(From the private journal of Jocelyn Murphy)
8:00 a.m., Nov 1
When Sam left, I had the nightmares again. I thought they were over – hadn't had one since a month or two after Dad handed me off to the Winchesters. But after S ran away, they started happening again. Bad. After a 2 year absence, boom, there they were, vivid as ever. Don't know how what happened with T has anything to do with what happened with S, but on top of everything, on top of the leaving and the not calling, Sam gave me the nightmares again. So damn it – I think I've earned the right to be pissed at him.
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Sam was sitting in the Impala.
Actually, he was sitting in the Impala, at a truck stop, on the way to investigate a potentially haunted highway. And if he closed his eyes, he could be sixteen again.
But he didn't want to be sixteen. No, he liked twenty-two. He wanted to go back to Stanford and be twenty-two, be pre-law, be with Jess. That was his life. That was where he belonged. And he would go back . . . right after this. This one last hunt. He had to make sure his dad was okay, he knew he had to. But this was it. Once they found John, it was over, and over would stick next time around.
He had Dean's box of cassette tapes in his lap, trying to find something, anything he hadn't heard a thousand times as a kid, when a shadow fell over him. "Dean wants to know if you want breakfast." Jocelyn wiggled a tiny Styrofoam coffee cup and a granola bar at him.
"No, I'm good." He nodded at the food. "How'd you pay for that stuff? You guys still running credit card scams?"
"Well, if you'll remember, hunting doesn't really keep a person in shoes." She leaned against the car, taking a long swig of coffee and staring out at the road. "And anyway, we just apply. They'rethe ones who send us the cards."
Sam picked up a Led Zeppelin tape, dropped it back into the box. "Yeah? And what names did you write on the application this time?"
A smile tugged at her lips, but dropped them just as quickly. "Bert Afranian. And his children Bernice and Hector. Got three cards out of the deal."
"Sounds about right." Sam realized, as Jocelyn opened her granola bar with a bite, that the gap she'd had between her two front teeth had grown together. "So . . . what exactly are you doing for education?"
"Hm?"
"I mean, shouldn't you be in school right now?"
"Oh. Yeah." She chewed, swallowed. "After you . . . after you left, it seemed pointless to hang around a town long enough for just one of us to enroll in school. Especially with the power of the Internet. I do this distance-learning thing now. Send stuff in once a week, get new assignments through email. Not a prep school education, but it'll get me my diploma."
"Oh, wow. Cool."
She sipped more coffee. Sam's eyes slipped over to her motorcycle, sitting by the next pump over, looking like absolutely nothing a sixteen-year-old girl should have. "Wanna tell me how you conned my dad into letting you get the bike?"
"Wasn't much con involved . . . It belonged to – someone. He gave it to me. Sort of."
"Anyone I know?"
"No."
Sam didn't press her. "Still can't believe Dad let you keep it."
She shrugged, offered nothing more, and Sam gave up completely. She didn't want to small talk, fine. God only knew what she would do if he tried to bring up something significant.
She was being unfair.
Or, maybe she was just being a teenager. Maybe it had nothing to do with Sam. That was at least a possibility.
He heard Dean say, "He want anything?" and turned to see his brother taking the pump from the Impala's back end. Jocelyn answered no and tilted her head back and drained her last drops of coffee.
Dean came around to the car's driver's side and slid in, storing his junk food in between him and Sam, who closed his own door. The box's contents clattered around. "I swear, man," Sam said, "You gotta update your cassette tape collection."
"Why?"
"Well, for one, they're cassette tapes. And, two –" He began picking tapes at random. "Black Sabbath . . . Motorhead . . . Metallica –"
Dean snagged a tape from the box, evidently unmoved. "Say what you want, I can take it. Oh, but if you let Joss hear you badmouth Black Sabbath, she'll make your life a living hell."
"Jocelyn likes this stuff?"
"Jocelyn loves this stuff."
Really, Sam shouldn't have been surprised. Even as kid, it was Dean who Jocelyn had looked up to, Dean she'd watched with a nearly religious reverence, Dean she'd tried to emulate in every single way she could. But still – Black Sabbath? "She's a sixteen-year-old girl. She should be listening to the Jonas Brothers –"
" – who? –"
"– not the greatest hits of mullet rock."
The roar of a motorcycle rolled through the open windows. Jocelyn rode up beside them, eyes hidden by her helmet's visor, but her head was twisted their way. Dean held up a finger and fed the tape to the car. "House rules, Sammy," he said. "Driver picks the music. Shotgun shuts his cakehole."
"You know," Sam said, because this was a good a time as any, "'Sammy' is a chubby twelve-year-old. It's Sam –"
The car came to life, AC/DC's "Back in Black" started pounding out of the speakers, andDean's hand flew to the volume knob. "What's that?" he called as he cranked it up. "Sorry, I can't hear you, the music's too loud . . ."
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6:15 a.m., Nov 2
So, yesterday.
We got to Jericho, reached the five-mile stretch John disappeared on. Centennial Highway. Ran into a crime scene. An empty car, a missing guy. Fits the MO. I rode past – God, I wish I could get rid of that bike – while the guys played feds. Yeah – Sam played a fed.
Anyway, D and S heard a cop mention that his daughter – the girlfriend of the victim, Troy – was putting up missing posters downtown. After they met back up with me, we tracked down the girl, Amy (as Troy's cousins from Modesto) and ended up having coffee with her and a friend in a nearby café. That's where we learned about this local legend – as the story goes, a girl was murdered on Centennial and now gets her kicks hitchhiking and killing off the poor saps who stop to pick her up. We went to the local library to see if the story checked out. It did.
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"Female Murder Hitchhiking" was the first thing Dean typed into the Search field of the Jericho Herald website, but the computer's reply was a polite (0) Result for . . . line. He changed "Hitchhiking" to "Centennial Highway", clicked GO again. (0) Result for . . .
Sam tried to be patient, he really did. He sat watching from the chair next to Dean, he intended to let him keep trying, but somehow his hands flew out anyway. "Let me try –"
"I got it!" Dean batted his hand away, so Sam took hold of his brother's rolling chair and shoved, sending Dean sliding. Jocelyn – who had been supporting herself on Dean's shoulders – caught her balance and gave Sam a dirty look. He moved between her and the computer.
"Dude!" Dean pushed himself back over. "You're such a control freak. . ."
Sam rested his hands on the keyboard and studied the screen for a moment. Just as he typed the first letters, Jocelyn crossed her arms over his shoulders, rested on him, and he had a sudden flash of himself in the backseat of the Impala, a sleeping little girl curled up beside him like a cat . . .
He flexed his fingers and continued typing.
First, he changed "Female" to "Woman."
Nothing.
He deleted "Highway."
Nothing.
"Gee, Sam, glad we got you on the job," said Dean.
Sam bit his tongue and replaced "Murder" with "Killed".
Nothing. 0 Results for . . . glared back at the trio like a taunt, and Sam felt Jocelyn shift. "Angry spirits are born from a violent death, right?"
"Very good, Jocelyn," he muttered.
Her arms stretched out on either side of him and her hands nudged his off the keyboard. "Well, smartass . . ." She backspaced over "Killed." "A violent death doesn't always equal murder, does it?" S-U-I-C-I-D-E, she poked into the computer. GO.
Searching . . .
(1) Result found: Suicide on Centennial
Dean cuffed Sam's arm and jerked his thumb towards Jocelyn. "And she never even went to college."
"You can click on the link if you'd like, Sam." Jocelyn withdrew her arms.
The blue light from the monitor bounced off of the grin Dean sent Jocelyn's way. Sam resisted the urge to tell them both off. Monday, he said to himself. Just until Monday. He clicked on the link, and an article topped by a picture of a pretty young woman appeared. "This was 1981 . . ." He moved closer to the screen to read. ". . . Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river."
"Never understood jumping off bridges," said Jocelyn.
"Say why she did it?" Dean asked.
"Yeah . . ."
"What?"
"An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Her two little kids are in the bathtub, she leaves them alone for a minute, when she comes back . . . they aren't breathing. Both die."
"Hm."
"Look at that," Jocelyn pointed to a snapshot of a man, his head bowed, hand covering his mouth. "'Our babies were gone," she read, "and Constance just couldn't bear it', said Joseph Welch. The husband."
"Hey, guys." Now Dean pointed, but lower, at the final picture in the article. "That bridge look familiar to you?"
Sam looked closer. It did. They had been on it earlier than day, posing as feds.
