Disclaimer etc, see Chapter 1
NET KNOTS
Chapter 10
"I want to see it," Dean decided.
"Now?" Sam protested, aware midnight had visited and gone home in a huff over being ignored some time ago.
"Nah, I'd like to book an appointment with you for Tuesday week," Dean's sarcasm liked to keep in trim. "Yes now!"
Rolling his eyes, Sam got up and plugged the laptop's broadband cable jack back into the wall, thankful that even the more rundown motels were mostly aware that they needed to link into the information superhighway or perish. Some of them would have been better off perishing. If the website ever enabled them to save some little cash, Sam intended to hoard a bit of ammo/gas money and upgrade to a completely wireless hub laptop. This one had a wireless broadband connection but it was very basic and often 'cut off' at inopportune moments and when used on battery power it lasted only an hour before metaphorically shrivelling the ground like the Wicked Witch of the East after Dorothy had thrown that bucket of water over her.
Fortifying himself with more coffee – he would be ricocheting off the walls at this rate – Dean waited impatiently for Sammy to fire up his electronic oracle, roughly shoving aside Sam's military-style kit bag, and noticing the thick sheaf of papers, more than one of which…had his own name on prominently on them?
"Here," Sam stood up and nodded towards the paperwork, "Oh yeah, and you need to fill those in too."
"For the website?" Dean hefted impressive poundage of sliced and diced trees.
"That's phase one-and-a-bit." Sam acknowledged. "After I'd done freaking out when I realised we were sitting ducks for the IRS I started freaking out again when I realised that as long as we were in the hospital we were a hair's breadth away from somebody going, "'Hey, that guy's been a corpse in St. Louis for the past half-year.'""
"You deleted my homicide file?" Dean beamed at the first bit of good news he'd heard since they started this conversation.
"No way," Sam shook his head. "Trying to delete all trace of a murderer in post 9/11 America? Not likely. But those files are designed to be updated with new information and I so I hacked in and added some narrative."
"'Some narrative'," Dean reiterated, ignoring the computer screen for the moment. "What narrative, exactly?"
Sam smiled in what was probably supposed to be reassurance. "The shape-shifter's MO was to break in and steal the clothing of its next intended fall guy a few days before – remember, it broke into the Warrens and stole some of Zach's clothes a week before it murdered his girlfriend. So, I just hacked into the police files and amended it to read that the unknown perpetrator spotted Dean Thomas Winchester on a camping holiday with his family and noted the superficial resemblance, before stealing Dean Winchester's clothing and his ID."
"Not bad," Dean conceded.
"Of course not," Sam smirked. "I added an addendum that Dean Winchester had no idea what was going on until he arrived to report the theft of his driver's licence and clothing and encountered confused police officers who had buried him in St. Louis. Dean Winchester left without a stain on his character and the police file now records the perpetrator as John Doe." Sam explained, "Of course, there's no paper trail to back up the computer narrative but between admin employee turnover of staff and the level of conscientious filing you'd expect from a bored, underpaid clerk, that won't surprise anyone or prod them to go looking."
"So what're all these…gun permits?" Dean scowled.
Continued in Chapter 11…
© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart