Chapter 4: Death of an interior decorator
The next morning Dean woke up with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Castiel: ruining days before they even began. The kitchen was making a noise it usually didn't make before Dean was there to facilitate the noise. The coffeemaker was producing that familiar morning bubbling sound. After showering and dressing, Dean was pleasantly surprised to find a cup of coffee waiting for him. Castiel had taken up a new position to sulk. Instead of lying face down on the bed, he was lying face down on the couch.
'Pamela promised to look in on you a couple of times today. Are you gonna be alright?' Dean asked, as he heard Sam's unmistakable code knock. It was a dorky pretending to be a spy secret knock and Castiel sounded just as annoyed by it as Dean was.
'No, I plan on being kidnapped by a mentally deficient construction worker. Wait; that already happened,' Castiel sarcastically mumbled into the couch pillows. Dean chuckled until Castiel sat up straight and glared at him. He then glared at the clock as Dean opened the door and let in Sam.
'Good morning,' Sam beamed.
'Oxymoron,' Castiel mumbled. Sam winked at Dean and Dean grinned. This might be fun. Who knew someone with a worse morning mood than Dean existed?
'Try not to break anything. Don't run with scissors and all that,' Dean warned and Castiel scowled. Sam was also enjoying this. His smile was wide and he kept fondling something in his pocket. Was that? No, it couldn't be. Yet, it was. The infamous napkin. Dean didn't even want to know why Sam had kept it and why he was fondling it. They made for the door.
'Ah, construction workers leaving for work on time. What do you see outside?' Castiel asked and they stopped. Dean craned his neck to look out of the window and Sam did too. They exchanged a confused glance. There was nothing extraordinary to see outside.
'Nice weather?' Sam tried. Dean knew this was leading up to an insult. Something about construction workers being lazy or stupid or quite possibly both. This was only to be expected. Not the laziness or the stupidity; that wasn't true, but the insult. More and more he got the feeling that the insults had nothing to do with their perceived lack of intelligence or with their job, but with Castiel himself. It was a way of keeping them at bay.
There were only two explanations. Castiel was an asshole or someone in Castiel's past was an asshole. Or maybe a cause and effect thing: Castiel was an asshole, because someone in his past had been an asshole. Either way, whatever insult was coming, Dean discovered he couldn't really sum up the willpower to care. It was not personal.
'No flying pigs?' Castiel asked, and he pretended to search the sky. Triumphantly, he turned to the brothers. He wants to get kicked out, Dean thought. He wants to be pushed away, so he can wallow in self pity in his own apartment.
'Just a talking one,' Dean quipped and Castiel nodded. A tiny smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but it was gone in a flash. Dean thought he might have imagined that again. Kind of like the little lost boy look that Castiel had had in the hospital. Dean was aware of his tendency to do that; he made up redeeming qualities about guys he was attracted to. It was stupid.
'I handed that one to you on a silver platter, didn't I?' Castiel asked, amused.
'Yeah, you did,' Dean said and smiled. As he closed the door behind him, Sam smirked at him. It would really be better for everyone concerned if Sam just refrained from smiling in the morning, because his cheery disposition irritated Dean. Even when, like now, Dean was in a pretty good mood. What would be even better would be if Sam also didn't talk before, let's say ten a.m. No such luck.
'That was cute. The witty repartee, flirting, sexual tension: whatever you want to call it,' Sam remarked. Dean didn't say anything; he merely imagined that Sam's head got stuck in the elevator doors and that lifted his spirits enough to stand next to his brother in the elevator without kicking him. Of course, when they got to Sam's car another argument developed and surprisingly, it wasn't about Dean calling Sam's car a wreck.
Dean had made the mistake of telling Sam about the problem with the beams. Always the righteous one, Sam wanted to tell someone, maybe even go to the police. So, Dean yelled that if they did that nothing would happen. Knowing Crowley, which Dean did a little, since Crowley was one of the not so nice men with whom Dean had had a not so healthy relationship, he would have the police covered. If it was Crowley and the odds were in his favour. Sam yelled that they couldn't have their colleagues work under such conditions. Dean yelled some more about being blacklisted and not being able to find a job in the building sector if they did that and unlike Sam he couldn't turn to another field for work.
The ride to work was unpleasant to say the least. Dean was still wound up about their fight and Sam was uncharacteristically silent, which unnerved Dean. The sign with the sketch didn't help matters. Homes, my ass, Dean thought; they were building death traps. As they got out of the car, Balthazar hurried over to them. Maybe the site will be closed after all, until the investigation into the accident is concluded, Dean hoped.
'What are you doing here?' Balthazar asked, breathless. There were people at work. A small man with a pointy nose went into the finished condo. The collapsed condo excluded, there were construction workers everywhere and Dean felt an incredible anger surging inside of him. These people's lives were in danger and for what? So someone like Crowley could make some more money.
'What about the investigation?' he bit at Balthazar. The supervisor looked ashamed. He adjusted his hard hat and without looking at Dean Balthazar explained that the investigation was over. It was deemed a human mistake. The beam had not been secured properly, which had caused undue pressure on the beam and this had led to its breaking.
'This is getting better by the minute. So, now it's my fault that I almost got hit in the face by a fucking beam? That's it. We're going home,' Dean shouted and he pushed Sam back into the car. He was so angry that he wasn't thinking clearly. What about his job? What about his apartment? What about his life? What about their lives?
'You've been reassigned to another site!' Balthazar blurted out and Dean blinked.
'Castiel didn't tell you? He requested you and Sam be put to work somewhere else,' Balthazar said and continuing in a whisper, 'I know the investigation is bullshit, but I need this job. My wife's pregnant again. I can't afford to lose my job.'
Absentmindedly, Dean accepted the quasi-apology by patting Balthazar's arm. He surveyed the construction site. He looked at his colleagues. He thought about that humming sound the beam had made before snapping. Sam was right. Someone needed to do something and Dean just happened to have an architect at his disposal. And if Crowley did turn out to be at the bottom of this; that would be the icing on the cake. Crowley deserved everything he got as far as Dean was concerned. Balthazar gave him the address and Dean drove off with Sam and a new resolve: he was going to crack this case wide open.
That's what detectives said, right? The case of the busting beam. The case of the bad boss. The case of the angry architect. The case of the crazy construction worker. So much alliteration, so much choice. Dean glanced at Sam. If Sam knew that Dean even knew the word alliteration, let alone what it meant, Dean would never hear the end of it. So what if Dean read poetry? That was not something that his brother needed to know. Not now. Not ever.
(***)
At the end of the day, Dean couldn't resist the temptation to go look at the finished condo at the disaster site. Death traps had never looked so good. Sam agreed to drive by, but Dean really wanted to take a peek inside and determine whether that beam also hummed. As they arrived at the site, Dean was extremely dismayed to find the Impala standing there. It was a running joke that Pamela was the only person authorised to borrow his car. Architects, however, were not allowed to drive his baby; no matter how hot the architect in question was.
'I'll see you tomorrow,' Dean told Sam. The slam of the car door sounded loud across the deserted construction site. Sam drove off and Dean watched to see whether his unnecessary force would cause the door to fall off mid drive. He couldn't decide whether that would be a good or bad thing. The atmosphere was eerie, though the bright sunlight somewhat dispelled the feeling of foreboding that Dean tried valiantly to ignore.
At the door of the condo, he stopped to listen. Inside everything was quiet. Cautiously, he opened the door. He felt a carpet underneath his feet and saw a lit lamp in the hallway. The walls were painted a warm yellow colour, probably called something like buttercup or daisy or whatever the hell those colours were always named. Dean hesitated. The condo must have been quickly prepared for the photo op, to sell more units. The work done on the inside was impressive. He had expected it to be finished, but not actually finished, if that made sense.
Neither had he expected Castiel, standing under the archway leading to what Dean presumed was the living room or the kitchen, with a dark spot on his otherwise light blue shirt. There was no humming sound, Dean noted, relieved. He turned his attention to Castiel.
'For fuck sake! You're supposed to be at home, resting,' Dean admonished and didn't it just freak him out a little that he referred to Castiel in his apartment as home? There was much more to say, but the dark spot staining Castiel's sleeve attracted Dean's attention and he approached Castiel. With every step he took, more of the living room became visible.
'Are you alright? You've got blood...' Dean began, but he stopped when he gained an unobstructed view of the living room. In the middle a man lay sprawled out face down on the floor. There wasn't a lot of blood, but what there was matted the man's hair and coated his neck. On the side table next to Castiel someone had emptied the man's wallet. There was a driver's license, a library card, an id, a business card, a credit card and an insurance card.
'Gabriel Brown,' the name on all the cards said. The business card specified his occupation as interior decorator. There were also a few photos of an elderly couple and a dog, a few crumpled receipts and twenty dollars. Dean looked at Castiel again. The blood was not only on his shirt, but also on his hand.
'What the fuck happened?' Dean asked. Castiel's breathing was loud and the coppery smell of blood was starting to affect Dean. In this heat, the whole thing would be more of a mess than it already was in no time. The architect leaned against Dean, seemingly unaware of doing so, and laughed weakly.
'I'm going to go out on a limb here and say murder,' he said. And this was one of Dean's imaginary things, Dean thought, because his intuition was crap. It had led him to adulterers, guys who spend their entire lives in the closet and abusive boyfriends. So, Castiel could be a serial killer for all Dean's intuition was worth, but he didn't think so. Castiel had nothing to do with this. He might be a lot of things, but he wasn't a murderer. What a fucking mess! At least, the case now had a name. The case of the dead decorator it was.