Saint Anthony's Hospital. The morgue. The 2 Sherriff's Department detectives present in the room thought that they had seen it all... until now. An early morning call from a pronghorn hunter in the hill range 8 miles north of the town. He had found a body, he told the detectives. And it was clear that from looking at it that there had been some "real nasty shit" done to it. The corpse was found buried under a pile of dumped rubbish, burnt beyond reconigtion. HAZMAT had to be called in to retrieve the bodies, which were then handed over to the State Coroner's Office. Both detectives felt it necessary to call in SWAT for backup, because whoever had done this was obviously extremely vicious, posing a massive danger to the community. The SWAT team selected for the job were all hardened veterans, both in police work and foreign wars. One officer was to later reflect that he had fought in the civil war in Somalia, and nothing he had seen there could possibly be worse than this. Armed militia dead by his hand he could deal with. The bodies of an innocent woman he could not.

None of this was of any concern to Avenged Sevenfold and their partners at the moment, however. The officer who fought in Somalia wasn't too concerned about how he felt either; watching the grief and rage emanating from Matt Sanders was much harder to deal with.

And Matt was a broken man right there and then too. Not even his closest friends in Avenged Sevenfold had ever seen him like this. True, they were in shock and horror as well, but nothing compared to Matt. Matt sat there over the love of his life, now lying blackened and burnt on a pathology table. Still as a statue, tears falling from his eyes faster than a waterfall. Apart from that, the only signs of life were his shaking slightly. The officer turned to the two detectives who had come with him, "I say we leave him alone. It's gonna be a while before he is even capable of talking to people, let alone giving a statement". The detectives nodded silently, walking out with the SWAT officer. The officer noticed that the female detective was crying silently herself. The male detective looked close to tears as well.

The female detective fished out a case of cigarettes from her pocket. "Dobson?" she enquired, offering her male colleague a smoke. He declined, "you take a break, Ramirez. Go get some chow. I'll keep working with Officer Guadelupa, talk to the families, you know?" He gave the detective called Ramirez a warm smile and a nod, trying very hard not to start crying. Ramirez walked, dream-like, out to the ambulance bay and sparked up. A shuffling movement behind her made her turn around to be met with a pair of green eyes belonging to a short man who looked extremely disturbed.

"You're Detective Sergeant Ramirez, am I right?" the man asked. Ramirez mustered up a smile for the man, recognising him as being in the waiting room with the rest of Avenged Sevenfold. "Yes, that's me... you're Zacky, right?" "Yeah that'd be me... I wanna thank you for giving us some space" Zacky told her, sounding and looking like a small boy. "That's fine Zacky... Oh my god, its just so... horrible. What that poor girl must have gone through before she died-" she never finished, as Zacky had enveloped her in a hug, crying into her shoulder. Both stood there crying for what seemed like years.

"When you and your friends feel up to it, Zacky" Ramirez informed him gently, "we will need a statement off all of you." "Sure thing ma'am, whatever you need" Zacky said. "We will get who did this Zacky, I swear on my mother's grave" Ramirez stated, looking fierce all of a sudden. Zacky believed her, he saw the fire in the detective, understanding what it would be like to see another person of your gender basically tortured and killed, and thrown out like they were nothing. "Detective Ramirez, Val's sister Michelle is in the room, she is her next of kin" Zacky told her, "you may want to start with her". "That's fine Zack, will do, you just help your friends keep it together... especially your lead singer"