You know, the more stories I write, the less I feel like disclaiming them. Nevertheless…
AN: I seem to remember "Beginnings" being the last episode of Buffy's season 2, where she almost gets arrested, but I could be wrong. It's been years since I saw it. Oh, and Jonathan and Andrew were the "we're taking over the world" geeks in season 5... why am I telling you this? You probably know more about it than I do.
The sincerest form of flattery
The call Victor Hendrickson had been dreading for months came at 2:47 a.m. from a police department several hundred miles away in Michigan.
The Winchesters were caught, and he hadn't been there.
That rankled.
But at least, as Reid pointed out in the car, they wouldn't be killing anyone else. Still, Hendrickson had been looking forward to snapping the cuffs around that cocky bastard's wrists himself. The younger brother he wasn't too worried about, figured he was basically a decent kid, just misguided, and far too loyal to his murderer brother. Wrong priorities, that was Sam Winchester's problem. Sometimes you just have to think about Number One, after all.
Dean on the other hand… Hendrickson was starting to think he was allergic to the bastard's very name. Every time he heard it, his hand would jerk reflexively towards his gun.
When they reached the boonies some hours later, an amused-looking Detective named Jake Roberts met them.
"Can't believe the FBI is interested in these guys," he said once they'd all shaken hands.
"Interested? The older one's a serial killer!" Hendrickson barked.
Reid frowned at Roberts, looking as though he'd just been gripped by a worrying premonition. Hendrickson was too busy glaring to notice.
"Yeah? Well, I looked at the files, and frankly everything you've got is circumstantial – but that's not what I meant." And with this cryptic statement, he ushered them into the yard, where a forensic team was taking apart what Hendrickson assumed was the Winchester's vehicle.
Reid bit back a snort of laughter. Roberts nodded at him, as if to say, see what I mean? Hendrickson just gaped at the scene in front of him. From what he'd seen of Dean Winchester, pink flamingoes weren't really his thing…
Oh no. Please no…
"Found some pretty weird stuff," Roberts interrupted his slowly forming suspicions. "EMF meters, night-vision goggles, hours of more or less empty video tapes… and a few action figures, one or two RPGs…"
Was that sarcasm Hendrickson detected in the man's voice? Surely not.
"Empty tape?" he repeated, tearing his eyes away from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer poster being carefully removed from the back of the car.
"Yeah, you know, houses, graveyards – very rarely any people, just empty rooms, often at night. Oh, and we found an impressive stash of pot," Roberts added.
"Pot?" Hendrickson said rather weakly. What did that sticker on the trailer door say? Step into the light, Carol-Anne… oh, yeah, that horror movie with the skeletons in the front garden.
The suspicions were certainties now. There was just no way, it didn't add up with anything they knew about the guy… but on the other hand, why had they called him if they weren't sure? Come to think of it, how could they not be sure? Or had the fine art of fingerprinting not yet reached this particular Department? Well, there was one way to find out for certain.
"Where are they?" Hendrickson demanded.
Roberts gestured in reply. If either of the FBI agents had spared him a glance as they headed inside, they would have noticed he was trying very hard not to laugh.
Hendrickson plunged through the station, scattering policemen, Reid hurrying along in his wake, torn between amusement and concern for his partner. He didn't know why, but Hendrickson was becoming increasingly obsessed with finding the Winchesters, and it worried him. Especially as he rather agreed with Roberts and that attorney back in Greenfield. There was just too much that didn't add up about the case, too many witnesses that said the exact opposite of what they should have if the brothers really had been killing people.
Besides, he had also noticed, rather uneasily, that the deaths seemed to stop, not start, once the Winchesters had been sighted in any given town.
But just try telling that to Victor Hendrickson.
In front of him, Hendrickson burst into the interview room with a crash. Reid followed him, took one look and ducked back out again. Amusement had just won out over concern.
Hendrickson thought he heard his partner whoop with laughter as the door slammed shut. He himself just stood stunned.
Holy Mary mother of God, he hated the boonies.
How in the hell could those so-called police officers out there have been this stupid?
Sitting in front of him, looking rather worried but trying manfully to seem contemptuous and defiant, sat a pair of too-pale, skinny computer geeks. The blonde one wore glasses. Definitely not Dean Winchester. The dark one had a large number of badges scattered over his anorak. Definitely not Sam Winchester.
Hendrickson pulled himself together with a visible effort. "FBI," he barked at the geeks, pulling out his badge. "Who in the hell are you two?"
"MIB, you mean?" the blonde one said. "Well, forget it. You've got no right to keep us here like this, and you can't make us talk, either, so why don't you just let us go? We haven't even been charged."
The dark one nodded enthusiastically. "Exactly right," he said. He was the yes-man, then. Hendrickson was vaguely surprised he hadn't sneered "Yeah!" in his best wannabe-high-school-rebel-talking-to-the-principal voice.
He decided a good sharp shock would do the trick with these two, and slammed a hand palm down on the tabletop.
"Listen, you nerds," he said sharply, "I don't know how much of that stash of pot you've already smoked today, but even so, you ought to have the sense not to sit there and try and make me believe you're serial killers! How's that for a charge? And the rest, well, credit card fraud, breaking and entering, grave desecration, for whatever wacked-out reason, and – "
But he was interrupted by badge-boy letting out a panicked exclamation.
"Serial killers! Serial killers? You told me you'd checked them out, you said it was fine, that no one would notice, and now you're telling me we're impersonating serial killers? Ed!"
"Harry! WWBD, remember? Beginnings, remember? And I did check them out, they were dead! How much more fine can you get?"
"Dead serial killers! What are you, crazy?" Harry shrieked. Under the circumstances, that was rather a rhetorical question, Hendrickson thought. He pushed away from the table and headed out of the interview room. They were too busy freaking out to even notice.
Outside, Reid was shaking with suppressed mirth, and Roberts was wearing a carefully constructed expression of innocent puzzlement.
"Why in the hell did you call me for these two?" Hendrickson asked, suddenly too fed up to even yell at the man. Every single time he thought he had them…
Roberts' eyes widened. "I thought you'd want to see them anyway, sir," he answered. "Besides, we couldn't be sure they weren't the Winchesters, we don't have their prints on file… technical glitch with the computers."
Reid let out a noise somewhere between a choke and a laugh, and Hendrickson turned away from him with a put-upon sigh.
"Where's the coffee machine?" he asked.
Several hundred miles away, at a gas station in the very town Hendrickson had left at 3.30 a.m. the day before, a green-eyed young man in his late twenties was filling a black Chevy Impala with gas. His younger brother was sitting on the car's boot, sipping coffee and frowning thoughtfully into the distance.
"We could have gotten them into real trouble, you know," he said.
The older one grunted. "Dude, come on. It's all worked out perfectly. We needed Hendrickson outta town so we could deal with that haunting, Jake gets to entertain himself for a few days, and Jonathan and Andrew get theirs. Anyway, Jake promised he'd make sure they got out of it… eventually. It's not like they don't deserve a scare. That pair of 'professional paranormal investigators' could have gotten those kids killed."
His brother grinned suddenly as a thought struck. "You know, they say imitations the sincerest form of flattery," he observed.
"Drivin' round the country pretendin' to hunt ghosts is one thing, Sammy," came the reply, "but makin' people think Dean Winchester associates with pink flamingoes?"