A/N
Hey guys! Thanks so much for reading! Ok, so I've gotten some complaints about not updating The Ultimate Battle of Wits, and working on this instead. I apologize for not updating that story, I basically hit a wall and am working through it. I have some of the next chapter written, and with luck, it will be updated soon. Thanks for your patience. This chapter, though, is pretty cool if a bit repetitive, and the next one will begin to take place during the season 8 finale. Just a note, I have no idea how law enforcement procedure works, so what I've described here probably isn't accurate. So as always review, check out my other stories, and enjoy!
Ch. 9
Obstruction of Justice
The knock at the door startled Kevin and Derek from their conversation on just how Kevin had been able to jump out of a window with minimal bruising.
"Who is it?" Kevin asked furtively, glancing back and forth from Derek to the door so quickly it was headache inducing. "Theo? Scott? Malia?"
Derek frowned. "You said Stiles called other people when he found out Theo was working with the Doctors." he muttered. "Why did he call him?" In quick strides, Derek marched over to the door and threw it open to reveal a very sheepish looking Jackson Whittemore.
"Derek!" Jackson exclaimed, his hands leaping out of the pockets of his gray hoodie. "I wasn't expecting you. Where's Stilinski? He said to meet him here."
"Join the club." Derek said, gesturing for Jackson to come in, which he did reluctantly. "Our guest of honor appears to be running a little late."
Jackson's head pivoted to face every corner of the Stilinski home upon entering it slowly, probably canvassing it with his advanced senses. Then he saw Kevin and his eyes narrowed in on the other boy suspiciously.
"Who are you?" he asked with a pretentious tone.
"Some guy who's sick of hearing that question." Kevin said. "Maybe I should just get a name tag. Kevin Tran, human, friend of Stiles, and also the guy who went through all that trouble to dig up your phone numbers. I mean, really, some politeness would be nice..."
Derek cleared his throat, effectively cutting off Kevin's rant.
"Kevin was just informing me on what we've missed." Derek said, "since I've been out of town, too. You, Jackson, you might need some more catching up than that. Kevin, you want to help me enlighten him?"
Kevin smiled in a way that made Jackson fear for his life.
"Why, I'd be happy to!"
"It's very nice to meet you, Sheriff Mills." Parrish said eagerly with a hearty handshake once the commotion Jody had caused had settled down. "I'm deputy Parrish, I understand you know Sheriff Stilinski well?"
"Oh. John and I go way back!" Jody proclaimed loudly while Parrish led her into the sheriff's office. "We met at a sheriff's convention, and then we discovered we had a mutual friend named Bobby Singer."
"I've heard of him." Parrish said with a weak smile. "I'm told he passed away shortly after I arrived in Beacon Hills."
"Yeah, well." Jody said with a shrug. "His line of work was tough."
"He was an auto salesman, wasn't he?" Parrish asked incredulously, shutting the door and gesturing for Jody to sit down. Instead, she leaned against John's desk, and Parrish stood in front of her, arms crossed.
"Sheriff Mills-"
"Please, call me Jody."
"Jody, then." Parrish amended, his politeness beginning to waver under the weight of stress he was feeling. "I just wanted to inquire in private about the nature of this visit."
Jody smiled mischievously. "What, a woman can't drop in on her old friend and his son from time to time?"
"Not when the old friend has been unconscious in the ICU for approximately fourteen hours and his son is in police custody on a murder charge." Parrish replied sternly.
Jody didn't look surprised at the information. On the contrary, she let out a small chuckle. "Maybe that's why I'm here." she said conspiratorially.
Parrish bristled. "Sheriff Mills, the Stilinskis are good friends of mine as well, and I hate to see the trouble that's befallen them, but with all due respect, I don't think there's anything you can do. Beacon Hills is a little out of your jurisdiction."
Now Jody laughed, harshly. "That's rich," she said with a cold smile, "coming from the guy who arrested him in the first place."
Parrish stiffened, freezing his sudden wave of panic. "How do you know that?" he demanded. "The report isn't even written yet."
Jody didn't respond, she merely kept smiling while simultaneously giving him a harsh glare, as if demanding he elaborate.
A couple seconds of heavy silence went by, and Parrish relented. He relaxed his tense stance minutely. "I was only following orders." he said gruffly, not meeting Jody's eyes.
"Oh really?" Jody challenged. "Whose?"
Parrish swallowed his pride and looked at her again, confused. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you said it yourself." Jody said, with a triumphant gleam in her eyes that made Parrish want to run and hide. "The sheriff is unconscious. In order to arrest young Mr. Stilinski over there, you would have needed a warrant for a judge, and the sheriff's approval to ask for that warrant. Well, here's the warrant right here." Jody said, pointing to a sheet of paper on her desk. Before Parrish could react, she had snatched it up and begun to read. "Here's the judge's statement, here's the murder charge, here's the evidence- an eyewitness statement by one Theo Raeken- here's today's date, September, 2015, my, this office sure moves things along fast. And, oh look." Jody's eyes traveled to the bottom of the page, and her eyes positively alighted in ingenuity. "A signature from the judge- and the sheriff of Beacon County."
She looked up from the warrant, and her eyes bore into Parrish's victoriously. "You know, every sheriff's office has their own protocol for emergencies, you have heard of Sioux Falls' zombie apocalypse hoax a few years back." Something akin to grief flashed briefly across her face. "Well Sheriff Stilinski, here, had a very strange protocol in place. If he was unconscious and unresponsive for a certain amount of time, another officer would take over his duties until he regained consciousness or the position was up for re-election."
"Yes." Parrish confirmed. "And?"
"And," Jody continued with her unsettling smile, "not many people know outside of this station that that new sheriff is you."
Parrish said nothing, only kept his face perfectly expressionless.
"'On this day in the month of September, 2015,'" Jody quoted from the warrant. "The aforementioned Judge of the district and Sheriff of Beacon County consent to the arrest of M. Stilinski. Signed Judge Eric Davis and Sheriff Jordan Parrish.'"
Parrish shifted from foot-to-foot uncomfortably.
"What's interesting," Jody continued, "was the specificity of the former Sheriff's request. Particularly, that he be unconscious and unresponsive for twelve hours before the deputy would take over. His lawyer was very clear on that."
"Perhaps I should talk to him." Parrish said through gritted teeth.
"Perhaps you should." Jody agreed. "Because if I recall correctly, Stiles was arrested at approximately 9:35 this morning. And the sheriff wasn't declared unresponsive until midnight." Jody squinted at the small clock nailed to the wall. "So, while the sheriff has been hospitalized for approximately 14 hours, you only became Sheriff right about when I walked through this door."
"At 9:35 this morning," Jody continued, no longer smiling, her mouth coiled like a serpent about to strike, "You arrested Stiles Stilinski with a warrant you had no authority to sign. That makes the arrest void. And while there's nothing stopping you from calling Judge Davis and issuing another warrant, there's also nothing stopping me from walking out of this station with Stiles as a free man."
Parrish took a deep breath before speaking. "What is your point, Sheriff Mills?"
"My point, Sheriff Parrish," Jody said, with mockery behind his new title, "Is that you said you were following orders, but that's not true. Unless you were referring to the orders of your alpha, Scott McCall."
Parrish flinched in alarm, his face showing brief shock before he composed it.
"I'm not quite sure I like what you're implying, Jody."
"I'm not implying anything." Jody said vindictively. "I know you know about what's really going on here. And I probably know more than you."
"Then you understand why we're keeping Stiles here." Parrish said through gritted teeth. "Illegally obtained warrant or not, it's safer for everyone."
"Says who?" Jody challenged. "A seventeen year old werewolf?"
"An alpha." Parrish corrected. "Who knows what's best for this town. I don't know how you know all about this-" he gestured widely around himself to indicate the insanity that is Beacon Hills, "but I think this is a little out of your league. We have kids left and right being turned into chimeras. And Stiles killed one of them. You probably don't know him as well as you thought."
Jody sighed. "Listen, Jordan, I'm still relatively new to the supernatural, but chimeras or not, I've seen things you wouldn't believe. And even as a sheriff I've had to bend the rules, because I know I should leave the fighting to the professionals. That boy you have stuck in jail? His brothers saved my life when it was too late to save my son's. I know his kind well enough. As for being a little out of my league, try running a town in amidst an apocalypse. That zombie hoax a few years ago? It wasn't a hoax. But you would know that if you had stuck around."
Parrish paled as Jody gave him a withering glare.
"That's right, Jordan, I recognize you. You can stop pretending we don't know each other. You were only at my office for about a year before you picked up and left. Funny, you never mentioned where you were going. And I bet you never told Stilinski where you were from."
"It never came up." Parrish said with a lame shrug.
"Well, here's what's going to happen." Jody said. "You're going to give me the keys to Stiles' cell. I'm going to walk out of this station with him. And if you never want to see me again, you won''t apply for another warrant until Stiles has a proper chance to explain himself."
"And if I refuse?" Parrish asked, crossing his arms aggressively.
Jody smiled smally. "Then I arrest you for obstruction of justice. You went around your superior's back when he was still your superior, and the fact that you know he had been hospitalized since 10 o'clock last night even though you wouldn't have been notified until the change of power at midnight is shifty, not to mention you taking orders from a boy. Now, how's that going to look when John wakes up? It's your choice, Sheriff."
It really wasn't a choice. Slowly, Parrish took a few calculation steps away from Jody, until he was no longer blocking the door. He held out her keys for him to take, which she did, sauntering past him and out the door.
"So let me get this straight." Jackson said frustratedly, pacing back and forth furiously in the Stilinski living room while Kevin and Derek looked on with mild amusement. "I leave town for a year and a half and things literally go to hell. A WHOLE PACK of alphas wreaks havoc and kills Erica and Boyd, Stiles, Scott, and Allison DIE to save their parents, Lydia is a BANSHEE who dated yet another dangerous werewolf, McCall is an ALPHA, Stiles gets POSSESSED by an evil FOX, he KILLS Allison, Danny runs of with Lydia's boyfriend's twin brother, A HIT LIST comes out with everyone's name on it, KATE FREAKING ARGENT COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD, Peter goes psycho again, and now a bunch of supernatural wannabes are turing high schoolers into freaks and then killing them? Oh, and Theo's back, and he's evil, which by the way is not a surprise, he was a total dick in fourth grade. Oh, but that's not it! If that wasn't enough, STILES, literally the most uncoordinated kid on Earth, is apparently A BADASS HUNTER WHO KILLS VAMPIRES AND DEMONS? WHAT THE FREAKING HELL?"
Jackson was breathing heavily by the time he finished his rant, and he glared at Derek and Kevin with enough force to rival... well, Derek.
"That pretty much sums it up." Kevin said lightly, nodding his head. "How was London?"
"Oh, well, you know what, London was a little boring." Jackson said with vicious sarcasm. "Maybe it was because we didn't have a MAGIC TREE!"
"You're not saying much." Kevin said to Derek, and then he noticed how Jackson and Derek weren't looking at eachother in the eye. In fact, they were hardly looking at eachother at all, each one's glances ricocheting off of the staircase and the various tables in the house.
Derek cleared his throat. "Jackson hasn't been back to Beacon Hills since a couple days after he turned into a werewolf. And he and I didn't exactly have a very healthy student-teacher relationship."
Jackson scoffed. "McCall's an alpha now." he said, still viciously, but quieter, like he was really considering the weight the words had. His eyes had a bit of a faraway look in them, like even though he was practically terrified of all that had ravaged Beacon Hills since his departure, he wished he could have been there, and Kevin wondered what life had been like for Jackson in London, if there had been any werewolves there, if he had had any company, or if he had been completely alone. "I have to take orders from McCall."
"You don't have to do anything." Derek said gruffly, addressing Jackson directly for the first time since his arrival. "You're not a part of this pack anymore, you're just here to help out."
Jackson flinched, and Kevin realized something else. All those horrors that Stiles had described- over the phone during the grace period after Donovan's death, in the waiting room of the hospital, even when the two first met in the bunker- Jackson had been one of them. He had killed, he had caused horror after horror, and he left before he had a chance to make it right. What Kevin had been describing, tragedy after tragedy, Jackson had felt more than just out of place. He was probably angry he couldn't help the pack survive, couldn't attone for the things he's done, and he probably felt the guilt of every single death, like the alpha pack and the nogitsune festered in the dark wake he himself had ravaged.
This angry detachment from the horrors of Beacon Hills was, like most aspects of Jackson's personality, completely fake.
"Actually, I'm not sure taking orders from Scott will be a good idea right now." Kevin said, and he made a note to talk to Stiles later about fitting Jackson into the fight. "Theo's got him wrapped around his finger. He's compromised. Not to mention I'm kind of on the top of his most wanted list."
"I'm probably number two." Derek said, shooting Jackson an inquisitive look, like he, too, was beginning to pick up on the boy's melancholiness. "Since I never actually told him where I was going."
"Well, then I'd hate to see where I am." A voice said from the doorway. Derek, Kevin, and Jackson whirled to see the door wide open and Stiles leaning against the doorway, grinning like an idiot, with an older woman in a sheriff's uniform standing behind him.
"Stiles!" Kevin exclaimed happily, and he ran over and gave his friend a brief hug. Then he turned towards the woman and held out his hand. "We haven't met officially." he said. "Because the Winchesters are idiots. I'm Kevin Tran. It's an honor to meet you, Sheriff Mills."
Jody Mills smiled warmly and shook his hand. "And I, you. It's not every day a girl gets to meet a-"
"-tech genius, yeah, I know." Kevin said with a somewhat forced laugh. He shot Jody a meaningful look that the werewolves at his back couldn't see, and she seemed to get the message. "If you don't mind me asking, how the hell did you get him out?" He inclined his head towards Stiles, who was doing a double take upon seeing Jackson.
Jody smiled mischievously, and Kevin knew he would never know why. "Bureaucracy." she said simply. But then she looked over at Stiles and her brow furrowed slightly.
"Oh, man." Stiles said happily, oblivious to the sheriff's worry. "It was awesome! Jody waltzed in and talked to Parrish for like 5 minutes, and boom! She came out of Dad's office with his keys! The look on Theo's face..." Stiles trailed off, looking upwards with a joyful, faraway glance. "It was beautiful. And he couldn't hear a damn thing! My dad's had his office lined with wolfsbane and mountain ash for years."
Derek and Jackson looked less than thrilled upon hearing that.
"Did he say anything to you?" Jody asked, concerned, "while I was in there?"
"Nope!" Stiles said gleefully. "He spent all of his energy trying to hear!"
Jody shot Kevin another glance, this time full of worry.
"Uh, Stiles..." Kevin began tentatively. "You get why this isn't necessarily a good thing, right?"
"No, I know." Stiles said, sobering up slightly, but still wearing a goofy grin. "He didn't say anything. But he did hand me this." Stiles unfolded his hand to reveal a crumpled sheet of paper. "I didn't even notice until I was in Jody's squad car."
"What does it say?" Kevin asked eagerly.
Stiles shrugged. "Let's find out." He gestured for Derek and Jackson to come closer, which they did, Derek immediately so, and Jackson immensely reluctantly. He looked incredibly on edge, looking back and forth from Stiles to Derek, as if trying to figure out who to be more afraid of. He ended up standing next to Kevin.
Stiles unfolded the crumpled paper, and every crinkle seemed to be a gunshot in the empty house. Finally, the paper was read, and everybody read it with heavy intensity.
"What in God's name is that?" Jody exclaimed, but Jackson paled, Derek looked shocked, and Kevin made a noise akin to choking on words. All three whipped their heads to look at Stiles, who held the paper with shaking hands.
"How does he know?" Stiles breathed, and irony of ironies, he looked like he had seen a ghost.
"Stiles? Care to explain?" Jody asked.
"They're chess moves." Jackson said quietly. "A whole page of them. Look at this-"
But before he could read any of them, Stiles snatched away the paper and ran up the stairs.
Jody and Kevin glanced at each other quickly before barreling up after him, and Derek and Jackson weren't very far behind. They found Stiles in his bedroom, muttering like a madman while searching frantically.
"Stiles?" Derek asked tentatively.
"Found it!" Stiles exclaimed, and before anyone could ask any questions, he plopped something down on his desk. A worn chessboard covered in sticky notes.
"I haven't seen that in a long time." Derek muttered, while Jackson and Jody looked confused.
"Yeah, I put it away after the whole Benefactor thing." Stiles said, looking stricken. "I couldn't bear it anymore. Give me a second."
He flipped all of the pieces over, examining their sticky notes, and in some cases he scribbled down new ones and stuck them on.
"He left you a guide to a game." Jody said. "Why?"
"A scare tactic?" Stiles said with a shrug. "I told him in the station it was his move." He opened back up the sheet of paper and read it.
"Do you play, Jody?" Kevin asked while Stiles set up the board.
Jody shook her head. "Nah, I'm more of a card game person."
Kevin laughed. "I think Sam and Dean would agree with you."
"Dean, yeah." Stiles mused. "The guy has a poker face like nobody's business, and he's a genius at hustling pool. Sam, though... he may have beaten a centuries old witch at poker, but don't be fooled. He's the one who taught me how to play chess. And he's the only one who can still beat me."
Stiles let that sink in for a minute as he handed the crumpled sheet to Jackson. "Would you mind reading these aloud?"
"Uh, sure." Jackson said, fumbling a little. "Pawn to D4."
"That was Kira." Stiles said, as he moved the white pawn in front of the king forward two spaces. "Leaving town. Scott's the king, and Kira was his sanctuary."
"Pawn to E5." Jackson said.
"That was Liam." Stiles elaborated, moving the black pawn in front of the queen forward two spaces. "He turned against Scott, and Theo was free to move."
"Pawn to G4." Stiles moved another pawn forward.
And so it continued. Stiles moved pawns as more players arrived on the scene. He used the knight that was Parrish to take the pawn that was Hayden, and everyone knew that Hayden was dead. A black bishop took one of Stiles' rooks. (His father.) At one point, a white bishop named Kevin was cornered by the black queen, a black pawn, and the white king, but managed to escape by taking the pawn. Finally, the third to last directions left the white queen blocked by several pieces, none of which could take her, until a white bishop took the black knight directly in front of her.
"What's the last move?" Stiles asked, analyzing the board, which had his queen surrounded by two white bishops and two white pawns.
"Queen to G5." Jackson said quietly.
"That's Theo." Kevin said softly as Stiles picked up the black queen and set her gently down. Then he scrambled backwards and scrutinized the board.
"Help me!" he barked. "Which pieces are in danger? Who has to be moved?"
Jody, Kevin, Jackson and Derek scanned the board, looking for any change, but then, "There!" Jackson shouted, pointing to a little pawn that hadn't been touched the whole game. The queen had been placed directly in front of it.
"Who is it?" Derek asked as Stiles flipped over the pawn and read the bottom. His brow furrowed in confusion and alarm as he set the pawn back down.
"It's the nemeton." Stiles said. "But that's impossible. No one knows where it is!"
"Guys!" Jackson exclaimed. "Check the bottom of the paper." He held it out.
Kevin squinted at the bottom of the paper, where words were stenciled in very small handwriting. "'Your move, Stilinski.'" he read.
"How?" Kevin asked. "How does Theo know about the conversation you and I had at the hospital?"
"How does he know about your chessboard?" Derek asked.
"How does he know that that was my idea?" Jackson murmured. "That that's what I did to make sense of Beacon Hills?"
"How does anyone know anything?" Jody said. "He has eyes. He has ears. And I think I know who they are. Stiles, I think it's time we give your brothers another call."
