A/N: Non-Supernatural 'Verse.
Nothing could have prepared Officer Adam Milligan for what he discovered in the back of that abandoned warehouse. The call to dispatch had been routine; suspected trespassing by local teenagers who were constantly being dared to enter the warehouse in the middle of the night.
It was bitterly cold, and Adam pulled his thick jacket close around him and turned up his collar against the gusting wind. Leaving the headlights of his patrol car on, he approached the door and noticed the broken lock on the ground, the small door sat a few inches ajar. In his hand, Adam grasped his billy club and used it to push the door open slowly.
The frigid metal creaked and groaned in protest to the movement. The warehouse was pitch-black, all except for a small ray of light emitting from the door to the office at the other side of the massive, empty room. "Police!" Adam called authoritatively. "I'm going to need you all to exit the building."
The front door slammed behind his back and he involuntarily jumped, especially when he heard no response from the brightly lit office; the light wasn't normal though, he remarked as he tried to quickly cross the thick black darkness of the warehouse. The warm, yellow light seemed to flicker and move, casting shadows across the blinds that covered the window into the office.
On second thought, Adam was quite certain that this warehouse hadn't had electricity in years. "Hello?" He called out again, only a few feet from the office door now, his fingers twitching as his hand hovered a few inches above his gun in its holster; he felt his adrenaline levels begin to increase and a cool burst of fear coursed through his veins as only silence greeted his ears.
Undoing the snap that kept his gun in its holster, Adam gripped the butt with his right hand. "I'm going to need anyone inside to make yourself known!" He warned, fingers opening and closing around the cold steel of his handgun.
Silence once again.
Adam kicked the door open and it banged into the wall with a resounding crash as the young patrolman moved to begin checking all the corners of the space. But the moment his eyes adjust to the room lit by countless candles, he is glued in his spot.
The room was not empty. In the flickering light of those blood red candles, dripping wax onto the stone floor, the walls were covered with strange symbols and writing. On a table in the middle of the office was what looked to be some sort of black altar, the silver chalice was filled with a liquid that looked far too similar to blood.
But the piece de résistance was the rugged, wood-hewn cross standing against the far wall, a towering structure of black wood painted with those strange symbols in the crimson red of blood. In three places, the mutilated body of a middle-aged, blond man was nailed to the frame, and above his blood-stained hair was a piece of parchment with writing on it, though he couldn't make out what it said from this distance, and there was no way he was moving any closer any time soon.
With shaking hands, Adam fumbled for the radio clipped to his belt. "Dispatch, this is Officer Milligan," when his voice wavered, he cleared his throat. "I have a 10-45, presumed dead, at the abandoned warehouse on Wiltshire."
"Copy that, Milligan," Dispatch responded just as the main door to the warehouse slammed shut once more.
"Requesting back-up," Adam informed the woman on the other end as he turned and pointed his gun towards the open door to the office, a chill running down his spine as he turned his back on the man hanging from the cross. "Send everyone you've got..."
"10-4," The voice of the female dispatcher rang through the room. "What do we have, Milligan?" She asked, wanting to know something to tell the back-up she was sending, there was a clatter that sounded like the radio being dropped on the ground. "Milligan?" She called the officer's name when she received no response. "Milligan, do you copy?" The line crackled with silence.
"All units to 117 Wiltshire Blvd. I repeat, all units to 117 Wiltshire Blvd. 11-99, Officer not responding after report of 10-45 presumed dead."
When the first officers arrived on scene, there was no sign that Adam had ever been there. His patrol car was not even parked outside, and the door to the office inside the warehouse had been chained closed with a lock. An officer took an ax to the lock and they gained entry to the office.
"Call Winchester," was the first thing anyone dared say when they caught site of the gruesome tableau. Above which, on the wall, was painted "Book of Satan 2:6".
The young officers fall silent as one of them catches sight of Detective Dean Winchester arriving at the scene. He raises the yellow crime scene tape and ducks his head underneath as he strides towards the warehouse door with a steely, unreadable expression on his face, and no one dares impede his progress.
The ranking officer on scene notices Dean's entrance from where she stands, conversing with one of the forensics guys; excusing herself, she walks towards the detective. "The M.E.'s here," She says, trying to get Dean's attention, which is currently focused on the open door to the warehouse. He turns his eyes towards her approach. "I told him to hold off on the examination of the body until you had a chance to look it over," she adds when she is finally next to him.
As per usual, Dean looks her up and down in her uniform, and a hint of a smirk appears on his lips. "Well hello, Officer Harvelle," He quips with a raise of his eyebrows. The man knows everything there is to know about the Crucifix Murders, and yet he can't keep his eyes from straying to Jo's ass. "How much does the M.E. hate me?" He asks with a grin, totally in his element.
Jo raises her eyebrows in disapproval. "You're making him wait, and I'm pretty sure he was in the middle of dinner, so, probably a lot." She follows as Dean resumes walking towards the warehouse.
"Who called it in?" He asks, the milling officers part like the Red Sea for Dean.
"Milligan." Jo's voice is hard when she gives him the news. Dean struggles to keep his face unaffected as he hears the news. "They haven't heard anything from him since," The two of them are now in the warehouse, and with the door to the office completely open, they can see a small taste of what lies inside, still flickering with the light from the burning red candles.
The hairs on the back of Dean's neck prickle slightly and he begins to feel the adrenaline course wildly through his veins as he looks to see what messages she's left for him this time; he follows as Jo escorts him into the small square office at the back of the warehouse.
When they enter, the officers are still trying to rig up the flood lights, so Dean experiences what Adam must have seen when he discovered the scene.
This is how it was supposed to be seen.
The cross on the back wall is just like the others; all of them almost perfect replicas, pitch black like the night, but not from paint. The only paint-like substance on that cross is the vic's blood, creating a complex interwork of demonic symbols on the two rough pieces of African Blackwood timber.
Jo falls silent as Dean approaches the crucifixion scene, studying it intently.
The man looks to be in his mid-thirties with sandy blonde hair. That is about all Dean feels he can make out about the victim. His face is littered with contusions, both eyes swollen shut and several teeth missing. But the hardest part to miss was the large incision cutting his belly completely open, his intestines spilling from his abdomen.
Each of the victims' cause of death had not been their crucifixion. The first had been blunt force trauma to the head, and the second had finally been stabbed in the chest a total of 66 times. Dean estimates that she typically tortures them for about three hours after nailing them to the cross, before delivering her lethal blow.
"Could you get the M.E.?" Dean asks Jo as moves his gaze from the cross to the stone wall next to it.
From the door, Jo calls the medical examiner over nods towards the body. "He's all yours," She says to his scowl.
Dean is examining the symbols on the walls, "Can someone get me a black-light?" He shouts towards the officers standing idly around the room. One of them starts and exits the room quickly, calling for a black-light to everyone outside.
"These the same symbols?" Jo asks, standing behind Dean as she squints at the demonic symbols on the wall. Nodding as he takes a few steps back, Dean scrubs his hand down his face as he takes a photo with his phone.
"Looks like it to me," He types a number into his phone and sends the photo off in a text. "But the order might be different, I'm sending it to Bobby," his father's old friend had taken to consulting with the police department whenever they had cases that had any sort of symbols. Jo nods in agreement; she likes Dean when he's like this, in his element.
The senior forensics tech, Ash, approaches the two of them as Dean is looking at a list of those symbols on his phone, in his hand is a black-light attached to a long, orange extension cord. "You rang?" He says to Dean, a new-found ally on the force. His analyses of the forensic evidence of the two previous crime scenes had truly endeared him to Dean, but he could still be an annoying little shit.
Dean snatches the black light from his hand and flicks it on without a word. Is it wrong that there is a large part of him that was almost hoping for a new crime scene so he could test his theory.
Under the black-light, the wall erupts into a bright, complex array of symbols. Dean lets out a low whistle when his suspicions are confirmed. When he was studying some of the previous crime scene photos he'd noticed a small amount of stray smeared blood around one of the painted symbols. He knows enough about forensics to know that wiped away blood shows up under a black-light.
"These were drawn in blood and wiped away," He remarks to no one in particular, but Ash is gaping, wide-eyed next to him.
"It's like she fucking knows, man." He says with an incredulous voice, his tone betraying the embargo they'd had on this particular topic. Dean shoots him daggers with his eyes. They had to check the blood; they couldn't say it was...yet. "Like she knows the importance of today," Dean clears his throat and moves away from Ash, attempting to ignore his babbling. "You know this isn't the same as the other symbols, right?" Approaching the stone wall closer, Ash clicks his tongue. "It looks like Hebrew."
The blood in the silver chalice on the black altar beckons to Dean, taunting him. He knows that his whole investigation depends on this blood, and Ash's ability to detect the mixture of two different types. The blood type of the victim, and the blood from a female type AB positive. If he finds the same AB positive blood, it will be official. It will be the third victim.
They are dealing with a serial killer.
Dean pushes those thoughts away as he curses Ash in his mind for planting those words into his brain at a time like this. Making his blood run that much colder and his pulse rise to a gallop and rip through his veins. It was horrific, what was happening, but, for Dean, this had turned into a game after the scripture message over the second victim, just like this one, but he would examine that in a moment. Her purpose becomes clearer in Dean's mind with every kill she makes.
All the components of the altar are delicately and precisely placed. The silver chalice with the Latin engraving sitting in the middle of a pentagram is the centre piece of the carnage. There is something about that damn cup that gives Dean the feeling that she has a set number of tableaus to create. Anxiety grips at Dean's chest when he thinks about what that means for his investigation.
If she is only going to provide a set number of crime scenes, she could disappear forever before Dean could catch her; and the thought of catching this sadistic woman was beginning to keep Dean up nights.
"What verse did we get this time?" Dean asks Ash who he feels standing behind him, as he leans down to examine the pentagram on the black cloth.
"Chapter 2 verse 6," Ash replies. "There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!" He quotes slowly from the parchment nailed to the cross.
The pentagram is made with a crimson powder that smells strongly of sulfur, and Dean scrunches his nose at the odor and Ash's words as they cement another piece of the puzzle in his mind.
He turns abruptly to examine the parchment as the officers finally get the floor lamps up and running. The bright white light that engulfs the room blinds him for minute and when the world comes back into focus, the victim's mutilated body emerges from the fog, and Dean moves his eyes to the parchment.
The undeniably feminine script is the same sharp small cursive that the previous two verses had been written in. The cloth paper was scratched under the writing, as if it had been written with a sharp blade. Ash had suggested an old-fashioned feather quill. But even with the violent, sharp strokes, Dean can tell the words had been lovingly scratched onto that parchment.
"Grab the parchment, the blood, the chalice, and some of the powder," Dean instructs Ash as he turns to walk toward Jo and away from the M.E. who huffs in annoyance. Just to chaff his ass, Dean stops to pull out his phone and snap a few more pictures of the symbols on the cross.
When he turns back to Jo, she has a bemused expression on her face, "I've got all I need right now," He tells her, "Ash and I are heading back to the station right now so he can get started on the blood," She nods, awaiting further instruction. "Be sure to get the photographers to get shots under the black light. I want those on my desk ASAP. The M.E. can take the body back to the morgue, I'll be in tomorrow to look it over myself. The forensics geeks can bag the rest for evidence and I'll have Ash process them when he finishes the blood-work." Dean and Jo are walking towards the exit to the office.
"That it?" She prompts, trying to make sure that Dean is getting everything he needs.
Ash knocks over a candle as he turns to place the evidence baggie containing the parchment into his messenger bag. "Shit," he bends down to pick up the red candle from the ground, and he stops dead in his tracks. "Dean," He calls, pulling out a scalpel from his bag. "There's something in this candle." The candles had been left burning so long that the wax had melted deep enough to expose a small white ball hidden within.
Ash can feel Dean crouching over him as he extracts the white ball which, upon closer inspection, is simply a tiny ball of rolled up paper. "Is that paper?" Dean asks as he makes the realisation in his mind. "God-dammit," Dean exclaims in frustration, pulling Ash towards the rest of the forensics team. "I want all the candles melted down."
The groaning from the interns is audible even from this distance.
The station is eerily quiet as Dean leans back in his chair to stare at the collage of photos he has up on the wall next to his desk. The midnight moon casts a few stray beams of light into the deserted station, but Dean's small desk lamp is all he has on to illuminate his small part of the room.
Scrubbing his hand slowly down his face, Dean leans forward and opens his bottom desk drawer and pulls a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers from behind the standing manila folders. He pours himself a healthy quantity and takes the amber liquid down in one go. As the liquor burns the back of his throat, he stands and walks towards the three sections of his board. Movement catches his attention out of the corner of his eye, and he sees Ash through the large window to The Lab, his head bobbing to the music playing in his head-phones.
Dean turns to walk towards the bathroom, unwilling to stare at that fucking board any longer. As he makes his way, he can see the back of the officer on duty at the front desk through the glass doors.
His reflection in the mirror is not a welcome sight The bags under his eyes are even more prominent after his long day, and he sees sleep no where in his future. Though he had shaved that morning, his jaw still bears a dark shadow of wiry hair, and there's no way all those thick lines had been between his eyes that morning.
After taking a piss, Dean splashes a handful of water on his face and pats it dry with a paper towel, puffing out his chest to exit the bathroom, determined not to let that bitch get under his skin. He has a fucking job to do.
The officer at the front desk is leaning on the counter as he chats to a uniform who just returned from patrol; Dean doesn't recognise him from the crime scene, and yet he nods in Dean's direction as he disengages from his conversation with the other man and opens the glass door to enter the desk area.
"Hey! Winchester, right?" He calls across the room. Dean raises his eyebrows. "You're Detective Winchester, right?" He reiterates when he is standing before him.
Dean nods. "Yeah, Dean Winchester. Can I help you with something?" He asks, his patience virtually non-existent.
The officer pulls an envelope out of his back pocket and hands it to Dean. "I went a checked out the crime scene on my way back after my patrol, and when I got back, this was taped to my car." Dean examines the envelope that suddenly feels like lead in his hand. "It had your name on it."
"Did you show this to anyone?" Dean asks, immediately recognising the sharp strokes making out the three words on the front of the envelope. Detective Dean Winchester. He looks up at the unknowing officer and his flaring green eyes are wild and unbridled, the other man shakes his head.
"No one. Came straight here."
Staring for a moment into the officer's eyes, Dean finally begins a slow nod. "Ok," His voice is heavy. "Thanks." Quickly walking away, the other officer says nothing in response.
It should be a sign that the lip of the envelope gives Dean a paper cut as he slides his index finger to break the seal.