"Hey, Dean?", addressing the older Winchester, you turned in your chair to face him and tapped on a newspaper article, continuing without waiting for his acknowledgement. "Remember that case we dropped because it seemed to be a dead end?" Dean stopped cleaning his gun, resting his hand on the barrel. "You mean the murders up in Minnesota? With the uh..."
"The weird tavern guy, yeah, exactly."
"Right, yeah. What about it?"
"See, I think we got another one. Another murder. Guy, around 30, was found like three days ago, dumped in a creek. Exact same marks as the other victims, fits perfectly."
Sam propped himself up on the bed across the room, obviously you also caught his interest. "Are you sure?", he inquired. "I mean... the same marks, could be coincidence, right?"
Dean shot Sam a glare, who held his hands up in defense. Dean's action clearly stated something along the lines of "Seriously?!". He didn't like it when someone questioned you.
Nonetheless he raised one eyebrow at you, as you weren't in the hunter's business for all too long, even he didn't trust you fully with finding cases. Yet.
"No, no. It's a good point actually. But now, check this out. He was dumped with no blood left in his body, completely drained. Just like the other victims back in... North Oaks? Yeah."
"Ok. I think you definitely found us something there, but we don't have anything we could pick up on again, cause we closed the case with hardly any information. (F/N) had us quite distracted back then...", Sam had swung his legs over the edge of the bed, leaning with his elbows on them.
"Seriously Sam? You just really had to bring it up again, huh?", Dean raised his voice as he saw you pressing your lips together, trying to keep your emotions from displaying over your face.
He looked at Dean in confusion, shaking his head slightly.
"It's alright Dean, don't worry about me. Let's focus on the case."
"Sam was right, though. We've got nothing", Dean threw the rag on the table, reassembling his gun.
You held up your index finger and snapped with your fingers, whilst you reached for your laptop.
"Hold up for a sec. There might be something", you opened your laptop and began to type, "right before we stopped working the case I stumbled upon something... back then I thought it was nothing, but now I think... that maybe...", Dean had scooted closer, looking over your shoulder and Sam stood behind you, leaning on the back of your chair.
After a few seconds, you exclaimed, "Ha! I knew it!"
No reaction from the other two hunters.
"Errr... (Y/N)? There're paintings?", the younger brother sounded rather bewildered.
Dean didn't look one bit closer to working out what your point was.
"Come on guys, think. What color are these paintings?", you tried to help them figure out what they were looking at.
"Red...?"
It took a few seconds, but then their faces lit up, your sign that they got it, so you could continue explaining your theory.
"See, he has a legal/official website, where he sells his paintings. It says right here that he paints them with his own blood. Even painted Lucifer on some Rockstar guys's guitar with his blood. Weird, but not illegal. But the second I convert it into .onion and change a few digits... you clicked on enter, it took a bit longer to load but then a shit ton of paintings loaded. All titled with sketchy names.
"'The Majesty's Hangman', 'Forgotten Gods', 'Greed And Death', 'Ad Digitum Prurigo', 'Requiem Of The Damned', 'Remedy For The Living', 'The Last Message'...", Sam read slowly, trailing off.
"I know right?! That's some heavy shit, guys. Check this out, he even takes commissions, assassinates someone for you and paints you a portrayal, or whatever. See, some of the paintings he's selling look exactly like the found corpses. Now I bet that we will be able to see a new drawing pop up here in the next few days."
"Nice work, (Y/N)!", Dean patted you on your shoulder and Sam too gave you a pat on the shoulder, before turning around to start packing.
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tbc