II
Little bird,
Rests by my side,
Wishing I was free
He couldn't remember his parents' faces. When he thought of his mother, he remembered thinking that she was like the sun and could feel soft kisses tickling his cheeks. He remembered riding in a big black car with his father, listening to the music on the radio and being surrounded by the smell of leather and motor oil. He could remember the little things, like how his mother's hands were skilled enough to smoothly take the skin off an apple without once nicking her fingers with the knife; or how his father would toss him high into the air and catch him before he hit the ground. Sometimes he'd wake up grasping at the memory of their voices. But he couldn't remember their faces.
He remembered Sammy. He remembered that chubby smiling baby with the big eyes that used to stare back at him as he'd murmur stories into little ears. It's a well-worn memory, like the pages of his copies of Vonnegut. He remembered the weight and what it felt like to carry Sammy out of the house; just as he remembered his father's saying,
"Take your brother outside as fast as you can – don't look back!"
He remembered watching his house consumed by flames. His father never came back. His mother never got out.
By the time the neighbors got to him, the firemen leading the way, they found him rocking back and forth on his knees, whispering endlessly,
"It's alright, Sammy. I got you. I'm gonna take care of you. Nothing's gonna happen to you. I promise. I'm here, Sammy."
He's running. Flames are licking at his feet. Fire roars around him and heavy smoke fills his lungs. In an act of desperation, Sam jumps.
He falls
And dives into a pool of cool dark water. It is bottomlessly deep. He is surrounded by silence and darkness.
But then there is a pinprick of light. With hardly any sound Sam swims his way towards the light. He is swimming though air. Floating high above a house. He knows he must get closer. He must go inside. He swims his way down, finding an open window to slip through.
The lights are on, blindingly bright. A man in a tan trench coat walks beneath him. All Sam can see of the man head is his messy, dark brown hair. He crosses under Sam, a silver knife glinting in his hand. Sam opens his mouth to yell, but there is no sound.
There's a woman tied to a chair. She's struggling desperately to break free of her bonds. She's screaming profanities, trying to keep the man focused on her. She knows, just as Sam knows, that her son is hiding in the closet, and the man is getting closer and closer, and if only she could distract him, maybe her son could survive this, please not Ben, please, Oh God, Ben no!
The boy goes down swinging. He tries to beat the man with a baseball bat, but it does no good. The man in the trench coat is a relentless force. Ben puts up a good fight. The man doesn't let him suffer a slow death. He catches the boy before he could crumple to the ground, bleeding from where he was stabbed in the heart; the man lays Ben down gently and closes the boy's eyes.
The man returns his gaze to the sobbing mother. She has stopped struggling, her despair weighing down her limbs as well as her spirit. The man walks over to her and bends so that their eyes are level and catches her gaze. In her dark brown eyes, Sam sees the steady gaze of a deer locking eyes with hunter. She spits in the man's face. Sam expects the man to hit her in the face, but the man does not. Instead, Sam hears the rumble of a gravely, earthy voice accompanied with the sound of an inhuman screeching pitch. The screech gets louder and louder, to a point where Sam can no longer hear what the man is saying. But he knows the words, because they are rattling his bones, sympathetic vibrations resonating deep within his person until he wanted to scream out from the pain of it.
"We are born with death in our lungs. The Mother and the Child are the initiation from which there is no return. They are Life personified, and Death cannot exist where there is no Life. Do you understand now? The Mother and Child must be sacrificed to fulfill the first rite."
And then there is silence and darkness. Sam's floats and drifts in nothingness.
Sam wakes up with a jolt. He sucks cold air into his lungs and takes in the texture of his ceiling as he feels the dream world drain from his consciousness. He turns and finds himself looking into the green eyes of his wife. He takes in her concern with tired eyes.
"Hey Jess."
"Hey." There's the heavy pause of silence between them. That is one of the beautiful things about the two of them. They can find the depths of the other's soul without words as a guide. Sometimes Sam wonders what his life would be like without her, weaving in and out of his life like a thread of gold, or loving him with a warmth like the sunlight that streams through their bedroom window in the spring. In between these thoughts and his attempts to mentally shed weight of the dream, Sam's work phone goes rings. He flinches, then reaches for it where it flashes on top of his night stand.
"Wesson."
"Well Saminator, you'll never believe it."
"Gabriel?" Out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees Jess roll her eyes. He lays on his side, focusing on her as he listens to the voice on the phone continue to rattle on.
"You called it. I'm at a crime scene that matches Smith's first victims; a single mother and her son. The coroner is still on his way up, but from the state of decay, I'd say they've been dead since Friday evening."
"Three days and nobody noticed?"
"Would you believe me if I said somebody stuck a Febreeze thingy in the vent?"
"No."
He hears Gabriel sigh over the phone, and in his mind's eye Sam sees Gabriel running a hand through his hair in frustration.
"I don't know what to say, Sam. No witnesses here. Still haven't found anyone who knew anything about the Engel crime scene. Signs of forced entry and struggle all around, but no trace evidence left behind that forensic has been able to put to any use. It's a copycat, Sam. And one who knew Smith's M.O. to a T."
"There's a note."
"Give the boy a prize," and then the tell-tale crackle of a plastic wrapper before Gabriel pops another sucker into his mouth and then proceeds to talk around it, "Yeah. I'm bagging it right about…now. You can come look at it when you come in. I already called Ash in, so he's going to meet us at the station."
"Right."
"See you there."
"Gabriel wait."
"Yes?"
Sam swallows, then continues,
"What are their names?"
"Braeden. Lisa and Ben Braeden."
Sam shuts his phone, resisting the urge to hurl it across the room; instead, squeezing it in a tight grip. Jess brings up a hand to cup his face, the warmth soothing the tension he feels.
"Do you want to talk?"
Sam sits up and stretches his arms and his back. He picks up his badge and lightly tosses and catches it, eyes focused on a corner of the ceiling.
"Do you remember the Dean Smith case from five years ago?"
Jess sits up as well, wrapping her arms around her knees and tilting her head attentively.
"The Silent Hunter? How could I forget? You almost died. Gabriel almost died."
He gets up and gets dressed. The dead have all the time in the world, but the living who solve the mystery of their death need all the time they can get. If the murderer was following Smith's path, he would kill again.
"Last night there was a murder that matched Cassie Robinson, his third victim; left a note behind and everything. They just found two others that match Amy Pond and her son."
"And the nightmare? Was it one of your dreams?"
"Yes."
Ash holds up the letter from the Braeden crime scene and compares it to the photograph of the Pond letter.
"Sam, you and Gabriel worked the original case."
"Yeah."
Sam holds the original Pond letter, running a finger tip along the words.
Babybro,
I wish we'd had an apple pie life. Thought I'd try it for myself, but it's not the same without you.
"No prints left behind. Like Smith. No witnesses at the scene. Like Smith. No trace evidence that's led to any leads. Also like Smith. How do you want to explain it?" He passes Sam the Braeden letter.
"I don't want to explain it."
Dearheart,
I wish we'd had a house. I wish our lives were perfect and that we could be a family together. It's not the same without you.
They had never allowed the media access to the content of the letters. The only people who knew the words Smith left behind were the investigating officers and anyone else with access to the case files. Their copycat must be someone who was either close to Dean Smith or obsessed with him. Gabriel bursts into the room waving a file triumphantly.
"Forensics just in. The Braedens-"
"Were killed by the same weapon; a smooth bladed knife. The son, Ben, died first. His mother's throat was cut shortly after. The killer left the letter on the mantel piece."
"Robocop strikes again. He hasn't even looked at the crime scene photos yet."
Gabriel pulls a face.
"I hate when you do that."
Ash leans back in his chair and holds a pencil up to his lip.
"Are you officially working this case with us now, Laufeysen?"
"Yes. And I've been instructed by Singer to keep myself out of the way of any firefights. He forgets that I used to be a professional."
"Can you blame him? You practically worship the sugar plum fairy."
Gabriel rolls his eyes and throws a purple jolly rancher at Ash's head.
"Singer's giving us a task force to handle this thing. We're supposed to brief them in an hour," he picked up the case file and started walking out, "Come on! Day light's burning."
A/N Slow updates are slow.