Sam trailed the building super across the crumbling and trash-strewn concrete of the apartment building's courtyard, toward what he guessed would be a similarly crumbling and trash-strewn parking lot. His hair was stuck to the back of his neck with sweat. How socially acceptable would it be to take out a rubber band and put it all in a floppy topknot? Actually, how socially acceptable would it be to just ask the super to quit with the Grand Tour already and skip ahead to the supernatural stuff?
The vinyl Rentals Available sign flapping from the building's roof had given him the idea to get onto the property by saying he was looking to rent. What with the way the SoCal sun was beating down, any ruse that didn't involve wearing that FBI monkey suit had seemed appealing at the time. But he'd been on this tour for twenty-odd minutes already and so far the most interesting part had been hearing the insults the kids playing out in the parking lot were shouting at each other.
Sam's favorite was: "Your mom better buy you some super absorbent diapers, because this is going to make you crap your pants so bad!" Whatever "this" was that the kid was referring to, it had resulted in a nearly supersonic BANG that echoed like it was coming from the bottom of an empty dumpster. Lots of high-pitched PINGs and the sound of metal warping soon followed.
Maybe he'd made a mistake. Maybe, if he'd come as the law, he could have spent less time wondering how much flammable trash was in the building's dumpster and how fast those kids could climb out of it if need be, and more time inspecting the room where that Jane Doe and her baby son had blown to bits a few days ago.
As Sam reluctantly walked across the courtyard to join the super at the parking lot gate, where she was already struggling to get her key into the gate's rusty lock, he caught sight of a strand of ripped yellow CAUTION tape fluttering from the doorjamb of a dented steel door. Relieved to finally have something to do or look at that didn't involve discussing the merits of wall-to-wall carpet or bullshitting about how he'd do on a credit check, he darted away from the gate and toward the door so fast that he practically pivoted on his heel. Sam shouted over his shoulder, "Excuse me, ma'am? Is this the laundry room?" even as he abandoned her.
The laundry room door was wedged between two apartments' overstuffed patios. Soot blackened the steel, coiled from the doorframe, and crawled along the stucco walls. Sam hitched his shoulder bag and listened for the muffled but reassuring clink of the weapons inside. This room was what he'd come to see.
When he'd read that the pediatric wards around here had become so overwhelmed by an influx of sick infants that even top-flight hospitals like Cedar Sinai were offering up beds for the overflow, he'd bookmarked the local news sites, set a couple Google alerts, and just waited for more news. Ritzy hospitals didn't welcome hordes of babies on Medi-Cal unless something strange was already going on, and he'd figured it was only a matter of time before things came to a head. Now they had.
The series of lethal explosions that had started up last week – always either a mother and her baby son or a father and his baby daughter, all Jane and John Does – didn't necessarily have anything to do with the sick infants crammed into NICUs all over LA County. But even in the Valley, two bizarre trends going on at once was too bizarre not to follow up on.
Or at least Sam thought so. Dean would have preferred to head to inland Florida for what looked to be a leprechaun outbreak. Sam's attempt to play the sympathy card (heartbreaking victims desperate for their help! Etc.) had done a lot to convince him to come to Cali instead, but it had been the prospect of In-and-Out and the chance for Dean to try out his new-and-improved hookup app profile on a massive dating pool that had ultimately sealed the deal.
The super scurried up next to Sam as he ripped a portion of the CAUTION tape away. She gestured toward the door apologetically: "We have laundry on-site...Obviously, this will be fixed before you guys move in!"
Someone had stuck a crushed jug of Bounty detergent in the doorjamb to keep the room from locking shut. But the opening it created was too narrow to let much light into the room itself, and residue from the bleach and detergent bottles hid any other scent. Sam didn't want to push the door open any further before he had some kind of theory as to what was inside.
Could that be sulfur he was catching whiff of, or just a trashcan neglected for too long in the hot little laundry room? Was that the flutter of a monster scuttling around in the dark, or just a sheet of fabric softener caught by the breeze? He listened for claws clattering across the floor, the rustle of a witch shoving ingredients into a hex bag. All he heard was the sound of the kids destroying the dumpster and the super sucking her teeth at his interest in the building's most recent violent death.
But even if he couldn't see or smell or hear what was in there, he had the feeling that the room wasn't empty. His scalp had gone cold and his stomach had grown tight, and those were usually signals to get prepared for a fight. He slid his hand into his bag and groped for the salt. It was the only thing he carried that wouldn't do any harm if accidentally sprung on a kid or a pet, but that might still be a useful weapon. His eyes still on the door, he asked the super, "Do you mind getting me a glass of water? I'll meet you back at your apartment…"
"Sure," she said. "But do you like what you see so far?"
Sam hesitated – what answer would send her away from this room faster? In the fraction of the second while he struggled to decide, the super apparently made a decision herself; she slipped between Sam and the laundry room door and grabbed hold of the doorknob, gave him a brilliant Always Be Closing! kind of smile, and started shoving the door open with her hip.
"Well, I know that you'd like living here. It's perfectly safe," she said. "Really! We clean the dryer vents every quarter! And the woman who died wasn't a resident. She was homeless, I think. Poor thing. I doubt she was even doing laundry!"
Sam yanked his hand from his bag and grabbed for the side of the door. But she was too fast; his fingers caught at air, and she swung the door wide, stumbling ahead of him with her back to the quickly receding dark.