinklemabobble.
He holds this look on him for five long seconds that pass a little too quickly for Tom's comfort, and goes back to his paper and coffee.

Then he decided he wasn't happy to hear this news.

Murder and investors never mixed well.  When people die, opportunities tend to boil and scab up like so much bacon fat on a frying pan.  And in the middle of a frozen dump like Alaska, the effects were bound to be multiplied by tenfold, fifteenfold.

Tom generally isn't an overly happy person.  He isn't an unhappy person either.  Rather than being either thing, Tom tends to simply -be-.  He finds it easier to sell that way when he's in a position to tip either way.  What he has been, as of late, is irritable.  Snow and subzero temperatures isn't good for bald heads and clean-shaven faces, and there are days when even his extra-fluffy furry hooded snow jacket wasn't enough to keep the gnawing cold from grinding constantly against his scalp and chin.

Murder on the ice.  Christ.

Either way, he was indoors, he had coffee, and about....a third of a croissandwich left to go.  At least for the time being, he was going to be alright.

He gives the person who relayed the grim news another look to see if they're serious about the news, decides that the person is, and says, "Alright, one second."

He flips out his cell phone and calls his state-side secretary.
"Hi.  Dora, its me.  I'm gonna be out here for a couple more days.  Forward all my messages to my PDA, will you?  Thanks."  

He hangs up and with a mildly resigned expression, sets the phone down on the table and looks back up at the person who gave him the news.

It just so happens that his expression is exactly the same expression he gives Detectives Milnes and Jacobson as they stare him down.

He doesn't mind the yelling Inuit just yet.

Robert mulls over the message the boy gave, and considers his options.

On one hand, he's currently sitting very comfortably, with his feet up on the table in the type of ultra-relaxing posture that it's hard to ever acheive deliberately, no matter how much thought you put into it- and he puts a lot of thought into just those kind of conundrums. He's drinking a particularly delicious mocha latte, and he's holding a perfectly rolled cigarette that he just demonstrated for his good buddy Kevin. Just thirty seconds ago, he claimed that he wasn't going to move "for nothin' or no man", and if you can't trust your own word, just who can you trust?

On the other hand, events of note are few and far between here, and maybe the meeting will be interesting. He turns to Kevin.

"Ehhh, I dunno. Think there's actually been a murder? Are you gonna go?" he asks, lazily.

Tom gathers up his messenger bag and goes, swallowing the rest of his crossandwich and his coffee at the same time like someone who'd spent a lot of his lifetime rushing through meals that's consisted of crossandwiches with scalding coffee on the side so that he could get on the road and get to a meeting about someone who's been killed in a snow-covered shithole wasteland.

Except without the murder, the snow-covered shithold wasteland, or the scalding coffee, but it was too late to decide that he actually liked having feeling in his tongue.

Robert frowns. He slowly does the math. There's not very many people in this town, which means that if this really was a murder and not that washed up sheriff or his dickless deputy stumbling across someones hunting kill and getting over excited, there's a good chance he knew them.

He emits a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort. "Like it's actually a murder! Mulroney probably found a dead moose, and figured it was a murder because it looked like family to him. But... yeah, you're right. Let's saddle up." he murmurs, dramatically.

He swings his feet over the top of his coffee cup, rises to the floor. He bends down, scratching the wolf lying sleepily at his feet, just above it's collar. "C'mon, Killer Lobo! To the school!"

The big wolf rises, with a yawn. It nuzzles his hand, affectionately, and makes a placid, puppy-like yelp. Robert smiles.

"If you're a good boy, and you don't eat too many people on the way over there, Ill give you a schmacko biscuit when we get back, ok? Ok!"

He shoulders his backpack and heads off towards the door.

Robert pulls his jacket tighter around him, and fastens up his gloves. He shivers.

"Kind of a warm snap we've been having, isn't it?"

He wanders along, keeping pace with Kevin, Killer Lobo trailing close behind.

Johnny and Mach: You pile into the schoolhouse which is packed full of people, allowing you only some room against one the back walls to stand.

Even then, you can tell several people are missing. There are roughly 90 people packed into the small building, and there are a number more people who live in the town.

"I think that's everybody who's coming," The sheriff says from his place behind the lectern at the front of the room. "Looks like some people opted to stay home, and I can't say I blame 'em. Now, I'll take any questions y'all have at the end, after I've described what we know so far. Onea the kids found a bucket of bones, seemingly left out like it was supposed to be thrown away. She told her teacher, and he called me over. I figured at first it was just someone too lazy to properly dispose of something they hunted, but it didn't take long to figure out that the bones were human."

There's an uproar of people asking questions and voicing concern to each other. The sheriff gives some time for the crowd to shout, then raises up a hand to quiet them down.

"We don't know who the bones belong to yet, but we've already sent some samples off to Anchorage to be tested, and we've authorized the boys over at the lab to have a look over 'em as well. I promise I'll keep you all updated as we learn more information. Now, any questions?"

Robert raises his hand. He had every intention of screeching "Why won't someone think of the CHILDREN?", but when the Sheriff looked at him, at the last moment he decides to ask:

"Who'd you say found 'em? How old were the bones, anyway? Like all crumbly, or still... meaty? Nothin' on 'em that'd tell who it was?"

"Where'd you find them?"  Tom suddenly calls from his little spot on the wall.