Fic Post: "Leapin' Lizards" (3/4)
Oct. 30th, 2007 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwendolyngraceTitle: Leapin’ Lizards (3/4)
Author: Gwendolyn Grace (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gwendolyngrace)
Rating: PG
Characters: Sam Winchester (age 8), Dean Winchester (age 12), Dr. Sam Beckett, Adm. Al Calavicci, OFC.
Pairings: None
Genre: Gen (Quantum Leap / Supernatural Crossover)
Wordcount: 18,560 give or take
Summary: Happy Birthday,ficwriter1966! This is set sometime within the first year or so of Project Quantum Leap (because the first season of QL is the only one I have on DVD currently!). The Leap Date is July 8, 1991. Dr. Sam Beckett Leaps in to save a life, which is not unusual…what’s unusual is that he’s saving it from an angry spirit.
Author’s Notes: About a month after venturing hardcore into the SPN fandom, I got to reading some fics byficwriter1966. I have tremendous respect for her interpretations, and shortly after beginning to comment on and friending her journal, she answered some questions about writing for TV and being a published author. She revealed that she wrote two of the Quantum Leap tie-in novels. And thus this idea was spawned. I feel a little like I’m putting my head in the lion’s mouth—only because she knows the QL-verse much better than I! I’ve spent the last few months surfing QL sites, trying to jumpstart my memories of the show, and borrowing my mother’s Season 1 DVD set (Season One feels way short!). At the time I thought it would be easy to get this written before her birthday; boy, did I underestimate the rate of plot bunny attack in this fandom! Also other commitments, getting into a show…etc. But here it is, and it’s dedicated to Carol.
Crossover Note: As with most of my crossovers, if you are minimally familiar with either fandom, you will be able to enjoy the fic without needing too much knowledge of the other fandom used herein.
Researcher’s Note: The July 11 eclipse, Minnewaukan, Devil’s Lake, the reservation, the drainage project, and the National Guard training facility are all real. The MotW is not. I don’t speak Lakota; I cobbled together some vocabulary found online to create the name of the creature.
Disclaimer: Quantum Leap was created by Don Bellisario and is owned by NBC TV. Supernatural was created by Eric Kripke and is owned by WB / CWTV. I was created by a rare act of silliness on my parents’ part and am (entirely) owned by my obsessions.
Chapter Two
“Darnit, Dean, I can’t go in there with a twelve-year-old kid pretending to be from the DoD!” Sam said for probably the fiftieth time.
“You can’t go in there alone!” Dean insisted. “You won’t know what to ask.”
“Here,” Sammy offered from the desk in their motel room. He held out a composition book. “I wrote questions down for you.”
“Sammy,” Dean sighed, “that book has your name and a dinosaur sticker on the cover.”
Sammy shrugged. “So tear out the pages,” he said to Sam, ignoring Dean. Something in the kid’s expression made Sam smile back at him reassuringly.
“Thanks,” Sam said and accepted the black and white notebook. He scanned the pages, written out in neat, little-kid block lettering. They were pretty good, like the one where he wanted to know about any history of drought-induced sinkholes opening up elsewhere in the area (with a carefully inscribed note about a cave-in in Minnewaukan a few years ago). Occasionally there was one that gave away Sammy’s youth. Sam thought perhaps asking, “Have there been any sightings of a ‘Loch Ness’ sort of monster in the lake?” might draw an unwanted reaction. “Why don’t I just transfer them to something else, so they’re in my own handwriting?” he asked, searching for middle ground between the two.
Dean crossed his arms and slumped on the bed. “I still say you should have some backup.”
“I will,” Sam told him confidently. And he would. As soon as Al showed up again. Sam figured if anyone could feed him the bluffs he’d need to get through this, it was his very own Rear Admiral. Meanwhile, re-writing the questions bought him a little time to wait.
When Al did appear, it was with a list of questions frighteningly similar to the ones Sam had just copied down. “Winchester said there’s a DoD badge in the…. You’ve got it,” Al remarked when Sam held it up before clipping it onto his jacket.
They left the boys at a motel down the road and Sam drove to the National Guard training base, after carefully shaving and cleaning himself up. Parroting Al’s speech, he was waved through to the command post, where he drilled his way down to the engineering corps in charge of the drainage project.
The men there didn’t have a lot to tell him. They were fighting with Ramsey County over whether the drainage would negatively impact the area. They’d heard about the sinkholes, but there was no way the drought in Minnewaukan and the overflow from the lake could be connected.
“The papers like to say there’s drought everywhere, but it’s just not so,” Lieutenant Keegan said, munching on a wad of tobacco. “This drainage project is necessary – the lake’s just about overflowing its banks in places.”
“Really?” Sam’s eyebrows lifted, sensing a lead. “Do you have any geological surveys of the water tables in the area? Benson County has been irrigating pretty heavily; I wonder if their water is draining right out of their ground and into the lake.”
Keegan complied happily enough, but the water table surveys were no real use. Sam stared at the elevation lines as if by looking at them long enough, he could make them make sense. Even with Al reading off Ziggy’s interpretation of the maps, they didn’t point to a natural solution. Sam thanked the Lieutenant for his time and hustled himself out, Al keeping pace the whole time with a stream of instructions on how to blend in on a military base.
“Just walk like you know exactly where you’re going… left, Sam. Sam, left!” Sam corrected his course just in time to avoid a door opening, but not the person who came through it. A pert sergeant in regulation dress brown skirt and short-sleeved blouse clicked into the hallway on solid-looking pumps. The open door obscured Sam from her view, and by the time he had sidestepped the steel, she had already executed a tight left turn right into him. Her lunch tray flipped up into her shirt, spilling fries, ketchup, and coffee into the hallway, and pressing what looked like tuna on rye into her chest.
“Oh, no!” she cried, dropping the tray and surveying the mess now decorating her uniform and the floor.
“Sorry!” Sam sputtered, fumbling for the napkins that hadn’t been soaked with coffee and holding them out to her. “I tried to dodge but….”
“I didn’t see you…” she offered. “Oh, Christ, it’s all over.”
“Here, let me um….” Sam scooped up the fries back onto the tray when the SFC accepted the napkins and tried to scoop some of the mayonnaise off her tie.
“Sam, this is not helpful,” Al admonished. Sam ignored him.
“I’ll get a corpsman to mop the hall,” she muttered. “Dammit!” She picked up the half-empty coffee cup and dropped it onto the tray. She still hadn’t really looked at him, but amongst the flurry, Sam had taken in her slim frame, a good bit shorter than he was, her black hair tied in a bun, and her heart-shaped face with its somewhat tanned skin.
“I should replace your lunch at least,” Sam offered. “And pay your cleaning bill. Sergeant…?”
“Davis,” she offered absently. “That’s kind of you, but it’s my own fault, really….”
“No, I saw the door, I just didn’t expect you to zig when I zagged,” Sam said with a smile.
She finally looked up, seeing Sam for the first time. Or rather, seeing John for the first time, and she clearly liked what she saw, but then composed herself quickly, professionally, militarily. There was something a little odd about her face, apart from the closed expression. Sam could see himself in the reflection from her large, dark eyes.
“Sam,” Al interjected, “ordinarily I’d say take what life offers you, but this time I gotta tell ya you’re better off getting out while no one suspects anything.”
“Really, it’s all right,” she said feebly, unaware of speaking over Al’s rant. “Agent…Orange?” she could barely keep her voice from cracking. “Seriously? That’s your name?”
Sam grimaced. Either Winchester had a horrid sense of humor or he’d let Dean put the name on the ID. “Fraid so. And yeah, I get the jokes all the time.”
Sam waited while SFC Davis ducked back inside the door to the mess hall and alerted someone to the need for cleanup. “What brings the DoD to Devil’s Lake? If you don’t mind my asking,” she said when she came back.
Even without Al’s input, Sam would have taken the opening this offered him. “I’ve been assigned to look into the Minnewaukan sinkholes,” he said amiably. “Only I don’t quite know what to tell my superiors, since there doesn’t seem to be much of anything we can do about it.”
Sergeant Davis frowned. “The sinkholes? What does that have to do with the lake?”
“Well, apparently nothing. I thought maybe the drainage was affecting the higher ground, but—”
“No the water tables are totally off,” Davis said half to herself. Then she looked up as if she’d betrayed a state secret. “I should go clean up a little more,” she commented suddenly. She had no sooner spoken than she sidestepped him and made off down the hallway.
Sam turned as he passed him. “Wait, seriously, let me replace your lunch!” he offered again.
“Oh, no, no trouble!” she called over her shoulder. A second later, she turned a corner.
“Sam,” Al said at his elbow. “Call me crazy, but she was into you. Then you mentioned Minnewaukan and she….”
“Freaked?” Sam muttered, glad that he was alone in the hallway for the moment. “Yeah. I’m going to follow her. See what Ziggy can find on Sergeant First Class Davis.”
~*~*~*~
Sam followed Davis to a corridor marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” He waited until she keyed in and dashed forward just as the door was about to close, catching the edge of the door to slip through it. Once inside, he hung back for a few seconds while SFC Davis moved down the corridor and took a right turn. Sam trailed after her.
She went into the ladies’ room about three doors down on the left. Sam kept going along the corridor, reading the names on the offices, until he found hers. The door was locked, so Sam jotted down the department and the office number and went across the hall, pretending to be looking for her.
“I think she’s at lunch,” the junior officer inside told him.
“Thanks,” Sam said, as if he hadn’t already known this. “Have you been billeted at Grafton long?”
“Six months, sir,” came the polite answer. If there was a hint of, “Why?” behind the prompt reply, Sam ignored it.
“Do you know Sgt. Davis well?”
“Not very well, sir. Our offices really don’t interact.”
“Right. But you’ve seen her around,” Sam said with a knowing smile.
The junior officer relaxed. “Hard not to,” he admitted. “She keeps to herself, though,” he volunteered, as if eager to prove there was no inappropriate fraternization in play.
“Really? Pretty girl like she is? Does she have a boyfriend or anything, off-base?”
He looked uncomfortable again. “I wouldn’t know, sir.”
Sam nodded. “Right, of course not,” he said convivially. “You said your offices don’t really interact. Just curious: in this area, why wouldn’t the Training Purchasing Department interact with the Office of Community Relations?”
The young man blinked, and for a moment, Sam feared he had asked a question to which his cover would have already known the answer. Fortunately, whether or not that was true, the junior officer must have been used to “test” questions, because he set his jaw as if refusing to be phased. “Around here, sir, ‘Community Relations’ just means the Reservation. We don’t have much call to purchase anything on the Res, sir.”
Sam winked and nodded, letting the kid know he’d passed. “That would be…the Spirit Lake Reservation?”
“Yes, sir, over at Fort Totten.”
“Thanks.” Sam nodded again and turned to go. A sudden intuition struck him and he stopped at the door. “Hey, how far is Fort Totten from Minnewaukan?” he asked casually.
“About 15 or 20 miles, sir,” replied the kid with a shrug.
“Yeah, thanks,” Sam said again, waving his acknowledgement on his way out the door. He had a whole list of questions for Sergeant Davis now.
But her door was still locked. Sam peered through the frosted glass for any sign of movement and saw none. Neither he nor the kid had seen her return, but with both doors closed that was hardly remarkable. Looking both ways for any observers, Sam sidled down the hall to the ladies’ room. He tentatively opened the door. “Housekeeping?” he called softly, voice breaking. There was no answer. Sam checked the hall again and ducked inside the tiled room. He came around the little privacy wall where the hand dryers were mounted. The line of sinks and mirrors to his left was empty, except for the reflection that didn’t match his memory of his face. The four stalls on his right all had open doors, hanging ajar on their hinges. And between the sinks and the stalls, high up on the wall, was an open transom window, just large enough for a size six like Davis to wriggle through.
~*~*~*~
Sam ducked back out of the restroom before anyone could find him there. Luckily, even on a National Guard base, there weren’t many female personnel. He made his way out of the command center and back to the motel. As he came up the hallway to the room, he heard voices inside. When he heard Sammy say, “Dr. Beckett,” he paused to listen.
“I’m not saying I want him to stay in Dad’s place, Dean. I want Dad back, too,” Sammy continued whatever he’d been saying in a placating tone. “I just meant that if Dr. Beckett can’t do what he says and bring Dad back…it might not be so bad.”
“Are you high? What happens to Dad?” Dean asked angrily.
“He’d be…safe. In the future. Without having to worry about taking care of us, I mean. He’d probably just pick right up hunting.”
“Sammy, he’d be out of his mind without us,” Dean told his brother emphatically. Then, less sure: “Wouldn’t he?”
“He’d take care of himself. He always does. And he’d know we’re okay.” He gasped and added excitedly: “He might even find us in the future. They could look it up and show him where we live when we’re grown up. Dr. Beckett’s—”
“Not Dad,” Dean cut off whatever Sammy was going to say with his own assessment of what Dr. Beckett was—and apparently what he wasn’t. “We are not trading Dad in for a kinder, gentler model, Sammy!”
“But we could be normal —live in one town, go to one school. Maybe only hunt once in a while, or on summer vacations. And he’s really smart—I bet he could help us with all our homework and projects and everything. I bet he’d even offer to help.” Sam’s breath caught at the longing in that young voice.
“I don’t think keeping a scientist from the future stuck in Dad’s body qualifies as nearly normal.” There was no doubt that Dean thought being a scientist was as lame as Sammy found it laudable. There was also no doubt that he thought his brother was on dangerous ground.
“Dean, I didn’t say I wanted them to stay like this!” Sammy insisted.
“Yeah? Cause it sounds to me like you sure wouldn’t mind. Now cut it out, Sammy. We’re getting them switched back, and that’s final.”
“You sound like Dad,” Sammy said, his earlier plaintive tone evaporated into stubborn defiance.
“I’ll sound like him a lot more if I have to kick your butt about this again.”
Sam chose that moment to put the key in the lock and turn the knob as loudly as he could. “Kick Sammy’s butt about what, Dean?” he asked as he came through the door.
“About…wanting to come along on the next phase of the hunt,” Dean said smoothly. Kid was good; Sam had to hand it to him. If he hadn’t been outside eavesdropping, he’d never have guessed they’d just been arguing about whether he would stay here forever.
“Well, I might actually want you both along,” Sam told them. He explained quickly, remembering his promise to run all hunt-related plans past Dean. “I think our next steps are either to go to the reservation and find out what anyone there knows, either about Sergeant Davis, or about the sinkholes, or just go to the sinkholes themselves and see what we can see.”
“Reservation,” Sammy voted, just as Dean said, “Sinkholes.”
Dean turned to Sammy. “First-hand examination of the scene, Sammy. Can’t beat that for gathering evidence.”
“Dean, if someone on the reservation knows what this is, we can go to the scene prepared for it,” Sammy argued.
“Yes, and if someone on the reservation knows Sergeant Davis, then we can find out how she’s connected to this whole thing, if at all,” Sam added. “I think Sammy’s right. The Res is our next stop.”
It was easy enough to come up with a cover: John Cohasset was taking his boys on a living history trip over the summer. With a minimum of fuss, they found their way to the tribal administration center. Sammy had a ball talking with one of the tribal elders about a project he’d done that year on Wounded Knee and soon had the woman behind the reception desk offering him a piece of homemade fudge. Dean browsed the tomahawks in display cases and asked pointed questions about whether the Sioux of Spirit Lake had ever laid any curses on the white men back in the day.
“Or, you know, even more recently?”
The Santee elder grunted. “There’s a legend that the great medicine man Standing Bear placed a curse on inquisitive little boys,” he said.
“How about boys who eat too much fudge?” Dean asked, inclining his head toward Sammy.
“They bring their own curse on themselves,” said the elder with a smile. “But I don’t know of any curse that has ever come true in these parts.”
“Sir, what’s your opinion about the sinkholes up in Minnewaukan?” Sam asked.
The elder’s eyes dipped to his lap, then back up. “Minnewaukan land is Wakan, holy,” he said. “But lately it has become…tainted by something. Mick Leaping Fox went to consult the stars three weeks ago. He hasn’t returned. I would avoid that place if I were you.”
Sam nodded while the boys exchanged a knowing look. “One more thing, if you don’t mind: Do you know a Sergeant First Class Davis from the National Guard camp?”
The secretary slammed her drawer shut too loudly. The elder said nothing for a long moment. “What does Lara have to do with Minnewaukan?” he asked finally.
“Maybe nothing. But I think she might know something about what’s going on out there. If you see her, would you please ask her to page me at this number?” Sam handed over a slip of paper in Dean’s handwriting.
“We haven’t seen her,” the secretary said quickly.
“Okay. Well, if you do,” Sam repeated. “C’mon, boys, we’ve taken up enough of these folks’ time,” he continued, surprised that both of the Winchester boys took their leaves without question or complaint.
Back outside in the blinding light, Dean said, “They have seen her, I bet.”
“I bet, too,” Sammy said.
“That makes three of us.”
“Four,” Al said. Sam jumped.
“Dr. Beckett?” Dean asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sam said. He pointed to a public bathroom. “You two need a pit stop?” They shook their heads. “Okay,” Sam said wearily. “Well, I’m going to take advantage. I’ll be back.” He walked toward the low building.
Once he got a few paces away, he said under his breath, “What have you got, Al?”
“Well, I don’t know if it helps, but she has ties to both the lake and the reservation. Turns out, Lara Davis is that secretary’s niece.”
“Do you think she put a curse on the area for some reason?”
Al shrugged. “I seriously doubt it, Sam.”
“Okay. Well, what does Winchester have to say about destroying this thing without getting killed?”
“He’s…not very forthcoming. He’s demanding to be brought in here, to the imaging chamber.”
“Why?”
“Wants to check on his sons with his own eyes. I’m telling ya, Sam, we’ve had some difficult people in the waiting room, but….”
“Yeah, well, tell him his kids miss him, too,” Sam said. He suppressed the discussion he’d overheard earlier, chalking it up to nerves on the boys’ parts.
“I guess you can’t really blame him, doing what he does, which I still can’t quite believe, by the way—”
“Like you said, Al, doesn’t matter. Apparently it’s pretty real to them. What else does Davis have in common with the deaths so far? Anything?”
Al shook his head. “Gooshie can’t get Ziggy to be that specific. Davis wasn’t on duty at the training center during any of the incidents, but we don’t have a way to pinpoint her whereabouts. Do you think she could be controlling whatever this is?”
“I think it’s a fair possibility. She’s a local who knows the area. What I can’t figure out is why—I mean, it doesn’t seem to be serving any useful purpose. The guys in the engineering corps say the lake needs to be drained, and the water supplies aren’t common to both areas, so what’s the big deal?’
Al consulted his readout. “Whatever the deal is, Sam, I think Ziggy just found something for you: Sergeant First Class Lara Davis has a 60% likelihood of dying at the Minnewaukan Cemetery tonight.”
Go on to Chapter Four
Author: Gwendolyn Grace (
gwendolyngrace)Rating: PG
Characters: Sam Winchester (age 8), Dean Winchester (age 12), Dr. Sam Beckett, Adm. Al Calavicci, OFC.
Pairings: None
Genre: Gen (Quantum Leap / Supernatural Crossover)
Wordcount: 18,560 give or take
Summary: Happy Birthday,
ficwriter1966! This is set sometime within the first year or so of Project Quantum Leap (because the first season of QL is the only one I have on DVD currently!). The Leap Date is July 8, 1991. Dr. Sam Beckett Leaps in to save a life, which is not unusual…what’s unusual is that he’s saving it from an angry spirit.Author’s Notes: About a month after venturing hardcore into the SPN fandom, I got to reading some fics by
ficwriter1966. I have tremendous respect for her interpretations, and shortly after beginning to comment on and friending her journal, she answered some questions about writing for TV and being a published author. She revealed that she wrote two of the Quantum Leap tie-in novels. And thus this idea was spawned. I feel a little like I’m putting my head in the lion’s mouth—only because she knows the QL-verse much better than I! I’ve spent the last few months surfing QL sites, trying to jumpstart my memories of the show, and borrowing my mother’s Season 1 DVD set (Season One feels way short!). At the time I thought it would be easy to get this written before her birthday; boy, did I underestimate the rate of plot bunny attack in this fandom! Also other commitments, getting into a show…etc. But here it is, and it’s dedicated to Carol. Crossover Note: As with most of my crossovers, if you are minimally familiar with either fandom, you will be able to enjoy the fic without needing too much knowledge of the other fandom used herein.
Researcher’s Note: The July 11 eclipse, Minnewaukan, Devil’s Lake, the reservation, the drainage project, and the National Guard training facility are all real. The MotW is not. I don’t speak Lakota; I cobbled together some vocabulary found online to create the name of the creature.
Disclaimer: Quantum Leap was created by Don Bellisario and is owned by NBC TV. Supernatural was created by Eric Kripke and is owned by WB / CWTV. I was created by a rare act of silliness on my parents’ part and am (entirely) owned by my obsessions.
Chapter Two
“Darnit, Dean, I can’t go in there with a twelve-year-old kid pretending to be from the DoD!” Sam said for probably the fiftieth time.
“You can’t go in there alone!” Dean insisted. “You won’t know what to ask.”
“Here,” Sammy offered from the desk in their motel room. He held out a composition book. “I wrote questions down for you.”
“Sammy,” Dean sighed, “that book has your name and a dinosaur sticker on the cover.”
Sammy shrugged. “So tear out the pages,” he said to Sam, ignoring Dean. Something in the kid’s expression made Sam smile back at him reassuringly.
“Thanks,” Sam said and accepted the black and white notebook. He scanned the pages, written out in neat, little-kid block lettering. They were pretty good, like the one where he wanted to know about any history of drought-induced sinkholes opening up elsewhere in the area (with a carefully inscribed note about a cave-in in Minnewaukan a few years ago). Occasionally there was one that gave away Sammy’s youth. Sam thought perhaps asking, “Have there been any sightings of a ‘Loch Ness’ sort of monster in the lake?” might draw an unwanted reaction. “Why don’t I just transfer them to something else, so they’re in my own handwriting?” he asked, searching for middle ground between the two.
Dean crossed his arms and slumped on the bed. “I still say you should have some backup.”
“I will,” Sam told him confidently. And he would. As soon as Al showed up again. Sam figured if anyone could feed him the bluffs he’d need to get through this, it was his very own Rear Admiral. Meanwhile, re-writing the questions bought him a little time to wait.
When Al did appear, it was with a list of questions frighteningly similar to the ones Sam had just copied down. “Winchester said there’s a DoD badge in the…. You’ve got it,” Al remarked when Sam held it up before clipping it onto his jacket.
They left the boys at a motel down the road and Sam drove to the National Guard training base, after carefully shaving and cleaning himself up. Parroting Al’s speech, he was waved through to the command post, where he drilled his way down to the engineering corps in charge of the drainage project.
The men there didn’t have a lot to tell him. They were fighting with Ramsey County over whether the drainage would negatively impact the area. They’d heard about the sinkholes, but there was no way the drought in Minnewaukan and the overflow from the lake could be connected.
“The papers like to say there’s drought everywhere, but it’s just not so,” Lieutenant Keegan said, munching on a wad of tobacco. “This drainage project is necessary – the lake’s just about overflowing its banks in places.”
“Really?” Sam’s eyebrows lifted, sensing a lead. “Do you have any geological surveys of the water tables in the area? Benson County has been irrigating pretty heavily; I wonder if their water is draining right out of their ground and into the lake.”
Keegan complied happily enough, but the water table surveys were no real use. Sam stared at the elevation lines as if by looking at them long enough, he could make them make sense. Even with Al reading off Ziggy’s interpretation of the maps, they didn’t point to a natural solution. Sam thanked the Lieutenant for his time and hustled himself out, Al keeping pace the whole time with a stream of instructions on how to blend in on a military base.
“Just walk like you know exactly where you’re going… left, Sam. Sam, left!” Sam corrected his course just in time to avoid a door opening, but not the person who came through it. A pert sergeant in regulation dress brown skirt and short-sleeved blouse clicked into the hallway on solid-looking pumps. The open door obscured Sam from her view, and by the time he had sidestepped the steel, she had already executed a tight left turn right into him. Her lunch tray flipped up into her shirt, spilling fries, ketchup, and coffee into the hallway, and pressing what looked like tuna on rye into her chest.
“Oh, no!” she cried, dropping the tray and surveying the mess now decorating her uniform and the floor.
“Sorry!” Sam sputtered, fumbling for the napkins that hadn’t been soaked with coffee and holding them out to her. “I tried to dodge but….”
“I didn’t see you…” she offered. “Oh, Christ, it’s all over.”
“Here, let me um….” Sam scooped up the fries back onto the tray when the SFC accepted the napkins and tried to scoop some of the mayonnaise off her tie.
“Sam, this is not helpful,” Al admonished. Sam ignored him.
“I’ll get a corpsman to mop the hall,” she muttered. “Dammit!” She picked up the half-empty coffee cup and dropped it onto the tray. She still hadn’t really looked at him, but amongst the flurry, Sam had taken in her slim frame, a good bit shorter than he was, her black hair tied in a bun, and her heart-shaped face with its somewhat tanned skin.
“I should replace your lunch at least,” Sam offered. “And pay your cleaning bill. Sergeant…?”
“Davis,” she offered absently. “That’s kind of you, but it’s my own fault, really….”
“No, I saw the door, I just didn’t expect you to zig when I zagged,” Sam said with a smile.
She finally looked up, seeing Sam for the first time. Or rather, seeing John for the first time, and she clearly liked what she saw, but then composed herself quickly, professionally, militarily. There was something a little odd about her face, apart from the closed expression. Sam could see himself in the reflection from her large, dark eyes.
“Sam,” Al interjected, “ordinarily I’d say take what life offers you, but this time I gotta tell ya you’re better off getting out while no one suspects anything.”
“Really, it’s all right,” she said feebly, unaware of speaking over Al’s rant. “Agent…Orange?” she could barely keep her voice from cracking. “Seriously? That’s your name?”
Sam grimaced. Either Winchester had a horrid sense of humor or he’d let Dean put the name on the ID. “Fraid so. And yeah, I get the jokes all the time.”
Sam waited while SFC Davis ducked back inside the door to the mess hall and alerted someone to the need for cleanup. “What brings the DoD to Devil’s Lake? If you don’t mind my asking,” she said when she came back.
Even without Al’s input, Sam would have taken the opening this offered him. “I’ve been assigned to look into the Minnewaukan sinkholes,” he said amiably. “Only I don’t quite know what to tell my superiors, since there doesn’t seem to be much of anything we can do about it.”
Sergeant Davis frowned. “The sinkholes? What does that have to do with the lake?”
“Well, apparently nothing. I thought maybe the drainage was affecting the higher ground, but—”
“No the water tables are totally off,” Davis said half to herself. Then she looked up as if she’d betrayed a state secret. “I should go clean up a little more,” she commented suddenly. She had no sooner spoken than she sidestepped him and made off down the hallway.
Sam turned as he passed him. “Wait, seriously, let me replace your lunch!” he offered again.
“Oh, no, no trouble!” she called over her shoulder. A second later, she turned a corner.
“Sam,” Al said at his elbow. “Call me crazy, but she was into you. Then you mentioned Minnewaukan and she….”
“Freaked?” Sam muttered, glad that he was alone in the hallway for the moment. “Yeah. I’m going to follow her. See what Ziggy can find on Sergeant First Class Davis.”
~*~*~*~
Sam followed Davis to a corridor marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” He waited until she keyed in and dashed forward just as the door was about to close, catching the edge of the door to slip through it. Once inside, he hung back for a few seconds while SFC Davis moved down the corridor and took a right turn. Sam trailed after her.
She went into the ladies’ room about three doors down on the left. Sam kept going along the corridor, reading the names on the offices, until he found hers. The door was locked, so Sam jotted down the department and the office number and went across the hall, pretending to be looking for her.
“I think she’s at lunch,” the junior officer inside told him.
“Thanks,” Sam said, as if he hadn’t already known this. “Have you been billeted at Grafton long?”
“Six months, sir,” came the polite answer. If there was a hint of, “Why?” behind the prompt reply, Sam ignored it.
“Do you know Sgt. Davis well?”
“Not very well, sir. Our offices really don’t interact.”
“Right. But you’ve seen her around,” Sam said with a knowing smile.
The junior officer relaxed. “Hard not to,” he admitted. “She keeps to herself, though,” he volunteered, as if eager to prove there was no inappropriate fraternization in play.
“Really? Pretty girl like she is? Does she have a boyfriend or anything, off-base?”
He looked uncomfortable again. “I wouldn’t know, sir.”
Sam nodded. “Right, of course not,” he said convivially. “You said your offices don’t really interact. Just curious: in this area, why wouldn’t the Training Purchasing Department interact with the Office of Community Relations?”
The young man blinked, and for a moment, Sam feared he had asked a question to which his cover would have already known the answer. Fortunately, whether or not that was true, the junior officer must have been used to “test” questions, because he set his jaw as if refusing to be phased. “Around here, sir, ‘Community Relations’ just means the Reservation. We don’t have much call to purchase anything on the Res, sir.”
Sam winked and nodded, letting the kid know he’d passed. “That would be…the Spirit Lake Reservation?”
“Yes, sir, over at Fort Totten.”
“Thanks.” Sam nodded again and turned to go. A sudden intuition struck him and he stopped at the door. “Hey, how far is Fort Totten from Minnewaukan?” he asked casually.
“About 15 or 20 miles, sir,” replied the kid with a shrug.
“Yeah, thanks,” Sam said again, waving his acknowledgement on his way out the door. He had a whole list of questions for Sergeant Davis now.
But her door was still locked. Sam peered through the frosted glass for any sign of movement and saw none. Neither he nor the kid had seen her return, but with both doors closed that was hardly remarkable. Looking both ways for any observers, Sam sidled down the hall to the ladies’ room. He tentatively opened the door. “Housekeeping?” he called softly, voice breaking. There was no answer. Sam checked the hall again and ducked inside the tiled room. He came around the little privacy wall where the hand dryers were mounted. The line of sinks and mirrors to his left was empty, except for the reflection that didn’t match his memory of his face. The four stalls on his right all had open doors, hanging ajar on their hinges. And between the sinks and the stalls, high up on the wall, was an open transom window, just large enough for a size six like Davis to wriggle through.
~*~*~*~
Sam ducked back out of the restroom before anyone could find him there. Luckily, even on a National Guard base, there weren’t many female personnel. He made his way out of the command center and back to the motel. As he came up the hallway to the room, he heard voices inside. When he heard Sammy say, “Dr. Beckett,” he paused to listen.
“I’m not saying I want him to stay in Dad’s place, Dean. I want Dad back, too,” Sammy continued whatever he’d been saying in a placating tone. “I just meant that if Dr. Beckett can’t do what he says and bring Dad back…it might not be so bad.”
“Are you high? What happens to Dad?” Dean asked angrily.
“He’d be…safe. In the future. Without having to worry about taking care of us, I mean. He’d probably just pick right up hunting.”
“Sammy, he’d be out of his mind without us,” Dean told his brother emphatically. Then, less sure: “Wouldn’t he?”
“He’d take care of himself. He always does. And he’d know we’re okay.” He gasped and added excitedly: “He might even find us in the future. They could look it up and show him where we live when we’re grown up. Dr. Beckett’s—”
“Not Dad,” Dean cut off whatever Sammy was going to say with his own assessment of what Dr. Beckett was—and apparently what he wasn’t. “We are not trading Dad in for a kinder, gentler model, Sammy!”
“But we could be normal —live in one town, go to one school. Maybe only hunt once in a while, or on summer vacations. And he’s really smart—I bet he could help us with all our homework and projects and everything. I bet he’d even offer to help.” Sam’s breath caught at the longing in that young voice.
“I don’t think keeping a scientist from the future stuck in Dad’s body qualifies as nearly normal.” There was no doubt that Dean thought being a scientist was as lame as Sammy found it laudable. There was also no doubt that he thought his brother was on dangerous ground.
“Dean, I didn’t say I wanted them to stay like this!” Sammy insisted.
“Yeah? Cause it sounds to me like you sure wouldn’t mind. Now cut it out, Sammy. We’re getting them switched back, and that’s final.”
“You sound like Dad,” Sammy said, his earlier plaintive tone evaporated into stubborn defiance.
“I’ll sound like him a lot more if I have to kick your butt about this again.”
Sam chose that moment to put the key in the lock and turn the knob as loudly as he could. “Kick Sammy’s butt about what, Dean?” he asked as he came through the door.
“About…wanting to come along on the next phase of the hunt,” Dean said smoothly. Kid was good; Sam had to hand it to him. If he hadn’t been outside eavesdropping, he’d never have guessed they’d just been arguing about whether he would stay here forever.
“Well, I might actually want you both along,” Sam told them. He explained quickly, remembering his promise to run all hunt-related plans past Dean. “I think our next steps are either to go to the reservation and find out what anyone there knows, either about Sergeant Davis, or about the sinkholes, or just go to the sinkholes themselves and see what we can see.”
“Reservation,” Sammy voted, just as Dean said, “Sinkholes.”
Dean turned to Sammy. “First-hand examination of the scene, Sammy. Can’t beat that for gathering evidence.”
“Dean, if someone on the reservation knows what this is, we can go to the scene prepared for it,” Sammy argued.
“Yes, and if someone on the reservation knows Sergeant Davis, then we can find out how she’s connected to this whole thing, if at all,” Sam added. “I think Sammy’s right. The Res is our next stop.”
It was easy enough to come up with a cover: John Cohasset was taking his boys on a living history trip over the summer. With a minimum of fuss, they found their way to the tribal administration center. Sammy had a ball talking with one of the tribal elders about a project he’d done that year on Wounded Knee and soon had the woman behind the reception desk offering him a piece of homemade fudge. Dean browsed the tomahawks in display cases and asked pointed questions about whether the Sioux of Spirit Lake had ever laid any curses on the white men back in the day.
“Or, you know, even more recently?”
The Santee elder grunted. “There’s a legend that the great medicine man Standing Bear placed a curse on inquisitive little boys,” he said.
“How about boys who eat too much fudge?” Dean asked, inclining his head toward Sammy.
“They bring their own curse on themselves,” said the elder with a smile. “But I don’t know of any curse that has ever come true in these parts.”
“Sir, what’s your opinion about the sinkholes up in Minnewaukan?” Sam asked.
The elder’s eyes dipped to his lap, then back up. “Minnewaukan land is Wakan, holy,” he said. “But lately it has become…tainted by something. Mick Leaping Fox went to consult the stars three weeks ago. He hasn’t returned. I would avoid that place if I were you.”
Sam nodded while the boys exchanged a knowing look. “One more thing, if you don’t mind: Do you know a Sergeant First Class Davis from the National Guard camp?”
The secretary slammed her drawer shut too loudly. The elder said nothing for a long moment. “What does Lara have to do with Minnewaukan?” he asked finally.
“Maybe nothing. But I think she might know something about what’s going on out there. If you see her, would you please ask her to page me at this number?” Sam handed over a slip of paper in Dean’s handwriting.
“We haven’t seen her,” the secretary said quickly.
“Okay. Well, if you do,” Sam repeated. “C’mon, boys, we’ve taken up enough of these folks’ time,” he continued, surprised that both of the Winchester boys took their leaves without question or complaint.
Back outside in the blinding light, Dean said, “They have seen her, I bet.”
“I bet, too,” Sammy said.
“That makes three of us.”
“Four,” Al said. Sam jumped.
“Dr. Beckett?” Dean asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sam said. He pointed to a public bathroom. “You two need a pit stop?” They shook their heads. “Okay,” Sam said wearily. “Well, I’m going to take advantage. I’ll be back.” He walked toward the low building.
Once he got a few paces away, he said under his breath, “What have you got, Al?”
“Well, I don’t know if it helps, but she has ties to both the lake and the reservation. Turns out, Lara Davis is that secretary’s niece.”
“Do you think she put a curse on the area for some reason?”
Al shrugged. “I seriously doubt it, Sam.”
“Okay. Well, what does Winchester have to say about destroying this thing without getting killed?”
“He’s…not very forthcoming. He’s demanding to be brought in here, to the imaging chamber.”
“Why?”
“Wants to check on his sons with his own eyes. I’m telling ya, Sam, we’ve had some difficult people in the waiting room, but….”
“Yeah, well, tell him his kids miss him, too,” Sam said. He suppressed the discussion he’d overheard earlier, chalking it up to nerves on the boys’ parts.
“I guess you can’t really blame him, doing what he does, which I still can’t quite believe, by the way—”
“Like you said, Al, doesn’t matter. Apparently it’s pretty real to them. What else does Davis have in common with the deaths so far? Anything?”
Al shook his head. “Gooshie can’t get Ziggy to be that specific. Davis wasn’t on duty at the training center during any of the incidents, but we don’t have a way to pinpoint her whereabouts. Do you think she could be controlling whatever this is?”
“I think it’s a fair possibility. She’s a local who knows the area. What I can’t figure out is why—I mean, it doesn’t seem to be serving any useful purpose. The guys in the engineering corps say the lake needs to be drained, and the water supplies aren’t common to both areas, so what’s the big deal?’
Al consulted his readout. “Whatever the deal is, Sam, I think Ziggy just found something for you: Sergeant First Class Lara Davis has a 60% likelihood of dying at the Minnewaukan Cemetery tonight.”
Go on to Chapter Four
