Salt and Blood 8/25
Chapter 8
When I finally had the time to really dig into Dean's file I wanted to get my own impression so my attention was on the pictures taken from the scenes and the victims. And the body which had been buried as Dean Winchester but I set that aside for the moment.
Including Rebecca Warren there were five victims in the St. Louis case. At first the police had arrested different men - husbands and boyfriends - but then they found a hideout in the sewers and came to the conclusion that it had been one man. Dressed up like their loved ones he fooled the women long enough to let him in the house. Rebecca Warren hadn't been fooled the second time and shot him when he came after her.
In later statements - after Dean had popped up pretty much alive - Rebecca Warren still insisted that the man she shot had been the attacker and that Sam and Dean had been there to help her.
I had no idea what exactly had happened there but it looked more and more like Dean hadn't killed anyone. At least not in St. Louis.
The pictures of the victims spoke of somebody with a lot of anger against women. He beat them up but his real passion was the knife.
It was beautiful. The lines, the cuts. It spoke of a virtuoso. And he didn't learn it yesterday. I bet if I'd start a national search I'd find more murders with this handwriting. I found the same handwriting on all five victims.
Wait, what was that? I leaned closer.
"Left-handed." Dumbfounded I sat back. One of the women - victim number three - had been killed by someone left-handed. There was no doubt about that. Every single one of the other four women had been tortured by someone using his right hand but this one clearly not. That didn't make any sense at all.
As soon as I had found one difference I found more.
It kept me awake the whole night but in the end I was convinced that it had been one offender with one unique handwriting. On the other hand the wounds highly suggested that it had been five different offenders. Men with different height, wight and strength. As far as I could tell from only pictures the men first been accused of the individual murders were most likely the ones who did it.
The wounds on Rebecca Warren could have been inflected by Dean Winchester, his features fit. Or by the Dean Winchester lookalike shot in her living room.
"Why is the FBI so keen on framing you?" I asked the Blue Steele mugshot of Dean. If this would ever go to court, I shook my head, with a decent lawyer this case would crumble to dust. If Dean could afford a decent lawyer which I doubted.
With the bank robbery it got even weirder. According to the witnesses statements the Winchester brothers just happened to be there when it went down. Pretending to check the security cameras. Why, I had no idea and it seemed like nobody working this case had bothered to ask.
Anyway, after the initial robber - who never had asked for money by the way - had been shot by the police, Dean took over. There had been killings and a young woman ended with a letter opener in her chest. Which had Dean's prints on it.
I looked at the picture of an obvious dead woman in her underwear. Jane Doe. She looked like the twin sister of one of the employees but she wasn't. Who she was nobody knew.
I stared at the picture trying to figure out what it was telling me. Besides the letter opener in her chest half of her right arm had been skinned. And her throat was cut.
The autopsy report said her throat had been cut post mortem but the way the blood was smeared I doubted that. However, it hadn't bled like it should with the pressure of a beating heart behind it. The blood just had leaked out. Strange.
And there was the skinned arm. Which hadn't bled at all. Trust me, if you skin somebody, there will be blood. A lot of it.
The longer I analyzed the picture the more I got the impression it was fake. To me it looked like something Hollywood would came up with.
"I'd love to see the original scene." I muttered to myself. If I didn't know better I'd say this Jane Doe in her underwear was some kind of prank. A very good one but still a prank.
She was dead, that was the only thing I was certain of.
"Did Dean kill her?" Harry asked.
"I don't know." I had to admit and even if he killed her, had it been murder or maybe self-defence? Or something completely different?
Just like the Dean Winchester lookalike nobody seemed to miss this young woman from the bank. Like they both had never really existed.
I had looked at the pictures for hours in search for answers. What I got was more questions.
Why had the Winchesters been in that bank? What drew them to Miami? And why were people of the Doe family popping up around the Winchesters?
When I finally turned the computer off and went to sleep I was mostly convinced that Dean Winchester didn't belong on my table. Same for his brother.
However, I wanted to understand what was going on with the brothers. Was Dean's interest in Debra really just the obvious? Why the questions about Sergeant Doakes?
Already half asleep I decided to proceed like usual. Observe, get to know them - it wasn't just Dean this was a double package - become their friend.
For a short second my mind traveled to Brian. He had played a game with me. Did the Winchesters want to play as well? Where they looking for me?
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I needed more information about the Winchester brothers. Lucky me, I lived together with an insider.
"This Dean." I started casual. "What's he like?"
Me and Deb sat together on the couch each of us with a beer in hand and feet on the table.
"Fuck." She shook her head with a smile. "I think he's the best fucking thing that could have happened to me right now." She gestured with the beer in my direction. "I know it's nothing permanent, I fucking know that. Just two adults having fun."
The way her smile faded I guessed she was thinking about Lundy. He hadn't told her it wasn't permanent. But we were deep in a territory I didn't know at all, so I could be completely wrong.
"Does he live around here?" I asked taking a sip from my beer. "Maybe you two could work something out."
"We had two dates." Deb reminded me. "That's not exactly marriage material. Besides, he doesn't live around here. He and Sam are on some kind of road trip to research for their book." She frowned. "He hasn't told me where he is from." She shrugged it off. I could have told her that Dean Winchester hadn't have a permanent address since he'd been four. His file was quite interesting, however, confusing.
"How about you invite them both over to Rita's place for dinner tomorrow?" I suggested. I'd thought about that the whole day and it seemed like a good idea. Even hinted it to Rita to test her reaction and she'd love to meet the men who wanted to write a book about mine and Deb's work. "I bet they hadn't any good home-cooked food for a while."
Usually I invade my victims home - I wasn't even sure if I could call one of the Winchesters my next victim - but in this case they didn't have a home I could invade. So the next best thing was to let them invade mine. Or Rita's.
The fact that Dean technically already had invaded my bed didn't count. That I was comfortable with him being around the people I called family told something. I didn't see him as a threat. Not for me or Rita or the kids. And for sure not for Deb.
"Is Rita okay with that?" Deb asked.
"She loves a full house." I repeated Rita's words. "And she loves to cook."
Deb took another sip from her beer. "I got the feeling Dean's not the meet the family type." She said thoughtfully.
"Oh." So much for the let them invade my home.
Then she grinned. "But I don't have to tell him where we'll go." Pleased with herself she nodded. "I'll just let them pick me up and then we head over to Rita's."
"Sounds like a plan."
We clunked the beer bottles.
continue to chapter 9
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