Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: See Chapter 1.

THE SCENT OF YOU

Chapter 6

The speaker was dressed in the uniform of a County Sheriff, and the hood of the car he had his butt perched against as he contemplated them with folded arms was marked as a sheriff's car. He bore a resemblance to Larry Hagman in his Dallas days, only fatter-faced and without the hat, revealing battleship-grey hair that matched his eyes, which were sharp and assessing.

"Oh, sorry, I hope we aren't disturbing anything…" in more ways than one. Sam hastily hopped over the privet hedge back onto the sidewalk followed by Dean, turning his 'sincerity' up to maximum.

"Nope," the sheriff assured them, "though new students sticking their noses into painful Amarillo recent history won't win you –"

Dean opened his mouth to speak and Sam smoothly denied him the chance by stating, "We're not students, we're here investigating the deaths. I'm Sam Winchester; this is my little brother, Dean." He held out his hand with an amiable smile.

As he had expected the tradition of Southern hospitality had the sheriff shaking his hand, "I'm Tom Henson, Amarillo County sheriff. You're Private Eyes…or reporters?" His tone took on an edge.

"No sir, we're here because of our cousin," Sam corrected.

"One o' the victims, huh?"

"No, our cousin, Rosemary – Rosie – she's due to start Amarillo in the Fall as a Freshman and after what's happened…she's their only one and Uncle Matt and Aunt Lucy are worried." Sam related.

"Got kids m'self, I can relate." Henson conceded.

"I'd be happy to let you have Uncle Matt's number," Sam bluffed with an Oscar®-winning verisimilitude of sincerity, "but if so, I'd be obliged if you'd make sure who is on the other end of the phone…if Rosie finds out we're here she'll tear a right strip off us both."

"A sensible man is always scared of his womenfolk," Henson actually smiled, but then asked, "So how are you going to explain away your trip?"

"Uncle Matt asked us to swing by on the QT," Sam continued his prevarication, "so Rosie wouldn't find out. You know what teenagers are like – Rosie's huffing and puffing about how they're being silly and ridiculously overprotective. Uncle Matt knew we'd be around Amarillo for a few weeks so we could see what was going on without rousing Rosie's suspicions."

"You've got jobs in Amarillo?" the sheriff asked more directly.

"For the next week or so, yes," Sam confirmed, "We're hunters."

"Hunters?" Henson stiffened warily.

Sam was aware of the thrumming tension in Dean behind him who had so far been wise enough to stay quiet, but he answered cheerfully, "Well the PC term is Animal Conservation Specialists, but basically yes." Deciding it wouldn't hurt to lay it on a little thicker, Sam expounded, "We deal with everything from a grizzly that gets too fond of your prize calves through a bunch of coyotes decimating your spring lambs to herds of deer ram-raiding your garden to get at your azaleas."

"I thought they were, y'know, protected…?" Henson queried.

Sam nodded affably, "Yes, sir, they are. The first route is to relocate the animals as far away as possible, but unfortunately that doesn't always work. When it comes to remembering, and more importantly finding their way back to, a place where they were able to get a lot of food while being Nature's equivalent of a couch potato, animals are a lot more talented than you'd think. If they keep finding their way back you've got no choice, 'cause no farmer or rancher is going to risk his family or his employees 'gainst a grizzly or a cougar that's lost its fear of man, and if you don't get the shot bang-on first time every time you end up with a wounded animal going on a rampage."

"So they bring fellas' like you in," Henson nodded. "So what do you think you'll be able to find out that, due respect, every law enforcement officer in greater Amarillo couldn't?"

"To be honest, nothing," Sam soothed any injured sense of pride, "but it's worth a few days to give our aunt and uncle peace of mind, especially after what happened with our other cousin – " Sam stopped and made a face as if he'd let slip more than he intended.

"Your cousin was killed on a college campus?" Henson asked solicitously.

Sam sighed deeply and shook his head, the very epitome of embarrassed sorrow. "No sir. Our cousin was also Dean Winchester," he nodded at his brother, "he was an only one too. Aunt Mary died when he was a baby so it was just him and Uncle John and…now, Dean he was always headstrong and a mite wild, but he was a good kid, bright too," Sam said earnestly, "but he got in with the wrong crowd and he was too proud and stubborn to admit what was going on, so he just got dragged deeper into criminality."

"It can happen to anyone," Henson pointed out sympathetically.

"Yeah…" Sam did his best woebegone expression. "Dean was killed when he was 26…he broke into a house and the homeowner shot him."

"I can understand why you'd want to make sure your surviving cousin's okay," Henson conceded.

"Yes, sir; we'll be discreet and keep out of your way," though not for the reasons you imagine, "you have my word." Sam assured him.

Sheriff Henson was agreeable and after a further handshake with Sam, got back into his car and drove off. Sam turned around and found his brother's irate face inches from his own.

"Why didn't you just sit him down and tell him our life story!" barked Dean irately. "What did you think you were doing!"

"Saving our asses from the county jail, and keep your voice down," Sam retorted as he began to walk back to the Impala, Dean falling into step beside him. "Tom Henson isn't a time-server counting down to his pension or a politician only focussed on fast-tracking to higher office. He's interested and he cares."

"So?"

"So there's no stone he hasn't left unturned with those eleven deaths. He would have taken all of two minutes to bust any fake ID we cared to show him, and you can bet he's memorised every one of the dead people's files sufficiently to know that none of them have any convenient cousins named Sam and Dean on the horizon."

"And a five minute check of the student roll would show that we weren't new students." Dean begrudgingly admitted. "But that crap about me being your little brother –"

"People equate taller with older," Sam stated, "and it's necessary now that you have that police file. The first thing Henson's going to do when he gets back to the office is look up Sam and Dean Winchester. A dead murder suspect of the same name, who looked exactly like you and with the same birthday would have been too much for him to swallow."

"So this way he buys the namesake cousin story and simply assumes the input clerk got mine and your names the wrong way round when entering our birth dates."

"Exactly," Sam replied. "Humans are very good at rationalising, and since you can't be alive here and dead there at the same time, he'll be willing to accept that explanation."

"Not bad, Sammy," Dean praised sincerely; for all his 'college geek' jibes, Dean knew that he didn't deal well with the 'normal' world and mainstream society.

He was far more at ease in the mystical world of demons and paranormal wackiness than with tax returns, paycheques and nine-to-five…in that way, Sam had always been Dean's bridge and buffer, both his shield and interpreter for a world he often struggled to understand and cope with.

"I'm not just a pretty face."

"I was going to say you're not as dumb as you look."

"Hah-hah," Sam snorted as they reached the Impala and he got in the passenger side, aware there was no chance of driving after that 'little brother' crack, "but actually, once we've left Amarillo and Sheriff Henson is no longer interested in your record, I'll go into the police files and do some creative editing and narrative addition."

"How?" Dean asked suspiciously as he started her up and moved away from the kerb, unsure if he liked the sound of 'creative editing'.

Sam shrugged, "I'll rewrite the official report to read that it was an unknown drifter attacking women in the area who, regrettably, bore a superficial resemblance to the elder son of a vacationing family - and that it was the local news media which wrongly claimed the assailant actually was 'Dean Winchester'. I'll change it to read that that the Winchester family returned home before the perpetrator was shot and killed by Rebecca Warren after he broke into her home and 'at this time the assailant's true identity is unknown'." Sam recited and then brightened as a thought struck him, "What's more it'll act as a deterrent to any reporters or tabloid hacks scratching around, like that National-Enquirer-wannabe 'debunker of the supernatural' idiot who did that website exposé hatchet-job on dad."

"You know about that?" Dean winced.

"Oh yeah," Sam nodded emphatically as he recalled the way his stomach had somersaulted when he'd spotted a student at Stanford looking at the piece – article was too grandiloquent a word - and realised it was about his father. Fortunately 'John' was such a common name that it had never occurred to anyone that there was any connection to normal, boring, Stanford Sam.

"Caleb told Dad to sabotage the article but Dad suggested it was best to leave it out there and ignore it." Dean explained why the offending thing was still in cyberspace.

"Dad was right," Sam told him. "Keep taking the thing down would have aroused interest – and curiosity in what Dad had to hide - if the guy kept reposting his supposed exposé. Leaving it alone and ignoring it means it's just one more bit of hysterical nonsense amongst the thousands of others floating around in the cyber-ether."

"I get that, but I don't see how changing my police record like you said will ward off other reporters digging for a story."

"In a word, bro': lawsuit," Sam smiled. "Years ago reporters who chanced on something had to make a lot of effort to dig up the skinny and the circulation was more limited; these days it's too easy to Yahoo!® or Google® for information but by the same token your libellous verbiage is likely to reach a lot more people – which means that when your victims sue your ass they get proportionally a lot more money out of you."

"Ah…" Dean nodded, beginning to see the light.

"By the time I've done rewriting your record, there won't be a dry eye in the house," Sam promised him, "and it'll send cold shivers down the spine of any nosing-about hack. Innocent, upright young man from clean-cut, all-American family has his photograph splashed over half the State's TV screens and newspaper headlines by irresponsible regional news companies. Family magnanimously decline to pursue damages, but won't be forgiving if someone else starts raking up the muck. With luck, any reporters who stumble across the story and consider digging any deeper will wake up in cold sweats with the words 'punitive damages' echoing in their ears like the wail of Marley's ghost."

Dean chortled, "I love you when you're evil, Sammy…but why not just delete the whole thing?"

"Uh-uh, no way," Sam shook his head vehemently. "These systems are vulnerable because they're designed to allow you to add information and make editorial changes. But, especially after 9/11, I try and erase all evidence of a murder suspect from a law enforcement database and I'll set off every bell and whistle there is going. We'll wake up with the entire Alphabet Soup from Homeland Security through the FBI, CIA, NSA and ATF shoving Dirty Harry Magnums under our noses and displaying a lamentable lack of humour."

Dean nodded acceptance, as Sam was the computer specialist of the family. Dean wasn't as bad as John 'outwitted by a toaster' Winchester but he knew he wasn't up there on the techno-scale of brilliance that Sam was. But then another potential problem occurred to him. "But what if someone suspects the record's been tampered with?"

"It's a risk," Sam admitted, as they pulled up at the stop light, "but not a very likely one, especially since, luckily for us, the case is closed and solved. Even if someone actually looks at the paper file and can't find the written 'original' report they're not likely to think anything of it other than 'damn file clerks'."

"And people tend to automatically take whatever the computer's telling them as Gospel," Dean acknowledged as the light changed to green and he drove on.

"Exactly," Sam agreed, "Besides people retire and there's always staff turnover. A busy cop with no time who might glance at a closed-file record in passing is not going to waste time tracking down former input clerks just to find 'the one' who input the report he's reading on his screen a few years back."

Dean nodded but didn't answer as, indicating left, he turned into the quiet suburban street where victim number six had lived and pulled up around the corner in the next turn, which was a small cul-de-sac.

Getting out of the Impala they saw that the neighbourhood was mostly deserted. The houses were old two-storey stone built dwellings with front yards full of venerable trees and shrubbery rather than lawns where children could play, and there were no signs of swings and slides and other parental accoutrements. Most of the people in this neighbourhood were childless professional couples who were out working all day and 'networking' at night or affluent retirees who spent half the year on cruise ships in the Caribbean.

As they walked on foot to the sixth victim's house, no curtains twitched or lace nets moved, indicating it was likely everyone was out. Still they walked up the yard like respectable people, and fortunately a large rhododendron bush obscured them from view, enabling them to go around the rear of the house. There was no sign of movement from within, no hint of occupancy, which was what they wanted. Victim Number Six had been one of the gunshot suicides, a childless Amarillo college lecturer, using the handgun her husband had bought her in case of 'home invasion'. Understandably, he'd had a nervous breakdown in the aftermath and was currently at a sanatorium recovering his health.

"Where was it?" Dean asked quietly in the silence of the rear yard; even the birdsong seemed to be a melancholy eulogy to the dead woman – according to the news reports the couple had been childhood sweethearts whose inability to have children had, unlike so many similarly afflicted couples, pulled them together rather than torn them apart.

"Rear bedroom," Sam recalled, grunting in self-disapproval as he put his foot on the trunk of the gnarled, old tree that would be their route to gain illicit entry.

"What?" Dean asked, right behind him.

"This is a flowering dogwood," Sam patted the trunk in apology as he worked his way up to where he could swing from the branch to the balcony of the master bedroom. "They used to be all over the South, but now they're going the way of the American Chestnut."

"With that blight thing? Dad told me once when he was really little, the last American Chestnuts in the Appalachians used to look like snowfall when they blossomed in the Spring," Dean supplied, "but by the time he was five they were all gone."

"Yeah…" Trying to inflict as little damage as possible on the venerable trunk, Sam swung onto the small balcony of the master bedroom, followed a second later by Dean who lithely made the small 'hop' seem effortless.

Dean barely broke stride popping the lock and they went into the bedroom; without pausing they went through into the guest bedroom, because they were not voyeurs or given to gratuitously invading someone's privacy and home for the fun of it.

Someone had given the walls a hasty stark-white repaint that clashed with the softer creams and bronze-browns of the room's original décor. Sam averted his eyes, knowing suddenly exactly what the walls had looked like after…he had a sudden flashback to his precognitive vision while trapped in Max Miller's closet, of the deranged boy killing Dean with his own gun…such a small round hole in the centre of Dean's head…such a ghastly spray of blood all over the walls…Sam clenched his teeth and forced down a wave of nausea.

Dean activated the EMF detector and like a singer awaiting their cue, it sounded off, causing them to exchange grim glances.

Continued in Chapter 7…

© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart