Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage (13 page)

“No!” Sam shouted again. He lunged forward—

And almost fell off Roy’s sofa.

He breathed deeply in the predawn light and ran a trembling hand through his hair.
So much for a restful night’s sleep,
he thought.

Of the three of them, Dean woke last on Friday morning. Sam stood over the breakfast nook table, papers and photos spread out, while Bobby had covered every square inch of space on the kitchen counter with more police files. Dean stretched, looked from one man to the other. “Tell me that’s coffee I smell.”

“A fresh pot,” Sam confirmed.

“Help yourself, Mr. Van Winkle,” Bobby said without looking up.

“Hey, I still got harpy smackdown aches and pains.” Dean poured himself a mug of coffee and downed about half of it before speaking again. “Anything make sense yet?”

Before Dean had nodded off the night before, they had gone through the police reports, accident scene photos and witness statements until his vision blurred. After hours of analysis they had come to the conclusion that Laurel Hill was an unlucky town. Incredibly unlucky. If it hadn’t been for the presence of the man in the bowler hat near all the accidents, Dean might just have advised the mayor to start passing out rabbit’s feet and four-leaf clovers to all residents.

“Like something telling us where to find Waldo?” Bobby asked. “No. Nothing like that.”

“These witness statements,” Sam said, thinking out loud, “maybe the police are asking the wrong questions.”

“Do the victims have anything in common?” Dean wondered.

Bobby picked up a legal tablet filled with handwritten notes. “First known incident, three experienced roofers fall, one after the other.”

“The woman who owned the house gave herself a black eye running back to dial 911,” Sam added. “Then injured her hand.”

“Plain old clumsiness,” Dean suggested.

“Maybe,” Bobby said. “The timing of her clumsiness, though … Some kind of after-effect of whatever made the roofers fall?”

“It was just after she saw Steed,” Dean said. “Bowler guy.”

Bobby read from his notes. “Few blocks away, David Boyce chainsaws his femoral artery, bleeds out.”

“Close enough for bowler guy to have walked there,” Dean said.

“Thursday morning rush-hour pile-up is next,” Bobby continued. “Everyone in the accident died. From the traffic cam, we know bowler man was there.” He flipped through several pages. “McClary gave me a list of witnesses. Bystanders. Few drivers far back enough they weren’t involved in the chain reaction.”

“Okay, but if it is him, what’s his M.O.? Was there anything helpful on the traffic cam footage?” Sam asked.

“Stands there like he ain’t got a care in the world,” Bobby said. “Walks away when the emergency vehicles show up.”

“The bus accident’s next,” Sam said. “Excluding the fitness center casualties, the bus driver died and one passenger. But is there a connection to our guy?”

“Hold on,” Bobby said. “Got a transit map here.

“Yup. Intersection of the pile-up is a scheduled stop for that bus.”

“So he saw the bus passing or—”

“He was on the bus,” Sam finished for Dean, “and got off at that stop.”

“Do we have names for the other passengers?”

“That we do,” Bobby said, holding up a page. “When the police questioned them, nobody mentioned our tall stranger. But, like you said, maybe they didn’t ask the right questions.”

“Sam and I can question them,” Dean suggested.

Bobby nodded. “After the pile-up and bus crash,” he said, “we have a series of accidents: Deanna Roe, married mother of two boys, trips down the stairs carrying a laundry hamper, breaks her neck. Hal Norville, divorced anesthesiologist, falls stepping out of the shower and splits his head open. Suffers massive stroke. Gertrude Finney, retired spinster, dies in a lint-trap fire. Only pattern so far is no pattern.”

“How far apart were the accidents, geographically?” Sam asked.

Bobby checked his notes, rubbed his eyes. “Same block. Parry Lane. Location is the pattern.”

Dean frowned. “Being round this guy is like having a black cat cross your path, times a hundred.”

“Better watch out for Roy’s stray, then,” Bobby commented.

“Actually, having a black cat cross your path is considered lucky in some cultures, like Britain and Japan,” Sam said.

“Anyway, the skydivers were friends back in college,” he continued quickly, seeing Dean and Bobby’s blank expressions.

“Reeks of wrong plane, wrong time,” Bobby said, shaking his head. “Could’ve been three strangers.”

“The three roofers knew each other, too,” Dean said.

“Wrong roof,” Bobby countered. “Victims of opportunity.”

He lifted a page from a neat stack. “Two more incidents before the mall: Roger Basely fell asleep on the couch while smoking, and Mildred Dottery suffocated under newspapers.”

“Suffocated?”

“Newspapers from Jimmy Carter’s heyday,” Bobby explained. “Hoarder. Both victims lived on Lafferty Lane.”

“The mall shooter,” Dean prompted.

Bobby picked up his notepad. “Shaun Benton,” he said. “McClary checked him for priors. Couple domestic disturbance calls, bar fights, assault and battery.”

Dean frowned. “McClary—d’you trust him?” he asked Bobby suddenly.

“Reason I shouldn’t?”

“No reason,” Dean said.
When the Leviathan can look like anybody,
he thought,
anybody could be a Leviathan.

“This Benton guy admitted he had anger management issues,” Sam said, “but something pushed him over the edge.”

“Or someone, pushing his buttons,” Dean said. “Bowler
guy was definitely there, at the mall.”

“So, maybe instead of pushing the shooter physically, he pushed him mentally,” Bobby suggested,

“Could be this guy has no pattern,” Dean said. “No plan. Just create random friggin’ havoc.”

“Distracted and sleep-deprived drivers,” Sam said, thinking out loud again, “careless chainsaw operator … It’s like that expression: an accident waiting to happen.”

“Except bowler guy’s tired of waiting.”

“We can’t predict when, where or who. So maybe we can figure out how, or why.”

“He enjoys it,” Dean said grimly. “When he was swinging his cane on the bridge, I swear he was smiling.”

“We’ll get this sumbitch,” Bobby said. “I’ll ask McClary to check every video feed he’s got. Guy in a bowler hat with a cane should stick out like a stretch limo at a muscle car convention.”

“Good,” Dean said, “because we got no clue what’s next.”

Eleven

“Bomb threat,” Ryan Bramble scoffed. “Load of crap, more like.”

The entire student body of Laurel Hill High School— the beige brick monstrosity, as he thought of it—had been evacuated to the open field across the street from the school and its parking lot. Each teacher tried to keep his or her students corralled in a separate area, matching faces to names on their attendance sheets to make sure everyone had left the building, but friends inevitably strayed across the imaginary lines to talk to one another.

Standing with his balled fists shoved into the pockets of his black jeans, Ryan faced the entrance of the school, where two regular cop cars and two K-9 SUVs occupied the bus lane, and couldn’t help feeling irritation at the intrusion.

“What’s your theory, Ryan?” Sumiko Jones, his girlfriend,
asked as she pointed her cell phone camera up at him. They shared a government class that period so they wouldn’t catch any flak for hanging out during the evacuation.

He flipped a strand of cobalt-blue hair out of his eyes and raised a hand in front of her camera lens. “Don’t record me for your blog.”

“Okay, Mr. Crankypants,” she said, smiling. “You’ll be an anonymous source. Tell me what’s going on?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Bomb-sniffing dogs searched the perimeter of the building and now they’re checking inside,” Sumiko said and pursed her lips. The fire-engine-red lip gloss matched the outer layer of her black and red top. Her pitch-black hair was styled in a pixie cut, though he preferred her hair long, as it had been when they first started dating in junior year. “I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m gonna say they’re searching for a bomb.”

“That’s what they want you to think,” Ryan said. “Actually, it’s a drug sweep.”

“Why search the exterior?”

Ryan placed his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her with a shake of his head. Even wearing her three-inch black platform boots with all the buckles, she was almost a foot shorter than his six-five frame. He had always been taller than her, but had gone through a six-inch growth spurt in the last year, while her height had probably maxed out. Sometimes he felt like a clumsy ox around her. Coaches for the various Laurel Hill Lions sports teams took notice of his size, but he wasn’t graceful or athletic. “They want to keep
us off guard.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Are you worried about something in your locker?”

“You’d know if I had anything.”

“Ha!”

“Like I can keep secrets from the Lion Truth blogger.”

“Shh!”

“What? It’s not a secret. Your name’s on the blog. You’re live-blogging the evacuation now, aren’t you?”

“True, but if I keep reminding everyone, they get nervous and stop talking.” She typed furiously on her cell phone as she spoke to him. “And … posted!”

“Writing about me?”

“No,” she said. “And I’m not posting your theory either. I don’t buy it, Bramble.”

“Why not?”

“Haven’t you been reading my blog?”

“Who can keep up?” he said. “You know, you could write for the school paper.”

“Nah,” she scoffed. “Too structured. Nothing but puff pieces. I write what I want when I want to write it. And you haven’t been reading it. All the strange accidents happening around town the last couple days. Totally bizarre.”

“I don’t watch or read the news,” Ryan said. “I’ve got my own problems. Besides, why do you even care about that stuff?”

“Maybe it’s happening here, now,” Sumiko said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder toward the school.

“We could use some excitement,” he said sullenly.

“Wow,” she said, shocked. “I thought you were joking, Ryan. But you really don’t have a clue.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

“Wait, there’s Rachel Barish,” Sumiko said. “I heard she was in the principal’s office when the bomb threat call came in.”

Ryan trailed after her, exasperated. “How could you know that?”

Sumiko held her phone up over her shoulder and waved it toward him, as if he could read the display while she jogged away. “Kassidy Barish, her sister, texted me. Rachel signed in late. Orthodontist appointment.”

“Mr. Bramble, where do you think you’re going?”

“Nowhere,” Ryan said, stopping in his tracks.

Mr. Detrick, his government teacher, was a real hard ass, especially where Ryan was concerned. Sometimes it was like he was looking for an excuse to have Ryan suspended. In fact, all of his teachers watched him as if they expected him to go postal. With his size and dyed blue hair, he would never be inconspicuous. Maybe that was part of the problem. Sumiko, on the other hand, could run laps around the entire student body or jump rope in the middle of the street and none of the teachers would raise an eyebrow. She always seemed like she had a purpose. At one time, Ryan thought he might be college bound. Up until this year, he’d had good grades and attendance. He hadn’t aced every course like Sumiko, but he held his own. Lately, though, his academic efforts had come up short. As and Bs had drifted down to Cs and now a few Ds. He tried to study longer, reviewed material repeatedly,
but that only produced tension headaches, not better grades. Sumiko tutored him in the classes they shared and that helped to a degree, but he continued to fall behind. Maybe he knew, subconsciously, that it was futile. His father worked two jobs, but could never afford to send Ryan to college. More likely, Ryan would need a job to help out with household expenses. Or maybe the thought of losing Sumiko had triggered a defeatist spiral. He simply couldn’t keep up with her. After this year, she would attend some prestigious university somewhere far from Laurel Hill, leaving him behind to flip burgers for minimum wage, completely forgotten.

Adding to his growing isolation, he hardly ever saw his father lately, and when they were together, they never talked. Not really. Ryan could feel his life slipping away and each day the frustration grew inside him, building up so much pressure he wanted to scream and pound his fists against the wall. Maybe his teachers sensed it. Maybe they were right to be wary of him.

Sumiko slipped back beside Ryan the moment Detrick looked the other way.

“You’re like a ninja,” he whispered.

“Are you being racist?” she asked, smiling to take the sting out of it.

“Cat burglar, then,” he said. “Get anything bloggable?”

“Nothing good. Rachel was there when the call came in. They called the principal to the phone. She heard some whispering. One of them grabbed a procedural manual off a shelf. Someone else called the police.”

He leaned over so he could talk to her privately, without
the rest of his government class eavesdropping. “Miko, do you think … ?”