Trust Me or Lie to Me

[winchester_lost]

"Oh, hey, can I get a bacon cheeseburger? Extra onions," Dean requested with a smug smile and a single raised eyebrow as the man that had been riding him left. Their attempted 'interrogation' wasn't going well, needless to say. He leaned back in his chair, careless of the fact that one of his hands was handcuffed to the table. Sammy had gotten

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[facs_lightman]

Cal was less than thrilled with the Lightman Group's continued partnership with the FBI. Trouble was, the money the contract brought in was a significant part of what kept them afloat. It meant that whenever the FBI had a difficult case, they called him in to grill a suspect or take a second crack at a witness. Some of the time, the cases interested him. Other times they bored him to tears. More often than not, it put him in a situation where he had to deliver news to the FBI that they didn't want to hear. This was one of those times. He'd reviewed the case file, the charges against this Dean Winchester, and viewed a so called video confession more than a handful of times. The charges and the file… that wasn't much help to him, he didn't operate that way. But the video was a different story.

Dean wasn't lying. In the video, it was obvious that he was cocky and very obvious that he was vain, probably wasn't taking this very seriously, but then he'd gotten out of that situation. The suspects had miraculously happened to escape in the middle of a police scandal. He didn't know about all of the rest of it, there wasn't video of an interrogation asking about each crime in detail, but something told him it would be interesting, what he saw. He was coming into this leaning, definitely not neutral. But then, no one is ever really neutral on a case like this. The Feds working the case were out to hang him. The name Winchester brought a particular look, contempt and disgust, maybe a little self-righteousness now that they thought they'd caught him. Cal was walking in bent the other way, and so maybe that made him more neutral than anyone else working his case.

Even so, he knew his hands were tied on this one. Find him innocent and then what? There was evidence stacked against him. They needed a confession, in lieu of that, an expert witness to point to where his face betrayed him, and that was it, the final piece of the puzzle they had built up to explain what all had happened. Guilt was easier, and innocence, if that was the truth, would be nearly impossible to sell. The FBI was counting on guilt. They didn't want Cal Lightman: deception expert, they wanted Cal Lightman: case closer. That man didn't exist. Not even close.

Cal walked into the interrogation room, an agent behind him at the door looking in past him, at Dean, as he shut the door again behind him. Cal moved to sit, the way he walked making it seem like his limbs weren't quite solidly attached, like they moved too easily. It made him seem bigger than he was. There was something about him, something else, more than the way he moved, that made him seem more intimidating than his five feet seven inches. It was in his sharpness, the way that even at a height disadvantage he slouched like he could afford that inch, and stared up directly into the face of whoever he was talking to, looking at, getting a read on. It didn't matter if they were looking him in the eye or looking down a head's height at him, the look was the same. It was the look of a man who knew how to handle himself, who knew that he had an edge that no one else had. And he did.

He sat down across from Dean, one leg kicked out casually, leant more to one side than the other, arm slung back over the back of his chair. And he was staring Dean down, completely focused to the point of rudeness. He hadn't said hello, hadn't greeted him, nothing. Not yet.

"So, they say you're a nutjob. A real, honest to goodness nutjob," he said, talking with his hands, using the one that wasn't slung back to gesture in some kind of vague circle before letting it fall back to his leg. "They have a laundry list of the crimes you've committed… fraud, all kinds, assault, robbery, torture, murders. There's more in there, but then, you know that."

[winchester_lost]

"I take it I don't get that cheeseburger," Dean said flippantly, a lift of an eyebrow as he looked the new arrival over.

The man was imposing despite a lack of physical stature, sharp eyes, something in the way he carried himself, and it made Dean actually take notice, as opposed to the idiots like Henrickson that thought getting in his face was impressive. He had much more respect for the quiet strength he saw there in the lazy posture, the confidence there. He didn't seem like a suit, Dean had already met what passed for his legal counsel, and he came off too aggressively to be his shrink. He had no intention of going with the whole insanity plea the defense was working on -- fuck 'em. But, that meant he had no idea who this guy was supposed to be. Working with the FBI, he guessed, some new face to try and lean a confession out of him? Either way, he was at least the most interesting person they'd sent in.

"People say a lot of things. Most of it's crap."

Dean snorted in amusement at the idea that people said he was a nutjob. He seemed rather unconcerned about the whole thing. He hadn't worked out how he was going to break out, but he always did. Worst case, Sammy would find a way to get to him once he had that ghost escorted into the hereafter. Not his plan of choice, but it wasn't like he was afraid of rotting behind bars for the next twenty years, no matter what they were trying to do to work him over. This guy seemed a better brand of interrogator than the suits that couldn't keep their tempers, which Dean exploited mercilessly, but he had no intention of admitting to crimes he hadn't committed. After all, it wasn't like anyone bothered asking about credit card fraud.

"You guys get it all backwards, but, hey, whatever helps you sleep at night and pads your paychecks."

He smirked, a lazy curl of full lips, his eyes intent, meeting the other man's as if he had nothing to hide. The truth, was that he really didn't. Not here, not with this. He couldn't put his hands behind his head, so, he settled for letting them rest easily on top of the table, still tilted back in the chair.

"So, who are you? I didn't think they had contracted interrogators."

[facs_lightman]

Cal scanned his face as he spoke. Dean wasn't concerned about this at all. In fact, the casual demeanor, the request for food, the lazy smile seemed to suggest he was enjoying it on some level. It was the kind of thing you'd expect from a serial killer, someone who'd wanted to get caught, but something told him that wasn't the case here. He didn't want to be caught.

He understood, though, why this act was cementing his guilt in the minds of the FBI. They were mistaking this for a man who wanted to be caught, a man who was enjoying his fifteen minutes. There was more to this than what met the eye.

"Cal Lightman," he said, "Charmed, I'm sure." He was talking fast because he was thinking fast, eyes moving over Dean's face, focusing on his eyes, eyebrows, the muscles around his mouth. "Let's start with the most recent first. Did you kill those people? The ones in the bank."

He didn't give Dean a chance to respond, didn't give him a chance to think. He just hit him with more questions, kept them coming so he didn't have time to control his face. "What about before that, what about Emily. Did you kill her? Tie her to a chair, rough her up first? You did the same to her friend but… what, didn't have enough time to finish her off?"

He watched his face, for recognition, for shame or guilt or arousal. The kind of crimes he was supposed to have committed, it'd make sense to see arousal, to see that he got off on it. It'd go with what the FBI thought, go with his general demeanor, a sicko who got off on it. Guilt would make sense, too, but he didn't expect it with the way he was acting now. If the kid was sharp, he'd see that something about this was already getting to Cal. They hadn't even started, and it was clear that whatever he thought about Dean's innocence or guilt was touched with judgement. It was the name, Emily, it was things like this came way too close to home. Monsters. He'd met his fair share, he'd interrogated them, studied them. They'd come after him before, after his daughter. He was good at his job. He knew what he was looking for, knew what the telltale signs would be, if Dean was the kind of monster they said he was. Not that Cal and Dean dealt with the same kinds of monsters.

[winchester_lost]

Dean was still trying to size him up, had a name to put to the face. Dean wasn't good like Cal was, but he was still good at reading people. His pretty much flawless ability to walk into someplace and walk out with someone pretty on his arm wasn't just because of his pretty face and that bad-boy air. It was also because he was good at figuring out which girls wanted to go home with someone.

At the mention of the bank there was a twinge of regret. It was still fresh, recent, just a couple weeks gone. Ronald and his Manroids. Dead on the floor as the SWAT team opened fire. Sure, the guy had gone about the whole thing ass-backwards, but Dean couldn't help thinking he should have kept him alive. Maybe if Sammy hadn't decided to go all Mister-Fed-Stick-Up-My-Ass, things would have turned out differently. Or maybe he was simply right that ignorance was safe.

He hadn't had time for the thoughts to run their circuit, let alone to get out a response, before Cal was shot-gunning more questions. Emily. He didn't place the name at first, until Cal got descriptive. Oh. The first time he'd met a shapeshifter. Framed his brother's friend's brother for the murder of his girlfriend, and then stole Dean's face and nearly killed Rebecca. They'd killed it, though, and with the lair and the poor kid's bloodied clothes found, they'd pinned the murder squarely on him.

Another twitch of regret. They were small, flickers of something, but his outward demeanor didn't shift. His full lips didn't waver from that cocky grin, but it was there in the tension around his eyes. Because Rebecca shouldn't have been in that position. He felt bad they hadn't gotten to her sooner, hadn't killed it before it had gotten it's filthy hands on her. Well, his filthy hands on her, technically, but the point still stood. She was a cute girl. They should have been faster. They'd saved her, but still.

Dean has a feeling that this was getting to the other man. He wasn't quite sure why, but, he was clearly bothered by it. Not so much the bank, but that first case. Something in the way that he said Emily. Was it the fact that those had been so much more gruesome, not just murder but torture? He looked at Cal, a slight tilt of his head, trying to figure him out. Dean was enjoying himself, but not the way that Henrickson and the Feds thought. Dean had turned figuring out the people they sent in to interrogate him, to try and drag a confession out of him into an amusing sort of game.

And, hey, it was good practice for poker.

"See, this is the problem with all of you. You talk about being rational, but 'rational' goes right out the window when you run into information that doesn't tell you the story you want it to."

He shook his head, looking a little disgusted with people. And then Dean started pushing at Cal. "I mean, have you even looked at the mess that is my altercations with the law? First, you have a supposed 'bank robbery' where no one tried to take any money and no demands were ever made. Oh, and, tell me, they ever get an ID on the dead chick? Looked exactly like one of the hostages, but Sherry didn't have any identical twin sisters, did she?"

He didn't expect the man to believe him, but he was making a point, and turning things around so that he was the one asking questions was always a good thing. He was being honest. Intent, but honest, not a shred of deception in those steady hazel eyes that were watching Cal with an almost hawk-like intensity. This was poker without the cards. There was an edge to his voice, to his words, but it was the sort of edge borne of frustration at the fact that people simply didn't want to know. Dean was kind of tired of getting tossed behind bars just for being the guy with a rap sheet nearest to the crime scene. And with their line of work, he was always nearest the crime scene.

"Second, there's that whole mess where some cop was trying to string us up for murder. Funny enough, it wasn't me that time either. Then before that I ran into a police officer in Baltimore, and nailed some crazy-ass redneck family that thought Surviving the Game was a great idea and not just a shitty movie."

[winchester_lost]

Both of them had been written up as incidents where he'd 'escaped in the chaos'. Which was to say that law enforcement had realized that he wasn't the murder he was typecast as, and had turned a blind eye as they'd walked off.

"And then there was Saint Louis. Where they decided that despite digital experts having previously declared that the security camera footage hadn't been tampered with that it 'must have been'. Henrickson was spouting something about an order to exhume my corpse which they still have down there. I actually wasn't even in town when Emily died. Though, I'll admit I make a better scapegoat than that Zack kid."

"You people just don't get it. There are bodies where I go because I'm trying to save your worthless asses."