Skin: Copycat
“Where’s my candy?” I demanded as soon as Dean opened the door to get back in the Impala, a white plastic bag hanging from his wrist, weighed down by purchases from the gas station to our right.
Dean huffed and shucked the plastic from around his arm and then chucked the bag at my lap. I yelped when the cold drinks hit my thighs; even through the plastic, they felt like blocks of ice. “There’s your candy. Don’t get any chocolate on the upholstery or I’ll kick your ass,” he threatened. I had no doubts that he’d sincerely try, too.
I stuck my tongue out at him and started going through the bag, tossing a wrapped candy back over the seat to Serenity and held out a bottle of water for Sam over the top of my seat. It took a moment for him to look up from his phone, but he took the bottle once he saw it.
“And just for that, you don’t get your soda,” I told Dean, feeling childishly triumphant over the miniscule punishment.
Dean shut his car door and hit the lock mechanism before diving over from his seat, grabbing at the bag. Taken by surprise, I shrieked and tried to wiggle to the side, but with my door locked there was only so far I could go. One of Dean’s hands met my side and started prodding under my ribcage and I giggled, trying to hold the bag as far away from him as possible.
“Ah!” I screamed happily, trying to weakly bat at Dean’s shoulders for my freedom. The soda and candy still in the gas station bag knocked lightly against the window as I tried to keep it away. “No fair tickling!”
“Give me the soda!” Dean commanded, continuing the assault on my side.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Serenity muttered in the back seat. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Winchester, you’re assaulting someone over a soda.”
“Fine!” I squealed. “I give, I give!” My toes curled in my socks and when Dean lunged for the bag, it took me a moment to force myself to relax my fist. Reluctantly, I gave up my prized plastic bag to the older Winchester and lowered my hands to my sides. Tucked against the car door, I pulled the seat belt over to latch the buckle and glared at Dean as a last-ditch attempt to retain some of my dignity.
“Well, Holls, next time you shouldn’t play boss in my car.” Dean advised arrogantly, getting his soda out of the bag, popping the lid of the can, and then setting in the cupholder. He tossed it over to me a moment later so I could get my Three Musketeers out before hanging the plastic over the gear shift for a trash bag when we inevitably finished our snacks and drinks. “Alright, Sam, I figure we’d hit Tucumcari by lunch, then head south to hit Bisbee by midnight.” Sam made no sound to indicate that he’d heard, so in the exact same tone of voice, Dean tested if he was listening by adding, “Sam wears women’s underwear.”
Sam looked up from his phone and gave Dean one of his famous bitch faces. “I’ve been listening,” he assured him, annoyed. “I’m just busy.”
“Busy doin’ what?” Dean put his arm over the back of his chair and turned around.
“Reading emails,” Sam answered casually.
“Oh.” I stopped and pouted. “Huh. Well, I should probably do that sometime. God knows how full my inbox has gotten since we were in Wisconsin. Who are you emailing?” I asked, changing my interest and ripping open the candy wrapper.
“My friends at Stanford,” Sam answered pleasantly, seemingly happy just at the thought of the people he’d left behind. I hadn’t heard any mention of continued communication since he’d left his college and I thought back to the image of Jess a couple of weeks ago, vanishing behind a telephone pole after saying our goodbyes to the friendly local high school girl, Charlotte, whom we’d helped.
“You’re kidding,” Dean stated in surprise, a reaction opposite to my own in one respect; he sounded more dismayed. I was happy for Sam - if he was talking to them, then maybe he’d gotten a measure of closure over Jessica’s death, but Dean seemed upset that Sam was communicating with his Stanford friends. “You still keep in touch with your college buddies?”
Sam looked up from his phone with his eyebrows pulled together in innocent confusion. “Why not?”
Dean scoffed like it should have been obvious. “Well, what exactly do you tell them?” His voice suggested that this was only the first in a long list of objections he held. “You know, about where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing?”
Sam looked to the emails on his phone and then up to his brother with narrowed eyes, looking for a trick in the question. “I tell them I’m on a road trip with my big brother and a couple of family friends.” Serenity and I met each other’s eyes at the clear reference to us. I suppose it’s not too weird that Sam included us; we are helping them to find their father and get around on hunts, and we’re friends, so it’s not exactly inaccurate, but at the same time it seemed like maybe he would have kept that portion to himself. “I tell them I needed some time off after Jess.”
“Oh.” Dean nodded and turned around, seeming okay with it now. “So you lie to them.”
“No!” Sam denied quickly, shaking his head violently. “I just… don’t tell them everything.”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “That’s called lying.” He caught a look at Sam’s crestfallen expression in one of the mirrors and backtracked, chuckling. “I mean, man, I get it - telling the truth is far worse.”
Sam went on the offensive, glaring at the back of Dean’s neck. “So, what am I supposed to do, then? Just cut everybody out of my life?” Although it was clearly meant as a line to make Dean realize he was being silly, Dean took it seriously and shrugged his shoulders in a noncommittal agreement. “You’re serious?”
“Look, it sucks,” Dean admitted with complete seriousness. “But in a job like this, you can’t get close to people. Period. The only people you can be close to are your family and your hunting contacts, and even then you’ve gotta keep it clean, close to the vest with most people.”
That made me stop. I hadn’t considered it too much before - hunting was quickly becoming something that I focused all of my energy on, along with the Winchester Family Ruins, which I had mentally and tactlessly dubbed the boys’ mother and Jess’s deaths and John Winchester’s disappearing act. I didn’t really make any plans to go back to the normal crime-fighting I’d been doing, but when I thought about it, I hadn’t made a decision not to, either. At the same time, how could I just give up hunting when it was new and exciting? And yes, I’m good at my job - but there are a lot more FBI agents than there are hunters, I’m willing to bet, for two reasons: the first being that a lot of hunters are probably killed by the hunted sooner or later, and two, if hunting was a large community, then the supernatural wouldn’t be unknown to the vast majority of civilians.
And if I can be a target for the venom of the supernatural monsters, then does that mean my friends can be linked to me? If contacting them puts them in danger… I won’t be able to tolerate myself if staying in contact with my friends puts them in harm’s way. The last thing I want is my foray into another side of the world getting anyone I care for killed. What if I’m risking just that by emailing them still?
I started hunting to learn and to save lives, not to kill off people I love and protect. By hunting, have I already signed myself into a lifetime of living like Sam and Dean, as a huntress? Or have I just gathered enough information to begin considering the decision of which world I want to live in - the FBI’s or the hunters’?
Sam glowered at Dean. “You’re kind of antisocial, you know that?”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”
Neither of them seemed to realize that I was freaking out a bit over here, and I took a large bite of my chocolate to try to calm down and chill out. Chocolate makes almost everything better, so long as you have enough of it.
I was nearly done with my Three Musketeers by the time that Dean decided he’d had enough of sitting around patiently. Just as he twisted the keys to put the car back into gear, Sam muttered a horrified interjection. “God…!”
“What?” Serenity asked without pause, leaning over to try to read the emails, too.
“In this email from this girl, Rebecca Warren-” Sam paused, looked up to Dean, and clarified, “One of those friends of mine.”
Dean only particularly cared about the femininity of the name. “Is she hot?” He asked, looking at Sam over the shoulder of his seat. I scowled at him and punched him in the arm hard enough to get across the message of my irritation.
Sam tactfully ignored Dean’s superficial question. “I went to school with her and her brother, Zack. She says Zack’s been charged with murder.” I leaned my head back against the headrest, already able to tell what was going to happen - we’d go say hi to Rebecca and Zack. “He’s been arrested for killing his girlfriend. Rebecca says he didn’t do it, but it sounds like the cops have a pretty good case.”
“Dude,” Dean said after a stunned second. “What kind of people have you been hanging out with?”
Sam shook his head in disagreement. “No, man, I know Zack. He’s no killer.” His voice was forlorn and sad, longing to go back and help and upset that his friends had to be going through this.
“Well…” Dean only paused for a minute before he gave up his filter and finished, “Maybe you know Zack as well as he knows you.”
Sam looked up from his phone and fixed Dean with his bitch stare, but Dean wasn’t looking and he didn’t see. “They’re in St. Louis,” Sam said, clipped and final. “We’re going.”
Dean laughed, taking it as a joke. “Look, I’m sorry ‘bout your buddy, okay? But this does not sound like our kind of problem.”
Serenity reached up from her seat behind Dean and flicked one of his ears audibly. Dean scowled and leaned forward, raising a hand to cup his ear protectively while Serenity glared fire at him. “Sam’s friends, Sam’s problem, our problem,” she stated definitively, daring him to defy her ruling.
“St. Louis is four hundred miles behind us!” Dean protested, leaning forward so that Serenity couldn’t pull the same trick again.
“And at what point does friendship and loyalty mean nothing?” I asked, frowning at Dean softly in disapproval, thinking that maybe if Sam was pulling the ‘brother’ card and Serenity was being the bad cop, then I could be the good cop and come off as sweet and innocent to gain points. I widened my eyes and looked up at him, blinking slowly and willing tears to well in my eyes.
Dean groaned. “Ugh. Alright. We’ll stop by, check it out, and drive right through Missouri.” He glanced at me and did a double-take as I lifted my head again and rubbed away the falsified tears contently, then growled under his breath when he figured he’d been played. “I’m telling you, though, this isn’t our type of gig.”
Despite his misgivings, Dean was smart enough to realize that he was completely outnumbered with three against one. The fact is, even if there isn’t anything we can do, they’re Sam’s friends. Dean’s closest relationships seem to be with Sam and his father, and I know he moved around too much in school to really have a best friend he wasn’t related to. Dean means well, but he doesn’t understand that sometimes when your friends are in trouble, you feel as compelled to help them as if it were Sam or his father who needed his help.
Rebecca Warren owned a house near downtown St. Louis with two stories and white paint. There was a driveway and a small garage just big enough for some storage and a small car. The trim was a pleasant lavender. It seemed altogether welcoming and happy, except all of the curtains were drawn in a clear message to clear off and leave me be.
I hung back behind Sam, Dean, and Serenity. I was a bit nervous as to how this reunion was going to go; going on two months since Sam left Stanford to travel to Jericho in search of their father, Sam hadn’t seen any of his college friends before today. While I was sure Rebecca wouldn’t mind seeing Sam, there was no telling how she’d react to his brother, a virtual stranger - let alone Holly Kasakabe and her sister standing on her porch, apparently the surprising and mysterious ‘family friends’ of the Winchesters. Dean was his normal self - giving the “charm smile” and ready to flirt the clothing off of anyone that he didn’t think would… ah… let’s just say he’s heard detailed threats from Serenity that, if completed, would make it extremely difficult for him to have sex any time in the near future.
A woman who I guessed was Rebecca pulled open the white, four-panel front door at first with a hostile attitude, but it quickly morphed into delight. She sported a California tan and a modest green top, an earthy-colored beaded necklace around her throat. Her lips had a light, glossy sheen, and there was a slightly darker tone around her eyes like she’d used makeup to cover up that she’d been crying or tired recently. Her hair was very light blonde and looked naturally straight, hanging down a few inches past her shoulders and parted slightly to the left.
“Oh my God!” She cried, pulling the door open further and then letting it swing in towards her wall, stepping out over the foyer to wrap her arms around Sam’s neck. “Sam!”
Sam laughed - a genuine, cheerful laugh, and raised one arm around Rebecca’s shoulders and the other hand rose to ruffle her hair lightly. “Well, if it isn’t little Becky!”
“You know what you can do with that ‘little Becky’ crap,” Rebecca said, shoving him away with her hands playfully.
Sam’s smile faded slightly but his eyes were still sparkling happily at seeing his friend. I hadn’t stopped to think about how he must feel through all of this; Dean had few emotional connections to people and Serenity and I are closest to each other, but Sam had been at college for years before being dragged away from a completely different life compared to the one we were leading now. First he lost Jess, and now it’s like he’s lost everyone he knew at Stanford; this is more than meeting up with a friend for him. It’s reuniting with another side of himself.
“I got your email.”
Rebecca seemed to immediately sober as her smile faded, too. “I didn’t think that you would come here,” she admitted, reaching up to push her hair out of her face and back behind her shoulders.
Dean had had enough of being ignored and he stepped forward closer to Sam, holding out his hand to Rebecca. “Dean. Older brother.”
“Hi,” Rebecca said politely, not quite charmed yet.
“Hi.”
“I’m Serenity, and this is -” Serenity looked behind to me as she tried to introduce us, but when she saw I was partially hiding behind Sam and Dean, she scowled and fisted the collar of my shirt, dragging me forwards with force. “This is my sister, Holly Kasakabe,” she finished now that I was in view.
Rebecca went straight to looking surprised and Sam looked first at the two of us and then back at her. “Oh, yeah. Serenity and Holly are those family friends I mentioned,” he said, waving at the two of us and offering Rebecca another cute trust me, I’m adorable smile.
“Holly and Serenity… Kasakabe.” Rebecca looked between the two of us uncertainly, saying our last name more like a question than a statement. I don’t quite blame her - you can hear about well-known people but you’d be surprised when they show up on your porch. Serenity and I aren’t famous in the same sense as performing artists, but I’m on the news frequently enough for her to know who I am. Most children don’t recognize me, but I’m still a big name in the FBI. Serenity isn’t as well known - maybe in shadow societies or criminal syndicates, but not to the general public. She’s a badass mafia boss to the gun-toting minorities, but to most civilians she’s just my snarky but well-meaning sister.
I offered her an unsure, slightly shaky smile. “Don’t worry, Miss Warren. I’m not working against your brother, I’m just here because a friend of Sam’s is a friend of ours.”
It was only when it was out of my mouth that I realized how cliché that sounded, but Rebecca didn’t seem to mind. Visibly set at ease, she stepped further out onto the porch and held out her hand for a greeting handshake. “Rebecca, please. It’s a pleasure to meet you - all of you.”
“We’re here to help,” Sam vowed earnestly. “Whatever we can do.”
Rebecca looked around and held out a hand towards the open doorway, leading into the front hall. “Come in, please.”
I waited until Sam, Serenity, and Dean were in the house before I followed, and I made sure to shut the door quietly behind me. Rebecca had a tall floor lamp turned on in the living room, which was down the hall a few yards and had a door attaching it to the kitchen, that provided sufficient light, but Rebecca hit a light switch anyway, flooding the interior of the main space with light that seemed yellow due to the light marigold paint.
The bedrooms must have been upstairs because it seemed like the first floor was mostly just entry hall, wide living area, fairly-sized kitchen, bathroom, and pantry. The kitchen had an island in the middle and a coffee pot on the visible left side of the sink, a wide fridge with a college class picture pinned on the front with a magnet. The living room had an oval-shaped rug of green, red, orange, yellow, and brown muted colors, a sofa in the middle and facing one wall, an armchair on either side, a coffee table in the middle of the arrangement, and a television set on top of a three-foot-high stand on the opposite wall. Behind the couch, there was a billiards table that was a little bit dusty, pool sticks resting on top of the green felt. There was a window on either half of the far wall.
“Nice place,” Dean commented.
Rebecca shrugged modestly. “It’s my parents’. I was just crashing here for the long weekend when everything happened. I decided to take the semester off.” She took a deep breath and nodded like she was steeling her own resolve. “I’m gonna stay until Zack’s free.” And since there was no guarantee that that was going to happen, she was risking her college standing by doing so.
“Where are your parents?” I asked, fixing my hands in front of me and interlocking my fingers. “Do they know what’s going on?”
“Of course,” Rebecca nodded matter-of-factly. “They live in Paris for half the year, so they’re on their way home now for the trial.” She stepped backwards, her heels passing over the line of change between carpet and tile into the kitchen. “Do you guys want a beer or anything?” She offered.
Dean broke out into a grin. “Hey-”
Sam interrupted Dean and, right on cue, Serenity elbowed Dean in the ribs, the motion hidden from Rebecca by the angle of the wall. “No, thanks,” Sam corrected Dean with his empathetic puppy dog expression. “So, tell us what happened.”
Rebecca paused where she was and rested one of her hands flat on the wall just inside of the kitchen. “Well, um, Zack came home, and he found Emily tied to a chair.” Rebecca looked away from Sam and the rest of us. She must have been very upset - I assume she knew Emily, if she was the sister of Emily’s boyfriend. So not only is her brother being charged for assault and homicide, but also, her friend was beaten and murdered. “And she was beaten up and bloody, and she wasn’t breathing.” She blinked and the light over her head reflected on the tears beginning to fall. I flinched back in discomfort.
She must have been told the story secondhand, but clearly she had quite a vivid imagination, otherwise she probably wouldn’t appear to be quite so traumatized by it.
“So…” Rebecca stopped, swallowed hard, and tipped her head to the side, blinking rapidly. “He called nine-one-one, and the police - they showed up, and they arrested him!” Well, yeah, of course, I thought to myself in confusion. His girlfriend, his house, and he was the only non-victim at the scene. It was pretty cut-and-dry, however tragic. “But, the thing is, the only way that Zack could have killed Emily is if he was in two places at the same time!”
Now, that exclamation actually made my train of thought come to a screeching halt. Yes, hysteria and tragedy combine badly, but was it actually possible that she was telling the truth? If she had anything time stamped, or any proof - maybe some monster had, I don’t know, attacked Emily?
Oh, or before I get ahead of myself - A: Zack actually did kill his girlfriend or B: Someone broke in, beat and killed Emily Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Is, and Zack took the fall because he was an easy arrest.
“The police,” Rebecca continued, hiccupping slightly as she worked herself up into an emotional fervor. “They have a video. It’s from the security tape across the street, and it shows Zack coming home at ten thirty. Now, Emily was killed just after that, but I swear he was here with me - having a few beers - until at least after midnight!”
“You know…” Sam started, shuffling his feet and gaining his confidence all into one place. “Maybe we could see the crime scene?” He suggested hopefully and kindly at the same time. “Zack’s house.”
“We could?” Serenity stated as an inquiry, looking at Sam in wary surprise; like she knew he was up to something but she wasn’t entirely sure what it was.
I just looked straight ahead at the wall and felt my jaw go slack. This doesn’t bode well for me.
“Why?” Rebecca asked, her breath slightly huffy since she didn’t think that seeing the crime scene could benefit any of us. “What could you do?”
“Well, me, not much,” Sam admitted, laughing in good nature. “But Holly here - she’s FBI. She outranks even the local cops.”
Rebecca looked back to me in a sort of new light - like she’d considered me an adversary against her and her family, and then as a guest, but not as a potential ally. There was hope brightening her eyes now. It was a sort of unspoken question - if she asked aloud it was presumptuous and awkward, but it wasn’t a possibility she could just ignore. And damn, either Sam is one manipulative little bastard or he didn’t think how this would make me feel - because I don’t want to get involved in this for so many reasons, only a couple of which being that I’m on sabbatical and that it draws attention to the people I’m trying to legally protect. Yet on the other hand, if I deny the help then not only do I make Rebecca feel worse than she already did, but I also make Sam look bad for suggesting it, and then I feel guilty for that, too.
I am so screwed.
So instead I just plastered on a smile. “Yep! They can tell themselves they call the shots, but I get the veto.” Internally I repeated a mantra of how I am so going to make Sam regret putting me in this position, because this is not what friends do to each other.
But then again, who said we were friends? This is exactly the reason why we all started working in conjuction in the first place; so that Sam and Dean could reap the benefits of a contact in the FBI. That’s what they planned on doing and that’s what they’re doing now, and it was never a secret to Serenity and I. Maybe I was reading too far into things and we weren’t all friends, just in a mutually-beneficial relationship where we lived together for weeks on end.
“You guys…” Rebecca paused and her lips pulled down in agonized indecision. “It’s so nice to offer-” I never offered anything, Sam just implied that I would help- “-but I just - I don’t know.”
“Bec, look.” Sam tried again, his voice soft yet firm at the same time as he tried to sensitively drive his point across to his friend. “I know Zack didn’t do this. Now, we have to find a way to prove that he’s innocent.”
Sam successfully melted Rebecca’s qualms. She pushed herself away from the wall and, sniffing, she rubbed her at her eyes with the heels of her palms to pull herself together. “Okay,” she decided. “I’m gonna go get the keys.” She pushed herself away from the threshold and down the hall back towards the door - she probably kept the keys on one of the coat hooks or something - leaving the four of us to hang out awkwardly in the living room.
“Oh, yeah, man,” Dean sniped in a sarcastic whisper at Sam’s taller figure once Rebecca was out of earshot. “You’re a real straight shooter with your friends.”
“Dude!” Serenity held out her arms in offense, baffled by the turn of events. “What was that for? I get you want to help, but you pretty much forced Holly into this one!”
“Yeah, what was that about?” I agreed, crossing my arms defensively. Really, I was more upset by Sam’s lack of consideration than I was angry at having to help Rebecca - if Sam wanted to see the crime scene, all he really had to do was ask me to my face and I would have probably gotten him in. It’s not like I have anything against helping him out. But asking me in that context was completely passive-aggressive. I believe he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but there’s no way a guy as smart as Sam doesn’t realize what he’s doing.
“Look, Zack and Becky need our help,” Sam said, giving me pleading eyes. “I just want to help them out. I know Zack wouldn’t do this. He used to go on about Emily all the time. No way he kills her. And two places at once? We’ve looked into less!”
“So he has a conflicting alibi. Supported by his sister,” I hissed fiercely. “Of course Rebecca’s supporting him, Sammy, they’re family, they love each other. We made a deal in California - you want something from me as an agent, if it’s within reason, I do it for you in turn for being taught how to hunt. You don’t manipulate me in the off chance that I might disagree with you!” I hissed, finding it hard to keep my voice down low so Rebecca, only separated from us by the barricade of walls, wouldn’t hear the ensuing argument. She was grief-stricken; the situation wasn’t her fault.
“That wasn’t a smooth move, Sam,” Serenity agreed, glaring. “We’re not pawns. You don’t get to decide how we act and we can tell when we’re being pushed around. You want us around for your uses? Fine, but at least be man enough to tell us to our faces.”
Sam gave Rebecca all of his sympathies outside of Zack’s house once again. Zach’s place wasn’t unlike his sister’s, except the trim was a light green and the paint was a few shades different in the cream color. Most of the curtains actually weren’t pulled shut, but there was yellow crime scene tape wound around the columns of the front porch, blocking off the top of the short stairs. The door was shut firmly and no police cars were around, but evidently the CSI unit was still pending results.
“Bec, you wanna wait outside?” Sam offered. I just shot a glare at the back of Sam’s neck. I had already been roped into this, but I didn’t have to be happy about it. I stepped up the front stairs and pulled up on the CSI tape. The sides of the banner wound around the columns slid up a bit but mostly it just pulled at the center and I still had to duck to get under.
“No,” Rebecca refused, but she was giving Sam grateful eyes in return for the consideration. “I wanna help.” Her last word was almost completely drowned out by the dog next door to Zack, chained up by a doghouse outside in the back - I don’t know what breed it was. I couldn’t see it very well but the color and size made me think either a Rottweiler or a Beauceron.
Help us how? I thought snidely, but knew better than to take out my frustration with Sam by saying it aloud to Rebecca. I wish Serenity was here, but she and Dean had thought to go get a hotel room since it seemed as though we’d be staying for at least overnight, and we agreed to meet at Rebecca’s afterward. I twisted the door handle, not completely surprised to find it unlocked, and pushed it in gently. It gave in without so much as a creak and I hit the light switch just inside. Without waiting for Rebecca, I crossed over the front foyer and held the door still, running my fingers along the edge to feel for any chipping or damage.
“There was no sign of a break-in,” Rebecca told me, trying to be helpful. Sam, unlike me, was so tall that he actually had an easier time stepping over the crime scene tape rather than under it - when Rebecca tried to do the same, she ended up hopping a bit to stay upright once on the other side. “They say that Emily let her attacker in.”
“Makes sense,” I pointed out, giving up on the door and walking further in towards the living room. This room was more obviously marked; crime tape was tied along short markers to point out specific blood stains and positions for the serologists and cops on the case to try to put together what had happened with the best accuracy. I tipped my head to the side and stared at the red on the tan rug, letting myself slip into that mind frame.
Most of the blood was just off of the center of the room - far enough to the right and close enough to the fireplace that no one would have been able to see in from the sidewalk outside. That was probably where the victim had been tied up to the chair and beaten. Most of the blood was over there, but there was a faint stain on the other side of the room that didn’t seem like it had come from direct bleeding - transfer from something else, maybe - clothes or a weapon?
“But the lawyers can’t even refute that,” Rebecca worried. “They’re already talking about a plea bargain.”
I glanced back behind me and my eyes landed on Sam. “Keep calm, Rebecca,” I cautioned. “Plea bargain’s bad but it could be worse and the police have got a point. If Zack wasn’t responsible for the murder, then someone else was.” I emphasized the ‘if’ in the statement, locking eyes on Sam. His jaw stiffened rebelliously but he didn’t comment on it; he knew he’d already pushed boundaries with me and honestly, I wasn’t sure how he’d make up for that. “Now you might think something is irrelevant, but even the most seemingly unrelated thing could be important. Do you know anyone who would have it out for Zack or Emily? Either someone in a public service or someone they socialized with?”
Those were the only reasons I could think of for Emily letting someone who might kill her into her home.
“No, people loved Emily, she was always so sweet to everyone.” Rebecca pushed her hair away from her face and back behind her shoulder, sniffing slightly, but looking like she was seriously considering the question. “I mean, not in a fake way, but she was genuine. She’d offer notes if you missed a class or bake you cookies if you were sick. Zack hasn’t really had fights since he was in middle school; never provoked anyone…” her voice kind of trailed off slowly and I rolled my eyes. Three seconds before she realizes a clue.
I was dead-on. “Um, there was something,” Rebecca recalled, holding up one hand in excitement. She carefully ticked off something on her fingers. “It was about a… a week before. Somebody broke in here, and stole some clothes - Zack’s clothes. The police, they don’t think it’s anything. I mean, we’re not that far from downtown, sometimes people get robbed.”
The dog from next door was still barking incessantly outside; I was about ready to go outside and cut its tongue out, except there would be a lot of blood on my shirt if I went through with that.
“They think that’s nothing?” I repeated incredulously, pulling at a handful of my hair irately. “Seriously? Someone gets their clothes robbed and a week later, someone that looks like them goes into their house and murders someone while alibis point to their suspect being somewhere else, and they think that the stolen clothes are just a funny little coincidence?!” Even without knowledge of the supernatural, the cops here should have put two and two together and at least looked further into it. “Jesus Christ, I think I need to have a talk with local P.D.,” I muttered, more to myself than to the other two. “And damn it, what the hell is wrong with that mutt?!”
Rebecca sighed and looked out one of the windows in the kitchen to the ink-and-cinnamon-colored dog yapping its lungs out in the neighboring yard. “You know, that used to be the sweetest dog,” she reminisced.
“What happened?” Sam asked, suddenly interested with the dog’s transition.
Rebecca shrugged. “He just changed.”
“Do you remember when he changed?” Sam asked hopefully, his tone bordering far too much on excitement.
Rebecca gave him an odd look for it, but she answered anyway, giving it her best guess. “I guess around the time of the murder.”
Sam tried to cool his attitude by making it into a simple “nod and look away like it never actually mattered” thing, but I didn’t buy into it for a second. Looking back to Rebecca, I smiled kindly. “Hey Rebecca, do you mind looking through the kitchen?” At her look of sudden confusion, I explained, “Just see if you notice any sharp instruments missing. Being able to guess whether or not the weapon came from the house could indicate whether or not the attack had been premeditated.”
“Of course,” Rebecca nodded, her eyes lit with determination, and she turned around, storming off to the kitchen with the speed of lightning. A moment later I heard the clattering of cutlery moving in a drawer as it was opened.
I looked back to Sam sharply. “So the neighbor’s dog got mean. Does that actually mean anything or are you thinking of becoming a dog whisperer?” I asked bitingly.
“Animals can have a sharp sense of the paranormal,” Sam whispered back, after looking over his shoulder to be sure that we were in the clear. “Often when a supernatural entity is around, pets or even wildlife can start behaving strangely. Usually they get more hostile. Like the dog.” Sam motioned vaguely behind him through the wall towards the other yard.
“So you think whatever killed Emily was supernatural?” I asked somewhat skeptically. Can’t a dog just have a bad day? Am I sure that something’s up, or is Sam just grasping at straws to try to preserve his memory of Zack? But Sam nodded with such sincerity that I sighed.
“Alright, then I need to see the security tape. If there’s neighborhood watch, I can compare the video from Rebecca’s house and Zack’s, see if Zack left before Mr. Psycho got home.” I raised my voice just in time as Rebecca came back from the kitchen, shaking her head. “Anything?”
“No, I don’t think anything’s missing. I mean, I don’t know how much of anything they have, but it doesn’t seem like anything’s out of place,” she answered confidently. I guess she thought that would be a point for Zack’s favor. To a small degree. And by small I mean… miniscule. But I needed you away, so it worked.
“Good. Rebecca, the security footage - do your lawyers have a copy?” I asked her, putting myself back into the attitude of a normal investigator. “I could get it, but that would require taking the time to get a new disc burnt.” In reality, contacting and meeting with a lawyer would probably take longer than getting the technicians at the St. Louis Police Department to create another disc, but she didn’t know that, and the longer I could keep my name off of the official record, the happier I’d be.
Rebecca looked down guiltily and wrung her hands. “I, ah, I’ve already got it,” she admitted, risking a glance up to me. I raised an eyebrow, pretending not to be impressed with her, but internally I was actually applauding her disregard for procedures. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of you, but I stole it off of the lawyer’s desk. I just had to see it for myself,” she hurried to try to explain.
I just rolled my eyes in mock exasperation and dutifully muttered, “Civilians,” under my breath. “Alright. Let’s go back to your house and you can show me that. Serenity and Dean are probably waiting, anyway.”
Sam’s trusty laptop, to the rescue again. Complete with a D.V.D. rom and wide screen, it makes a great way to watch a video, even one as boring as a neighborhood watch recording.
Sam had it set on Rebecca’s coffee table and Serenity, Dean, Sam, and I were all crowding around it, too absorbed in watching it to notice that it was slightly awkward that Serenity was leaning over Sam’s lap sideways to see well and that I was on the floor in front of the table to make room for Dean, whose feet were planted on either side of my legs. He leaned forward over me to see the laptop and, in turn, Rebecca was leaning over the back of the couch behind him.
“Here he comes,” I said, pleased to have finally made headway when I saw a man turn from the sidewalk and step up the front steps to Zack’s porch. I let go of the arrow button that had been controlling the fast forwarding. The video paused for a minute to readjust accordingly before it continued at a much better pace.
A timestamp in the top right corner used military time. When a man who most certainly looked like the Zack in the picture on Rebecca’s mantel opened the door, looked around cautiously, and slipped inside the house, it was timestamped twenty-two-oh-four.
“That’s just after ten,” Dean said out loud, doing the translation from military to twelve-hour in his head. “You said time of death was about ten thirty.”
“Our lawyers hired some kind of video expert. He says the tape’s authentic. It wasn’t tampered with.” Rebecca started to scratch characters on the back of the couch with her fingernail and I focused back on the tape. Right before Zack (or his lookalike) disappeared inside, he looked around, happening to look right over the camera without seeming to realize it was there. As the camera lens caught his eyes directly, they seemed to change like a shutter sliding down over the irises and turning them silver before he looked away and went in, shutting the door behind him.
I know Sam caught it too, because he twisted around in his seat to look up at Rebecca. “Hey, Bec, can we take those beers now?” He asked.
“Oh, sure.” Rebecca straightened up and moved quickly around the couch, half jogging out to the kitchen.
“Hey!” Sam called for her attention again and Rebecca poked her head back into the living room. Sam offered her a smile. “Maybe some sandwiches, too?”
Rebecca smirked. “What do you think this is, Hooters?” She retorted, rolling her eyes and disappearing back into the kitchen - but I heard cupboards and drawers open and knew that despite the smartass rebuttal, we were going to get a free meal.
“I wish,” Dean muttered under his breath. I felt something pick up a strand of my hair from on top of my neck. I assumed it was either the wind or Serenity - she does that sometimes. It’s what we do when we’re bored and don’t care about how we come off to other people. We’ll play with each other’s hair - braiding or fishtailing or curling - or draw or write on each other’s’ arms with a pen, or we’ll draw with our fingers on each other’s backs and have the other try to guess what was being drawn.
“Hey, you lot saw that thing with the eyes, right?” I asked just to be sure that I wasn’t tired and seeing things. I hit the back arrow key and let it rewind at the first speed, going back to the door closing, opening, a man stepping out backwards, and him looking around again. I lifted my finger up just in time for it to start playing forwards at the moment where his eyes went through the transition to an eerie silver.
“Well, maybe it’s just a camera flare,” Dean suggested, his voice surprisingly close behind me.
“I’ve never seen a camera flare like that,” Serenity discredited skeptically. “I mean, it looked like his eyes turned silver - not were silver. I swear they started off brown. It was like some sort of slide came down and the color changed with it.”
“Like a shutter,” I agreed with her. “A flare wouldn’t have an effect like that. Not from this angle, anyway.”
Sam tipped his head to the side and bit lightly at the inside of his cheek. “You know,” he started thoughtfully. “A lot of cultures believe that a photograph can catch a glimpse of the soul.”
“Right - like mirrors,” Serenity grumbled, crossing her arms. In the last hunt we’d had, we’d found a real life case of Bloody Mary - if anyone said the Bloody Mary chant three times, then the nearest person to have murdered someone and kept it a secret was haunted and killed by the ghost of a murdered girl named Mary Worthington from thirty-five years ago. For about two hours, Serenity had had to keep her eyes closed or risk having Mary claw her eyes out. It went without saying that she did not particularly like mirrors anymore.
“Remember that dog next door to Zack’s?” I asked, more rhetorical than anything because I highly doubted that Sam had already let it slip his mind. “Maybe he saw this. Maybe it’s not Zack, just looks like him.”
“Like an evil double?” Serenity hypothesized, more curious than anything at this point. “A doppelganger - looks like him, but isn’t actually him, except no one really knows that he exists so no one thinks twice about arresting the innocent version.”
“Well, it would explain how he was two places at once,” Sam murmured.
I pulled forward to hit the button to eject the security tape C.D., but had to stop when my hair was pulled. I grimaced and turned my head to glare at Serenity, except her hands were in her lap. I looked back further to glare at Dean, who just then realized what the problem was - he had a lock of my ginger hair in his hands, absentmindedly curling it around his fingers and then combing it out straight again. I raised my eyebrows and he dropped my hair immediately, clearing his throat and replacing his hands on his knees.
“Okay…” I said awkwardly, unsure how I was actually supposed to react to my male friend who despises romance and touchy-feely-ness playing with my hair, supposedly without noticing what he was doing. “I’m going to pretend that that didn’t just happen, and anyone who says otherwise is sleeping without blankets tonight.”