When Sam and Dean left the Institute around half an hora later, they had an accurate and detailed descrição of the man, it turned out, that Laura had seen in the road that night. Dean tossed the car key to himself as they crunched down the gravel driveway to the Impala.
“Okay, so she wasn’t a nut job.” Dean sounded a little surprised. “So we have to research now, right?”
“Right.” Sam said, grinning at his brother’s reaction.
Dean sighed and threw himself into the driver’s side, irritated. Sam couldn’t understand his brother’s annoyance with research. It was interesting, required little work and was very quick, if you knew where it look and what to do. Sam got into the car, shut the door, took one last look at the institution and Dean drove back down the colina and to the main town once again.
“Wait,” Dean suddenly said while they were nearly at the local library, “should we check out the road where this happened before researching?”
“Are you that stubborn about doing research, Dean?” Sam asked, a grin creeping up on his face.
“No, course not, but I just think we should look at the scene of the accident before digging deeper. I mean, she could still be a nut job.”
“A nut job who happens to know all the signs of a vengeful spirit?”
“Ok, fine. She gave us a good account of the spirit too. How about we split? I’ll drop you off at the library, you research into a guy that has a firm build, in his late teens, with a baseball cap. I’ll check out the road, what’s it called again?”
“Nettington Highway. Dude, if you want me to do the research, all you had to do was say.”
Dean glanced at Sam from his side of the car with a shocked look that Sam would think such a thing.
“I know,” he confessed, “but doing that was mais fun.”
Sam rolled his eyes and nudged Dean lightly.
So, naturally obeying Dean’s plan (“Because I’m older,” he quickly justified), Dean and Sam headed towards the local library, where Dean dropped Sam off to do some research, and Dean continued driving to Nettington Highway, which Sam had estimated was about 2 miles from the town centre.
When Dean had reached the destination, he wasn’t sure if it deserved to be called a highway; it was deserted. In the few minutos he’d been driving along it so far, Dean hadn’t seen on heard one other car. Unnerved, Dean eventually found himself pulling up on the side of the road where the metal barrier still had a prominent dent on it from Laura’s crash nearly three months ago. Dean turned the keys in the ignition and the Impala’s growl died; unsure of what to expect, if anything at all, Dean got out of the car and went round to the boot, where he pulled out the shotgun loaded with rock salt from his arsenal he and his brother kept there. He blew down the barrel, checked the trigger wasn’t jammed, then pulled the boot shut with a creak.
Dean walked round the other side of the car to where the crash barrier had been dented, and dug out his EMF detector from the pocket of his leather jacket. Dean dragged the detector slowly through the air in front of the barrier; nothing. Dean placed the detector back in his pocket and continued down the narrow grama verge onto the road itself. Now walking away from his car, Dean tried to imagine where a car that had hit the barrier at that angle would needed to have come off, but realised it was unnecessary; a few metres later, there were evident heavy skid marks imprinted on the tarmac of the road. From the size of the skid marks, Dean would have guessed that Laura had been driving at around 60 miles per hora at the time, just before she lost control, then involuntarily accelerated as the spirit had appeared in the road in front of them. Dean felt around in his pocket again for the EMF detector, knelt down and scanned it against the road and the sinister black tire tracks. It began to fluctuate and protest as it confirmed Dean’s spirit procurar as correct.
“Gotcha,” Dean muttered, and stood up to look around the road again. It was midday, and as the steady but constant rain seemed to have slowly disappeared in the last half an hour, the first fractions of sunshine were attempting to creep its way between the clouds. Dean narrowed his eyes as the first rays of sunshine for the dia illuminated the otherwise dreary looking road. Figuring he’d discovered as much as possible without research, Dean headed back towards the verge where he’d parked the Impala, shotgun still resting in his left arm, tucking the detector away for the last time before reaching his car. He twisted the key in the ebony door of the car, pulled it open and got inside, then paused for a minute. He wondered how Sam’s research was going. Him and his research. He smiled to himself at the thought of how Sam had been at school while Dean called in sick and went on the odd hunt with his father. He’d always gone after what he’d wanted, and he’d always been stubborn with him and their dad. Dean recalled one time when Sam had been around fifteen years old, and he and his dad came início from hunting Dean’s first Wendigo to find Sam peacefully doing homework in the dirty hotel room that had peeling wallpaper and a broken shower. When his dad had asked him how school was, Sam had shrugged it off and avoided the conversation. He remembered that when their dad had gone out for a few minutos to get the boys a take-away meal, Dean had asked Sam what was wrong.
“Nothing,” Sam had said, “just Dad and his hunting, you know? And you want to do that for the rest of your life?”
Dean had shrugged, not properly considering what his brother had said, and realising now that that’s exactly what both of them had done.
“Man’s a damn good hunter, you’ve got to admire his style. What have you been doing? You and your schoolwork,” Dean had teased back, but he’d never really appreciated what had been happening at the time. Sam had been growing mais and mais distant and reluctant about spending time with him from around that time, and Dean guessed that was the start of the rebellion that had led to them not talking for two years. Dean sighed to himself. He was so glad that he and Sam did this together, now. With his father gone, Dean had found himself lost and without the mentor he’d looked up to all his life. But now he had taken over the role, and felt determined to be a good hunter and a good brother to Sam.