Hubris -- part 5
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“What the hell was that about?” Henriksen demanded the second he stepped back into the bank.
Sam shrugged. “Following a hunch. Quickest getaway is by vehicle, and the closest vehicles that could exit unnoticed were in the parking garage.”
“And?”
“I was right. But he got away.” Sam clenched his jaw, hating the disapproval coming off Henriksen in waves. It wasn’t his fault! “He’s driving a big black car, sedan, looked like late ‘60’s model muscle car. Couldn’t get the plate number.”
Henriksen turned away, already pulling the radio to call in a BOLO on the car. Sam sighed heavily and headed downstairs, wanting to walk through the scene once before the forensic guys got there. He spared a glance for the now-shrouded body of Ronald Resnick, dark trails of crimson on the white cloth and floor surrounding him. Poor bastard. He really should have known better.
The SWAT guys were right; the piles of goo on the stairs and in the bank manager’s office were really disgusting. Sam crouched down, using a pen to pick up a piece to examine it closer. A little bit of blood, what looked like skin, and lots of whiteish clear effluvia and connective tissue. Huh. And the one in the manager’s office had some clothes by it. Jon Cooper’s description suddenly made more sense. Maybe when the shapeshifter changed its skin, it shed.
“Is that from his victims?” one of the SWAT guys wondered, disgust coloring his voice.
“What would make you say that?” Sam asked him, pinning him with a hard look.
“Did you see the body down in the boiler room?”
While the guy upstairs had his throat slit, the girl downstairs . . . Sam swallowed hard when he saw her body. Dressed in only a silky slip, she lay slumped upright against the wall, with one leg at an odd angle, a bloody arm, and a blade stuck deep in her chest.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
One of the officers there nodded solemnly. “I’d hate to be the one to break the news to her sister.” At Sam’s questioning glance, he elaborated, “I escorted a woman out earlier, one of the bank tellers, looked exactly like her. Must be her twin sister or something.”
That was the first good news Sam had heard all night.
Resisting a smile, he knelt beside the body of what he was sure was the shapeshifter, inspecting it closer. The murder weapon looked like a letter opener, probably from one of the offices upstairs. Sam would bet good money that it was silver too.
“See this?” the officer from the stairs said, pointing at a slimy thing on the floor. It looked like . . . skin. Sam focused on her arm, wanting to touch but not daring to risk it. The arm was a mess, but there was much less blood than he thought at first glance. It was raw and bloody, but there was definitely more of the same type of goo as upstairs.
“What’ve we got?” Henriksen asked as he stepped into the room, Reidy at his shoulder.
“Female, Caucasian, young. Stabbed to death,” one of the officers immediately spoke up. “Looks like he was in the middle of skinning her too.”
Reidy gagged slightly, but Henriksen’s face only got harder. “Winchester, with me.”
Sam stood up, knees popping, and followed Henriksen down the hall. When they were out of earshot, Henriksen whirled on him. “What the hell is going on? You told me he only killed out of necessity. So tell me, what’s so necessary about skinning one of his hostages?”
“I told you that as part of a preliminary profile on an UnSub, based on the information we had at the time,” Sam hissed back, frustration boiling over. “Remember? When we thought we were only dealing with a bank robber? We only got a name yesterday. Hell, I still haven’t completely finished his background.”
“Well, you better,” Henriksen said softly, stepping right up into Sam’s space. “Because three people are dead here, and at least part of that’s on you.”
Sam jerked back, feeling like he’d been slapped. “How do you figure that?!”
“You misread this guy. We still don’t know exactly what kind of psycho we’re dealing with, except that he’s a sadistic fuck. And you let him slip through your fingers in the parking garage.” Henriksen held his incensed gaze for a handful of heartbeats. “Get back to work. We’ve got to hunt down a serial killer.”
*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam wasn’t sure who he hated more right now, Henriksen or Dean.
In the four weeks since the Milwaukee incident, the BAU team had been officially handed the case, with Henriksen attached. Sam had the feeling that he was allowed to stay with the case less out of professional courtesy and more because he was too proud and stubborn to let something like this go. As Reidy put it, “It’s the kind of case that can make your career . . . or give you a raging ulcer.”
Henriksen had become damn near unbearable, and most of the team let Sam deal with him. Still piqued over his perceived failure and Henriksen’s disdain, Sam worked his ass off, tracking down every lead he could, trying to prove that it was over now and possibly explain Dean’s role. Problem was, the more they dug, the less things made any sort of rational sense, and his skills as a profiler were useless. There was no logical (i.e. non-supernatural) reason that fit the facts, and they all felt like they were banging their heads against a brick wall.
Sam found himself walking a very delicate balance. Hunter’s instincts, long thought buried, flared up nice and bright, his brain accessing all the lore he’d accumulated over the years and done his best to forget. As his profiling and agent skills faltered, the Hunter side became more demanding, driven by his innate urge to know and understand. He knew what was going on, but no FBI agent with a single shred of dignity would dare mention, let alone believe in, a supernatural explanation.
He had to chose his words carefully now, monitoring exactly what he said, not letting anything that could be perceived as strange loose. He hadn’t had to do that since his first semester at Stanford, suddenly thrust among all these people in a foreign culture and needing to make friends. It reminded him of 1984 and doublethink/doublespeak. That book creeped him out, and he despised that he had to resort to that hypocrisy now.
Of course, with the Hunter/prey and vigilante theories shot down, the only other remotely plausible explanation was a stark raving lunatic serial killer. That’s the one they settled on by default, despite Sam’s objections and evidence to the contrary. His initial observation of the culprit being one person had come back to bite him in the ass now that they had one person to focus on, and Henriksen’s obsession with finding Dean only grew.
“You have anything?” Henriksen barked as he crossed over towards Sam’s cubicle.
“The teller, Sherri, was telling the truth.”
“About which part? The killer who saved her life, or her twin who didn’t exist? She’s nuts.”
“Scared, yes. Nuts, hardly.” Sam bit back a sigh and held up a piece of paper. “One birth certificate for a Sherri Golgos, born June 12th, 1985 in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Single live birth. No twin, sister or otherwise. Checked with the hospital and the doctors just in case, and they’re positive that Laurie Golgos only gave birth to one child that day. She was telling the truth. Whoever that woman in the bank was, she’s not related to Sherri.” Sam jerked his head to the next cubicle. “McDowell’s got something.”
McDowell glared at him, but cut the intensity when Henriksen turned his attention to her. “Preliminary results from DNA came back.”
“About time.”
“They were double-checking just to be sure,” McDowell snapped. “The woman in the bank is a near match to Sherri Golgos.”
“So it is her sister, or cousin, or freaky identical yet distant relative?”
“No. Near match in that they think it’s human.”
Henriksen shook his head. “What?”
“None of the tests are coming back within set parameters. After ruling out contamination, they thought it was a problem with the nucleotide bonding pairs. They did some NAT testing, then PCR for a footprint comparison, but turns out the phosphodiester bonds were completely -“ McDowell cut herself off at the glare Henriksen shot her, and switched back from geek to English. “The DNA isn’t normal.”
“What on this case is?” Jeffers put in, lounging back in his chair.
“The way the lab explained it, it’s unstable. The DNA structure on the samples is wrong, which makes it very prone to breaking. The more time passes, the more it breaks down into free nucleotides.” McDowell shrugged, uncharacteristically shy. “Human DNA doesn’t do that. Not living, anyway.”
“And there’s more,” McDowell said, retrieving another sheet of paper. “The two puke-inducing piles of goo? Have the same genetic anomaly.”
“They all came from her?” Jeffers made a face.
“Nope. The one on the stairs tentatively matches our dead guy. The one in the manager’s office matches the bank manager.”
“Who was found at home, dead of a supposedly self-inflicted gunshot wound hours before the robbery.” Sam let his head fall back with a sigh. The shifter did shed when it changed. Okay, one more piece to the puzzle that only he could see.
“Yet at the same time, he appeared on the security cameras at the bank, hard at work. Employee statements confirm he only disappeared once Resnick chained everybody in,” Hodkins pointed out.
“And their bodies show no sign of this genetic aberrance,” McDowell concluded.
“Seriously, what the hell?” Henriksen sighed heavily, rubbing at his temples. “Okay. Forget the bank. Any new leads on Harrison?”
“Not really.” Sam waved a hand toward the map, now with more pins and a few whiteboards propped up around it. “No hits on the BOLO, no credit card checks, nothing. He’s gone. We’ve been backtracking, trying to find a pattern. Found a couple more places he’s been, though, and there may be witnesses that saw something useful.”
“Witnesses? Or more converts to the cult of Dean?” Henriksen groused. Sam huffed softly, glad he hadn’t gone with Henriksen on the last couple interviews. “I really don’t get that. He’s a loner, a killer, interested in the occult, likes to dig up graves and mutilate corpses for kicks, yet he leaves behind all these people devoted to him.”
“Maybe he’s not a killer,” Sam pointed out for what seemed to be the umpteenth time. “Nobody’s actually seen him kill anyone. If anything, they all think he’s some kind of hero.”
“You really believe that?” Henriksen fixed him with a dead-eye stare, and Sam forced himself not to react. The others ducked back into their cubicles, ostensibly getting back to work even as they listened to the oft-rehashed argument.
“You know as well as I that not all the evidence points to him,” Sam said, deliberately calm. “He doesn’t seem cut and dry guilty. I think there’s something more here. The evidence supports him being a vigilante better than your theory of a psycho killer.”
“Vigilante. Right. So, what’s he targeting?” Sam held his tongue, irritated frustration bubbling around the edges of his composure. “C’mon Sam, every vigilante has a target. What’s he going after? What justice is he looking for by mutilating corpses and slitting throats?”
At Sam’s continued silence, Henriksen scoffed. “I think we’ve all seen the quality of your opinions.” He glowered at Sam. “Tell me. Do you want to catch this dirtbag or not? ‘Cause right now it sounds like you’re making excuses for him.” He stood, still glaring.
“Find him,” Henriksen ordered. “He didn’t just vanish.” With that, he walked out of the bullpen, hopefully to go find someone else to terrorize.
Sam glared at the photo of Dean outside the bank they had pinned up on the wall. Henriksen was an overbearing obsessive ass, but it was Dean who had kicked down the wall between his world and Sam’s, and completely mangled Sam’s carefully ordered life.
*~*~*~*~*~*
The places Sam liked to go to drink after work depended on why he was drinking. The team usually headed for a sports bar or a pub close to the Metro line, like Kelly’s, but avoided the traditional cop bars. Those were fun times, just unwinding a little bit after a hard case or long week, and he never had more than two beers unless he was celebrating something.
Tonight, Sam was alone, and he was strongly tempted to get himself completely plastered.
Staring down into his glass of whiskey, he swirled it around slightly, watching the light refract around and through the amber liquid. A comparison to witches scrying flittered through his mind before he banished that thought and took a drink. It was thinking like that that drove him to this dive bar in the first place.
Over two months had passed since the debacle in Milwaukee. The good news, the only good news, was that there hadn’t been another robbery. But that was massively overshadowed by the looming mountain of unsolved cases, all pointing directly to Dean. Who, after a very brief appearance out in Idaho, had utterly disappeared. Again.
Sam scowled. His brother the psycho killer. At least as far as the FBI was concerned, that is, because no one really wanted to believe he was a vigilante on a holy crusade to rid the world of monsters. He certainly wasn’t going to tell anybody. Of all the rules John had tried to drum into Sam’s head, the one that really stuck was Hunting Rule #1 - we do what we do, and we shut up about it.
He’d never told anyone about what his family did, not even Jess. He hated hunting, all the ugly things that came along with the sucky job, and the way it made him an outcast, a freak. He’d worked so hard to appear perfectly normal, nothing really strange about him that would invite questions. He fought tooth and nail to separate himself from them, forging his own path.
His family had always held him back, moving around, switching schools every few months, forcing him along on a ridiculous war. It was a miracle he’d ever graduated high school. John had thought bow hunting was more important than homework, that doing extra PT was a viable excuse for not studying for a test.
Even after he left, it didn’t get much better. He fudged on his interviews, had to be creative on his applications without straight up lying, gradually creating this protective bubble between him and the life he’d left behind. He spent nearly three years lying to Jessica about his past, always avoided mentioning anything pertaining to life before college. Some nights he still ached for her . . . but he’d rather not be with her than see her repulsed by him, or worse, call him crazy.
Now he wondered if it was only a matter of time. His family was like the ghosts he’d once helped hunt and put down - always cropping up at the most inopportune moments, scattering everything in their wake in a fit of destruction.
Sam threw back the last of the whiskey and slammed the glass down, gesturing for a refill. He hated thinking about the family business.
Today had been a bad day. Henriksen was in a foul mood after another series of supremely unhelpful interviews out in Colorado, and after being forced to go with him this time, Sam wasn’t any better. Hodkins had made a connection between Dean Harrison and a series of killings in St. Louis, except the supposed perp in that case was dead. They’d exhumed the grave yesterday, only to find a gelatinous puddle instead of a corpse in the casket. Henriksen had taken that as confirmation that Dean had faked his own death and ordered them to dig deeper.
The worst part was when Jeffers had proposed that maybe Dean Harrison was yet another alias, and promptly sent Deb into a hacking frenzy. Sam stood there, heart in his throat and praying desperately that whoever Dean had paid to forge his record was better than Deb.
Part of Sam’s dilemma came from examining the cases they’d connected back to Dean, and he was sure actually were his work, not whatever he was hunting at the time. While many were typical Hunting behaviors, some of the crimes were unusual, out of pattern and undeniably violent. Like torching the orchard in Indiana, or the home invasion in Missouri, or attacking an off-duty officer in Ohio.
He’d started to wonder just how well he knew his brother. Dean had always been heavily involved in hunting, enjoying it on a visceral level that Sam just couldn’t understand. He knew the violence he was capable of, but always assumed it would only be unleashed towards a deserving target. But now he wasn’t so sure.
Why hadn’t John popped up on the radar for so long? Did Dean ever find him? What if - it hurt to even think this - what if something had happened to Dad? Was Dean on his own? Did he blame Sam for not coming with him?
It had taken Sam a long time to work past the long-held hero worship of his brother. When he stepped back and analyzed Dean rationally, some things he’d never really acknowledged came out. Like how Dean needed people, needed his family, and wanted to be needed. He craved approval, especially from Dad. As anti-social as he could be, Dean hated being by himself.
If something had happened to Dad, and Dean was alone, Sam knew he could have crossed some lines. Dean modeled his life after Dad; without him, he was tailspinning, and his first reaction when stressed was often violence. What if Dean really was killing people, not just monsters?
Sam shook his head and dug into his wallet for some money. This wasn’t helping anything, and now he was just drunk and morose. Time to go home, pour himself into bed, and wake up tomorrow to keep hunting his brother.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam looked over the boards yet again, eyes sweeping the familiar patterns. It was all there, right in front of him - yet it was useless. He could show where Dean had been for most of the last five years, but ever since Milwaukee, Dean had simply dropped off the face of the earth. No new leads, no credit card hits, no hits on the BOLO, nothing. Just another trail going cold.
Growling, Sam stomped back to his desk for his wallet. “I’m going for coffee,” he announced. Thankfully, none of the others requested anything, simply nodding at his departure with an almost palpable sense of relief. He scowled but said nothing more as he headed for the stairs, tempted almost to run down them heedless of the risk; anything to work out this simmering frustration.
By the time he reemerged in the bullpen, steaming latte in hand and his mood slightly more settled, there was a new tension in the bullpen, a crackling anticipation like just before lightning struck. Sam paused, narrowing his eyes as he looked around at his team. Body language spoke volumes: McDowell’s hunched shoulders, Hodkins’ refusal to meet his eyes, and Jeffers’ determined fixation on his computer, face taut.
Sam was about to ask when Morgan’s voice boomed from the walkway. “Winchester! With me, Now!”
Grimacing, Sam left his coffee on his desk and approached his supervisor, a heavy sense of dread in his heart. Morgan led him upstairs, fury in every line of his body, and Sam wracked his brains as to the cause. No new leads, but Morgan wasn’t the kind to wind himself this tight over a case, no matter how frustrating.
In thick silence they reached the office of Deputy Director Groves, and Morgan opened the door, motioning him in first. Warily Sam stepped inside, nodding at Henriksen, who was already seated, and Groves who stood by the window. “Winchester,” Henriksen smiled, a cold thing with no humor.
“What’s this about?” Sam asked, reluctantly sitting next to Henriksen as Morgan stood, arms crossed, by the door.
“Funny thing just came up,” Henriksen said casually. “Think we finally figured out why this case has been such a goatrope.”
Groves sauntered over and propped his hip on the edge of his desk, tapping a folder with one finger. “Tell me, Sam . . . just when were you going to tell us that Dean is your brother?”
Sam froze, an icy pit yawning open in his stomach. Oh shit.
“Deb finally managed to dig up our suspect’s real background. Turns out Dean Harrison is actually Dean Winchester, older brother to Sam Winchester. Looks like he paid someone to cover that up, right around the time he was reported dead in St. Louis. There were good, too - hacked into AFIS and the Social Security office, even modified birth certificates.”
Henriksen leaned forward, eyes boring into Sam. “Which would not have taken so damn long if you had told us as soon as you knew.”
“When was that, anyway?” Groves asked casually. “The witness interviews, the crime scenes . . . or did you know from the start and have been helping to cover his tracks?”
Sam shook his head, swallowing hard through his tight throat. “Milwaukee,” he muttered thickly. “The news cast.”
Henriksen and Groves exchanged a look, but it was Morgan who spoke up next. “Yet in the three months since that, you never found the time to share that piece of information.”
“Look, I haven’t seen my brother in six years. I thought he was dead,” Sam blurted out desperately. “We were working a case involving impersonation, near exact look-alikes. I didn’t know if it was really him.” Even as he protested, he knew it was a flimsy excuse. Judging by the looks directed at him, they all knew it too.
Turning away from the painful disappointed expression Morgan had, Sam tried to plead his case with Henriksen. “Victor, how much have I helped out on this case? You’d still be chasing shadows if it wasn’t for me. I proved it was one man, I found the video anomalies, I told them to cross-reference the credit cards with cell phone accounts. I helped link this whole thing together. I want to find him as much as you do.”
“Because he’s a killer? Or because he’s your brother?” Henriksen asked pointedly. “Yes, you’ve helped. But you let him get away from you in Milwaukee. You had us chasing our tails in Colorado. We didn’t find out about Boise until too late. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that you didn’t tell us he was your damn brother!” He nearly yelled the last part, and Groves made a calming motion in his direction.
“Sam, no matter what, this looks bad. A case of this magnitude, and we’ve had the suspect’s brother working on it the entire time? Not a good reflection on the Bureau. You may have compromised everything.” Groves let out a heavy sigh. “Sorry Sam, but your actions will have serious consequences.”
“Like what?” Sam asked, tense.
“You lied on your application, Sam. You said you didn’t have a brother. That alone requires termination of your employment,” Morgan told him.
“Oh, and there’s more. You’ve interfered with a federal investigation. Withheld crucial evidence on an on-going investigation, which counts as obstruction of justice, and used your position here to conceal evidence pertaining to the pursuit of a felon suspected of heinous crimes.” Groves smiled thinly. “Lots of big words that come down to, you’re fired, and we’re taking you into custody.”
Henriksen examined him like he was contemplating how best to pull the wings off an insect. “You’re going to give us a statement, Sam. If you’re cooperative, you might just lose your job. Or we could charge you with all those, plus tack on aiding and abetting, maybe even felony accessory after the fact.”
“What? That’s ridiculous!” Sam protested, adrenaline spiking as the words sank in. “I had nothing to do with any of this!”
“No? You’ve lied to me for the past three months. Why should I start believing you now?”
“I didn’t lie! I just . . . didn’t tell you everything.” Sam winced at those words and the futility of his protests. It was over. With a heavy sigh he stood, carefully removed his holstered gun and his badge and put them on Groves’ desk.
“Security is going to take you down to interrogation now. Play nice.” Groves nodded at Morgan, who opened the door to call a couple security guards in.
Henriksen stood right in front of Sam. “You know, after we linked the two of you, I had them dig deeper. Looked into your family. Mom dying in a house fire, that was tragic. Reading about your father, now, that explained a lot. Ex-marine, raised his kids on the road, cheap motels, backwoods cabins. Real paramilitary survivalist type. He taught you and your brother well. Brainwashed you both real good, made Dean into his perfect little soldier. But you, you broke out of the crazy. Went off on your own, became a fed. Nice and respectable.”
Sam stared stonily at him. “This have a point?”
“Nobody’s seen or heard from John Winchester in over three years. Just whoosh, vanished, without a trace. Me, I think he trained Dean a little too well, held the leash a little too tight. Without you in the picture, Dean was free to take care of that.” Henriksen paused for effect, inching a little closer to Sam, getting right into his face. “So this is what I don’t understand. Why would you risk everything you’ve accomplished for a psychopath who probably killed your father?”
A red haze blocked out his vision. Sam didn’t remember making the fist, but he definitely remembered the feel of his knuckles smashing into Henriksen’s face. Damn that felt good. He got two more hits in before someone grabbed his arms from behind and threw him to the floor. Breathing hard, Sam relaxed his muscles, silently acquiescing as they snapped the cuffs on him.
Henriksen climbed somewhat unsteadily back to his feet, thumbing at the blood running from his nose and lip. “Now we can add assaulting a federal officer on that list of charges you’re facing.” He nodded at the security guards holding Sam down. “Take him to Interrogation Room 3.”
They hauled Sam up by his elbows and frog-marched him out the door. Last thing he saw before the door swung shut was Henriksen’s dark glare.
As he followed his guards towards the elevator, Sam’s mind was working in overdrive, trying to process everything, to formulate a plan. His life here was over. Everything he’d worked so hard to attain, gone in a heartbeat. All because he didn’t open his mouth and admit Dean was his brother.
Sam closed his eyes as rage swelled up in him again. This was so unfair! He didn’t do anything wrong, and now he’d probably end up in jail. Because he had an idiot for a brother.
NO.
He let out a long slow breath, mind crystal clear. Okay. He knew what he had to do.
His fingers drifted over the handcuffs on his wrists. Standard Smith & Wesson model, not fastened too tight, just enough to restrain him. Letting his lips twist upward slightly, he got to work.
The Bureau had good internal security, but Deb had complained before that some of the cameras weren’t placed in the right spots. Sam surreptitiously glanced around, noting the small black orbs in the ceilings, mentally calculating sight lines. Seven steps ahead, the corner before the elevator had a blind spot.
Sam counted down, twisting his wrist slightly and letting out a small cough to cover the click of the handcuffs. Three . . . two . . . one . . .
A small stumble knocked his shoulder into the guard on the left, sending him momentarily off balance. Sam twisted out of their grasp and swung, planting his elbow into the side of the other guard’s head. He ricocheted off the opposite wall and went down with barely a squeak, unconscious before he hit the floor.
The first guard had enough time to yell, “Hey!” before Sam slugged him in the gut, folding him over with a pained whuff! A hard blow to the back of the neck dropped him senseless next to his partner.
Sam glanced around, but no one was in sight. There was a door just to the right of the elevator, probably a service area. He popped the lock in thirty seconds and dragged both guards in, then shut the door and relocked it behind him. One obstacle down, but now the clock was ticking.
Calm as you please, Sam got in the elevator and pushed the button for the parking garage, praying he made it before they locked the building down. A small ding signaled in the affirmative, and he exited, walking rapidly as he scanned the vehicles. He rarely drove his car in to work, hating the morning traffic jams and preferring to take the Metro when possible. But now, with speed of the essence, he needed a car.
Picking a suitably non-descript Volvo with no car alarm, he jimmied the lock and slid in. It had been years since he’d last hot-wired a car, but thanks to a memorable summer spent learning the intricacies of it from Dean, he found it was like riding a bike. A minute later, he drove smoothly out of the garage and turned towards his apartment.
He had to move fast. He gave himself twenty minutes to throw what he needed in a bag, withdraw what money he could from his bank account, and get out of the city. Any longer and he risked Henriksen and the police catching up to him. He’d have to ditch the car and find new transportation, avoid public areas and anyplace with surveillance cameras. After that . . .
He clenched his fingers around the steering wheel until the knuckles blanched. He had to find Dean.
*~*~*~*~*~*
On to part 6