Sam and Dean sat at one computer together, Dean in control of the screen. Mack was playing with her rabbit in her car seat on the floor next to them. Dean typed the words 'Female Murder Hitchhiking' into the search bar and hit GO. The screen told him there are '(0) Result'. He replaced 'Hitchhiking' with 'Centennial Highway' and got the same response. "Let me try," Sam reached forward to take the keyboard from him. Dean slapped his hand away. "I got it."
Sam shoved Dean's roll-y chair back, taking over. "Dude!" Dean protested, hitting him on the shoulder. "You're such a control freak." He looked down, checking on Mack as Sam spoke. "So, angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?" Dean nodded. "Yeah." Sam glanced back at him. "So, maybe it's not murder." He replaced the word 'Murder' with 'Suicide' in the search bar and hit Go. That got one result- an article entitled "Suicide on Centennial". Dean glanced over at Sam as he clicked on the article, skimming through it.
"This was 1981," Sam said as he read. "Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river." Dean had reached down, taking Mack's rabbit and was playing with her while Sam worked. "Does it say why she did it?" he asked, continuing to play with his daughter. She was giggling and reaching for the rabbit. "Yeah," Sam answered. "What?" Dean asked, smiling down at Mack even though he was actually worried about Sam's tone. "An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die."
Dean stopped playing with Mack, swallowing hard. He dropped the rabbit back in her car seat, turning to skim the article himself. He found the section Sam had just read from: 'Deputy J. Pierce told reporters that, hours before her death, Ms. Welch logged a call with 911 emergency services. In a panicked tone, Ms. Welch described how she found her two young children, 5 and 6, in the bathtub, after leaving them alone for several [minutes]...' Dean stopped reading. He wondered what Mack would be like at that age. He didn't want to imagine losing her like that.
"'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch," Sam continued reading aloud. "That bridge look familiar to you?" Dean asked him, nodding at the picture of Joseph in front of Sylvania Bridge; the same place where Troy died.
They returned to the bridge that night to investigate, leaving Mack sleeping in the car while they paced the length of the bridge, stopping to lean on the railing and look down at the river. "So, this is where Constance took the swan dive," Dean said. "So, you think Dad would have been here?" Sam looked over at his brother. "Well, he's chasing the same story, and we're chasing him."
Dean started walking back toward the Impala, Sam following. "Okay, so now what?" Sam asked. "Now we keep digging until we find him. Might take a while." Sam stopped in his tracks. "Dean, I told you, I gotta get back by Monday-" Dean stopped, turning around. "Monday. Right. The interview," he nodded. "Yeah," Sam nodded back. "Yeah, I forgot. You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just gonna become some lawyer? Marry your girl?"
"Maybe. Why not?"
"Does Jessica know the truth about you?" Dean pressed. "I mean, does she know about the things you've done?" Sam took a step closer to him. "No, and she's not ever gonna know." Dean snorted. "Well, that's healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later, you're going to have to face up to who you really are." Dean turned around, continuing his path toward the Impala. "And who's that?" Sam asked, following once more. "You're one of us."
Sam rushed forward, cutting Dean off and forcing him to stop in his tracks once more. "No. I'm not like you. This is not going to be my life." Dean glared at his brother. "You have a responsibility to-" he started. "To Dad?" Sam cut him off. "And his crusade? If it weren't for pictures, I wouldn't even know what Mom looked like. And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone. And she isn't coming back."
Dean grabbed Sam's collar angrily, shoving him up against the railing of the bridge. They stared at each other for a long moment, not saying anything. "Don't talk about her like that," Dean hissed. He let Sam go, walking away, and spotted Constance standing at the edge of the bridge. "Sam," he called. Sam walked over to stand next to him, also seeing the ghost. Constance looked over at them, then stepped forward over the edge of the bridge. The brothers ran over to the spot where she'd been, looking over.
"Where'd she go?" Dean asked. "I don't know," Sam shrugged. Behind them, the Impala's engine started and the headlights turned on. They both turned to look. "What the-" Dean started. "Mack!" Sam frowned, "Who's driving your car?" Dean reached into his pocket, taking the keys out and jingling them. Sam glanced over at them right before the car jerked into motion, heading straight for them. They both turned and ran. "Dean? Go! Go!" Sam cried. The car was moving faster than they were, and when it got too close, they both dove over the railing. The car skidded to a halt.
Sam had managed to grab onto the edge of the bridge, and hauled himself up, looking around. "Dean? Dean!" Below, he spotted his older brother crawling out of the water onto the mud, panting. "What?" Dean called up. "Hey! Are you alright?" Sam asked. Dean held up an A-OK sign. "I'm super. Mack?" Sam retreated from the edge to check on his niece in the back of the Impala while Dean made his way up to the bridge. She was still sleeping soundly in her car seat, the short ghost ride seeming not to have affected her at all. "Is she-?" Dean asked as he approached. "She's fine," Sam replied. "Still sleeping."
Dean glanced in for himself, relaxing a little when he saw his daughter asleep. He circled around to the front of the car, checking under the hood for any damage. "Your car alright?" Sam asked when he closed it back up and leaned against it. "Yeah, whatever she did to it, seems alright now. That Constance chick, what a bitch!" Dean yelled the last word in the direction of the bridge railing where they'd originally spotted the ghost. "Well, she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure. So, where's the job go from here, genius?" Sam settled down on the hood next to Dean, who threw his arms up in frustration, flicking mud off his hands.
Sam sniffed, wrinkling his nose and looking over at Dean. "You smell like a toilet," he told him. Dean looked down in defeat.
When they went to check into the motel the next morning, the clerk in the lobby told them about the room John had rented out for the whole month. So, they headed to John's room and picked the lock, sneaking inside. Every vertical surface had papers pinned to it: maps, newspaper clippings, pictures, notes. Books and other assorted junk littered the floor and bed, including something with a hazardous-materials symbol. Dean set Mack's car seat down on the floor at the foot of the bed while they looked around. "Whoa," Sam breathed.
Dean turned on the light by the bed, picking up a half-eaten burger sitting there. He sniffed it, recoiling. "I don't think he's been here for a couple days, at least," he said, putting the burger down. Sam crouched, pinching some of the salt left in a line on the floor. "Salt, cat's-eye shells... he was worried," he noted, looking up. "Trying to keep something from coming in." Dean walked over, looking at some of the pictures on the wall. "What have you got here?" Sam joined him.
"Centennial Highway victims," Dean replied. Sam nodded, looking at the pictures of all the men. "I don't get it," Dean said as Sam moved to look at another wall. "I mean, different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?" Sam turned on a lamp to better see the other papers taped to the wall. "Dad figured it out," he said. Dean turned to look. "What do you mean?" He walked over to look with Sam.
"He found the same article we did. Constance Welch," Sam tapped the article with his finger. "She's a woman in white." Dean looked back at the pictures of Constance's victims. "You sly dogs," he smirked. "Alright, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it."
"She might have another weakness."
"Well, Dad would want to make sure," Dean pointed out. "He'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?" Sam shook his head. "No, not that I can tell. If I were Dad, though, I'd ask her husband. If he's still alive." Sam moved out of the way while Dean leaned in to take a closer look at the wall. "Alright. Why don't you, uh, see if you can find an address, I'm gonna get cleaned up." Dean started to walk away but stopped when Sam spoke. "Hey, Dean?" Dean turned back to look at him. "What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry." Dean held up his hand.
"No chick-flick moments," he said. Sam laughed, nodding. "Alright. Jerk." Dean smirked. "Bitch." Sam laughed again and Dean turned, heading into the bathroom. When he emerged, clean and in a fresh change of clothes, Sam was sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to a voicemail from Jess. "Hey, man. I'm starving, I'm gonna grab something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?" he asked, shrugging on his jacket. "No," Sam shook his head. "Aframian's buying," Dean smirked. Sam shook his head again. Dean nodded, grabbing Mack's car seat and heading out the door.
As he got over to the Impala, he looked over and saw a police car. The motel clerk was talking to Deputy Jaffe and Deputy Hein from the bridge. The clerk pointed over at him, and he turned away from them, pulling out his cell phone and dialing Sam. "What?" Sam asked. "Dude, five-oh, take off," Dean told him. "What about you and Kinley?"
"Uh, they kind of spotted us. Go find Dad." Dean hung up, turning to face the deputies with a grin on his face. "Problem, officers?" he asked. "Where's your partner?" Jaffe asked him. "Partner? What, what partner?" Jaffe glanced over his shoulder, jabbing his thumb toward the motel room. Hein headed that direction and Dean fidgeted in place, adjusting his grip on Mack's car seat. "So. Fake US Marshal. Fake credit cards. You got anything that's real?" Jaffe asked Dean.
"My boobs."
Dean grinned, and was promptly slammed over the hood of the cop car and placed in handcuffs.
"Where's my daughter?" Dean asked when the sheriff joined him in the interrogation room. "She's fine. We have some officers looking after her until social services arrives to pick her up. So, you want to give us your real name?" the sheriff asked, setting a box he was carrying on the table. "I told you, it's Nugent. Ted Nugent," Dean replied, freaking out internally, but not showing it. If social services showed up before he could break out, he'd never see Mack again.
"I'm not sure you realize how much trouble you're in here," the sheriff frowned. "We talkin', like, misdemeanor kind of trouble or, uh, squeal like a pig trouble?" Dean quipped. "You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall." Dean looked away and the sheriff continued. "Along with a whole lot of Satanic mumbo-jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect."
"That makes sense," Dean scoffed. "Because when the first one went missing in '82 I was three." The sheriff smirked. "I know you've got partners. One of 'em's an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing. So tell me. Dean." He tossed a brown leather-covered journal on the table. "That his?" Dean stared at the journal, expressionless. The sheriff sat on the edge of the table, pulling the journal back toward him and flipping through the pages. "I thought that might be your name. See, I leafed through this. What little I could make out- I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy."
Dean leaned forward to take a closer look, face still stony. "But I found this, too." The Sheriff showed him a page that read 'Dean 35-111', circled, with nothing else on the page. "Now, you're stayin' right here till you tell me exactly what the hell that means." Dean stared at the page, then looked up at the sheriff. "It's my high school locker combo," he told him. "Bull," the sheriff replied. "What does it really mean?"
"I'll say it again, it's my high school locker combo."
"Do I have to remind you of the amount of trouble you're in? We got enough evidence from that motel room to lock you away for a long time. You aren't seeing that little girl of yours again. So tell me, what. Does. That. Mean?" Dean glared up at the sheriff. "How many times I gotta repeat myself? It's my high school locker combo."
"We gonna do this all night long?" Before Dean could make a smart response, a deputy leaned into the room. "We just got a 911, shots fired over at Whiteford Road." The sheriff looked down at Dean. "You have to go to the bathroom?" he asked. "No," Dean replied. The sheriff handcuffed him to the table and left. Dean spotted a paper clip poking out of the journal and grabbed it, using it to pick the handcuffs. After grabbing the journal, he snuck over by the door, peeking out at the sheriff and other deputies finishing gearing up to leave.
He ducked out of sight as they exited and then snuck out. He found one female deputy who'd stayed behind with Mack. "Hey!" she cried. "Really sorry about this," Dean told her. He clocked her across the jaw, knocking her out, and then grabbed Mack's car seat, sneaking out via the fire escape. By the time the deputy woke up and alerted the sheriff, he would be far away. He found a phone booth in town a couple blocks from the sheriff's office and called Sam.
"Fake 911 phone call? Sammy, I don't know, that's pretty illegal," he joked when Sam picked up. "You're welcome," Sam replied. "You have Kinley?" Dean glanced down at his daughter, asleep in the car seat at his feet. "Yeah. I do. Listen, we gotta talk."
"Tell me about it," Sam said. "So the husband was unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should've been Dad's next stop." Dean huffed in annoyance. "Sammy, would you shut up for a second?" Sam pressed on, not listening. "I just can't figure out why Dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet."
"Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho," Dean told him. "What? How do you know?" Dean looked down at the journal in his hand. "I've got his journal." Sam was quiet for a minute. "He doesn't go anywhere without that thing," he finally said softly. "Yeah, well, he did this time," Dean sighed, frowning. "What's it say?"
"Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going."
"Coordinates? Where to?"
"I'm not sure yet," Dean said, shrugging. "I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that Dad would skip out in the middle of a job? Dean, what the hell is going on?" Dean opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment, he heard Sam slam hard on the brakes, tires skidding. "Sam? Sammy?" he asked. "Take me home," a female voice carried through the speaker. "Sam!" Dean yelled again. "Take me home!" he heard Constance repeat. "No," Sam said, voice sounding quieter than before; he must have dropped the phone when he slammed on the brakes.
Dean hung up, grabbing Mack's car seat and hurrying off. He needed to get to Constance's old house before he lost his brother.
The Impala- which Constance had been driving herself- pulled up in front of her house and stopped. The engine shut off and so did the lights. "Don't do this," Sam begged her. In the back seat, Constance flickered. "I can never go home," she said sadly. "You're scared to go home," Sam realized, turning around in his seat. She'd vanished. When he looked around, she reappeared in the passenger seat. She climbed into his lap, shoving him back hard enough that the seat reclined. He struggled against her grip.
"Hold me," she told him. "I'm so cold." Sam continued to squirm, glaring up at the ghost. "You can't kill me," he gasped out. "I'm not unfaithful. I've never been!" She leaned down, whispering in his ear. "You will be. Just hold me." She kissed him as he continued to struggle, reaching out for the keys. She pulled back and disappeared, a flash of something horrible behind her face as she vanished. Sam looked around for a minute, then yelled in pain and yanked his hoodie open.
Five holes were burning through his shirt, and they matched up with Constance's fingers as she flickered back into focus, her hand reaching into his chest. A gunshot went off, shattering the window and startling the ghost. Dean approached the Impala, firing another salt round from the shotgun in his hand. While he was firing, Sam managed to sit up and start the car. "I'm taking you home," he said.
He drove forward, and Dean stared after the car in shock. Sam smashed into the side of the house and Dean hurried through the wreckage to the passenger side of the car after grabbing Mack's car seat off the ground. "Sam! Sam! You okay?" Sam groaned in the front seat. "I think..." he answered. "Can you move?" Dean asked. "Yeah. Help me?" Dean set the car seat down again, leaning through the window to give Sam a hand. On the other side of the room, Constance picked up an old framed picture of herself with her two kids.
"There you go," Dean said, pulling Sam out of the car. They both turned and spotted Constance, who glared up at them. She threw the picture down, raising her hand. A bureau scooted across the floor, pinning Sam and Dean against the car. Dean looked over at Mack worriedly, but the bureau had managed to miss the car seat. The lights flickered, and Constance looked around, scared. Water began to pour down the staircase and Constance moved over to the bottom of the stairs, looking up.
"You've come home to us, Mommy," the ghosts of her two children spoke in chorus. They moved from the top of the stairs to stand directly behind her. They embraced her tightly and she screamed. In a surge of energy, still screaming, all three ghosts melted into a puddle of water. Sam and Dean shoved the bureau over, heading over to look at the spot where the ghosts had vanished. "So, this is where she drowned her kids," Dean said. Sam nodded. "That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them."
"You found her weak spot. Nice job, Sammy." Dean hit Sam's chest right in the spot where Constance had injured him and Sam let out a pained laugh. "Yeah, I wish I could say the same for you," Sam jabbed. "What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak?" Dean snorted. "Hey. Saved your ass." He leaned over, assessing the damage on the Impala. "I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car." He glared back at Sam. "I'll kill you."
They worked together to get the car out of the house, and then Dean went back to grab Mack and get her situated before taking off, getting back on the road. Sam worked on deciphering the coordinates John left in his journal while Dean drove. "Okay, here's where Dad went," he finally announced. "It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado." Dean nodded. "Sounds charming. How far?"
"About six hundred miles."
"Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning. Assuming Mack doesn't wake up and need something." Dean looked over at Sam hopefully. "Dean, I, um..." Sam began. "You're not going," Dean translated, looking back at the road then at Sam again. "The interview's in, like, ten hours. I gotta be there." Dean looked back at the road, trying and failing to hide his disappointment. "Yeah. Yeah, whatever. I'll take you home."
They pulled up outside Sam's dorm, Dean still frowning. They'd had to make one stop because Mack woke up and needed food, but other than that it had been a straight shot back to Stanford. Sam climbed out with his bag, leaning down to look through the window. "Call me when you find him?" he requested. Dean nodded, brooding silently. "And maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?" Dean nodded again. "Yeah, alright."
Sam patted the car door twice and turned away. Dean leaned toward the passenger door, one arm over the top of the seat. "Sam?" His brother turned back to look at him. "You know, we made a hell of a team back there." Sam smiled, "Yeah." Dean drove off, Sam watching him ago. Less than a mile down the road, Dean flipped a u-turn and drove back, sitting outside the dorm just waiting like he had two days earlier. Something in his gut told him he needed to get inside and get to Sam.
"Be right back, bug," he murmured, getting out of the car. He snuck back into Sam's dorm, just in time to hear his brother yelling out Jess's name. He rushed over, kicking down the bedroom door. Sam was laying on the bed, staring up in horror at Jess, who was pinned to the ceiling with flames surrounding her. Dean paused just briefly as he realized that's what his father must have seen the night their mother died, and then he rushed over, grabbing Sam and hauling him back toward the door. "Jess! Jess! No!" Sam yelled.
Dean dragged him bodily out the door and down the stairs, heading back out to the Impala. Other students had started gathering outside, evacuating the building and fire trucks had begun to pull up to the scene. Sam had stopped struggling, both brothers staring up at the flames coming out of the window of his and Jess' dorm. After a minute, Sam turned and headed back to the trunk, going through the arsenal. Dean continued to watch with the rest of the crowd that had gathered, then turned and joined his brother at the trunk.
"We got work to do," Sam said, throwing a shotgun down in the arsenal and shutting the trunk.