Saving Scott

1: Old Cases, Part One

Sheriff Stilinski's Office

Evening

"You know," Stiles said, placing a vase of flowers down on the sheriff's desk, "the last time we brought one of these to her grave, it was stolen the same day?"

"Hundred bucks," Stiles continued, "down the drain."

"Hey, Dad?" Stiles peered over his father, Sheriff Noah Stilinski's, desk. "What're you...what're you doing down there?" 

The sheriff was sprawled behind his desk, amidst dozens of papers and files, a bulletin board behind him with victims and names pinned up on it. 

"Hey," Sheriff Stilinski retorted, "somebody wants the flowers that badly, they can have 'em. It's the gesture."

"Hey, Dad?" Stiles looked around the sheriff's office. "What is all this?"

"I've been looking over some old cases," Sheriff Stilinski told his son, "from a more illuminated perspective, if you know what I mean."

Stiles picked up one of the files and read aloud, "'Strange sighting of bipedal lizard-man, sprinting across freeway.'"

"Kanima pile," Sheriff Stilinski told his son.

Stiles crouched down in front of his father. "Dad, you're not going back through all of your old cases, seeing if any of them had anything to do with the supernatural, are you?"

"I admit, that the recent opening of my eyes to the greater mysteries of the universe has got me...reassessing," Stilinski stated, passing a file to Stiles. "There are at least a hundred cases here where I can look at the details and ask myself, 'If I knew then, what I know now...'"

"Right, but are you sure you want to go down that path?" pressed Stiles.

"Do I have a choice?" retorted Sheriff Stilinski, before sighing. "There's one case in particular that I can't get out of my head. Eight years ago, when I was elected sheriff of the county, my first official duty was to tell a woman that not only had her brother and son died in a car accident, but as best we could tell, the body of her nine-year-old son had been dragged from the wreck by some kind of animal."

"You mean dragged and eaten?" Stiles questioned.

"We didn't find the car until three days after the crash," recalled Sheriff Stilinski. "They had driven off the road into a pretty deep ravine. The two bodies that were still in the car were covered in bites and slashes."

Stiles peered back down at the file, then up at his dad. "So you're thinking...bites, claw marks...probably a werewolf, Dad."

"Or a were-coyote," suggested the sheriff. "Like your girlfriend, Malia."

"We actually broke up," Stiles said. "She told me I was still in love with Lydia, and that it was okay." Stiles let out a sigh. "She was probably right."

"Oh. I'm sorry, son."

"But we have coyotes in the forest, too, like Malia. And coyotes, they scavenge, right? So couldn't they have just left the bites and the slashes?" questioned Stiles, returning to the case.

"Absolutely," answered the sheriff, recognizing that his son didn't want to talk about it. "But guess what night the accident occurred on?"

Stiles' hand drifted down, and he sighed. "Night of the full moon." He looked around his father's office, frowning at all of the boxes. "Hey, dad, where are all these going?"

"Yeah," sighed the sheriff. "We probably need to talk about that."

The boxes informed Stiles that they were going to someone in the FBI, someone named Special Agent McCall.