Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage (14 page)

“What?”

“I mean, is something wrong with me?”

“Well, if you don’t stop growing, I’ll need a stepladder to kiss you.”

“I’m serious.” He looked around nervously. “Ever feel like you don’t belong?”

“It’s called being a teenager, doofus.”

“Do you—?”

The sounds of angry shouting were coming from two classroom groups away. Ryan saw somebody shove someone. “Get away from her, creep! No! I don’t care! That perv was sniffing her hair!”

Of course, Sumiko was instantly filming the skirmish.

In the blink of an eye, she had turned her attention somewhere else. Maybe it was just as well. He doubted he could have told her what he was feeling, because he wasn’t sure himself. Trapped and desperate summed it up.

“That’s Tyler Shackleford, one of the Lion’s linebackers, shoving and shouting at Dalton Rourke, who’s been suspended more often than a busload of avid bungee jumpers,” Sumiko said, speaking for the microphone, not for Ryan’s benefit.

“Bungee jumpers travel in buses?” Ryan wondered aloud, knowing she would ignore him while she was live-blogging.

“And the strawberry-blonde tresses in question belong to the statuesque Jennifer Martin, who’s been dating young Tyler since last year’s Holiday Ball.”

Tyler pushed Dalton again, then a third time, shaking off gym teacher Mr. Gadsen’s restraining hand. At first Dalton, who was at least Tyler’s equal in size and build, took the abuse, but his face was rapidly turning beet red from his neck to his buzz-cut red hair. Looking at him, Ryan knew Dalton was about to explode.

“Don’t do it,” he whispered.

But, as Ryan had expected, the next shove triggered Dalton’s retaliation. He roared and lunged forward, striking Tyler high on both shoulders while hooking one of his ankles with a heel. Tyler fell back onto the grass and, in a second, Dalton had dropped to a knee beside him and raised a fist to punch him in the face.

Mr. Gadsen hooked Dalton’s elbow before he could strike. Then Mr. Detrick grabbed Dalton’s other arm. Together they pulled him away. As Tyler climbed to his feet, looking abashed at having lost the upper hand, Gadsen barked, “Both of you report to the vice principal’s office when we’re done here.”

“It’s his fault,” Tyler said, placing a possessive arm around Jennifer’s shoulders. “That freak was sniffing her hair like a dog. Right, Jen?”

Looking embarrassed, Jennifer hugged her elbows tight against her body and nodded slightly.

“This is bullshit,” Dalton said. “I was defending myself.”

“True that,” agreed zombie-pale Jimmy Ferrato, one of Dalton’s few friends.

“The vice principal’s office,” Gadsen repeated, pointing at Dalton and Tyler, his hands cocked like six shooters. “Both of you.”

The teachers made them separate, but Tyler looked back and pointed at Dalton, mouthing the words, “You’re dead, punk.”

When his back was turned, Dalton flipped him the bird.

“Posted!” Sumiko said. “That will generate a lot of hits tonight.”

“And that matters because … ?”

“If I get enough hits, I can monetize,” Sumiko explained. “Feed my tech needs, clothes, car, exotic vacations.” She shrugged with an impish grin. “The sky’s the limit.”

“That’s what you care about?”

“No, Bramble,” she said. “I want to get the worrying-about-finances part of my life out of the way, so I have time for the stuff I really care about.”

“And what stuff is that?”

“I’ll have the rest of my life to figure that out!”

Everyone started talking at once. Ryan looked up and saw the police and K-9 units come out of the school. One of the cops spoke with the principal and vice principal, who had been standing in the school parking lot during the search, before heading to his cruiser. The principal waved to the students to return to the building. The mass slowly walked forward, waiting for a cop to stop traffic while they crossed the street.

“Jackrabbit,” Sumiko said.

“What?”

She pointed.

Dalton Rourke and Jimmy Ferrato were sprinting in the
opposite direction, turning out of sight behind a row of houses. Of course, Sumiko caught their escape with her cell phone camera.

The moment they were gone, Sumiko bumped into Ryan with her hip and nodded toward the far side of the crowd, where a young man with a shaved head and earrings, wearing a battered leather coat, jeans and black boots, was watching the students and teachers. He winced as he massaged his temples. It looked like a bad hangover. As the students returned to the school, he took a perpendicular course toward the row of houses, away from the cop at the intersection, head bowed.

“That’s Jesse Trumball,” Sumiko said, intrigued.

“Yeah. So?”

“So, he dropped out months ago,” Sumiko said. “Why’s he at a school evacuation?”

“Because he misses us?”

“As if,” Sumiko said, simultaneously tapping away on her touchscreen keyboard. “Nope. Mr. Trumball called in the bomb threat.”

“Miko! You can’t post that on your blog,” Ryan said. “That’s slander.”

“Written
defamation is libel,” Sumiko explained. “What I just
said
was slander.” She reached up and wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, tugging him down for a quick kiss on the cheek. “But you won’t turn me in, will you, sweetie?”

“Of course not,” he said, but she had already turned back to her cell phone.

He hardly ever had her attention anymore, and even then she divided her focus between him and the phone. Every day the scale seemed to be tipping further out of balance with her and he felt helpless to stop it.

They walked back inside together, but Ryan might as well have been alone.

Twelve

Bobby called ahead and met Sergeant McClary in his Laurel Hill Police Department office. McClary leaned back in his office chair, one hand clicking on a mouse as he scanned his computer monitor, the other holding a clear plastic cup containing a banana-strawberry smoothie, which he sipped through a thick straw. When he saw Bobby, he grinned sheepishly and waggled the cup. “To ward off low blood sugar.”

“That’ll do it.”

He motioned Bobby to a seat in front of his desk. “What can I do for you, Agent Willis?”

“Couple things,” Bobby said. He opened the folder he was carrying and removed the grainy traffic cam photo of the man wearing the bowler hat from the top of the stack. “Consider this gentleman a person of interest.”

McClary leaned forward in his chair. “I remember him. He stood there during the massive pile-up. The guy might be guilty of retro fashion sense and incredible apathy toward human suffering, but nothing illegal, surely.” McClary took a long sip of his smoothie while Bobby stared at him. “What? You think he’s part of the burglary ring?”

“Same guy walked by the triple roofer accident.”

McClary set his cup down. “Really?”

“According to Michelle Sloney,” Bobby said, neglecting to mention that the Winchester boys had been the ones to interview her, and leaving Dean out as a witness on the overpass. “My advice, pull every video feed you’ve got. See how often this guy shows up near trouble.”

“Good idea,” McClary said, nodding. “Maybe we’ve got evidence of him doing … something to set these things in motion. You know what’s weird?”

“All ears.”

“We had all kinds of makes and models of vehicles involved in that hellacious pile-up—foreign and domestic, models spanning fifteen years, give or take—and not one airbag deployed.” McClary said. “Not a single damn one. Logistically, how is that even possible?”

Unless every airbag in town is a malfunction waiting to happen?
Bobby thought. Not a theory he wanted to test personally— or suggest to McClary. He’d lose all credibility with the man.

“Maybe some kind of EMP device that disables impact sensors.”

“Who knows? I’ll get this cleaned up if we can’t find a better photo,” McClary said, indicating the traffic cam shot. “Release it to the press. Bring him in for questioning, if nothing else. What’s the other thing?”

“The bus crash,” Bobby said. “I’d like to interview a couple of the passengers.”

“That crash happened about a half-mile away from the pile-up,” McClary said. “D’you think they’re related, other than by timing?”

“That bus stops at that intersection,” Bobby said significantly.

“But it wasn’t involved in the …” McClary stopped mid-thought. “Maybe the guy in the hat rode the bus to that stop.”

“It’s a thought.”

McClary exhaled forcefully. “I don’t know,” he said. “The bus was checked for mechanical failure. The brakes worked fine. The driver simply keeled over. I don’t see how they connect.”

“Not a big fan of coincidences, sergeant.”

“Okay,” McClary said. “We’re spinning our wheels—no pun intended—so I’ll ask the county M.E. to treat the bus driver as a possible homicide. They’ll check the body for punctures or anything that might not show up on a routine tox screen.”

“I’d like to talk to a few of his passengers, and covering our other bases, anyone who witnessed the pile-up.”

“Sure,” McClary said. “We got statements from a few people who were closest to the driver. It seemed like another unfortunate but unconnected accident at the time. As far as the pile-up, we talked to one woman walking her Yorkie, but she took cover pretty quick.” McClary clicked his mouse a
couple of times, typed briefly on his keyboard. “Hold on … Printing the names now. Be right back.”

Bobby waited while McClary stepped outside his office to pull a page off one of the network printers. When McClary returned, he handed Bobby the printout before returning to his chair. “For what it’s worth, anyway,” McClary said. “Keep me posted if it pans out.”

Bobby stood and had turned to leave when McClary’s phone rang. With a nod of thanks, Bobby backed out to give the man some privacy. But McClary held up his hand, signaling Bobby to wait.

“Yes, I did,” McClary said into the phone. “Yesterday evening. Sure.” Snatching a pen out of a desk caddy, McClary wrote down some information in sloppy cursive. “Thanks.” He hung up the phone and shook his head. “I’m really starting to hate coincidences.”

“What?” Bobby asked, his turn to be intrigued.

“A missing person report came in yesterday from one”— he paused to check his notes—“Liana Bekakos, bookkeeper-slash-receptionist for Kiriakoulis Plumbing. It seems the owner, Frank Kiriakoulis, never returned from his last job. The uniform who took the report assumed Frank decided to spend a long weekend in Atlantic City, blow off some steam.”

“Meaning Frank’s vehicle is missing as well?”

“White van, commercial plates,” McClary said, smiling like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “Kiriakoulis Plumbing painted on the side panels.”

“Either I’m slow,” Bobby said, “or you’ve got one hell of a hole card.”

“I put an alert in the system for anything else unusual related to the streets where we’ve had these bizarre accidents. And yesterday we had two fatalities on Lafferty Lane.”

“Guy burned on his sofa and the hoarder.”

“Care to guess the street address of Frank’s last job?”

“Find that van,” Bobby said, “maybe we find Mr. Chapeau.”

“Tie him to grand theft,” McClary said. “Possible kidnapping.”

Bobby suddenly looked solemn. “I’ve got a bad feeling Frank’s no longer among the living.”

“Look, I wasn’t hungry, okay?”

“I’m not criticizing, Dean,” Sam said. He was sitting in the passenger seat of the miraculously unscathed Monte Carlo, looking over the list of bus passengers Bobby had passed to them. “It’s commendable you gave up your last breakfast sausage to a feral cat.”

Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” faded and the classic rock station began a block of commercials. Dean lowered the volume on the radio.

“He’s not feral,” Dean said, bristling. “He’s got a name. Shadow.”

“Right.”

“He’s more like an outdoor cat,” Dean continued, frowning. “Look, Roy guilted me into it. We took over his house. We can’t let his damn cat starve.”

“I agree.”

“Fine,” Dean said. “Where to?”

“A twofer,” Sam said, tapping the list. “Janice Cummings and Felicia Akop rode the bus together. Both work at Salon Colette.”

He checked his map and relayed the directions to Dean.

Dean noticed a slight tremor in Sam’s hands.

“Everything okay in Sammy-land?”

Sam shot him a quick glance, then looked away, as if worried Dean might see something in his eyes. “I’m—fine. Fine.”

“Which you would say even if you weren’t?” Dean asked.

“No,” Sam replied. “Just the usual, you know. There’s a baseline …”

“A baseline of crazy?”

“Of stuff I need to deal with,” Sam said, “every day.”

“Your new normal?”

“Right,” Sam said with a hint of a smile. “This and that. I deal.”

“And that doesn’t change?” Dean asked. “Ever?”

“Sometimes it … catches me off guard.”

Sometimes Dean worried that Sam’s mental rollercoaster was one Lucifer ticket stub from flying off the rails. He couldn’t know the amount of crap Sam had to fight through each day to function without the benefit of a straightjacket and padded walls. He only knew what Sam told him. Fortunately, Sam seemed willing to admit to and discuss these mental battles. Maybe he couldn’t spare the effort required to maintain secrets while fighting for his daily dose of sanity.