Chapter 2- Tatum
"Have you seen the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tate?" Micah Rockwell asked as he breezed into the office he shared with his fellow journalist and good friend Tatum King.
"Was I supposed to? I don't work for the San Fran Chronicle, so unless it has to do with Boston or the Boston Herald, I probably didn't even bother reading it." She answered, her lavender colored eyes not leaving the flat screen of her computer and black painted nails kept bouncing from one key to another as she kept typing her new article. That was the one thing Micah loved about working for a newspaper; you got copies of every paper from every major city in the United States.
"Read this, it's interesting." He said, dropping the folded paper onto her desk. Her vivid eyes finally left her computer and darted toward him, her dark brown eye brow arched high.
"What's it about?"
"Another one of those darkroom deaths."
"Micah! Are you kidding me, that's what you bring me to read? Another one of those stupid accidental deaths in a college photo class?"
"This one is different." He told her as he pointed at the picture that accompanied the article. It was of what looked like a young woman, in her early twenties maybe shriveled up like a dried out apple that had sat too long in the sun.
"Gross, what is that?"
"Lauren Mills, dead college student."
"Gimmie a minute to read this."
"Late Thursday afternoon another college student was found dead in her photography class dark room. Lauren Mills' body, found dried up as if it had been locked away in a coffin for years, was found by her professor, Carl Bowen. Bowen, 55, who has been teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute for nearly twenty five years, refused to give a direct statement but he said he heard a scream before finding his student, Mills 24, dead. The dark room door was then busted down by Bowen himself, head janitor Jerry Kirk said the door had been locked from the inside. "When I got there, I saw Carl draping a sheet over Miss Mills' body; she looked like she had been dead for years. But when I checked the door, it had been locked from the inside and the only way to lock it is with Carl's keys, he had them on his key ring on his belt loop. He never locked it during the day and neither did his students." Kirk said. Mills, an honor student with plans to be a journalist, was working on project in attempt to keep her grade above a 95 when she died. "I dropped Lauren off, I saw her an hour before she died. We had plans to go out later." Boyfriend and senior, Jacob Bast said before breaking down. Mills' death at the moment is not connected to the six similar deaths where the body was found shriveled up; Alyssa Rivers of Billings, Montana; Kelly Dans from Tampa, Florida; Sarah Right in Augusta, Maine; Parker Matthews in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Christine Williams of Seattle, Washington and Olivia Deacon from Nashville, Kentucky. Officials are still baffled about the six girls' mysterious deaths. Not further evidence in the previous cases have been brought to police attention."
Folding the paper back up, Tatum turned back to Micah and raked a hand through her long auburn hair. She had a feeling that the police and all that were the wrong people to call in this situation, but Micah didn't have to know that part.
"So, what do you think?"
"That something killed her."
"That professor guy."
"I said something, not someone. And no, not him. Something else."
"What else? She was alone in the darkroom."
"How do you know that?" Tatum asked, unfolding the paper again and tearing at the article, picture and all.
"I'm friends with the guy who wrote the article, she was alone."
"But what about those other girls? The other ones that have died? Has there been anything new?"
"Nope, they all were waked and buried, close casket of course." Micah said smiling.
"Not funny. Don't you have work to do?" Shooing her friend away, she grabbed the article and scanned it into her computer. Once it was there, she signed onto the internet and searched through her email address book. Coming to the one she wanted, she pasted the newly scanned article there and typed a small message herself:
"Giving you two something new to check out. It seems right up your alley Sam. It's not the first death that's happened and I have a feeling that it's not the last. Gimmie a call or email me back if you find out anything. Take care Sammy and watch the asshole for me, make sure he doesn't get himself killed.
Love Tate."
After sending it, she went back to her work; an article about the newest gallery opening for the art section of the paper and felt her mind wandering. She had known Sam and Dean Winchester since she was about eight, Dean was the same age as she was and Sam was four. Their fathers, John and Ben, both hunted the things that bumped in the night and passed it onto their children, even though Tatum didn't do it anymore. Her job was the most normal thing in her life; from the time she was ten till her twenty second birthday she hunted monsters, demons, ghosts and whatever else lingered in the shadows, her mother had been mauled by a Wendigo when she was six while they were on a family camping trip, she learned to shoot a rifle at age twelve, by thirteen she could drive a car and she had even dated Dean Winchester, pain in her ass and out of all the guys she had been with, he was the best in bed. Sam was the little brother she never had and loved him the way she imagined you'd love a sibling. Her father was somewhere with John, hunting down the things that took away their wives and unreachable by the children, not that it bothered Tatum; she had a better relationship with John than her own father. She had talked to John a couple weeks earlier when he was on his way to hunt something that was after him and the boys in Chicago; a daeva. She knew a lot about them, she had been chased by one when she was sixteen. But that was weeks ago and she hadn't heard from him since.
Hours later Tatum was packing up her things to leave, putting papers into her messenger bag and taking her camera with her when Micah showed up at her desk with a roll of film in hand
"Alex wants it developed by morning. Can you do it?"
"By hand or take it down to the drug store?"
"By hand."
"Bastard." Alex Kelly was her editor and liked to think he ran the paper because his uncle owned it and loved to boss Tatum around because she was one of the few woman that worked under him. Standing up, she put the film into her pocket and walked out, locking the office for the night. Walking home that night, the sun was still up at seven thanks to day light savings time, Tatum thought back to when she was a kid, being dragged all over the place only with Sam and Dean to keep her company while her father and John hunted monsters. She still hated moving around, that was why once she got to Boston she refused to move. She had come to Boston with about five thousand dollars; got herself a room at the Hilton and a week later got her job at the paper. The hotel manager let her move in there and they set up at payment schedule; that had been four years ago. Now at twenty six, she was finally adjusted to being in one place and a part of her feared moving again. Moving again meant going back to her old life and her old life was something she was not ready to re-accept. Coming to her hotel, she made her way in and then up to the ninth floor. She'd develop Alex's pictures in her master bathroom like she always did, using her bath tub and some storage containers to hold the chemicals, put the safe light bulb into the fixture in there and do her work.
The room she lived in was one of their suites, it had a master bedroom, a small kitchen, living room and her office was set up near the balcony doors. Dropping her bag near the couch, she grabbed the film and went to work. After developing it, she picked out a couple pictures to enlarge and bring into work the next morning. As she was about to go back into the bathroom, she heard her cell phone ring. With her water dampened film in hand, she rushed over to her bag and grabbed the small phone before it went to her voicemail.
"Hello?"
"You sound out of breath, whatcha doin' Tate?" Hearing the all too familiar voice that made her feel like she was sixteen again, she dropped her film and felt her upper lip curl.
"Dean I sent Sam the email, not you."
"Well, he wasn't here and I went online. Can't help it if I'm nosey and when I saw my girlfriend's email address popping up in my brother's mail box, I got a little curious." She could almost hear him grinning.
"First off, it's ex-girlfriend's email address and second, going through people's mail is against the law."
"I don't think it includes email yet, so technically I've done nothing wrong."
"Whatever, what do you want?"
"I was reading that article and you're right, it does sound like something for us to check out. Now, I was wondering, since it came across your desk, are you willing to come with me and Sam to check it out?" For someone who had broken up with Tate nearly eight years ago and hadn't really seen her in four, he sounded desperate.
"You want me to go out to California with you?"
"Not just me, Sam's gonna be there."
"No. No. No. No way in Hell am I driving across country with you in the back of that shitty Impala to check out some creepy deaths. I stopped doing that the day...the day that accident happened." Tate felt a knot form in her throat, she still wasn't ready to talk about what happened when she was sixteen and it had been almost ten years since then.
"I know, I remember that day. But you seem to know a little more about it than me and Sam do, please Tate before someone else dies."
"I'll think about it, give me a day or so." She said, feeling herself giving into him.
"I'll call you back tomorrow, same time."
"Fine." With that said she ended the call and tossed her phone onto the couch, knowing she'd lose it in the cushions again. Running a tired hand through her hair, she picked up the film she had dropped and reached for her scissors and cut the film into strips. As she cut the film she thought about going to California. It would mean joining the hunt again, taking up old habits again, carrying a gun loaded with rock salt bullets again, reopening old memories again and more importantly seeing Dean again. Tatum wasn't ready to see the man who broke her heart into too many little pieces revisit the night that shook her to her very core. She wasn't ready; she was barely able to sleep without a light on yet. Going to help them wasn't going to be good for her; it was only going to set her back.
With a tired sigh, she put the film into a negative sheet and headed toward her bedroom. Opening the closet doors, she pulled down a suit case and tossed it onto the bed. Unzipping it, she found that her travel iron and a few stolen soaps from the last hotel she stayed at were still in there. She'd put clothes in it tomorrow and be ready for Dean's phone call, but right now all Tatum wanted to do was sleep. And that's what she did; she curled up on the side of the bed far away from her suit case and hugged her pillow, clamping her eyes shut as soon as her head hit the silk pillow case. It was early still but she was going to need all the energy she could possess to handle the next few days.
"Going to see Dean." She mumbled as sleep finally took over.