through a long hallway with a broken light 3/?
~*~
Elias stood across the street from a new crime scene watching while everyone ran around in controlled chaos, each person with a job to do and determined to get it done as fast as possible. Another killing, another woman sliced up in her car. Serial killer. The conclusion was inevitable, only Elias knew it wasn’t the whole truth, and he was sure no one currently on scene could handle the truth if he chose to share it. With no reason to put it off, he started across the street, head bent against the wind. He kept his hands buried deep in the pocket of his trench coat, the bottom of it whipped around his legs. It was snowing. The weather was hell on a crime scene. If there had been any external clues, they had been wiped away before the first police car arrived. Elias doubted there had been anything, but it was a shame not to know for sure.
He was puzzled over the footprints Jane had seen. Whatever was doing this had left them intentionally, and trying to figure out the why of that was driving him nuts. He couldn’t figure out a reason for it. Lost in thought he flashed his federal ID at the cop guarding the perimeter. They’d already been through the “what are the feds doing here” spiel; his explanation that he was there as an observer for his own reasons had done little to mollify anyone. He kept his head down and his ID out when one of them got that look in his eye. Elias tugged his hat down a little farther over his ears; it was too damn cold. He didn’t know why he hadn’t gone after the job in Florida instead. Swamp lights might not be more interesting, but they were damn sure warmer. He looked over the dark blue Honda Accord surrounded by police, and maybe they were less deadly.
“Hey, you, James,” The sheriff called him, waving him over. Elias frowned, and moved toward the man standing beside blood stained car. The windows weren’t painted with blood, but that didn’t mean there was a lack of the stuff. It had splattered against them and run down the glass. No longer bright it was like ugly brown paint thrown around inside the car, but there was no mistaking the smell as he joined the sheriff at the open door. The mutilated body of the young lady was still behind the steering wheel. Her blood that wasn’t splattered on the windows had soaked into the seat around her. The freezing cold kept the car from smelling like a slaughter house, but the coopery tinge on the air was unmistakable. Elias looked at the body, frozen solid where it sat. They were going to have an interesting time getting her out, which likely explained why she was still sitting there. The sheriff directed Elias’ attention away from the blue tinged rigor of the woman’s face to the less disturbing view of the empty passenger seat. Blood splattered it in random designs, but what the sheriff was interested in was anything but random. A hand print on the back of the seat, beside the headrest, it was perfectly clear, unmarred and deliberate. He was leaving clues; taunting the police, just like a real serial killer. Elias felt a headache starting. This was just great.
“Fuck.” He muttered; the sheriff looked at him expectantly, “That’s all really, just Fuck.” Elias told him, shaking his head.
“Serial behavior,” the sheriff said staring at the hand print, “he’s taunting us. I don’t want to call in outsiders, but I’m not sure I have the resources for this. 4 girls are already dead,” he hesitated, “maybe 5 though I can’t understand that last one. The girlfriend mentioned footprints; we didn’t pay enough attention to her. I’ll have to talk to her again. That might be the first scene where he left a clue, even though I don’t understand how. Did you see that car?” The sheriff turned to look at Elias, his lined face dark with worry. “Oh, of course you didn’t.” he turned back to stare at the handprint. “I’ll open it up for you, everything we have if you’ll help.” Elias was taken aback by the offer. Local police didn’t welcome FBI interference, and cooperation was given grudgingly in most cases, as if the very presence of the FBI was an insult to the capability of the local police department.
“Of course,” he agreed without hesitation, “It’s more than I have permission to do, but if I can help I will.” The sheriff nodded his thanks.
“Appreciate that son, now let me get someone on this handprint and see what we can find out.” The sheriff moved away in the direction of the small group of officers searching for evidence in the blowing snow. The hopelessness of their task was daunting. Elias turned his attention back to the handprint, resisted the urge to lay his hand on it. That wasn’t a place he wanted his prints, though it was obvious that the print was much larger than his hand. He had the hands of an artist not a killer, and even though he considered killing an art in its own right that didn’t make the elegance of his hands seem any less out of place.
Elias shook off thoughts of how he should have stuck with the piano, and looked back at the young woman behind the wheel. Brutalized and frozen, her life stolen from her in an instant, the hope and promise that had made her a person, destroyed. He glanced at the handprint a final time before turning to follow the sheriff’s path through the snow. His eyes dark with speculation, he barely acknowledged the other men when he arrived in their midst. He knew the hand print had not been left for the clumsy investigation of the police department, for men focused only on what they could see with their eyes. It had been left for him. Whatever was out there knew he was there, and what he was doing. The footprints, the handprint were not clues but a warning. It was a reminder of how easy it was for the hunter to become the hunted. Elias tried to deny the chill that traced his spine, but he shuddered and pulled up the collar of his coat determined to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades that said someone was watching him. He tugged his hat down more firmly over his ears and thrust his hands into his pockets.
Let him watch, Elias thought with a grim chuckle, let the bastard watch.
~*~
Sam surveyed the lackluster motel room with a jaundiced eye; it was no better or worse than the last hundred places they’d stayed. Clean, the smell of disinfectant almost, but not quite, countering the smell of stale cigarettes lingering in the air. He wrinkled his nose, he didn’t mind the smell of cigarette smoke, but there was nothing pleasant about years of embedded smoke mingling with the sharp pine scent of Pine Sol.
“Christ it smells in here,” Dean grumbled dropping his duffle on the table beside the door. Sam’s bag hit the middle of a bed, and he walked through the small room to poke his head in the bathroom. There the elderly stained toilet and tub gave mute testimony of years of abuse. The tile was dingy and the grout discolored but it was clean. The shower curtain was pulled back; making it easy to see the tiny room was empty. When he turned back to the room Dean tossed him a box of salt; Sam caught it and went to the nearest window to salt the sill, careful to leave an unbroken line.
“No windows in the bathroom.” He told Dean moving to the only other window in the room, the long one beside the door. He salted that, and then the threshold, while Dean looked through the night stand hoping for some information about a place to eat. He found a Gideon Bible, and the local phone book; there was not so much as a logo pad or pen. “We can ask at the desk.” Sam told him to stop his griping, “now shut up and let me finish this.” Dean turned around to find Sam busy painting a ward on the back of the door. He frowned.
“Sammy, what the fuck man?” he demanded. Sam continued to paint concentrating on getting every line correct.
“I don’t know what this is Dean, but it’s bad. Can’t hurt to be careful,” He paused painting a few more lines, “you should pull up the carpet in the corner over there, and paint a devil’s trap under it, in case we need it.” Dean looked over at the faded carpet, the stains on it deeply set and unidentifiable. Tearing it up was not high on his list of things to do.
“Sam,” he growled a protest, but was already moving towards the corner of the room. Sam might be a pain in the ass, but if he thought they might need a devil’s trap, Dean wasn’t going to argue. Bitch about it? You bet, but there’d be a devil’s trap under the carpet before they left the room.
~*~
Elias entered the bar with a rush of cold air and a swirl of snow. He surveyed the room as he brushed the wet stuff off the shoulders of his coat, stamping his feet to get it off his boots. He tugged off his ski cap and shoved it into his pocket. It’d still be damp and as good as useless later, but there was nowhere else to put it. He finger combed his hair forward, making sure it didn’t stick up some weird way. He hated hats. Done with his brief survey of the interior, satisfied there was nothing lurking in the corners of the room, and that his appearance was satisfactory, he walked to the bar where he ordered his beer.
The bartender set it in front of him without comment. Elias had been in the last three nights running. The locals were becoming used to seeing him, nothing close to acceptance, but at least he was no longer the focal point of the night. He’d put up with it because one of the best places to talk to people was the local bar. They’d get loose lipped from alcohol, and talk about things he’d never get them to admit if they were cold sober. Elias pulled his leather gloves off and dropped them into the pocket with his hat. He chose a stool and settled onto it rubbing his hands together trying to thaw them. He was tired of being cold, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, not while whatever it was roamed around free to kill. He looked over the crowd. A live band was tuning up on stage, and several groups of people were at the far end playing pool. There were women everywhere. His mouth set in a grim line Elias wondered if they would all arrive home safe that night.
He was half done with his beer when he got warm enough to open his coat. He kept it on though in his mind he could hear his mother’s voice, an echo from his past, scolding that if he wore his coat indoors it wouldn’t be good for anything when he went back outside. The memory made him smile, a bare quirk of his lips, tinged with melancholy. He was sure she was right, but his arsenal wouldn’t be good for anything if he left it hanging in the coat room. Sorry, Mom. He thought, but he needed the reassuring feel of his blades against his wrists more than he needed to please his mother. He’d never been very good at that anyhow. She was a good woman, his father the best, Elias felt he was of questionable value as a son. They sure as hell deserved better than him.
That self deprecating smile made another brief appearance. Elias didn’t regret who he was, he was too relieved that the voices that had haunted him his entire life, that all the things he saw that no one else seemed to notice, were not figments of a broken mind but real. The day he’d he learned the truth about the world had changed him, changed his life. His relationship with his parents was broken, but he wouldn’t go back. The memory of his terrified youth spent in and out of hospitals was not a pleasant one. His life started the day he understood that ghosts and other supernatural creatures were real, and often they were dangerous. When he’d met the old hunter, living alone and boarded up in a hovel at the edge of town, Elias had been ecstatic, he thought that he’d found someone he could bond with; things hadn’t turned out that way.
Jericho wasn’t interested in talking, or bonding. He was retired from hunting, in all practical ways. He wasn’t interested in talking, or forming a friendship with the ragged half deranged boy who’d followed a ghost into his backyard one night. What he’d done was train him. Starved for interaction with anyone who understood, Elias accepted anything Jericho had to offer. He absorbed the practical lessons and excelled at the physical. It had taken years, but with the old man’s help, Elias had rebuilt himself from the inside out, had turned himself from a frightened child into a dangerous man. He lived beyond the fringe now, his true identity left behind on the night stand in his parent’s house the night he’d left home for good.
Elias realized his bottle was empty, and motioned for another one. He glanced at himself in the mirror; his black trench framed his slender body to its best advantage, making his shoulders appear broader and his hips narrower. His open coat revealed a hand knit sweater in his favorite dark jade green. It was thick and warm, and topped a pair of black denim jeans. Those were worn in all the right places, not from use but from the expertise of the designer. Not visible in the mirror, his Parda boots gleamed on his feet. They showed no signs alteration, though they were lined and steel toed. A heavy gold ring glinted on the ring finger of his right hand and a single gold hoop pierced the lobe of his left ear. He was a clothes horse in the truest sense of the word, but didn’t go in much for jewelry.
The door behind him opened, and Elias watched in the mirror as the newcomers entered. He’d never seen them before, and after three days he was familiar with the crowd that frequented the bar. Daffodil was not the sort of place that attracted visitors, especially not in the middle of the winter. These two fit right in, stomping snow off steel toed boots as they shrugged out of heavy parkas, scattering more snow on the floor. Elias started to look away, writing them off as locals. Their plaid shirts and scruffy jeans screamed they were home, but then the tall one’s eyes met his in the mirror. Elias froze. There was nothing local about the slant of those gold cat’s eyes studying his. 6’, god knew what, shoulders as wide as a barn, narrow hips and legs longer than the Red River flowing outside the back door, Elias turned slowly on his bar stool, unable to resist the lure of face to face with the man.
Every kind of internal radar he possessed was going off, and Elias wasn’t sure if he should listen to the one telling him that the men in front of him were dangerous; or if he should tune into his gaydar which was going off like fireworks on the 4th. Holy fuck! Elias thought what the hell was a guy like that doing in Daffodil North Dakota?
Chapter 4
Elias stood across the street from a new crime scene watching while everyone ran around in controlled chaos, each person with a job to do and determined to get it done as fast as possible. Another killing, another woman sliced up in her car. Serial killer. The conclusion was inevitable, only Elias knew it wasn’t the whole truth, and he was sure no one currently on scene could handle the truth if he chose to share it. With no reason to put it off, he started across the street, head bent against the wind. He kept his hands buried deep in the pocket of his trench coat, the bottom of it whipped around his legs. It was snowing. The weather was hell on a crime scene. If there had been any external clues, they had been wiped away before the first police car arrived. Elias doubted there had been anything, but it was a shame not to know for sure.
He was puzzled over the footprints Jane had seen. Whatever was doing this had left them intentionally, and trying to figure out the why of that was driving him nuts. He couldn’t figure out a reason for it. Lost in thought he flashed his federal ID at the cop guarding the perimeter. They’d already been through the “what are the feds doing here” spiel; his explanation that he was there as an observer for his own reasons had done little to mollify anyone. He kept his head down and his ID out when one of them got that look in his eye. Elias tugged his hat down a little farther over his ears; it was too damn cold. He didn’t know why he hadn’t gone after the job in Florida instead. Swamp lights might not be more interesting, but they were damn sure warmer. He looked over the dark blue Honda Accord surrounded by police, and maybe they were less deadly.
“Hey, you, James,” The sheriff called him, waving him over. Elias frowned, and moved toward the man standing beside blood stained car. The windows weren’t painted with blood, but that didn’t mean there was a lack of the stuff. It had splattered against them and run down the glass. No longer bright it was like ugly brown paint thrown around inside the car, but there was no mistaking the smell as he joined the sheriff at the open door. The mutilated body of the young lady was still behind the steering wheel. Her blood that wasn’t splattered on the windows had soaked into the seat around her. The freezing cold kept the car from smelling like a slaughter house, but the coopery tinge on the air was unmistakable. Elias looked at the body, frozen solid where it sat. They were going to have an interesting time getting her out, which likely explained why she was still sitting there. The sheriff directed Elias’ attention away from the blue tinged rigor of the woman’s face to the less disturbing view of the empty passenger seat. Blood splattered it in random designs, but what the sheriff was interested in was anything but random. A hand print on the back of the seat, beside the headrest, it was perfectly clear, unmarred and deliberate. He was leaving clues; taunting the police, just like a real serial killer. Elias felt a headache starting. This was just great.
“Fuck.” He muttered; the sheriff looked at him expectantly, “That’s all really, just Fuck.” Elias told him, shaking his head.
“Serial behavior,” the sheriff said staring at the hand print, “he’s taunting us. I don’t want to call in outsiders, but I’m not sure I have the resources for this. 4 girls are already dead,” he hesitated, “maybe 5 though I can’t understand that last one. The girlfriend mentioned footprints; we didn’t pay enough attention to her. I’ll have to talk to her again. That might be the first scene where he left a clue, even though I don’t understand how. Did you see that car?” The sheriff turned to look at Elias, his lined face dark with worry. “Oh, of course you didn’t.” he turned back to stare at the handprint. “I’ll open it up for you, everything we have if you’ll help.” Elias was taken aback by the offer. Local police didn’t welcome FBI interference, and cooperation was given grudgingly in most cases, as if the very presence of the FBI was an insult to the capability of the local police department.
“Of course,” he agreed without hesitation, “It’s more than I have permission to do, but if I can help I will.” The sheriff nodded his thanks.
“Appreciate that son, now let me get someone on this handprint and see what we can find out.” The sheriff moved away in the direction of the small group of officers searching for evidence in the blowing snow. The hopelessness of their task was daunting. Elias turned his attention back to the handprint, resisted the urge to lay his hand on it. That wasn’t a place he wanted his prints, though it was obvious that the print was much larger than his hand. He had the hands of an artist not a killer, and even though he considered killing an art in its own right that didn’t make the elegance of his hands seem any less out of place.
Elias shook off thoughts of how he should have stuck with the piano, and looked back at the young woman behind the wheel. Brutalized and frozen, her life stolen from her in an instant, the hope and promise that had made her a person, destroyed. He glanced at the handprint a final time before turning to follow the sheriff’s path through the snow. His eyes dark with speculation, he barely acknowledged the other men when he arrived in their midst. He knew the hand print had not been left for the clumsy investigation of the police department, for men focused only on what they could see with their eyes. It had been left for him. Whatever was out there knew he was there, and what he was doing. The footprints, the handprint were not clues but a warning. It was a reminder of how easy it was for the hunter to become the hunted. Elias tried to deny the chill that traced his spine, but he shuddered and pulled up the collar of his coat determined to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades that said someone was watching him. He tugged his hat down more firmly over his ears and thrust his hands into his pockets.
Let him watch, Elias thought with a grim chuckle, let the bastard watch.
~*~
Sam surveyed the lackluster motel room with a jaundiced eye; it was no better or worse than the last hundred places they’d stayed. Clean, the smell of disinfectant almost, but not quite, countering the smell of stale cigarettes lingering in the air. He wrinkled his nose, he didn’t mind the smell of cigarette smoke, but there was nothing pleasant about years of embedded smoke mingling with the sharp pine scent of Pine Sol.
“Christ it smells in here,” Dean grumbled dropping his duffle on the table beside the door. Sam’s bag hit the middle of a bed, and he walked through the small room to poke his head in the bathroom. There the elderly stained toilet and tub gave mute testimony of years of abuse. The tile was dingy and the grout discolored but it was clean. The shower curtain was pulled back; making it easy to see the tiny room was empty. When he turned back to the room Dean tossed him a box of salt; Sam caught it and went to the nearest window to salt the sill, careful to leave an unbroken line.
“No windows in the bathroom.” He told Dean moving to the only other window in the room, the long one beside the door. He salted that, and then the threshold, while Dean looked through the night stand hoping for some information about a place to eat. He found a Gideon Bible, and the local phone book; there was not so much as a logo pad or pen. “We can ask at the desk.” Sam told him to stop his griping, “now shut up and let me finish this.” Dean turned around to find Sam busy painting a ward on the back of the door. He frowned.
“Sammy, what the fuck man?” he demanded. Sam continued to paint concentrating on getting every line correct.
“I don’t know what this is Dean, but it’s bad. Can’t hurt to be careful,” He paused painting a few more lines, “you should pull up the carpet in the corner over there, and paint a devil’s trap under it, in case we need it.” Dean looked over at the faded carpet, the stains on it deeply set and unidentifiable. Tearing it up was not high on his list of things to do.
“Sam,” he growled a protest, but was already moving towards the corner of the room. Sam might be a pain in the ass, but if he thought they might need a devil’s trap, Dean wasn’t going to argue. Bitch about it? You bet, but there’d be a devil’s trap under the carpet before they left the room.
~*~
Elias entered the bar with a rush of cold air and a swirl of snow. He surveyed the room as he brushed the wet stuff off the shoulders of his coat, stamping his feet to get it off his boots. He tugged off his ski cap and shoved it into his pocket. It’d still be damp and as good as useless later, but there was nowhere else to put it. He finger combed his hair forward, making sure it didn’t stick up some weird way. He hated hats. Done with his brief survey of the interior, satisfied there was nothing lurking in the corners of the room, and that his appearance was satisfactory, he walked to the bar where he ordered his beer.
The bartender set it in front of him without comment. Elias had been in the last three nights running. The locals were becoming used to seeing him, nothing close to acceptance, but at least he was no longer the focal point of the night. He’d put up with it because one of the best places to talk to people was the local bar. They’d get loose lipped from alcohol, and talk about things he’d never get them to admit if they were cold sober. Elias pulled his leather gloves off and dropped them into the pocket with his hat. He chose a stool and settled onto it rubbing his hands together trying to thaw them. He was tired of being cold, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, not while whatever it was roamed around free to kill. He looked over the crowd. A live band was tuning up on stage, and several groups of people were at the far end playing pool. There were women everywhere. His mouth set in a grim line Elias wondered if they would all arrive home safe that night.
He was half done with his beer when he got warm enough to open his coat. He kept it on though in his mind he could hear his mother’s voice, an echo from his past, scolding that if he wore his coat indoors it wouldn’t be good for anything when he went back outside. The memory made him smile, a bare quirk of his lips, tinged with melancholy. He was sure she was right, but his arsenal wouldn’t be good for anything if he left it hanging in the coat room. Sorry, Mom. He thought, but he needed the reassuring feel of his blades against his wrists more than he needed to please his mother. He’d never been very good at that anyhow. She was a good woman, his father the best, Elias felt he was of questionable value as a son. They sure as hell deserved better than him.
That self deprecating smile made another brief appearance. Elias didn’t regret who he was, he was too relieved that the voices that had haunted him his entire life, that all the things he saw that no one else seemed to notice, were not figments of a broken mind but real. The day he’d he learned the truth about the world had changed him, changed his life. His relationship with his parents was broken, but he wouldn’t go back. The memory of his terrified youth spent in and out of hospitals was not a pleasant one. His life started the day he understood that ghosts and other supernatural creatures were real, and often they were dangerous. When he’d met the old hunter, living alone and boarded up in a hovel at the edge of town, Elias had been ecstatic, he thought that he’d found someone he could bond with; things hadn’t turned out that way.
Jericho wasn’t interested in talking, or bonding. He was retired from hunting, in all practical ways. He wasn’t interested in talking, or forming a friendship with the ragged half deranged boy who’d followed a ghost into his backyard one night. What he’d done was train him. Starved for interaction with anyone who understood, Elias accepted anything Jericho had to offer. He absorbed the practical lessons and excelled at the physical. It had taken years, but with the old man’s help, Elias had rebuilt himself from the inside out, had turned himself from a frightened child into a dangerous man. He lived beyond the fringe now, his true identity left behind on the night stand in his parent’s house the night he’d left home for good.
Elias realized his bottle was empty, and motioned for another one. He glanced at himself in the mirror; his black trench framed his slender body to its best advantage, making his shoulders appear broader and his hips narrower. His open coat revealed a hand knit sweater in his favorite dark jade green. It was thick and warm, and topped a pair of black denim jeans. Those were worn in all the right places, not from use but from the expertise of the designer. Not visible in the mirror, his Parda boots gleamed on his feet. They showed no signs alteration, though they were lined and steel toed. A heavy gold ring glinted on the ring finger of his right hand and a single gold hoop pierced the lobe of his left ear. He was a clothes horse in the truest sense of the word, but didn’t go in much for jewelry.
The door behind him opened, and Elias watched in the mirror as the newcomers entered. He’d never seen them before, and after three days he was familiar with the crowd that frequented the bar. Daffodil was not the sort of place that attracted visitors, especially not in the middle of the winter. These two fit right in, stomping snow off steel toed boots as they shrugged out of heavy parkas, scattering more snow on the floor. Elias started to look away, writing them off as locals. Their plaid shirts and scruffy jeans screamed they were home, but then the tall one’s eyes met his in the mirror. Elias froze. There was nothing local about the slant of those gold cat’s eyes studying his. 6’, god knew what, shoulders as wide as a barn, narrow hips and legs longer than the Red River flowing outside the back door, Elias turned slowly on his bar stool, unable to resist the lure of face to face with the man.
Every kind of internal radar he possessed was going off, and Elias wasn’t sure if he should listen to the one telling him that the men in front of him were dangerous; or if he should tune into his gaydar which was going off like fireworks on the 4th. Holy fuck! Elias thought what the hell was a guy like that doing in Daffodil North Dakota?
Chapter 4