The door opened inward, and Dean just let it go. It creaked, sounding distressingly like the front door in every haunted-house movie ever made.
John Winchester had been a well-trained Marine, and he taught his sons well. They moved in proper formation, Dean going in low first with Sam covering him, then Sam going in ahead of him with Dean covering him, and so on through the front hall.
The house looked pretty much the same as when they had left.
Then the rattling started.
Looking around, Sam saw that the framed posters on the hallway walls were vibrating, the metal of the frames banging against the Sheetrock. Several of the items on the small table in the hall fell off.
Stealing a glance to his left, he saw that the record albums Dean had left lying on the floor were now dancing across the floor, and the stuff on the coffee table was also falling off. Some of the CDs fell out of their racks, the jewel cases splitting open.
Slowly, Sam moved forward toward the kitchen, shotgun still in the low ready position, Dean covering him with shotgun raised.
It occurred to Sam that they never found out from Manfred what room he had to enter before the spirit manifested itself. Now, however, wasn’t the time to go out and ask.
As they moved into the kitchen, Dean cradled the shotgun with one arm and pulled out the EMF with the other. It was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Not that they needed the confirmation, since the house was behaving like it was on a fault line. That was pretty much impossible, though—the house was built on solid rock. There was no basement, even—the laundry room, which Manfred had given them free use of, was located in a nook off the kitchen.
They checked it after they were done with the kitchen, but still nothing. The washer and dryer were rattling as if they were on, but both machines’ dials were in the off position.
They went back through the hallway into the living room, where more items had crashed to the floor. Dean winced as he stepped on the broken glass from the frame of the Isle of Wight poster.
Still no phyiscal manifestation of the spirit, just the house shaking and—
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
No matter how many times Sam encountered sudden noises in his life—and he figured he encountered more in the average month than most people did in their entire lives—his heart still skipped a beat when it happened.
Only one beat, though. As soon as he heard the cackle, he got down on one knee, shotgun raised.
But there was still no physical manifestation.
The cackling faded and the same voice started chanting the words “Love me!” over and over again.
Sam looked at Dean. Without any sign or facial indication, Sam knew that his brother agreed they should check upstairs next.
Dean went up first, Sam standing at the base of the stairs, shotgun raised. Once he made it up, Sam followed. Taking advantage of his long legs, he took two steps at a time.
The house was still shaking, and the cackling was now intermixed with the exhortations to be loved. Manfred had hung pictures of people Sam assumed to be family on the walls, and some of them had fallen down to the floor. Others rattled on the nails that held them to the wallpaper-covered wall.
“Love me!”
Sam whirled around and saw the face of a woman with bottle blond hair that was flying out in all directions—and couldn’t help but think it was a little ridiculous that the woman’s spirit had a dye job—as well as a body, but no discernible arms and legs. Her shoulders and hips kind of just faded off. She floated down the hallway toward him and Dean, her mouth wide with her cackling, her eyes looking somewhat demented. Her entire form was also transparent—which wasn’t true of all spirits, but this one barely had any substance. Plenty of spirits—especially angry ones—could manifest physically, but this woman seemed to focus most of her ectoplasmic energy on laughing and wanting to be loved.
Just before he fired his shotgun, Sam noticed that her T-shirt had some kind of funky design on it.
The rock-salt rounds did their job. As soon as the salt hit her form, it started to dissipate, features dispersing across the hallway until there was nothing left.
Though the echoes of her last cry of “Love me!” sounded throughout the old house, the interior had stopped shaking, and once the echoes faded, there was silence.
Dean looked at Sam. “What the hell’s a spirit doing wearing a ’rÿche shirt?”
Sam frowned. “What’s a rike shirt?”
He immediately regretted asking, as Dean gave him his most disgusted look, which meant that he had made the mistake of professing ignorance about music Dean worshipped.
“Dude! Queensrÿche. They did Operation: Mind-crime, which is only the best concept album ever created.”
Unable to help himself, Sam said, “They’re the ones with the umlaut on the y, right? How do you pronounce that, exactly?”
“Bite me, Sam.”
“And I didn’t realize that there were any good concept albums.”
“Excuse me?” Dean cocked his head, his mouth hanging slightly open. “Tommy, Thick as a Brick, hell, Dark Side of the Moon, for Christ’s sake, they’re—”
Realizing he’d teased his brother enough, Sam said, “Shouldn’t we tell Manfred it’s safe to come into his own house?”
Dean blinked. “Right.” Without another word, he moved back to the stairs.
Sam followed after pausing to chuckle at how easy taunting Dean could be sometimes, so Dean was already out the door by the time he got to the bottom.
Manfred and Dean came in together a few seconds later. “You sure it’s safe?” Manfred asked, not sounding the least bit convinced.
Dean looked around the house. “You hear any cackling? Anybody asking you to love her?”
After looking all around, and actually putting a hand to his ear, Manfred finally said, “No.”
“She’ll probably be back tomorrow night, but for tonight, it’s safe.”
Manfred looked at Dean. “So you dislocated her?”
“Dissipated, yeah.”
Shaking his head, Manfred said, “Man, I need a toke.” He went into the living room, walking over to the sideboard. While dusty bottles of booze were piled haphazardly on top of it, the side had two doors with keyholes, a skeleton key sticking out of one of them. Manfred turned the key, opened the door, and reached into it, pulling out a Ziploc bag full of green leaves and a yellow box.
The brothers exchanged a glance, shrugged, and set their shotguns carefully against the hallway wall before joining Manfred in the living room.
Manfred was sitting on the easy chair, leaning forward while he put some of the stuff on the coffee table onto the floor, next to the stuff that the spirit had already knocked off, thus clearing space for him to construct his joint.
Sam and Dean both sat on the couch perpendicular to him. In a gentle voice, Sam said, “I’m sorry, Manfred, but we need to ask you a few questions.”
“What, now?” Manfred didn’t look up.
“We actually saw it,” Sam said.
At that, Manfred looked up. “Really? Whoa.”
“It was a girl,” Dean said, “blond hair—”
“Dyed,” Sam added.
“Right, dyed, kind of a hook nose, and wearing a Queensrÿche shirt. Ring any bells?”
Manfred shrugged. “You know how many women in ’rÿche shirts I see all’a time?” He gingerly finished rolling his joint.
Dean asked, “You ever take any of ’em home?”
“Maybe.” Manfred shrugged again, then dug into the pocket of his leather jacket, which he had yet to take off after coming in from outside, and pulled out a lighter. “Honestly, I took lotsa women home, from the Park in Rear, from other places—Christ, I can’t even remember last week, y’expect me t’remember that?” And then, to accentuate the point, he took a drag on his joint.
Dean looked at Sam.
Sam ju
st shrugged back.
“You guys want a drag?” Manfred said in a much more mellow voice, smoke blowing out his mouth.
“No thanks.” Sam got to his feet. “We actually have some stuff we gotta take care of tonight.”
Manfred grinned. “Thought you was just sayin’ that to blow off Janine.”
Dean actually looked embarrassed. “Yeah, about that—”
Holding up a hand, Manfred said, “Don’t sweat it, Dean. She flirts with anything that moves. You show up tomorrow night, she’ll hit on y’all over again. You don’t show up, she’ll forget all ’bout you.”
Sam looked down at Dean, who was still seated on the couch. “Gee, we don’t know anybody like that, do we, Dean?”
Looking up, Dean glared, then also rose from the couch. “Yeah, we really do have something we gotta take care of.”
“You takin’ the car?” Manfred asked after taking another toke.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Groovy, man. Jus’ park it b’hinda truck when y’get back.”
Dean smiled. “Thanks.” He tapped Sam on the chest with the back of his hand. “Let’s motor, Sammy.”
They went out to the Impala and retrieved their coats from the backseat. Sam still had the keys, and Dean had shown no interest in doing any more driving in this city—nor did Sam have any interest in listening to Dean while he did—so Sam folded himself into the driver’s side.
Driving to Webb and 195th took almost no time at all this late hour. There were other cars on the road, especially once they got out of Riverdale and drove on Broadway to West 225th Street, which turned into Kingsbridge Road once they went over I-87.
Unfortunately, Sam’s belief that parking would be easier at night proved a foolish one. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered.
“Look around, Sammy,” Dean said. “Most of these are apartment buildings, and I ain’t seen too many parking lots. This time’a night, everyone’s at home asleep, which means their cars are parked. Screw it, just double park.”
Sam frowned. “Isn’t that illegal?”
“So’s breaking and entering, and that’s kinda what we’re here for.”
“Yeah, but we’re good at B and E, and we probably won’t get caught. But the car’s just out there being illegally parked. I mean, I saw tons of double-parked cars during the day, when I was driving around, but I haven’t seen a single one since we left Manfred’s. We’ll stand out, is all I’m saying, and if some bored night-shift cop decides to—”
“You got a better idea, Sam?”
Sam steered the car down Webb back toward Kingsbridge. “Wasn’t there a parking lot on Kingsbridge?”
“Is that the big street we came up?” Dean asked.
Nodding, Sam said, “We’ll try there.”
Making a right onto Kingsbridge, Sam saw the parking lot—then the rates they were charging, not to mention the sign that said, sorry, full.
His head in his hands, fingers rubbing his forehead, Dean said, “Sam, just double-park.”
Letting out a long breath, Sam said, “Yeah, okay.” He drove down another block, turned right, made a broken U-turn using someone’s driveway, turned left back onto Kingsbridge, then did the one-way-street shuffle once again to get to the house where the first of their Poe-inspired murders took place.
“I got an idea,” Sam said. The house had a driveway next to it that was gated and locked. The driveway was just wide enough to accommodate the Impala. Sam pulled up as if to parallel park.
The first time, he aimed a bit off, and so had to start again. The second time, he came in at too wide an angle, so he had to start again. By the time he succeeded in parking the car more or less evenly, Dean looked like he was ready to chew off his own arm.
Glaring at Sam as he turned off the ignition, Dean reached over and yanked the keys out. “I’m driving back.”
Sam shook his head and chuckled—it wasn’t as if Dean was any better at parallel parking—and followed his brother to the wrought-iron gate that blocked the driveway they’d parked in front of.
Dean looked up at the house. “Nice place. Surprised they haven’t sold it.”
“Yeah, well, murder plays hell with real estate, y’know?”
Reaching into his coat pocket for his lock pick, Dean said, “Yeah.” He knelt down and started working on the gate’s padlock. After about thirty seconds’ work—which seemed like an eternity to Sam, feeling very exposed on the city street, even this late at night with no sign of anyone—it clicked open. Sam looked around nervously, unable to help noticing that several people in the surrounding apartment buildings had their lights on. Hope none of them are looking down at the street outside their windows.
Dean pushed the gate open quickly—something Dad had taught them, metal gates made more noise if you opened them slowly. Sam jumped forward and caught the gate before it collided against the house.
They both went into the driveway, Dean shutting the gate behind him so it would look normal. However, he didn’t relock the padlock, as they might well need to make a hasty exit.
Dean knelt down next to the side door and started to work on picking that lock.
Several minutes passed, and Dean made no progress whatsoever.
Whispering urgently, Sam said, “Dude, will you hurry up?”
“It’s a tough lock, Sammy,” Dean whispered right back. “And it’s dark. ’Sides, artistry takes time.”
“So does incompetence. C’mon, Dean, I’ve seen you get through doors faster than this.”
“Those doors had freakin’ porch lights, okay? Just give me a sec, I think I—”
Suddenly, a light shone right in Sam’s face. Looking down the driveway at the source, he saw a dark figure who appeared to be holding a gun in addition to a flashlight.
“Freeze, police!”
TEN
Fiftieth Precinct
The Bronx, New York
Saturday 18 November 2006
It had been several years since Detective Marina McBain had been up to the Five-oh in the Bronx.
Like most of the New York Police Department’s precinct houses, the Fiftieth Precinct in the Bronx was a boxy white edifice with few windows and an American flag atop it flapping from a pole. McBain drove her Saturn—her own car rather than a departmental one, as technically she was off duty right now—up Broadway after getting off the Major Deegan at the West 230th Street exit. She turned left at West 236th, which had been renamed after Officer Vincent Guidice, a member who died in the line of duty a decade earlier. In fact, her last trip up here had been the renaming ceremony for the street back in 1999.
McBain searched desperately for a parking spot. Generally, the street outside a precinct house had angled parking, but cops never parked their cars neatly. Vehicles, both unmarked and blue-and-whites, were thrust up against the sidewalk at every conceivable angle, some of them on the sidewalk itself.
Eventually, though, McBain found a place to wedge in her Saturn. After locking it with the remote, she walked in the precinct’s dirty glass front door, heading up the four metal-rimmed stairs and through the creaky wooden doors to the reception area. The public information desk was empty at this time of night, so McBain moved past it and to the left, walking by about half a dozen plaques for those officers who fell in the line of duty (Guidice most prominent among them). There, facing the large white wall with the Five-oh’s insignia emblazoned on it, was the main desk, behind which sat a bored-looking night-shift sergeant. Hair in a crew cut, beady eyes barely visible under a ridged brow, a potbelly protruding over his gun belt, and with a name tag that said o’shaughnessy, the sergeant was perusing the sports pages of the Daily News. McBain could hear a voice, not really audible, on crummy speakers under the desk. She assumed it was the dispatcher, and as she got closer she heard familiar codes, confirming her presumption.
McBain also noticed the Derek Jeter bobblehead on top of the computer monitor. It was slightly askew, and obviously not attached to the monitor, so chances wer
e good it belonged to this sergeant alone, who only kept it out during his own shift. In addition to his name tag, his badge, and the gold 50 pins attached to his collar, he was also wearing a decidedly nonregulation pin with the interlocking NY logo of the New York Yankees baseball team. If worse came to worse and she couldn’t get O’Shaughnessy to help her out via friendly means, she could always threaten to report him for being out of uniform.
Without looking up from the paper, O’Shaughnessy said, “Can I help you?”
“So whaddaya think, the Yanks’ll trade Johnson?”
That got the sergeant to look up. “Friggin’ well hope so.” He looked at McBain. She watched his face change as he regarded her. First he saw her dark-skinned face and short, nappy hair, and his disinterested expression said, black female. Then he moved down to her dark business suit, which altered his expression to vague interest, since it was now black female who doesn’t look like street slime. Then he saw the gold shield on her belt. Only then did he set the paper down and change his expression to one of genuine interest, as now she wasn’t a black female at all, but a member. “Never shoulda traded for the guy inna first place. He ain’t no Yankee. Neither’s A-Rod.”
McBain smiled, dredging up the baseball knowledge she had absorbed from her fellow detectives in the Missing Persons Unit. She couldn’t have cared less about that or any other sport, but you didn’t survive in the testosterone-laden NYPD without being able to hold your own in any conversation about the Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Nets, Giants, or Jets. The Rangers, Devils, and Islanders were optional, which was good, as McBain drew the line at hockey. “Yeah, but A-Rod’s still a good player. I don’t think RJ has anything left in the tank.”
“Got that right. ’Sides, after 2001, you don’t let a guy like that onna team.”
“I dunno, they let Johnny Damon on after 2004, and he’s been pretty good.”
O’Shaughnessy shook his head. “That’s different—Yanks signin’ Damon pissed off Red Sox fans. Pissin’ off Red Sox fans, that’s always good.”
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