Standing Outside the Fire

45

"So what now? Move to Vermont, open up a charming B&B?"

"No. I still want – I still need to help people. So..." he smiled, "I'm gonna become a hunter."

"Really?" Sam and Francesca said.

"Yeah. I could be your third wheel. Or fourth wheel."

Francesca raised a brow. "You know that's not a good thing, right? Sam's third wheel half the time around me and Dean. Sorry, Sam."

"Of course it is. A third wheel, even a fourth wheel, adds extra grip, greater stability. I even found a case. Oklahoma City – a man's heart jumped 10 feet out of his chest. It sounds like our kind of thing, right?"

"He's got a point," Sam reasoned.

"Excellent." He rapped the car and turned away. "I'll see you there."

"Wait, Cas, Cas!" Dean called. "If you want to play cowboys and bloodsuckers, that's fine. But you're gonna stick with us, okay? None of this zapping around crap. Capiche?"

"Yeah, I capiche."

"All right, then." He walked to the driver's door.

"Can I, uh, at least ride in the front seat?"

Dean and Sam said simultaneously, while the former shouldered Castiel out of the way, "No."

Dean and Sam got into the front seats as Francesca got her usual spot in the back. Castiel opened the door behind Sam.

INT. POLICE MORGUE – DAY

A body covered with a sheet laid on a table.

The detective said, "Coroner said his heart was ejected from his body. Got some air, too. Found it in a sandbox."

Sam, Dean and Francesca were wearing their FBI suits and dress, Castiel was in his trenchcoat.

"Any idea what happened, Detective?" Sam asked.

"A lot of people are thinking drugs, Agent Nash – an assload of drugs."

Castiel said to Dean, "There are no narcotics in that man's system. His molecules are all wrong."

"But you don't think that, huh?" Francesca questioned.

"Never seen an eightball do that," the detective replied, pulling back the sheet to reveal the cookie-cutter heart-shaped hole in Gary's chest.

"Wow. And who called this in?"

"Friend of his named Olivia Kopple. She saw the whole thing." She pulled the sheet back up. Her phone rang. "Oh." She looked at the caller ID. "Ah, crap. I have – I have to take this. Here's everything we got." She handed Sam  a file. "Knock yourself out."

"Thanks," Sam said.

"Listen, you see anything weird, anything out of the box, you give us a call," Dean told the detective, handing her a card.

"Whatever you say, Scully," the detective replied. She said into her phone, "Detective Glass. On my way."

Sam read the file.

"I can't sense any EMF or sulfur," Castiel informed. "Mr. Freleng's arterial health is, uh, excellent." He leansd over the corpse and sniffed. "Mm. He did recently suffer from a..." he sniffed again, "...mild, uh..." He sniffed a third time. "What is that? ...bladder infection."

"Cas, stop smelling the dead guy," Dean and Francesca told the angel.

"Why? Now I know everything about this man. So we can–"