Chapter 25

Denson gazed at the bearded, cap-wearing individual John Winchester had sent out to talk to him. He had brown hair shot with a little gray, and he wore an expression familiar to Denson from long years of experience. Robert Singer didn't much trust law enforcement, thank you very much. On the other hand, Denson had already read the man's police file, so he knew some of why.

"So, Agent Denson, what can I do for you?" Singer asked brusquely.

"I understand that John Winchester sent his son Dean's car to you," Denson said. Singer nodded. "Can you tell me the circumstances of that?"

"Not sure what you're asking for," Singer replied. "John sent the car to me because I've got space to store it, and he knows I give a damn about Dean."

"How are you connected to the Winchester family?"

"Met John years ago, when he came to my yard with the boys, looking for parts. We got to be friends. The boys call me Uncle Bobby on account of they don't have anyone else to call that."

"So, you're close with the family?"

"Closest to Dean, these days," Singer replied. "John and me sort of drifted apart, and Sam went away to school, but Dean would turn up from time to time, help me out on a few projects, then move along."

"When was the last time you heard from him?" Denson asked.

"Middle of August, I guess. Maybe early August. He called to let me know he wasn't coming on Labor Day like we'd planned, but that was no big thing. He moves around a lot."

"You know where he was then?"

"No idea," Singer said. "He didn't say and I didn't ask."

"It didn't surprise you not to hear from him for four months?"

"Not really. It's a little unusual, but I'm not his keeper. I didn't call him either."

Denson nodded and glanced aside at Melissa to see if she had any thoughts. He wasn't sure he believed Singer, but he had no reason to disbelieve him. It wasn't so much that he thought the man was lying to him as he thought Singer wasn't being altogether frank. "So, lay out the timeline for me. John Winchester called you to let you know that the car was coming, and –"

"He didn't call me," Singer said, giving him an incredulous look.

"He . . ." Denson paused, staring. "So, what, the car just showed up?"

Singer snorted. "If you knew John Winchester, that wouldn't surprise you," he said. Denson exchanged another glance with Melissa and saw that she found that as disturbing as he did. "Look, I don't know what you hope to learn from me, honestly. John sent me the car, and I put it in my back lot. He and Sam showed up a day or so later, we discussed where to go looking for Dean, and –"

"They came to you in South Dakota?" Denson asked, startled. Neither father nor son had mentioned that, though both interviews had been truncated, he supposed. "Did they think you knew where Dean was?"

"I'd seen him more recently than either of them had," Singer said, shrugging. "And I think Sam wanted a look at the car."

"The car," Denson said. "Yes, I'll need your permission to send a tow truck into your yard to get that car to a crime lab for processing."

"Like hell," Singer replied, his eyes snapping. "That car's been through too many hands to be of any use to you, not to mention having been practically detailed before it was abandoned."

"Detailed by who?" Denson asked.

"Don't you mean 'whom'?" Singer shrugged. "I don't know, but I know that car. When it got to my yard, it was cleaner than I've ever seen it in twenty years, and there's no way in hell John stopped to vacuum the floors."

Denson could see that point. "Regardless, it's evidence –"

"I am not surrendering Dean's baby to you, and that's the way it is," Singer said. "It would kill that kid if he found out that car was in your hands for 'processing,' and don't think I don't know what that can mean. I've seen cars that have been processed by crime labs. Apart from his family, there isn't anything in the world more important to Dean than that car. I'm not letting you hand it over to a bunch of lab monkeys who'll only see it as a dissection project."

"I could subpoena it," Denson said.

"And I could fight you tooth and nail," Singer retorted. "In the courts and out. I'm telling you, it won't do you or your investigation any good, and it would do material harm to Dean's morale."

Denson shrugged. "So, what gave them the lead for Alabama?"

"They consulted a friend of mine, a psychic named Pamela Barnes," Singer said.

"A psychic?" Denson repeated incredulously.

"Yup, and she was right, so you can't fault her on that." Denson glanced at Melissa, who nodded. She stepped away to make a call. "Oh, and Agent Denson?" Denson turned back to Singer. "She has a constant flow of customers in and out of her place, and she's spent most of her weekends with me lately."

"So, does she work with the police?"

"Nope." Singer looked around and stood up. "Anything else?"

"Would you mind telling John Winchester that I'd like to speak with him or his younger son?"

"I'll tell him," Singer replied with an ironic twist to his lips. He walked off, muttering slightly. Denson heard some of it, mostly a litany of how useless and hopelessly late the police tended to be. He couldn't even altogether blame him. The boys in Nebraska had really dropped the ball, and they'd be lucky if the Winchesters didn't decide to sue them.

He sat down and started flipping through the file of photographs they'd finally gotten, keeping them close to his chest so as not to share them with the whole room. He stared at them, puzzled by some of what he was seeing. Something must have gone wrong in the processing because there were odd streaks and peculiar dots on the images, only they seemed to follow the contours of the victim's body. He'd have to have the lab check them again, but then he saw the note at the back of the file.

Made three attempts to clear these images up, but the strange markings don't seem to be a problem with the film or the processing. We may need to test the victim's skin for residues of some kind of light-sensitive paint, though how any kind of paint could have survived two surgeries and who knows how many sponge baths is an open question.

A body dropped into the seat next to him as he flipped back to get another look at the photograph of the victim's abdomen. "What do you – son of a bitch!"

Denson clapped the file shut and turned to John Winchester. "I'm sorry, sir, you shouldn't have seen that."

"Well, I have, so don't bother hiding it," Winchester said.

Denson shook his head. "There's something wrong with the processing," he said.

The man's eyes narrowed, and Denson could sense an enormous amount of thought churning behind those dark eyes. He still wasn't sure what he really thought of John Winchester. On the face of it, he seemed to be an utterly devoted father, but so many of the things others said of him argued against that image. "I've already seen the injuries live and in person. What's the harm of me seeing photos of them?"

"I'm sorry," Denson said, and he saw Winchester's eyes go through anger, frustration and resignation while his face remained immobile. He was one you had to read closely. "I do have some questions," he said.

"Ask 'em," Winchester replied.

"Mr. Singer told us that you went to his place in South Dakota before you came down to Alabama."

Winchester's eyebrows went up. "Did he? Didn't I?" He blinked thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, I don't think I did. What of it?"

"What led you to Alabama?"

Winchester grimaced. "Obviously, Bobby's already told you," he said. "That explains the look," he added in a mutter. Shaking his head, he shrugged. "I consulted a psychic friend of his who seems to have a pretty good record. I had a bad feeling about all of this, and she guided us right."

"Did you know her before this?"

"Nope. Just heard Bobby talk about her."

Denson kept getting a feeling from all of these guys that they were leaving things out of their stories. It might be nothing, but it might be key to resolving the case. "What did she tell you?"

"She did something, she called it dowsing, that pointed to the area north of Birmingham, and then she touched Dean's car and described a finished house in an unfinished subdivision with an Alabama power truck parked nearby."

"Did you find the house?" Denson asked. Since they'd found both John and Sam's prints in the building, Denson wondered if he'd come clean.

Winchester nodded. "We did."

"Why didn't you contact the police after that?"

"Two reasons," Winchester said. "One, it would have taken a lot of time, because they would have wanted to ask us a bunch of questions, and we would have been tied down forever."

"And two?"

"Pamela told us he'd been moved to a brick building closer to Birmingham. We drove around for a while, looking for something that matched her description." Winchester met his gaze squarely. "The cops wouldn't have listened to a lead from a psychic, and they wouldn't have turned us loose to go looking ourselves, and God knows what else might have happened if we'd been delayed."

"Why didn't you tell us about it once you had him safe and in the hospital?"

"Honestly, I didn't think about it," Winchester said. "Dean's been pretty central to every thought for the last few days. He's still not in great shape."

Denson nodded. He'd been getting regular reports from the hospital. "So, all your leads came from this psychic? Why didn't you tell me that before?"

Winchester looked faintly embarrassed. "Would you want to tell an FBI agent that you and your Stanford-educated son had driven halfway across the country following leads from a psychic?"

Denson snorted. "I see. Now, has Dean mentioned anyone other than the man who looked like Jeff Bridges?"

Winchester blinked at him. "No, he hasn't. Have you seen signs that there was more than one person involved?"

Denson pursed his lips, then decided to be relatively frank. "There are aspects of the operation that clearly would have required at least two people, and it's not the sort of thing that your son could have been forced to do."

Winchester's eyes narrowed. "Operation?"

"Has Dean said anything about a box?" Winchester went pale, and Denson grimaced. "That's the sort of thing we need to know about. Anything Dean has said could be useful."

The man beside him remained silent for a moment, then he sighed. "Sam would know more. Dean's talked a bit more frankly to him that to me, but Sam's asleep right now."

Denson found that unsurprising. Sam rarely seemed to be available when the police officers were in the hospital. He'd spoken to John a few times, and now he'd spoken to 'Uncle Bobby,' but Sam never emerged from the ICU when they were known to be there. He wasn't sure why that was, or if it really was just coincidence. "Tell me what you know."

"He can't bear a number of words that the bastard evidently used frequently. Procedure and treatment send him hysterical. He doesn't cope very well with needles, and while scissors are okay, single blades are not." He looked at the file. "Can I please see those photos? Even just one of them?"

Denson gazed down at the manila folder and contemplated his options. After a moment, he opened the folder carefully and let Winchester see the first of the photos, showing the victim's back. It had the strange streaks and dots like all the others did. "I'm sorry, the lab seems to have had a problem processing these."

Winchester grunted and put his hand out, peering down. Denson wondered what he was looking at with such fascination. "Thanks." He rose. "Was there anything else?"

"Not at this time."

Winchester nodded and left. Denson sat back and contemplated his next move. First on the agenda would be arranging for a new set of pictures to be taken.

John knew that Denson probably suspected that he was keeping Sam away from the cops, and he wasn't far wrong. John would be just as glad if Sammy never talked to them again. He could lie, but he was less good at it when not playing a character. Dean could lie from sun up to sun down without the slightest effort, and though he might stretch plausibility a bit, he wouldn't show any discomfort unless he was caught outright. Sammy tended to look uneasy and slightly guilty when lying as Sam Winchester, so it was better he avoid the police.

Nevertheless, that wasn't the real reason John wasn't sending him out to the cops. The real reason was that Dean – when conscious and aware of his surroundings – would get tense if Sam wasn't in sight. The longer Sam was out of sight, the worse it got, till he started to panic. The last time, that had only taken a half hour. Sam couldn't make heads or tails of it, because Dean wasn't having that reaction to John or Bobby, but John hadn't explained to him how thoroughly Azazel had used threats against him to control his older brother.

Thoughts about going after Azazel soon had to be back-burnered. They still needed three warm bodies at least to help monitor and take care of Dean. Really, they needed more, but he wasn't taking any more hunters off the line, and nor was he bringing in anyone who couldn't overpower Dean with a minimum of damage to him.

When he reached the room, Sam and Dean were theoretically playing poker, but Dean had clearly drifted off in mid-game. His hand lay face down on the over bed table, and Sam was flipping through the other cards as if bored. When John got close enough to hear them, he heard Bobby say, "That's cheating." John saw why a second later when he reached them. Rather than aimlessly flipping through the unused cards as John had thought, Sam was building himself a royal flush.

"Yeah, and Dean makes fun of me when I don't do it," Sam replied. "And it's not like we're playing for money."

"What are you playing for, then?" John asked. He walked up to the head of the bed and touched Dean's forehead, then his cheek, checking for fever. It had been down all day, but no one was sure how long it would stay that way. The day before had been a never-ending round of hallucination that had remained benign only so long as Sam was there.

Sam shrugged uncomfortably. "Okay, we're technically playing for money, but it's not real money. Neither one of us has half a million, which is what we decided to start out with."

John raised his eyebrows. "Half a million? How'd you come up with that figure?"

"I don't know. We used to do it all the time when we were kids. We'd agree on a mythical total, split it, and then we'd play back and forth, working on our tells and stuff. I think it was mostly to keep us occupied since Dean didn't do homework and I always finished mine pretty quick." The royal flush complete, Sam shuffled the remainder of the deck and put it on the table, his hand face down in front of him.

John hadn't really thought about what they might be playing for, but it was heartening to know that they'd resurrected an old tradition between them. Sam rose and stretched. "What did he want?"

"He had questions about that psychic we consulted," John said, giving Bobby a mock-glower. "Perfectly delivered, thanks."

"Hey, I didn't know you hadn't told them you'd been up to see me," Bobby growled defensively.

"I'm serious," John said. "Now it looks like I just didn't want anyone to know I'd consulted a psychic."

Bobby's brows drew together. "And you couldn't have just told – right, I keep forgetting. You don't tell people anything."

John scrutinized Sammy's face. He was looking careworn and tired. "When was the last time you left the hospital, Sammy?"

Sam blinked at him. Youth had kept him going longer than John would have expected. Both Bobby and John had cycled back and forth between the hospital and the motel room through the last several days, but Sammy hadn't really left. "I can't leave, Dad," Sammy said. "Dean freaks out, you know that."

"You have to get some air, boy," Bobby replied, and John saw Sam give him a harried look.

"I went to the cafeteria yesterday and had lunch, and they wound up having to sedate him. I'm not going anywhere."

"That can't go on," John said, staring down at his sleeping son.

"Well, now's not the time to push it," Sam said. "I've got the recliner, I'm good."

"You haven't eaten since this morning," Bobby put in.

Sam shrugged. "I could use a salad with some chicken."

"I'll grab you something," Bobby replied. "John, you need anything?"

"Just a sandwich, whatever," he said.

"Bacon double cheeseburger with extra onions," said the limp figure in the bed. John looked down at his son in some alarm, worried that he'd heard more than they'd want him to.

"When that starts coming in clear liquid form, you got it," Bobby retorted, giving Dean's foot a squeeze.

"Not fair. Sammy can eat whatever he wants and he wastes it on rabbit food."

"Chicken isn't rabbit food."

"No, but it's girl food."

"Boys," John said warningly, and they both looked up at him, Dean with a weary grin that harkened back to long ago days and Sam with an uncomfortable mix of anxiety, nostalgia and fury. At least John knew that little of the fury was directed at him at the moment.

"So, Sammy, you ready to get your ass whupped?" Dean asked, scooping up his cards.

"Sure," Sam said, picking his up. John watched the ensuing scene with his emotions as muddled as Sam's. It was undeniably good to see his boys together, engaged with each other and not fighting, but the atmosphere remained strained. There was a fair amount of playacting on both sides as they played poker and joked about each other's tells and cheating strategies. Sam was trying to stay positive, to keep Dean's mood up, and Dean was doing the same thing for Sam. Meanwhile, both of them were suffering on so many fronts. Conversations stayed light as air because no one wanted to upset Dean while his health was still so fragile, and Dean was in full avoidance mode anyway. John wasn't even sure if either of them was aware of just how hard the other was working to keep things relaxed.

Castiel appeared beside John. "They cannot hear us," he said, nodding towards the boys, and John turned towards the . . . he'd had to accept it, weird as it was. The angel. "If you think Sam needs time away, perhaps I could find some way of making Dean comfortable with that."

"What, you mean if you went with him or something?" John asked.

"It is one possibility," Castiel said.

"With you needing to bolt any time another angel appears, I'm not sure how well that would work," John replied. "What other possibility do you see?"

"I could ensure that Dean remained asleep the entire time that Sam was gone," Castiel said. "Again, that may be problematic if another angel shows up, but Dean will not automatically awake if I go, it will only become possible again. He sleeps very deeply these days."

"I noticed," John said. "I'll give it some thought."