"I'll come pick you up in about two hours." Dean leaned towards the passenger window from the driver's seat. Sam had his elbows resting on the window's frame and his head inside the car. "If I'm not here yet when you come out walk a little down the street so they won't think you're some kind of freaky psycho stalker." Dean finished. Sam snorted.
"Man, give me a little credit." He complained. Dean didn't comment on his brother's response.
"I'll try to be back in one and a half hours." Dean said, Sam nodded in agreement and stepped back from the car, hitting the roof with his flat hand and smirking as his brother drove away. Dean hated it when he did that.
Sam turned to take a good look at the house. The Mayer family lived in a nice neighborhood, typical picket fences, people walking their dogs or jogging around in the morning. Sam thought this place was too normal, even for him. A couple blocks away was the park where Robert Mayer was last seen. From what little he had learned from the paper articles, Robert Mayer, the first person to go missing, liked sports, and would run in that park at least twice a week. Maybe whoever had taken him had been spying on him for a while, learning his routine. Maybe his family had seen something suspicious.
Sam walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. He heard some movement inside the house and then steps approaching the door. He hoped it was Mrs. Mayer. He didn't really like it when Dean pointed it out, but he had an aura around him that made older women want to mother him. It had been very useful in the past when making an investigation.
The door opened slightly and a man peeked out, Sam cursed inwardly as the man gave him a distrusting look.
"Can I help you?" The man asked politely although he didn't seem to appreciate visitors.
"Y-Yeah." Sam stammered purposefully. He had decided he'd be a clumsy assistant at the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. "Hi, my name is Sam Miller, I come from the District Attorney's Office." The man eyed him up and down, like he was considering whether to believe him or not.
"Are you Mr. Mayer?" Sam asked as innocently as he could.
"Yeah, that's me. What can I do for you?" Mr. Mayer asked, though he still didn't open the door completely.
"I'm sorry to bother you. You'll see, I began working just yesterday as an assistant to the person in charge of your case. There was a little problem with your case files." Sam said, and that apparently got the man's attention. He stepped from behind the door, and invited him in. Sam thanked him and stepped inside.
The man led him to a large, cluttered living room. There was not a single spot on the wall that wasn't covered with pictures of his son at some sports event. Trophies of every size, color and shape covered every surface of the furniture. Sam guessed that Robert was an only child. Either that, or his siblings seriously resented him.
Mr. Mayer motioned for him to sit down and, before sitting himself, he seemed to think of something.
"Excuse me, can I see some ID?" The man asked.
"Yes, of course." Sam answered and searched the inner pockets of his jacket. He found what he was looking for and showed the man a little plastic card with his name, picture and the Attorney's Office seal. Mr. Mayer looked at it for a few seconds, and Sam was afraid he had noticed it was fake.
In spite of Dean's endless assortment of fake IDs and police badges from every possible state, they couldn't find anything to make him a District Attorney's assistant. They had to make up a credential and Sam had copied the certifying seal from the city's official government page. Sam tried to look as casual as possible while Mr. Mayer eyed his card. After what seemed like ages, he nodded and sat down. Sam kept himself from letting go a deep sigh of relief.
"I'm sorry." Mr. Mayer started. "Ever since my son disappeared, we've been getting reporters come and interrogate us. Some pretend to be cops." The man sighed.
"I understand Mr. Mayer, it's OK." Sam replied. He felt somewhat ashamed to be doing the same thing, but he had a good reason, and if this man's son was still alive, he would find him. "You can't be too careful.". Sam added. Mr. Mayer nodded and leaned back on his armchair.
"So, what was this problem you mentioned." He asked. Sam took out a folder from inside his jacket and took out some official looking papers.
"Well, I told you I started working at the office yesterday. My first assignment was to review some case files, one of them, the one concerning your son's disappearance." Sam said. "The problem is the guy before me made a mess of the case files. There are many misplaced important papers, in your case, it's your declaration to the police." Sam paused, but hurried to continue at seeing Mr. Mayer's face after hearing such news. "Now, don't worry, I'll find it. It's in the office. I just thought you would rather make a new declaration and I'll put it on the case file so the investigation can continue, and when we find the previous one, we'll just replace it with that one." Sam watched Mr. Mayer's face to see if he bought it. The man seemed upset for a moment, but after a few seconds he sighed and nodded.
"That's very kind of you. I trust the person who had your job was fired?" Mr. Mayer asked.
"Oh, believe me, he was fired. And there's a warning of his incompetence issued to every law office from here to Nicaragua." Sam said smiling, and Mr. Mayer chuckled slightly.
"OK." The man started. "So, what do you need to know?". He asked.
"Well, just what you told the police when they first came. Tell me about the day he disappeared." Sam said, leaning into the coffee table to write down everything Mr. Mayer said.
"Well, the 16th of last month, Robbie went out after dinner to run in the park, just like he did every Tuesday." Mr. Mayer sighed, looking somewhere behind Sam, over his shoulder. Sam didn't turn, he was sure he was looking at a picture of his son. The man noticed Sam staring at him and continued. "He usually came back an hour later, but it had been 3 hours and he didn't return. I went looking for him. I wasn't so worried, it's a large park, and he had been working extra hard lately. He got an athleticism scholarship at the PIT you know?" The man asked smiling, pride evident in his face.
Sam smiled back at him, and Mr. Mayer continued. "I got to the park and drove around it once, but I didn't see him. I parked on the street and walked around for a few minutes. I saw a couple of kids sitting in a bench and asked them if they had seen him. They said they had, they saw him run two laps around the park, but they lost sight of him when he ran away for the third lap and didn't see him again." Mr. Mayer looked down and sighed. Sam was suddenly thankful it had been Mr. Mayer and not his wife who answered the door. It made him very uncomfortable if people cried when he was questioning them.
"Did you or your wife noticed anything suspicious right before your son's disappearing?" Sam asked. Mr. Mayer gave him a confused look and Sam explained. "Like someone watching your home with insistence. A car parked for several days in front of the street, anything like that?" Mr. Mayer shook his head. Sam sighed and spoke again.
"I'm sorry to have to ask Mr. Mayer." Sam said with an apologetic look. "But is it possible your son could have just run away?." Sam asked and Mr. Mayer shook his head side to side, like he was tired of hearing the same question.
"No way. Robbie was a happy kid. He had many friends, we knew most of them, and he had just gotten his scholarship." The man paused for a moment, looking down before going on. "He is the best son a father could ask for." He said. "Didn't drink, didn't smoke, he did good in school, he exercised." He stopped, and Sam decided he had enough information. After refining the details and asking Mr. Mayer to sign the paper with his 'declaration' to keep up appearances, Sam thanked him and left.
He still had half an hour before Dean came to pick him up, so he decided to walk to the park and see what he could find.
Author's Note: Yeah, this was boring, but it will begin getting more interesting in the next chapter. Please review to let me know what you think so far.