Disclaimer: Do I really need to say this? It's kinda painful.

2. Research

Sam had hacked into the Seattle PD's database when they met up back at their motel that evening. More bodies had turned up and they had separated to cover more ground. Sam seemed to hit the motherload – score one more point for Geekboy. Dean had no idea how Sam does the things he does, the only thing Dean could do with that laptop was surf for porn.

"So all of the vics had a ravaged appendage of some sort." Sam glanced up from the screen to his brother who was sitting on the end of one of the beds and was in the middle of meticulously cleaning and oiling the guns. Hunter's Handbook rule number one – make sure your piece is in perfect fucking working order. And the Winchester arsenal was perfectly maintained.

"All of them?" Dean looked up from the weapon in his hand and frowned at his brother. "Even the ones that were burned?"

"Yup. Even the ones that were ripped limb from limb and scattered. All of them had bite marks of some kind."

"So someone, or something, is going to not so great lengths to attack and kill people, and then half-ass the body dump?"

"Looks that way. Whatever is doing this doesn't seem to care about covering their tracks."

"But what is the big question." Dean stressed. This whole thing was too weird, even for them. They had never come across a case with such a high body count as this, except for that demon virus that time in Crater Lake, but that was completely different. It was like a supernatural convention was going on in Seattle complete with an all-you-can-eat buffet.

"And I did a little extra digging when you went back to the morgue this afternoon when they brought in that new body." Sam continued.

Dean shuddered. "Dude was extra crispy."

"Yeah, well I decided to dig into that Doctor from this morning."

"Doctor McCreepy?" Dean's interest piqued. "What'd ya find?"

"Well first, just the usual. Doctor from Anchorage, moves to Smalltown USA, everyone is grateful to have him on staff – talented, pillar of the community, yada, yada." Sam waved a hand flippantly in the air.

"Tell me you found something on the guy better than the kind of porn he likes." Dean sat forward and propped his elbows on his knees.

"Well, I broke into the Forks Sherriff's Department server. Turns out that no one has reported a missing girl in town, matching our vic's description or otherwise."

"So no missing kids in town. Well, how many hospital's can the area have? This Forks Memorial or whatever it was called could serve a really large part of the state if it's a mostly rural landscape."

"I checked that too, and no one matching our girl has been reported missing in the last few months in the entire Olympic Peninsula."

"So if there's no missing girl, why would Dr. Cullen drive all the way to Seattle then?"

"Maybe he wanted to check out the body." Sam added, an insinuating tone in his voice.

Dean looked at his brother's face. "You got a Trump card you're holding Sammy." Dean accused him. "What else did you find?"

"Well…how old did Dr. Cullen look to you?" Sam leaned back in his plastic motel chair.

"I don't know…young. Maybe late twenties at the most. Why? You gonna ask him out?" Dean smirked.

"God, you're an ass." Sam cursed at him. "Doctor Cullen has been at Forks Memorial for almost three years. And he was in Anchorage General for nearly four years before that."

"Which means he was a doctor when he was twenty." Dean surmised. "Dude's Doogie Howser."

"It gets better." Sam continued. "There's no record of him going to medical school in the U.S., and there are no tax records or credit card histories of him prior to Anchorage."

"So Doctor Creeps-Me-The-Hell-Out fell from the sky with some bogus medical degree documents?" Dean asked incredulous.

"Seems that way. I mean, we know how to get fake anything, why not this guy?" Sam shrugged.

"Alright, so Dr. Fake-n-stein comes to the morgue to check out the victim. Why?"

"We know there's something not right with him, do you think he may have something to do with all this?"

"It's likely." Dean rubbed his palm over his face. "Dude!" He stood up quickly. "What if the good Doctor is a Shtriga?"

"Fuck!" Sam turned back to his laptop, tapping furiously at the keys. "Just give me a minute…" More rapid tapping and Sam frowning at the screen. "Almost…" he said a minute later. "There!" He said triumphantly, spinning the laptop to show the monitor to his older brother.

"What's this?" Dean walked over to Sam and stood behind him. Sam turned the computer back around and scrolled down the screen.

"This is the personnel files for Anchorage General Hospital." Sam said proudly. "Complete with scanned images of the staff identification cards."

"Which means a picture." Dean grinned.

Sam scrolled through a few more screens before an image of a handsome blonde man filled a part of the screen. "He looks the exact same." Sam concluded.

Dean leaned in and looked at the date under the photo. "Picture was taken six years ago, and he still looks like he's in his late twenties."

"How many creatures don't age?" Sam turned and looked up at his brother behind him.

"Too many in our line of work. Shtriga's definitely don't." Dean stood up and stretched his back. "Sammy, you look deeper into the Doc, I'm gonna go grab us a pizza. I'm starved."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Sam flicked his pen across the table, his temper causing his nose to flare and forehead to crease. "I've looked Dean! There is nothing more to find!"

"There has got to be something on this guy!" Dean yelled back, slamming his palm on the table top.

"Look Dean," Sam was pissed. "There's nothing to find. No records of any mass deaths of children in any of the towns the Doc has been in. All of them write the same things about him in his records, talented doctor, gifted surgeon, brilliant diagnostician." Sam ticked off the offensive list on his fingers. "He's better at his job than Doctor House. Even has a sterling bed-side manner." Sam shoved the laptop away in disgust.

"How far back did you go?" Dean paced the floor of the motel. Sam had spent all day in the public library going through its resources and making notes. Apparently, the shifty Doc had changed fake names every couple of years, faked papers, filed taxes under his fake names, which was the real kicker to Dean. What was the point in going to all the trouble of setting up an alias if you paid taxes anyway? Did the monster have a civic conscience? The Doc was good at covering his tracks – it only spoke volumes of what Sam was capable of in the research department. It's too bad the kid never got to be the trial lawyer he wanted to be. He would have steam-rolled his opposition.

"I was able to track him back as far as 1952." Sam rubbed at his eyes. "If he's a Shtriga and he's been around all that time, he would have had to feed. And no kids have died here in Seattle." Sam glared at his older brother, knowing that question was on the tip of his tongue. "I don't think it's him."

"We've got this messed up case, Doc Cullen shows up at the morgue, and you're telling me he's not connected? I don't buy it. There are no such things as coincidences." Dean slammed the plastic chair against the cheap table in frustration. "You can't tell me he's not something!" Dean yelled.

"Dude…I'm not arguing with you there." Sam tried to calm him down but his temper was rising also. "I know there something wrong with this guy. I just don't think he's responsible for what's going on here."

"So, what?" Dean sneered. "He was in the neighborhood and decided to drop in on the local mortuary to see what was shaking?"

"No…But…" Sam trailed off, his forehead creased in thought.

Dean grabbed the chair he just tossed and sat down at the table across from his brother. "But what Sammy?" He asked. "What's rattling in that freak brain of yours?"

"What if…" Sam held up a finger so that Dean wouldn't interrupt him until he was finished speaking. "What if Doc Cullen isn't involved in these killings? What if he's some supernatural-whatever, but he's not doing this and it's something that moved in on his territory?"

"He'd want to check it out." Dean rubbed his jaw. It kind of made sense.

"Right. So Doctor Cullen hears the stories of all the murders being committed in his backyard…" Sam trailed off.

"And doesn't want something stirring up trouble…" Dean added.

"And maybe messing up his low profile." Sam finished, pointed a finger at Dean as if that proved the point.

Dean scrubbed his hand over his face. His head hurt. "But that doesn't help us figure out what's doing the killings here in Seattle, or figure out what the Doc is."

"Maybe he's some sort of demi-god or something." Sam offered.

"Man, I hate demi-gods." Dean ground his teeth together.

"I don't like them either, but as far as we know, Doctor Cullen hasn't harmed anyone. We can't touch him." Sam leaned forward onto the Formica table top, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Dean huffed in frustration. There was so much going on in this case and they didn't have a clear direction with which to start. "So do you want to go to Forks tomorrow and see Doctor Cullen?" Dean offered. "See if we can shake him down and see if anything rattles?"

"You want to go see him, not knowing what he is, and confront him about this stuff?" Sam raised his eyebrows in amazement.

"If you got a better idea, I'd love to hear it." Dean grabbed some napkins off the table, wadded them and tossed them in the waste basket.

"I hate not knowing what we're up against." Sam groaned, letting his head fall back so he could stare at the ceiling.

"We'll just pack a little of everything." Dean smirked. "Some evergreen stakes, silver knife, salt rounds…"

"You want to walk up to this guy holding a shotgun?" Sam laughed.

"We'll take the sawed-off. We'll wear the suits and I'll hide it beneath my overcoat."

"This is crazy." Sam shook his head.

"Crazy's all we got little brother."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

"Hey Damien." Dean spoke into his cell softly. Sammy was in the shower and would be out soon, and then they'd be on the road to Forks. Caleb hadn't answered his phone, and Dean was shunted directly to voicemail. "Just checking in, we're looking into those gang murders in Seattle. There's something fishy going on and me and Sammy are going to do a little digging. We'll keep you posted Dude. Hope your hunt with Ethan and Eli is going okay. Talk to you later."

Dean flipped his phone shut and stood up to load his things into the Impala.