"Rush" - Chapter Ten, Part One
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Chapter One here.
Chapter Nine here.
Rush
Chapter Ten
“Tell me, Katie,” Dean said, meeting the spirit-child’s wide brown eyes squarely. “Tell me the name of the person who killed you.”
At first he thought it was his imagination, because her mouth didn’t move, and because the sound seemed to come from everywhere. Strains of familiar music, something he’d heard before on that first afternoon at The Baron Hotel-a young girl’s lilting voice singing a tune long dead.
Come be my forever love
My lovely little turtle dove
“Do you hear that?” he asked gruffly, never taking his eyes off the spirit before him. “Grace, tell me you can hear that.”
Beside him, Grace shifted slightly, and he caught the movement in his peripheral vision.
“’Lovely Turtle Dove,’” she breathed.
“I get it, Katie,” Dean confirmed for the little girl, his voice still soft. “It was Agnes Markham, wasn’t it? Her husband called her ‘turtle dove,’ but she was really a vulture. Agnes hurt you-killed you-and nobody but her and you and Quon-Jin ever knew. Is that right?”
The spirit nodded solemnly, and Dean winced at the sorrow in her expression.
“Honey, why? Can you tell me why she would do such a terrible thing to you?”
Katie leaned in even closer to whisper into Dean’s ear, her icy breath painful on his bare flesh.
“Not-my-mommy…” she told him, withdrawing slightly and holding up three pale white fingers.
In an instant, she was back across the room, shrinking against Quon-Jin’s side as Dean recoiled slightly, startled.
The move put him off-balance, his knee giving way without warning, and Dean toppled back and to the side, landing painfully, high on his hip.
“Sonofa--!”
“Dean!” Grace cried, kneeling quickly beside him.
The air was suddenly thick with tension as Quon-Jin billowed forward again, darkening, shoving Katie out of the way. Dean grabbed up the salt-gun with a snarl, once more bringing it to bear on the hanged man.
“Hold it!”
He matched steely gazes with the Chinese spirit, then remembered suddenly the feel of small hands on the stairs, pushing against his back as he raised the shotgun to fire, forcing him off-kilter; remembered Quon-Jin leaping forward with a shout. Dean drew his brows together, taking his bottom lip in his teeth. Maybe they protect each other.
As if on cue, Katie gave her hand an angry flip, the gun flying from Dean’s hands as he lay on the clay floor and a stack of cardboard boxes tumbling forward, almost in slow motion. Grace screamed as the cartons fell, breaking open to bury them both in a sudden flood of books and papers, old clothes and tools, cast-offs from an earlier age.
The hunter struggled to rise, cursing, digging his way out from under and bringing Grace with him so that together they burst up from the flotsam like breaching dolphins from ocean waves. Dean pawed for his handgun, but it was gone, lost somewhere in the basement along with the salt-gun, and iron rounds wouldn’t have done much good, anyway. About the best he could do was stay on his feet and breathe heavily, protecting Grace by standing in front of her and attempting to pin the Chinaman and the little girl with a baleful glare.
“Dean, how do you think angry spirits are born?”
The soft voice was vague and fleeting in Dean’s memory as everyone stood frozen for a long, tense moment.
“They can’t let go, and they can’t move on.”
He didn’t know where the words came from-didn’t really care-but he recognized the empathy in them, felt them touch a responding chord somewhere inside him.
These two, a little girl who should have had her whole life ahead of her and the man falsely accused of her murder-they deserved something better than the cards they’d been dealt.
But they needed to go, and go now, before they really got somebody hurt. Or dead.
So, finally, Dean ducked his head.
“All right,” he said curtly, forcing his shoulders to relax, knowing all eyes were on him. “It’s all right. We’ve just got to work this out.”
Slowly, the tension eased, Quon-Jin repositioning himself protectively near Katie, Grace getting a solid grip on Dean’s arm to help steady him.
He knew without looking that his kneecap hadn’t dislocated again, but the pain was sharp, almost sharper than it had been in Elko, and Dean flashed suddenly on Sam, on how mad Sammy’d be if his big brother had gone and screwed things up beyond redemption.
A caustic laugh tried to crawl out of his mouth, and Dean bit it back impatiently.
Another Winchester, beyond redemption.
Couldn’t say it would surprise him, if it happened, he thought. Make that when it happened. Like father, like son-
Except that Dean had a job to do first, and damned if he wasn’t going to do it.
I’m takin’ care of business, Dad, and I’m tryin’ to take care of Sammy, too. Some days are just easier than others. This one? Hell, who ever figured I’d be jawin’ with ghosts?
Keeping a wary eye on Quon-Jin, he shifted to a more comfortable position, most of his weight on his left leg, against Grace.
“I don’t understand,” the curator said, her voice undeniably even although her body was trembling. “Agnes killed Katie because she wasn’t her daughter?”
“Maybe,” Dean rasped, his knee screaming like a banshee. “Maybe she was jealous of Katie’s mom. Or maybe she just killed her out of grief at having lost her own kid so recently.”
That put a frown-line between Grace’s brows, and she turned to him almost sharply. “The Markhams didn’t have a child.”
“Yeah, they did, actually, and I can show you the proof upstairs in your own little museum. And at the cemetery-I think the Historical Society’s going to have to make that fence around the Markhams’ grave a little bigger. Anyway, after Agnes murdered Katie, she blamed Quon-Jin.”
“And they just believed her? What proof could they have had that he was guilty?” Grace’s voice cracked with emotion, and Dean brushed a hand against her arm, thinking of the little footprints he’d seen on the pollen-dusted basement steps.
“They didn’t need any, Grace. I think Quon-Jin and Katie hung out together back in the day, kinda like they do now. Don’t know how they got to be buddies, but they were, and she probably came and went down here as she pleased, although maybe not while he had customers. So he’d have had plenty of opportunity to kill her, if he’d wanted to, and Agnes…well, Agnes already had some kind of an ax to grind against foreign imports. Plus, those days? She knew that nobody’d ever take the word of a Chinaman over hers.”
Across the spill of cardboard boxes, Quon-Jin’s spirit brightened again, and if he squinted, Dean might swear the hanged man had begun to smile.
Effin’ ghosts, throwin’ him off, actin’ almost human…
“Is that right, you two?” Dean asked, and although both Katie and her protector nodded, the little girl tucked her ring finger under her thumb beside the little one, leaving two fingers still upraised.
“Not-my-mommy!” she repeated firmly.
“Not her mommy?” Dean turned to Grace in frustration. “What’s that mean? Who the hell was her mommy?”
Of course Grace had the answer. “Delilah Reardon," she said. "I’m sorry, Dean-I thought you knew.”
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Bull Clancy was a monster of a man, his height almost equal to Sam’s, but his mass broader, every inch of it spectral muscle. Sam wondered how he’d managed to miss all that the first times he’d seen the ghost, because it sure as hell was hard to miss now. And for a dead guy, Bull wielded a pickax with amazing accuracy.
Sam dodged back quickly as the ax swung past him, chest-high. He had raised his gun to fire when it had gone flying, torn from his hand by spirit-force, skittering across the stone floor into the utter darkness of the drift as Clancy hoisted the ax for another swing. Now, he was weaponless, and the iron rounds hadn’t had much impact on the ghost to begin with.
Clancy came at him again, dead eyes glittering with malicious humor, feinting left, then right as the hunter countered warily. Somewhere nearby was the hole Steve had dropped through, and for a moment Sam thought the ghost might be maneuvering him toward it.
But Clancy laughed, vanishing abruptly and plunging the Forty-Eight into utter darkness, only to reappear moments later at Sam’s back.
Sam whirled, huffing with angry surprise, and Clancy vanished again, this time blinking into existence just behind Sam’s left shoulder. When the ghost tapped him lightly, leaning in and grinning as though to tell the young man some delicious secret, the touch was like ice, freezing Sam’s arm and the expanse of his back.
With a shout, Sam leaped away again, although he knew he was only buying time as Clancy’s roaring laughter echoed around the vast and empty drift.
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Dean blinked, brows gathering as he looked skeptically at the woman beside him.
“The local madam was the gold-camp darling’s mother,” he said in disbelief, and Grace nodded.
“Delilah Reardon was Katie’s mother,” Dean said again, just to make sure, “and they both lived upstairs at The Baron.”
“Yes, and yes,” Grace confirmed quickly. “Katie’s body was found in the alley right behind the hotel.”
Well, what do you know? Maybe that wasn’t just little Wren Markham he’d heard…
Then Dean’s frustration spiked. “Where the hell did ‘Kaheny’ come from!?” he snapped to the room at large.
“Uh-there was probably some gossip, but nobody ever really knew for sure who Katie’s father was. Delilah never told.”
“Grace.”
His gentling growl did its job and the curator ducked her head, almost blushing as she admitted, “There are Kahenys in the Markham family tree, but everyone seemed to believe that was coincidence, and that ‘Kaheny’ was just Katie’s theatrical name.”
Dean nodded, smile thin and grim as more puzzle pieces fell into place. “Sure they did. Delilah and Katie showed up in Rattlesnake from San Francisco, which is where the Markhams were from. And they settled down in The Baron Hotel, and got friendly enough that JT and Delilah had a picture taken together, one that looks almost exactly like one he took with his wife Agnes. What do you want to bet that he and Delilah knew each other pretty well from the good ol’ days back in the City, and that JT Markham was little Katie’s father?”
“No bet,” Grace responded immediately, and Dean gazed across the basement at Katie and Quon-Jin, eying the child’s ghost speculatively, letting the wheels in his head turn.
“But whether or not the gossip was true, everybody thought Delilah went crazy after Katie’s murder, and that’s why she stabbed JT. Then he ran downstairs and died in his wife’s arms,” he recalled aloud.
“Yes,” Grace said again, and Katie’s expression grew sorrowful.
Frowning, Dean struggled to make the right connections. If he closed his eyes, he could bring to life the specter of the distraught woman who had appeared in the Markhams’ suite and stabbed him in the heart, vivid and livid in her red dress, bloodless cheeks somehow flushed with anger to match as she shrieked incoherently into his startled face.
But there had been words, punctuated with obscenities…
“Give me-daughter!” she had shrilled, her harridan’s voice piercing. “Own child, Ja-Mark-killed her!”
Dean felt his eyes widen as he got the picture. “Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured to himself, studying the little girl standing in the protective shadow of a Chinese drug-lord. “You’re gonna sing me that same song, aren’t you?”
“What?” Grace asked, leaning in to hear him, and Dean drew in a sustaining breath.
“Agnes killed them both,” he announced, his voice rough with the realization, and Katie began to brighten. “Agnes killed Katie and JT-crime of passion, I guess you’d call it-and then she made patsies out of Quon-Jin and Delilah. People believed her, or didn’t mind believing her, anyway, so that’s who they blamed. Isn’t that right, Katie?”
Once more, the child’s image flickered, and when she reappeared in front of him, Dean bent over, slow and without threat, until he could look directly into her eyes.
“I thought that was your mommy I saw with the knife, Katie,” he told her seriously. “Everyone said that Delilah had killed JT Markham, and I had no reason to doubt it. Sure looked like her, once I saw her picture and could put a name with the face. What I couldn’t figure out was how Delilah could have crossed the salt-line. Spirits shouldn’t be able to do that.”
The little girl shook her head with a pout, and Dean quirked a smile.
“Yeah, I know you know. That’s why you knocked, huh? To see if I’d come out and play. You’ve been leavin’ your footprints everywhere, haven’t you, including right outside my door.”
He couldn’t take bending any more, and Dean straightened with a muffled groan, throwing a quick glance at Quon-Jin, checking to make sure the ghost was behaving himself.
He kinda felt like Matlock, proving his client innocent, making his final, impassioned pitch in a TV episode’s big climax: key witness on the stand and everybody in the courtroom leaning forward in fascination, hanging on his every word as he laid things out for them, wrapping up all the loose ends, leaving the jury no choice but to send the real killer to the chair.
Not bad for a guy with blood still tricklin’ down his face….
“Thing is, the woman who took a stab at me looked an awful lot like Agnes, too,” Dean said, sweeping his left arm out dramatically and nearly overbalancing because of it. He cleared his throat, hoping no one had noticed as the color rose in his cheeks. “And salt couldn't stop her, because the woman with the knife was Agnes, and she didn’t need to cross the salt-line; she was already right there in the room. She died in that room, and then some part of her just never left. Her daughter Wren is still there, too-I heard her running; felt her bump against the bed. Salt wasn’t gonna work against either of them, because they both died in that room, were both already inside.”
Dean dropped his volume, speaking gently now and only for Katie’s benefit. “And ol’ Agnes, she repeats your daddy’s murder time and again, because of how hateful and sad she is. Isn’t that right, Katie? Did I get that right?”
This time, Katie nodded, and Dean pressed his lips together, knowing what he was about to say would sound like a favor, and wondering at how far he’d come down his long, strange road to be doing favors for effing ghosts. Jesus, what would Dad say about that?
It didn’t matter, though-not now. Dad was dead; black-and-white was for zebras and old movies; and right was right, whatever the circumstances.
“I can make sure that Agnes Markham and her little girl find some peace, Katie; so you can all find some peace,” Dean said, voice soft and sincere. “Would you like me to do that?”
Again the child’s spirit nodded, and the light around her grew so that Dean had to narrow his eyes against it.
“Then I’ll take care of it,” he promised. “’Not my mommy’ was right both times, sweetheart. You did real good, helpin’ me and Grace understand what happened to you and to your friend Quon-Jin and to your daddy. Now? Now, you’re free to go.”
But suddenly Katie was twisting before him, a coy kitten, one finger still raised.
“Not my mommy,” she whispered, her smile shy as she searched Dean’s face with big brown eyes, twirling the finger in front of his nose.
Oh.
To his astonishment, Dean felt his cheeks flush again, but she certainly wasn’t the first girl who’d had a crush on him. First dead one, maybe….
He returned Katie’s smile warmly.
“I get it,” he said to her, leaning down once more, still keeping his voice low so only the two of them could hear. “That was your little tea party, up in your mama’s room. I thought maybe Delilah was fallin’ back into old habits, and it never crossed my mind that you were the one doin’ the asking. Well, Katie-cat, that was real nice of you to invite me, and I’m sorry I had to decline.”
Dean lifted a hand and raised his own index finger. For just a moment, the living and the dead touched, Katie beaming with bashful delight.
Quon-Jin stepped forward quietly then, arm outstretched, and Katie glanced back at him over her shoulder. With a final look at Dean, she skipped to the Chinese man, folding her hand into his. They were both smiling broadly as the light streaming from them became blinding, and Dean was forced to turn away, shielding his eyes against the inside of his elbow, Grace burying her face in her hands. When at last they could see again, the spirits were gone, faded into nothing.
“Where did they go?” Grace wondered softly beside him, and Dean could only shrug.
“I don’t know. I hope they went to someplace better.”
“I hope so, too.”
The curator’s voice was almost breathless, and he could tell that she was crying in silence once more. Still, she grasped his elbow gently, allowing him to balance against her while he straightened, making sure his knee wasn’t going to buckle when he put his weight on it.
Then he turned to her, wanting to apologize, somehow, although he wasn’t sure why. To his surprise, Dean found she was smiling, although her face shone with tears in the steady glow from the light overhead.
“Grace?”
She laughed, wiping her eyes as she explained. “Now Quon-Jin’s family can venerate him, Junjei. Now I can honor my ancestor, and that’s a wonderful blessing. Thank you.”
Their kiss was slow and sweet and filled with promises Dean knew he could never keep, no matter what he might want. But there was comfort in it, and acceptance, and Dean felt locks being opened inside him, releasing things he’d kept imprisoned for a very long time. Then, at last, he drew back, his thumb brushing away the tears from her cheek.
“I think you have a story to tell me,” she said, gazing up at him as Dean smiled, curious. “Something about salt, and a woman in your room with a knife?”
He chuckled but said nothing, bending with a pained groan to toss boxes aside until he found his handgun, moving stiffly to the far corner of the basement to retrieve the shotgun. Then he and Grace climbed the stairs together, one step at a time and hand in hand, pausing at the top to turn off the light.
“Why didn’t Delilah speak up?” Grace asked, bemused. “She could have told them she didn’t kill JT, but she never said a word. She spent the rest of her life in prison.”
Dean shrugged, holding open the door into the joss house and ushering her through. His knee-brace lay beside the altar, and he grabbed it up, began strapping it back around his throbbing leg.
“I don’t get it all, Grace,” he said. “Maybe she just didn’t care, after Katie died. And think about it. Delilah was nothing more than a glorified hooker, but Agnes owned the richest mine for miles around. It’s like with Quon-Jin-which one of them was more apt to be believed? For my money, in both cases, it was Agnes.”
“I guess there’s discrimination of all kinds,” Grace admitted sadly, and Dean nodded.
“You got that ri-“ He broke off abruptly, startled by a call on his cell, somehow certain that whatever his brother had to say couldn’t be good. “Excuse me; I gotta take this, and the charge is goin’. Sammy? What’s happ--”
“Help!” A woman’s voice cried. “Oh, please, help! He said it’s Clancy!”
Dean’s eyes widened, his brow furrowing with disbelief. “Who is this? Erica? Where’s Sam?”
“In the mine!” the wailing voice cried loudly, and Grace looked at him in alarm. “Sam’s in the mine, and there’s a…a man! Clancy! Sam said to tell you it was Clancy!”
Grace put her hand on his arm, and Dean turned away slightly from the distraction of her touch, thinking fast. If Bull Clancy had shown up again at the mine, it meant that they’d missed something back at the cemetery…
“Erica! Calm down!” he ordered, lips thinning. “Are you at the North Cedar?”
He thought he heard a ‘yes’ amidst her sobs, but it didn’t really matter. That’s where Sam was, so that’s where Dean was headed.
“Erica, stay where you are,” he said roughly into the cell. “I’m on my way.”
He snapped the phone shut, then took Grace firmly by the shoulders.
“Grace, I know Bull Clancy’s song-book is in the museum. Is there anything else of his-something personal? Think hard!”
She shook her head quickly, startled. “Dean, the hymnal belonged to Leland Hartson. Does it matter?”
“The card said-“ Understanding flared suddenly in Dean’s green eyes. “You told me the cards were mixed up. What’s in that display case that belonged to Clancy?”
“Um…” She was flustered, his vehemence making her first forgetful, then verbose, words rushing out of her in a stream. “His-his teeth! The wooden false teeth he wore when he first found color at North Cedar and Inishmurray. Before that, he couldn’t afford real dentures. Hartson sometimes made jokes about them-said it was fitting for a horse’s ass to be wearing horse’s teeth!”
Jesus Christ, Dean thought. How much more personal could you get than somebody’s spit, and just how much of Bull Clancy’s saliva had soaked into those teeth during the time he’d worn them, tying his spirit down exactly the same as bone and blood and hair would do?
He bit down hard on another oath, his eyes boring into hers.
“Wasn’t anybody in this town buried in one piece?” he growled. “Sweetheart, you gotta open that case for me right now!”
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Chapter Ten, Part Two here.
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