Chapter 7

When Dean wakes, Sam is at the table again. Alex's laptop sits in front of him, screen folded down, cords unplugged. Sam's notebook has a few pages flicked back, and as Dean watches, he turns another page over.

"What are you doing?" Dean croaks.

Sam looks up. His brow is creased. "The job, Dean." He looks back down at the notepad. "You didn't take any notes."

It would be easy to make Sam smile. To touch him and make the tension go away. Dean climbs out of bed and pulls on his jeans. "Didn't find anything. The usual teenage angst. Dad's too tough, Mom's too soft, my brother is the only one who understands, and yeah, by the way, I'd really like him to do me."

Sam's lips twitch, like he wants to smile, but it's too hard. "I wouldn't call that the usual."

Dean shrugs, then makes his way across the room in bare feet. "You had better luck?"

"Dad got cruel. To Hayden, not Alex. It began after the brothers started their thing. Mostly verbal abuse, some physical. Jim broke Hayden's arm one time, made him lie about how it happened."

"The knife. It had initials carved into it, right?"

"Yeah." Sam reaches for the police files, the evidence photos, finds the right sheet of paper and slides the file over to Dean. "J.G. Jim Graeme. The cops knew that. Jim claimed that Alex must have taken it to defend himself from Hayden."

"Yeah, 'cause Alex was terrified of Hayden." Dean rolls his eyes. "At the end, were they still..."

"They loved each other," Sam says. "There's no way Alex killed Hayden. Alex would have done anything for him. He was a good kid, Dean. Hayden managed to hold onto a part of his humanity, but something happened in that house that made Alex lose his."

"Sounds to me like he watched his father kill his brother." Dean lifts his head, stares at the ceiling. "So, you think if we can get Jim to come clean, they'll move on?"

Before he can answer, Sam's phone buzzes on the table. He picks it up, swipes at the screen. "Email," he says. "It's from the doc. She's got the test results." He doesn't offer any more information, but his eyes stay locked to the screen as he scrolls with one fingertip.

"Well?" Dean says.

Sam lets out a heavy breath. "There were eight samples. The first, the knife has Hayden's blood on it. The rope has bits of Alex's skin. The second, the knife had Hogan's blood on it, and Hayden's. The rope had both Ben's and Alex's skin on it. And so on. Cumulative evidence. It was the same knife, the same rope, for all four events."

"Romeo and Juliet? They had the previous two kids DNA on the stuff? And the gay kids had the previous three?"

"You got it," Sam says. "It's not a big surprise. We know Hayden had been possessing cops and walking the knife out of the station, and the rope was there, at the house, too."

"And if they tested them now, the knife would have your blood on it, and the rope..." Dean reaches up, brushes his fingers over the rough graze that circles his throat.

"Your DNA, yeah." Sam leans back in his chair and sighs. "But you want to guess who else is in there? Whose DNA is on both of them, in all the tests, from the very first sample?"

Dean frowns. "Jim," he says. "Jim Graeme."

---

"I haven't passed it on to the sheriff yet." The doctor stands in front of the desk in her office, teeth worrying her lip, fists balled in the pockets of her lab coat.

"Can I ask why?" Sam asks.

"They knew the blade belonged to Jim. It stands to reason his DNA could be on it. I just don't think the sheriff is going to be willing to look at him for this. If there was hard proof, maybe. But I can't see the sheriff dragging Jim in on something he can explain away."

"He admitted to owning it, ten years ago. His prints were on it. But he claimed it disappeared from his truck before his sons died. The cops figured Alex had taken it and kept it on himself for protection. But his fingerprints weren't on it."

The doctor's forehead creases up. "You think Jim killed his boys?" Her eyes widen. "You think he killed all those other kids? Why would he do that?"

Sam and Dean share a conspiratorial look. "We don't know yet," Dean says.

"You know what weirds me out most of all? That they were the same. The blade and the rope. Don't the police have them locked up or something? Surely they didn't just take them back to the house and dump them there."

"We're pretty sure they didn't," Dean says. "Don't worry. We'll get it figured out."

---

The sheriff opens the file in front of him, eyes skimming down the lines of text. When he's done, he pushes it back into the center of the desk, leans back in his chair, and lets out a long, slow breath. "So what are you thinking?"

There's tension in every muscle of Sam's body when he speaks. "Jim Graeme found out about the relationship between his sons. He blamed Hayden, and killed him. Alex took the rope from his father's truck and hanged himself in the attic out of grief."

The sheriff's face twists into confusion. "Relationship? Those boys didn't get on so good, according to Jim. You think Hayden was beating on the kid?"

Sam shakes his head. "Definitely not. Hayden and Alex Graeme were lovers."

The sheriff's expression morphs into disgust, and his hands grip the arms of his chair, tight, as though he's about to push himself to his feet. "They goddamn well were not."

"Sorry, Sheriff. We have proof that they were." Sam sits up in his chair. His posture is defensive, his body poised on the edge of movement.

The sheriff goes red in the face, and finally shoves himself up to his feet. "Impossible. Wherever you're getting your information, it's wrong. Those boys were... They were..."

"You okay, Sheriff?" Dean says, mildly amused. "You want us to call the doc? Find you your pills?"

The sheriff's eyes lock onto Dean's face, hard and beady. "I won't have you telling Jim and Hope that their boys were queers, you understand me? They don't need to hear disgusting lies like that."

Dean jerks back in disbelief. Then he puts one hand on the desk, and he forces himself to lean forward. "Am I hearing this right? They were brothers, and they were getting it on, but your problem is that they were both dudes? What kind of a hick town is this?"

Sam's arm shoots out to push Dean back into his chair. "Calm down, Agent." He stands up, presses his hands to the desk and leans forward. He towers over Sheriff Hammond. "We've got a job to do, Sheriff, and we'll do it with or without you."

The sheriff glares up at him. "Get out," he says. "Get the hell out of my office."

Dean stands up, brushes himself off. "Sure. Oh, by the way. You might want to think about how the evidence just walked out of your lockup. Not just once, but four times. Kinda looks like an inside job, don't you think? Like someone's encouraging these kids to off themselves. Maybe we need to take a look at that, once we take Graeme in."

He turns to the door, Sam right behind him.

"Would we be bulldozing the house tomorrow if we wanted that?"

Sam turns back. "The mayor caved?"

The sheriff gives him a jerky nod. "It's over, you hear me? And the sooner you two are out of my town, the better."

---

The sound of sawing, hammers hitting nails, men calling to one another, is familiar, like the memory of a past life. Dean lets it wrap around him like a blanket, something soft and warm and smelling of home. It wasn't really him, because Dean's a hunter, always has been, always will be, but he fit in that life, even if there was always something missing.

Now he's more likely to be carrying a badge—a fake badge, but a badge all the same—than wielding a hammer, smashing in skulls notwithstanding. But he breathes it in, the sawdust, the oil, and he smiles.

"You miss it, huh?" Sam says as they pass Graeme's truck. There's a thick, dusty rope coiled on the lowered tailgate, and the bed is half-full of lumber.

Dean shakes his head. "Nah. I'm a hunter, Sammy. It was safe, is all. Comfortable." He looks up at Sam, but quickly looks away again, because it wasn't hunting that was missing from that life. It was Sam. He stops, backtracks, and fingers the rope on the gate.

Sam comes back to him, hands deep in his pockets. His eyes flick to Dean's throat where the marks hide behind the collar of his shirt.

Gravel crunches under heavy boots. Sam and Dean turn to find Jim Graeme bearing down on them.

"What are you doing here?" Graeme says, his face tight with tension. "I'm working, I don't have time to—"

"Did you tie Alex up so he wouldn't get hurt when you stabbed his brother to death, Jim?" Dean pulls an end of rope, and draws it through his hands. "Did you make him watch?"

Jim's head jerks around, to see if anyone's close enough to hear. When he turns back, there's a mixture of anger and panic on his face. "I don't know what you're talking about. Alex killed Hayden, then himself. Cops closed the case years ago. You got no right to come here with accusations like that."

Sam steps forward, hands still in his pockets, but he's poised, ready. "You caught them together, didn't you? Found out exactly how close they were? For a parent, that's got to be pretty traumatic. I can almost imagine how easy it might be for a man to snap in a situation like that."

Jim's eyes go wide, and he takes a step back. "How did you—?" He shakes his head. "You're crazy. That's disgusting."

"I think the best thing for everyone would be if you went to the sheriff, Mr. Graeme. Tell him the truth. Before it gets out. You know how gossip can spread, and it might turn to speculation. People might think you killed all those other kids, and there's a big difference between a crime of passion and serial premeditated murder in the eyes of the law."

The color drains out of Jim's face. "Are you threatening me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think we are."

Jim starts to back away. "Get the hell off my site or I'll have you dragged off."

"We're leaving," Sam says. "We've got all we need."

They head back out onto the road, and in the background they hear Graeme shouting at his men. "You think he'll do it?" Dean asks. "You think he'll confess?"

"I don't know. If he does, I don't know if it'll do any good, if it'll help Hayden and Alex move on. They might be past saving."

"I won't accept that we're stuck with them, Sammy." Dean stares at him over the roof of the Impala. "I'll do anything to get rid of them." He opens the door and slides into the driver's seat.

He waits until Sam's in the passenger seat, waits until the doors are closed and it's just them, isolated from the outside world. "Hey, Sammy?" he says. "I think I've got an idea."