Dean was being held in the morgue in downtown Hitchcock. Bobby had sent Sam on to Wyoming, assuring him that he would follow shortly with Dean's body, that he would do everything in his power to retreive Dean before an autopsy was done; he seemed to grasp the fact that Sam was the only one of them capable of stopping Jake.

Ellen stayed to help Bobby, as bodies are known to take more than one person to lift, especially when you are trying to be gentle and respectful to the dead...which doesn't always happen in their line of work.

"So are we going to con the guard into letting us in," Ellen asked as she climbed into the passenger seat of the van, "Or are we just breaking in?"

"Feel like putting on a lab coat?" Bobby said as he put the van in gear and pulled away from the shack.

-----------------------------

Ellen walked into the morgue with a lab coat and clipboard, the look made all that more official by her wardrobe choice of buttondown blouse and knee-length skirt with heels. She was not all that excited about the apparel, but she knew that she would be all the more convincing because of it, and this was important. Her friend Dean was in there.

Ellen did not have anything against autopsies, personally, but she knew well enough not to argue with Sam about any subject pertaining to his deceased brother, the only family the poor boy had.

She walked up to the man sitting at the desk in the small town's coroner's office. Seeing that his nametag said J. Ferris, she took a stab. "John?"

The young man stood and corrected her politely, "James. My friends call me Jimmy."

She stuck out her hand to shake his, "Sorry 'bout that. I'm new, they haven't even given me my nametag yet. 'm Dana." She released his hand and looked around the small, cold office. "So how'd you get stuck on graveyard shift?"

Jimmy sat back behind his small desk with a pile of paperwork still to be completed. "I'm new too. It's my second day. I just graduated Friday, and my dad made me get a job. This is what I got stuck with." He confessed with a shy, but disgusted, look on his face. He shook his head as he flipped through the papers on his desk.

Ellen could tell this kid was self involved and wouldn't ask too many questions because he didn't really care about anybody else's life, which made him fairly gullible. Oh, the lessons that come with age, Ellen thought.

Jimmy continued, "They keep telling me that this town doesn't see much work for a coroner, but, man, we've had four in two days."

"Four? I was under the impression that there was only one...??" Ellen sat in the sterile looking chair across from Jimmy.

Jimmy leaned back in his own chair. "Yeah, it was the weirdest thing. Some local kids were out at that old abandonned town down the road tagging the place, you know." He pantomimed using a spraypaint can. "They found a dead girl just at the edge of town and called the cops, then when the cops got there they checked the buildings and found another girl and a guy dead."

"They say what killed 'em?" She put a touch of worry in her voice as she added "Did they drink the kool-aid, or is there a serial killer on the loose?"

"They didn't say much to me; I'm supposed to transpose the recordings they did when they did their autopsies, but I haven't gotten to these yet. Too much other shit to do." He shrugged and pointed again to the pile of paperwork on his desk.

Ellen flipped through the chart on her clipboard. "What about this last guy, the one they found this morning?"

Jimmy rolled his eyes, it was obvious this was not his idea of a career job. "Oh, that guy? Yeah, they said it looks like a stroke. Like, he had it while he was driving and got out and stumbled into the intersection."

"No kiddin'?" She chuckled. "He's kinda young for a stroke, though, isn't he? Says here 'John Doe, approximately early 30's'." She mentally wiped her brow, as the use of the John Doe moniker indicated they didn't figure out who Dean was, or what he was wanted for.

"I don't know. How old are people when they usually get strokes?" He asked, but didn't wait for an answer. "They haven't done the autopsy on that guy yet."

Another mental brow wipe for Ellen. "Huh." She stood, "Well, I don't know about you, but I've been smoking for thirty years and if I go without one for too long...well, it's not pretty. Care to join me?"

Jimmy looked around as if to see if anyone was looking. "Yeah, totally." Then leaned in conspiratorilly, "Don't tell my dad though, dude, he'd kill me."

"Lead the way." Ellen smiled, and followed him to the back alley doorway.

Leaning against the building, she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her lab coat pocket and handed one to Jimmy, lighting his before pulling one for herself. Jimmy puffed away on his cigarette, while Ellen looked on, cigarette unlit.

"So what are you going to study in college, Jimmy?" She asked, trying to distract him from noticing her cigarette.

Jimmy took another drag on his, then as smoke seeped out between his words, he said, "I don't want to even go. My dad is forcing me. I figure I'll just go for the parties, he's paying for it."

Ellen chuckled and put the unlit cigarette to her lips, "Yeah, he'll pay for it in more ways than one, huh?"

Then it happened. Jimmy laughed, then faltered. He lurched forward a bit, then looked back at Ellen with a betrayed look on his face. The laced cigarette was having it's intended affect, and a few short seconds later, Jimmy toppled over, face down on the asphalt, as Ellen took her cell from her pocket and dialed Bobby to pull around to the alley.

Ellen tucked the cigarettes back in her pockets, pulled out a pair of latex gloves and put them on. Since the only other object her fingers had touched since she entered the building was the clipboard, which she planned to take with her, it would make clean up for this con pretty simple.

Bobby rounded the corner in the van, and when he came to a stop jumped out and helped Ellen lift Jimmy's limp form back into the morgue. Once inside, they searched the lockers until they came to Dean's.

Now it was Bobby who faltered. He pulled the trey out of the refrigerated locker and stopped, looking into Dean's face. "Oh, Dean. You stupid ass." He said, his eyes welling with tears.

Ellen shook her head and swallowed, her eyes filling too. After a moment, she cleared her throat. "Bobby, we gotta go."

Bobby wiped his face and cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah." He moved around to the head of the trey. "I'll take his head, you grab his feet, okay?"

"Got it."

Bobby propped Dean up, using his own body to work him into a sitting position, then grabbed him around the waist and lifted him gently off the table, with Ellen mirroring his lifting at Dean's feet. Slowly they made their way to the minivan, and loaded Dean into the back. Bobby had had the foresight to take the removeable seats out back at his junkyard, so laying Dean inside was made fairly easy. They placed a pillow under his head, and covered his naked body with a blanket, which made him look much like he was car camping, and surprisingly peaceful.

As Bobby got behind the wheel and closed his door, he muttered to himself, "Hang on, Sam."