memento vivere - supernatural & criminal minds

chapter 33

Chapter 33
Schrödinger's Cat

Frank Breitkopf - one of the only killers to evade the BAU, and now possibly the one to break its founding member. 

They first encountered him in Golconda, Nevada. He had been on the police's radar for decades as a textbook sexual sadist. Only one woman had escaped him. Her name was Jane. She claimed that she had looked into his eyes and felt completely calm. He said he fell in love with her. In an interrogation with Gideon that dragged on for hours, Frank issued an ultimatum. He would stop killing if he and Jane were allowed to leave together. Gideon only agreed on the second condition, that Frank would provide him with the location of a school bus full of children he had abducted and left in the desert. 

The arrangement lasted for one year before Jane ran from Frank, realizing he was incapable of love. The man snapped. He killed a woman Gideon loved and left her body in his apartment. Still keen on ultimatums, he presented the team with the same one - give him Jane, and all would be well. They had Frank cornered in a train station with Jane's hand in his. He told her he loved her, but the world would always keep them apart. The team had only been able to watch as the couple lept onto the train tracks together. In place of justice, all Gideon had was a railway streaked with entrails.

For one member of the team, this was not the only maelstrom to face. A phone call from Dean had Jude split in two. For a second time, Sam had gone missing. The search for him had led Dean and Bobby to Harvelle's Roadhouse, which they found burned to ashes. Something was coming to a head in the world of monsters. An electric unease kept Jude from standing still. She was pacing her apartment when Dean finally called again after hours of radio silence.

"Dean? Did you find him?"

"We need you down here." A familiar sense of dread seized Jude's chest. There was something in his voice. "Cold Oak, South Dakota. It's an old pioneer town."

"Did you find him?" Jude asked again. She was already grabbing a pre-packed duffel bag from her closet. It was that long-dormant hunter's instinct to run, an instinct that reuniting with the Winchesters had awoken. "Dean?"

"We found him, but Judy, he's...he's dead."

***

The silence in Cold Oak was akin to a graveyard. Jude tread along the single muddy path that wove through the ghost town. She had no address - if the buildings had been marked, these numbers had long since crumbled away - and instructions to find a dingy blue house. This was not difficult seeing that it was the only one with a light on inside.

With a fist clenched so tight her nails indented her palm, Jude knocked on the door. It was wrenched open by Dean, half in shadow, his eyes sunken in his skull. His name was halfway out of her mouth before he pulled her across the threshold into his arms. She didn't complain that he held her too tight, and let him decide when to pull away.

"He's in there," Dean raised an arm to his right. He sounded like he'd swallowed sandpaper. "I don't know if you wanna see him, but..."

"I have to see him." Her only hope was that it would not taint the memory of Sam as he was in life. She tried to hold his smile in her mind, tried to picture the dots of his dimples as Dean led her to where the body lay. The image vanished as Jude's knees struck the floor beside the old mattress that served as his deathbed. Sam's head was turned towards her. His eyes were shut and his arms were folded across his stomach. She set her hand atop his, the skin cold and pale, and fought a bout of nausea to ask, "How did it happen?"

"He vanished," Dean croaked behind her. "Bobby and I looked for him. We figured out he was in Cold Oak, so we came, and...we were so close, Jude. We had him. Then some son of a bitch ran out of nowhere and stabbed him."