Baltimore, Maryland

POLICE STATION

There was background chatter as a man was led down a dimly lit hallway in cuffs. In the bustling office, Peter Sheridan was on his cell, a mug of coffee in hand. "Under what names? Oh, yeah, those are my favorites so far. Possible IDs in three states that we know of."

He pulled a paper from the fax machine and stared at it. "I gotta call you back."

EXT. MOTEL

A SWAT team approached a motel room from the outside.

POLICE STATION

Sheridan entered an interrogation room and sat down. "Well, first I thought you were just stepping up your game. Credit card fraud, breaking and entering, and this one... puzzled me. Grave desecration. But still these are a long way from murder. Then we get fax from St. Louis. Where you're suspected of torturing and murdering a young woman. However, no one could probe anything, of course, because supposedly you died there."

EXT. MOTEL

The SWAT team broke open a second floor door with a battering ram. Inside, Sam stopped, holding his hands up.

POLICE STATION - FIRST INTERROGATION ROOM

"But I gotta tell you something. You look pretty healthy to me."

MOTEL

Diana Ballard advanced on Sam, her gun drawn.

POLICE STATION - FIRST INTERROGATION ROOM

"So now we know Karen Giles wasn't the first person you murdered."

MOTEL

"Going somewhere, Sam?" Ballard asked.

POLICE STATION - FIRST INTERROGATION ROOM

"But I guarantee you she's the last." He stood and walked out of Dean's room.

POLICE STATION - SECOND INTERROGATION ROOM

The policewoman entered another interrogation room, where Sam was pacing by the window. She placed a coffee cup on the table. "Thought you might be thirsty."

"Okay, so you're the good cop," Sam said. "Where's the bad cop?"

"Oh, he's with your brother."

"Okay. And you're holding us why?"

"Well, he's being held on suspicion of murder. And you, we'll see."

Sam leaned forward, shocked. "Murder?!!"

"You sound genuinely surprised. Or are you that good of an actor?"

"Who was he supposed to have murdered?!"

"We'll get around to that."

"Well, you can't just hold us here without formal charges!"

"Well actually, we can, for 48 hours, but you being a pre-law student, would know that. I know all about you, Sam." She read from a file. "You're 23 years old, no job, no home address,  your mother died when you were a baby, your father's whereabouts are unknown. And then there's the case of your brother Dean. Whose demise was, well, just a little bit exaggerated. Feel free to jump in whenever you like." Sam leaned against the wall, folding his arms. "Shy? No problem. I'll keep going. Your family moved around a lot when you were kids. Despite that, you were a straight-A student. Got into Stanford with a full ride."

"I needed some time off. To deal. So I'm taking a road trip with my brother and a friend and her daughter."

"How's that going for you?"

"Great. I mean... we saw the second largest ball of twine in the continental U.S. Awesome." He pulled a chair up to the table and straddled it.

"We ran Dean's fingerprints through AFIS."

"Okay."

"Got over a dozen possible hits."

"Possible hits. Which makes them worthless."

"But it makes you wonder. What are we gonna find when we run your prints?"

"Yeah, well." Sam pounded his fist on the table sarcastically. "You be sure to let us know, all right." He pointed to the cup. "May I?"

"Please."

"Great." He lifted the cup and sipped it as she leaned over him intently.

Ballard looked at him. "Sam, you seem like a good kid. It's not either of your fault Dean's your brother. We can't pick our family. Right now, detectives in St. Louis are exhuming a corpse. They're trying to figure out how your brother faked his own death. After torturing all those young women. Dean's a bad guy. His life is over. Yours doesn't have to be."

Sam looked at her, incredulous.

"You want me to turn against my own brother?" Sam asked.

"No," Ballard said. "We already caught him cold. Red-handed at the Karen Giles murder scene. We just need you to fill in some pieces."

"Why would I do that?""

"Because I can talk to the DA. Make a deal for you. You can get on with your life. Dean's as good as gone."

Sam thought for a moment as a distraught look crossed his face and said quietly, "Our dad and Tony Giles were old friends. They were in the service together. We've known him since we were kids, you know? So we came as soon as we heard about his death."

Dean was sitting at a café table reading a newspaper. The headline read, 'Man's Throat Slit Without A Trace'.

Sam approached with two cups of coffee and set one down. Adeline, holding Eva, approached with her own cup of coffee. As they sat, Dean handed over the paper.

"There you go," Sam said.

"Anthony Giles," Dean told them.

"Who's Anthony Giles?" Sam and Adeline asked.

"He's a Baltimore lawyer. Working late in his office, check it out."

Sam read. "Uh..." he muttered, "throat was slit, room was clean. Huh. No DNA, no prints."

"Keep reading, it gets better."

Adeline glanced at the article. "Security cameras failed to capture footage of the assailant."

"So I'm thinking either somebody tampered with the tapes-"

"Or it's an invisible killer."

"My favorite kind." He looked at Sam. "What do you think, Scully? You and shortstop, here."

Sam frowned. "I'm not Scully, you're Scully."

"No, I'm Mulder. You're a red-headed woman."

"Adeline's your Scully and we both know it."

Adeline's cheeks flushed.

Dean noticed and said teasingly, "Got something to say, Adeline?"

She shook her head and focused on her daughter for sake of preventing further flushing.

Sam continued the story. "Woulda been kinda hard for Dean to kill Tony, considering we weren't in town at the time."

Ballard looked at him. "So tell me what happened next."

"Okay, uh, that's when we went to see Karen," Sam said. "She was barely holding it together. We just wanted to be there for her. You know?"

Karen, a young woman with dark hair and dark-framed glasses, was sitting in her home, on the verge of tears. She was looking at some forms that Sam, Dean and Adeline, holding a now sleeping Eva, dressed as insurance company employees, had given her.

"Insurance," Karen said. "I totally forgot about the insurance."

"We're very sorry to bother you right now, but the company is required to conduct its own investigation," Sam told her. "You understand."

"Sure."

"Okay. Um. If you could just tell us anything you remember about the night your husband died."

"Uh, Tony and I were just supposed to have dinner. He called and said he was having computer troubles and that, that he had to work late. That was it."

"Do you have any idea who could have done this to him?" Adeline questioned.

"No. No, it's like I told the police. I, I have no idea."

"Did Tony mention anything, you know, unusual to you? In the days before his death?" Dean asked.

"Unusual..."

"Yeah, like strange?"

Karen shook her head. "Strange?"

"You know, Karen, weird? Weird noises, uh, visions, anything like that?"

Sam cleared his throat and gave Dean a look while Adeline let out a sigh. Karen turned to Sam, who turned on his concerned face again, then shot Dean another look as she glanced down.

"He had a nightmare the day before he died," Karen told them.

"What kind of a nightmare?" Sam inquired.

"Uh, he said that he woke up in the middle of the night and there was a woman standing at the foot of the bed, he blinked and she was gone, I mean, it was just a nightmare."

"Did he say what she looked like?" Dean questioned.

"What the hell difference does it make what she looked like?"

"Uh, it's just, our, our company's very thorough."

"He said she was pale, and she had dark red eyes."

"So I gave Karen a hug and told her to call me if she needed anything," Sam explained, "...and that was it. End of story."

Ballard looked at him. "Sam, I am trying to help you here. But you have got to be honest with me. Now we have an eyewitness. Someone who saw two men and a young woman fitting both your and your brother's/friend's description breaking into Giles' office."

"Okay, look, Karen called us later, said that there was some stuff that she wanted from Tony's office, but the police weren't letting her in. Like, a picture of the two of them in Paris. Look, it was wrong to enter a crime scene, but she gave us the key!"

Sam picked the lock on Giles' office and he, Dean and Adeline, holding her sleeping daughter, entered, ducking under the police tape.

Sam shined his flashlight on a pool of blood on the floor. "Hey. Anthony Giles' body was found right about here." He read the report. ""Throat slit so deep part of his spinal cord was visible.""

Dean whistled. "What do you two think? Vengeful spirit? Underlining vengeful?"

"Yeah, maybe," Adeline said. "I mean, he did see that woman at the foot of his bed."

Dean picked up a sheet of paper lying on the desk. "Take a look at this."

Sam took the paper and held so Saoirse could see. It contained a small-font printing of the word "danashulps" repeated over and over to fill the page.

"Dana Shulps," Sam said. "A name?"

Dean found another paper. "I dunno, but it's everywhere." He grinned. "Well, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

Sam shined his flashlight down on the glass table in front of him, pausing. He breathed on the glass, revealing the same letters - "DANASHULPS" - impressed in the surface.

"Wow," Sam said. "I'd say we've officially crossed over into weird."

"Maybe Giles knew her," Dean guessed.

"Or maybe it's the name of our pale red-eyed mystery girl."

Adeline looked between them. "Well. Let's see what we can see."

They searched, but found nothing after searching through all accessible paper and computer files in the office. Sam was at the desktop computer.

"There's not a single mention of a Dana Shulps anywhere," Dean said. "There's not a D. Shulps. Or any other kind of friggin' Shulps."

"Great," Sam noted.

"What have you got?" Adeline asked.

"Nothing. No Dana Shulps has ever lived or died in Baltimore in the last 50 years at least."

"So what now?" Dean and Adeline questioned.

"Well, I think I'm pretty close to cracking Giles' password. Maybe there's something in his personal files, you know?"

"By close you mean..." Dean trailed.

"30 minutes, maybe?"

Adeline nodded. "I've got to get Eva to bed. It's way past her bedtime." She stood and left.

Dean glanced at his watch. "Awesome. So I guess I just get to, uh, hang out." His voice dropped to a mutter. "Awesome."

Sam typed, concentrating. Dean sat down, annoyed, and started making clicking and mouth-fart noises.

"Dude, seriously," Sam said.

After a moment, Dean decided, "All right, I'm gonna go talk to Karen again, see if she knows anything about this Dana Shulps, huh?"

"Great."

"Keep going, Sparky."

Dean left.

"Then Dean went back to Karen's place to check up on her," Sam explained. "I mean, you know, she had been pretty upset earlier."

"So why didn't you go with him?" Ballard asked.

"I just went back to the motel." He paused a beat. "How'd you know we were there, by the way?"

"We found the motel matchbook on your brother when we arrested him. We couldn't find Adeline or her daughter. Let's quit fooling around. Now, you and Adeline were with your brother the whole time you were in Baltimore. Why separate now? Because your brother left you two. To go murder Karen."

"He didn't kill anyone."

Ballard hit the table. "I heard the 911 call! Karen was terrified. She said someone was in the house."

Karen was sitting on the sofa in pajamas, crying. The TV was on low. As she blew her nose, she heard a figure pass by. She took off her glasses to rub her eyes, paused, then put them back on. Across the room in a mirror, she saw a ghostly figure and yelped. She turned on the light and the figure was gone. She got up, panicked, and went into the hallway, then into the bedroom and shut the door and called 911.

"Hello, emergency services," the operator said.

"Hello? I think I saw someone in my house," Karen told the operator.

"What is your address?"

"It's 421 Clinton Avenue. Please, can you-" there was a click and the call was disconnected. "Hello?"

The printer on her desk flicked on and started printing out the same repeated pattern as before: "danashulpsdanashulpsdanashulps". Karen fumbled for a flashlight, turned, and saw the ghost behind her - it was a young blonde woman with dripping red eyes. Karen screamed.

Dean arrived at Karen's and knocked on the door. "Karen, you in there?"

Dean looked around, then picked the lock and entered. He tried the light by the door, but it didn't work. He went further into the house, up the stairs and into the bedroom. He pushed open the door and saw Karen lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Her throat was slit deeply. He saw the pages from the printer and frowned.

"Seriously, what the hell?"

He knelt by Karen's body, noticing bruises on her wrists. He took one wrist in his hand.

"Freeze," a policewoman ordered.

Behind Dean, two cops had their guns trained on him.

"Stay on your knees," the policewoman said. "Hands where I can see them. Now!" Dean complied. "Cuff him."

Sheridan was sitting in an observation room where he could see Dean, handcuffed to a table.

Ballard entered. "You getting anywhere with him?"

"No. Just a bunch of wise-ass remarks. You?"

"Sam's story matches Dean's to the last detail."

"Hmm. Yeah, well, these guys are good. I'll give 'em that."

"If we don't get Sam to flip, we have nothing but a lot of circumstantial evidence."

"Hey. We've got Dean at the crime scene with blood on his hands. Juries have convicted for less."

"Yeah, but, I mean, where's the murder weapon? What's the motive? You talk about reasonable doubt."

"Diana." He touched her face. "Do you have reasonable doubt? We keep leaning on these guys and girl, one of them will tumble. And don't forget about St. Louis. I'm telling you. This Dean guy is our guy."

"I know Tony Giles was a friend of yours."

"Yeah. He was, he was a good friend."

"Look, and I know you want to clean this mess up quick. But come on, Tony knew a lot of criminal types, I mean, maybe we're just..."

"Criminal types? He was a defense lawyer, for god sakes, of course he knew criminal types."

"All right, let's get back at 'em."

"No, you know what? Let 'em stew in their juices for a bit. Find Adeline and Eva Steele. Come here." He kissed her.

DEAN'S INTERROGATION ROOM

Dean, still handcuffed to the table, was muttering to himself, thinking. "Dana Shulps, Dana Shulps, Dana ShulpsDana, DanaShulps..."

SAM'S INTERROGATION ROOM

Sam pulled a pad of paper and a pen to him and wrote DANA SHULPS in block letters and frowned in thought.

DEAN'S INTERROGATION ROOM

"Maybe it's not a name. Maybe it's not a name."

SAM'S INTERROGATION ROOM

"So if it's not a name... Anagram, maybe?"

He wrote ANDA SH... under the first line, then continued.

DEAN'S INTERROGATION ROOM

Head down, Dean continued to mutter to himself. There was a knock on the door and he looked up.

A smiling middle-aged man poked his head in. "Mr. Winchester?"

"Yeah."

"I'm Jeffrey Kraus. I'm with the public defender's office. I'm your lawyer."

"Oh. Thank God," Dean said in a deadpan tone. "I'm saved." Kraus sat. "Hey, could I, uh, steal a pen from you? Some paper?"

"Sure." He handed over the items and Dean started scribbling. "Uh, well, the police haven't found a weapon yet. So that's good. But, uh, they got your prints. And literally blood on your hands. And with your police record, uh..." he noticed that Dean was ignoring him, "Mr. Winchester? What are you doing?"

"I think it's an anagram."

"A what?"

"An anagram. Same letters, different words."

Dean had written different ways of DANA SHULPS, trying to figure out the anagram. "Uh, do me a favor? See if you recognize any of these words, you know, local names, places, anything like that?"

"Do you understand how serious these charges are?" Kraus asked.

"I'm handcuffed to a table. Yeah, I get it. Humor me. Take a quick look."

Kraus pulled the pad towards him. "Well, S-U-P, I don't know about that, but Ashland is a street name. Not far from here."

"A street." He took the pad back, tore off a sheet of paper, and started writing again.

"Let's start with where you were the night Anthony Giles died."

"Can you get in to see my brother and friend?"

"Mr. Winchester, you could be facing the death penalty here."

"Hey, thanks for the review, Matlock. But. If you want to help me..." He held up the folded notes he'd just finished. "I need you to see my brother."

POLICE STATION

Ballard was writing an email at her computer. Suddenly, the repeating string DANASHULPS started scrolling across the screen. She looked around, nervous.

SAM'S INTERROGATION ROOM

Sam looked at the note Dean sent him.

HILTS--

IT'S A STREET

ASHLAND

-MCQUEEN

"I hope that's meaningful," Kraus said. "But I'd like to discuss your case now."

Sam gestured to the chair. "Sure thing, Matlock."

"You two really are brothers, aren't you?" He sat. "Now. As you know, the DA might be interested in..."

A knock on the door was quickly followed by Ballard who addressed Kraus. "We need you. With the other brother."

DEAN'S INTERROGATION ROOM

Several others had crowded into the observation room outside where Dean was being held. Across from his seat, a digital camera had been set up. Ballard and Kraus entered.

"Counselor? Your boy decided to confess," Sheridan said.

"Mr. Winchester? I'd advise against that strongly," Kraus warned.

"Talk directly into the camera, first stating your name for the record."

Dean cleared his throat and leaned forward, looking directly into the camera. "My name is Dean Winchester. I'm an Aquarius. I enjoy sunsets, long walks on the beach, and frisky women. And I did not kill anyone. But I know who did. Or rather what did. Of course it can't be for sure, because our investigation was interrupted. But our working theory was that we're looking for some kind of vengeful spirit."

"Excuse me?" Ballard questioned.

"You know, Casper the bloodthirsty ghost?"

In the observation room, the spectators started laughing.

"Tony Giles saw it. I'll bet you cash money Karen did too. But see, the interesting thing is the word it leaves behind. For some reason, it's trying to tell us something. But communicating across the vale, it ain't