Skinner watched them filing in, one by one. As honeyed traps went, this one had 'fuck-up' written all over it. He didn't like the make-up of this team and mistrusted the motivation that had spawned it. Neither balance nor experience was at a premium. Scully, at least, would make up one of the cornerstones of Manning's - he had no doubt it was his idea - ridiculously hokey, flush-him-out plan. He wasn't sure if he could say the same of Mulder.
He looked over at the other man, feeling his brows drawing together and smoothed them out accordingly. Mulder was being impossible. Impossible to talk to, impossible to meet eyes with and most frustrating to Skinner, impossible to read. He was sitting on a desk, one leg dangling negligently as he surveyed the rest of the team. Half-moon eyelids and tousled hair, he looked irritatingly fresh faced. Skinner knew better and was unable to quash the slight sense of satisfaction that accompanied that thought. It felt far too good to have the insider view for once, however fragmented.
Scully was the only woman in the team. She arrived on time and introduced herself briefly, directing a grave, cool look at Skinner by way of greeting. He nodded back at her, saying her name aloud in conspiratorial welcome. He was amused to see that his were not the only eyes on her as she moved across the room. In some hieroglyphic way, she conveyed her utter indifference to the fact that she was a woman. Yet there was nothing to suggest she ignored her good looks. It pleased Skinner, as much as anything could right now, to see her take a seat at Mulder's desk. Mulder hopped off the desk and went around to sit behind it, raising a non-committal eyebrow at Scully on his way. She blinked back at him and as easy as that, the lines of communication were open between them. Skinner watched them both for a moment, amusement winning out over envy, and then turned away to contemplate the rest of the agents present.
Richard Kroeger was watching him, his habitually unpleasant smirk firmly in place. Proceed with caution, son, Skinner found himself thinking, as he returned the look, with interest. Then chided himself half-heartedly for playing alpha games. What the hell was he going to do for God's sake? Piss a circle around Mulder? A picture of Mulder's possible reaction to that floated through his head then, and he felt himself reprehensively close to laughter at the idea. Kroeger could be their guy, he thought, looking away. A sobering thought. For all that his reputation preceded him, and even given Mulder's conversation with him, it was incredible to look at the man in the sober Bureau environment and imagine him...
Skinner left the thought unfinished, dark, bloody images threatening to form behind his eyes, where he could least afford them, confusing man with beast. He could just be a nasty piece of work with zero personality who also happened to get off on rough sex and cut corners in his cases. He had a certain appeal, Skinner could see that. The rough, unpredictable type. Dark hair framed a pair of vaguely slanted, blue eyes and a strong, triumphant nose swooped down upon a slightly sulky mouth. Probably, on a closer look, all too predictable.
Bagnio, now he was a completely different proposition. Long, attractive face with laugh lines around his mouth and smiling blue eyes. Had a reputation for being open and pleasant to deal with and dedicated to his work. The kind of guy that Skinner could work with and probably have a beer with. Also the maker of smooth propositions to one Fox Mulder. Painful propositions. He could be their guy too. Or he could just be a guy who had a certain, specialized taste in sexual matters. Not a crime. Definitely not an indicator of psychopathy.
He thought again of the files that Gills had promised would be on his desk, by today. Mentally fitted a farm implement as far up the bastard's ass as it could go, for the second time in as many hours. Felt marginally better. He knew he'd be a lot more grounded once those files made their way into Mulder's hands. Scully and he would naturally do their level best but all three of them knew that it was Mulder who could best transpose twisted thoughts onto ordinary moments. Where they saw the actions of a man, he saw the teeth marks of a monster. It was the nature of his talent.
When they were all present and accounted for, and seated, Skinner took the floor, leaning up against his desk in an effort to informalize the formalities.
"Okay," he said. "Here's the deal. This investigation is headed by both Agent Mulder and myself. Any of you have a problem with anything, you go to Agent Mulder. You have a problem with Agent Mulder, you go to Agent Mulder. If you still have a problem, then you come to me. And I'm where the buck stops."
He paused. Had a good, hard look at each of them, letting them know he was looking for a problem. Apart from Kroeger, he got a good vibe from the rest of them. There were two from SVU here and Kroeger and Bagnio who had come from ISU. Those two agents, Cooke and Armstrong, were watching Mulder like kids who couldn't believe they were in the same room with the fabled boogeyman, only to find he had other things on his mind besides eating them. It was a fact that kept on forcibly making itself known to Skinner; a lot of agents steered clear of 'Spooky' Mulder but even more remembered and respected plain, ordinary Fox Mulder because there was nothing plain or ordinary about his profiling skills. Their failing, of course, lay in the fact that they thought these were two different people, one less crazy than the other.
Assholes, Skinner thought with that now familiar zeal of the newly converted. From the mandatory and mostly unwanted research he had undertaken ever since the first body had been found, he had managed to distil a few truths amongst all the Mulder myths. He had carefully looked at the man's work in the ISU. In those heady days, Mulder had alienated and delighted people in equal measures, an accepted fallacy of prodigy. Mulder today was essentially the same person; it was just that the focus of his obsession had changed.
The difference now was a matter of results and subject matter. Whether aliens come in the night and abducted people was a matter of large indifference to the American psyche. On the other hand, if one of them, some person that they passed everyday on the street, who looked no different from each of them, went around slicing up his or her fellow man, well shit, then it was a national emergency. And who was to say they'd be wrong, Skinner was startled to hear himself think.
Decided the pause had been sufficiently long enough to let them all think a little.
"I don't need to tell you how serious the situation is," he said, smoothly taking up where he left off. "We have three bodies at this time. Agent Mulder is confident we have a serial killer on our hands and I share his confidence. You know what that means. You're all here because of your time spent in special investigative units. You know that serial killers don't stop killing until they are stopped."
Skinner paused again, waiting for his words to be taken in, letting that last sentence hang in the air. Even Kroeger seemed a little more sobered up by it. Maybe the smirk was a facial tic, he thought uncharitably.
"So, here's what I want from you. Your personal problems are your own. I don't want to know what they are. Don't bring them here. If you can't do that, come to me and I'll reassign you. If you have a problem with someone in this team or the way in which this investigation is run, like I said, the buck stops with me. Take it outside this room and there'll be hell to pay. I mean it."
He looked around the room. Discounted Mulder and Scully summarily. Passed over Bagnio just as quickly. He recognized enough of himself in the man to know he could handle himself. Kroeger, now he was a different matter. If he wasn't the killer, he was going to be a liability a mile wide. Skinner had seen this kind of guy more times than he wanted to remember; he would talk long and hard from the shadows and keep on talking right up until his dying breath. Then he would get a commendation for doing it in the line of duty, for chrissakes.
Cooke and Armstrong he didn't know and probably should hold off thinking about, at least until Gills delivered their files. But he hadn't gotten where he was without falling into the habit of sizing up people. There was nothing really remarkable about Cooke apart from a pair of blue eyes which had a nice, steady way of meeting Skinner's gaze. Armstrong looked like every college football player he had ever seen. Around 6 ft tall, he had a body that bore more than a passing resemblance to a brick wall and if his expression was anything to go by, he'd probably seen the wrong end of one or two in his time, as well. Skinner suspected though, that it was more likely the look of a man who struggled to keep up with his peers and lived in fear of being left behind.
Still, he was expected to be grateful for having him, for having both of them. They were all that could be spared for an investigation team that was essentially doubling up as a man-trap. Armstrong he could understand. But he had to wonder what made Cooke so dispensable. Nothing to be done about it, anyway. This was the way he was forced to conduct the investigation and he had to accept that. He didn't have to like any of them and he surely wasn't going to hesitate for a second if a kick up the ass was warranted. But he had to get them to work with each other as well as with him and Mulder. Again his gut roiled protestingly. He had a bad feeling about this. On paper it didn't seem like the worst plan and no doubt had a lot of face-saving grace for Manning. But right now it just didn't feel right.
"No one has anything they'd like to say?"
A gratifying silence met his question. He really didn't need anyone to say anything. Once Manning sent the relevant files down to him, they'd have files on each of those guys a mile thick, from which way they came out of their mothers to how many pairs of socks they owned to how many fingers they used to jerk themselves off. Obviously their concentration would fall on Bagnio and Kroeger but the other two would also have been vetted. With Mulder heading up the investigation, carelessness was not an option. Mulder met his eyes then for an amused second, the first real and honest interaction they'd had all day. They were both thinking the same thing. Just for a moment Skinner's helpless anger showed itself. Only for a moment, as he tried to beat and bully the quicksilver rhythms of both heart and groin, willing them back to complacency. Long enough for Mulder's mouth to harden itself. Long enough for the tiny connection to rebound on itself.
Fuck him, Skinner thought, frustration souring his mouth. Mulder turned every invitation into an intrusion and he found it near unbearable that he, Skinner, kept issuing them. Now Mulder sat there, his face expressionless and his shoulders rounded. Skinner remembered the furious silences and white flags with Sharon and couldn't resist the clumsy comparison. Even when things were good between them, he had not been able to bear her probes. The worse things became, the less he was able to explain or bear the violation of being beseeched to talk, to say something. The worst part was that Mulder probably understood all of this. Better than Skinner did.
He gave up on that part of his brain and without more than a curt "Agent Mulder?", vacated the spotlight. Found his way back behind his desk and watched Mulder fidget a few papers this way and that, and then look around the room once, neither lingering nor hurrying past the faces of Kroeger and Bagnio. There was a certain quality to the silence in the room then, something different to the respect Skinner had commanded from them. Mulder scared them. Everyone in the room knew they were looking at the real thing. Scully looked over at him then, a faint curve to her lips. He couldn't help sharing her amusement, even though it felt vaguely incestuous to be exchanging smirks over Mulder. He let his eyes rest on her for a moment longer than necessary by way of acknowledgment, then turned back to Mulder to watch him gather them in.
"Most of you know that besides being here as a profiler, I'm also doubling up as the bait and the motivation for the killer," Mulder said, his voice as soft as he could make it and still sound clear. "It's good to have a team at my back. I know you want to get this guy as much as I do." A pause. "And it won't hurt your careers any."
They were all listening to him, which was good. Kroeger, as far as he could tell, had still not taken his eyes off him. Bagnio hadn't exactly tracked him around the room but his eyes were now fixed on Mulder, slitted in concentration. He was clicking away at a ballpoint, a notepad at hand. He had taken a good, hard look at them both, his eyes much more easily drawn to Bagnio than to Kroeger. But he was neither intimidated nor distracted. He was too good at this to fall into either of those potholes.
He wondered if Skinner understood that. Probably did since he hadn't sensed any concern from the AD on that score. A little squaring-off with Kroeger maybe, but most people did that, even before they pretended to be Mulder's lover. Not exactly happy with Mulder but he could see how that had come about, after all that had happened last night and this morning. Both those thoughts stuck a little in his craw and he concentrated instead on handing out the admittedly slim folders he'd made up. They didn't know much but they had a point to start with.
He waited patiently until they were all with him again, ignoring Kroeger's 'thanks, teach', letting them open up the files and get comfortable with the scene photos.
"You can see that while the scene looks disorganized, forensics have recovered nothing of value. No trace evidence has been left behind. So the handbook would say that this is an organized killer who was interrupted in some way. Right?"
Mulder looked around the room. Hard. Blank faces but at least they were serious ones. Notes were being taken. He continued then. "Wrong. I think this is an organized killer trying to look disorganized. We'll learn nothing from these victims apart from the fact that torture turns him on."
"About that, Agent Mulder. He's only killing the homeless but he's clearly fixated on you. What kind of serial do you think he is?" Bagnio asked from the back of the room.
Mulder focussed on him. Bagnio was asking the right questions. Could be a killer's ego or just very good case work.
"I don't think we've got a missionary on our hands."
He saw a slightly perplexed look on Armstrong's face and marked it even as he forestalled his question, "He's not killing them because he thinks the homeless are unworthy. He's doing it because no one will miss them. He's a lust killer. Each victim has been chosen for a resemblance to me. Each victim has also been cosmetically enhanced to that end. But, as you can see, each victim was tortured and raped brutally. That's where he gets his turn on. The amount of pleasure he gets is dependent on the level of pain he can force his victim to endure. The more heinous his actions the more aroused he is going to be."
Armstrong's brow cleared and he nodded, relapsing into his previously stoic expression, albeit a little paler than before.
Kroeger jumped in then, to Mulder's growing irritation. Why didn't they just shut the fuck up and let him get to it? It was a question he didn't need to have answered for him. They were all just doing what he would have done in their position. Trying to get comfortable with the UNSUB. Still, there was no way he was going to let this become a habit, least of all for Kroeger. He turned his attention to Kroeger's question, again, like Bagnio, a very focussed question.
"Yeah, you're right. Serial killers don't change their patterns. I don't believe these are his first killings."
A low murmur went around the room. All eyes were on him.
"Then why," Kroeger pressed on, "has he suddenly decided to fixate on you? How does that fit the pattern?"
Mulder repressed the urge to bark at them. Use your heads. Get off the guess-list and think. But even as he thought that, he knew better. There was only one way to get off the guess-list. You have to get into the killer's head. Some people were good at it, some people were bad at it and some people were better at it than most others. Because he was in the third category, he saw the answers in the questions themselves. It wasn't some kind of visionary gift like the kind profilers in movies and tv shows seemed to have a surfeit of. Just an instinct that was part talent and part hard work.
So without much hope of being understood, he said, "It fits the pattern if he doesn't think he's deviated from it."
Silence greeted him, some of it less blank than the rest. Mulder stared coldly and took a moment to let his face show them they were already behind. He didn't give a fuck about respect; he knew where his balls were. What he wanted was to infect them with his own sense of urgency, to rebuke them with it. Only when he was satisfied they were nearly as embarrassed as he wanted them to be, did he speak.
"What I mean is, is that our guy doesn't know he's killed before."
They were all too well trained to break out into babble but the earlier murmur returned, stronger than before and there was more than blankness on those faces now. Scully and Skinner were looking at him with a familiar mix of exasperation and speculation.
Scully asked, "What do you mean, Mulder?"
Mulder grinned affectionately. She had the air of someone who had delivered their lines as had been expected of them, like a polite guest who exclaims at the family album when prompted. He wondered if she meant him to be amused or instead felt cheated by her failure to goad him. He would never know, of course. She had far too much self-possession to give up the answer. And that was how he liked Scully, a little hard to see but never far from his side.
He felt the lazy tic-tic behind his right eye. He could see for miles now and only wondered that he had not turned out as some frustrated manikin himself, always having to coax people into the shapes that he could see them in. He had never understood why they couldn't see it for themselves. He reined himself in, trying to hold back the near-fugue state of comprehension that was threatening to pull him along with it, leaving the others behind.
Instead, he waited, then held up a hand and said mildly, "Listen to me."
He waited another beat and then went on. "He won't be the first serial killer to suffer from a schizophrenic disorder and he won't be the last. Just think about it. There are two men here. One is fixated with Agent Mulder and has begun a careful, clear- headed series of murders. I’m sure there are points of madness in him. He’s doing terrible things. But he cleans everything up and by the time we get the bodies, there’s nothing there to find. Do you understand?"
Mulder paused and looked around the room carefully, "Do you understand? He’s *delivering* these bodies to us. We’re not going to find anything there. He’s mad but he’s careful. It’s the other half of him we need to find. That’s how we’re going to catch him."
For the first time since the task force had been put together, Mulder brought their attention to a pile of big boxes in one corner of the room.
"These are all the unsolved crimes we have, dating back three years. If we need to, we’ll go back further. We need to find a pattern."
Kroeger spoke then, disbelief tinging his voice, "All these boxes? We’re just going to look through them? What are we looking for?"
Cooke followed that up with his first question, "This other half, Agent Mulder, the lust killer – what’s he like?"
Mulder smiled humorlessly at the unthinking faith in Cooke’s voice. "You’re both asking the same question," he said. "In both guises, he’s going to be an organized killer. As far as those sorts of labels still mean anything, let’s start with what he won’t be. He won’t be a loner. He fits well into society. He’s probably gregarious, out-going and often charming in a manipulative way. He won’t have a record of poor performances, whether it be in school, social situations or in his job. He’s not a prodigy but he is successful at his job. Unlike the archetype disorganized killer, he’s not going to come sniffing around the crime scene and he’s not going to talk about it too much to his colleagues or friends."
Kroeger grinned and said cockily, "A guy’s gotta be a wino before he gets off your shit-list, Agent Mulder?"
Mulder turned a disinterested look on Kroeger and stared him down, bemused at how neanderthal the guy was when Mulder had his pants pulled up. After a moment, Kroeger shifted uncomfortably and looked away from Mulder’s gaze and turned instead to the rest of the room. ‘Can you believe this asshole?’ his hands asked, moving apart from their clasped position before him, their palms turned outwards; pale question marks. Cooke and Armstrong suddenly seemed very interested in the contents of their folder. Cooke went as far as to look up from his spread out notes at Mulder. Bagnio favored Kroeger with an unpleasantly cool smile, icy blue eyes broadcasting his opinion of the other man at him.
Mulder was pleased to see Skinner avoiding all eyes in the room. Skinner knew that the jostling for dick size should be fought out on Mulder’s territory, all the better to lead them out of the desert with. Kroeger looked like he wanted to hit someone. Or maybe fuck them a little too hard for their own good. The room focussed on Mulder again.
Game on.
He began where he had left off, "Our killer’s cunning, in the way that most mad people are. He has a definite set of rules and he’s following a particular type of logic dictated by his psychosis. He’s not easy to catch out. He’s a pathological liar and has a chameleon personality. He researches his craft meticulously."
"What does...what does that mean?"
Armstrong again. Just edgy enough to ask what they all wanted to know. Mulder looked at them all. Even Bagnio for all his legendary cool, looked a little uneasy. The shadows were beginning to show up all around them. It was unnatural for anyone to be able to keep such manners of monster firmly in the front of the mind at all times but clearly they were already getting better at it. Good, Mulder thought unfeelingly, with the detachment of experience. There wasn’t room for carelessness or softness. A monster was loose and it would be driven again and again to fulfil its fantasies. Unless they stopped it. That was the nature of the beast. Bloody visions of old ghosted cases slipped behind his fatigued shields for a minute and he felt the feathery touch of all the bodies of years gone by, slip and slide down his spine.
He answered Armstrong as succinctly as he could, aware that Skinner's gaze had sharpened on him in that last moment or two. "What I mean is that he chooses his victims very carefully unlike these three bodies that the other, saner, if we can say that, half of him arbitrarily chose as part of a group of men that no one would miss. He selects victims he can control and dominate, usually through sex or through a position of authority. He selects the site of the attack well ahead of time. He stalks the victim carefully. The crime scene will show us his rage, carefully controlled, in the form of ropes, chains, gags or handcuffs present or on the victims."
Armstrong subsided again into that peculiar, wounded silence he seemed to perpetually live in. Mulder had to suppress an urge to pat him. There, there, don't take on. Uncle Mulder will save you from the big, bad serial killer. Ridiculous. There was only so much empathy he could have with these people before it impeded his ability to sense the killer. He needed to leave himself empty so the world of the other could soak into him, until that moment when he came to know the nature of his psychosis. That was the key. And it had very little to do with any mystic mumbo jumbo. Serial killers, simply and quite plainly, were motivated to kill. Like other people need water and light and air, they needed to kill. Find the psychosis driving that motivation and the killer gets found out. Why leads to who, as Patterson used to go around barking. In some things he had been right.
The team looked punchy and unnerved, apart from Skinner and Scully who just looked interested. They'd been in dark places with Mulder as their guide before. They had thick skins and put not a little trust in him. The thought stung Mulder, quickening the dormant hurt and tricking him into a quick glance at Skinner. It made him realize again as little else did when he was working, how tired he was. He wanted to wrap this up. Scully was wearing the frown she usually directed at him with such potent success. He launched himself back into speech.
"On the other hand," Mulder said, running his right palm along his unshaven cheek, just for the feeling of movement it gave him, "he's no Bo Derek."
He saw Skinner scowl out the corner of his eye and bestowed a beatific smile on him, watching with satisfaction as the dark eyes turned darker yet. The scowl was replaced instantly with a quelling look. Too late, Walter, I know you think I'm funny.
He pressed onwards, feeling exponentially more cheerful. "Our guy's not so good in bed, for a start," he said lightly, feeling the tension in the room increase by a fraction. "But more importantly, once we find the serial killings, we're going to have a lot more to go on. There will be evidence of torture, rape and generally aggressive acts prior to death. He will have collected trophies of some deep personal meaning to him. He will have stamped his signature, his personality, his fears and his intentions all over those killings. Then it's just a matter of time."
The four men all but squared their shoulders under Mulder's intent gaze. Scully stayed the same, arms crossed under her breasts, the same uneasy faith on her face.
He stayed with the momentum, saying briskly, "Okay. That's all for now. If you have any questions, can you save them for after lunch? I think, if you don't mind, Sir, we'll break for an hour."
Skinner nodded his approval curtly and said, "See everyone back in an hour. Agent Scully, if you could give me a moment of your time."
Kroeger was the first one to shoulder his way out, still obviously fuming. Bagnio lingered a little and once the room had emptied, said casually, "Agent Mulder, can I bring you back something?"
Mulder blinked tiredly. "No, I'm okay. Thanks."
In a softer voice, Bagnio said, "You look like you could use a sandwich."
Mulder nearly changed his mind, the mild tenor of Bagnio's voice affecting him more than he imagined it could, now that he was coming down from his tight zone of concentration. He was not given the opportunity to decide.
Skinner silently appeared next to him, as though he had been there all along. "Agent Mulder's lunch is taken care of, Agent Bagnio."
He placed a hand on Mulder's forearm, the arrogant assumption of the gesture saying more than mere words could convey. Bagnio's eyes rested on Mulder's forearm for a minute before travelling carefully up it and over Mulder's chest until he was looking into Mulder's eyes. Mulder stared back at him hard but saw nothing but friendly warmth in Bagnio's face and a momentary amusement.
Then Bagnio nodded and said pleasantly, still looking only at Mulder, "As long as you eat something, Agent Mulder, before you keel over. Me, I'm dreaming of pastrami and rye with mustard slathered all over it."
"Sauerkraut?" Mulder asked, for the hell of it.
Bagnio paused and then offered carefully, "I want to believe, Agent Mulder."
Mulder grinned. He couldn't help it.
He was still grinning when Bagnio left. A grin that he knew Skinner could see but the indecently normal, everyday interaction was still buzzing through him and he didn't care.
In any event, Skinner waited only as long as Bagnio turned his back before letting go of Mulder, saying, "If you're done charming the locals, Mulder, sit down and eat something."
Mulder was surprised to find he was awaiting some more definitive claim on his time. He could feel the aching reminders of his fall from grace all over his body and was suddenly irritated and fed-up to his teeth. All his good intentions were rattling in his bones and he wanted to lie down on a soft, wide bed and sleep until his eyes stopped hurting every time he blinked. Instead he followed Skinner to the desk he had claimed as his own and took the sandwich that Scully was holding out to him. She had gone to the inhouse cafeteria and returned with sandwiches and coffee for all three of them. Ham and cheese. With limp lettuce. Good thing he wasn't hungry. Scully grimaced as she bit into hers but he could see she was bristling with the intention to finish it.
He reached for one of the cups of coffee only to have Skinner order him implacably, "Eat your sandwich, Mulder."
Mulder shot Skinner a look of exaggerated disbelief and said clearly, slowly, "Don't tell me what to do."
Scully waved another packet of sandwiches at him, saying in a muffled voice around another determined bite of her own, "Eggsalad, Mulder."
His favorite in the sandwich line. He took it from her gracelessly, feeling an unreasonable anxiety that his will, which only minutes ago, was holding an entire room together, could be so easily bent by eggsalad. He put aside the ham and cheese, only to see Skinner take it from him and begin to unwrap it, his own two sandwiches already disposed of. There was collusion in this somewhere. Mulder wanted to refuse the sandwich Scully had given him and then demand his own back, when it was too late.
"Mulder, eat it or wear it," Skinner said rudely, giving Mulder the uncomfortable feeling Skinner was tapping his thoughts without his consent.
He shrugged at him rebelliously even as he began to unwrap the goddamn thing. Then inhaled sharply, startled, as a sore muscle in his right shoulder protested such cavalier treatment. Frowning, Skinner put a hand out and applied an impromptu massage, his fingers unerringly searching out the knots in that shoulder. Mulder gasped, relief loosening his tongue, and Skinner kept at it until Scully made some tiny movement. Then he moved his hand away again, not hurriedly, but with the same calm assurance with which he had laid it on Mulder's forearm when Bagnio was talking to him. Mulder looked at him narrowly. The man was turning into an octopus.
Skinner looked back at him, an unsettling hint of solicitude in his eyes. Mulder looked away again, resisting the schoolgirlish impulse to lay his hand against the other man's. Instead he bit into the unwanted sandwich, relishing the explosion of flavor in his mouth, knowing he would soon, in helpless corruption, eat the next one too. Again that feeling of wanting to put things right between them, rose up in his throat. Saying sorry suddenly seemed a very small and simple price to pay, if it meant having that near-forgotten rapport with Skinner back again. Ludicrous too. What would he apologize for first? Where should he begin? A man was killing people because of him. This wasn't a priority. And where had being sorry gotten him before?
Instead he let the moment pass, tired and grateful just to have some small amount of accord between them again. Together, they walked Scully through the details of the plan before the other four men got back from their break. No more than that was feasible right then and they decided to continue the conversation over dinner. Mulder found something to quibble about in Scully's too ready acquiescence, in her withdrawal from him. Some element of shrewd comprehension that she usually favored Mulder with, had been replaced with a softer indulgence. She didn't press his coffee on him and she didn't ask him why he looked like such crap. He felt himself growing steadily more jittery than he had any excuse for and added to the lines around Skinner's mouth, contradicting him at every turn in the conversation because he didn't know how else to show her his distress. All three of them found it difficult to hide their collective relief when the other members of the team returned.
The afternoon passed quickly in a tedious, never ending sifting of boxes. Possible patterns were marked, collated and then discarded in favor of new ones. Murders that seemed linked, after a few eager, tension-charged phonecalls, turned out to be false leads. Tempers flared and Armstrong and Kroeger clashed over which one of them would take the lighter of two boxes. Mulder stepped in, mediated, rebuked and gave orders. He oversaw everything, expended manic amounts of energy in keeping himself abridge of every development and cemented his rule as the pack leader with absolute authority. In the process he exhausted himself entirely, walked the length and breadth of the room innumerable times, and more than once avoided the weight of Skinner's grave, watchful gaze.
When they finally agreed to call it a day, it was 7pm and Mulder needed more painkillers almost as much as he needed his next breath of air. Skinner gave Scully directions to the house they were placed in and they agreed on a late dinner at 9pm. Kroeger was still glowering when he left, without a word. Bagnio said a quiet good night to everyone and no one in particular. Cooke and Armstrong left as unremarkably as they had arrived. Eventually, Skinner and he were alone in the room. They looked at each other warily, Skinner the first one to cross the distance between them.
"Well?" he asked mildly, standing in front of Mulder, who was leaning against the edge of his desk. "How bad do you feel?"
Mulder found himself half-smiling and replied without evasion, "Like shit. I'll be lucky to make it to the car."
"Maybe you could sleep here tonight?" Skinner proposed smoothly, a glint in his eyes giving the lie to his words.
Mulder roused himself enough to give him a disgusted look. "If I have to stay here one more minute, I think I'll kill myself."
Skinner said, not unkindly, "If we stay here another minute, I'll do the job for you."
Mulder grinned, his usual antagonistic urges deserting him in the wake of Skinner's gentle teasing.
"C'mon, let's go before you have to carry me to the car."
"Before I have to leave you here, you mean," Skinner retorted, shrugging on his overcoat.
"Yeah, yeah. Never mind that," Mulder said. "What's for dinner?"
"Whatever we catch on our way back. Put your coat on."
Mulder tried it for the second time and grimacing at the bolt of pain that raced through his shoulder, said a little breathlessly, "No dinner? What kind of housefrau are you?"
Skinner frowned, put down his briefcase and came over to Mulder. Not making any attempt to reach for the other half of Mulder's coat, he said, "Let me have a look at your shoulder. It's a long ride back."
"Not that long," Mulder protested, a little surprised.
Skinner looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "Do you know what you looked like when you came in that door?"
Mulder stiffened, feeling the color fade from his face. Not fair. Not fair, is what he wanted to say. Instead he was careful not to breathe too hard as he tried once more to get his coat on by himself.
"Idiot," Skinner said dispassionately, after letting him struggle with it for a few, painful seconds. "Stand still."
Mulder obliged him, not enough breath left in him to argue as Skinner undid his shirt and gently inspected the suspect shoulder.
"I think it's okay," Skinner said, after a little while. "But it might be a good idea to let me strap it up when we get back. Just in case."
"Yeah, okay," Mulder muttered unevenly, the heat of Skinner's hands against his skin going straight to his cock, a possibility that occurred to him too late to guard against.
He tried to move away unobtrusively, only to have Skinner's hands come to a stop over his chest.
"What is it? Am I hurting you?"
"A little," Mulder lied, wanting Skinner to take his hands off him.
It had the opposite effect. Skinner began moving his hands again, gently pressing into Mulder's shoulder and upper chest at different points. "Tell me where it hurts," he demanded.
Mulder shook his head wordlessly and tried to twist away from Skinner's touch, only to jerk his shoulder needlessly.
"Shit," he hissed, one hand reflexively going to his chest, covering Skinner's own hand, trying to brace his shoulder.
Skinner stared at Mulder, the beginnings of a faint frown on his face. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Mulder stared back unblinkingly at him, feeling the color creeping into his face as he registered the awkwardness of his position. His shirt was undone and Skinner's left hand was bracing one half of his chest while the right was supporting his shoulder from the back, rubbing warmth into it. He let his head fall back, closing his eyes in weary bewilderment. How the hell had he let this happen? Was he really this fucking stupid?
Skinner began to say something and then stopped. Traitorously, Mulder's right nipple had hardened under Skinner's touch and was now pushing at the rough, callused edge of Skinner's palm. Mulder felt the hand at his back still in mid-motion and realized he was shockingly, unavoidably, hard as a rock. He opened his eyes to find Skinner looking at him with an unreadable expression on his face.
"Jesus," he said roughly, amazed at his body's foolishness, at its wilful disobedience of him. "Jesus, Walter, I'm...I'm sorry."
You couldn't say she wasn't better off. You couldn't complain. Not if you were here to see her. She had a nice house and she had married a man who had aged well. He still had his strength. They had nice neighbors, although that Mrs Parsons was something of a disappointment. Kept herself to herself, that one. She looked a little mixed, if you asked her. Not that anyone did. Weren't even allowed to call them niggers any more. Racist. She wasn't racist. Some words stuck, that's all. All her life that's what she'd call them and she was seventy now. African-american. No wonder the country was going to pieces, letting this kind of foolishness go on. She had heard tell that nowadays, if a person had some black in them, they got their schooling free. Disgraceful, she called it.
Her children wouldn't abide by it. They giggled, embarrassed of her, with their own children and their own husbands to fill in the gaps she didn't fit. Racist. She wasn't racist. She knew what she knew, that was all. They'd have a nice little think about their mother when the will got read, she knew that much alright. She cackled at that thought, a comfortable, private malice rising in her as she looked out over her porch. It looked like rain.
Mrs Miller got up and went inside to check on her apple pie. Still in the baking tin, it was just about ready to take over to next door. Such nice young men, those two brothers but couldn't crack an egg open between them. You only had to go inside to see the ironing board smack in the middle of the kitchen and the three dogs sitting splayed out on the cool tiles, scratching themselves furiously. Fleas? She didn't think so. They weren't that kind of boys. They probably just let the dogs into the house more than they should.
No father, no mother. None that ever came to visit, at any rate. All to themselves and such as they were, a few friends who came and went. Nice looking men like those two, they were bound to get a few late nights between them. They weren't big on the girls. Not that what she poked her nose in where it didn't belong but next door and all, you couldn't help notice some things. No steady girlfriends, she didn't think. No regular girls that she'd seen anyway. They were only young, though. She could see that much and for all her years, she liked a bit of noise and youth not so far from her own self. It kept her young, watching those two coming and going.
But all in all, you couldn't ever say they made a nuisance of themselves. Kept a nice fence, always painted up and though they stayed on that side of it, they never minded a visit from her. Nice, pleasant young men. Always appreciated her cakes and pies and sometimes of a Sunday, when she made some ribs extra, well they were always so grateful for her trouble when she took them over. Had a few words with Ben from time to time too. They talked cars, if that's what you could call that bombshell they kept scratching their heads over, out in their yard. They brought their dogs to her mind when they did that and she sometimes thought that there was some truth in what they say, about pets and their owners all looking alike.
She put on her coat, in case. She didn't know in case of what but even though she was only going a door away, that was the way she did things. In case. Things always worked out for the best that way, she had found. She made sure to close her own gate behind her, her knees giving her a small warning to go careful on her bones today. There was a storm brewing, no question. The gate at the top of the boys' driveway - the inner gate - was standing open. Which was unusual. Somebody had forced it so hard that its hinge had gotten stuck in the gravel, bringing up a long muddy gash of earth behind it. No sign of the dogs either. She stood there indecisively, looking down at the bright blue gravel that lined the driveway.
She was always finding little chips of that gravel stuck in the soles of her brogues. Ben got real cranky with her, telling her to just wear her sandshoes and her in her coat and all. Sandshoes indeed. She dressed right, just like she'd done all her life. Next door or the five miles into town, it was all the same to her. You didn't wear your sandshoes with your coat. She knew that alright. They might be taken ill. Nothing nicer than their dinner all cooked up for them, if that was how it was. She could always bring over some of that meatball stew from last night. Ben wasn't coming home to dinner tonight and she wouldn't be eating it, not with her stomach, she daren't.
"Dogs?" she called out, not too loudly. She felt a little silly calling out their names, all three of them. Peter, Jim, Drew. Those weren't dog names. They were people names. She wasn't going to shout those out all over the yard. Not her.
She tried again. "Dogs? Where are you? Where are the boys?"
She looked doubtfully at all the old, woody trees pressing up against the windows. They didn't even clean the ones nearest to the street. How was she supposed to make out anything? Should she go closer in and look through the window? If the boys were out, it would look real odd. She would look like a real busybody if they came along now. But surely they couldn't be out? But if they were here, surely they would have heard her? The house would have been open and she would have heard all their noises - the tv warring with the stereo, the dogs arguing with the fence and more than likely, either Neil or Tom talking on the phone. They were always, one or the other of them, on the phone. They were sick, probably. Both of them were probably in bed, with the pillows over their heads or something like that. Men always got like children when they came down with something. Cracked ribs and broken legs, they didn't mind those. But something like the flu or a cold, those just weren't a man's idea of falling ill. Turned them into babies.
She wasn't going to really look, anyway. Just glance around a little. One bedroom, at least, faced outwards, towards the street. No doubt but that they had both come down with it. If she could just get one of them to notice her, they'd get themselves up and open the door for her. She tried to be careful of her stockings and pulled her coat around her as she inched closer to the dusty windows. Peering in, at first she couldn't see anything. Nothing wrong with her eyesight, she could still tell a street sign from a minute away, its name and even whether it was a street or a drive or an avenue.
Ben grumbled that it was because she knew the neighbourhood like the back of her hand. She tactfully nodded and said that most likely that was true. But that was because he wore glasses himself and didn't appreciate much of the kind of joke she would have liked to have made to make him see it was nothing. Anyway, right now, it was only that her eyes needed adjusting to the gloom inside. Dark shadows along the walls made for a harsh contrast with the daylight outside, for all that the storm clouds were gathering at her back.
When she finally did see inside, Mrs Miller, for all her earlier good intentions, shrieked till her voice gave out. The pie fell from her hands, and not once did she remember that part of it, even though in later years when she'd given in to the interest people took in the tale, she relayed everything else faithfully as it had happened. The dogs never stopped, not even to look up at her, though they did growl once or twice. One of them had its nose buried in Neil's throat, all the way inside. Mrs Miller never forgot, although that bit she never did tell anyone either, not even Ben. All the blood on the walls, the sightless eyes bulging behind their gags, their nakedness and all those other things she put from her mind nearly as she saw them. But she would wake up, years from this cool stormy evening, screaming, screaming for someone to stop the picture in her mind's eye of a dog's throat rhythmically moving as it ate quietly.
But this was all in the years to come. At that moment, shrieking outside the boys' window, upside down pie on her brogues, Mrs Miller backed away and started a slow loping gait that would have her laid up in bed for weeks, her skin bruising and purpling and Ben burning the eggs. She ran to Mrs Parsons, she being on the other side, and lurched up to her front door, her hand outstretched, ready to bang against it even before she touched it.
"Mrs Parsons!" she gasped, her throat feeling like phantom fingertips were squeezing at it, closing it off from words.
Mrs Parsons appeared in the doorway eventually, her face even more suspicious than usual. With something extra added by the sight of Mrs Miller gasping at her door, hair askew and eyes wild.
"What? What is it?" said Mrs Parsons.
"I have to come in, Mrs Parsons," Mrs Miller moaned. "I'll tell you but I have to sit my bones down."
"No, you don't!" Mrs Parsons said back promptly, her eyes looking at Mrs Miller like she was standing there with no clothes on. "I said - what is it?"
"It's the boys, it's the boys. Something has... they're dead. Something has...I can't tell exactly." Mrs Miller ground out with some difficulty. "Something. Dead."
She rattled at the mesh door again.
"Call 911," Mrs Parsons croaked, backing away from the door and Mrs Miller. "That's what you do. You call 911. Don't you know that?"
"Yes," Mrs Miller said, still rattling at the door. "Yes."
END OF PART 7
