Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written because there just isn't enough Henricksen fic out there. (There's not enough Gordon fic out there either, but that's another matter entirely.) So I decided to write for a fandom I (gasp) don't usually write for. On with the show.
The Unusual Case (The Usual Suspects)
"You might find that interesting, Vic," Henricksen's boss, Palmer, said one Wednesday afternoon, handing him a case file. "You've been asking me for something good for a while now. Here it is. The Winchester brothers, recently escaped from custody in Baltimore."
"Escaped from custody? Sir, I-" Henricksen began to respond, but he was forestalled by a raised hand.
"Just read it, Vic. It's better than it sounds."
It was. It was engrossing.
Dean Winchester was twenty-seven and had been wanted for the murder of a young woman in St. Louis when he had apparently been shot dead. And yet he had somehow been arrested, very much alive and with blood on his hands, at another murder scene. Aside from the murders, there was a long, long list of crimes. Arson, the odd theft, fourteen unpaid parking tickets and a few other traffic violations, breaking and entering, trespassing, destruction of property, impersonating a whole range of officials, more than a decade's worth of credit card fraud and, strangely, grave desecration.
Sam Winchester was twenty-three, six foot five, and unlike his brother had only a very short rap sheet, the only charge being along the lines of accessory. In fact, his profile painted quite a different picture. He had been a straight-A student who had somehow got a full ride to Stanford and then a ridiculously high LSAT score. He'd had a law school interview and a damn fine girlfriend. But the night before the interview, the girlfriend had died in a fire and Sam Winchester had vanished with his brother, only staying long enough for the funeral.
After the profiles there were the details of their escape from Baltimore. Dean had been arrested, then Sam. But Baltimore's finest had not treated either with enough respect. Sam Winchester had escaped through a fourth-storey window, for Christ's sake. And the statement from Detective Ballard-
Henricksen snorted. Baltimore's finest indeed. "Hey, Reid," he called to his partner. "Come have a look at this."
Reid quietly perused the documents on offer. When he had finished, he turned to Henricksen, eyebrows raised. "I guess we're going to Baltimore," he said.
"Damn right we're going to Baltimore," Henricksen replied.
------
The police station in Baltimore was dark and damp. Even the offices looked like cells. A few inquiries led Henricksen and Reid to a blonde woman in her forties working diligently at her computer. There were fading bruises on her wrists, Henricksen noted. Almost like she'd been tied up.
"Diana Ballard?"
She didn't look up at them immediately, but did say "Detective Ballard," with a slight emphasis on Detective.
"Special Agents Henricksen and Reid, F.B.I. We're here about the Winchester case."
Ballard looked up from her work then, but didn't look entirely surprised. "You already have my statement," she said coolly. "I don't see why this is necessary."
Henricksen did not miss a beat. "Well, it is. We'd like you to tell us what happened again."
Ballard remained silent. "We can do this somewhere else, if you'd like," Reid said.
Detective Ballard did not respond straight away, instead thinking it over for a bit. But then she seemed to come to a decision. "Well then, Special Agents," she said, taking the lead. "I'd like to get this over with."
It was a good decision, Henricksen thought.
------
She led them not into an interrogation room, but a small office. The boxes around the walls indicated that it was being cleared out. "This was Pete Sheridan's office," Ballard said, gesturing towards a chair and taking the second one herself. Reid was left standing.
"Your partner." It wasn't a question.
"He was," was the perfectly neutral response. It distanced her from all of her partner's actions.
"So let's go over this. Dean Winchester was found at a crime scene with Karen Giles' blood on his hands. Giles had made a 911 about ten minutes earlier, stating that someone was in the house. And yet Dean Winchester did not kill her?" Henricksen questioned.
Still keeping her voice perfectly level, Ballard responded, "That's right."
Henricksen shook his head. "Those are some long odds. What are the chances that he stumbled into a murder scene just minutes after the murder was committed? Reid?"
"Very long odds," Reid said, following his partner's lead.
"But that's not really why we're here," Henricksen continued, "We wanted to ask you more about what happened later." He leaned forwards. "You can start with Sam Winchester's escape."
Ballard narrowed her eyes. "Like I said in my statement. Dean sent a note to his brother with their lawyer. I'm sure you have a copy. Sam read it and climbed out the window. I don't know what he did then, but we think he set up near here and did some of his own investigating."
"Then what?"
"I left the station. I was feeling unwell. Sam intercepted me and told me what he'd found out. He took me to Ashland Street, and we found Claire's body. Then we went to try and find Pete."
"And Dean?"
Ballard continued in the same reasonable monotone. "My partner was interrogating Dean. He lost his temper. Assaulted him. After I had left the station, at around two in the morning, he decided to transfer Dean to St. Louis by himself. Sam and I caught up with him just outside town."
"Speaking of which, Detective Ballard, why didn't you take Sam straight back to the station?"
She clearly didn't take well to this criticism of her professional abilities. "Time was of the essence. I believed that Sheridan would have killed Dean. Saving his life was my priority. Also, Sam escaped our custody once. He probably would have done so again."
"What happened next?"
"We caught up with Sheridan outside of town," she repeated. "He'd already removed Dean from the back of the vehicle and had a gun on him. He confessed to killing Tony and Karen Giles, as well as Claire. He also confessed to stealing heroin from lockup, using Claire to sell the heroin and Tony Giles to launder the profits. He admitted he was planning to kill me. We fought. I shot Sheridan in the struggle."
"And yet the Winchesters escaped."
"I was distraught. I turned my back."
Henricksen raised his eyebrows. "Distraught? Detective, you don't strike me as the type."
Her expression visibly hardened. "Pete was my partner. We were in a relationship. And I'd just found out that he had killed his friends and wanted to kill me. My superiors excused me."
"How long would you say your back was turned for?" Henricksen asked, taking down a few notes.
"Only a minute or two. When I turned around, both of them were gone."
"Oh, you got suckered good, Detective. Those boys played you like pros. Well, they are."
Ballard leaned forwards. "Those boys saved me. They helped me catch a killer. They did nothing wrong here." She withdrew a bit. "Are we done? I'm rather busy at the moment."
Henricksen didn't answer, just closed his folder. Reid answered instead. "Yes, I think we are. We'll let you know if we want to talk to you again."
Detective Ballard stood up and nodded at them on her way out. "Special Agents. It's been a pleasure."
As Detective Ballard reached for the doorknob, however, Henricksen spoke again. "How did you get those bruises? Almost looks like you've been tied up."
Ballard tugged her sleeves back over her wrists and said, coldly this time, "That's none of your business, Special Agent."
"Did the Winchesters do that?"
Now Ballard was openly glaring at them. "It has nothing to do with the Winchesters. The details of my romantic involvement with Pete are not relevant to your investigations and I would appreciate it if we left that line of questioning there. Good afternoon."
------
Back in the car and driving back to Washington, Henricksen took his eyes off the road for a second and turned to Reid. "So, what'd you think?"
"It's exactly what's in her statement. But she's not telling us everything, I'm sure."
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Henricksen turned back to the road. "Anything else interesting in those files?"
Reid shuffled the paper around a bit. "Well, if you look at Dean's statement about the original crime, and then Sam's, they're practically identical."
"So they're lying about what they were doing in Baltimore." This, Henricksen thought, was a given, but it was the sort of thing they had to confirm.
"Looks like it. I'll check their story about Tony Giles meeting John Winchester in the Marines when we get back to base."
Reid continued, "Any ideas on how the Winchesters found out it was Sheridan committing those murders?"
Henricksen shook his head. "Not a one. It took forensics days to corroborate the Winchesters' story. Sheridan didn't exactly keep a list of his crimes on paper. And besides Ballard and the Winchesters, who heard Sheridan confess?"
"I've never heard anything like it," Reid said, shaking his head.
"And that St. Louis thing," Henricksen went on. "Dean Winchester was declared officially dead. Positive identification. They buried him and nobody touched that grave. I have no idea how he did that either."
A brief look of sympathy. "St. Louis PD not got back to you yet?"
"Nope."
They didn't speak again until they got back to base.
------
"Hey, Reid, fax for you," Agent Cook said about an hour after they'd returned. "From the Marines."
Reid took the proffered pages, and he smiled slightly as he read them. "Vic, we were right. Tony Giles and John Winchester likely never met. Winchester was stationed in Vietnam, and Giles worked stateside. The boys were lying through their teeth."
Henricksen also smiled, but replied, "You do realise this raises the question of what they were doing in Baltimore in the first place."
"Maybe they were just passing through. Any luck with St. Louis?"
"Not yet. But no way they were just passing through. There's method to the madness somewhere here. I don't think this was random. And if we work out what they want, we can catch them."
And Henricksen had every confidence in his ability to work out that method.
