Chapter 18

Dean's eyes narrowed, "Rebecca Hale."

"She's the first person I think of; but how could she have gotten the jump on them? I mean, Weston and Donovan were the only ones who were attacked from behind; she might have been able to get the jump on them. But the others were full frontal, they would have seen in coming and it wouldn't take much to stop her."

"She's a woman. She probably distracted them with her...feminine wyles or something."

Sam smirked, "Feminine wyles?"

"Shut up," Dean snapped before Sam could say anything more.

Sam held up his hand in a I'm leaving it alone gesture and continued with what he was going to say, "How do we know if it's her?" He had asked the question as more of a thought process than an actual question; but Dean responded anyway.

"We ask her."

"We ask her?"

Dean sighed and rolled his eyes, "Are we going to keep repeating what the other one says before moving on or can we actually move on?"

Sam ignored him, "You want to just walk up to this grieving widow and ask, 'Hey have you been killing off all the people around here? People who tried to help your husband?'"

Dean stared at his brother and listened with a blank, but amused, expression before answering, "Well I figured we'd flash our badges, she'd let us in, we'd make her all comfortable with us, and then we'd ask her."

"Dean..."

Dean threw up his hands, "I don't know what you want me to tell you Sammy. You're the one with the puppy dog eyes of doom; you think of something." He walked around his bed and sat down, "Do I have to do everything?" After a few heart beats of scowling at each other, he laid back onto the bed and said, "You're research boy...so research."

Silently, Sam grabbed a pillow off his bed and threw it hard down onto his brother's face. Dean bolted uprigh and glared at Sam. "We aren't going to learn anything online that we didn't already know."

Dean continued to scowl for a long time; but soon his face turned into a look of deep concentration. After a few minutes he stood up and started towards the door, "Come on Snoopy." Just before he passed Sam, he reached around and biffed him upside the back of his head, Gibbs style. Sam's head snapped forward and he slowly turned to give Dean a dirty look. "Don't dish out what you can't take," Dean smirked before turning out the door. Sam just grit his teeth and followed him out to the Impala.

Sam and Dean had been sitting in the Impala outside Rebecca Hale's house for hours and of course, as always, the smacks and jabs had escalated until Sam yelled. Dean, of course, still couldn't help sneaking in a few more pokes and prods before Rebecca finally left.

The loud squeaks of the Impala's doors reminded Sam to pick up some WD-40 before there next stake out. He'd have to sneak out in the middle of the night again to spray it on the hinges because, of course, Dean thought the squeaks and groans of "his baby" were just a part of being a classic. One of these days those classic squeaks were going to cause a classic problem; like a blown sneak-up attempt for example. As was usually the case, Dean bent down to pick the lock while Sam tried to nonchalantly glance around for any potential witnesses. Dean stood up and opened the door then he turned to Sam and blew on the end of his lock-pick before shoving them back in his pocket. Sam rolled his eyes, dork.

The inside of the house was as "cute" as the outside was and it was glaringly obvious that Emmett had let Rebecca have her way with every inch of the place. There wasn't a single visible item that said that a man lived (or had lived) there, Dean noticed. "It looks like Martha Stewart threw up in here," he said as he looked over the knick-knacks that probably costed her three times what it had cost the lucky schmuck who had made them.

Sam started to look through papers on the desk in the livingroom while Dean went upstairs. They hoped that splitting up the house would allow them to search it thuroughly before she came back; whenever that was. Most of the stack were hospital bills with red "Past Due" stamps on them; getting back to normal was expensive. For the first time, Sam was happy that he and Dean never had to worry about that; credit card fraud had it's advantages.

He searched every inch of the livingroom, kitchen, dining room, and basement but found nothing. None of the set of knives on the counter were missing, there wasn't a suspicious amount of duct tape in the pantry, and her spice rack held nothing cinnamon and nutmeg; no wolfsbane or hair of dog in sight.

The first room Dean came to was a bathroom and after a quick search under the sink and through the drawers, he moved on. The house was small and there were only three more doors down the hall. The first door was to the master bedroom and the vibrant dots of Harley Davidson black and orange were refreshing after so much robin's egg blue and lavender. So this is were she forced all the masculinity of the house he thought to himself. He started on the side of the room closest to him which was obviously hers. After finding nothing in her dresser or nightstand that said, "I'm a serial killer" to him, he moved on to Emmett's side. On the night stand were two photos; one of he and Rebecca on their wedding day and one of a beautiful, gleaming black Harley Davidson. It was obvious in a second that the photo wasn't a "man I love my bike" photo but more of a "one day..." photo. Too bad that day would never come. Dean turned around and pulled open the closet and was a little confused by what he saw. Instead of the usual scene where the woman's clothes pushed the man's into one little corner of the "shared" closet; the majority of the space was filled with masculine t-shirts and dress clothes. He pulled box after box off the shelf above the clothes but found nothing but shoes, hats, and cheesy holiday socks. He found nothing between or behind the hanging clothes and no "murder kit" sat at the bottom of the closet either. He closed the closet and sighed in frustration. Maybe they had it all wrong.

He hollered, "Find anything?" down the stairway before continuing to the next room when Sam shouted "No" in return. He pulled open the door at the end of the hall and wasn't surprised when it turned out to be nothing more than a linen closet. Finally he opened the last door and stopped dead in his tracks. He didn't know what to think as he took in the powder blue nursery in front of him. Of course, like the rest of the house, it was picture perfect; from the grand white crib to the wide-eyed baby animals painted on the walls. Rebecca hadn't looked pregnant when they had spoke to her; this was a room of what they had thought their future would hold and that thought got to Dean. Then he saw all the other, out-of-place things in the room, and realized the place was filled with loss. All arond the little room sat the things that had been missing down stairs; pictures of Emmett and Rebecca together and ugly pictures that guys love but their wives and girlfriends insist would look better in rooms out of sight of visitors. Every piece of Emmett.

It was a shrine.

Unsettled, Dean quickly looked around the room, careful not to move anything from its place and left. He almost ran into Sam as he came to the bottom of the stairs. "Find anything?" Sam asked.

Sam's voice pulled Dean out of his head, "No. You?"

"No." Sam noticed the look on Sam's face, "You alright?"

Dean looked him in the eye and was about to say something when a car pulled into the driveway. Sam ducked and looked out the window, "It's her. There's a door through the kitchen, come on."

Dean followed his brother quickly into the kitchen as Rebecca came to the front door. He saw her pause after she turned the key and realized the door had already been unlocked. She glanced around her and cautiously stepped back before glancing at the windows. It was still early, Sam and Dean had been too busy digging up Emmett's grave to sleep last night, so he knew she couldn't see through the windows; but he froze when she looked right at him. It seemed like a long time; but it must have been a second before her gaze continued to the next window and Sam smacked him on the arm. As he closed the door behind him, he saw her dialing her cell phone and hurrying off the porch.

Sam and Dean had cut through a few yards before they walked around the corner and back to the awaiting Impala. "That was close," Sam mumbled.

"Understatment," Dean responded while he stared back at Rebecca Hale's house.

Sam noticed his brother's oddly depressed demeanor, "You okay?"

"Yeah..."

"Did you see something in there?" Sam asked but Dean just gave a uncommitted grunt in repsonse. Sam waited for awhile but Dean never elaborated or made any move to start the car and leave so he started to think out loud. "Something was off in there..." he ran his hand through his hair, "I didn't see one picture of her husband in there. Heck, there wasn't even anything that told me a man had ever lived there..."

Dean sighed and turned his attention from the house to the steering wheel, "She moved it all upstairs." He glanced at Sam, "It was there, she just couldn't handle see it all the time. It doesn't mean she forgot about him."

"Makes sense," Sam mumbled as he thought of Jess.

Dean seemed to snap back to himself and he started the Impala, "Anyway, the point is we didn't find anything that screamed "serial killer." Sam nodded in agreement, "We should probably get out of here before the cops show up."