I am so not in the mood for this. It was at least a three hour drive from Chicago to Wisconsin, which is better than our normal time spent in the car, but this was made even worse by Dean and Sam's constant bickering. Over Sam not sleeping, over the guy from Chicago who wasn't a demon but was something else that we didn't know, over taking another brief reprieve from the job… And I couldn't turn my music up loud enough!
Now we're sitting in a diner. I'm hunched over the table and glaring at the two of them. Our waitress comes over. Her name is Wendy. She takes one look at me and shouts over her shoulder,
"Hey, Ronnie, how's about a fresh pot of coffee?" she turns back to us and says, "On the house. She looks like she needs it." I smile at her gratefully.
"Thank you!" Dean says with that special smile of his. Lady killer.
"What can I get you?" Wendy asks.
Sam orders a salad for breakfast. I swear he's a horse. I order a mushroom omelet, and Dean orders bacon and eggs, flirting with the waitress all the while. Sam sighs and gives Dean a look as Wendy walks away. Dean ignores him as he gets out a newspaper and a pen.
"Please don't fight." I beg.
"We're not fighting!" Dean says.
"We haven't said a word!" Sam agrees, holding his hands up.
I roll my eyes. "I don't have caffeine in my system yet. I can't deal with this."
Dean raises an eyebrow as he circles an obit. "Deal with what?"
"You." I say. "You're flirting with the waitress, Sam's sighing a deep sigh of disapproval and you two are just going to go on and on at each other!"
Sam covered his hand with his mouth to hide his grin. "You do need caffeine." He says.
"Don't you dare laugh at me." I threaten. Sam just smiled as the waitress comes back with a steaming pot of coffee and fills our mugs.
"There you go dears." She says. "Your food will be right out."
"Thank you." Dean says.
We pass the time in idle conversation. Dean circles obituaries, Sam and I banter back and forth as the coffee slowly wakes me up. We only pause for breath when the food arrives.
"These are all possible cases," Dean says around his bacon, "but not at all convincing." He folds and puts down the newspaper so he can shovel eggs into his mouth. I cut up my omlete and spear a piece on my fork as I take the newspaper and begin to look through it myself. I saw patterns that Dean didn't. He tended to look for freak accidents, I usually looked for a similarity in causes of death. Of course, you had to make exceptions for the old people, but it's usually pretty rare for, say, five people in the same small town to die of heart attacks within the same obit section.
We finish our meal in silence. Sam gets up to use the restroom, and Wendy comes up to us just as I've circled the name Sophie Carlton. A young woman, healthy as a horse, who just drowned, third one this year in the same lake. See? Patterns.
"Can I get you anything else?" Wendy asks. I look over at Dean, wondering what trick he'll use to get her number this time. He bites his pen, and is just about to speak when Sam comes back. He takes one look at Dean and the waitress, and shakes his head.
"Check, please." He says as he sits back down.
The waitress smiles at him. "Sure thing, hon." She grabs our plates and walks away to grab the check. Dean glares playfully at Sam.
"Sam, I get that you're real keen on finding Dad," Dean says, "but we're allowed to have fun. And that?" he points to the waitress, who's wearing cute short shorts under her apron. "That's fun!"
Sam rolls his eyes, but before he can reply and start another argument, I slap both of them with the newspaper.
"In case you boys forgot, we're here to work!" I spread the newspaper out in front of them. "I think I've got one. Her name's Sophie Carlton. She drowned in Lake Manitoc in Wisconsin. Three problems though. First, she was a varsity swimmer according to her obit, so the odds of her just drowning are kind of slim. Second, they dragged the water, and they didn't find squat. No body. And then, she's the third person to drown in that lake this year. They didn't find bodies for the other two, either."
Dean reads over the obituary. "Says they had a funeral a few days ago. They buried an empty coffin?"
I nod. "For closure or something like that."
Sam scoffs. "Closure? What closure? People don't just disappear, other people just stop looking for them!"
I roll my eyes as Dean shakes his head at Sam. "Something you wanna tell me, Sammy?"
"The trail for Dad!" Sam says. "It's getting colder every day!"
"Exactly," Dean says, "So what do you expect me to do?"
"I don't know!" Sam says. "Something. Anything!"
Uh oh. Dean gets that look on his face, like he's about to beat some serious monster ass.
"You know what, Sam? I'm sick of this attitude! You think Gwen and I don't want to find Dad as much as you do?"
"Yeah, I know you do, it's just that-''
Dean slams his hand down on the table. "We're the ones who've been with him every single freaking day for the past three years, while you've been going to pep rallies up at college! We will find Dad, but until we do, we're going to kill everything bad between here and there! Got it?"
Sam leans back, crosses his arms, and rolls his eyes. Dean is distracted again by Wendy, and we sit in awkward silence for a few moments until the check had been paid.
"So Lake Manitoc." Sam says. "How far?"
Dean smiled and I just rolled my eyes. However long it was, with my mood, it would take ten times longer. It didn't help that the argument in the diner left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. The ride was awkward and tense.
When we finally make it, we settle into our usual routine. Find a motel, drop me off, Sam and Dean go impersonate federal agents.
"Why can't I go with you, and we can not pretend to be federal agents that magically decided to descend from on high to investigate a death in the middle of Bum-fuck, Egypt?" I complain as we pull into the motel.
"It's a small town, Gwen." Sam points out. "We can't just show up and pretend to be friends of the dead girl. Besides, pretending to be government agents gives us the authority to ask all the weird questions we need to."
"It's not our fault you're short!" Dean teases, patting my head condescendingly. I swat his hand away and scowl.
"Yes, it is!" I snap. "You two stole all the tall genes! Especially you, Sammy!" Sam just grins and opens the door for me.
"Maybe when puberty finally kicks in you'll grow." He says. "Oh wait, it already has!"
I shove him. "What am I even supposed to do? You two get to do all the interesting detective stuff!"
"Just get us a room, Gwen." Dean says. "And 'sides, you know that interesting equals dangerous in our line of work. Forgive us for wanting to protect you."
"I'm fifteen, Dean, not six." I say, grabbing my bag from the trunk. "And I know my way around a knife and gun better than just about any girl my age. I think I can handle the interesting detective work."
"Doesn't change the fact that you're too young to be taken seriously." Dean says. "Now go check in and try not to get killed."
"Can't we just say I'm an understudy or something?" I ask, desperate to actually be able to do something. Dad never let me do anything, and I don't want history to repeat itself with Dean!
Sam and Dean share a look, and I can tell they're doing that telepathic big brother communication. I wait anxiously for their verdict.
"Go get us a room." Dean finally said, and my face fell. "And then you can come back. We'll say you're an intern, and we'll pray to whatever God is up there that they buy it."
I fist pump the air. "Yes!" I cheer, slamming the trunk closed and rushing back to the front to give Dean a hug.
"Don't thank me yet!" Dean says gruffly. "If it doesn't work, it's never happening again!"
I don't care though. I hug him tightly, before grabbing the card and skipping into the motel. I finally get to actually get involved in the nitty gritty of hunting! No more waiting in the motel rooms, or in the car, just hoping that there's some fluke that lets me take part in the take down, like our last couple hunts.
I get us our motel room, and, admittedly, I probably looked dementedly happy to the guy at the desk. He hands me the key, and I can see him restraining himself from warning me about the dangers of drugs. I drop off our bags in the room before heading back out to the boys.
"Now, do we change into suits or something?" I ask excitedly. Sam shakes his head.
"No," he says, "we're going as Wildlife agents. Makes the most sense. We won't need to dress all fancy for this one."
"Alright!" I say, climbing into the front seat, squeezed between Dean and Sam. "Let's get going!"
"You're way too excited about this." Dean says gruffly as he shakes his head, sticking the keys in the ignition.
"You just don't want me to have any of the fun you have." I say.
Dean shares a look with Sam. "Gwen, if you ever have half the fun I've had, my soul will be damned to hell for all eternity."
I roll my eyes. "Come on, Dean. Did you really expect to be able to keep me locked up in a motel room until I was eighty three?"
Dean shrugs as we pull out of the motel parking lot. "I had hopes."
"And now they are dashed!" I tease.
"Not yet they're not…" Dean mutters. I kick my feet up on the dash, leaning back and giving Dean a smug look. Dean swats my feet off the dash, grumbling to himself.
We drive through the countryside, passing the occasional house, in silence. For me, it's a happy one, but for my brothers - especially Dean - it's more tense and dreaded. I can kinda see where they're coming from. If the family doesn't buy me as an understudy, that could blow our whole gig. Trying to find out information as presumed cons caught posing as a federal agent is considerably harder then finding out information as fake-feds, or even as an average joe citizen. But still, I'm far too excited at the prospect of being allowed in on the hunts to be worried about someone not buying me as a trainee federal agent.
We pull up in front of a nondescript house. It didn't look well taken care of. The paint is peeling and there's rust on the gutters. It's in front of a lake that stretched out behind the house. That's presumably where Sophie Carlton had drowned. Sam, Dean and I walk up the cracked and weedy paved sidewalk to the front door. Dean turns to give me a stern look.
"Listen here, Gwen. You let us two do the talking. Got it?" he says. "You do not speak unless spoken to. Less attention drawn to you the better."
"Sir, yes sir!" I answer, saluting him and rolling my eyes. Now Dean was just being overly cautious. But still… Anything to let him keep me in the hunt. Dean knocks on the door. A pudgy young man answers the door. He looks nothing like his sister's picture in the obituary. Aside from being much chubbier than his sister would've been, his hair color was much darker, and his eyes were brown instead of the light color of his sister's eyes. He also looks to be older than she was. If I'm remembering her obituary correctly, her brother's name was Will.
"Will Carlton?" Dean asks, looking Will up and down.
"That's me." Will says, straightening up. "Who's asking?"
Sam and Dean take out their fake IDs to show him. "I'm Agent Ford," Dean says, "and this is Agent Hamill, and our intern, Hannah. We're with the US Wildlife Service."
Will looks at our IDs curiously, before looking at Dean. "Are you here about Sophie? What would Wildlife Service want to know about an accidental drowning?"
"We don't think it's an accident." Sam said. "We'd like to see the lake and ask you a few questions if you don't mind."
Will gave us each a long look before nodding. "I'll take you out back." he said, stepping outside onto the pavement with us. He leads us around the house and down a path to the lake. There's a dock jutting out into the lake, and an older man is sitting on a bench on the dock, staring out at the lake.
"That's my dad." Will says. "He's really shook up by it."
"Can you tell us how it happened?" Sam asks gently.
Will clears his throat and blinks a few times. I can see him trying to force back tears. "Yeah." he says in a choked voice. "She was about a hundred yards out when she got dragged down."
"She didn't just drown?" Dean asks.
Will shakes his head. "She was a varsity swimmer. Practically grew up in that lake. She's as safe out there as she would've been in her own bathtub."
"So there wasn't any splashing, or other signs of distress?" Sam asks.
Will shakes his head again. "No, that's what I'm telling you!"
"Did you see any shadows in the water?" Sam asks. "Maybe some dark shape breach the surface?"
"No." Will said. "But again, she was pretty far out there."
"You ever see anything strange on the shoreline?" Dean asks. "Tracks that you didn't recognize, things like that?"
Will looks a little confused. "No, never. Why? What do you think is out there?"
"We'll let you know as soon as we do." Dean says. "I think that'll be all for now. Thank you for your time." he turns around and begins walking for the car, but Sam stops him.
"What about your father?" Sam asks, looking at the older man on the dock. Will looks too, and the pain is evident on his face.
"Look, if you don't mind…" Will says, "he didn't see anything, and he's been through a lot."
"We understand." Sam said. "Thanks a lot." Sam turns around and walks with Dean back to the impala. I follow them as quickly as I can, muttering a 'condolences' under my breath as I pass Will. I climb into the impala with Sam and Dean.
"What do you think, Gwen?" Dean asks as he starts up the car.
"I think it's pretty clear it wasn't an accident." I say. "How could it be? A varsity swimmer just up and drowns, and no body can be found?"
"What should we do next then?" Sam asks.
"Talk to the sheriff." I answer promptly. "See what his explanation is for three people drowning and no bodies being found."
"Good girl!" Dean says, pulling out onto the road and beginning the drive back to the main part of town. "Let's get started!"
I grin out the window, pleased that it went so well and that I seem to have passed their little quiz. I can only hope it goes so well with the sheriff. From what I've gleaned from years of watching from the sidelines, local police officers rarely if ever like federal agents sticking our noses into their business.
And it turns out this sheriff is no different. He's much more suspicious of our cover story than Will was, especially of me. But he leads us back into his office to talk, nevertheless.
"Now, forgive me for asking, but why does Wildlife Services care about an accidental drowning?" the sheriff asks.
"Are you so sure it was accidental?" Sam asks. "A varsity swimmer isn't likely to drown on her own, and even if she did, there'd at least be a body. Your report said you didn't find one. Or the bodies of the other two drowning victims."
The sheriff motions for us to sit at the chairs around his desk. I sit down in one chair, and Dean in the other. Sam stands behind Dean. "Well I don't see what else it could be, since there's no carnivores in that lake, and certainly nothing big enough to pull a person down!"
"Will Carlton says he saw something pull his sister down." Dean says. The sheriff waves that comment off.
"Will Carlton is traumatized, and grief plays tricks on the mind. Still, we dragged that entire lake. Nothing. We even ran a sonar sweep. Nothing." he says as he sits down and shuffles papers on his desk.
"Don't you think it's a bit odd, though?" I ask, ignoring the glares sent my way by Dean and Sam. "This makes the third body to go missing in that lake."
The sheriff looks at me with a piercing gaze, the kind that makes me want to shrivel up and try to look non-threatening. A predatory gaze. "I know that." the sheriff says. "These are people from my town, people that I care about!" he takes a deep breath and lets it out in a tired sigh. "Anyway… This won't be a problem much longer."
"Why's that?" Dean asks.
The sheriff's eyes light up with interest. "The dam. It's falling apart. And the feds - that's you - won't give us the grant to repair it. So they've opened the spillway. In six months, both the lake and most of the town will be gone." he gave us a smile that was both knowing and condescending. "But as Federal Wildlife, you already knew that."
Dean coughs, and Sam smiles right back at the sheriff. "Exactly." Sam says.
There's a knock at the door, and a very pretty young woman and a young boy who I'm assuming is her son are at the doorway. Dean stands up.
"Sorry." the young woman says with a small smile. "Am I interrupting? I can come back later."
"No, darling, it's alright." the sheriff says. "Gentleman, miss, this is my daughter."
Sam smiles at her, and Dean gives her a grin and offers his hand to shake. "Pleasure. I'm Dean."
The woman smiles coyly at Dean and shakes his hand. "I'm Andrea Barr. And this is my son, Lucas." Dean waves at the little boy, but he ignores Dean and walks away to the table at the other end of the room, set up with coloring supplies.
"These people are from Wildlife Service." the sheriff says. "They're here about the lake."
"Oh." Andrea says. "I hope you can figure out what's happening and stop it." she drifts away to sit with her son.
"Is he okay?" Sam asks the sheriff, looking at Lucas.
"He's been through a lot." the sheriff says. "We all have." he stands, signaling the end of the meeting. "If there's anything else I can do for you, just let me know."
Dean and I stand as well. "Now that you mention it," Dean says as he, Sam and I walk to the door, "could you point us towards a motel?" Sam and I both look at him knowingly. We already checked into the motel, and he knows damn well where it is. He was just looking for any way to talk to Andrea. Christ, he was hopeless.
The sheriff smiles. "Wildlife doesn't have a fund for hotels for their agents?" he asks.
"Dad." Andrea scolds lightly. She addresses us, "Lakefront Motel. About two blocks south of here."
"Two?" Dean echoes. "Would you mind showing us?" he smiles at Andrea, shamelessly flirty. I have to resist the urge to groan and face-palm.
Andrea laughs. "You want me to walk you two blocks?" she asks.
"Not if it's any trouble." Dean says. Shameless, that man.
Andrea makes an effort to quiet her giggles. "I'm headed that way anyway." she says. "I'll be back to pick Lucas up at three, okay Dad?" she ruffles Lucas's hair. "We'll go to the park."
Sam thanks the sheriff again as Dean follows Andrea out the door. I shake my head and share a look with Sam. Sam seems surprised that Dean hasn't gotten any better in the years since he's been gone. Dean is attempting, and mostly failing, to flirt with Andrea. She ignores most of his passes until we reach the hotel.
"There, see? Two blocks, just like I said." Andrea said, before smirking at Dean. "It must be so hard, with your sense of direction, to never be able to find your way to a decent pick up line!" she waves and walks back the way we came. "Enjoy your stay!" she calls.
When she's out of earshot, I burst into laughter. "That was an epic fail, man. So epic that it should make the Guinness."
Sam is laughing too. "Kids are the best? Seriously? You don't even like kids!"
"I love kids!" Dean protests, almost sounding offended.
"Name three children that you even know." Sam says. Dean looks like he's about to say something, but Sam cuts him off. "Gwen and I don't count." Dean closes his mouth and continues thinking. I scoff and walk into the hotel.
"You're hopeless, Dean!" I call.
"I'm thinking!" he calls back.
Sam and I walk to our motel room and rush to claim a bed. I'm pooped, so I snuggle into a little ball under the covers, shivering. Sam is much more work-oriented than me, however, so he just sets up his laptop and gets to work researching. What he's researching, I don't know, since I don't really think we have that much to go on. But if his little college educated mind thinks it has a lead, by all means let it follow it up.
I lay in the bed staring at the ceiling until Dean comes in, lugging our bags. "Did you think of any?" I ask him. He glares at me.
"Shut up." he says, tossing my teddybear at me. I grab him and hold him under the covers. Dean starts going through his clothes, separating the dirty from the clean. We stay like that for a while, me laying in bed dozing, Sam working on his laptop, Dean going through our things. This is our downtime. And so far, I'm enjoying it.
Eventually, I sit up and look over at Sam. He's got this look of total concentration on his face. Now I know why he did so well in college. He must've been a whiz at writing papers.
"What you got, Sammy?" I ask him, climbing out of bed and going over to look at his screen.
"A pattern." Sam says. "So there's the three drowning victims this year, right?"
"Any before that?" Dean asks, putting down the shirt he was attempting to fold so he can pay attention to Sam.
"Yeah." Sam says. "A few." he highlights the headline of the article he's reading online. It's the online version of the Lake Manitoc Tribune. The headline he's highlighted reads, "Drowning Taints Ice Fishing Festival". He clicks on a new tab, and another headline comes up, this one reading, "Twelve Year Old Girl Drowns in Lake, Second Drowning in six Months at Lake Manitoc".
"Six more drownings spread out over the last thirty five years." Sam says. "None of those bodies were ever recovered either. Whatever's out there, this thing is picking up its pace!"
Dean starts pacing. "So, we've got a monster on a binge?"
"That's what it seems like to me." I say. "But something about this whole lake monster theory isn't sitting right with me."
"What?" Dean asks, shooting me a sarcastic grin, "You don't believe in the Loch Ness Monster?"
"That's exactly what's bugging me about this, too." Sam says. "With the Loch Ness Monster, there's hundreds of hundreds of eye witness accounts stretching back for hundreds of years. Here, there's none of that. This started thirty five years ago, and there wasn't a single mention of anything before that." Sam looks at the picture of the twelve year old girl who drowned. "Whatever this is, no one is living to tell the tale."
And on that bright and cheerful note, the conversation ended. Dean went back to folding clothes, and Sam went back to looking through news articles. I look over Sam's shoulder, pondering the case. All signs pointed to supernatural, but what supernatural thing are we dealing with? I'm having a hard time thinking of any monsters that lived underwater, but what else could this be?
It's just as I'm coming out of this line of thought that a name on Sammy's screen catches my eye. "Wait," I say to Sam, pointing at the name on the screen. "Christopher Barr. Barr. Where've I heard that name before?"
"Andrea's last name was Barr." Dean says.
"Of course you'd remember that." I roll my eyes.
"Hey, it turned out to be helpful!" Dean points out.
"We'll see." I say.
"Nope, Dean's right." Sam says, bringing up an article that reads, "Local Man Dies in Tragic Accident". "Christopher Barr was the drowning victim in May. He was Andrea's husband, and Lucas's father."
I wince. "No wonder Andrea wasn't interested, Dean, she's a widow!"
"I didn't know!" Dean protests.
Sam continues reading. "Apparently he took Lucas out swimming. Lucas was on a floating wooden platform when his father drowned. It was two hours before he was rescued."
"Poor kid…" I say quietly, my heart aching for the little boy who watched his father die.
"No wonder the kid was so freaked out." Dean says. "Watching one of your parents die isn't something you just get over."
Sam clicks on the picture of Lucas. His sad, mournful and dead eyes look into the camera. "Maybe we have an eye witness after all." Sam says.
"We can't do that to him!" I say. "The poor boy is scared enough as is! And besides, he won't talk!"
Dean coughs. "Well, I have a way with children. I'll see if I can talk to him."
"You?" I repeat. "You have a way with children? In what universe?"
"This one." Dean says. "You'll remember that I took care of both of you growing up. And I didn't do a bad job of it, either, because one of you went to college!"
Sam rolls his eyes. "Fine. We'll see if you can get him to talk to us. His mother said they'd be at the park around three. We'll go see him then."
(Alright you beautiful people! It's been a while since I uploaded a new chapter, huh? But I'm back! I hope you all had a happy new year and a wonderful holiday season! Comments and critiques are wanted and appreciated! Tell me what you think of Gwen? I'm worried about her being a bit too... Perfect. And about having to adjust parts of the story to accomidate her. Thoughts?)
