Sam dropped into one of the library chairs and opened his laptop. Dean would be better off distracted with monster hunts than just being allowed to wallow. He checked a few news feeds and alerts that he'd set up and started to read. He sensed more than heard Cas enter the room.
"How's Dean doing?" he asked. Cas looked unhappy.
"He's sleeping for now. I wish he would let me help him." he said miserably. Sam gave him a sympathetic smile as the angel flopped gracelessly into a chair.
"I found a case for you," he said suddenly. He looked tense and Sam blinked in surprise.
"OK," he said cautiously. "What's the deal?" The angel reached out and Sam let him drag the laptop across the table. He tapped at it for a few moments then pushed it back over to Sam. The young Winchester looked at the website the angel had pulled up and started to read, trying to ignore the way Cas fidgeted opposite him. Sam gave the angel a searching look.
"It sounds like it might be worth checking out. You seem very...disturbed by it." Cas looked away.
"It...reminds me of something," he said unhelpfully. "An old memory. Do not concern yourself about it." Sam pulled a face.
"I don't like being left in the dark, Cas," he told the angel irritably. Cas stood up.
"It's not important," he insisted and strode out of the room, effectively shutting down the conversation. Cas had learned some very bad habits from Dean, Sam thought. He turned his attention back to his computer.
After an hour or so, he was distracted by a shuffling sound. He looked up to see Dean, freshly showered and dressed and looking marginally more human than he had earlier.
"Hey!" Sam said with a smile. "You look better." Dean gave him a pained grin.
"Is Cas around?" he asked. Sam shook his head.
"He was here earlier. I don't know where he went." Sam peered at his brother. "You up to talking about a possible case?" Dean actually brightened at that.
"A case? Yeah, sure."
"OK, so get this," Sam replied. "A few weeks ago, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, a local pastor at a church is accused of some pretty inappropriate behavior with several young women in the choir. Well, that happens, people are people after all. After that, a lifelong vegan by the name of Terry Wood attends the local county fair and goes hog-wild at the BBQ - I mean he eats so much meat he actually kills himself." Dean grimaced.
"Dude's a vegan, then goes and eats all the pig he can shove down his gullet? Wow. Is this like when we ran into Famine?" Sam thought his brother looked a little nauseous.
"I thought so too at first, but then I came across another case, a guy called Mike Waters. Mike was a hippy back in the day. Still very much a peace and love kinda guy, definitely not the kind of person you'd think would go nuts and spray his local supermarket with bullets. He killed four people and injured over a dozen more before an off-duty policeman was able to take him out. According to the blotter, Waters never owned a gun before. He apparently went out, bought a small arsenal and decided to attack the grocery store." Sam leaned back, raking one hand through his hair. "I don't know if it is our sort of thing, but Cas thought it might be worth checking out."
"Cas?" Dean said, surprised. "Why did it catch his attention?" Sam shook his head.
"No idea, he seemed real agitated about it though."
"What's your theory? Witches?" Dean asked.
"Yeah, I'm thinking witch, maybe. Some kind of spell that makes people behave out of character. Or it could be a cursed object." Sam told him. Dean scratched at his stubble, thinking.
"Yeah, that works. OK, I'll tell Cas we're heading out." He dragged himself up from the table.
"He could come with, if you want," Sam said. "He did find the case after all. And it would get him out of the bunker for a bit." Dean shook his head emphatically and Sam frowned.
"Nah, he's good. Working on some translation of an book he got off eBay." Dean explained. That seemed kind of weak to Sam but he wasn't going to push it.
"OK, well give me an hour to wrap up a couple things and then we'll hit the road."
In the car, Dean cranked the radio up to eleven, and began to sing along, tapping his fingers on the wheel. Sam regarded him carefully, his brother was hard to read but there were a number of tells that Sam had identified over the years and this was one of them. Something had disturbed Dean's orbit and Sam wondered what it could have been. He cast his mind back over the last few weeks. He'd been serious when he'd suggested to Cas that the problem could be related to Crowley, but if that was what was eating at his brother, then it suggested that he still felt some lingering friendship towards the demon. Since Crowley was at least partly at fault for the whole mess they found themselves in, that seemed strange. Sam would happily have killed him long ago were it not for the fact that they had no idea who would rise in his place.
"So, how are you feeling, Dean? Any last lingering side effects from the Mark of Cain?" he asked. Dean turned off the radio.
"You wanna talk about this now?" he asked. Sam furrowed his brow. Was the question that controversial?
"Uh, yeah? I mean, we haven't talked about it so far and I figure that we should." Sam replied uncertainly. Dean harrumphed and his fingers tightened on the wheel.
"OK, fine. I'm fine. No side effects. We done? Good." Sam couldn't help but bark out a laugh.
"All right then. Sorry." He turned away to look out of the window at the passing countryside.
"I feel bad, OK." Dean said suddenly, after a considerable pause. Sam rotated his head so quickly it made him dizzy.
"Define bad?" he said in surprise. His brother sighed.
"About Cas. I beat him within an inch of his life," he frowned in memory. "I came so close to just ending him, just stabbing him with that angel blade over and over and-" his voice cracked and he broke off.
"But you didn't," Sam reminded him. "You stopped. And Cas has forgiven you. Hell, you let him beat the crap out of you just a few weeks ago and wouldn't let him heal you because you felt you had it coming. Seems to me you guys are even. Not that I think Cas thinks about it that way, but you know. You guys are cool now, right?" Dean swallowed.
"I dunno, man," he said after a long pause. "I mean, he isn't holding a grudge or anything because, well, he's Cas. I don't think he does grudges, at least not anymore."
"Not when it comes to you, you mean," Sam grinned. "The rest of us, I wouldn't be so sure."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Dean growled and Sam kicked himself.
"Nothing. Just that your friendship's been through a lot more than most relationships, that's all."
"OK, we're done here." Dean announced. He reached out and turned the radio back on.
Lewisburg was a small town with a quaint air to it, like it had been frozen in time. This part of central Pennsylvania was not well populated and the closest major cities were all hours away. Sam quite liked it, but Dean seemed less impressed. They checked into a local motel and then drove across the river into Milton to talk to the state troopers there.
Trooper Hudson was an large, amiable man with a bushy beard and more to say about his lovely daughters than anything useful on the case.
"Honestly, I can't really understand why the Feds would send you boys up here on this one," he told them. "It's an open-and-shut case. I have two dozen eyewitnesses say they saw Mike Waters open fire on shoppers in the store. I have three witnesses who saw him in the gun store buying the weapons. Mike himself admits that he did it. Sam and Dean exchanged glances.
"I thought he had been killed. Can we talk to him?" Dean said. The trooper rolled his eyes.
"Shot, yeah. Through the leg. He's in the hospital, I can call my guy there, tell him to expect you."
"Great, thanks." Sam smiled. The trooper handed over a copy of the file.
"There's not much in there that'll help you. But never let it be said I don't know my duty."
Hudson had told the Winchesters that Mike Waters was supposed to be guarded at all times. But when they finally found his room at the hospital, there was nobody to be seen. Peeking around the door, Sam and Dean saw that Waters was sound asleep. Coughing theatrically, Dean strode into the room and flashed his badge at the man in the bed when he awoke.
"I'm Special Agent Taylor, this is my partner, Special Agent Deacon." Dean introduced.
"FBI?" Waters spluttered. "What do you want?"
"We're here to talk about what happened at the Food Market two days ago," Sam told him.
"There's nothing to tell," Waters said stubbornly. "I got up, I went to the gun store, I bought a bunch of guns and ammo, and I went and shot up the place. End of story."
"We'd like to understand why you did this, Mr Waters," Sam prodded. Waters shifted restlessly in the bed.
"Why? What does it matter? I confessed. Period." Sam made a quelling gesture.
"I understand that, but we would still like to know why a man who has never so much as raised a fist to another man his entire life would suddenly go on a rampage like this." Waters was sullen.
"It was a gift," he said. Sam looked at him in bewilderment.
"What do you mean?" he asked. Waters looked down at the floor, unwilling to elaborate. "Mr Waters, you killed four people. We need to know if anyone else is going to do what you did."
"At the fair, there was a fortune teller. She told me she could give me a gift. I had to tell her my deepest, darkest secret wish. And if I did, she said I would receive the gift of fulfillment. And she was right. I told her that I have been a pacifist all my life, and people disrespect me for that. Like it's a bad thing. It makes me so mad, I wanted to teach them a lesson. And that's what she gave me, the courage to act on that impulse." He slumped further down the bed.
"It doesn't seem like a very good deal," Sam said carefully. "I mean, you're going to prison, probably for the rest of your life. Why would you agree to something like that?"
"I don't know," Waters said miserably. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Sam and Dean made their way down to the morgue, to talk to the pathologist, a snub-nosed, stocky woman with a shock of curly brown hair and a cheery demeanor that seemed wildly out of keeping with her profession.
"Feebies, huh?" She grinned when presented with their badges. "Don't get much of the Men in Black treatment up here in the sticks."
"We'd like to talk to you about Terry Wood," Sam told her. She sobered a little.
"Yeah, that was a nasty one." She ushered them into her office and pulled a file from her desk. "He hadn't eaten meat in forty years. His body would have been totally unequipped to cope with it. And he ate so much that he actually ruptured his stomach. It was like he was possessed. I've never seen anything like it. He ate himself to death."
"Did you know the victim?" Dean asked. She frowned in thought.
"Not really. I mean, we attended the same church so I knew who he was, but not more than to say hello to." Sam's ears pricked up.
"Which church would that be?" he asked and she narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.
"First Presbyterian. Why?" Sam smiled reassuringly at her.
"We're just trying to find out if another case is connected to this one, like if the victims knew each other." Her brow cleared.
"You're talking about Mike Waters. Yes, he attends our church too. Not regularly, he isn't the most devout soul, but I've seen him there from time to time." She hesitated and began to look nervous. "That was what you meant, right?"
"Well-" Sam started.
"This is about Pastor Blayze, isn't it?" she exclaimed. "Well, I for one don't believe any of it. A more Godly man, a pastor more committed to his flock you could not hope to meet. I think those girls are wicked, very wicked indeed to say such terrible things." She folded her arms defensively across her bosom and glared at them.
"We're very sorry, Ma'am, but you understand we have to investigate all angles," Dean said sternly. Her shoulders slumped.
"I suppose. But I'm telling you, Pastor Blayze is innocent."
Outside in the corridor, Sam chewed at his lip.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"Not sure," his brother replied. "I mean the fortune teller angle, could be a witch yeah. But unless we know that the other victims also met with her, it could also just be some New Age type with crystals and an active imagination."
"But there is a case here, right?" Sam pressed. Dean looked puzzled.
"Yeah, man. I think so. Why, don't you?" Sam frowned.
"I dunno. I mean, yeah I think there's a case. But I also get the feeling we're being led around by the nose," he explained. Dean looked troubled.
"You wanna check out the church?" he asked. Sam nodded.
"I think that's the logical next step. Too many threads of this case seem to connect there."