One of the Good Ones

23. The Usual Suspects

"I needed some time off. To deal. So I'm taking a road trip with my brother and his fiancée."

"How's that going for you?"

"Great. I mean... we saw the second largest ball of twine in the continental U.S. Awesome." He pulled a chair up to the table and straddled it.

"We ran Dean's fingerprints through AFIS."

"Okay."

"Got over a dozen possible hits."

"Possible hits. Which makes them worthless."

"But it makes you wonder. What are we gonna find when we run your prints?"

"Yeah, well." Sam pounded his fist on the table sarcastically. "You be sure to let me know, all right." He pointed to the cup. "May I?"

"Please."

"Great." He lifted the cup and sipped it as she leaned over him intently.

Ballard looked at him. "Sam, you seem like a good kid. It's not your fault Dean's your brother. We can't pick our family. Right now, detectives in St. Louis are exhuming a corpse. They're trying to figure out how your brother faked his own death. After torturing all those young women. Dean's a bad guy. His life is over. Yours doesn't have to be."

Sam looked at her, incredulous.

"You want me to turn against my own brother?" Sam asked.

"No. We already caught him cold. Red-handed at the Karen Giles murder scene. We just need you to fill in some pieces."

"Why would I do that?""

"Because I can talk to the DA. Make a deal for you. Youwill can get on with your life. Dean's as good as gone."

Sam thought for a moment as a distraught look crossed his face and said quietly, "Our dad and Tony Giles were old friends. They were in the service together. We've known him since we were kids, you know? So we came as soon as we heard about his death."

Dean, with Deanna on his lap, was sitting at a café table reading a newspaper. The headline read, 'Man's Throat Slit Without A Trace'.

Sam approached with two cups of coffee and set one down. Juliette wheeled herself up with her own cup of coffee. As they sat, Dean handed over the paper.

"There you go," Sam said.

"Anthony Giles," Dean told them.

"Who's Anthony Giles?"

"He's a Baltimore lawyer. Working late in his office, check it out."

Sam read. "Uh..." he muttered, "throat was slit, room was clean. Huh. No DNA, no prints."

"Keep reading, it gets better."

Juliette glanced at the article. "Security cameras failed to capture footage of the assailant."

"So I'm thinking either somebody tampered with the tapes-"

"Or it's an invisible killer," Sam guessed.

"My favorite kind." He looked at Sam. "What do you think, Scully? You and shortstop, here."

Sam frowned. "I'm not Scully, you're Scully."

"No, I'm Mulder. You're a red-headed woman."

"No, Juliette is your Scully."

Dean smiled. "Yeah she is."

Juliette let out a light scoff and smiled.

Sam continued the story. "Woulda been kinda hard for Dean to kill Tony, considering we weren't in town at the time."