THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Urgh. So first off, we were in a police station. Not visiting, interviewing or even posing as police - Dean and I had tried it once or twice - but prisoners. Yes, this time we were prisoners. All thanks to Dean. Much to our luck, Sam and I were confined in the same interrogation room. Meanwhile, Dean was being held in a high security room, or so we’d been told.
A police woman, Ballard, entered the room, carrying a pair of coffee cups, which she placed on the table. I stood up from my seat at the table, and went to join Sam, who had paused in his pacing by the window.
“Thought you might be thirsty,” Ballard said.
“Okay, so you’re the good cop,” I said. “Where’s the bad cop?”
“Oh, he’s with your brother,” Ballard said breezily.
“Okay, and you’re holding us why?” Sam asked.
“Well, he’d being held on a suspicion of murder. And you two, we’ll see.” I was going to protest about me being juvenile, but the word murder shocked me. Sam and I reacted identically, at the same time.
We leaned forward, fists on the table, we spoke in unison, equally shocked. “Murder?!”
Ballard’s eyes narrowed. “You sound genuinely surprised. Or are you that good actors?” No. We were surprised. Dean hadn’t murdered any humans; unless he’d been hacking peoples’ throats behind Sam’s and I’s backs.
“Who was he supposed to have murdered?!” Sam exclaimed.
“We’ll get around to that,” Ballard said.
“Well, you can’t just hold us here without formal charges!” Sam said angrily, looking knowledgeable about that topic. I wasn’t so sure. But I did know that I was underage. And I voiced that now.
“You can’t hold me here at all! I’m seventeen. Shouldn’t I be in juvenile detention?”
“If your crimes are serious enough, then actually we can. And we can hold both of you here without formal charge, for forty eight hours, actually. But you being a pre-law student, Sam, would know that. I know all about you two, Sam and Millicent.” Ballard read from a file. “Sam, you’re twenty three years old, Millicent seventeen. No jobs, no home address. Millicent doesn’t go to school. Your mother died when Millicent was a baby, your father’s whereabouts are unknown. And then there’s the case of your brother Dean. Whose demise was, well, just a little bit exaggerated. Feel free to jump in whenever you like.” Sam and I leaned back against the wall, stubbornly silent. Sam’s arms folded across his chest, mine stuffed in my jeans’ pockets. “Shy? No problem, I’ll keep going. Your family moved around a lot when you were kids. Despite that, you were both straight- A students, till Millicent dropped out of school. Sam got into Stanford with a full ride.” Ballard closed the file. “Then about a year ago there was a fire in Sam’s apartment. One fatality. Jessica Moore, your girlfriend. After she died, you fell off the grid. Left everything behind.”
“I needed some time off,” Sam explained. “To deal. So I’m taking a road trip with my brother and sister.”
“And how’s that going for you?” Ballard asked.
“Great,” Sam said, almost too enthusiastically. “I mean... we saw the second largest ball of twine in the continental US. Awesome.” He pulled up a chair to the table, and straddled it. I sat on the table, ignoring the look Ballard was giving me.
“We ran Dean’s fingerprints through AFIS,” Ballard said.
“Okay,” Sam said slowly, pressingly.
“Got over a dozen possible hits.”
“Possible hits,” Sam echoed. “Which makes them worthless.” I glanced at my brother. The range of his knowledge was extensive.
“But it makes you wonder,” Ballard continued. “What are we gonna find when we run yours and your sister’s prints?”
“Yeah well.” Sam pounded his fist on the table. “You be sure to let us know, all right.” He pointed to one of the coffee cups. “May I?”
“Please.”
“Great,” Sam said. He sniffed the cup, and sipped it, as Ballard leaned over he and I, intently.
“Sam, and Millicent, you seem like good kids,” Ballard said. “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.”
I stared at her, incredulous, getting the hidden meaning in her words. “You want us to turn against our own brother?”
“No, we already caught him cold. Red-handed at the Karen Giles murder scene,” Ballard said. “We just need you two to fill in some missing pieces.”
“Why would we do that?” Sam asked.
“Because I can talk to the DA,” Ballard said. “Make a deal for you two. You can get on with your lives. Dean’s is as good as gone.”
Sam thought for a moment, his face twisted into feigned sorrow, before speaking quietly.
“My 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...” As Sam continued speaking, the story of how we got here replayed itself in my mind.
Sam and I approached Dean, carrying three coffees between us. We took our seats, setting the drinks on the table. Immediately, Dean handed over the paper he’d been reading.
“There you go,” Sam said, speaking about the coffee.
“Anthony Giles,” Dean said, out of the blue.
“Huh?” I asked. Never heard of him.
Neither, apparently, had Sam. “Who’s Anthony Giles?”
“He’s a Baltimore lawyer,” Dean said. “Working late in his office, check it out.”
Sam frowned, muttering the words of the article. “Uh. Throat was slit, room was clean. Huh. No DNA, no prints.”
“Keep reading,” Dean urged. “It gets better.”
“Security cameras failed to capture footage of the assailant,” Sam read.
“So I’m thinking either somebody tampered with the tapes.”
“Or it’s an invisible killer,” I added.
“My favorite kind,” Dean said. I rolled my eyes, of course it was. Dean whacked Sam’s elbow to get his attention. “What do you think, Scully? You wanna check it out?”
“I’m not Scully, Mil’s Scully!” Sam protested.
I shook my head. “We’ve talked about this. I’m Skinner. I keep you guys in line.
“If anyone needs keeping in line, it’s Dean and you,” Sam said.
“And I’m Mulder,” Dean cut in. “Sam’s a red headed woman. And Mil - apparently you’re a bald old man.” We all snickered.
“Woulda been hard for Dean to kill Tony, considering we weren’t in town at the time,” Sam said, continuing his conversation with Ballard in the police station.
“So tell me what happened next,” Ballard urged.
“Okay, uh, that’s when we went to see Karen,” Sam said. “She was barely holding it together. We just wanted to be there for her. You know?”
Sam continued telling the story, and I slipped back into the memories.
Sam, Dean and I, dressed as insurance company employees, talked to Karen Giles in her home. Karen, on the verge of tears, looking through false forms we’d given her.
“Insurance,” Karen mused. “I totally forgot about the insurance.”
“We’re very sorry to bother you right now, but the company is required to conduct its own investigation,” Sam said apologetically. “You understand.”
“Sure,” Karen said.
“Okay, um, if you could just tell us anything you remember about the night your husband died,” Sam said.
“Uh,” Karen hesitated, thoughtful. “Tony and I were just supposed to have dinner. He called and said he was having computer troubles and that, that he had to work late. That was it.”
“Do you have any idea who could have done this to him?” I asked, leaning forward to place my elbows on my knees.
“No. No, it’s like what I told the police, I, I have no idea.”
“Did Tony mention anything, you now, unusual to you?” Dean asked. His style of interrogating was very different from Sam’s, it was harder, and more to the point. “In the days before his death?”
“Unusual...” Karen repeated, as a question.
“Yeah, like strange?”
Karen shook her head. “Strange?”
Dean was beginning to get frustrated. “You know, Karen, weird? Weird noises, uh, visions, anything like that?”
Sam cleared his throat, and looked at Dean pointedly. Karen turned to Sam, who’s concerned face returned in an instant, like flipping a switch. I shot Dean a look as Karen looked down.
“He had a nightmare the day before he died,” Karen said slowly and quietly.
“What kind of nightmare?” Sam asked gently.
“Uh, he said that he woke up in the middle of the night and there was a woman standing at the foot of the bed, he blinked and she was gone, I mean, it was just a nightmare.”
“Did he say what she looked like?” Dean asked, sounding rather excited.
“What the hell difference does it make what she looked like?” Karen demanded.
I shot Dean a hard look, and said to Karen - improvising on the spot - “Uh, it’s just, our, our company’s very thorough.”
“He said she was pale,” Karen said slowly. “And she had dark red eyes.”
“So I gave Karen a hug, told her to call me if she needed anything,” Sam said, breaking me out of the past. “And that was it. End of story.”
“Sam, I’m trying to help you guys here, but you have got to be honest with me,” Ballard said firmly, eyeing Sam and I with her steely gaze. “Now we have an eyewitness. Someone who saw two men fitting you two and your brother's description breaking into Giles' office.”
I folded. I glanced desperately at Sam, and told the rest of the story. “Okay look. Karen called us later, said there was some stuff that she wanted from Tony’s office, but the police weren’t letting her in. I, like, a picture of the two of them in Paris, and some other stuff. Look, it was wrong to enter a crime scene, but she gave us the key!” Actually, most of that stuff was a lie.
We picked the lock on Giles’ office, and entered, ducking under the police tape telling us to do the exact opposite to what we were doing. I shined my flashlight on the pool of blood on the floor next to Tony’s desk.
“Hey. Anthony Giles’ body was found right about here,” I said.
Sam unfolded the newspaper clipping about the death, which he’d brought with him, and read from it. “Throat slit so deep part of his spinal cord was visible.” I winced, it sounded terrible.
Dean whistled under his breath. “What do you think? Vengeful spirit? Underlining vengeful?”
“Yeah maybe,” Sam said. “I mean, he did see that woman at the foot of his bed.”
I shrugged. ‘Easy salt and burn,’ I thought. ‘As soon as we figure out who the spirit is.’
I saw that Dean had picked up a bit of paper beside the computer. “Take a look at this.”
Dean passed the paper to Sam, and I looked at it over his shoulder. The entire page was printed with a single small font word, repeated so that the page was full. ‘DANASHULPS’.
“Dana Shulps?” Sam assumed. “A name?”
Dean picked up an identical page to the one Sam held. “I dunno, but it’s everywhere.” He grinned mischievously, going cross-eyed. “Well all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Sam glared at him. I shined my flashlight down on a glass table in front of us, pausing. I knelt and breathed on the glass, revealing ‘DANASHULPS’ engraved on the surface.
“Wow,” I commented. “I’d say we’ve officially crossed over into weird.”
“Maybe Giles knew her,” Dean suggested.
“Or maybe it’s the name of our pale red-eyed mystery girl,” Sam offered, still going with his Dana Shulps theory.
“Well,” I said, gesturing to the desktop computer. “Let’s see what we can see.”
Later, frustrated, after finding nothing, Dean and I returned to where Sam sat at the computer.
“There’s not a mention of a Dana Shulps anywhere,” Dean grumbled. “There’s not a D. Shulps. Or any other find of friggin Shulps.”
Sam sighed. “Great.”
“What have you got?” I asked.
“Nothing,” was Sam’s irritated reply. “No Dana Shulps has ever lived or died in Baltimore in the last fifty years at least.”
“So what now?” Dean asked.
“Well, I think I’m pretty close to cracking Giles’ password,” Sam said. “Maybe there’s something in his personal files, you know?”
“By close you mean...” Dean pressed.
“Thirty minutes, maybe?” Sam said, but there was an uncertainty in his tone.
Dean glanced at his watch. “Awesome. So I guess Mil and I just get to, uh, hang out. Awesome.” The last word was muttered.
Sam continued typing, concentration crinkling his brow. Dean paced for a moment, before sitting down on a leather bound chair beside me, looking annoyed. He started making clicking and mouth fart noises.
I glared. Sam looked back to give him a hard bitch-face. Dean continued. I continued glaring. “Dude, seriously.”
Dean sighed, and got to his feet. “All right, I’m gonna go talk to Karen again, see if she knows anything about this Dana Shulps, huh?”
“Great,” Sam grunted, deep in work.
“Keep going, Sparky,” I said, as I exited out the door with Dean.
“Then Dean went back to Karen’s place to check up on her,” I continued. “I mean, you know, she had been pretty upset earlier.”
“So why didn’t you go with him?” Ballard inquired, suspicious.
“Sam and I just went back to the motel,” I said quickly. I paused for a beat, exchanging a glance with Sam. My brow furrowed in suspicion of my own. “How’d you know we were there, by the way?”
“We found the motel matchbook on your brother when we arrested him,” Ballard said. “Let's quit fooling around. Now you were with your brother the whole time you were in Baltimore. Why separate now? Because your brother left you. To go murder Karen.”
“He didn’t kill anyone,” Sam spoke up, his voice hard and defensive, on our brother’s behalf.
Ballard slapped the table in anger. “I heard the 9-1-1 call! Karen was terrified. She said someone was in the house.”
After that, I was separated from Sam, and taken to another room. I heard mutters about what to do with me; taking me to the Baltimore Youth Jail was one of them. Left in my room, alone, I decided to get back to the case: figuring out what DANASHULPS meant. I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen, left on the table from something. I first wrote DANASHULPS on the top of the page. I frowned at the page.
“It’s not a name,” I muttered to myself, unsure why I was speaking aloud. “Anagram, maybe.... Or an abbreviation?” I shook my head. “Anagram.”
I started to write out a list of all the anagrams for DANASHULPS. Eventually, I came across one, which looked familiar. SUPASHLAND. I wasn’t sure about the S-U-P; but Ashland was a street not far from here, which we’d driven down on the way. I frowned. Ashland sup?
A knock at the door made me look up, and drive me out of my concentrating state. A man entered, carrying a bit of paper. He placed the paper on the desk, and slid it across from me. I read the note through in my head, written in Dean’s familiar scrawl.
HILTS - IT’S A STREET. ASHLAND. - MCQUEEN. I knew what that meant. It was telling Sam and I to make our escape, and Dean would buy us some time. As for the message; Dean had come to the same conclusion as I had. On the other side of the paper, was another note, this one written in Sam’s neater print. JR. - THE BRANCH. 5/2. - LEWIS. I understood that message too. It was Sam telling me to meet him at the Aardvark motel, in room 52. He was using characters from the movie Aardvark to tell me where to meet him.
The man, a lawyer, had evidently read the note. I tried to hide my comprehension, and look confused. “I hope that’s meaningful,” the lawyer said. “But I’d like to discuss your case now.”
I gestured to the chair opposite mine. “Sure thing, Matlock.”
“You three really are siblings, aren’t you?” ‘Matlock’ said. I sniggered slightly. Of course Dean and Sam would’ve called the guy Matlock as well. The lawyer took the seat. “Now. As you know, the DA might be interested in...”
He broke off as Ballard entered, and addressed the lawyer. “We need you. With the lawyer.”
I picked the lock on the locked window, using a bobby pin hidden deep in my pocket. It was a four story drop to the ground. I gulped.
I entered motel room 52, and found Sam, sitting at the table. Sam smiled wearily as I entered.
“You found me,” Sam said.
I nodded. “I got your message. Pretty clever. But I got it in a second.”
Sam shrugged. “Yeah, but that’s you. The cops won’t find out.”
There was a knock at the door. Sam and I stiffened, eyeing the door sharply. I opened it to find Ballard. I glanced back at Sam, hesitating. Ballard shrugged, pushing past me and entering the room. She showed Sam and I bruises on her wrists.
Sam nodded. “These showed up after you saw it?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Ballard said.
“All right,” Sam said. “You’re going to have to tell me exactly what you saw.”
“You know, I must be losing my mind,” Ballard said. “You guys are fugitives. I should be arresting you.”
“All right,” I said, impatient. “Well, you know what? You can arrest us later, all right? After you live through this. But right now, you’ve gotta talk to us. Okay?” Ballard nodded, so I continued. “Okay, great. Now this spirit, what did it look like?”
“She was um, she was really pale, and her throat was cut,” Ballard started. “And her eyes, they were like, this deep dark red? It appeared like she was trying to talk to me. But she couldn't. It was just... a lot of blood.”
“You know what? Here, I've been researching every girl that's ever died or gone missing from Ashland Street.” Ballard and I went over to Sam’s table. Sam handed us a stack of crime scene photos.
Ballard was immediately suspicious. “How'd you get those? Those are from crime scenes, and booking photos.”
Sam shrugged, his voice casual. “You have your job, Mil, Dean and I have ours.” His voice abruptly became firm again. “Here. I need you to look through these, tell me if you recognize anyone.”
Ballard and I sat. Ballard started flipping through the stack. She stopped on the third image; a woman’s booking image.
“This is her. I’m sure of it,” Ballard said.
Sam took the picture, and rattled off information immediately, barely glancing at the photo. “Claire Becker? Twenty eight years old, disappeared about eight or nine months ago.”
“But I don’t even know her,” Ballard protested. “I mean, why would she come after me?”
“Well, before her death, she was arrested twice,” Sam informed her. “For dealing heroin. You ever work narcotics?”
“Yeah, Pete and I did. Before homicide,” Ballard said.
“You ever bust her?” I asked.
“Not that I remember,” Ballard replied.
“It says that she was last seen entering 2911 Ashland Street. Police searched the place, didn’t find anything.”
I exchanged a look with Sam, and said slowly. “Guess we gotta check it out ourselves. See if we can find her body.”
“What?” Ballard scoffed, looking shocked.
I shrugged, casual. It didn’t bother me. “Well, we gotta salt and burn her bones. It’s the only way to put her spirit to rest.”
Ballard sighed. “Of course it is.”
Sam, Ballard and I entered 2911 Ashland Street. It was a dark warehouse.
“So what exactly are we looking for?” Ballard asked.
Sam and I exchanged a look. The cop was just going to hinder us.
“I’ll let you know when we find it,” Sam said. We split up. Sam hurrying up a flight of stairs, and Ballard and I continuing on the lower level. I walked away to the far corner. All of a sudden, I heard Ballard shrieking.
“Sam? Millicent? Sam! Millicent!” I dashed over, almost running headlong into Sam as he barreled down the stairs.
“Hey! Hey, we’re here,” Sam said. “What is it? What happened?”
“Claire...” Ballard said, her voice quavering.
“Where?” I asked, I hadn’t seen her.
“She, she was here.”
“Did she attack you?” Sam asked earnestly.
“No,” Ballard said quickly. “No, she was just like, reaching out to me. She was over there by the window.” I saw that the window was blocked by a shelving unit. “Here, help me move this.”
“All right,” Sam said. He, Ballard and I shoved the shelves aside, revealing the window. It was labelled from the outside: ASHLAND SUP(plies).
“Our little mystery word,” Ballard said. We turned to see a shadow on the opposite wall, casting the words into clear reflection.
“Now the extra letters make sense,” I mused. I pulled out my EMF reader, and approached the wall.
“What is that?” Ballard asked.
I answered as I scanned. “Spirits and certain remains give off electromagnetic frequencies.”
“So if Claire’s body was here, that would indicate that?” Ballard asked.
“Yeah, well, that’s the theory.” My EMF purred as I waved it over the brick wall. I turned. Sam came up, and started breaking through the wall with a sledgehammer. Once a sizable hole had been knocked out, Sam poked his flashlight inside.
“Yeah, yeah there’s definitely something in there,” Sam said, now using his elbows and fists to break through the wall. I helped him.
“You know? This is bothering me,” Sam muttered.
“Well, you are digging up a corpse,” Ballard pointed out.
“No, not that,” Sam contradicted. “That’s, uh, that’s pretty par for the course, actually.”
“Then what?” Ballard asked.
“It’s just, I mean, no vengeful spirit I’ve ever tussled with wanted to be wasted, so why the hell would Claire lead us to her remains,” Sam said. “It doesn’t make any sense.” We’d broken open most of the wall by now. Sam and I pulled the shroud-wrapped body, and paced it on the ground. Sam pulled out his pocket knife, and cut the ropes holding the shroud together, uncovering her. Ballard held out her wrists.
“Her wrists,” Sam said. “Yeah, they’d be bruised just like yours?”
Ballard touched a necklace on the corpse.
“That necklace mean something to you?” I asked.
“I’ve seen it before. It’s rare,” Ballard said, slowly. “It was custom made over on Carson street.” She reached into her neckline. “I have one just like it. Pete gave it to me.”
Sam and I exchanged a long look. I could see on his face, that he’d realized something.
“Now this all makes perfect sense,” Sam said.
“I’m sorry?” Ballard asked.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “You see, Claire is not a vengeful spirit, she’s a death omen.”
“Excuse me?” Ballard pressed.
“Claire’s not killing anyone. She’s trying to warn them,” I said. “You see, sometimes spirits, they don't want vengeance, they want justice. Which is why she led us here in the first place. She wants us to know who her killer is.” I paused. “Detective, how much do you know about your partner?”
Ballard thought for a moment. “Oh my god.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“About a year ago, some heroin went missing from lockup,” Ballard said. “Obviously it was a cop. We never found who did it. But whoever did it would need someone to fence their product.”
“Someone like a heroin dealer,” Sam said. “Somebody like Claire.”
Ballard drove Sam and I down a highway. Ballard was finishing up a call on her cell phone.
“All right. Thanks.”
“What is it?” Sam demanded.
“Pete just left the precinct,” Ballard said. “With Dean.”
“What?” I had to struggle to keep my voice from rising to a shriek.
“He said the prisoner had to be transferred, and he just took him,” Ballard said. “Dispatch has been calling, but he won’t answer the radio.”
“Radio?” Sam echoed. “He took a county vehicle?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then they should have a lo-jack,” Sam said knowledgeably. “You’ve just gotta get it turned on.”
We met up with Pete’s van. Dean had been thrown to the ground, and Pete had a gun at his head. Sam, Ballard and I got out of the cop car.
“Pete! Put the gun down!” Ballard called, holding her gun trained on Pete’s head.
Pete looked up. “Diana? How’d you find me?”
“I know about Claire,” Ballard said, ignoring the question.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sheridan said quickly.
“Put the gun down!” Ballard exclaimed.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Sheridan said. “You’re fast. I’m pretty sure I’m faster.”
“Why are you doing this?” Ballard asked.
“I didn’t do anything, Diana,” Pete said.
“It’s a little late for that.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Pete said quickly. “Claire was trying to turn me in, I had no choice.”
“And Tony? Karen?” Ballard asked.
“Same thing!” Pete exclaimed. “Tony scrubbed the money, he got skittish, and then he wanted to come clean. I'm sure he told Karen everything.”
Dean, Sam and I exchanged ‘how the hell do we get out of this’ looks. Dean shook his head, looking at the ground he still sat on. Sam gritted his teeth grimly. I sighed, as quiet as I could, and continued watching the sheriffs.
“It was a mess; I had to clean it up,” Pete continued. “I just panicked.”
“How many more people are gonna die over this, Pete?” Ballard asked.
“There’s a way out,” Pete said, eyeing Dean with distaste. “This Dean kid’s a friggin’ gift. We could pin the whole thing on him. Right? No trial, nothing. Just, just one more dead scumbag.”
Dean glared. “Hey!” Pete raised his gun again. Dean shuffled backwards.
“No one with question it,” Pete continued. “Diana, please. I still love you.” Ballard lowered her gun. “Thank you. Thank you.” As Pete turned back to Dean, Ballard brought up her gun, and fired, hitting Pete in the stomach. Pete went down; Dean rolled out of the way, and got to his feet.
“Then why don’t you buy me another necklace, you ass?” Ballard growled. Pete tackled her legs, knocking her down. Ballard lost her gun, and Sam dived for it, but Pete was quicker, and closer, and got there first.
“Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” Pete begged. Somehow, Ballard recovered a weapon, and shot Pete in the back. He went down, permanently this time.
Sam, Dean and I stood to the side, watching Ballard, who knelt by the body of her late partner. Ballard got up, and approached us.
“You doing all right?” Sam asked kindly.
“Not really,” Ballard admitted. “The death omen Claire. What happens to her now?”
“Should be over,” I said. “She should be at rest.”
“So, uh. What now, officer?” Dean asked.
“Pete did confess to me. He screwed up you three’s cases royally,” Ballard said. “I'd say that there's a good chance that we could get your cases dismissed.”
“You’d take care of that for us?” Sam asked.
“I hope so,” Ballard said. “But the St. Louis murder charges? That's another story. I can't help you. Unless... I just happened to turn my back, and you walked away. I could just tell them that the suspects escaped.”
“Wait, are you sure?” Sam asked, his eyes flicking from me and Dean to Ballard.
“Yeah, she’s sure, Sam,” Dean said, his voice firm.
“No, it’s just, I mean, you could lose your job over something like that,” Sam said.
“Look, I just want you guys out there doing what you do best,” Ballard said. “Trust me, I’ll sleep better at night.” She turned to leave. “Listen, you need to watch your back. They're gonna be looking for the three of you right now. Get out of here. I gotta radio this in.”
“Hey, uh, you wouldn’t happen to know where my car is, by chance?” Dean asked.
“It’s at the impound yard down on Robertson,” Ballard said. Dean gave her a calculating look. “Don’t... even think about it.”
“It’s okay, it’s all right, don’t worry,” I said quickly, shooting Dean a firm look. “We’ll, uh, we’ll just improvise. I mean, we’re pretty good at that.”
“Yeah. I’ve noticed,” Ballard said dryly.
Sam, Dean and I walked off down the road.
“Nice lady,” Sam commented.
“Yeah, for a cop,” Dean said. “Did she look familiar to you?”
“No, why?” Sam asked.
I shoved Dean playfully, and steeled myself, incase I got the same back.
“I don’t know,” Dean said. “Anyway, are you guys hungry?”
“No,” Sam and I said in unison.
“For some reason I could really go for some pea soup,” Dean said.