Days Like These, Chapter Four
: : CHAPTER FOUR : :
September 29, 2010… Home of Dean Winchester & Sam Wesson, Alexandria, Virginia
The need to wake started to lift Sam to consciousness. He felt the pressure of needing to relieve himself and finally gave into the call of nature. Rolling up and swinging his legs off the bed he ambled to the bathroom without turning on the lights. After taking care of himself he shuffled back to bed and for the first time noticed that Dean was no longer there.
He was awake instantly. He felt the sheets on Dean’s side. Cold.
Their bedroom was fairly compact as far as Master Bedrooms went, but their apartment had three rooms. One was reserved for guest, usually visiting agents. And one was an office they shared. Dean taught at least one class each semester at either Georgetown, American or UVA. He had an invitation to teach at Howard and Catholic for next year.
Pulling on the bulky blue sweater that Dean claimed had seen better days he padded out of the room, but never got as far as the office. Dean had covered the floor to ceiling windows of the living room with the pictures of the boys, his laptop was open on the coffee table and he was sitting on the couch hunched over scribbling on something and making circles.
Sam peered over without getting too close. Calendars? He cleared his throat. Usually, Dean knows when he’s there. Sam watched the total absorption of his partner at his task.
Hell, an elephant could probably waltz through the door in a tutu and he wouldn’t notice! He quickly surveyed the room. The bourbon was on the counter, there was less in it than there was before. He spied the empty glass holding down a sheaf of papers next to the laptop.
“Dean? What the hell, man, it’s,” he looked at the clock on the oven, “four in the morning!”
“Yeah,” Dean kept circling and looking at a chart on the laptop, “Couldn’t sleep. I think I’ve figured it out, Sam.”
“What?” Sam plopped down on the chair to the side of the sofa since there were papers on either side of Dean. “What did you figure out?”
“I think I’ve got the dates.” Dean muttered as he made another notation. “The bodies we have the most recent ones, three from 2010, Milner in Omaha, and the other from this year in Chester,” he looked over at Sam and after his nod, continued, “then there’s the three from 2009, three from 08 and one from 07 and then the one their running more tests on.”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded, “got that. We had that before.” He could see Dean vibrating with nervous energy and he tried to keep his voice calm. “What’s different?”
Dean smirked, “Well, all the deaths that have been pinpointed so far have set the TOD on a Sunday, right?”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded, “religious nut kills on a Sunday. We’ve seen that before.”
“Yes, we have,” Dean agreed, “but those killing always had a set pattern. Once a month, once every seven weeks… these have no pattern.”
“But they’re not random?” Sam looked over all the papers strewn about, “You wouldn’t have been doing this much research for random.”
“Nope,” Dean grinned slightly, “I wouldn’t. This one,” his tone was almost admiring, “she’s a tricky bitch. Look at this,” he cleared the cushions on his left so Sam could move over, “wait,” Dean turned to Sam, “d’you know how Easter is calculated?”
Sam shrugged, “No idea, except it’s always on a different date, it’s frikkin’ annoying!”
Dean chuckled, “Yeah, it is. Okay, so, way back when, 325 AD, the First Council of Nicaea is convened by Rome’s Emperor, Constantine the First. He brings together Christian bishops from all over making it the very first ecumenical council.”
Sam nods, “I thought it was to make up new laws for the church.”
“It was,” Dean agreed, “But,” he smirked, “it was also the first effort to reach a consensus by bringing representatives of known Christendom together. And one of the big questions was Easter.” Sam’s brows rose in question. “I don’t know why, no one really does, but until this meeting Easter followed the Jewish calendar.” He looked over at Sam who nodded.
“Because Easter really is Passover, right?”
“Exactly,” Dean agreed. “But this council had an issue with the rising of the full moon and didn’t want Easter to come before it. So,” he pointed to a chart he’d constructed, “they fixed a date of the Spring Equinox for March 21. The date for Easter would fall on the Sunday following the full moon that rose after the Spring Equinox which was known as the Paschal moon.”
“Why was Easter such an issue?” Sam asked confused, “I mean other than it’s the time that marks the crucifixion.”
Dean shook his head, “It’s more. For all of Christianity it’s the start of the Ecclesiastical year.” He grinned at Sam’s confusion, “There’s much more to the whole moon thing but for our purposes, you just need to understand HOW Easter is calculated. It’s the Sunday following the full moon that rises AFTER March 21.”
“And it doesn’t matter,” Sam questioned, “that every calendar lists the Spring or Vernal Equinox as March 19th and 20th?”
“For Christians and with regard to Easter,” Dean shook his head, “no, it doesn’t matter. But here’s the important part.” He pulled another page that was loaded with scribbles toward him. “The dates of the killings, they’re really bugging me.”
“Why these Sundays,” Sam asked as he looked at the page with all the days that represented TOD circled in red, “that’s what was buggin’ you?”
“Yeah,” Dean smiled. “Exactly.”
“So, what did you find,” Sam took the calendar, “this is a mess, but I’m sure it means something to you.” He handed it back, “Show me.”
Dean let out a deep breath, “First, this is rudimentary at best, because I don’t have enough information which tells me there are definitely more boys we’ve not found. But here goes.” He shifted to face Sam, “It’s important that you remember the calculation for Easter, because our killer uses that to figure out when to kill her next victim.”
Sam looked at him in confusion.
“Look at the dates here,” Dean pointed to the calendar of 2010. “The kill dates that we now know are, May 30, August 1, September 26. You with me?”
“Yeah.”
“Look here,” Dean drew another heavily scrawled page toward him, “these dates from the bodies attributed to 2009 dates,” he looked over at Sam and at his partner’s nod continued. “The ME reports peg these bodies from June 14, November 8 and January 31, yeah?”
“Got it,” Sam nodded as he peered at the page, “but what does it,” he shook his head, “okay, I don’t got it.”
Dean nodded, “Stay with me,” he rifled through the spread out pages, “this,” he held it up to Sam, “2007.”
Sam nodded, “Four of the bodies are linked to that year.”
“Yes,” Dean smiled in mild triumph, “look,” he ran his finger over the page, “the ME’s fixed the TOD here, on May 6, and here,” he pointed to another date, “August 5,” Dean looked over as Sam nodded and continued, “there are two others November 25 and January 27. You see anything, yet?”
Sam let out a huff of dismay, “Just a lot of random dates. Okay, they’re all Sundays but that could mean everything and nothing.”
Dean nodded as he gnawed as his lip. He looked back at the pages he just showed Sam. He snatched a couple others toward him. He looked from page to page.
Sam looked down at the vast array of papers seemingly strewn about and realized that it wasn’t the mess he originally thought it was. He looked over at the page in Dean’s hand and saw how meticulously the dates were written. “I’m going to put up coffee.” He rose stretching, “I’m guessing sleep is out for both of us.” He shook his head with a small smile when Dean didn’t answer and padded into the kitchen area. He could still see his partner puzzling through all the pages of dates and TODs.
His brows rose as Dean started to cut apart some of his notes and then stack the cut one on top of the other. He was nearly convinced that Dean’s mind was on a bender when he held the stack up to the light.
“Sonovabitch,” Dean breathed out the expletive as he looked at the scrawl in his notebook. And then added to it. Sam was sure this was probably about the hundredth time he’d done it in the past hours. But something in the way Dean said the mild curse also said that he’d just seen something he hadn’t before.
“What?” Sam leaned toward his partner, “What is it?”
“Okay, watch,” Dean keyed up a graph on his laptop, “all these dates mean nothing except that they’re a Sunday.”
“Right.”
“But look backwards,” Dean’s voice was charged with excitement, “the full moon is on the 27th, the only other day of observance that I think fits the profile is Mary Magdalene Day, on May 25. The Sunday after the full moon is May 30.”
Sam shook his head in disbelief.
“Mind you, I can’t really be sure. This is one date, and I’ve got others, but I’d need to see this date reoccur or this target date reoccur.” He held up the sheaves of pages to the light and pointed at one of the columns, as he turned to look back at his partner standing behind him, “D’you see?”
“Shit,” Sam whispered. He took the pages and held them closer to the light so he could see the other pages behind them more clearly. “But you, we, need more.”
:::: :::::: ::::
“These are the dates,” Dean tacked up his pages of calendars riddled with marked off dates, “and based on the TODs we’ve gotten from the MEs then these correspond with the Holy Days of Easter, Ascension Day, Autumn Equinox, Samhain also knows as All Souls Day, Saturnalia, Epiphany and Candlemas also known as the Purification of Virgin Mary and the Presentation of Jesus.”
He pulled up a blank white board, “Look. Our unsub is using the calculation for Easter, there’s enough dates for this one, the Autumn Equinox which comes up three times and each time it’s the same pattern, the Sunday after the full moon that follows the date of the Equinox. And again, here,” Dean jotted down ‘Easter’, “each time, the TOD corresponds to the Sunday after the full moon following Easter.” He wrote out the other examples.
Dean nodded, “And if I’m right,” he spread more pages out on the table, “there are a lot more victims.”
The AVU team looked at Dean in stunned silence as he wrapped up his run down on the timeline he’d assigned to the Angel Boy killer, a moniker coined by Garth at the outset of Dean’s presentation.
It fit.
“So,” Rufus finally broke the dazed silence, “let me understand. This is what you think is the timing, but we need more information to be sure.”
“Right.” Dean gave him a short nod, “And we need to find out what was different in these areas. The victims that have been identified are from all over the country. That means this person travels. Who is she or he? They could travel for business. But I don’t think so.”
He turned to Charlie, “Can you put up that piece I gave you, looks like a big box cut into fours?”
“Sure thing.” In seconds Charlie had the handwritten diagram that Dean made scanned in and projected for the team.
“Look,” Dean pointed to the four boxes, “these are all the states where victims were found.”
“You separated them by season? Gabe leaned forward to get a better look, “Oh!”
Dean nodded, “Yeah. Oh!”
“The states with the coldest climates are hit in the summer and those with the warmest in the winter.” Gabe looked up to where Dean was standing, “That’s an interesting twist. Also means this is a commercial endeavor.”
“Exactly,” Dean grinned.
“So, we need to figure out what was in these towns,” Sam piped up from the far end of the table.
“I’m betting a traveling evangelical group.” Benny looked over at Dean who gave him a small shrug.
“Could be a circus,” Kevin added, “or some other entertainment group like a national touring company.”
“That’s true,” Benny’s partner, Gary, spoke up. The man was very quiet and it was surprising that he joined the discussion. “There are tons of singers and bands that tour all over the country. Magic acts, professional coaches. Sports teams.”
“Yeah,” Garth added, “and some of them, most, have really big entourages. Roadies to set up, some of those might fall into your “Buddy” profile.”
“Good point,” Dean nodded as he listened to his team power through the possible organizations that could shelter their unsub.
“And there are plenty of women on those tours, too,” Charlie added. Since they’d lost Meg and Jessica to the Colorado office, they were very light on the female voice. Charlie had to carry that burden on her own.
“Yeah, but, Charlie,” Sam looked down the table toward her, “would that include the grandmotherly type?”
She shrugged, “Women of the grandmotherly age are agents, managers, lawyers, and,” she shrugged slightly again, “we can’t assume when you attach the label of grandmotherly that we’re talking orthopedics and hair in a bun wearing the housecoat. That is so not women today.”
“No, it’s not,” Dean agreed, “but if our unsub is the grandmotherly type she’d have to the kind of woman that kids would inherently trust. And we still haven’t nailed down either profile, ‘Pretty Woman’ or ‘Grandma’. In the meantime,” he looked at Charlie and Kevin, “let’s get a bead on all the traffic into and out of these areas, see if they have any connections to each other.”
The two Tech Analysts left to get started on searching electronically. “Gabe, Garth,” Dean turned to them, “can you search any news items that maybe broke in these areas at the time we’ve put the murders. See if anything strikes you as off?”
“Sure thing,” Gabe grabbed his cola, and took off for his office with Garth on his heels.
Benny, Gary, Dean and Sam remained. They were still looking at the timeline that Dean had laid out.
“According to this,” Benny broke the silence that had descended, “if it’s right, and knowing you, it is. Then there’s already a new victim.”
Dean nodded, “Yeah, three days ago.”
“And they’ll be another one ooonn,” he studied the chart Dean created, “November twenty-eighth?”
Dean nodded, “You got it.”
“Where do we look,” Sam asked, as he looked at the locations they knew.
“That’s what we need to find out.”
:::: :::::: ::::
Shining faces raptly watched the tent going up. Eyes grew big with the fascinating sight as yards and yards of fabric formed a structure held aloft by a few poles and ropes.
The air was saturated with the sweet scents of sugary treats that were a constant lure for all children. They were heady. They brought delight.
And that always brought out a smile.
September 29, 2010… FBI Headquarters, Washington, DC
Charlie kept her eyes on Dean. She could see the tension in his back as he continued to study the screens projected in front of him. Her brows rose and she nodded in greeting as Benny came in. The War Room was quiet and empty but for the occasional soft click of Dean’s remote screen changer.
Benny sidled up to Charlie’s spot at the back of the room. Three of her computer screens mimicked the ones Dean studied. “How long’s he been standing there?” Dean’s short cropped hair bore the signs of having been ravaged by a hand running through it in frustration many times. His shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and if you looked closely enough you’d see various colored ink stains still on his fingers.
Charlie shrugged, “Most of the afternoon. Made a couple calls. Looked up some stuff on his own.”
Benny looked around the silence-wrapped room. It was a quiet, heavy with frustration and the confusion that comes before most discoveries. In this room, it was Dean’s perplexity that hung in the air. He could nearly hear Dean thinking or trying to puzzle out the string of dates in front of him. He glanced up at the screen and saw an array of calendars laid out. “Where’s Sam?”
Charlie smirked, “Getting food. You know how Dean is, if someone doesn’t feed him, he won’t eat until he figures out what’s making him nuts.”
Benny nodded with well understood knowledge. He’d been with the man for years before they finally split and saved their friendship. He narrowed his eyes as he looked back at the calendars. They were marked with a set of symbols other than the circled dates Dean had shown them earlier. “When did the two new ones come in?”
“About an hour ago,” Dean said without turning. “I’m not seeing something, Benny. It’s here. I know it is, but I’m not seeing it.”
“What is it you don’t think you’re seeing,” Benny joined him in front of the screens as he leaned against the table. “It was damn clever of you to figure out the moon thing and the way our unsub is picking the kill date.”
Dean shook his head, “Thanks,” his voice trailed off lost in thought. He shook his head at the screens at his own thoughts, “Something’s off.”
“What,” Benny prodded, “talk it out.”
His former partner let out a long breath. His eyes skimmed over the calendars. He clicked on the remote button in his hand and another set of markings to the calendars came up along with a US Map.
If… IF… I’m right about these dates,” Dean started but his voice trailed off as he continued to immerse himself in the myriad of dates already laid out. “Then,” he continued finally, “the unsub is organized, methodical. And patient. Look at the detail of her ritual with the burials, the calling cards that are left.”
He looked down as Sam pushed a sandwich into his hand. He absently took a bite as Sam leaned against the table on the other side of him. Dean shot his current partner a grateful glance as the man pushed his rain dampened hair from his face. Charlie had to chuckle to herself as the three men looked at the screen in front of them as if the answer was going to write itself. But she’d seen them do this before.
“Hey,” Sam turned toward her, “what about the locations we’ve got? You find anything that matches yet?”
Charlie nodded, “Couple things.”
“And that’s the other thing,” Dean interrupted them, “these dates, these places, okay they’re all over the place. We already knew that, but there’s no organization at all.” He walked toward the projected calendars, “look at these. They’re a mess!”
“But,” Sam interrupted as he swallowed a bite of his sandwich, “all these dates coincide with the whole Sunday after the full moon thing. You know the Paschal moon stuff.”
Dean nodded, “They do. And I feel good about that, but there’s still something off. There are eight dates. That’s wrong. Doesn’t hold with the rest of the signature.” Sam wasn’t sure if Dean was talking himself through it or actually expecting a response.
“Okay,” Sam took a shot at the fact that he was included in Dean’s musings, “what’s off then?”
Taking a quick bite of his sandwich Dean grabbed some of his written notes. “Eight,” he said more to himself than in answer to Sam. “It shouldn’t be eight. Three maybe. Or Seven. It’s just…” he let out a sigh, “it’s doesn’t hold up with all her other signatures. It’s, I don’t know, sloppy.” He looked from his notes to the screen, “And there are too many, it’s just off.”
Chapter Five