Castiel and his team don't discover the body until a few days later. Not the new body; without the Bloody Valentine's signature, no one thinks to involve the feds. No, they find the old body, which had been lying in a pool of its own blood for over a week.

"And no one noticed it 'til now?" Castiel asks, incredulous. "Or no one thought to get us on the phone? Because honestly, I don't know what's worse."

The local police officer, who would probably seem really sweet if Castiel hadn't been in an awful mood lately, quickly runs through her defense, and the defense of the department, seemingly mostly out of fear.

"He wasn't a popular guy," she says. "And it was a Friday night. No one noticed he was missing until he didn't show up to work for a few days."

"Your definition of a few days and my definition of a few days are apparently very different," Castiel says.

"Castiel," Hannah says quietly, warning him to calm down.

"Apparently, he always had bad attendance," the officer says. "No one thought anything of it until he was gone more than a week."

"Thank you," Hannah says quickly, then leads Castiel away before he can snap at her. Under her breath, she murmurs, "I know you're upset, but you need to calm down."

"All this time, I thought he just dropped off the radar, and he was right fucking here," Castiel hisses. "And we would've known that if people could do their fucking jobs —"

"Everyone here did," Hannah whispers. "It's just the dead guy being unreliable, both in life and death. There's nothing anyone can do about it. There haven't been any murders since. I think he gave you the benefit of the doubt, so just calm down and take this like a normal case."

Castiel sighs. "Fine. Let's go."

They're directed to the victim's body, another short message written in blood on the wall, complete with a new phone number.

"Maybe call me during the day this time."

"So? What now?" Hannah asks.

"Now we head back and call him," Castiel says. "And just pray that we're not too late."

~~

The only people around Castiel's desk with him are Michael and Hannah when he makes the phone call. The phone rings and rings and rings and rings and...

"The owner of this phone has not set up a voicemail."

Castiel groans and hangs up. "Nothing."

"He didn't pick up?" Michael guesses.

"Does it look like he picked up?"

Michael puts his hand up slightly, backing down.

"What do we do now?" Castiel asks. "Keep calling him? Move on?"

"It's your case," Michael says, already turning to leave after that turned nothing up. "I trust you'll make the right call."

As soon as Michael is gone, Hannah sits down next to Castiel, more at ease now. "What do you want to do?"

Castiel thinks for a moment. "I guess we wait. Call him every few hours, use the free time to come up with a plan."