Hellhound (Supernatural #1)

1: Out in the Rain

So why was he frowning now?

"Dad, what does it say?" I asked, curious.

Looking away from his fortune, he grinned at me and was about to tell me when his desk phone rang. With a sigh, he held up a finger to ask me to wait and picked it up. The conversation was mostly one sided. Dad only said, "Really?... Where?... In this weather?... I'm on my way." In that exact order. Then he put the phone down and looked at me. It was a look I knew well; it was his look that meant he wasn't going to come home anytime soon.

"Sorry, kiddo, but there was a one-eight-seven in some back alley near Seventh and Hall."

I arched an eyebrow at that. A homicide? And I guess his question about the weather did make sense. It had been raining cats and dogs for most of the week already, and the wind had picked up quite a bit since I made it to the station. No one in their right mind would venture outside right now. Then again, no one in their right mind would murder someone regardless of the weather. But still, didn't murderers also prefer to be nice and cozy inside? Could their murder not wait until the sky had cleared up? On the other hand, the rain washed away all potential evidence they might have left behind.

"I'll ask Hank to give you a lift home, okay?" He planted a quick kiss on the top of my head before heading for the door, pulling on his waterproof windbreaker as he went. "And good luck with your Chemistry test tomorrow!"

He was gone before I could even call back a goodbye. I gave a halfhearted wave that no one was there to witness before sinking down into the chair with a sigh. Another night alone at home. Great. Oh well, nothing I could do about that.

When Hank knocked on the office door, I was cleaning up the desk, clearing away all evidence of the takeaway Chinese food. "Ready to go home, Sawyer?" Hank was nice. He was the same age as Dad and they had been best friends since high school. He was also one of the better poker players at the station. He and his wife, Ellen, lived next door from us, which meant that Ellen would often check up on me when her husband and Dad were working a long shift at the station. Growing up, I even called him Uncle Hank.

"Yeah, just need to throw this away and I'll meet you at the front desk," I told him with a smile.

He closed the door as he left and I went to chuck the empty containers into the bin when Dad's fortune caught my eye. In the end, he didn't even get to tell me what it was. Without a second's hesitation, I snatched up the piece of paper and turned it over, scanning the words.

The answer you seek is in another cookie.

The fortune was so lame I couldn't understand why Dad would stare at it for so long. Maybe it was because he hadn't actually been seeking for an answer. But then the phone had rung and there was a body downtown. He would be looking for answers now, but I doubted a fortune cookie could tell him the answer to that big question.

Crumpling up the fortune, I threw it in the trash, grabbed my own cookie and headed for the front of the station. I didn't want to keep Hank waiting for too long, especially since he would probably join Dad after he had dropped me off. When I reached the front desk, the room was illuminated by the red and blue lights of the sirens outside. It was hard to make anything out through the torrent of rain outside, but I could vaguely make out the shapes of people moving about in the rain before the cars disappeared, one after another. Everyone seemed to move about in a frantic chaos, moving quickly and with a goal in mind.

Without realizing it, I had stepped out of the building and watched all the activity from under the porch, only partially sheltered from the rain. It was strange to see such a fuss over a murder. The person was already dead, and that wasn't going to change if they got there a few minutes late. But to see so many deputies leave for the crime scene, to see the cars with the sirens on. Just who was this dead person?