Witch's Canyon (14 page)

“You can have the ranch, but you won’t get me,” she said out loud. She meant for it to sound defi -

ant, but instead it rang hollow, pitiful, to her ears.

She wrapped the blanket tighter around herself and trembled.

FIFTEEN

As it had the night they first came in—just last night, Sam realized, although much had happened—the town seemed to close up early. Even the neon open sign at the Plugged Bucket was turned off when they went past after leaving the Richardsons’ house. The Wagon Wheel was dark and empty. It seemed word had spread, finally convincing enough people to drive them to their homes.

Where, Sam feared, they were no safer than they were at any other place. If it chose you, it chose you, whether it was an old man or a spirit or a shapeshifter, and there didn’t seem to be a hell of a lot you could say about it.

They cruised dark and silent streets, searching for the old man. The snow had stopped falling, although now and then a breeze puffed some into the air. In fact, Main Street had been plowed, but nothing else had, and the Impala made a shushing noise as they 124 SUPERNATURAL

drove. On the tape deck, Bob Seger sang “Turn the Page,” about being on the cold and lonely road, and Sam empathized. Dean tapped his fi ngers quietly on the steering wheel, in time to the music.

“This is pointless,” Dean said after twenty minutes or so. “There’s nobody out, much less an old man with a gun.”

“The killer might be out there somewhere,” Sam said. “We’re just not seeing him.”

“Or it. And if it’s a spirit, we might never see it.

We’ve got to be on the scene when a killing happens, or right after. That’s the only way we’re going to run it to ground.”

“Like we were on the scene with the bear.”

“Yeah, except at the time we thought it was just a bear. Now we know better.”

“Let’s go back to our room,” Sam suggested. “We can listen to the police band radio, maybe get online and see if there’s something else we can learn. Something we’ve been missing.”

“We’re missing something, that’s for sure,” Dean said. He changed course, back to Main and toward the Trail’s End.

They had stayed in so many motels during Sam’s younger days that, growing up, he’d been surprised to learn that there actually were families like the ones he saw on TV, who lived in the same place day after day and didn’t have to collect their mail, if they got any at all, from some desk clerk or other.

Stanford was the only place he had ever felt close to settled in, and the apartment he shared with Jess was Witch’s

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the only home he’d ever looked forward to getting back to at the end of the day. He wondered what it might be like to have bookshelves, family pictures and your own artwork on the walls, a pantry full of food that you liked and wanted to eat.

He might never find out. People in his line of work—not that there were many of them—probably didn’t get the chance to retire peacefully.

The Trail’s End was like most other motels. Inex-pensive and anonymous. Most of the vehicles scattered around the parking lot when they pulled in hadn’t been there in the morning, when they left.

Their room was decorated with an over-the-top cowboy theme. It had two beds covered in western-print bedspreads, with the legs of the beds standing in old, worn-out, painted cowboy boots. The dresser on which the broken TV sat had cow-horn drawer pulls, while the single nightstand between the beds had miniature lassoes instead, along with phone books on an open shelf, a Bible and the
Book of Mormon
in the drawer, and a telephone and clock radio on top.

The closet door was mirrored, and there were six hangers inside, the kind that fit into little hooks that the pole slid through, so people couldn’t steal them to use at home. Boots and ropes and cattle danced around on the wallpaper.

The cowboy motif didn’t carry through to the bathroom. There was a flat counter with a tissue box and what looked like an ashtray laden with little pack-ets of shampoo and conditioner, along with a single bar of soap and a coffeepot. Behind the coffeepot, 126 SUPERNATURAL

a bucket held sugar, creamer, and plastic stirring sticks. There were also a standard toilet and a tub with a plain white shower curtain.

All the comforts of home, if your home was a Super 8 or a Motel 6.

Sam’s pretty much was. He guessed that motels had won their way into the hearts of Americans by offering low prices and a kind of sameness, so whether you were visiting Niagara Falls or the Rocky Mountains or Graceland, the view inside the room would be more or less the same, once you got past the regional differences in decor.

Unless you were a Winchester.

When they stayed in a motel, they kept the Do Not Disturb sign out at all times. The walls quickly became papered with news clippings and printouts from the Web, most dealing with unsavory topics that might frighten your average motel housekeeper.

They traveled with a police band radio, guns and knives and other assorted weaponry, electromagnetic frequency readers and infrared thermal scanners, a laptop computer and a printer, and enough miscellaneous equipment to make the unschooled suspect terrorism or worse. Any room they occupied turned almost immediately into a command center for their spook-busting operation, and when every surface was covered, they started setting stuff up on the fl oor.

They had hardly spent any time in this room yet, so Sam could still see the walls and furniture when he walked in and clicked on the light. Most of the gear they would have set up in the room had been Witch’s

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hauled in and left on the floor. Without discussion, they both went to work, as they had so many times before. Sam got the laptop booted up and online, with the printer connected and ready to go. Dean turned on the radio and found the frequency of the local sheriff’s office. As the room filled with the buzz and crackle and unique shorthand of cop talk, he started cleaning and reloading some of their guns.

Sam plugged into the LexisNexis database, which gathered news items from newspapers, radio, TV, and the Internet, and ran a search for Cedar Wells.

Most of what came up had to do with the Grand Canyon, although there were also some stories about a logging controversy when a nearby mill had been bought out and shut down. Beyond that, he found a small handful of stories about the killings, mostly breathless tabloid tales that made the whole thing less believable instead of more. If he’d seen some of those before coming out, he might have recommended not bothering to make the trip.

Scanning a few of them, however, he found references to someone named Peter Panolli, who claimed to have witnessed one of the murders, back in 1966.

The article had been published in 2002. “Dean, check the phone book for me.”

“Yes, boss,” Dean said wryly. “What am I checking for?”

Sam spelled the last name. “Peter,” he added. “See if he still lives in the area.” He kept reading through the largely useless articles as Dean flipped pages in the background.

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“Got him,” Dean said a minute later. “Cedar Wells address. Peter Panolli, M.D.”

“He’s a doctor?”

“That’s what it says.”

Sam checked the digital readout on the clock radio: 9:30. A little late to be considered polite, but etiquette was far from his first priority at the moment. And doctors had to be used to getting calls at all hours, right?

He turned away from the laptop and snatched up the motel phone. “Read me the number.” Dean did, and Sam punched the buttons.

The voice that answered didn’t belong to the doctor. It was too young to have been around in 1966, and too female to be anyone named Peter. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Sam said. “I’m sorry to call so late. I’m looking for Dr. Panolli.”

“Hold on a sec,” she said. He heard thumping noises, and then a muffl ed shout. “Dad!” More thumping sounds, and a minute later an older, deeper voice came on the line. “This is Dr.

Panolli.”

“Peter Panolli?”

“That’s right.”

“This is going to sound strange, Doctor, but I just read that you were a witness to one of the killings in the last Cedar Wells murder cycle, back in 1966. Is that true?”

Panolli let a long pause elapse before he spoke.

“What’s your interest?”

Sam had known that question was coming, and Witch’s

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as usual, there was no easy answer for it. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s started again. Right on schedule.” Honesty seemed like the best policy in this case, so he took a breath and continued. “My brother and I are trying to stop it, not just for now but forever. But we need to understand what we’re dealing with. I wondered if you’d take a few minutes to tell us about your experience.”

“Tonight?”

“People are dying, Dr. Panolli. Tonight would be good.”

Another pause, but not as long this time. “Very well. Can you come around right away?”

“We’re leaving right now,” Sam said. “And thank you.”

The Panollis lived in a large white house on the edge of town. A wrought-iron fence stood around the property, but the gate was open when they arrived.

Driveway lights illuminated the way to the front door, which was made of some heavy, carved wood.

A brass knocker hung on it, just below a huge fresh pine wreath, but before either of the brothers could grab it, the door swung wide.

Sam guessed that the girl who opened it was the one who had answered the phone. She was nineteen or twenty, he speculated, wearing a red cable-knit sweater with a white reindeer emblazoned on the front over faded jeans and thick purple socks. “I’m Heather,” she said with a bright smile.

“I’m Sam. This is Dean.”

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“Your dad here?” Dean asked.

“I’ll get him.” Her pale blond hair was shoulder length and loose, and when she pivoted to fetch her father it whirled around her head like a hoop skirt on a square dancer.

“Cute,” Sam muttered when she was gone.

“For a kid, I guess,” Dean said.

Any reply Sam might have made was cut off by footsteps coming toward them from inside the big house. One set was Heather’s soft shuffl ing, the other heavier, and with an added knocking sound. Sam saw why when Dr. Panolli came into view. He was a big man, tall and broad and with a gut of substantial mass preceding him into the room. He carried a wooden cane, and the cane’s rubber tip tapped the fl oor with every step.

“You’re Dean?” he said, approaching Sam and extending his right hand.

“No, Sam. This is Dean.” Sam took the hand and gave it a quick shake.

The doctor turned to Dean, shook his as well, and said, “Delighted to meet you both. Welcome to my home. It’s late for coffee, but if you’d like a cup of herbal tea? Or hot chocolate?”

“No thanks,” Dean said. “We don’t want to take much of your time.”

“Let’s at least make ourselves comfortable,” Panolli said. He gestured toward a double doorway with a pocket door that was mostly tucked into its slot.

“Shall we?”

Dean led the way, followed by Sam, Dr. Panolli, Witch’s

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and Heather. They went into a living room stuffed with antiques, in the way that some antique stores are stuffed. Threading a line between tables and lamps and tables that had lamps built into them, between a sailor’s trunk and a huge copper urn, around a spindly chair that looked like a stiff wind would break it, much less the good doctor’s bulk, Dean found a couch that looked like it could support some body weight and sat down on it. Sam joined him. Panolli chose a chair on the other side of a glass-topped coffee table—a big chair. Heather perched on the fragile looking one.

“I hope you haven’t wasted a trip out here,” Panolli began. He pressed on the sides of his head with both hands, as if trying to tame his mane of graying hair.

His eyes were hooded, his jowls like a bulldog’s, and his lips rubbery and moist. “I’m afraid there’s very little I can tell you beyond what is commonly known and what has been reported in the press. I was about Heather’s age. A little younger. This was 1966, right?

You might not think it to look at me now, or at the town, but there were hippies in Cedar Wells, and I was one of them. I’m not certain we called ourselves hippies yet, that may have come a year later, after the Summer of Love. But I had hair longer than Heather’s, and I wore ragged jeans and protested the war in Vietnam and listened to rock and roll and folk music. Bob Dylan’s
Blonde on Blonde
had come out that year, and it was a revelation. That was also the year that he had the motorcycle accident that changed his life, and American music, forever.” 132 SUPERNATURAL

He gazed past Sam and Dean, as if he was looking into his own history. But then his eyes clari-fied and sparkled as he warmed to his subject. Most people acted like this, Sam had found, if you let them talk about themselves long enough. Dr. Panolli hadn’t needed any catalyst at all, just the opportunity. “What a year for music that was. The Beach Boys released
Pet Sounds
, Brian Wilson’s master-piece. The Beatles put out
Revolver
and quit tour-ing. The Byrds had
Turn! Turn! Turn!
An incredible time. My friends and I had heard about drugs, of course, psychedelics, but with music like that on the record player, who needed them?”