Perspective Shift 5/7
Previous
A/N: There are some lines from “Proteus” in this chapter and the next, but I’ve tried to keep the borrowing to a minimum.
Chapter 4
Joss made sure she had her game face on before making the video call to Stanford’s dean of student affairs, Vicki Winter. She didn’t know what was worst: the nature of the case John and Finch had uncovered this time, the fact that the Winchesters were involved, the fact that the Winchesters had actually provided accurate information about the case, the fact that John and Finch were trapped out there on Owen Island with both the Winchesters and the identity killer… or the fact that her not-quite-boyfriend, Narcotics Det. Cal Beecher, kept interrupting her over her freezing him out after she had lost a chance to join the FBI over his Internal Affairs record. Cal had at least confirmed her analysis of the video from Rollins’ store in Chicago, but she couldn’t help wishing that her partner, Lionel Fusco, weren’t out with a sick kid and could run interference for her. (Not that Fusco was missing out on the case altogether; Finch had called her about the teeth on his way to leave his Belgian Malinois, Bear, with Fusco for the night. Joss still wished he were in the office and not at home in Brooklyn.)
But she couldn’t let any of that show in talking to Ms. Winter. So she took a moment to breathe deeply and set her fears and irritation aside before she made the call to ensure that she could win information with a smile.
The first part of the conversation was pretty standard for discussions of cold cases with administrators of large colleges. Ms. Winter had actually known Henri Musset, but she downplayed the significance of the fact that he’d last been seen on campus. Losing touch with alumni after graduation was common, she claimed. What did ruffle her calm slightly was the discovery that she couldn’t find any records for Alex Declan other than Musset’s housing form.
“Do you know of any professors or residence hall directors I could speak to about Declan?” Joss asked.
Ms. Winter shook her head. “The director of their residence hall left in 2007, and without Declan’s transcript, I wouldn’t even know where to recommend that you start looking.”
Joss nodded once in understanding. “I believe Sam Winchester was also a Stanford student at that time.”
Ms. Winter’s face clouded. “Oh, yes. That was tragic.”
Joss tilted her head. “What was?”
“Sam was one of the best students the pre-law program had, especially considering his life circumstances. He’d grown up essentially homeless, had come to Stanford on scholarship, and was estranged from his family. I actually thought he’d graduate early until a friend of his, Tyson Brady, got himself into trouble with drugs and alcohol. Sam let his own grades slip trying to help Tyson, had to repeat a couple of quarters. Still, he made a 174 on his LSAT, looked like he was a shoo-in for law school… and then the fire happened.”
“What fire?”
“There was some sort of electrical fire in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Jessica Moore. His brother managed to get him out alive, but Ms. Moore died. Sam took a leave of absence to recover… and I’m sure you’re aware of what’s happened since.”
“Yes.” Joss nodded slowly, processing that. “Do you know if Winchester knew Alex Declan or Henri Musset?”
Ms. Winter was taken aback. “No, not to my knowledge. Of course, I can’t exactly keep track of who’s friends with whom at a school this size, even now, but Henri didn’t have many friends outside the international students and the English department. But now that you say that….”
“Yes?” Joss prompted when Ms. Winter didn’t immediately continue.
Ms. Winter shifted uncomfortably. “I… know this will sound odd, but… at least at the time… if Henri had been friends with Sam, I would have expected him to go to Sam about whatever trouble he was having with Alex. Sam always seemed eager to help people, especially friends who were disadvantaged in any way.” She looked away from her webcam. “I’ve often wondered whether that’s what drove him to join his brother’s crime spree-if he convinced himself somehow that what they were doing was to help people.”
Joss smiled tightly. “I see. Thank you, Ms. Winter. I won’t keep you. Oh-if you’re able to find any further information about Alex Declan, would you give me a call?”
Ms. Winter promised she would and signed off.
Joss blew the air out of her cheeks and leaned back in her chair. Finch had said that John believed the Winchesters were on the level about wanting to stop Declan and that Sam had implicitly blamed himself for not preventing Musset’s murder. That fit with what Ms. Winter had said about Sam’s personality when he’d been at Stanford. But it didn’t make Joss any happier about the idea of her shadowy friends being stranded with not one but three serial killers, regardless of whether two of them thought they were helping people by killing as they did.
After a moment’s reflection, she went to the precinct’s radio base station and tried to call Owen Island Station on the emergency band. All she got was static. And that was the last straw. It was a two-hour drive from the station to the Coast Guard base nearest to Owen Island. She could keep trying to call from her car radio, but she needed to get out there.
Cal, unfortunately, was having none of it. She hadn’t read him in because John and Finch were involved, so she couldn’t explain exactly why she was so worried, and he did everything short of physically restraining her to stop her from haring off into the storm.
“I’m going, Cal,” she finally insisted. “I won’t say it again.”
“Fine,” he conceded-and snatched her keys out of her hand. “But I’m driving.”
If Joss weren’t so concerned about preventing a homicide, she might have committed one. Instead, she merely stormed out to her car, Cal trailing in her wake.
“What do you think?” Dean asked quietly as the brothers left the conference room and fell into step with each other, motioning with his head in a way that Sam understood he was asking about Finch.
Sam sighed. “I was pre-law, not pre-med.”
“Yeah, but you were behind him.”
“I dunno. Seems like some kind of spinal cord injury. He’s got scars on the back of his neck, probably from surgery. I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d think he’d gone three rounds with a poltergeist and lost.”
“How recent?”
“More than a year, I’d say. Wouldn’t have seen them if I hadn’t been looking.”
“Damn.” Dean glanced back over his shoulder. “And someone’s still after him?”
“And all he has is John.”
The look Dean shot Sam at that spoke volumes-it was the sort of look he got before adopting another stray (and that always meant people, given Dad’s rules about pets). But all he said was, “Not anymore.”
Sam nodded his agreement, and that was that.
The hard part of setting up the interrogation room, for Sam, was finding his way around Finch’s laptop, which ran Unix. It was still raining too hard for him to bring in his own laptop from the car, even wrapped in someone else’s raincoat, but Finch had tucked his into one of the waterproof bags that held his other equipment, so Sam had to use what was available. Finch looked slightly nervous about what Sam might find on the hard drive, but even if Sam had thought he had time to snoop, John watched over his shoulder while he was setting up the camera feeds. In the end, although it took slightly longer than usual because of the unfamiliar OS, he had the laptop ready to hand back to Finch within fifteen minutes. The hard part for Dean, on the other hand, appeared to be following Finch’s instructions as to how to wire the table while hiding a silver wire among the leads to prevent Declan from tampering with them. It wasn’t like Finch was unreasonable or unclear, but his tone did get strident a few times, and Dean hadn’t been in the mood to take orders from anyone to begin with. Still, he finished about the same time Sam did and passed the remaining coil of silver wire to Sam for safekeeping, and while they settled Finch with his equipment in the next room, John went to get him some hot water and sugar for tea and alert the rest of the station’s occupants that they needed to ask everyone some routine questions.
The interrogations themselves went like clockwork. Sam paused his video of Declan at a point where his face, but not the retinal flare, was most visible and set his phone in the middle of the table to induce people to lean against the tabletop so that the seismograph would register their heartbeats. John mostly stayed in the background, which was fine with the Winchesters, who had their own routine honed by years of practice. Dean was chummy with the bar owner; Sam was protective toward the girl; they were both conciliatory toward the deputy and the newlyweds who’d accidentally interrupted them earlier. They didn’t really break into “good cop/bad cop” until questioning the developer, the fisherman, and the drifter.
“How close to completion is your hotel, Mr. Cunningham?” Sam asked the developer.
Cunningham shook his head. “Not close enough. We’re ninety days out and probably two months behind. Even if the power weren’t out, your fugitive wouldn’t get much more than a roof over his head-I don’t even think the toilets have been installed yet.” He sighed. “I was worried enough that the site might wash away in all this rain. It’s halfway underwater as it stands. But if word ever gets out that a wanted man might have used it as a hideout….”
“Murder’s better for business than you’d think,” said Dean. “Just look at Amityville.”
Cunningham shot him an incredulous look.
“Please excuse my partner,” Sam said with a plastered-on smile, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “It’s been a long day.”
John shifted behind them like he was trying not to laugh, then dismissed Cunningham.
The fisherman, Ethan Mattson, insisted that he’d been trying to salvage his catch of lobsters, but Sam knew he was nervous even before John ducked out to check what Finch was getting on the seismograph. The brothers quizzed Mattson about elements of the lobster business-where he sold his catch, how much he got per pound, legal limits on the size of lobsters one could catch, etc.-and his shiftiness only increased. He wrung his hands, neither of which was injured, and refused to look either Winchester in the eye.
Finally, Dean leaned forward. “Here’s the thing, Ethan. I saw your traps out there. Those lobsters weren’t movin’.”
Mattson looked like a deer in the headlights. “Musta been the cold.”
“Do you have a heart problem, sir?” John asked, walking back in.
“Heart problem?” Mattson echoed, then stammered a moment before getting out, “No, I-I-I don’t think so.”
There was a pause, which made Mattson really squirm, before Sam said, “Guess it’s a good thing we’re not game wardens, then. That’ll be all, thank you.”
Mattson bolted out of the room.
Dean leaned back and sighed. “Y’know, when the computer gave us that hint about Ten Little Indians, I thought maybe everyone on the island would have some kind of guilty secret. So far, he’s the only one apart from us.”
John nodded. “Finch confirmed it, and not just with the seismograph. His answers about the market price of lobsters are years out of date.”
Sam crossed his arms. “So what do you think his deal is? Drugs?”
“Could be.”
“Not worth our while to find out right now, though,” Dean said. “Main thing is, he’s liable to run for it, and if Declan intercepts him….”
“He could use Mattson’s appearance to get into the station,” Sam agreed.
“Don’t think he’s our only potential liability,” said John. “Let’s get Engquist in here.”
The drifter, Victor Engquist, was less twitchy than Mattson but still visibly nervous. This time it was John who was bad cop, confronting Engquist about his duffle. But barely had Finch confirmed a heart rate spike at John’s suggestion that Engquist was in the military when Becky, the local girl, knocked on the door.
“Deputy Schmidt sent me to tell you someone’s calling on the radio,” she said apologetically when Dean answered.
“Whoa, wait,” said Engquist as John and Dean looked at each other and followed Becky out of the room at just short of a run. “What… what does that mean?”
“We don’t know,” Sam replied, pushing away from the table. “We do know you’re not the man we’re looking for. But Victor? Going AWOL was a bad move-one that could get you killed by the man we are looking for.” And with that warning, he ushered Engquist out.
“Say again?!” Deputy Schmidt was bawling into the radio microphone when Sam joined John and Dean at the front desk.
“I ha- … inf… marshal… speak … -ediately,” replied a female voice that was largely obscured by static.
“What is it?” John pressed.
Schmidt shook her head. “I dunno. Some detective from the city finally got through-said her name was Carpenter? Carter?”
John was just starting to reach for the microphone when the power suddenly went out.
Schmidt groaned. “The generator!”
“I’ll check it,” Dean said, then added in a low voice, “Sam, you stay with the civilians. I don’t like this.”
“I’ll stay with Finch,” John added by way of barely-audible agreement.
Sam nodded. “Right. Watch yourself, Deputy,” he continued at a more normal volume as John and Dean headed off down the hall. “Declan could be trying to break in.”
“Oh, sure, your phantom fugitive,” she snarked, but Sam tuned out the rest of her sarcasm as his eyes adjusted enough for him to get back to the lobby without stumbling. “All right, everyone, just remain calm,” he announced over the worried murmurs of the civilians.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” demanded the bar owner. “I put enough diesel in that generator to last us all night.”
“We don’t know, Mr. Amis. My partner’s gone to check it out. It could be a simple mechanical failure. The most important thing is to stay calm and stay still until the lights come back on. There’s no sense in wandering around in the dark, bumping into things and getting yourself hurt.”
“And what if it isn’t a simple mechanical failure?” Cunningham pressed.
“Look, whatever is wrong, my partner can fix it,” Sam insisted before deciding to embellish the truth a little. “He got his degree in mechanical engineering. We won’t know the cause until he gets back, and there’s no point in speculating ourselves into a panic.”
There was a particularly loud series of thunderclaps at that point that drowned out anything anyone else was trying to say. Sam thought he heard a thump, a crash, and a crackle from the front desk, but he couldn’t be sure. Instead of worrying about it, he tried to take a headcount during the seconds when the lightning shot enough light in through the doors for him to see who was present and who wasn’t.
“Where’s Mattson?” he finally asked.
“Who?” several voices returned.
“The fisherman.”
“I… think he said he was going to the restroom,” said the newlywed husband. “But I don’t remember for sure.”
Sam swore internally.
“The hell with him,” said Engquist. “How long’s it gonna take to get the power back?”
“I honestly have no id-” Sam began, exasperated, but was cut off by the power coming back on.
After a round of sighs and murmurs of relief, the newlywed wife declared, “I need to go see if there’s any more creamer in the break room. I think we’re about out.”
Sam huffed. “Okay, but be careful.”
She nodded and started to leave, but she got only as far as the door to the front desk before stopping short with a horrified scream. Becky ran over to her, while Sam ran to the desk-and then vaulted over the desk to get to the reason for the scream before the rest of the civilians could block his path.
Schmidt lay on the floor with a Ka-Bar knife buried in her chest. And above her, the emergency radio system was smashed beyond repair.
“Is she… is she dead?” Becky choked out.
Sam stifled his impulse to make an Innocents Abroad joke worthy of Dean and checked Schmidt’s pulse, even though there was little chance that she was still breathing.* Sure enough, her heart had stopped. “I’m afraid so,” he said just as John ran up, Finch limping along behind him as quickly as his injuries allowed. “That bad lightning outbreak gave our killer the perfect cover. We could barely hear ourselves think, never mind hearing him do this.”
“You,” Amis demanded, pointing a trembling finger at Finch. “You were working with them. What were they really doing in there?”
Finch carefully didn’t look at John or Sam, or acknowledge Dean sprinting up behind him with gun in hand, as he answered semi-truthfully, “They asked to use my equipment for police business. They were looking for liars in the group, talked about hunting a killer.”
That touched off a round of recriminations, as Finch had no doubt intended, and gave Sam a chance to look at everyone’s hands again. None had gained a bandage. But the newlywed husband finally cut that conversation short by asking who owned the knife, which gave John the chance to identify it by type and hint-only hint-that it belonged to Engquist. Engquist responded by taking a swing at John, but John made short work of subduing Engquist and revealing a Marine Corps tattoo on Engquist’s left wrist. Tearfully, Engquist finally confessed that he’d gone AWOL when his unit was about to be deployed to Afghanistan for the second time, but he denied having killed Schmidt.
“Where’s Mattson?” Dean murmured in Sam’s ear while John questioned Engquist about who could have stolen his knife.
“Bathroom, supposedly,” Sam murmured back.
Dean swore. “Still got that wire?”
Sam passed it to him as unobtrusively as possible.
“Thanks.” Dean passed Sam the keys to the car. “Gonna make sure Declan can’t cut the power again.”
“What’d he do?”
“Pulled the plug. Just like that.”
Just then, everyone else realized that Mattson was missing. “I’m going after him,” John declared.
“Not alone, you’re not,” said Sam and pushed past the civilians still crowding the doorway. “If Mattson’s capable of this, he could have other weapons stashed on his boat. So I’m driving.”
John didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he looked at Dean. “If we don’t come back, get these people to safety.”
“You got it, Marshal,” Dean agreed.
Not until John and Sam were in the car did John ask, “What the hell are you thinking, Winchester?”
“One of two options,” Sam replied and started the engine. “Mattson apparently told the others he was going to the bathroom. Either he told the truth and ran into Declan, in which case we’re already too late for him, or he lied and made a break for it during the blackout, in which case Declan could still be after him with the goal of using his identity to get back into the station without our noticing. Either way, we need to make sure he’s not on his boat and get him back to the station if he is.”
“And if he is dead and Declan’s still in the building?”
“Finch still has Dean,” Sam noted and drove away.
The dusk-to-dawn light on the dock where Mattson’s boat was moored apparently had its own power source, because it was on when John and Sam arrived. John’s first stop was the stack of traps Mattson had claimed were full of lobsters; there was just enough light to see that Dean had been right about their not holding any sort of living creature. John smashed one and pulled out a bale of marijuana.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered and threw the marijuana down in disgust. “We’re hunting a killer, and instead we get amateur drug night in the sticks.”
Sam glanced around and spotted a harpoon gun on the wall of the boat’s cabin. “I don’t think Mattson’s here,” he said and pointed to the harpoon gun. “If he were, he’d probably be shooting harpoons at us by now.”
“So would Declan, probably,” John agreed. “We’ve caught a red herring. We need to get back.”
But just then a Coast Guard vessel roared into earshot, followed by a female voice-the same one Sam had heard on the radio, he thought-calling on the loudspeaker, “Marshal Jennings? Is that you?”
John waved, and the Coasties pulled up to the opposite side of the dock and hurriedly dropped a gangplank, which had barely touched the dock when a black woman in a suit and pea coat raced down it and over to John and Sam.
“Carter, what are you doing here?” John asked.
“I couldn’t get through on the radio,” Carter replied in a tone that Sam understood to mean I was worried. Then she turned to Sam. “Det. Carter, NYPD Homicide.”
“Agent Bonham, FBI,” Sam returned and flashed his credentials. “I take it Marshal Jennings already read you in.”
Carter looked from Sam to John and back in growing alarm. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” John and Sam chorused.
“Come with us,” Sam continued. “We can explain on the way.”
“The way where?” Carter demanded but let John usher her into the back seat of the car.
“Back to the station,” John answered. “Declan may already be inside.” He shut her door and got into shotgun at the same time Sam climbed back behind the wheel.
Sam was just about to shut his door when someone else got off the Coast Guard boat-and a male voice Sam had thought he’d never hear again called, “Joss, wait! JOSS!”
Sam slammed his door shut and peeled out as the man tried to chase after them.
“Why the hell did you bring him?” John asked Carter.
Carter sighed. “He brought himself-wouldn’t let me drive in this weather. It’s not like I read him in, John.”
“Who was that?” Sam asked, fearing the answer.
“His name’s Cal Beecher,” Carter answered. “He’s in Narcotics.”
“Are you sure?” The Winchesters had disposed of Gordon Walker years before, but this wouldn’t be the first time one of their old enemies had resurfaced after an apparently permanent death.**
“Yes, I’m sure,” Carter snapped. “What the hell are you-”
“Joss,” John interrupted. “We can talk about Beecher later. If Declan’s managed to get into the police station, his primary target is Finch.”
Carter swore quietly.
“He’s already killed at least one person and destroyed the radio. He won’t try to kill Finch right away, but especially after that thing with Root….”
Carter sucked in a slow breath, which was even more eloquent than Dean’s favorite curses. “Okay. We need a plan.”
Next
* “Is he-is he dead?” is a major running gag in Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, asked by Twain and his friends at every monument, grave, or reliquary they encountered on their trip to Europe in a deliberate attempt to rile their otherwise boring tour guides. The line is delivered in “Proteus” in all seriousness, but my Twainiac brain couldn’t help noticing the phrasing….
** For fans of only POI or only SPN: Gordon Walker and Cal Beecher are both played by Sterling K. Brown.
A/N: There are some lines from “Proteus” in this chapter and the next, but I’ve tried to keep the borrowing to a minimum.
Chapter 4
Joss made sure she had her game face on before making the video call to Stanford’s dean of student affairs, Vicki Winter. She didn’t know what was worst: the nature of the case John and Finch had uncovered this time, the fact that the Winchesters were involved, the fact that the Winchesters had actually provided accurate information about the case, the fact that John and Finch were trapped out there on Owen Island with both the Winchesters and the identity killer… or the fact that her not-quite-boyfriend, Narcotics Det. Cal Beecher, kept interrupting her over her freezing him out after she had lost a chance to join the FBI over his Internal Affairs record. Cal had at least confirmed her analysis of the video from Rollins’ store in Chicago, but she couldn’t help wishing that her partner, Lionel Fusco, weren’t out with a sick kid and could run interference for her. (Not that Fusco was missing out on the case altogether; Finch had called her about the teeth on his way to leave his Belgian Malinois, Bear, with Fusco for the night. Joss still wished he were in the office and not at home in Brooklyn.)
But she couldn’t let any of that show in talking to Ms. Winter. So she took a moment to breathe deeply and set her fears and irritation aside before she made the call to ensure that she could win information with a smile.
The first part of the conversation was pretty standard for discussions of cold cases with administrators of large colleges. Ms. Winter had actually known Henri Musset, but she downplayed the significance of the fact that he’d last been seen on campus. Losing touch with alumni after graduation was common, she claimed. What did ruffle her calm slightly was the discovery that she couldn’t find any records for Alex Declan other than Musset’s housing form.
“Do you know of any professors or residence hall directors I could speak to about Declan?” Joss asked.
Ms. Winter shook her head. “The director of their residence hall left in 2007, and without Declan’s transcript, I wouldn’t even know where to recommend that you start looking.”
Joss nodded once in understanding. “I believe Sam Winchester was also a Stanford student at that time.”
Ms. Winter’s face clouded. “Oh, yes. That was tragic.”
Joss tilted her head. “What was?”
“Sam was one of the best students the pre-law program had, especially considering his life circumstances. He’d grown up essentially homeless, had come to Stanford on scholarship, and was estranged from his family. I actually thought he’d graduate early until a friend of his, Tyson Brady, got himself into trouble with drugs and alcohol. Sam let his own grades slip trying to help Tyson, had to repeat a couple of quarters. Still, he made a 174 on his LSAT, looked like he was a shoo-in for law school… and then the fire happened.”
“What fire?”
“There was some sort of electrical fire in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Jessica Moore. His brother managed to get him out alive, but Ms. Moore died. Sam took a leave of absence to recover… and I’m sure you’re aware of what’s happened since.”
“Yes.” Joss nodded slowly, processing that. “Do you know if Winchester knew Alex Declan or Henri Musset?”
Ms. Winter was taken aback. “No, not to my knowledge. Of course, I can’t exactly keep track of who’s friends with whom at a school this size, even now, but Henri didn’t have many friends outside the international students and the English department. But now that you say that….”
“Yes?” Joss prompted when Ms. Winter didn’t immediately continue.
Ms. Winter shifted uncomfortably. “I… know this will sound odd, but… at least at the time… if Henri had been friends with Sam, I would have expected him to go to Sam about whatever trouble he was having with Alex. Sam always seemed eager to help people, especially friends who were disadvantaged in any way.” She looked away from her webcam. “I’ve often wondered whether that’s what drove him to join his brother’s crime spree-if he convinced himself somehow that what they were doing was to help people.”
Joss smiled tightly. “I see. Thank you, Ms. Winter. I won’t keep you. Oh-if you’re able to find any further information about Alex Declan, would you give me a call?”
Ms. Winter promised she would and signed off.
Joss blew the air out of her cheeks and leaned back in her chair. Finch had said that John believed the Winchesters were on the level about wanting to stop Declan and that Sam had implicitly blamed himself for not preventing Musset’s murder. That fit with what Ms. Winter had said about Sam’s personality when he’d been at Stanford. But it didn’t make Joss any happier about the idea of her shadowy friends being stranded with not one but three serial killers, regardless of whether two of them thought they were helping people by killing as they did.
After a moment’s reflection, she went to the precinct’s radio base station and tried to call Owen Island Station on the emergency band. All she got was static. And that was the last straw. It was a two-hour drive from the station to the Coast Guard base nearest to Owen Island. She could keep trying to call from her car radio, but she needed to get out there.
Cal, unfortunately, was having none of it. She hadn’t read him in because John and Finch were involved, so she couldn’t explain exactly why she was so worried, and he did everything short of physically restraining her to stop her from haring off into the storm.
“I’m going, Cal,” she finally insisted. “I won’t say it again.”
“Fine,” he conceded-and snatched her keys out of her hand. “But I’m driving.”
If Joss weren’t so concerned about preventing a homicide, she might have committed one. Instead, she merely stormed out to her car, Cal trailing in her wake.
“What do you think?” Dean asked quietly as the brothers left the conference room and fell into step with each other, motioning with his head in a way that Sam understood he was asking about Finch.
Sam sighed. “I was pre-law, not pre-med.”
“Yeah, but you were behind him.”
“I dunno. Seems like some kind of spinal cord injury. He’s got scars on the back of his neck, probably from surgery. I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d think he’d gone three rounds with a poltergeist and lost.”
“How recent?”
“More than a year, I’d say. Wouldn’t have seen them if I hadn’t been looking.”
“Damn.” Dean glanced back over his shoulder. “And someone’s still after him?”
“And all he has is John.”
The look Dean shot Sam at that spoke volumes-it was the sort of look he got before adopting another stray (and that always meant people, given Dad’s rules about pets). But all he said was, “Not anymore.”
Sam nodded his agreement, and that was that.
The hard part of setting up the interrogation room, for Sam, was finding his way around Finch’s laptop, which ran Unix. It was still raining too hard for him to bring in his own laptop from the car, even wrapped in someone else’s raincoat, but Finch had tucked his into one of the waterproof bags that held his other equipment, so Sam had to use what was available. Finch looked slightly nervous about what Sam might find on the hard drive, but even if Sam had thought he had time to snoop, John watched over his shoulder while he was setting up the camera feeds. In the end, although it took slightly longer than usual because of the unfamiliar OS, he had the laptop ready to hand back to Finch within fifteen minutes. The hard part for Dean, on the other hand, appeared to be following Finch’s instructions as to how to wire the table while hiding a silver wire among the leads to prevent Declan from tampering with them. It wasn’t like Finch was unreasonable or unclear, but his tone did get strident a few times, and Dean hadn’t been in the mood to take orders from anyone to begin with. Still, he finished about the same time Sam did and passed the remaining coil of silver wire to Sam for safekeeping, and while they settled Finch with his equipment in the next room, John went to get him some hot water and sugar for tea and alert the rest of the station’s occupants that they needed to ask everyone some routine questions.
The interrogations themselves went like clockwork. Sam paused his video of Declan at a point where his face, but not the retinal flare, was most visible and set his phone in the middle of the table to induce people to lean against the tabletop so that the seismograph would register their heartbeats. John mostly stayed in the background, which was fine with the Winchesters, who had their own routine honed by years of practice. Dean was chummy with the bar owner; Sam was protective toward the girl; they were both conciliatory toward the deputy and the newlyweds who’d accidentally interrupted them earlier. They didn’t really break into “good cop/bad cop” until questioning the developer, the fisherman, and the drifter.
“How close to completion is your hotel, Mr. Cunningham?” Sam asked the developer.
Cunningham shook his head. “Not close enough. We’re ninety days out and probably two months behind. Even if the power weren’t out, your fugitive wouldn’t get much more than a roof over his head-I don’t even think the toilets have been installed yet.” He sighed. “I was worried enough that the site might wash away in all this rain. It’s halfway underwater as it stands. But if word ever gets out that a wanted man might have used it as a hideout….”
“Murder’s better for business than you’d think,” said Dean. “Just look at Amityville.”
Cunningham shot him an incredulous look.
“Please excuse my partner,” Sam said with a plastered-on smile, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “It’s been a long day.”
John shifted behind them like he was trying not to laugh, then dismissed Cunningham.
The fisherman, Ethan Mattson, insisted that he’d been trying to salvage his catch of lobsters, but Sam knew he was nervous even before John ducked out to check what Finch was getting on the seismograph. The brothers quizzed Mattson about elements of the lobster business-where he sold his catch, how much he got per pound, legal limits on the size of lobsters one could catch, etc.-and his shiftiness only increased. He wrung his hands, neither of which was injured, and refused to look either Winchester in the eye.
Finally, Dean leaned forward. “Here’s the thing, Ethan. I saw your traps out there. Those lobsters weren’t movin’.”
Mattson looked like a deer in the headlights. “Musta been the cold.”
“Do you have a heart problem, sir?” John asked, walking back in.
“Heart problem?” Mattson echoed, then stammered a moment before getting out, “No, I-I-I don’t think so.”
There was a pause, which made Mattson really squirm, before Sam said, “Guess it’s a good thing we’re not game wardens, then. That’ll be all, thank you.”
Mattson bolted out of the room.
Dean leaned back and sighed. “Y’know, when the computer gave us that hint about Ten Little Indians, I thought maybe everyone on the island would have some kind of guilty secret. So far, he’s the only one apart from us.”
John nodded. “Finch confirmed it, and not just with the seismograph. His answers about the market price of lobsters are years out of date.”
Sam crossed his arms. “So what do you think his deal is? Drugs?”
“Could be.”
“Not worth our while to find out right now, though,” Dean said. “Main thing is, he’s liable to run for it, and if Declan intercepts him….”
“He could use Mattson’s appearance to get into the station,” Sam agreed.
“Don’t think he’s our only potential liability,” said John. “Let’s get Engquist in here.”
The drifter, Victor Engquist, was less twitchy than Mattson but still visibly nervous. This time it was John who was bad cop, confronting Engquist about his duffle. But barely had Finch confirmed a heart rate spike at John’s suggestion that Engquist was in the military when Becky, the local girl, knocked on the door.
“Deputy Schmidt sent me to tell you someone’s calling on the radio,” she said apologetically when Dean answered.
“Whoa, wait,” said Engquist as John and Dean looked at each other and followed Becky out of the room at just short of a run. “What… what does that mean?”
“We don’t know,” Sam replied, pushing away from the table. “We do know you’re not the man we’re looking for. But Victor? Going AWOL was a bad move-one that could get you killed by the man we are looking for.” And with that warning, he ushered Engquist out.
“Say again?!” Deputy Schmidt was bawling into the radio microphone when Sam joined John and Dean at the front desk.
“I ha- … inf… marshal… speak … -ediately,” replied a female voice that was largely obscured by static.
“What is it?” John pressed.
Schmidt shook her head. “I dunno. Some detective from the city finally got through-said her name was Carpenter? Carter?”
John was just starting to reach for the microphone when the power suddenly went out.
Schmidt groaned. “The generator!”
“I’ll check it,” Dean said, then added in a low voice, “Sam, you stay with the civilians. I don’t like this.”
“I’ll stay with Finch,” John added by way of barely-audible agreement.
Sam nodded. “Right. Watch yourself, Deputy,” he continued at a more normal volume as John and Dean headed off down the hall. “Declan could be trying to break in.”
“Oh, sure, your phantom fugitive,” she snarked, but Sam tuned out the rest of her sarcasm as his eyes adjusted enough for him to get back to the lobby without stumbling. “All right, everyone, just remain calm,” he announced over the worried murmurs of the civilians.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” demanded the bar owner. “I put enough diesel in that generator to last us all night.”
“We don’t know, Mr. Amis. My partner’s gone to check it out. It could be a simple mechanical failure. The most important thing is to stay calm and stay still until the lights come back on. There’s no sense in wandering around in the dark, bumping into things and getting yourself hurt.”
“And what if it isn’t a simple mechanical failure?” Cunningham pressed.
“Look, whatever is wrong, my partner can fix it,” Sam insisted before deciding to embellish the truth a little. “He got his degree in mechanical engineering. We won’t know the cause until he gets back, and there’s no point in speculating ourselves into a panic.”
There was a particularly loud series of thunderclaps at that point that drowned out anything anyone else was trying to say. Sam thought he heard a thump, a crash, and a crackle from the front desk, but he couldn’t be sure. Instead of worrying about it, he tried to take a headcount during the seconds when the lightning shot enough light in through the doors for him to see who was present and who wasn’t.
“Where’s Mattson?” he finally asked.
“Who?” several voices returned.
“The fisherman.”
“I… think he said he was going to the restroom,” said the newlywed husband. “But I don’t remember for sure.”
Sam swore internally.
“The hell with him,” said Engquist. “How long’s it gonna take to get the power back?”
“I honestly have no id-” Sam began, exasperated, but was cut off by the power coming back on.
After a round of sighs and murmurs of relief, the newlywed wife declared, “I need to go see if there’s any more creamer in the break room. I think we’re about out.”
Sam huffed. “Okay, but be careful.”
She nodded and started to leave, but she got only as far as the door to the front desk before stopping short with a horrified scream. Becky ran over to her, while Sam ran to the desk-and then vaulted over the desk to get to the reason for the scream before the rest of the civilians could block his path.
Schmidt lay on the floor with a Ka-Bar knife buried in her chest. And above her, the emergency radio system was smashed beyond repair.
“Is she… is she dead?” Becky choked out.
Sam stifled his impulse to make an Innocents Abroad joke worthy of Dean and checked Schmidt’s pulse, even though there was little chance that she was still breathing.* Sure enough, her heart had stopped. “I’m afraid so,” he said just as John ran up, Finch limping along behind him as quickly as his injuries allowed. “That bad lightning outbreak gave our killer the perfect cover. We could barely hear ourselves think, never mind hearing him do this.”
“You,” Amis demanded, pointing a trembling finger at Finch. “You were working with them. What were they really doing in there?”
Finch carefully didn’t look at John or Sam, or acknowledge Dean sprinting up behind him with gun in hand, as he answered semi-truthfully, “They asked to use my equipment for police business. They were looking for liars in the group, talked about hunting a killer.”
That touched off a round of recriminations, as Finch had no doubt intended, and gave Sam a chance to look at everyone’s hands again. None had gained a bandage. But the newlywed husband finally cut that conversation short by asking who owned the knife, which gave John the chance to identify it by type and hint-only hint-that it belonged to Engquist. Engquist responded by taking a swing at John, but John made short work of subduing Engquist and revealing a Marine Corps tattoo on Engquist’s left wrist. Tearfully, Engquist finally confessed that he’d gone AWOL when his unit was about to be deployed to Afghanistan for the second time, but he denied having killed Schmidt.
“Where’s Mattson?” Dean murmured in Sam’s ear while John questioned Engquist about who could have stolen his knife.
“Bathroom, supposedly,” Sam murmured back.
Dean swore. “Still got that wire?”
Sam passed it to him as unobtrusively as possible.
“Thanks.” Dean passed Sam the keys to the car. “Gonna make sure Declan can’t cut the power again.”
“What’d he do?”
“Pulled the plug. Just like that.”
Just then, everyone else realized that Mattson was missing. “I’m going after him,” John declared.
“Not alone, you’re not,” said Sam and pushed past the civilians still crowding the doorway. “If Mattson’s capable of this, he could have other weapons stashed on his boat. So I’m driving.”
John didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he looked at Dean. “If we don’t come back, get these people to safety.”
“You got it, Marshal,” Dean agreed.
Not until John and Sam were in the car did John ask, “What the hell are you thinking, Winchester?”
“One of two options,” Sam replied and started the engine. “Mattson apparently told the others he was going to the bathroom. Either he told the truth and ran into Declan, in which case we’re already too late for him, or he lied and made a break for it during the blackout, in which case Declan could still be after him with the goal of using his identity to get back into the station without our noticing. Either way, we need to make sure he’s not on his boat and get him back to the station if he is.”
“And if he is dead and Declan’s still in the building?”
“Finch still has Dean,” Sam noted and drove away.
The dusk-to-dawn light on the dock where Mattson’s boat was moored apparently had its own power source, because it was on when John and Sam arrived. John’s first stop was the stack of traps Mattson had claimed were full of lobsters; there was just enough light to see that Dean had been right about their not holding any sort of living creature. John smashed one and pulled out a bale of marijuana.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered and threw the marijuana down in disgust. “We’re hunting a killer, and instead we get amateur drug night in the sticks.”
Sam glanced around and spotted a harpoon gun on the wall of the boat’s cabin. “I don’t think Mattson’s here,” he said and pointed to the harpoon gun. “If he were, he’d probably be shooting harpoons at us by now.”
“So would Declan, probably,” John agreed. “We’ve caught a red herring. We need to get back.”
But just then a Coast Guard vessel roared into earshot, followed by a female voice-the same one Sam had heard on the radio, he thought-calling on the loudspeaker, “Marshal Jennings? Is that you?”
John waved, and the Coasties pulled up to the opposite side of the dock and hurriedly dropped a gangplank, which had barely touched the dock when a black woman in a suit and pea coat raced down it and over to John and Sam.
“Carter, what are you doing here?” John asked.
“I couldn’t get through on the radio,” Carter replied in a tone that Sam understood to mean I was worried. Then she turned to Sam. “Det. Carter, NYPD Homicide.”
“Agent Bonham, FBI,” Sam returned and flashed his credentials. “I take it Marshal Jennings already read you in.”
Carter looked from Sam to John and back in growing alarm. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” John and Sam chorused.
“Come with us,” Sam continued. “We can explain on the way.”
“The way where?” Carter demanded but let John usher her into the back seat of the car.
“Back to the station,” John answered. “Declan may already be inside.” He shut her door and got into shotgun at the same time Sam climbed back behind the wheel.
Sam was just about to shut his door when someone else got off the Coast Guard boat-and a male voice Sam had thought he’d never hear again called, “Joss, wait! JOSS!”
Sam slammed his door shut and peeled out as the man tried to chase after them.
“Why the hell did you bring him?” John asked Carter.
Carter sighed. “He brought himself-wouldn’t let me drive in this weather. It’s not like I read him in, John.”
“Who was that?” Sam asked, fearing the answer.
“His name’s Cal Beecher,” Carter answered. “He’s in Narcotics.”
“Are you sure?” The Winchesters had disposed of Gordon Walker years before, but this wouldn’t be the first time one of their old enemies had resurfaced after an apparently permanent death.**
“Yes, I’m sure,” Carter snapped. “What the hell are you-”
“Joss,” John interrupted. “We can talk about Beecher later. If Declan’s managed to get into the police station, his primary target is Finch.”
Carter swore quietly.
“He’s already killed at least one person and destroyed the radio. He won’t try to kill Finch right away, but especially after that thing with Root….”
Carter sucked in a slow breath, which was even more eloquent than Dean’s favorite curses. “Okay. We need a plan.”
Next
* “Is he-is he dead?” is a major running gag in Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, asked by Twain and his friends at every monument, grave, or reliquary they encountered on their trip to Europe in a deliberate attempt to rile their otherwise boring tour guides. The line is delivered in “Proteus” in all seriousness, but my Twainiac brain couldn’t help noticing the phrasing….
** For fans of only POI or only SPN: Gordon Walker and Cal Beecher are both played by Sterling K. Brown.