Chapter 10

Dean woke, bleary-eyed, to the faintest smell of coffee. He squinted at the bedside clock and read 8:18 in faint green LED lights. They hadn't gotten back to the motel until nearly 4:00 in the morning. Several more hours of sleep would have been really good.

In my own bed – Dean amended in his thoughts, then winced inwardly – what kind of geezer am I turning into?

It had been a very late night, but at least they had managed to identify the two victims. The first one, the one whose oil-stained hands Dean had noticed, had matched the general tattoo layout and dental records of David Black. The second body had helpfully had a tattoo that covered almost its entire chest and had matched the pictures and dental records for Randy Phillips, another of the missing persons.

Chief Hutchison planned to bring in family to take a look at the clothing that had been on the bodies and some carefully edited photos of the victims. That, along with Dr. Ogle's dental record examination, would serve as the conclusive identification.

"I'd rather not have them see the bodies in this state, if I can help it," Chief Hutchison had explained. "Can't hardly tell anything from them, anyway. Only that they didn't die easy." The local mortician had been called out in the middle of the night and assured the Chief that the bodies could be made to look somewhat more presentable, at least when fully dressed and laid carefully in a satin-lined coffin. Sam and Dean had exchanged quizzical looks at this discussion. In their estimation, burning the bodies would have been a lot easier.

Dean swung his legs over the edge of the bed and propelled himself to a sitting position. He had to find the source of that coffee smell – he prayed that it was close by.

"Mornin'," Sam greeted him. "I got coffee."

"I take back everything I've ever said about you," Dean mumbled as he dragged himself to the table. He sat heavily in the chair and gratefully took a sip of the hot brew. He grimaced, shuddered, and then took several more sips. "You are a hero."

"You're welcome."

All conversation was then paused until both had cleaned up, were sitting in a booth in the local diner, and had several bites of breakfast under their belts – coping methods 101 for spending ungodly amounts of time traveling and working with your brother.

"Elizabeth is expecting to be in her office by 10:00," Sam reported from a text message on his phone. "Says she canceled morning appointments to give the bodies a final exam before she passes them on to creepy Mr. Mortician – her words, not mine."

"We've got some seriously different victims here, man," Dean said. "Do we really think the briquette and the mummies are related?"

"They have to be," Sam said. "We just have to figure out how. I hope there's something on the bodies that we missed last night."

"Yeah, like 'If Found, Please Return to Blah, blah blah' – now that would be helpful…"

When they arrived at the doctor's office, Sam and Dean found that Officer McClanahan was already there. She had been sent to see if there was any new information, and also to see when the bodies would be available for release. David Black's father and Randy Phillips' aunt and uncle had been to the station already that morning. They had all agreed that the clothing belonged to their respective relatives.

The pictures had been a little more difficult. Chief Hutchison had met with both families together, thinking that it might be easier to hear the news at the same time. David's father had just stared at the pictures as though they were some sort of ancient scrip that he was completely unable to decipher. Randy's aunt had simply cried. But Randy's uncle had been vocal enough for all of them.

"What the hell is this supposed to be? You're telling me this is a picture of my nephew's body?" he had fairly bellowed. "He's only been missing for three damn weeks – this looks like something you'd dig up out of the sand from a thousand years ago!"

Chief Hutchison had sympathized, explained that the official cause of death was "acute dehydration" and starvation, and promised that the bodies would be available for burial by that afternoon.

"Most lame ass excuse for cause of death I've ever given," he had groused to Kayle once the victims' families were gone. "But I couldn't tell 'em we had no idea what caused the corpses to look like that. Get over to the doctor's and see when they're gonna be finished poking and prodding at them. And see if they know anything more at all," he had instructed Kayle.

When Dean and Sam entered the office, Dr. Ogle repeated the news that she had just been explaining to Kayle.

"The material we found under Randy Phillips' nails, and the indications of abrasions and bleeding on the fingertips – I think I might know what it is," Elizabeth said. "It's partly fibers from the ropes, but it's also bits of rock. I think he was scratching at a rocky surface – scratching pretty desperately."

"So my arms are tied up like this…" Dean threw his arms up over his head and crossed the wrists. He wriggled his fingertips. "And I'm scratching like crazy trying to get free…"

Kayle and Elizabeth both looked taken aback at Dean's unorthodox behavior. Clearly they had expected a more solemn demeanor from a murder investigation. Sam turned to give Dean a suppressive frown, but when he saw his brother's posture, his movement was arrested by a sudden thought.

"A cave. They were tied up in a cave," Sam exclaimed.

Dean dropped his arms. He gave the two women a modest smile in regards to his and Sam's detective methods.

"The only problem is, we don't have caves around here. Not big enough to hide bodies in, at least." Kayle's words wiped the smile off Dean's face.

"What about the national park Chief Hutchison mentioned – the one where the hiker had gone missing?" Sam asked.

"Big South Fork," Kayle responded, shaking her head. "That's just right next door to us. But there aren't cave formations there. I mean, there are lots of rocky crevices and overhangs, places like that. But there aren't caves. The nearest real caves are two or three hours north or south of here."

"Still," Sam said. "It would make sense for the victims to be held somewhere in a wilderness area like that, somewhere away from other people. Maybe it is something like an overhang?" He turned to Dean with a questioning look.

"Does make sense," Dean said. "A remote area, rocky but not necessarily a cave."

"So you think someone has been holding Randy and David since they went missing, somewhere in the Big South?" Kayle asked her question to both Dean and Sam, but she didn't wait for a response. Her look of confused inquiry suddenly changed to one of horrified realization. "Do you think the same guy has taken all of our missing persons?"

"We do have to consider that all of the missing persons may potentially have been victims." Sam responded in his best imitation of FBI agent-speak. Including Clemmer, although I'm sure you wouldn't connect that –

Elizabeth made the connection, though. She felt sick. It had been easy as long as they had been working out the identity of the bodies to push aside thoughts of the bigger picture. But now those thoughts came rushing back with Kayle's mention of the other missing persons. Someone – something – was taking people from their little town. Were there already other withered bodies out there, other gnawed bones?

Sam noticed the despairing look on Elizabeth's face. She knows it's worse than Kayle could possibly imagine –

"But how does that even happen?" Kayle asked incredulously. She gestured at the bodies. "How does someone do that to a body?"

"We're not sure," Dean answered. "But we have seen this before – remains like this."

He felt, more than saw, the shift in Sam's stance beside him. Apparently, Sam didn't remember. Dean didn't blame him if he had forgotten. It had been almost ten years ago that they had worked that case, and quite a lot had happened to them in the interim. Anyway, in that decade old case Sam hadn't been the one who had seen the bodies in a sort of waking nightmare. Only Dean had actually experienced that. So last night, he had immediately recalled seeing such remains. It had just taken him a while to sort through his memories to find where the previous sighting had been. Now, he was absolutely certain.