09x17 - Cardinal Points in Quincunx - Part Three: North Sea Oil
Episode number: 09x17 of Season 9 Fan Fiction (S9FF)
Title: Cardinal Points in Quincunx
Subtitle: North Sea Oil
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word count: 1,969
Rating: R
Warnings: violence, child endangerment, language
Sam waited impatiently at the forensics lab. Dean had insisted on lunch, and afterward they spent a few hours looking over the case files from the other incidents. This meant that the lab had had the needle or whatever it was for nearly six hours already, yet no one seemed to have any idea when Sam could take a look at it.
"Excuse me," he said to a passerby. "I need to see some evidence from today's case."
The woman took a moment, then asked, "Who are you?"
Sam flashed his badge. "Agent Bonham, FBI."
"Someone told you to come here to see evidence?"
"Yes, they did. Who are you?"
"Susan," she said. "Susan Fallen."
"Well, Ms. Fallen - "
"Susan, please."
"Susan. I need to see evidence from a crime scene processed today, and I've been waiting half an hour."
"Okay, come with me," Susan said, waving Sam back towards the front door. "I dunno who told you to go down there - "
"He was a gruff guy. I think he was on the scene today, actually."
"Probably Frank. He's new and more of a lab tech than forensics guy. I mean he's good. He just doesn't know the lay of the land."
She sounded genuine and honest, so Sam curbed his temper. "Well, then, I'm glad you found me."
Susan stepped behind one of the counters near the front door and started typing furiously on the computer.
"Okay, so, from today, that's the Hummel Residence?" she asked.
"Yeah, my partner mentioned seeing something on one of the bodies, a needle or something, that forensics took for analysis. I didn't get a chance to look at it, so I wanted to check it out - "
"There's nothing listed here like that," Susan said. "But here, take a look at the inventory."
She swiveled the monitor around. Sam looked over the list of items removed at the scene, including fingerprints, blood samples, and footprints. There was nothing about recovering a needle or anything like it from one of the bodies.
"Is there some reason forensic evidence wouldn't be catalogued?" Sam asked. "If it was still being processed, maybe?"
"No, this list is compiled before we process anything. If something was recovered at the scene, then it should be showing up here," Susan replied.
"I need a list of every forensic tech on scene at the Hummel Residence," Sam said.
"Okay, there were four, let me print out their info - "
"Photos included, please."
"Uh, yeah, I can do that," Susan said as she busied herself. "I'm sure it's just a filing glitch."
"Yeah, no, I understand, it happens," Sam said. "I'm sure it's just someone's bad day, right?"
She smiled as she handed him printed-off sheets on the four techs on scene: Frank Goren, Andrea Holmes, Joseph Black, and Kimberly Cervantes. The photos were clear enough that for Dean to recognize which one collected the needle.
Dean chose scissors for rock-paper-scissors, which he regretted now even though he won the round. Dealing with a coroner was one thing, but waiting for one to show was another thing all together. The morgue was on the ground floor, but even with all the windows open, it remained heavy with the smell of formaldehyde.
He checked his watch. He'd been waiting twenty minutes.
"Hello?" Dean called out.
No answer. Dean decided that a real FBI Agent would either throw a fit or snoop, and he opted to snoop. He didn't need to see the bodies again, so he glanced around for personal affects and found them laid out on a try inside a closed drawer.
Mr. Hummel had a watch, or what was left of one, a wedding ring, and a pendant of what looked to be one of the saints.
The tray also had a small cup off to the side. It was filled with dark, thin objects that could be splinters, but Dean found them oddly similar to the needle the forensics guy pulled off the body. On a hunch, he took a baggy and snatched the longest of them.
Ms. Hummel also had a cup of splinters, along with her wedding ring, necklace, and earrings.
Dean made his way over to the door. It'd been over forty minutes now, so Sam was probably done with the forensics lab. He could come back later to speak with the coroner.
As if the thought itself conjured her, the coroner pushed through the doors of the morgue. She started at the sight of Dean.
"Uh, who're you?" she asked.
"Agent Roberts," Dean said, flashing his badge. "I've been here for over half an hour waiting for the coroner. Please tell me that's you."
"Stephanie Beaulieu," she said, "and yes that's me. But no one told me you were here. Sorry about that."
"The Hummel case," Dean said shortly.
"Autopsy shows they died of blunt force trauma and massive blood loss, although it's likely they died from a blow to the head - "
"It's likely?"
Beaulieu shrugged. "The beating pulverized much of the skeleton, especially the skull, and it seems the blows were indiscriminate between body and head."
"What can you tell me then?"
"The only thing I can be certain about is that the first two strikes were delivered to the back of the knees. The victims fell to the floor on their backs, and then continuous blows were delivered until they were more than dead."
"Overkill," Dean remarked. "Can you tell if anything was missing from the body?"
"Uh, I'm sorry?"
"Anything missing: eyeballs, organs, anything that could've been taken from the body before pulverization."
"Extent of the damage is too severe to be certain," she replied.
"Did you find anything else?"
"Still waiting on tox screens and other tests. The only other thing I've got is these...things," she said. She pointed over to the personal affects. "I pulled about a dozen out of their torsos. Could be splinters from the murder weapon."
Dean handed off his card. "Listen, Dr. Beaulieu, if you find anything out, even if it makes no sense or it seems unimportant, call me."
"Really? A fed wants me to call him over any little thing?" she asked.
"For this case, yes," Dean replied as stoically as possible. For added affect, he said, "This is a serial case. We've got ten bodies like this so far, and twelve missing kids. So you find a toenail fungus or so much as ibuprofen on that tox screen, call me. Okay?"
Beaulieu nodded. "I got it."
Dean dropped a bag of burgers on the table of the motel room. Sam had already pinned up a map and spread out the reports he'd managed to collect.
"Dinner," Dean announced. "You would not believe what happened in the morgue - "
Sam came out of the bathroom and cut his brother off, "I waited for over thirty minutes in the lab. Some bozo pointed me in the wrong direction, and I only found out because I talked to some random lab tech that was nearby."
"Huh," Dean remarked. "I waited for forty minutes at the morgue for the coroner. No one bothered to fill her in that I was waiting for her."
"Think that means something?"
"Maybe these guys just hate feds," Dean dismissed. "But I can't really complain because while I was waiting, I got my hands on this."
He produced the splinters he stole from the morgue.
"Forensics didn't even check the one they pulled off the body into the computer," Sam said, taking the splinters-in-a-bag. "Did the thing you saw look like this?"
"The thing I saw was bigger, longer, but yeah sure, these look just like it," Dean replied. He settled into a seat, not willing to wait any longer for something to eat.
"Just out of curiosity, which of these guys took the needle thing from the scene today?" Sam asked as he spread the four photos out on the table.
"Uh, none of them," Dean replied. "Guy I saw was like early twenties, blond, clean-shaven, brown eyes."
"Maybe we should find that guy, then," Sam said, "because according to the lab, these were the techs on scene today."
"So, what? You think it's someone cleaning up?" Dean asked. "That'd be weird."
"Not if the things we're looking for are smart."
"Coroner said the bodies were too badly pulverized to tell if anything was missing, like a heart," Dean said, biting into his burger.
Sam joined him and unwrapped his own dinner: a chicken sandwich on a roll.
"Or it could be that this area hates feds," Sam conceded. "EMF reader didn't pick up anything at the house or lab."
The pain radiating from her shoulder caused her to drop to the floor; all she could do was yell and writhe. She forced herself to open her eyes.
Crack, pop! Her arm set back into place, and the pain disappeared. She stood back up, and she found herself moving backwards into a living room. Two people were cowering away from two assailants, but all she could see of them was shadow and angry-blue eyes...
Then time pulled her back, out of the room, out of the house, and she forced herself to look, to make it count.
The house number: 4521. Mailbox name: Lundberg. Painted a pale yellow with blue shutters. Nice yard. But everything happened too fast. She was sitting in an old car, black. She didn't catch the make or model. But wherever she was, she was riding shotgun for Dean Winchester -
The car went in reverse, and side roads and highways all zoomed under the car. Finally, she saw, "Welcome to Bishop."
Dodge took a deep breath. Someone crouched over her.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, uh, who - who are you? Where's Castiel?" Dodge asked.
"I'm Kevin," he said. "Who are you?"
"I'm Dodge. Dakota Gage, FBI," she said. She sat up and assessed her surroundings. "I'm friends with Sam."
"Me too, sort of," Kevin replied. "Cas a little distracted. He's on the phone. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, well, visions are a bitch," she mumbled.
"Tell me about it," Kevin said.
"I gotta call Sam," Dodge said as she pulled out her phone.
"Okay, well, that makes sense," Sam said into his phone. "Because the last one you saw happened last night. You must be getting events from the future. I understand, but that's - right, I know. Can you tell us anything about whatever was attacking?"
Dean did his best to ignore the ominous conversation happening over his shoulder. He scanned through the missing persons reports for the children from the other attacks, trying to find a pattern. Almost all of kids were under eighteen, save for one.
Nicholas O'Donnell, age 21, was the Oldest of the O'Donnell children, currently attending Washington State. Two weeks ago, someone murdered his parents and he disappeared. He was the only missing adult in the whole case, but what really caught Dean's eye was his photograph.
Nicholas O'Donnell was the forensics guy from earlier that day.
"I'll be damned," Dean said out loud.
"We gotta go Dean," Sam said, packing his stuff up. "Dodge just had another vision, this time in Bishop, it's about an hour from here."
"Whoa, whoa, wait," Dean said. He held up the photograph, "This was forensics guy from today. He's also one of the missing kids. If this is a monster thing, maybe he knows something. He's got to be one of them."
"Then he'll be down in Bishop," Sam said. "Come on."
"So Dodge calls and all you wanna just run after her orders?"
"This is our first opportunity to get ahead of this thing, maybe prevent some people from dying. You wanna just sit here on your hands because it's Dodge who told us about it?" Sam asked.
"Fine but I'm driving."
<<< Previous Part:
Part Two: Southbound
Next Part: >>>
Part Four: Things are Better in the East
Primary Post: 09x17 Cardinal Points in Quincunx
Primary Post: Season 9 Fan Fiction (S9FF)
Title: Cardinal Points in Quincunx
Subtitle: North Sea Oil
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word count: 1,969
Rating: R
Warnings: violence, child endangerment, language
Sam waited impatiently at the forensics lab. Dean had insisted on lunch, and afterward they spent a few hours looking over the case files from the other incidents. This meant that the lab had had the needle or whatever it was for nearly six hours already, yet no one seemed to have any idea when Sam could take a look at it.
"Excuse me," he said to a passerby. "I need to see some evidence from today's case."
The woman took a moment, then asked, "Who are you?"
Sam flashed his badge. "Agent Bonham, FBI."
"Someone told you to come here to see evidence?"
"Yes, they did. Who are you?"
"Susan," she said. "Susan Fallen."
"Well, Ms. Fallen - "
"Susan, please."
"Susan. I need to see evidence from a crime scene processed today, and I've been waiting half an hour."
"Okay, come with me," Susan said, waving Sam back towards the front door. "I dunno who told you to go down there - "
"He was a gruff guy. I think he was on the scene today, actually."
"Probably Frank. He's new and more of a lab tech than forensics guy. I mean he's good. He just doesn't know the lay of the land."
She sounded genuine and honest, so Sam curbed his temper. "Well, then, I'm glad you found me."
Susan stepped behind one of the counters near the front door and started typing furiously on the computer.
"Okay, so, from today, that's the Hummel Residence?" she asked.
"Yeah, my partner mentioned seeing something on one of the bodies, a needle or something, that forensics took for analysis. I didn't get a chance to look at it, so I wanted to check it out - "
"There's nothing listed here like that," Susan said. "But here, take a look at the inventory."
She swiveled the monitor around. Sam looked over the list of items removed at the scene, including fingerprints, blood samples, and footprints. There was nothing about recovering a needle or anything like it from one of the bodies.
"Is there some reason forensic evidence wouldn't be catalogued?" Sam asked. "If it was still being processed, maybe?"
"No, this list is compiled before we process anything. If something was recovered at the scene, then it should be showing up here," Susan replied.
"I need a list of every forensic tech on scene at the Hummel Residence," Sam said.
"Okay, there were four, let me print out their info - "
"Photos included, please."
"Uh, yeah, I can do that," Susan said as she busied herself. "I'm sure it's just a filing glitch."
"Yeah, no, I understand, it happens," Sam said. "I'm sure it's just someone's bad day, right?"
She smiled as she handed him printed-off sheets on the four techs on scene: Frank Goren, Andrea Holmes, Joseph Black, and Kimberly Cervantes. The photos were clear enough that for Dean to recognize which one collected the needle.
Dean chose scissors for rock-paper-scissors, which he regretted now even though he won the round. Dealing with a coroner was one thing, but waiting for one to show was another thing all together. The morgue was on the ground floor, but even with all the windows open, it remained heavy with the smell of formaldehyde.
He checked his watch. He'd been waiting twenty minutes.
"Hello?" Dean called out.
No answer. Dean decided that a real FBI Agent would either throw a fit or snoop, and he opted to snoop. He didn't need to see the bodies again, so he glanced around for personal affects and found them laid out on a try inside a closed drawer.
Mr. Hummel had a watch, or what was left of one, a wedding ring, and a pendant of what looked to be one of the saints.
The tray also had a small cup off to the side. It was filled with dark, thin objects that could be splinters, but Dean found them oddly similar to the needle the forensics guy pulled off the body. On a hunch, he took a baggy and snatched the longest of them.
Ms. Hummel also had a cup of splinters, along with her wedding ring, necklace, and earrings.
Dean made his way over to the door. It'd been over forty minutes now, so Sam was probably done with the forensics lab. He could come back later to speak with the coroner.
As if the thought itself conjured her, the coroner pushed through the doors of the morgue. She started at the sight of Dean.
"Uh, who're you?" she asked.
"Agent Roberts," Dean said, flashing his badge. "I've been here for over half an hour waiting for the coroner. Please tell me that's you."
"Stephanie Beaulieu," she said, "and yes that's me. But no one told me you were here. Sorry about that."
"The Hummel case," Dean said shortly.
"Autopsy shows they died of blunt force trauma and massive blood loss, although it's likely they died from a blow to the head - "
"It's likely?"
Beaulieu shrugged. "The beating pulverized much of the skeleton, especially the skull, and it seems the blows were indiscriminate between body and head."
"What can you tell me then?"
"The only thing I can be certain about is that the first two strikes were delivered to the back of the knees. The victims fell to the floor on their backs, and then continuous blows were delivered until they were more than dead."
"Overkill," Dean remarked. "Can you tell if anything was missing from the body?"
"Uh, I'm sorry?"
"Anything missing: eyeballs, organs, anything that could've been taken from the body before pulverization."
"Extent of the damage is too severe to be certain," she replied.
"Did you find anything else?"
"Still waiting on tox screens and other tests. The only other thing I've got is these...things," she said. She pointed over to the personal affects. "I pulled about a dozen out of their torsos. Could be splinters from the murder weapon."
Dean handed off his card. "Listen, Dr. Beaulieu, if you find anything out, even if it makes no sense or it seems unimportant, call me."
"Really? A fed wants me to call him over any little thing?" she asked.
"For this case, yes," Dean replied as stoically as possible. For added affect, he said, "This is a serial case. We've got ten bodies like this so far, and twelve missing kids. So you find a toenail fungus or so much as ibuprofen on that tox screen, call me. Okay?"
Beaulieu nodded. "I got it."
Dean dropped a bag of burgers on the table of the motel room. Sam had already pinned up a map and spread out the reports he'd managed to collect.
"Dinner," Dean announced. "You would not believe what happened in the morgue - "
Sam came out of the bathroom and cut his brother off, "I waited for over thirty minutes in the lab. Some bozo pointed me in the wrong direction, and I only found out because I talked to some random lab tech that was nearby."
"Huh," Dean remarked. "I waited for forty minutes at the morgue for the coroner. No one bothered to fill her in that I was waiting for her."
"Think that means something?"
"Maybe these guys just hate feds," Dean dismissed. "But I can't really complain because while I was waiting, I got my hands on this."
He produced the splinters he stole from the morgue.
"Forensics didn't even check the one they pulled off the body into the computer," Sam said, taking the splinters-in-a-bag. "Did the thing you saw look like this?"
"The thing I saw was bigger, longer, but yeah sure, these look just like it," Dean replied. He settled into a seat, not willing to wait any longer for something to eat.
"Just out of curiosity, which of these guys took the needle thing from the scene today?" Sam asked as he spread the four photos out on the table.
"Uh, none of them," Dean replied. "Guy I saw was like early twenties, blond, clean-shaven, brown eyes."
"Maybe we should find that guy, then," Sam said, "because according to the lab, these were the techs on scene today."
"So, what? You think it's someone cleaning up?" Dean asked. "That'd be weird."
"Not if the things we're looking for are smart."
"Coroner said the bodies were too badly pulverized to tell if anything was missing, like a heart," Dean said, biting into his burger.
Sam joined him and unwrapped his own dinner: a chicken sandwich on a roll.
"Or it could be that this area hates feds," Sam conceded. "EMF reader didn't pick up anything at the house or lab."
The pain radiating from her shoulder caused her to drop to the floor; all she could do was yell and writhe. She forced herself to open her eyes.
Crack, pop! Her arm set back into place, and the pain disappeared. She stood back up, and she found herself moving backwards into a living room. Two people were cowering away from two assailants, but all she could see of them was shadow and angry-blue eyes...
Then time pulled her back, out of the room, out of the house, and she forced herself to look, to make it count.
The house number: 4521. Mailbox name: Lundberg. Painted a pale yellow with blue shutters. Nice yard. But everything happened too fast. She was sitting in an old car, black. She didn't catch the make or model. But wherever she was, she was riding shotgun for Dean Winchester -
The car went in reverse, and side roads and highways all zoomed under the car. Finally, she saw, "Welcome to Bishop."
Dodge took a deep breath. Someone crouched over her.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, uh, who - who are you? Where's Castiel?" Dodge asked.
"I'm Kevin," he said. "Who are you?"
"I'm Dodge. Dakota Gage, FBI," she said. She sat up and assessed her surroundings. "I'm friends with Sam."
"Me too, sort of," Kevin replied. "Cas a little distracted. He's on the phone. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, well, visions are a bitch," she mumbled.
"Tell me about it," Kevin said.
"I gotta call Sam," Dodge said as she pulled out her phone.
"Okay, well, that makes sense," Sam said into his phone. "Because the last one you saw happened last night. You must be getting events from the future. I understand, but that's - right, I know. Can you tell us anything about whatever was attacking?"
Dean did his best to ignore the ominous conversation happening over his shoulder. He scanned through the missing persons reports for the children from the other attacks, trying to find a pattern. Almost all of kids were under eighteen, save for one.
Nicholas O'Donnell, age 21, was the Oldest of the O'Donnell children, currently attending Washington State. Two weeks ago, someone murdered his parents and he disappeared. He was the only missing adult in the whole case, but what really caught Dean's eye was his photograph.
Nicholas O'Donnell was the forensics guy from earlier that day.
"I'll be damned," Dean said out loud.
"We gotta go Dean," Sam said, packing his stuff up. "Dodge just had another vision, this time in Bishop, it's about an hour from here."
"Whoa, whoa, wait," Dean said. He held up the photograph, "This was forensics guy from today. He's also one of the missing kids. If this is a monster thing, maybe he knows something. He's got to be one of them."
"Then he'll be down in Bishop," Sam said. "Come on."
"So Dodge calls and all you wanna just run after her orders?"
"This is our first opportunity to get ahead of this thing, maybe prevent some people from dying. You wanna just sit here on your hands because it's Dodge who told us about it?" Sam asked.
"Fine but I'm driving."
<<< Previous Part:
Part Two: Southbound
Next Part: >>>
Part Four: Things are Better in the East
Primary Post: 09x17 Cardinal Points in Quincunx
Primary Post: Season 9 Fan Fiction (S9FF)