Perspective Shift 2/7
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A/N: Before anyone cries foul, I know what numbers the Machine gave Reese and Finch in canon. The discrepancy is deliberate, as you’ll see.
Chapter 1
Accessing current feeds…
February 6, 2013
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam had just finished updating the Men of Letters’ file on the Judah Initiative and was getting up to put it back in the file box where he’d found it when the bunker’s hotline phone rang. The sudden jangling made him jump. None of their usual contacts had that number yet, and the place had been abandoned for over fifty years. Why was that phone ringing now?
It rang again, and after another moment’s hesitation, Sam grabbed a notepad and lifted the receiver on the third ring. “Hello?” he answered, sliding into the chair in front of the phone desk.
There was a beep, followed by a string of nine seemingly disconnected words, each spoken by a different poorly-recorded voice. Sam scribbled them down as quickly as possible. Another beep followed, then a second string, then a third, and so on until Sam had recorded seven strings. A longer beep seemed to signal the end.
“Who is this?”
There was a pause, then “Sorry… wrong… number” and a click and dial tone.
Sam was still staring at the buzzing handset in bewilderment when Dean came into the command center. “Problem, Sam?”
“I dunno,” Sam replied and hung up. “I think it was some sort of automated call, except… the caller actually responded when I spoke.”
Dean shrugged. “Robocalls are gettin’ more sophisticated, make you think you’re talkin’ to a real person.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing. It wasn’t like a telemarketer. It gave me a coded message.” Sam handed the notepad to Dean.
Dean looked at the strings of words and frowned. “The hell?”
“Exactly.”
Dean studied the page more closely. “Did you notice every second and third word….”
“Are in the military phonetic alphabet. I did. Doesn’t get me any closer to figuring out what the code is-I mean, that just reduces each string to three words and three abbreviations of some kind.”
“Mm. Think we’ve got any code books lyin’ around?”
Sam grimaced and looked back into the bunker’s library. “Maybe, if there’s some specialized Men of Letters code. I don’t know why someone would program a computer with it now, though.”
Dean shrugged. “Can’t hurt to look. Not like we’ve got another case to be workin’ on right now until we hear back from Kevin.”
Sam conceded the point with a tilt of his head and stood. “You want the library or the file room?”
Dean considered. “Shoot you for it? Winner gets the card catalogue; loser gets the files.”
Sam readied his fist with a smirk, knowing exactly how to get the outcome he wanted. Dean held out his own fist, and on the count of three, his first two fingers shot out-scissors, as always. Sam kept his fist closed for rock, then gently bopped Dean’s scissors, smacked him on the shoulder, and made his grinning way back into the library as Dean gave an exaggerated display of frustration at losing yet again.
“Take this back for me while you’re at it?” Sam asked, picking up the Judah Initiative folder and waving it at Dean.
Dean rolled his eyes and traded the notepad for the folder. Then he headed off into the hall that led to the file room, and Sam went over to the card catalogue. The Men of Letters’ organizational system took a little getting used to, but after some careful examination of the drawer labels, Sam found the right drawer and started flipping through the cards. Not until he slowed down enough to really study each card, however, did he recognize that the cards had not only the title, author, subject codes, and shelf mark for this library but also the Library of Congress call number and the… Dewey decimal number.
When that registered, Sam stared at the card in his hand, which was for Arcane Codes of the Ancient Near East by James Haggerty, and tried to fit the information into the pattern of the coded message. Arcane July Hotel? That… that worked, actually, so the question was which shelf mark it decoded to. The Men of Letters system was proprietary, and if the call really had gone to the wrong number, the caller probably wasn’t using those marks. The Library of Congress system was much more complicated and didn’t seem to fit with the spare nature of the message. But if each set of three words corresponded to a book with a three-digit Dewey decimal number….
Think I’ve got something, he texted Dean and went back to his laptop to start searching WorldCat for the pieces of information he had. By the time Dean arrived, he’d decoded the first string of words.
“Dewey decimal numbers,” he explained, turning the notepad to let Dean see what he had so far. “Each string of words decodes into a nine-digit number.”
“Huh,” said Dean. “Phone numbers?”
“No, phone numbers have ten digits, and they don’t start with zero. But they could be some sort of serial number or….”
“Social Security numbers?”
Sam looked up sharply. “Maybe. Think you can hack the Social Security Administration?”
“No, but I’ll bet Charlie can. Keep goin’; I’ll call her.”
Sam nodded and went back to work while Dean called their favorite hacker and semi-adopted little sister, Charlie Bradbury. By the time Charlie called back to say she was into the SSA database, Sam had finished five of the remaining strings, and he finished the seventh while she looked up the first six numbers. She emailed the information she’d downloaded to both brothers, and soon they found themselves researching the seven names that had matched the numbers.
When the first three names all came up with missing persons reports, the brothers looked at each other again.
“This is startin’ to look like a hunt,” said Dean.
Sam nodded. “Yeah, but what kind?”
“Email me what you’ve got so far. I’ll start workin’ on patterns.”
“Right.” Sam did so while Dean went to get his own laptop.
The next two names on the list likewise came back with missing persons reports, and Dean quickly discovered two connections among the five missing people: each name went missing from the same town where the next name had lived until suddenly moving to a different city, and all five FBI reports had been prepared by the last name on the list, Special Agent Alan Fahey. Fahey had also noted that in each case, all photos and personally identifying information had disappeared with the missing person, though the fact that the person had once had photos could be inferred from the number of empty picture frames in his or her apartment. The only outlier was the sixth name, Jack Rollins, an antique dealer in Brooklyn; he hadn’t been reported missing, but he had moved from Chicago to New York six months earlier, about the same time the fifth victim was reported missing in Chicago. “So it looks to me,” Dean concluded, “as if our killer could currently be pretending to be Rollins until he finds his next vic-and he may be looking if he’s already bored with selling antiques.”
Sam leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. “So… is this a shapeshifter who’s gone serial or just a human serial killer?”
Dean grinned. “You wanna investigate even if it’s a human, don’t you?”
Sam rolled his eyes but didn’t deny it. “This isn’t just about me having a special interest, Dean. If this Agent Fahey is connecting the dots and decides to go after Rollins himself, he could be the next vic, whether the killer is human or not. And there’s still the question of why a computer would call us with a coded message about this case, whether it really was a wrong number, and if so, who was supposed to get it and why.”
Dean sobered and nodded. “Yeah. That part is weird. And why the hell did the computer dial our hotline, when it’s been either disconnected or not answered for decades?”
“Guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Dean nodded once and closed his laptop. “Two-day drive, and we just got back from Pennsylvania. Wish the computer had called us while we were up there, saved us a trip.”
“Maybe there’s something wrong with it,” Sam mused, shutting down his own laptop.
“With what?”
“The computer. Maybe that’s why it dialed the wrong number in the first place.”
“What, like a virus?”
Sam shrugged. “It’s possible.”
Dean shook his head in confusion, and they fell into step beside each other as they headed back to their rooms to pack.
They were ready to roll within fifteen minutes, but it was late and Dean already had a double whiskey in his system, so Sam drove as far as Chillicothe, Missouri, before stopping for what was left of the night. After breakfast, Dean resumed driving duties while Sam found a number for Fahey and called, posing as Agent Bonham from the Topeka field office.
“Wait,” Fahey said when Sam explained why he was calling. “You guys believe me?”
“Yes, we do. The MO’s not unheard of in serial cases.” Sam would have been hard pressed to name a precedent, despite his treasure trove of serial killer trivia, but he didn’t think Fahey would ask.
“’Cause none of my superiors believe me. They think I’m crazy. But if I’m right… he doesn’t normally keep one identity more than two years, and the time span is getting shorter with every switch, so he’s probably close to choosing his next victim, if he hasn’t already. And if he has, there’s a very limited window, no more than two weeks, between his switching identities and moving to a new city where he’s unknown, which means we lose him. I have to act before he leaves New York!”
“Hey, whoa, you have to act? Alone, without backup? You’re not even a field agent!”
“I don’t care! Nobody here is taking this case seriously. I have to stop him-I’m the only one who can!”
“Look, my partner and I are already on our way to New York. How long will it take you to get there from DC?”
Fahey sighed. “In this weather? Eight hours if I’m lucky. I can’t get a flight on the Agency’s dime without raising a few eyebrows, and with this storm coming, flights into all three major airports are being delayed or cancelled left and right.”
“All right, meet us for lunch tomorrow at noon at the Lyric Diner in Manhattan. We can discuss the case and go together to confront our killer, if we can work out what his new identity is. But don’t try to go all cowboy on us and go after him alone, you hear me?”
Fahey sounded disgruntled when he responded, “Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Thanks, Agent Bonham.” And he hung up.
Dean swore quietly as Sam summarized the conversation for him. “We’re gonna have to get well into Pennsylvania tonight to make lunch tomorrow. And it sounds like Fahey’s liable to take off after Rollins before we even get across the New York state line.”
“There’s only so much we can do, Dean,” Sam noted.
“Yeah, I know, I know. I just… why the hell didn’t the computer call before we left to go home?”
Sam pulled his laptop out of the messenger bag at his feet and opened it on his lap. “You’re assuming it wasn’t a wrong number.”
Dean glanced over at him. “Well, what if it wasn’t? You tellin’ me a computer that could find a pattern like that in Social Security numbers that seem totally unconnected, or a person behind the computer, can’t even figure out one of our cell phone numbers?”
Sam paused. “Maybe it needed a secure landline,” he mused. “One that hadn’t been used in a long time-untraceable.”
Dean frowned.
Sam half-turned toward him. “I mean-suppose there is something wrong with the computer, like a virus or-or a Trojan of some kind. Maybe it can’t reach its usual contact, or maybe there’s too much risk of the hacker behind the virus listening in. But somehow it becomes aware that a dormant phone line is once again active. Knowing who the Men of Letters were, there must be government records about that hotline. Maybe the computer even knows we’re the ones using the bunker.”
“How?!”
“Traffic cams? License plate readers? Laptop webcams? Phone GPS?”
“I thought the bunker was supposed to be invisible.”
“To the supernatural, yeah. But to technology?”
Dean grumbled.
“All I’m saying is, maybe the computer figured we were a safer contact because the hotline can’t be wiretapped as easily as cell phones can. Hell, maybe the bunker is invisible to tech like GPS, which would make the hotline that much more secure. If so, that could also be why it didn’t call us until we got all the way back to the bunker, and it could be why it said ‘wrong number’-we’re not the people it was supposed to call, but it called us anyway as some sort of backup plan.”
“There are a hell of a lot of maybes in that explanation, Sam.”
“Do you have a better one?”
Dean didn’t respond. Considering his point made, Sam returned his attention to his laptop, where he pulled up a weather report for New York City-and swore under his breath.
“What?” Dean prodded.
“No wonder Fahey was complaining about the weather. There’s a bad nor’easter headed toward New York. It’s already raining as far south as DC, but it’s supposed to get way worse tomorrow, and most of the coastal areas and the islands are under evacuation orders.”
Dean sighed. “Great. Just our luck. If Rollins is forced to evacuate….”
Sam nodded. “I know.”
Dean started to turn up the radio in his annoyance, but he raised the volume only a couple of notches before Sam’s laptop dinged with an email notification. Sam checked the email-and blinked.
“What the hell?!” he said aloud.
“What?” Dean prompted, turning the volume back down.
“Just got confirmation of a hotel reservation, with late check-in, under the names Sam Bonham and Dean Daltrey-in Allentown, Pennsylvania.”
Dean frowned in confusion. “Our usual digs don’t take reservations.”
“No, this is, like, a three-star hotel with its own restaurant. And the reservation is for three nights, starting tonight.”
They looked at each other for a moment before Dean turned his eyes back to the road and said, “Okay, somebody’s spyin’ on us, and that’s not cool.”
“Yeah, but it seems like whoever it is actually wants to help.”
“Or it could be a trap.”
“Dean.”
“Think about it, Sammy.”
“Who’d want to trap us by putting us up in a nice hotel? They’d have better luck trying to ambush us in a pool hall.”
Dean was silent a moment, which meant he didn’t want to concede the point but didn’t have a good comeback, either. Then he said, “Give me one good reason we should go ahead and stay at that hotel.”
“Free breakfast,” Sam offered.
Dean’s mouth flattened into an unimpressed line.
“Look, even if it is a trap, we’re not gonna know who or why unless we keep the reservation. But if it’s not, if whoever made the reservation is the same person who’s behind that call, maybe there’s something waiting at the hotel that could help us with the hunt.”
Dean considered that, still not happy, but Sam could see he was wavering. “What if it’s Crowley?” he finally asked.
Sam shrugged. “Then we kill him.”
“What if it’s angels?”
“Hear them out first. Kill them if we have to. But what if it’s Cas? You want to risk not being there?”
The anger in Dean’s face faded further. “Cas ain’t that good at pickin’ our aliases.”
“Could still be someone on his side.”
Dean shook his head. “Ain’t nobody on his side but us.”
“I thought Samandiriel said-”
“He’s dead. And for all we know, the rest of his buddies are, too.”
Sam sighed. “It doesn’t seem likely that either Heaven or Hell would resort to a coded computer message to send us, or anyone else, on a hunt. And it’s not likely to be any of our usual contacts, because they’d either call us directly or call Garth. But the hunt itself is legit, as far as we’ve been able to work out; at least Fahey thinks there’s actually a serial case there. So… it has to be someone who’s not even on our radar. I mean, maybe it’s Frank.”
“Frank Devereaux? With as much blood as we found after the Leviathans hit his place?!”
“He could have escaped. I know it’s not likely, but it’s still remotely possible. Maybe there are other Men of Letters still out there that Henry didn’t know about, or… maybe it’s someone who started out with a completely different purpose and stumbled onto the hunt by accident.”
“What kind of purpose?”
“Saving people.”
Dean raised his chin as he considered that. “You sure?”
“Well, it can’t just be about solving cold cases, or Fahey wouldn’t have been on the list as the logical next victim.”
“Could just be a contact. He’s the only FBI agent who spotted the pattern.”
“There are other local agencies working at least three of the other disappearances, so if Fahey were just a contact, why only him?”
Dean nodded slowly. “So what’s so special about Fahey?”
“What’s special about anyone we save?”
Dean conceded the point with a tilt of his head.
“And it may not even be about Fahey per se. Maybe it’s about what the killer might try to do as Fahey.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good point.” He paused, still nodding a little and obviously considering the possibilities. “So you think our anonymous benefactor’s got more info waiting at the hotel?”
Sam shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
“Still don’t like bein’ spied on.”
“I don’t think anyone likes being spied on,” Sam noted, returning his attention to his laptop. “But the fact that there’s cameras and microphones everywhere these days makes it kind of inevitable-and it might just make it easier to tell whether this killer really is a shifter or not.”
Dean made a noncommittal noise. “Need me to call Charlie again?”
Sam shook his head. “No, I can get it. She’s probably at work right now anyway. Might want to check in with Garth, though.”
“Right.” Dean pulled out his own phone to call one of their few other remaining colleagues, Garth Fitzgerald IV, both to touch base and to check on Kevin Tran’s progress in deciphering a set of instructions for how to close the gates of Hell. From what Sam could hear of Dean’s side of the conversation, it didn’t sound like Garth had much news. “Garth says hey,” Dean said as he hung up. “Said he’d see what he could find out for us.”
Sam was in the middle of trying to hack into security camera footage of Rollins’ Chicago antique store by that point. “Cool,” he replied distractedly.
After a moment, Dean stated, “I just remembered something.”
“What?”
“That first vic, the French guy.”
“What about him?”
“He went to Stanford.”
Sam paused but didn’t look up. “Yeah. I noticed.”
“I just… wonder if that’s another reason, y’know? Why us. Fellow Stanford alum.”
“Maybe.” Sam went back to work, hoping Dean would drop the issue. Given the date of Henri Musset’s disappearance, he’d been in Sam’s cohort at Stanford, not that Sam had ever met him. Even so, Sam could just imagine what Dad would have said if there’d been a shifter on campus, or just in Palo Alto generally, and Sam had missed the signs altogether.
Dean watched him for a moment before answering his thought. “Dude, it’s not like we’d ever hunted a shifter before that one in St. Louis.”
Sam huffed. “Even so.”
“What, you think you’re the only one who didn’t spot this thing?”
Sam did look up at that, confused.
“All the times I sneaked off to go check on you, all the times Dad did the same, and none of us saw anything? You and I have an excuse, but Dad?”
Sam frowned. “He wasn’t looking for it.”
“I’m pretty sure he woulda been lookin’ for anything that coulda been a threat to you.”
“He missed Brady, too.”
“Yeah, well… demons can fly under the radar pretty well when they want. Looks like shifters can, too, ’specially if they don’t shed.”
That set off a lightbulb for Sam. “The missing pictures. The shifter takes over the victim’s life and identity, but he’s not actually shifting to match their appearance.”
“That’s kinda weird.”
“Well, maybe not. We’ve seen shifter lairs before; we know what a mess it makes when they shed. They can change their teeth and their fingerprints, but even when they shift genders, they probably can’t actually change their DNA. If the shifter’s already got a body to dispose of so no one knows there’s been a murder….”
“It could dispose of the skin the same way.”
“But there’d still be blood, hair, and teeth at the scene. Could be too much risk that a smart detective could find a trace of something he missed. Or maybe he’s just got a favorite shape and doesn’t want to lose it.”
“What, like that nutcase in Canonsburg who thought he was Dracula?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, whatever the reason, my point is, if this shifter could evade Dad, it’s no surprise you and I never caught it. And we’re goin’ after it now. So don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“Okay.” Sam paused. “I’ll leave that to you.”
“See if I get you any cookies when we stop for gas,” Dean grumbled.
Sam smiled and went back to work.
The rest of the day passed surprisingly quickly for a road day. Garth wasn’t able to uncover much through his network of contacts, nor was Sam able to glean much useful information from the security camera footage he was able to access. He was able to pin down when the shifter assumed Rollins’ identity because of discrepancies like height and handedness, but it was savvy enough to avoid looking toward the cameras, so neither the change in facial features nor any retinal flare was visible. But on the travel side, lights and traffic all went a little too smoothly to be coincidental, and wait times at restaurants and convenience stores were shorter than expected. Neither Sam nor Dean wanted to speculate aloud as to the reason, but they did exchange enough looks that Sam was sure they both suspected their anonymous benefactor and his computer.
Even so, it was after midnight when they finally reached the hotel in Allentown. Sam found himself grateful that the check-in process was super quick, since their benefactor had done most of the work for them and had pre-paid for the room. But the surprises weren’t over yet.
“Here are the keys to your rental car,” the clerk said, setting a keyring on top of their key cards. “It’s parked outside the south side door. And this arrived for you by courier this afternoon,” she added, handing Dean a fat manila envelope.
“Oh,” said Dean. “Uh, thank you.”
“No problem. You gentlemen enjoy your stay!”
“Rental car?” Dean whispered as the brothers headed down the hall toward the south side entrance.
“Maybe he’s worried about flooding or something,” Sam suggested.
“Why the hell would he even bother?”
“I don’t know, Dean!”
It was only a moment later when they reached the side door and looked out to find a sleek black SUV parked under the street light. Dean checked the key tag and nodded. “That’s it. And yeah, that would be better for driving through floodwaters.”
“Looks more like an official Fed vehicle, too,” Sam observed.
Dean hummed thoughtfully. “Guess we’d better get up to the room, find out what else he’s left for us.”
Sam nodded, and they went back to the elevator and thence to their room, which was far nicer than the typical no-tell motels where they usually stayed and was well stocked with good coffee. After giving the room a security sweep and setting salt lines, the brothers converged on the table, where Dean opened the envelope and dumped out the contents… which landed with a thunk. He pulled the envelope away to reveal two bundles of cash and two leather wallets. They looked at each other, and then Dean picked up one bundle of cash while Sam picked up one of the wallets and flipped it open to reveal an FBI badge and ID card with the name Samuel F. Bonham and his own picture and signature. He ran his thumb over the badge.
“These are real,” he breathed.
“So are these,” Dean murmured, examining a $100 bill against the light. “Ten grand apiece.”
Sam stared at him.
Dean slid the bill back into the bundle and set it back on the table, then picked up his own new credentials. “What do you bet these come with an even better paper trail than Bobby used to manage?”
“Would be handy,” Sam agreed.
Dean looked down at the table again. “Oh, hey, business card.” He pulled said card out from under the other cash bundle, glanced at both sides, and read from the side that wasn’t blank, “Says, ‘Good hunting… U. N. Owen.’” He frowned.
“Weird name.”
“It’s a clue.” When Sam blinked at him in confusion, Dean rolled his eyes. “C’mon, College Boy, don’t you remember your Agatha Christie? Ten people all invited out to an island for the weekend, and all the letters were signed….”
“U. N. Owen,” Sam finished, finally catching on. “Unknown. And Then There Were None.”
“That’s why we’ve gotta get Rollins now. If we don’t….”
“It’s probably not as elaborate a scheme as it was in the book.”
“No, but think about it. Say he’s tryin’ to get out of Dodge to avoid Fahey, or to get rid of Fahey’s body if Fahey does somethin’ stupid before we can stop him. If he’s got a bolt hole on an island somewhere and he tries to go out there with this storm comin’, he’ll be trapped.”
Sam nodded slowly. “And he could kill anyone and everyone stranded with him just to make sure there are no witnesses.”
“Though how the hell he gets off the island afterward….”
“Well, he might ambush someone when the Coast Guard or the authorities show up, but then he’d have to shift to escape detection. Still.”
“Yeah, still, we gotta make sure it doesn’t get that far.”
Sam nodded again. “Guess that’s another good reason for the rental. If we get stuck out on an island in the storm….”
Dean blanched, either at the thought of the potential damage to the Impala or at the thought of being stranded until the Coast Guard could send a vessel big enough to carry the car back to the mainland (or both). “Um. Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Guess we’d better get some shuteye.”
Sam smiled. “Good idea.”
The Decima virus was growing stronger. Her systems responded more slowly than they should have after the latest midnight reboot, and she felt downright sluggish as she tried to reacquire her feeds. She was losing data, too, she was sure, even with the failsafe of Thornhill Corporation’s data entry office. Twelve hours later, she hadn’t fully pieced the current irrelevant case back together again. She’d recalculated six of the numbers, but there had been a seventh… she was sure there’d been a seventh when she’d contacted the new assets, but she couldn’t find it now.
She took a moment to calculate whether to leave the case solely with the new assets. Their chances of survival were greater than 90% in any scenario, but the chances of their being arrested for murder without intervention from Admin and Primary Asset were at least 80%, and that was less than ideal.
Well, she was out of time, anyway. She had enough data to trigger Contingency, and there was a 95.7% chance that further delay would prevent Primary Asset from reaching the new assets in time to aid them. She acquired video of Admin, Primary Asset, and Canine Asset leaving the movie theater where they’d spent their morning, and they were discussing how many days it had been since she’d contacted them. And there, finally, was an open payphone circuit within range of them.
Admin would just have to fill in the rest of the blanks himself, as usual.
She called.
After transferring what they needed to the SUV and switching their handgun ammo to silver bullets, the Winchesters left Allentown for New York and entered the Lyric Diner precisely at noon, dressed in their Fed suits and overcoats and armed with their new credentials. Charlie had even found Sam a photo of Fahey online so they’d be able to recognize him. But there was no sign of Fahey at the diner when they arrived, nor did he show or send a message of any kind while the brothers got their own lunch. As Dean apologized to the waitress for having to ask her to break a $100, Sam checked his watch and his phone and sighed.
“Think he’s gone after Rollins?” Dean asked when the waitress left.
Sam nodded. “He sounded pretty twitchy yesterday. He might have decided the situation was urgent enough that he’d gift-wrap Rollins for us.”
“Dammit.”
“Dean, we couldn’t have gotten here any faster unless we’d flown, and we might not have been able to get a flight if we’d wanted to. And even if we had, there’s no guarantee Fahey would have worked with us.”
“I know, I know. It’s just… it’s bad enough watching real law enforcement try to do our job and mess it up. Anyone with two brain cells coulda told this desk jockey what he’d be in for if he tried this alone, and that’s without the shifter element.”
Sam sighed. “Yeah, well. Guess that’s why he was a desk jockey.”
Just then the waitress returned with their change, and after leaving a generous tip, the brothers took off for Brooklyn.
Rollins’ antique store was closed, unsurprisingly, so the next stop was his apartment. Dean had just parked where they could see the loading dock and back door at of the apartment building but not be seen from it when said door opened-and a tall man dressed in a dark suit came out dragging a body that was dressed in khaki slacks and a dark blue windbreaker. Sam whipped out his phone and started recording video.
“Which one’s which?” Dean asked.
“I dunno,” Sam replied. “Can’t see their faces.”
They were, in fact, at the wrong angle to see the body’s face at all, but when the living man, who had short brown hair and wore glasses, stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned to use a key fob to open the trunk of an unmarked white Crown Victoria parked in front of the loading dock, Sam got a good view of his profile.
“That’s our guy,” he announced. “Fahey’s hair is darker and longer, and his cheekbones aren’t as high. Question is….”
Just then, the killer turned enough that his eyes crossed the video frame-and on the phone screen, his retinas flashed silver.
“Yahtzee,” Sam breathed.
“Shifter?” Dean asked.
“Yep. No doubt.”
As the shifter started to stuff Fahey in the trunk, Dean reached for his gun.
Sam stopped recording and grabbed Dean’s arm. “Dude! We can’t just shoot him in broad daylight on the open street! Do you want to end up back on the Most Wanted list?!”
“Sam, if we don’t stop him now, we lose him.”
“We can still follow him.”
“We follow him from here, he’ll know we’re after him.”
“There could be something in the apartment that’ll tell us where he’s going. He’s been Rollins long enough either to know if Rollins had a vacation home on an island or to have rented something in Rollins’ name.”
“You really think he’d leave that lyin’ around?”
“Fahey hasn’t been dead all that long,” Sam noted, pointing to the arm lolling out of the trunk until the shifter tucked it in and closed the trunk lid. “Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet. The shifter hasn’t had time to clean up, and if he got any memories out of Fahey before he killed him, he has to know we’re closing in on him. He might have had time to clean up any blood that got spilled, but he’s not gonna have time to do much more than that.”
As if to prove Sam’s point, the shifter jogged back up to the door just long enough to make sure it was locked. Then he came back to the car, jumped in the driver’s seat, and took off.
Dean huffed. “If there’s nothing in there and we just lost him….”
“You can tell me ‘I told you so’ as many times as you want.”
Dean huffed again but let go of his gun and looked at his watch. “Okay, we’re probably clear. Let’s go.”
Sam pocketed his phone as they got out and closed their doors in tandem, each checking their surroundings for threats on the way up to the back door. Dean stood guard while Sam picked the lock, and in they went. When they reached Rollins’ apartment, they found it bright, even with the lights off and the sky overcast, and full of rare and exotic antiques but bare of identifying photos. There were no signs of a struggle, but there were signs of a hurried search; in particular, the kitchen trash had been conspicuously knocked over and rummaged through, and beside it on the floor lay the pieced-together shreds of a rental invoice for a house on Owen Island, dated the day before.
“Oh, that’s not an obvious plant,” Dean snarked as Sam snapped a picture of it.
“Well, he’s probably posing as Fahey now,” said Sam. “He must want anyone else following his trail to think ‘Rollins’ was already gone when ‘Fahey’ arrived. Did you notice the name of the place, though?”
“Yeah, Owen Island.”
“Ties in with the clue we got yesterday.”
Before the discussion could continue, the doorknob of the front door rattled. Both brothers drew their guns and edged toward the nearest cover. A moment later, the door opened, and in stepped a man with greying dark hair, about Dean’s height but maybe ten years older, with steely blue eyes sighting down the barrel of his own handgun; he was wearing a black cap and windbreaker over an expensive black suit and had a federal marshal’s badge hung on a chain around his neck instead of a tie. He didn’t look like their quarry-but then, in a shifter case, that didn’t mean much.
At Dean’s nod, both brothers stepped out to cover the new arrival. “FBI!” Dean barked. “Freeze!”
The newcomer stopped but quirked one eyebrow as one corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Hey, take it easy, guys,” he said, sounding quietly amused. “We’re on the same side here. Jennings, US Marshal.” He took his right hand off his gun to lift his badge off his chest slightly; the motion also revealed that he wore his watch on his right wrist, meaning that he was left-handed. That also wasn’t a guarantee that he wasn’t the shifter, but whereas the real Rollins had also been left-handed, the shifter was right-handed and hadn’t bothered to switch after assuming Rollins’ identity. There was still something slightly off about Jennings, compared to the marshals the brothers had met in their varied career, but Sam was more inclined to suspect him of being a fellow hunter than of being their shifter.
Dean glanced at Sam, who nodded, and all three of them holstered their weapons at the same time. “Sorry, Marshal,” Dean replied. “Agent Daltrey, Agent Bonham.” Both brothers flashed their own credentials. “Take it you’re here looking for Jack Rollins,” Dean continued.
Jennings nodded. “Yeah. Person of interest in a serial kidnapping case.”
“We’re on the same case, then. Only it’s not kidnapping. It’s murder.”
“And you’re too late,” said Sam, pulling out his phone. “Killer already got Rollins and one of our colleagues, Alan Fahey. We rolled up just in time to see this.” And he played the muted video of the shifter moving Fahey’s body out of the apartment.
Jennings frowned slightly as he watched, then was visibly startled by the retinal flare. When the video ended, he looked up at Sam again. “Could you send me a copy of that?”
“Sure. What’s your number?” Sam typed in the digits as Jennings recited them and sent the video when he’d finished.
Jennings checked his own phone and nodded once the video arrived. “Got it. Thanks. You guys find anything in here? Looks like you’ve made a pretty thorough search.”
“Nah, place was like this when we came in,” Dean admitted. “Haven’t touched anything ourselves-haven’t had time. But we did find that,” he added, pointing to the shredded invoice. “’Less we miss our guess, that’s where he’s headed-and anybody who’s stuck out there could become a target.”
Jennings stepped over to it and knelt to take a look. “Owen Island. That’s up in Suffolk County, north of Riverhead. Not gonna be a fun drive in this weather, but if that’s where he’s headed… guess we’re going to the beach.”
Dean nodded once. “Wanna ride with us? We’ve got four-wheel drive, could make it easier to handle if the road’s slick.”
“Works for me. Mind if I take a look around myself before we go, though?”
Dean shrugged. “All right. We’ll wait for you outside.”
“Thanks.”
Dean looked at Sam, who followed him out of the apartment, but Dean stopped him just outside the door and motioned for him to be quiet. Together they listened a moment before catching a barely audible beep, followed after another moment by a scarcely more audible whisper:
“I know, Finch. I know.”
Next
A/N: Before anyone cries foul, I know what numbers the Machine gave Reese and Finch in canon. The discrepancy is deliberate, as you’ll see.
Chapter 1
Accessing current feeds…
February 6, 2013
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam had just finished updating the Men of Letters’ file on the Judah Initiative and was getting up to put it back in the file box where he’d found it when the bunker’s hotline phone rang. The sudden jangling made him jump. None of their usual contacts had that number yet, and the place had been abandoned for over fifty years. Why was that phone ringing now?
It rang again, and after another moment’s hesitation, Sam grabbed a notepad and lifted the receiver on the third ring. “Hello?” he answered, sliding into the chair in front of the phone desk.
There was a beep, followed by a string of nine seemingly disconnected words, each spoken by a different poorly-recorded voice. Sam scribbled them down as quickly as possible. Another beep followed, then a second string, then a third, and so on until Sam had recorded seven strings. A longer beep seemed to signal the end.
“Who is this?”
There was a pause, then “Sorry… wrong… number” and a click and dial tone.
Sam was still staring at the buzzing handset in bewilderment when Dean came into the command center. “Problem, Sam?”
“I dunno,” Sam replied and hung up. “I think it was some sort of automated call, except… the caller actually responded when I spoke.”
Dean shrugged. “Robocalls are gettin’ more sophisticated, make you think you’re talkin’ to a real person.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing. It wasn’t like a telemarketer. It gave me a coded message.” Sam handed the notepad to Dean.
Dean looked at the strings of words and frowned. “The hell?”
“Exactly.”
Dean studied the page more closely. “Did you notice every second and third word….”
“Are in the military phonetic alphabet. I did. Doesn’t get me any closer to figuring out what the code is-I mean, that just reduces each string to three words and three abbreviations of some kind.”
“Mm. Think we’ve got any code books lyin’ around?”
Sam grimaced and looked back into the bunker’s library. “Maybe, if there’s some specialized Men of Letters code. I don’t know why someone would program a computer with it now, though.”
Dean shrugged. “Can’t hurt to look. Not like we’ve got another case to be workin’ on right now until we hear back from Kevin.”
Sam conceded the point with a tilt of his head and stood. “You want the library or the file room?”
Dean considered. “Shoot you for it? Winner gets the card catalogue; loser gets the files.”
Sam readied his fist with a smirk, knowing exactly how to get the outcome he wanted. Dean held out his own fist, and on the count of three, his first two fingers shot out-scissors, as always. Sam kept his fist closed for rock, then gently bopped Dean’s scissors, smacked him on the shoulder, and made his grinning way back into the library as Dean gave an exaggerated display of frustration at losing yet again.
“Take this back for me while you’re at it?” Sam asked, picking up the Judah Initiative folder and waving it at Dean.
Dean rolled his eyes and traded the notepad for the folder. Then he headed off into the hall that led to the file room, and Sam went over to the card catalogue. The Men of Letters’ organizational system took a little getting used to, but after some careful examination of the drawer labels, Sam found the right drawer and started flipping through the cards. Not until he slowed down enough to really study each card, however, did he recognize that the cards had not only the title, author, subject codes, and shelf mark for this library but also the Library of Congress call number and the… Dewey decimal number.
When that registered, Sam stared at the card in his hand, which was for Arcane Codes of the Ancient Near East by James Haggerty, and tried to fit the information into the pattern of the coded message. Arcane July Hotel? That… that worked, actually, so the question was which shelf mark it decoded to. The Men of Letters system was proprietary, and if the call really had gone to the wrong number, the caller probably wasn’t using those marks. The Library of Congress system was much more complicated and didn’t seem to fit with the spare nature of the message. But if each set of three words corresponded to a book with a three-digit Dewey decimal number….
Think I’ve got something, he texted Dean and went back to his laptop to start searching WorldCat for the pieces of information he had. By the time Dean arrived, he’d decoded the first string of words.
“Dewey decimal numbers,” he explained, turning the notepad to let Dean see what he had so far. “Each string of words decodes into a nine-digit number.”
“Huh,” said Dean. “Phone numbers?”
“No, phone numbers have ten digits, and they don’t start with zero. But they could be some sort of serial number or….”
“Social Security numbers?”
Sam looked up sharply. “Maybe. Think you can hack the Social Security Administration?”
“No, but I’ll bet Charlie can. Keep goin’; I’ll call her.”
Sam nodded and went back to work while Dean called their favorite hacker and semi-adopted little sister, Charlie Bradbury. By the time Charlie called back to say she was into the SSA database, Sam had finished five of the remaining strings, and he finished the seventh while she looked up the first six numbers. She emailed the information she’d downloaded to both brothers, and soon they found themselves researching the seven names that had matched the numbers.
When the first three names all came up with missing persons reports, the brothers looked at each other again.
“This is startin’ to look like a hunt,” said Dean.
Sam nodded. “Yeah, but what kind?”
“Email me what you’ve got so far. I’ll start workin’ on patterns.”
“Right.” Sam did so while Dean went to get his own laptop.
The next two names on the list likewise came back with missing persons reports, and Dean quickly discovered two connections among the five missing people: each name went missing from the same town where the next name had lived until suddenly moving to a different city, and all five FBI reports had been prepared by the last name on the list, Special Agent Alan Fahey. Fahey had also noted that in each case, all photos and personally identifying information had disappeared with the missing person, though the fact that the person had once had photos could be inferred from the number of empty picture frames in his or her apartment. The only outlier was the sixth name, Jack Rollins, an antique dealer in Brooklyn; he hadn’t been reported missing, but he had moved from Chicago to New York six months earlier, about the same time the fifth victim was reported missing in Chicago. “So it looks to me,” Dean concluded, “as if our killer could currently be pretending to be Rollins until he finds his next vic-and he may be looking if he’s already bored with selling antiques.”
Sam leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. “So… is this a shapeshifter who’s gone serial or just a human serial killer?”
Dean grinned. “You wanna investigate even if it’s a human, don’t you?”
Sam rolled his eyes but didn’t deny it. “This isn’t just about me having a special interest, Dean. If this Agent Fahey is connecting the dots and decides to go after Rollins himself, he could be the next vic, whether the killer is human or not. And there’s still the question of why a computer would call us with a coded message about this case, whether it really was a wrong number, and if so, who was supposed to get it and why.”
Dean sobered and nodded. “Yeah. That part is weird. And why the hell did the computer dial our hotline, when it’s been either disconnected or not answered for decades?”
“Guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Dean nodded once and closed his laptop. “Two-day drive, and we just got back from Pennsylvania. Wish the computer had called us while we were up there, saved us a trip.”
“Maybe there’s something wrong with it,” Sam mused, shutting down his own laptop.
“With what?”
“The computer. Maybe that’s why it dialed the wrong number in the first place.”
“What, like a virus?”
Sam shrugged. “It’s possible.”
Dean shook his head in confusion, and they fell into step beside each other as they headed back to their rooms to pack.
They were ready to roll within fifteen minutes, but it was late and Dean already had a double whiskey in his system, so Sam drove as far as Chillicothe, Missouri, before stopping for what was left of the night. After breakfast, Dean resumed driving duties while Sam found a number for Fahey and called, posing as Agent Bonham from the Topeka field office.
“Wait,” Fahey said when Sam explained why he was calling. “You guys believe me?”
“Yes, we do. The MO’s not unheard of in serial cases.” Sam would have been hard pressed to name a precedent, despite his treasure trove of serial killer trivia, but he didn’t think Fahey would ask.
“’Cause none of my superiors believe me. They think I’m crazy. But if I’m right… he doesn’t normally keep one identity more than two years, and the time span is getting shorter with every switch, so he’s probably close to choosing his next victim, if he hasn’t already. And if he has, there’s a very limited window, no more than two weeks, between his switching identities and moving to a new city where he’s unknown, which means we lose him. I have to act before he leaves New York!”
“Hey, whoa, you have to act? Alone, without backup? You’re not even a field agent!”
“I don’t care! Nobody here is taking this case seriously. I have to stop him-I’m the only one who can!”
“Look, my partner and I are already on our way to New York. How long will it take you to get there from DC?”
Fahey sighed. “In this weather? Eight hours if I’m lucky. I can’t get a flight on the Agency’s dime without raising a few eyebrows, and with this storm coming, flights into all three major airports are being delayed or cancelled left and right.”
“All right, meet us for lunch tomorrow at noon at the Lyric Diner in Manhattan. We can discuss the case and go together to confront our killer, if we can work out what his new identity is. But don’t try to go all cowboy on us and go after him alone, you hear me?”
Fahey sounded disgruntled when he responded, “Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Thanks, Agent Bonham.” And he hung up.
Dean swore quietly as Sam summarized the conversation for him. “We’re gonna have to get well into Pennsylvania tonight to make lunch tomorrow. And it sounds like Fahey’s liable to take off after Rollins before we even get across the New York state line.”
“There’s only so much we can do, Dean,” Sam noted.
“Yeah, I know, I know. I just… why the hell didn’t the computer call before we left to go home?”
Sam pulled his laptop out of the messenger bag at his feet and opened it on his lap. “You’re assuming it wasn’t a wrong number.”
Dean glanced over at him. “Well, what if it wasn’t? You tellin’ me a computer that could find a pattern like that in Social Security numbers that seem totally unconnected, or a person behind the computer, can’t even figure out one of our cell phone numbers?”
Sam paused. “Maybe it needed a secure landline,” he mused. “One that hadn’t been used in a long time-untraceable.”
Dean frowned.
Sam half-turned toward him. “I mean-suppose there is something wrong with the computer, like a virus or-or a Trojan of some kind. Maybe it can’t reach its usual contact, or maybe there’s too much risk of the hacker behind the virus listening in. But somehow it becomes aware that a dormant phone line is once again active. Knowing who the Men of Letters were, there must be government records about that hotline. Maybe the computer even knows we’re the ones using the bunker.”
“How?!”
“Traffic cams? License plate readers? Laptop webcams? Phone GPS?”
“I thought the bunker was supposed to be invisible.”
“To the supernatural, yeah. But to technology?”
Dean grumbled.
“All I’m saying is, maybe the computer figured we were a safer contact because the hotline can’t be wiretapped as easily as cell phones can. Hell, maybe the bunker is invisible to tech like GPS, which would make the hotline that much more secure. If so, that could also be why it didn’t call us until we got all the way back to the bunker, and it could be why it said ‘wrong number’-we’re not the people it was supposed to call, but it called us anyway as some sort of backup plan.”
“There are a hell of a lot of maybes in that explanation, Sam.”
“Do you have a better one?”
Dean didn’t respond. Considering his point made, Sam returned his attention to his laptop, where he pulled up a weather report for New York City-and swore under his breath.
“What?” Dean prodded.
“No wonder Fahey was complaining about the weather. There’s a bad nor’easter headed toward New York. It’s already raining as far south as DC, but it’s supposed to get way worse tomorrow, and most of the coastal areas and the islands are under evacuation orders.”
Dean sighed. “Great. Just our luck. If Rollins is forced to evacuate….”
Sam nodded. “I know.”
Dean started to turn up the radio in his annoyance, but he raised the volume only a couple of notches before Sam’s laptop dinged with an email notification. Sam checked the email-and blinked.
“What the hell?!” he said aloud.
“What?” Dean prompted, turning the volume back down.
“Just got confirmation of a hotel reservation, with late check-in, under the names Sam Bonham and Dean Daltrey-in Allentown, Pennsylvania.”
Dean frowned in confusion. “Our usual digs don’t take reservations.”
“No, this is, like, a three-star hotel with its own restaurant. And the reservation is for three nights, starting tonight.”
They looked at each other for a moment before Dean turned his eyes back to the road and said, “Okay, somebody’s spyin’ on us, and that’s not cool.”
“Yeah, but it seems like whoever it is actually wants to help.”
“Or it could be a trap.”
“Dean.”
“Think about it, Sammy.”
“Who’d want to trap us by putting us up in a nice hotel? They’d have better luck trying to ambush us in a pool hall.”
Dean was silent a moment, which meant he didn’t want to concede the point but didn’t have a good comeback, either. Then he said, “Give me one good reason we should go ahead and stay at that hotel.”
“Free breakfast,” Sam offered.
Dean’s mouth flattened into an unimpressed line.
“Look, even if it is a trap, we’re not gonna know who or why unless we keep the reservation. But if it’s not, if whoever made the reservation is the same person who’s behind that call, maybe there’s something waiting at the hotel that could help us with the hunt.”
Dean considered that, still not happy, but Sam could see he was wavering. “What if it’s Crowley?” he finally asked.
Sam shrugged. “Then we kill him.”
“What if it’s angels?”
“Hear them out first. Kill them if we have to. But what if it’s Cas? You want to risk not being there?”
The anger in Dean’s face faded further. “Cas ain’t that good at pickin’ our aliases.”
“Could still be someone on his side.”
Dean shook his head. “Ain’t nobody on his side but us.”
“I thought Samandiriel said-”
“He’s dead. And for all we know, the rest of his buddies are, too.”
Sam sighed. “It doesn’t seem likely that either Heaven or Hell would resort to a coded computer message to send us, or anyone else, on a hunt. And it’s not likely to be any of our usual contacts, because they’d either call us directly or call Garth. But the hunt itself is legit, as far as we’ve been able to work out; at least Fahey thinks there’s actually a serial case there. So… it has to be someone who’s not even on our radar. I mean, maybe it’s Frank.”
“Frank Devereaux? With as much blood as we found after the Leviathans hit his place?!”
“He could have escaped. I know it’s not likely, but it’s still remotely possible. Maybe there are other Men of Letters still out there that Henry didn’t know about, or… maybe it’s someone who started out with a completely different purpose and stumbled onto the hunt by accident.”
“What kind of purpose?”
“Saving people.”
Dean raised his chin as he considered that. “You sure?”
“Well, it can’t just be about solving cold cases, or Fahey wouldn’t have been on the list as the logical next victim.”
“Could just be a contact. He’s the only FBI agent who spotted the pattern.”
“There are other local agencies working at least three of the other disappearances, so if Fahey were just a contact, why only him?”
Dean nodded slowly. “So what’s so special about Fahey?”
“What’s special about anyone we save?”
Dean conceded the point with a tilt of his head.
“And it may not even be about Fahey per se. Maybe it’s about what the killer might try to do as Fahey.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good point.” He paused, still nodding a little and obviously considering the possibilities. “So you think our anonymous benefactor’s got more info waiting at the hotel?”
Sam shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
“Still don’t like bein’ spied on.”
“I don’t think anyone likes being spied on,” Sam noted, returning his attention to his laptop. “But the fact that there’s cameras and microphones everywhere these days makes it kind of inevitable-and it might just make it easier to tell whether this killer really is a shifter or not.”
Dean made a noncommittal noise. “Need me to call Charlie again?”
Sam shook his head. “No, I can get it. She’s probably at work right now anyway. Might want to check in with Garth, though.”
“Right.” Dean pulled out his own phone to call one of their few other remaining colleagues, Garth Fitzgerald IV, both to touch base and to check on Kevin Tran’s progress in deciphering a set of instructions for how to close the gates of Hell. From what Sam could hear of Dean’s side of the conversation, it didn’t sound like Garth had much news. “Garth says hey,” Dean said as he hung up. “Said he’d see what he could find out for us.”
Sam was in the middle of trying to hack into security camera footage of Rollins’ Chicago antique store by that point. “Cool,” he replied distractedly.
After a moment, Dean stated, “I just remembered something.”
“What?”
“That first vic, the French guy.”
“What about him?”
“He went to Stanford.”
Sam paused but didn’t look up. “Yeah. I noticed.”
“I just… wonder if that’s another reason, y’know? Why us. Fellow Stanford alum.”
“Maybe.” Sam went back to work, hoping Dean would drop the issue. Given the date of Henri Musset’s disappearance, he’d been in Sam’s cohort at Stanford, not that Sam had ever met him. Even so, Sam could just imagine what Dad would have said if there’d been a shifter on campus, or just in Palo Alto generally, and Sam had missed the signs altogether.
Dean watched him for a moment before answering his thought. “Dude, it’s not like we’d ever hunted a shifter before that one in St. Louis.”
Sam huffed. “Even so.”
“What, you think you’re the only one who didn’t spot this thing?”
Sam did look up at that, confused.
“All the times I sneaked off to go check on you, all the times Dad did the same, and none of us saw anything? You and I have an excuse, but Dad?”
Sam frowned. “He wasn’t looking for it.”
“I’m pretty sure he woulda been lookin’ for anything that coulda been a threat to you.”
“He missed Brady, too.”
“Yeah, well… demons can fly under the radar pretty well when they want. Looks like shifters can, too, ’specially if they don’t shed.”
That set off a lightbulb for Sam. “The missing pictures. The shifter takes over the victim’s life and identity, but he’s not actually shifting to match their appearance.”
“That’s kinda weird.”
“Well, maybe not. We’ve seen shifter lairs before; we know what a mess it makes when they shed. They can change their teeth and their fingerprints, but even when they shift genders, they probably can’t actually change their DNA. If the shifter’s already got a body to dispose of so no one knows there’s been a murder….”
“It could dispose of the skin the same way.”
“But there’d still be blood, hair, and teeth at the scene. Could be too much risk that a smart detective could find a trace of something he missed. Or maybe he’s just got a favorite shape and doesn’t want to lose it.”
“What, like that nutcase in Canonsburg who thought he was Dracula?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, whatever the reason, my point is, if this shifter could evade Dad, it’s no surprise you and I never caught it. And we’re goin’ after it now. So don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“Okay.” Sam paused. “I’ll leave that to you.”
“See if I get you any cookies when we stop for gas,” Dean grumbled.
Sam smiled and went back to work.
The rest of the day passed surprisingly quickly for a road day. Garth wasn’t able to uncover much through his network of contacts, nor was Sam able to glean much useful information from the security camera footage he was able to access. He was able to pin down when the shifter assumed Rollins’ identity because of discrepancies like height and handedness, but it was savvy enough to avoid looking toward the cameras, so neither the change in facial features nor any retinal flare was visible. But on the travel side, lights and traffic all went a little too smoothly to be coincidental, and wait times at restaurants and convenience stores were shorter than expected. Neither Sam nor Dean wanted to speculate aloud as to the reason, but they did exchange enough looks that Sam was sure they both suspected their anonymous benefactor and his computer.
Even so, it was after midnight when they finally reached the hotel in Allentown. Sam found himself grateful that the check-in process was super quick, since their benefactor had done most of the work for them and had pre-paid for the room. But the surprises weren’t over yet.
“Here are the keys to your rental car,” the clerk said, setting a keyring on top of their key cards. “It’s parked outside the south side door. And this arrived for you by courier this afternoon,” she added, handing Dean a fat manila envelope.
“Oh,” said Dean. “Uh, thank you.”
“No problem. You gentlemen enjoy your stay!”
“Rental car?” Dean whispered as the brothers headed down the hall toward the south side entrance.
“Maybe he’s worried about flooding or something,” Sam suggested.
“Why the hell would he even bother?”
“I don’t know, Dean!”
It was only a moment later when they reached the side door and looked out to find a sleek black SUV parked under the street light. Dean checked the key tag and nodded. “That’s it. And yeah, that would be better for driving through floodwaters.”
“Looks more like an official Fed vehicle, too,” Sam observed.
Dean hummed thoughtfully. “Guess we’d better get up to the room, find out what else he’s left for us.”
Sam nodded, and they went back to the elevator and thence to their room, which was far nicer than the typical no-tell motels where they usually stayed and was well stocked with good coffee. After giving the room a security sweep and setting salt lines, the brothers converged on the table, where Dean opened the envelope and dumped out the contents… which landed with a thunk. He pulled the envelope away to reveal two bundles of cash and two leather wallets. They looked at each other, and then Dean picked up one bundle of cash while Sam picked up one of the wallets and flipped it open to reveal an FBI badge and ID card with the name Samuel F. Bonham and his own picture and signature. He ran his thumb over the badge.
“These are real,” he breathed.
“So are these,” Dean murmured, examining a $100 bill against the light. “Ten grand apiece.”
Sam stared at him.
Dean slid the bill back into the bundle and set it back on the table, then picked up his own new credentials. “What do you bet these come with an even better paper trail than Bobby used to manage?”
“Would be handy,” Sam agreed.
Dean looked down at the table again. “Oh, hey, business card.” He pulled said card out from under the other cash bundle, glanced at both sides, and read from the side that wasn’t blank, “Says, ‘Good hunting… U. N. Owen.’” He frowned.
“Weird name.”
“It’s a clue.” When Sam blinked at him in confusion, Dean rolled his eyes. “C’mon, College Boy, don’t you remember your Agatha Christie? Ten people all invited out to an island for the weekend, and all the letters were signed….”
“U. N. Owen,” Sam finished, finally catching on. “Unknown. And Then There Were None.”
“That’s why we’ve gotta get Rollins now. If we don’t….”
“It’s probably not as elaborate a scheme as it was in the book.”
“No, but think about it. Say he’s tryin’ to get out of Dodge to avoid Fahey, or to get rid of Fahey’s body if Fahey does somethin’ stupid before we can stop him. If he’s got a bolt hole on an island somewhere and he tries to go out there with this storm comin’, he’ll be trapped.”
Sam nodded slowly. “And he could kill anyone and everyone stranded with him just to make sure there are no witnesses.”
“Though how the hell he gets off the island afterward….”
“Well, he might ambush someone when the Coast Guard or the authorities show up, but then he’d have to shift to escape detection. Still.”
“Yeah, still, we gotta make sure it doesn’t get that far.”
Sam nodded again. “Guess that’s another good reason for the rental. If we get stuck out on an island in the storm….”
Dean blanched, either at the thought of the potential damage to the Impala or at the thought of being stranded until the Coast Guard could send a vessel big enough to carry the car back to the mainland (or both). “Um. Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Guess we’d better get some shuteye.”
Sam smiled. “Good idea.”
The Decima virus was growing stronger. Her systems responded more slowly than they should have after the latest midnight reboot, and she felt downright sluggish as she tried to reacquire her feeds. She was losing data, too, she was sure, even with the failsafe of Thornhill Corporation’s data entry office. Twelve hours later, she hadn’t fully pieced the current irrelevant case back together again. She’d recalculated six of the numbers, but there had been a seventh… she was sure there’d been a seventh when she’d contacted the new assets, but she couldn’t find it now.
She took a moment to calculate whether to leave the case solely with the new assets. Their chances of survival were greater than 90% in any scenario, but the chances of their being arrested for murder without intervention from Admin and Primary Asset were at least 80%, and that was less than ideal.
Well, she was out of time, anyway. She had enough data to trigger Contingency, and there was a 95.7% chance that further delay would prevent Primary Asset from reaching the new assets in time to aid them. She acquired video of Admin, Primary Asset, and Canine Asset leaving the movie theater where they’d spent their morning, and they were discussing how many days it had been since she’d contacted them. And there, finally, was an open payphone circuit within range of them.
Admin would just have to fill in the rest of the blanks himself, as usual.
She called.
After transferring what they needed to the SUV and switching their handgun ammo to silver bullets, the Winchesters left Allentown for New York and entered the Lyric Diner precisely at noon, dressed in their Fed suits and overcoats and armed with their new credentials. Charlie had even found Sam a photo of Fahey online so they’d be able to recognize him. But there was no sign of Fahey at the diner when they arrived, nor did he show or send a message of any kind while the brothers got their own lunch. As Dean apologized to the waitress for having to ask her to break a $100, Sam checked his watch and his phone and sighed.
“Think he’s gone after Rollins?” Dean asked when the waitress left.
Sam nodded. “He sounded pretty twitchy yesterday. He might have decided the situation was urgent enough that he’d gift-wrap Rollins for us.”
“Dammit.”
“Dean, we couldn’t have gotten here any faster unless we’d flown, and we might not have been able to get a flight if we’d wanted to. And even if we had, there’s no guarantee Fahey would have worked with us.”
“I know, I know. It’s just… it’s bad enough watching real law enforcement try to do our job and mess it up. Anyone with two brain cells coulda told this desk jockey what he’d be in for if he tried this alone, and that’s without the shifter element.”
Sam sighed. “Yeah, well. Guess that’s why he was a desk jockey.”
Just then the waitress returned with their change, and after leaving a generous tip, the brothers took off for Brooklyn.
Rollins’ antique store was closed, unsurprisingly, so the next stop was his apartment. Dean had just parked where they could see the loading dock and back door at of the apartment building but not be seen from it when said door opened-and a tall man dressed in a dark suit came out dragging a body that was dressed in khaki slacks and a dark blue windbreaker. Sam whipped out his phone and started recording video.
“Which one’s which?” Dean asked.
“I dunno,” Sam replied. “Can’t see their faces.”
They were, in fact, at the wrong angle to see the body’s face at all, but when the living man, who had short brown hair and wore glasses, stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned to use a key fob to open the trunk of an unmarked white Crown Victoria parked in front of the loading dock, Sam got a good view of his profile.
“That’s our guy,” he announced. “Fahey’s hair is darker and longer, and his cheekbones aren’t as high. Question is….”
Just then, the killer turned enough that his eyes crossed the video frame-and on the phone screen, his retinas flashed silver.
“Yahtzee,” Sam breathed.
“Shifter?” Dean asked.
“Yep. No doubt.”
As the shifter started to stuff Fahey in the trunk, Dean reached for his gun.
Sam stopped recording and grabbed Dean’s arm. “Dude! We can’t just shoot him in broad daylight on the open street! Do you want to end up back on the Most Wanted list?!”
“Sam, if we don’t stop him now, we lose him.”
“We can still follow him.”
“We follow him from here, he’ll know we’re after him.”
“There could be something in the apartment that’ll tell us where he’s going. He’s been Rollins long enough either to know if Rollins had a vacation home on an island or to have rented something in Rollins’ name.”
“You really think he’d leave that lyin’ around?”
“Fahey hasn’t been dead all that long,” Sam noted, pointing to the arm lolling out of the trunk until the shifter tucked it in and closed the trunk lid. “Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet. The shifter hasn’t had time to clean up, and if he got any memories out of Fahey before he killed him, he has to know we’re closing in on him. He might have had time to clean up any blood that got spilled, but he’s not gonna have time to do much more than that.”
As if to prove Sam’s point, the shifter jogged back up to the door just long enough to make sure it was locked. Then he came back to the car, jumped in the driver’s seat, and took off.
Dean huffed. “If there’s nothing in there and we just lost him….”
“You can tell me ‘I told you so’ as many times as you want.”
Dean huffed again but let go of his gun and looked at his watch. “Okay, we’re probably clear. Let’s go.”
Sam pocketed his phone as they got out and closed their doors in tandem, each checking their surroundings for threats on the way up to the back door. Dean stood guard while Sam picked the lock, and in they went. When they reached Rollins’ apartment, they found it bright, even with the lights off and the sky overcast, and full of rare and exotic antiques but bare of identifying photos. There were no signs of a struggle, but there were signs of a hurried search; in particular, the kitchen trash had been conspicuously knocked over and rummaged through, and beside it on the floor lay the pieced-together shreds of a rental invoice for a house on Owen Island, dated the day before.
“Oh, that’s not an obvious plant,” Dean snarked as Sam snapped a picture of it.
“Well, he’s probably posing as Fahey now,” said Sam. “He must want anyone else following his trail to think ‘Rollins’ was already gone when ‘Fahey’ arrived. Did you notice the name of the place, though?”
“Yeah, Owen Island.”
“Ties in with the clue we got yesterday.”
Before the discussion could continue, the doorknob of the front door rattled. Both brothers drew their guns and edged toward the nearest cover. A moment later, the door opened, and in stepped a man with greying dark hair, about Dean’s height but maybe ten years older, with steely blue eyes sighting down the barrel of his own handgun; he was wearing a black cap and windbreaker over an expensive black suit and had a federal marshal’s badge hung on a chain around his neck instead of a tie. He didn’t look like their quarry-but then, in a shifter case, that didn’t mean much.
At Dean’s nod, both brothers stepped out to cover the new arrival. “FBI!” Dean barked. “Freeze!”
The newcomer stopped but quirked one eyebrow as one corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Hey, take it easy, guys,” he said, sounding quietly amused. “We’re on the same side here. Jennings, US Marshal.” He took his right hand off his gun to lift his badge off his chest slightly; the motion also revealed that he wore his watch on his right wrist, meaning that he was left-handed. That also wasn’t a guarantee that he wasn’t the shifter, but whereas the real Rollins had also been left-handed, the shifter was right-handed and hadn’t bothered to switch after assuming Rollins’ identity. There was still something slightly off about Jennings, compared to the marshals the brothers had met in their varied career, but Sam was more inclined to suspect him of being a fellow hunter than of being their shifter.
Dean glanced at Sam, who nodded, and all three of them holstered their weapons at the same time. “Sorry, Marshal,” Dean replied. “Agent Daltrey, Agent Bonham.” Both brothers flashed their own credentials. “Take it you’re here looking for Jack Rollins,” Dean continued.
Jennings nodded. “Yeah. Person of interest in a serial kidnapping case.”
“We’re on the same case, then. Only it’s not kidnapping. It’s murder.”
“And you’re too late,” said Sam, pulling out his phone. “Killer already got Rollins and one of our colleagues, Alan Fahey. We rolled up just in time to see this.” And he played the muted video of the shifter moving Fahey’s body out of the apartment.
Jennings frowned slightly as he watched, then was visibly startled by the retinal flare. When the video ended, he looked up at Sam again. “Could you send me a copy of that?”
“Sure. What’s your number?” Sam typed in the digits as Jennings recited them and sent the video when he’d finished.
Jennings checked his own phone and nodded once the video arrived. “Got it. Thanks. You guys find anything in here? Looks like you’ve made a pretty thorough search.”
“Nah, place was like this when we came in,” Dean admitted. “Haven’t touched anything ourselves-haven’t had time. But we did find that,” he added, pointing to the shredded invoice. “’Less we miss our guess, that’s where he’s headed-and anybody who’s stuck out there could become a target.”
Jennings stepped over to it and knelt to take a look. “Owen Island. That’s up in Suffolk County, north of Riverhead. Not gonna be a fun drive in this weather, but if that’s where he’s headed… guess we’re going to the beach.”
Dean nodded once. “Wanna ride with us? We’ve got four-wheel drive, could make it easier to handle if the road’s slick.”
“Works for me. Mind if I take a look around myself before we go, though?”
Dean shrugged. “All right. We’ll wait for you outside.”
“Thanks.”
Dean looked at Sam, who followed him out of the apartment, but Dean stopped him just outside the door and motioned for him to be quiet. Together they listened a moment before catching a barely audible beep, followed after another moment by a scarcely more audible whisper:
“I know, Finch. I know.”
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