The bar that Sam had pointed out to Dean down the street from the records office proved to be an English-style pub. The wooden sign outside with a medieval lion rearing amid the name of the establishment elicited a visible roll of the eyes from the hunter as he headed for the door. Hopefully they would at least have good beer.
And helpful staff.
Or at least a few girls worth checking out.
He moved straight to the bar, where the bartender was some guy roughly his age with wavy, dull brown hair and equally lack-luster grey eyes deeply ringed from insomniatic sleeping habits. He had been scribbling something into a notebook when Dean sat down and ordered a beer. With a friendly nod, he promptly fetched the drink then used the opportunity to give the hunter a once-over.
"You're not from here."
"No," Dean confirmed, reaching into his coat pocket to show the bartender his fake FBI badge. "Agent Dean Steinhardt." He flashed straight white teeth.
"Luc." He didn't offer his hand in greeting, though he smiled vaguely. "This is about that murder, isn't it?" the bartender said, stacking clean dishes as he spoke. There were other people in the pub but the bar itself was moving slowly enough that they could keep up a conversation. Something in his eyes made him look nervous, but Dean could write that off easily. They were talking about a murder in a small town. "Poor kid. Conway, right?"
"Yeah," Dean replied. "Mind if I ask a few questions?" He put the ID back into its pocket and took a sip of his drink. The place might be a bit of a dive, but the beer was at least palatable. Though, at this point, lighter fluid was nearly palatable. His tastes weren't terribly discerning anymore.
The bartender looked like he was about to say something about the beer, probably something about drinking on the job, but he rethought that and instead answered Dean's question with a shrug. "Sure, but I'm not sure how much help I'll be."
"These are just routine questions. It's nothing to worry about."
The bartender finished with the dishes, filled up a drink for another customer and leaned in against the counter. "Okay, shoot."
Did you know the victim personally?"
"He came in here a lot to see Lailah. She's the manager here. He'd come with friends, so I saw a lot of the three of them: Becks, Riley and Conway. College friends, I think." He frowned. "Sorry, your question was about whether I knew him. We weren't friends, but I saw him enough to know his type."
The nonplussed inflection of speech reminded Dean briefly of a friend a long time ago, but he pushed the idea away. This man was sure as hell no angel. "His type?"
"Player," the bartender shrugged. "Flirted with everyone. He and his friend would get into fights about that sometimes, but never anything serious, you know? Kind of…" Thinking, he quirked his lips in a wry almost-smile. "Kind of a bromantic frenemies thing." He made air quotes, and Dean had to fight hard not to cringe.
"His friend? You mean Riley – Irish kid."
"Yeah," the bartender nodded, crossing his arms. "That's the one. I think he only hung out with Julian because of the girl, but that's just projection. They got on fine most of the time."
"Right," Dean said, mentally running through the story. "You said he came here to see some girl?"
"Lailah. Afraid she's not in or I'd have you talk to her. She probably knew him better than me," he drawled. "Happy to answer any questions you might have, of course."
Dean nodded. "Let me know if Lailah gets in, because I think I would like to talk to her. In the meantime, have you noticed anything strange around here lately?"
"Apart from the murder?"
"Yeah."
The bartender shifted uneasily and raised an eyebrow. "No… What do you mean?"
Dean glance at the watch on his wrist, mentally trying to decide whether he wanted to bring Sam back tomorrow or just try to find out what he could here, because he seemed to have found a fairly solid connection to the people involved. He quickly redirected his gaze to the bartender, who appeared concerned, though only in a hazy sort of way. "Don't worry about it. Listen, I'll be back tomorrow with my partner, Sam, to talk to the other staff. Think Lailah'll be in?"
At this, the bartender appeared uncertain. "I don't know. She's out sick, man, so she might still be out tomorrow, but if she is, I'll give her a call and see if she'd mind talking to you."
"Good," Dean rapped on the counter and stood to pay for the beer. "Do that. Thanks for your time, uh… Luc," he said with a friendly nod. And he strolled out the door again.
The bartender refilled a few drinks he had neglected in talking to the supposed fed, watching Dean leave as he did so. Once he was sure he wouldn't be in demand for a few minutes, he backed off from the counter and leaned against a far corner of the area behind the bar, pulling out his phone to make a call.
Nothing fit into place.
By the time Dean and Sam met up again at the apartment, both had come to a similar but disheartening conclusion: this wasn't the work of anything supernatural. Just people. Riley may or may not have done it – odds and intuition said no.
The brothers decided to sleep on the matter, visit the bar together the next day to do a last bit of research, and then decide from there whether to get involved with a potentially human affair or leave it to the local authorities.
In the night, the bartender stood a few feet from a darkly clad figure, speaking in hushed tones.
"You're certain?" she asked, eyes hard and appraising, still lacking trust though they had been working together for some months without incident. The very nature of his profession and past affiliations separated them on a fundamental level.
"His name was Dean," he said, his voice soft and much less friendly than it had been when he had spoken to the Winchester earlier. Bartending hadn't been his first line of work. ? He stared at the young woman, eyes wide in a hazy, perpetually-stoned and over-caffeinated, insomniatic sort of way more than in a show of any specific emotion.
She didn't respond, awaiting further proof.
"He looked like the guy who was on tv a while ago." A mid-western accent became apparent as he went on, a far cry from the southern drawl of bartender Luc. "He mentioned a partner – he was pretending to be FBI – and he called him Sam…"
At the name of the younger Winchester, the woman shifted, signally her recognition. A flicker of acceptance made itself apparent for a moment in her eyes as she studied the man in front of her. "Well, then. Finally, the Winchesters."
The following morning, Dean woke to Sam shutting the hotel room door and walking in, sweating lightly and dressed apparently for a jog. He grumbled and rubbed his eyes, glanced at the little alarm clock next to the bed, which he couldn't be bothered to read for his bleary morning vision.
"Christ, Sammy."
Rather than respond to his brother's complaint, Sam simply set down a bag on the table with their breakfast inside. "I'm gonna take a shower," he said. "That's food."
Dean fell back heavily onto his pillow, watching Sam head off to the bathroom and waited until his brother had closed the door before sliding out of bed, dressing more completely, and settling into one of the cheap chairs the motel had supplied for its equally cheap table. Sam had brought in some kind of fast food breakfast, a fair indication to Dean that he wanted to get started on the case early today. And fair enough. They had accomplished little the day before.
When the boys finally talked about it, they decided to go and check the pub again for further leads. Dean was anxious to get to talk to Lailah, since she seemed to be in the middle of what he had found. Of course, she could also know absolutely nothing, which would put them back to square one and in need of a more thorough chat with the victims themselves.
"Agent Dean!" The bartender from the previous evening called out in greeting.
"Luc!" Dean greeted the man in a friendly tone. He and his brother strolled up to the bar, though before any further words could be exchanged, Sam tapped Dean on the shoulder, pointing across the pub at a waitress taking an order at a table with a couple of college kids. Surprised, Dean frowned at the bartender. "Hey, isn't that Beckett Williams? You didn't say she worked here." He did his best to keep any hostility out of his voice.
Luc licked his lips and began filling up two glasses of beer. "I forgot. She's newer, man, and I don't normally work when she does. Day shift was sick, so Lailah asked me to fill in for him. Guess something's going around, because she's still out, too."
Sam smirked at the Texan drawl briefly before pulling out his fake FBI badge to show the man. "Agent Sam Walsh," he said, keeping his face straight. "Is there anything else you may have forgotten that could help us in our investigation, Mister…?"
"Luc Tueur," he replied, placing the pints of beer on the counter. "On the house, since you're doing this town a huge favor by investigating the murder."
"Hey, thanks, man!" Dean said, starting to reach out for one with a grin.
His younger brother nudged him sharply in the ribs but flashed a professional smile at the bartender. "We're on duty." Dean deflated.
With a shrug, the bartender removed the beer, setting it aside, and leaned on the counter. "How can I help?" he asked. "What do you think I'd know?"
"You're a bartender. You must hear people talking all the time, right?" The bartender shrugged. "Do you think there's anyone who had it out for Conway?" Sam pressed. "Anyone seemed particularly edgy or suspicious lately?"
"Most folks, since the murder, have been a bit edgy," the bartender replied, a little too casually. He raised his eyebrows, staring owlishly at Sam. "But I suppose you mean beforehand. I can't say as I notice anyone particularly spooky who looked like they were about to murder someone."
"What about Conway's friends? Think they'd have any reason to kill him?"
This sent the bartender into a thoughtful quiet for a moment. He squinted and then replied. "Well, Julian broke up with Riley's little sister a while ago, but I'm not sure that's really reason for a man to kill someone. Weren't they at the scene, anyway?"
Dean looked at Sam. "Can you think of anyone who might want to kill Riley or Ms. Williams?" he asked. "Maybe Julian just happened to be in the killer's way."
"Are y'all making sure they're safe? If that's true and the killer hasn't been caught, they're probably still in danger, you know," the bartender said, frowning in concern. "I can't think of anyone who'd want them dead. I hear people talk, but it's about their relationships, their jobs. You'd have to be real drunk to confess a murder plot to someone like me in public."
Sam and Dean exchanged another glance, silently agreeing with the man.
"When's Beckett's shift over?" Dean asked.
Uselessly, the bartender glanced at his wrist, where he wore no watch, and then he turned around to look at a clock on the wall. "In a few hours," he replied, finally, after taking a few moments to apparently read the thing. Sam was beginning to wonder if the guy wasn't stoned; he looked the type. Dean didn't really care so long as he was useful, which he had only been slightly so far.
"Thanks. We'll be in touch if we can think of anything else you could help with," Sam said curtly.
"No problem," the bartender replied and immediately set to taking care of patrons he'd been neglecting during their brief conversation.
For the next few hours, Sam and Dean waited around at a table in the middle of the pub so that they could look around and have lunch at the same time. When Beckett's shift finally ended, they intercepted her before she could leave.
"Oh! Agents Walsh and… Steinhardt!" she said, surprised to see them – they hadn't been within her range of tables to take care of. "Have you found anything?"
"Actually, we wanted to some more, if that's okay," Sam said.
"Were you going anywhere?" Dean asked.
"I… uh… Nowhere that's more important than this." She clung to her bag as for moral support, her anxiety about the subject still obvious.
"I'm surprised you're already working so soon after your friend was killed," Dean said, a little too harshly. Sam gave him a hard look, which softened the moment he turned his eyes to the girl. "Why don't we sit and talk for a bit. We have just a few more questions."
A little shocked by Dean's accusation, the girl only nodded and followed them to a corner table near the back of the restaurant, well away from the bar and the majority of the customers, though the place was generally fairly small. Once they were seated, Beckett fidgeted awkwardly, unsure how to act under their scrutiny, which she felt to be much less friendly than the day before.
"So, why'd you kill him?" Dean asked bluntly.
"What?" she gasped, then sputtered. "I… Kill- What? N-no. He was my- but… oh my god!"
Sam gave his brother another stern look. He had used similarly cruel tactics himself to startle people into a truthful answer, but he didn't approve of this now. "Sorry, Beckett," he apologized for his brother. "We're just trying to explore all possibilities. Can you think of any reason anyone would want to kill you or Riley or your friend, Julian?"
"No," she said nervously. "And there's no reason any of us would want t-to…" Unable to finish the sentence, she looked away. It took a while before she would respond to anything they said, several tears running down her cheek as she fought to keep herself together. Finally, she worked up the courage to speak. Her breath caught in her throat. "The police are going to bring in Riley really soon. They still think he did it, because they got into fights sometimes and Luc had to file a police report once because of it."
"Luc?" Sam glanced at Dean, then leaned forward to look a little more directly at Beckett and get her to focus. "The bartender, Luc?" Struck by his curiosity, she nodded. The younger Winchester leaned back again. "Beckett, how well do you know Luc?"
"Not that well," she admitted. "He usually works nights, so I mostly see him when I come here with… When I came here with Jules and Riley," she said, her voice diminishing significantly around the name of her dead friend. Her tone, however, picked back up again after she started with a new sentence. "I mean, besides today, I worked with him for a week, and we only really talked a couple of times. He gave me a ride home once, because it was really late, and that was it." She stared over to where Luc was talking lightly with some customer, a vague expression etched across his face. She reddened slightly and looked back at Sam. "Why?"
"He said he didn't remember you worked here," Sam said, "So we're just trying to get a better idea of how reliable he is as a source of information. Standard procedure." Dean gave him a look that made it clear he felt his moderate liking for the bartender had been undermined, but he approved, since he couldn't really bring himself to trust much of anyone. Beckett blinked but nodded her understanding. "Do you think you could tell us about when you worked together? What kind of person is he?"
The girl faltered a moment, fumbling with the words she meant to get out. "I guess…We only talked twice… It was about a month ago, so I'm not sure why he'd say he didn't remember I worked here. Kind of mean," she muttered. "Um… anyway…"
She went on to explain.
The thunder added a certain gravitas to the melancholy music playing over the bar's speakers. At least, Beckett thought so as she set down a warm bowl of tomato soup in front of the place's sole mid-day regular. Dark clouds loomed heavy, visible as a weight above the town outside the windows, but no rain had fallen yet.
"Hey, Becks!" a friendly voice called from behind the bar. "Where's your friend today?"
She turned. "He's helping his sister pack for college. Said that yesterday," Beckett said, with no trace of the impatience she could have shown at his having forgotten.
"Guess I didn't hear."
"Oh, hey! Have you heard about the murder?" she asked walking over to lean on the bar while the regular she'd served pretended to work on a newspaper crossword puzzle. "It was all over the news last night."
"Awful," he drawled. "Jesus." The bartender swore softly and looked at the waitress, knowing she had more to say. Her eyes shone with an excitement that went beyond a tragedy in a small town.
"Well, it turns out there's been a whole string of them, you know? Across the past ten years or so. But none of them are related." He tilted his head slightly. "I mean," she went on, trying to explain coherently, "like, they were all solved easy, and it's always different people, but there are so many, you know?"
"Watch much TV?" the bartender asked, a wry smile tugging at the corner of thin lips.
She punched him playfully in the arm. "No. But I was looking at records. There have been seven in the past six months after a gap of a few years." He raised an eyebrow this time, somewhat intrigued.
"So?" he asked.
"So! So, don't you think it's weird?" she asked. "They were committed twice a month in exact intervals. It's just so strange."
He frowned now, seeing that she was taking this more seriously than he had thought. "I'll admit it's not… likely," he conceded lazily. "But what does that have to do with anything."
"There's going to be another one," she said anxiously. "I know it."
"What?"
"Two every month. Seven murders?" His eyes widened slightly, his surprised stare reminding her of an owl. "Now you get it? I'm worried."
"Don't you think the police will figure it out?" he asked after a pause. "Christ, if you know that, then they must."
Beckett pursed her lips, though she didn't argue.
After she had explained this, Sam asked a few more questions, then walked outside to catch up with Dean, who had stormed off.
"Sonuvabitch lied to us, Sammy!" he growled.
"Hold on," Sam said. "You saw the dude, right?" He pulled a thoroughly incredulous expression as they headed for the car. "I mean, he might not actually remember."
Dean replied with his own look of incredulity. "Seriously?"
"What?" The younger Winchester tilted his head.
"Don't tell me you're suddenly believing in coincidences." A caustic tone entered his voice that he hadn't really meant to let slip in, but he didn't back down from the criticism of his brother's willingness to write off the suspicion rising around the bartender.
"I just think we need to look at the facts before we start calling someone a murderer because he lied about how knowing a coworker." He raised his arms uselessly in a show of mild frustration, but Dean stood, relatively stoic now that his indignation at being lied to had subsided.
"So, you really want to get involved in this? Cause I'm pretty sure it's just people, Sam, and we kind of have bigger things to worry about." Standing by the door to the Impala, he shuffled impatiently, already mentally mapping out where they should go from here. The small town was slightly out of the way, but it wasn't too far from I-45, which would take them back north through Dallas, or they could head east… Struck by his brother's quiet, Dean gave Sam a sharp look. His brother was staring at him with a bitchy expression that under a lighter mood might have earned him some kind of good-natured teasing, but not now. Something had set Dean on edge, and he couldn't even pinpoint what it was himself. "Well?" he pressed.
"Remember when it used to be about the people, Dean? It used to be our job to save people."
"There's a bigger picture here. Besides, the police can handle this. It's just a normal murder – it's not our business."
"One more day," Sam said, searching Dean's eyes for some sign of relent in this strangely tense mood that took hold of him from time to time. It hurt seeing him switch so easily like this, because he'd certainly been in a better mood before it was made clear the bartender was not as trustworthy as he seemed. Sam determined to look further into the man's character without Dean, if his brother would consent to staying in the small town for the next twenty-four, so they could try to sort things out. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to this left uncovered, but it was only a hunch, and he had to admit that all the concrete evidence thus far pointed to regular murder.
A long hard look passed between the boys, at the end of which Dean rolled his shoulders in a shruggish gesture. "Whatever, man."
Relief sifted through Sam's chest. He nodded. "Okay, well, uh… We should probably talk to Riley again." Dean nodded.
Far from terribly helpful, Riley proved reluctant to answer many questions without Beckett around. They cornered him in the parking lot of the apartment complex on his way back from work, intercepting him before he could reach the relative safety of his friend's company.
"What was your friendship like," Sam asked, looking sternly at the young man.
Riley leaned against his car where they had caught him parking, a cardigan he must have been wearing at work but forsook in the face of the Texas sun, now draped over his arms, which were crossed uncomfortably across his chest.
"With Conway?" he asked, giving the Winchesters a dry-eyed stare.
The brothers noted the way he used the last name, Dean especially, trying to piece together what the bartender had told him about the friends. Even if that information were potentially untrustworthy, it proved a basis to test by.
"He dated my sister in college," he said, his voice strained; the idea of this even now bothered him. "I met Beckett through him, because she was with one of his friends at the time. Conway was…" He looked away, not out of emotion but at a loss for words, remembering. "He wasn't what you'd call a great guy."
At this pronouncement, he looked very earnestly between the brothers in a way that made Sam uncomfortable and Dean wary. "You start to overlook things like that though, the better you know someone, because that's not all he was. Sure, we fought sometimes, because I didn't like the way he treated people, and he thought I was… condescending and superior, but you know. Everyone fights sometimes. We were friends."
"Whoa, whoa. Take it easy." Dean raised a cautionary hand. "We're not saying you're the killer."
"We think someone might be trying to frame you," Sam said, suddenly remembering the death threat with the clover – obviously a dig at Riley's Irish background, if framing him for murder really were the idea. Hopefully the police would see that, but they might also see it as a flippant calling card from an equally flippant, immigrant murderer.
Fear flashed and then hardened in a narrowing of the Irishman's eyes. "Who would want to put me away for murder?" he asked, thoroughly bewildered.
Dean could imagine a few reasons why someone might want to prank the kid, but he had to agree that he'd seen nothing egregiously horrible about him. He threw a glance at Sam, since his brother seemed to be better at dealing with Riley than he was himself. The younger Winchester obliged without any kind of verbal cue, knowing well enough that Dean didn't like Riley. "That's what we're trying to find out," he said, "because more and more, that's what's adding up. Someone wanted to frame you for murder. It's possible that the killer was originally after Beckett and ended up getting your friend Julian instead – sorry, by the way."
Riley merely wrinkled his nose in response but displayed no other outward signs of an emotional reaction to the mention of his friend. He'd still not quite accepted that the boy was gone, so he managed to deal with everything at a distance and was fairly grateful, because it kept him rational in trying to understand what could possibly be behind all of this. "I really don't know, otherwise I'd tell you. I didn't think I had enemies."
Dean lifted his chin slightly, defying him to defend this claim. Riley stared at the man he took for a federal agent for a moment, lips pressed tightly together in a perturbed line. "I may have rubbed a few people the wrong way, but enough to kill me?" A bewildered town overtook his lilting tones. "Who does that?"
"The death threat that Julian received," Sam cut in, bringing the subject back to practical terms. "Did it have any indicators, any address?"
"The police looked at it thoroughly. Whoever sent it was pretty good about keeping it clean," Riley replied, his voice suddenly hollow, as some thought brought into focus the gravity of the situation. He looked back and forth between the brothers. "Please tell me you have some kind of lead."
The brothers exchanged glances. Dean finally decided to take charge, since he'd done the most research at the bar and Sam hadn't turned up anything more useful in his own searching. The elder Winchester pursed his lips and shifted his weight, quickly working out the best way to phrase things so he wouldn't offend Riley and have to deal with him longer than necessary. "We talked to the bartender over in the pub off the main road, and he mentioned someone Julian used to go see there." A vaguely confused look held Riley's eyes fixed on Dean's stolid green, so the hunter continued, pressing, "A girl named Lailah? Ring any bells, Lucky?"
He hadn't meant to call Riley anything other than his name, but the mental nickname had slipped out as his patience had waned. Though, if he was being honest with himself, which in and of itself was a rarity, Dean wasn't sorry at all for the minor lapse into irreverence, because he wasn't concerned with impressing Riley or making him like him. A guy like this was likely best kept worried enough to cooperate with a minimal amount of snark.
Riley let out a deep sigh but managed to contain and repress any show of obvious irritation beyond his general state of mind. "Lailah's the manager there," he clarified. "Jules had it hard for her. For a while, we were there a few time a week just a week just so the bugger would have someone to talk to while he was waiting to catch up with her." He pulled a wry sort of near-smile that mostly came across as a grimace. "She didn't care an ounce for him, though. I mean, she flirted a bit to be friendly, you know, but you could see she only put up with him to keep him coming in and paying for drinks."
"I'm guessing Julian would have told a different story," Dean said.
At this, Riley shrugged in concession. "For sure, he'd have been more optimistic of his chances, or he wouldn't have been trying so hard to get her attentions." He narrowed his eyes. "What you think she has something to do with all of this mess? She barely knew who I was much less would have cared enough to frame me for Julian's murder."
"Just trying to put all of the pieces together, Mr. Fallon," Sam sad, looking quite seriously at the young man. He brushed his hair behind his ears and glanced up toward the apartment buildings. While the evening air wasn't overly hot, he and Dean were in their fed suits and south Texas was humid as hell this time of year. Seeing Beckett making her way towards them from that direction caught him off guard. Under lighter circumstances, he might have waved – she was kind of cute – but he merely greeted her with a "hello" when she came near enough to hear easily.
"Saw you guys from the window," she said, brow crinkled anxiously. "Find anything?"
"Starting to," Dean said, shifting his eyes to Riley, who relaxed visibly in his friend's presence.
"Maybe," Sam amended.
"Wanna come inside?" she asked, looking at each in turn, eyebrows still raised nervously and making her eyes round in the process. "I could make some tea or get you boys a beer…"
Dean threw a look at Sam and frowned slightly once he caught his brother's attention. "I'm going to go see if I can get Lailah's number from our best friend, Luc the bar guy. Why don't you go ahead and with tea time," he grumbled in a low voice so that only Sam could hear – Riley had already moved away from them to be closer to Beckett – and his brother nodded ascension. "Hey, I have work to do, but I'll let you two know if anything turns up," he said gruffly and turned to leave.
Sam watched his brother go before turning to Beckett and Riley, who waited in awkward quiet for his answer. "I do have a few more things to talk about. Thanks for the invitation," he said, nodding to Beckett again, then followed her and her flat mate up to the apartment, while Dean rumbled off in the Impala, back toward the bar.
Dean committed to following the investigation after talking to the bartender again. When he met his brother at the motel again, he explained simply that they had become too invested to leave it now, and besides he'd gotten Lailah's address, because she was apparently unlikely to be back at work the rest of the week, as she was still ill. Sam accepted this and moved on, falling asleep easily while his older brother stayed awake, staring at the ceiling for several hours before he could bring himself to close his eyes.