Sharron Howard opened the door to her apartment with enough force to send her long hair flying back away from her face. She was wearing a soft pale blue top and black slacks and a scowl. A scowl that very quickly transformed into something a bit warmer as she clearly inspected Dean and found him somewhat acceptable.
"Can I help you?" she asked. Her tone wasn't exactly friendly, but she seemed at least interested in what he might have to say.
Dean could work with that and was suddenly very happy that Sam had decided to binge on research to try to figure out the symbols they had found carved into poor Haymond and had sent Dean out to do the grunt work of interviewing possible leads.
He smiled at her slowly. "Afternoon," he drawled. "I'm Peter Venkman," he said, letting the name roll of his tongue like it was the most natural thing in the world. Though if he'd known one of their 'kidnapping' victims was going to be hot, he might have gone with something a bit more impressive. Venkman was a damn mouth full, even if he was the cool one of the Ghostbusters. "Can I have a moment of your time?" And okay, it was a bit rough trying to be smooth on the job. But it was all about how you asked, not what you asked.
The door opened a little wider, but the tone stayed the same. "What do you want?"
Dean bit back the unprofessional reply – even though it may have been more welcome that what he really had to ask. "I'm an FBI agent," he told her in the same tone of voice he had when trying to use that line in a bar. "I need to talk to you about – "
She started to slam the door shut and he jerked his arm out to stop it half way. "Whoa, whoa!"
Not only had the scowl returned, ruining what looked like a perfectly good opportunity, but it had grown into something closer to a snarl. "I'm not saying anything and I don't have to." She was pulling on the door hard, but wasn't trying to smash his face in, so he guessed she believed he was a Fed enough not to assault him.
"Look, lady, I don't care about any of that shit," and he had a fairly good idea exactly what shit it was. Small towns were pretty consistent that way. Give them half a chance to talk shit about somebody and they would. It made it hard to be a normal person in town after something supernatural had fucked up your life. "Haymond's dead and we've got reason to worry whatever got him might be interested in you," which was a bit more blunt than he liked to be, but it did the job. She stopped tugging on the door and her eyes went from narrowed angry slits to wide open and freaked out.
"What?"
"Christ," Dean muttered. "Look, can we talk about this? Maybe inside?"
She didn't answer, but she let go of the door and shuffled back a bit. Dean was willing to take that as a yes. He slipped by her into the house, checking out the space automatically. It was a small apartment, old-ish but only in the out-of-date, built in the 80s kind of way and not the historical homes aspirations that some of the other places in town had. She had it decked out all girly with bright colors and decorative crap that seemed to crowd every surface. There was one main room with sightlines to the kitchen - and as far as he could tell no one else was home (always good to check for possible ambushes), there was nothing particularly witchy about (because life had made him twitchy about women and grudges) and he didn't see any dead bodies, body parts or blood (which was always a possibility with this job and should never be ruled out. People were fucking crazy).
Sharron didn't wait for him. She walked straight over to her couch and dropped onto it heavily. "This is so fucked up," she muttered.
Which was something Dean could agree with, but hey, she was still alive and currently all in one piece. So, you know, things could be a lot worse. A LOT worse. But somehow he didn't think she'd appreciate him pointing that out, so he kept it simple, stupid, the way his father had taught him. "That's why I'm here, miss," he told, using the tone of voice he always used with women when he wanted them to think of him as the big strong protector. Sam said it made him sound like he had to cough, but Sammy didn't know shit about women. He moved to sit next to her on the couch, aiming for that magic distance between friendly and creeper. When she kept staring down at the floor looking lost and overwhelmed, he tried scooting just a smidge closer. To be reassuring. "We don't know anything yet, but we don't want to take any chances, now do we?" he told her, hoping she would take the bait. "But in order for me to help protect you, I need to know everything you can tell me. Even if it seems crazy."
Bad word choice! She shot him a glare so fast and so venomous he was a little worried again about checking the house for any witch paraphernalia.
"Not that you're crazy!" he insisted, holding up his hands and not understanding why that made her glare even more. "I didn't say that. I just meant, if there was something you wanted to tell me, that you know, sounded a little crazy. That that would be okay. You know. Cause – what I mean is – things have probably been crazy for you, right? Not you're crazy but that things happening to you are crazy. That kind of crazy. I'm going to stop saying that word now. Trust me, lady, there isn't anything you could tell me that I haven't heard before."
She had her arms crossed and was leaning away from him as much as she could without getting up all together and moving away. But she let him dig himself deeper with every word and didn't say anything. And when he finally got his mouth back under control she just glared at him. Which wasn't reassuring.
"Look, something crazy as fuck happened to Bill Haymond. I don't want it happening to anyone else. Help a guy out here."
She finally softened a bit at that. "I don't know what happened to him."
"I didn't say you did," Dean agreed even though he had learned by now not to rule anybody out.
"And I really don't remember anything," she repeated.
He nodded quickly. "I get that. That's fine. How about we talk about what you do remember, before or after."
"I wasn't drinking," she snapped out.
"Okay. No drinking. I didn't think you were. You left during work, right?"
And this time she flushed a bright pink that he might have called delicate in different setting but right now was more angry red, like someone had slapped her in the face. "I don't – I don't remember saying the things I said at work."
"That's good. I mean, that helps. That means whatever happened, it happened while you were at work, right?"
She shrugged sullenly, but her eyes were watching him.
Dean rallied his best smile. "Alright. So whatever happened, happened while you were at work and you were still capable – physically – of talking and walking. That actually rules out a lot of things, see?"
She nodded slowly, almost begrudgingly.
"Alright. Did you notice anything odd during the part of the day that you remember? Anybody give you anything? You smell anything odd, like rotten eggs or something? Maybe saw somebody acting weird?"
"No. No one gave me anything." She added a shrug, something almost like a wry grin on her face. "And nothing weirder than normal at work. Mr. Green tried to cash another 'check' but he's old enough to be my great grandpa. We all know just to give it back to him and tell him to come by again later. Durrell was a skeezball, again, but he's been like that ever since he left his wife. I – the last thing I remember I was talking to Grace about what to eat for lunch. I don't remember anything after that. Honestly. I would never – " she cut off with a sniffle and Dean was suddenly much more in favor of her being mad and hostile to him than what was coming. "She says I said all kinds of things. Mean things. I mean, sure, she's gained a few pounds since high school but I wouldn't ever say that to her face! And I certainly don't think she's annoying. Grace is a sweetheart, honestly. Anyone who says differently better not where I can hear 'em. Even after – after what I supposedly said to her – when I woke up in that skivvy hotel, all alone and freaked out of my mind, she was the first person I called and she was nothing but nice to me."
"Christo," Dean muttered, just to be sure.
"I know, right?" she agreed blithely. "Christ, what the hell." She looked over at him. "Do you – you think you can figure out what happened? I mean, to me."
"Sure," Dean agreed because what else was he going to say? She didn't want a play-by-play of how often shit like this only got worse. "That's the plan. But I may come by later. Just to check on the house. Maybe leave some stuff behind, like salt by the doors. Don't you worry about that, okay? That all just FBI stuff, okay?"
A normal person would have called him on his bullshit. But normal people didn't cross his line of work too often. And when people were scared, and somebody came along saying 'hey, so do this and everything will be fine' you'd be surprised how often they just went along with it. The trick was not to hesitate or flinch when telling them what to do. If you made it sound sane, people didn't question it as much.
She wasn't buying it all the way, but she nodded slowly. She even smiled a little. "That might be nice. If you stopped by. It's been creepy the last few days, being alone and everything."
Well now. Apparently she bought it more than he thought. Dean smiled slowly, more than happy to take advantage of a good situation.
And then someone knocked on the damn door.
Sharron jumped, startled by the sudden loud noise and Dean cursed silently. An unexpected visitor was generally not a good thing. Sharron only gave him an apologetic look as she got up to answer it. Dean ignored her in favor of moving to the side away from the windows. It wouldn't hide him, but it would give him better cover if the shit really hit the fan. He didn't really expect whatever had sliced and diced good old Bill Haymond to show up on the girl's doorstep, but weirder shit had happened to him.
Though not quite as weird as Fox fucking Mulder.
Sharron had opened the door more widely this time, than she had greeting Dean. Apparently she wasn't as worried about noisy neighbors and invasive cops when she already had one FBI 'agent' in her house. So they both got a good look at each other. The Fed already had his badge out, holding it up in a sloppy crooked kind of half way. Dean had one hand going for his gun even though he knew it wasn't going to do him a damn bit of good. The guy might be annoying as fuck, but Dean wasn't going to shoot him for it. Running was probably the only option, but it wasn't instinctive and it was going to be a damn problem for the case if it got out that not only were Dean and Sam fake agents but, oh, yeah, wanted big time for murder and other crazy-ass shit.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He couldn't walk away from this one. He couldn't give it up and just move on to the next case like they'd done before. Any other time, there'd be plenty of weird shit to go around and he could handle walking away on the justification that the FBI was actually trying to fix things. But whatever this was had Cas's panties in a bunch and that took some serious shit to do.
And while Dean was busy having his own private freak out, Mulder smiled brightly and waved. "Just the man I was looking for!" he exclaimed cheerfully.
It was about the most annoying thing ever and Dean didn't have a choice but standing their mutely, hoping this insanity meant he wasn't going to get arrested immediately. The situation might be salvageable if he could just get out of this room.
"Ah, I didn't realize you'd already be here," Mulder continued. He didn't step into the room though. "Working hard, I see. And where might your other half be, hm?" The man gave a fake laugh that was so obvious it was painfully awkward just being on the other side of it. "Hopefully he's not lurking around here anywhere."
Dean had a moment to be very grateful Sammy wasn't. No sense in both of them getting caught up in this shitstorm. Dean would much rather it be him. Besides, one of them had to be running loose and free if they were going to get the other one of them out. The Fed's eyes were busy scanning the room, clearly looking for his missing bean-pole of a brother and Dean couldn't help but smirk back. Yeah, suit, you better be scared.
But this guy had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming. Instead of understanding the clear threat implied in Dean's cocky grin, the guy was maybe even more chipper than before. "Ms. Howard," he said, shifting his focus so fast Dean almost felt lost and confused. "I hope my counterpart's been very polite and professional."
Dean apparently wasn't the only one confused. Sharron looked like she'd changed her mind about this whole cooperating with the FBI thing and was looking at both of them like they were the crazy ones, not her. "I guess?"
"Oh, okay, that's great. But you know, we need to have a word or two – "
"Actually, I was just leaving," Dean interrupted. A little voice in the back of his head was chanting come on, come on, hurry up and get outta here but he tried to play it cool. "I'll just get out of your way and – "
"Oh, no worries! We can go together. I can drive you back in my car."
"I brought my own."
"Funny, I didn't see it out front, and it's so distinctive. Hard to miss."
Which was exactly why he'd parked it around the block and braved the still icy sidewalks to make it to Sharron's house. The Impala was a beautiful car and deserved to be recognized. Just not when Dean was hip deep in shit.
"I'm sure you've got your own questions to ask," Dean tried but Mulder spoke right over him.
"Oh, no. I'm sure you've been very…specific. But I'm sure we've taken up enough of Ms. Howard's time. You can catch me up somewhere else. I'd love to sit down and talk. We haven't had a chance to do that, have we? Sit down and talk. Not since that diner. We really out to do that. I'd love to hear your theories on all this. But I'm afraid we really ought to be going. So nice of you to make the time, Ms. Howard. We'll just get out of your hair. Wouldn't want to cause you any trouble. Here, you go first," he said, clearly addressing the last part to Dean as he finally moved. He stepped out of the doorway, into the house instead of backwards, putting himself sideways in front of Sharron. He had to be crowding her in the most awkward way ever but it was a clear message meant for Dean not to get any funny ideas about hurting her or using her as a meat shield. It'd be insulting if it wasn't the same thing Dean would have done if their roles had been reversed.
It also didn't stop Dean from rolling his eyes and sharing a look with Sharron that made it clear he agreed this guy was nuts. He gave her one last playful smile – no sense burning that bridge if he didn't have to – before squaring his shoulders and stepping out to face the music.