“If I’m not safe with the chief of police, I’m not safe with anyone.”
Dean frowned but said nothing. He’d feel better about her safety with her dad if the man actually believed in what was trying to kill her and had already killed her friends. The car might be a blind spot for him. Until it was too late.
Taking out one of his FBI business cards, Dean handed it to her.
“That has my cell number. If anything—and I mean anything—weird happens, call me.”
“Okay, Agent DeYoung.”
“No matter how crazy it seems. Call.”
“I will,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you both.”
With a brief smile, she walked to the police cruiser and knocked on the passenger side window. When her father looked up at her, she opened the door. Then she hesitated and glanced back at them with a slight wave goodbye before climbing into the car. Inside, she gave her father a mild shove to disarm his stubborn frown.
Watching father and daughter, Dean cast a sidelong glance at Sam and said, “You thinking what I’m thinking.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “She’s next.”
FIFTEEN
A few blocks east, the Winchesters approached the house with the killer tree.
“Have I told you it’s good to have you back,” Dean said, smiling. “The real you?”
“What?”
“Sammy with the soul inside,” Dean said. “You were good with her back there.”
“Lucy?”
“May seem natural to you,” Dean said. “And I know you don’t remember how it was—how you were, before. But it’s night and day, man.”
Sam nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right. I don’t remember being different. Hell, I don’t remember being gone. Guess it’s like waking from a coma. Everyone else lived through that time and I was... on pause. This part of me, I mean. But, in some ways, feels like I recovered from a serious illness. Feels good to be back.”
From where Dean parked the Impala on the shoulder of Chaney Lane, it looked as if somebody had killed the tree. The large white oak had toppled onto its side right across the street, completely uprooted, and blocking through traffic. A municipal truck with a flashing yellow light idled nearby. The driver had tied a rope around the upper trunk, preparing to tow it out of the way. A few neighbors stood in front of their houses or in doorways, silently watching the workman.
“That tree killed a man? Friggin’ Day of the Triffids?”
“According to Jeffries,” Sam said. “A branch broke through a second-story window and impaled Max Barnes.”
“So they put it down?” Dean asked. “Like a rabid dog?”
“That’s all I know, dude.”
“Storm wasn’t that bad,” Dean said. “Lightning, maybe?”
“No sign of a lightning strike.”
“Maybe the truck driver knows.”
Before they reached the man, Dean noticed something odd. The tree had come out of the ground with its roots intact. Behind the cluster of roots, clods of dirt and stones trailed back to the side of the house at 109 Chaney Lane. The large hole in the ground where the roots had been reminded Dean of the ever-expanding sinkhole he’d fallen into earlier in the evening. But this hole, for now at least, remained stable. He glanced up the side of the house and saw the shattered secondstory window, the edges of the glass streaked with blood.
“That’s the boy’s room,” a middle-aged woman said to him from the neighboring yard, nibbling nervously on her thumbnail. “But it wasn’t him.”
“Excuse me?” Dean said.
“Are you with the police?”
“FBI,” Dean said. “And you are?”
“Barb,” she said. “Barb Henn.”
“You know what happened here?”
“Max Barnes, the father, was killed. Some kind of freak accident.”
“Freak accident?”
“Apparently he was killed by a tree branch going through the son’s window. That’s what I meant about it being the boy’s room but the boy wasn’t the one hurt.”
“What happened leading up to the... accident?”
“When the storm started, I was watching TV with my daughter Nicole.” She pointed back toward her house and Dean saw a teenaged girl standing in the doorway, arms folded, leaning against the doorjamb, which had a black ribbon pinned above the doorbell. When Dean’s gaze fell on the girl, she gave him a little wave. Dean smiled with a slight nod of acknowledgment before turning his attention back to the mother.
“Go on.”
“The wind was gusting, but I didn’t think about it too much,” she said. “Other than worrying we might lose power, which we did, briefly. A brownout.”
“And the tree?”
“I heard it thrashing about, hitting the siding, but...” She shrugged. “Nothing unusual, considering the wind. Then I heard glass shatter.”
“Did you go outside? Look out your window?”
“Not until I heard Melinda—poor Mrs. Barnes— screaming. I thought something had happened to her boy, Daniel. That’s when I looked out the side window. I knew something was off. Then it hit me. Their white oak tree was missing. I could see the entire side of their house.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Of course, I went outside then and that’s when I saw the tree. In the street.”
“Like it is now?”
“No,” she said. “It was standing! Upright. Well, at least for a moment. But then it slowly tipped over and crashed to the ground. How is that possible? Sure, a tornado could uproot a tree, but this wasn’t a tornado. Other than the window, nothing was damaged—I mean, aside from Max.”
“Freak storm cell, maybe.”
“Something freaky,” she said. “Such a shame. I can certainly sympathize with the family. I lost my husband in the factory fire.”
“Sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Nicole and I lean on each other a lot since then.”
“Earlier tonight, did you happen to see the vic—Max Barnes?”
The woman shook her head. “Paramedics brought him down on a stretcher but his body was completely covered. That’s when I knew he was... that poor man.”
“The mother and son? Where are they now?”
“They left in one of the police cars,” Tom Cuffee, the municipal worker, said to Sam over his shoulder as he walked toward the open door of his truck.
“To give a statement?”
“No,” the workman said. “She did that here. She wanted the boy checked out. Mother was kind of hysterical, but the kid was worse, in a way. Robotic.”
“Shock.”
“Yeah,” Cuffee said, shaking his head in sympathy. “Jeez, young kid like that, sees his dad killed right in his own home. Can you imagine?”
“Did you see the father’s injury?”
“Not personally,” Cuffee said, sitting in the driver’s seat with the door ajar. “But I heard the branch went clear through his chest, back to front.”
“During the storm?”
“That’s what I hear.”
“Is that branch still on the tree?”
“Police had it sawed off,” Cuffee said. “Evidence. Of what, I don’t know.”
“Anything like this ever happened here in town before?”
“Are you serious? I doubt anything like this ever happened anywhere.”
“Good point,” Sam said. “About the tree...”
“Just moving it to the side of the road. Crew will come by in the morning with chainsaws and take care of the disposal.”
“Any idea how it got in the middle of the street in the first place?”
Cuffee closed his door, but lowered the window to continue the conversation.
“As if it couldn’t get any weirder, right? One of the cops said... No, I shouldn’t repeat that stuff. It’s in poor taste.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “Trust me, I won’t be offended.”
The man started the truck, put it in gear and slowly began to drag the tree toward
the shoulder of Chaney Lane. Branches bent, twisted and a few cracked as the trunk neared its temporary destination. Sam walked beside the truck, casting nervous glances back at the fallen tree with its thrashing limbs. Such was the life he and Dean had led that he had no trouble accepting the possibility of a murderous tree.
With the tree parallel to the curb, occupying the shoulder of the suburban street, Cuffee shifted the truck into park and climbed out to untie the rope.
“Okay,” he said to Sam. “I suppose you being FBI, you understand gallows humor in these types of lousy situations.”
Sam nodded.
“One of the cops looks from the side of the house where the tree used to be to the middle of the street where it ended up and says, ‘this tree committed murder then tried to flee the scene of the crime.’ ” Cuffee punctuated the delivery of the line with an embarrassed frown. “What I tell you? Poor taste.”
Sam shook his head. “As good an explanation as any.”
Dean joined them as the workman took out a utility knife and sliced the rope above the knot around the tree trunk. Then the man walked back to the truck’s tow ball hitch and sliced the rope free at that end, coiled it and tossed it in the truck bed.
“What do the cops think really happened?” Dean asked.
“They talked about writing it up as a wind-related accident,” Cuffee said. “But honestly? I think we all know that’s bull crap.”
The man climbed back into the driver’s seat of the truck, closed the door and turned off the yellow warning lights that had been flashing since the Winchesters arrived on the scene.
“What’s your explanation?” Dean asked.
Cuffee leaned out the window with a conspiratorial look on his face.
“Three words,” he said and ticked them off on his fingers. “U-F-O.”
“Really?”
“Wouldn’t put it past them ETs to have a secret base up there in the Rockies. Their own version of Cheyenne Mountain.”
Sam glanced at Dean. “Why would... aliens want a tree?”
“Who knows? Thumbing their noses at us.”
“Fight the fairies,” Dean said—just loud enough for Cuffee to hear.
“I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to their sexual persuasion,” he said, shrugging. “But if you got a better explanation, I’d love to hear it.”
“Not at the moment, no,” Sam said.
“You said FBI, right?” Cuffee said, arching an eyebrow.
“You wouldn’t happen to be MIB? No, wait. If you tell me, you’ll have to wipe my memory. Forget I asked.”
As the man drove away, Dean cast an accusatory glance at Sam.
“What?” Sam said. “He seemed rational up until the end.”
“Nice boy. Always kept to himself.”
“Shut up, Dean.”
As they walked back toward the Impala, Sam asked, “Neighbor lady see anything?”
“Saw the tree topple in the middle of the street,” Dean said. “Not how it got there. Mother and son taken to the hospital to have the kid checked out.”
“Got that from the workman too,” Sam said. “Kid had to have seen something.”
“We’ll catch him in the morning,” Dean said. “Hey, you remember all those black ribbons and bows on Arcadia Boulevard?”
“Yeah. Hard to miss.”
They climbed into the Impala. Dean hesitated before turning the ignition.
“Neighbor had one on her door. Lost her husband in the fire.”
“You’re thinking we should check out the garment factory?”
“Worth a look.”
Dean started the Impala. Before he pulled away from the curb, Sam’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and said, “Clayton Falls PD again.”
Sam answered.
“Agent Shaw,” Officer Richard Jeffries said. “Keeping you and your partner in the loop, like you asked.”
“Go ahead.”
“Report on the radio of an escaped supermax inmate.”
“A jailbreak?” Sam asked, incredulous. Though, at this point, nothing should have surprised him.
“Yep. Most recent addition to the zoo. Serial killer named Ragnar Bartch, better known as Butcher Bartch or the Cleaver Cannibal.”
SIXTEEN
“I’m familiar with Bartch,” Sam said to Jeffries, because he thought an FBI agent should be aware of “most wanted” criminals even after they were no longer at large. “Anyone heard from the warden? Alden Webb?”
“Chief ’s trying to reach him as we speak.”
“Where was Bartch spotted?”
“303 Perry Lane,” Jeffries said. “Off of Welker, near the cluster of hotels and motels. Phoned in by... Jylene Livengood.”
“Got it. Thanks,” Sam said, ending the call. He gave Dean the details on Bartch and the address of the eyewitness. “Perry Lane’s near our motel.”
Dean drove north toward Welker Street.
“Wondering if this is the real con or another manifestation.”
“Either way, he’s dangerous.”
“That’s what puzzles me about the trees.”
“What?”
“This whole perception as reality theory of yours,” Dean said. “People don’t perceive trees as mobile, let alone murderous?”
“Not usually. No.”
“That tree looked like it pulled itself out of the ground and took a stroll.”
Dean caught the light at Welker and headed west. With four lanes of traffic instead of two, he pressed down on the accelerator and zipped through town.
“Before it collapsed.”
“And it’s still there,” Dean said. “It’s a real tree.”
Sam nodded grimly. “Even the things that aren’t real,” he said. “There seem to be more of them, and they’re lasting longer. Dude, whatever’s causing this, it’s getting stronger.”
“And we’re no closer to figuring out what it is.”
With that sobering thought on their minds, they drove in silence until they reached Perry Lane. Sam spotted one house on the block lit up like a Christmas tree. Every light in every room on both floors was on, along with the lights on either side of the front door. Made it easy to read the address.
“That’s it. Three-oh-three.”
A police cruiser, light bar flashing, waited at the curb.
As Sam and Dean walked toward the house, a tall African American cop with a touch of gray at his temples and sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves exited the house and walked toward his cruiser. Stopping when he spotted them, he hooked his fingers in his belt and said, “You’re the gentlemen from the FBI?”
“Yes, we are,” Dean said.
“Could I see some ID?”
“Sure,” Sam said. After a long night, their FBI suits were looking more than a bit disreputable. Either that or the man was overly cautious.
“Agents Shaw and DeYoung,” he said as they showed their laminates.
“Sergeant Cornelius Harrison,” the man said, extending his hand to Sam and Dean in turn. “Good to meet you. Ms. Livengood reported a prowler.”
Dean looked at Sam, then back at the sergeant.
“We heard she reported Butcher Bartch on the loose.”
“She was mistaken about the ID,” Harrison said. “Deputy Warden called the station. As of five minutes ago, Bartch was still in his cell.”
“What about Webb?”
“No word from the warden,” Harrison said. “Chief ’s sending a car to his home.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the house with the red-lined electricity usage. “She may have seen a prowler, but it wasn’t Bartch. I had two more units here. Searched the grounds and the house. Nothing. I’m heading back to the station. You’re welcome to talk to her. I doubt she’ll be sleeping any time soon.”
Harrison climbed into his cruiser and pulled away as Sam rapped on the door of the house. A moment later, the door opened a crack, revealing a security chain in place. A pale young woman with long black hair and wide gray eyes s
tared at them.
“Jylene Livengood?” Sam asked.
“Yes,” she said. “And you are?”
“FBI,” Sam said.
“FBI. Really? That was fast.”
“Already in town,” Dean said.
“The police were here and gone,” she said. “They found nothing.”
“We have a few questions,” Sam said. “Won’t take long.”
“You got ID?”
The brothers took turns holding their FBI credentials up to the gap in the doorway. She nodded, closed the door to remove the chain, then opened it again and waved them in. Locking the deadbolt and chain after they were inside, she turned toward them and clasped her hands together.
Without preamble, she said, “I saw Ragnar Bartch. Standing right in front of my house. And he had a meat cleaver in his hands! But the police don’t believe me.”
Sam glanced around the living room. Neat with the exception of small stacks of various newspapers, local, regional and national, along with separate piles of weekly news magazines. In stark contrast to the abundance of news, facts and figures in her reading material, her walls were hung with an assortment of what looked like original paintings of fantasy creatures and settings, centaurs striding through forests, mermaids reposing on rock clusters at shorelines, dragons sleeping in gold-strewn caverns.
“How can you be sure it was Bartch?” Sam asked.
“I know his face,” she said, nodding quickly, as if it were a nervous tic. “I was among the protesters when they added the supermax wing. I keep track of who they bring into that place. I have their names, their court photos, and a list of their crimes. Well, at least the crimes for which they were convicted. Who knows what other heinous acts they committed? It’s enough to keep you up at night.”
“You are up late,” Dean observed.
“Storms woke me,” she said. “Couldn’t sleep. Came down to watch a movie on cable. Looked out the window and saw him standing there. Would you like some coffee? I’ve already had three. It’s no problem.”
“No thanks,” Sam said. “Actually, I could use a cup.”
She hurried into the kitchen and, after a minute of clinking ceramic and stainless steel, she returned with a tray holding three cups of coffee, a container filled with packets of sugar and other sweeteners, and a small-handled creamer.
Supernatural: Night Terror Page 14
