“Yes!” Dean said and then blinked a few times, surprised at them both. “Yes,” he said again, more gently. “I am going to trust him. I do trust him.”

Sam stared at him, a muscle in his jaw jumping, and then nodded shortly. “I’ll let Bobby know we’re going.”

“You do that,” Dean muttered and grabbed the toast when it popped up to eat as he dressed.

***

They couldn’t stay pissed at each other for long, of course. By the time they reached Wisconsin they were singing along to Dean’s mullet rock, like usual. At the motel that night, Sam looked up the article again and read it, frowning, with his chin on his hand.

“Everything about this guy is really vague. Like, it doesn’t say how old he was or what he did for a living, and apparently there’s no family.”

“So he was a loner.”

“An independently wealthy loner, it looks like.” He pushed the laptop to Dean. “Read that and tell me something doesn’t strike you as weird.”

Dean read the article and shook his head. “They don’t know who killed him or why, but we do. That’s not that weird.”

“Okay, Dean? I gotta say, it’s really weird to me that you’re tapping into the psychic dream network.” He pulled the laptop back. “But what I mean is, the local police admit how little information they’ve got but they’re not really soliciting the public for information, either. There’s no anonymous tip line. It’s like they don’t expect to solve this.”

“It’s a newspaper article, Sammy,” Dean said. “It’s not the police report. We’ll get the whole story when we get there.”

“FBI?” said Sam and Dean nodded. “We’d better get the suits pressed.”

“Right,” said Dean. “Suits pressed, shirts clean, shoes shiny. And packing heat.”

Sam looked at him, then nodded and closed his laptop.

***

As Dean lay in bed that night, he hoped he’d have another dream. Even the Hell dreams were worth it if Castiel would come and take him away, or just talk to him a while — answer some questions, though with Castiel it was more likely he’d get more cryptic statements. But those were okay, too — sometimes they talked about real things in between all the ineffability.

But if he dreamed he didn’t remember it, and in the morning there was no sign of an angelic presence in the motel room.

***

They arrived at the former home of Joseph Temple in the early afternoon, which was an apartment building in a suburban part of Bethlehem.  Like most of the country that spring, it felt more like January than March — gardens were no more than brambles of bare shrubbery or timid silver-green crocus leaves poking out of the ground, the sky was overcast and sickly gray, grass was brown or yellow as cut hay. There was still snow in shadowy corners. In a few weeks it would be Easter, but it felt more like a desolate midwinter.

Always winter but never Christmas, Dean thought, and felt a shiver between his shoulders.

The brothers got their suits pressed and their shoes shined, and went to the crime scene, their fake badges in their pockets, wearing shoulder holsters with their very real guns.  The police had finished their initial evidence collection, it appeared — the crime scene tape was still up but the apartment was empty, and the landlord gave them the key as soon as they flashed their badges. Sam set about investigating the apartment while Dean questioned the neighbors, most of whom hadn’t seen or heard a thing and didn’t know Joseph Temple well enough to speculate about his death.

One did, the woman across the hall. “He was a wonderful neighbor,” she said as she sat in an armchair, her back perfectly straight. She was in her sixties or so, her face lined but still pretty, silver-haired with hazel eyes. She gave her name as Sophie Fisher, and smiled to herself when Dean introduced himself as Agent Chilton. She wore an unusual piece of jewelry — a silver ring on her right hand, set with three small circles of malachite. It seemed out of place compared to her simple blue housedress and severe bun. “He was my best friend in this place.”

“Did he have any enemies?” Dean asked, sitting stiffly in the other armchair. Her apartment did not seem like a typical old lady apartment — the chairs were dark leather, masculine, and she had no pictures of grandchildren or even cats. Instead she had books, framed maps, photographs of places like Macchu Pichu and Angor Wat. She — or she and Mr. Fisher — must have traveled the world at one point, Dean thought.

“Everybody has enemies,” she said. “The man at the corner store thinks I’m a silly old biddy, but I doubt he’d murder me over it.”

“Okay, how about, do you know of anybody who’d want Joseph Temple dead?”  He smiled at her, turning on the charm. Women like Mrs. Fisher liked to pat his cheeks and give him cookies.

She, however, did not seem to have cookies handy. She picked up a book from the end table beside her chair and ran her thumb over the cover restlessly. “Yes. There’s a man called Lorcan that he’d talk about sometimes.”

“Lorcan what?”