The urge to put her foot down and simply wave as she rolled past the trooper, was overwhelming. Instead Scully reached for her pocket, shook open her ID and said crisply, "Agent Scully. F.B.I."
Unsmiling, he reached for the badge and the driver's license she offered him and studied it for a long moment. She was about to switch off the ignition when he nodded curtly and gestured her through.
"If you'll follow the patrol car ahead of you, ma'am, you'll go straight through to the dump site."
She grimaced as a patrol car pulled out in front of her. Switching its siren on, it began to dawdle down the highway at a matronly pace. Scully stabbed at the window release and savored the petty satisfaction of seeing the trooper's face disappear behind tinted glass in mid-speech. Yeah, you have a good day, too. She trailed after the patrol car, feeling a slight weariness that was at odds with the hour. It was, after all, seven in the morning, a time when people were already up and attacking the day. Maybe it was the fact that she'd been up since five and her day was going to include a mutilated corpse. Maybe she just missed Mulder's jack-in-the-box conversation.
She opened up her window again and let some of the crisp morning air in. There weren't many cars driving out of the city at rush hour and it hadn't taken her long to leave the traffic jams and car horns behind her. By now, concrete and smog had given way to a guard of tall trees, their trunks thickly aligned together. Brightly chattering finches were the only sounds she could hear and even they sounded muted. Sticking a hand out the window, she let the wind tug at her fingers. It was pleasantly warm, even this early in the morning. She sighed, some of the tension bleeding out of her shoulders. There were worse things.
Mulder could have had her on a wildgoose chase for a Yeti or a werewolf or something. Believe this. Believe that. It's all out there, Scully. At least here she was acting in her capacity as a federal agent, as a doctor. She wouldn't find herself in some motel room somewhere with Mulder next door having nightmares. She wouldn't stare into a badly lit bathroom mirror and wonder how she had sewn herself up with a man who didn't like confined spaces. She wouldn't ask herself why Mulder was the first real thing she could put some of herself into.
Abruptly the patrol car pulled into a small section of the woods, not giving her much warning. She braked clumsily and turned, discipline kicking in as she made the transition to the case itself, cutting off her previous train of thought. There was another trooper waiting to check her ID. Why, when a patrol car had escorted her all the way, she didn't know. But she handed over her ID anyway.
"Agent Scully. FBI."
Another eternal minute passed by before he handed back her card and waved her on. She parked the car and sat in it for a moment, looking out. The dump site was clearly taped and the area inside it was teeming with life, an obscenity, given the focus of its solicitude. She could see a couple of men in civilian clothes with yellow markers in their gloved hands. As she would have expected, a forensic team had already been called in from out of town. Mulder's voice echoed in her head, telling her that the markers would never be planted, that their guy knew better, way better than that.
Even from the car, she could see that Mulder was not there as yet. If the officiousness she had been subjected to was any guide, the local authorities were going to be prickly about a FBI take-over. Solidarity in numbers would have been nice. Having Mulder with her would have been nice. She knew it lay behind her present irritation but pinning down the exact makeup of that feeling was beyond her. The dead were her forum. Invading the living was Mulder's and she knew exactly where he would have been when he'd gotten the call. Scully could not have gone there without Mulder's request that she pick him up. And he had made no such request. Another small stab of annoyance rippled down her spine before she schooled herself to step out of the car.
Mud squelched underfoot, a depressingly practical corollary to the glistening trees around her. What chance of trace evidence now? She noted with quiet anger that she had worn a pair of heels instead of the flat pumps she would have ordinarily chosen. This then, was what came of being forced to tumble out of bed at five in the morning. Being rushed was something Scully worked at avoiding. She didn't enjoy the feeling. Refusing to stoop as low as to wonder if she had turned the gas off, she walked over to where the hum of activity was most prominent. There were around four or five patrol cars just outside the yellow tape, and to one side, the flashing lights of a tow truck. Another body in a trunk, then.
A group of uniformed men were watching her make her way towards them. She forbade herself the security of her badge and let it rest against her hip, where it belonged. When she got closer, she could see the dump site behind the group of cops. A late model Ford was parked in a small clearing, two rows of large tire tracks showing where it had turned off the main road. One of the men stepped up to her and shook her hand with a firm grip. He looked to be in his mid-fifties and Scully didn't miss the glance from under bushy eyebrows that took in her heels. He had very sharp, very blue eyes. She could imagine his gaze, in a crisis, having the force of an oncoming truck. She introduced herself for the third time.
"Agent Scully. FBI," she said, wondering when a time would come when she could routinely identify herself that way, without aggression, without being made to feel that she was worse off because she couldn't piss against a post standing up.
"Frank Jenkins, ma'am. I'm the sheriff. You here by yourself?"
"My partner, Agent Mulder, is en route, Sheriff. Are you in charge of the scene?"
The sheriff's face twisted into a wry, easy smile that didn't go a long way towards making Scully think he liked her any better.
"It would be fair to say that, ma'am, yes," he said, his voice surprisingly clear for a man who had nicotine patches peeping out of his breast pocket next to a packet of tobacco. He surveyed Scully for a moment. "But I guess you FBI people aren't here for the breath of fresh air now are you?"
Her answering smile was tight and noncommittal. Jenkins had been facing away from her when she'd arrived. In order to look at her now, he had to turn his whole body sideways, which gave her the awkward feeling that she was interrupting him in some more pressing task.
"Any idea who the victim might be, Sheriff?"
"It's a small town, Agent Scully," Jenkins said. "We know our own around here. Even Orin Piper, for all the lazy good-for-nothing drunk that he was."
Though nothing in his manner suggested anything of the kind, Scully felt an impatience coming from him, a suggestion that he would rather have left her to the dump site to graze alone and be left in turn, to the plod of his working day. Well that makes two of us, Sheriff.
She kept her voice civil, refusing to be baited. "Were there any witnesses?"
Jenkins shook his head. "Just a couple of joggers who came past, saw the car and figured they'd better check to see if everything was okay."
"Well then." Scully checked her hip to be sure she had her cell phone with her in case Mulder tried to call. "If you or one of your men could show me to the body, Sheriff, I'll get out of your hair as soon as I can."
Jenkins tipped back his baseball cap to scratch at a perfectly bare, bald skull. A hum of amusement worked its way through the troopers standing around him.
"As a matter of fact, I was first officer on the scene, Agent Scully. I'd be glad to show you around, " he said.
Scully arched a cool eyebrow and crossed her arms, inwardly dismayed at being so expertly displaced. She could almost picture the smirk Mulder would have been wearing on his face, had he been there. His absence was as much fortune as it was fuel to her rising temper. She let Jenkins stride off and then followed him after a moment, ducking under the same corner of yellow tape as he did. She could see why the killer had chosen the spot. It was overgrown and protected from the road by large, overhanging trees and bushes. As careful as she was to step where Jenkins stepped, a stubborn branch still threatened for a moment to string her up by her hair. She managed to untangle herself, her fingers revolting against the slick, mossy touch of it.
In terms of positioning, the scene was monotonously identical to the other bodies. The body was neither positioned nor discarded carelessly. It was a white male, not much older than his early twenties, at the most. Grotesque swelling under his eyes and around the facial bones pointed up the recent cosmetic surgery. But that wasn't telling them anything they didn't already know. No items had been placed on or around the body or anywhere in the vicinity of the dump scene. The men with markers kept walking careful circles but she didn't see any of those markers being planted. Scully considered the rest of the body as she snapped on the obligatory pair of latex gloves, feeling the powder inside them settle smoothly against her skin. He was dressed in a suit, something expensive, well tailored.
"Has he been photographed, Sheriff? Has the coroner had a chance to make an examination?"
Jenkins nodded. "That's a yes to both, Agent Scully. We've been out here a while now."
And I haven't, right? She shook her head, a little dismayed at such acerbic, defensive thoughts. What was the matter with her? Turning the question aside, she crouched down and pulled open an eyelid. The telltale spots were there, suggesting that death, in the end, was by strangulation. There were no discernible ligature patterns but bruising around the neck suggested the UNSUB had used his hands. They already knew that he liked what Mulder called 'a personal touch'. She gently levered the back of the body so she could look for a label inside the suit. Nothing. Carefully sliding her finger out, leaving the body as it had been, she got to her feet. Mulder would probably know. Which was probably the point.
She considered the state of the body next. The man had been killed in the usual slice and dice fashion they'd come to expect from this particular UNSUB. All the cuts that she could see, were measured and spoke volumes about control and preparation. There were so many stab wounds that Scully could not, without the benefit of an autopsy report, accurately gauge where the worst damage lay. She felt sure that Jenkins would want to nominate the on-scene coroner to carry out the autopsy. Technically speaking, he was the man in charge of the crime scene. Therefore it stood to reason that however temporarily, he was running it and the resulting investigation absolutely. The crime scene investigator would have no reason not to go along with that. No matter that shortly enough the FBI would take over. She had a feeling Jenkins would trade on that technicality even if only to handball things over to the members of the forensic team who were currently working the scene. Just as long as it wasn't this particular out-of-towner.
She had already spotted the coroner. He was the patient looking man smoking a cigarette outside the taped off area. He was also making sure his name was on the crime scene log, which meant he was done with the body and about to leave. He'd already looked at the body and was now, in all probability, going to go back to his motel room, leaving forensics to their patient collection. Jenkins would probably argue that it was within his jurisdiction as well as just plain common sense for the coroner attached to the forensic team that had been called in, to do the autopsy.
The thought irked her despite the small twinge of undeniable relief that accompanied it. Too many times she'd had to track down the person who'd carried out the autopsy and call them on shoddy work. There was a lot to be said for doing the autopsy herself. On the other hand, she had spent enough time doing autopsies in small town funeral homes to dislike their limited facilities intensely when compared to a nice, well set up hospital autopsy suite. Not that this one was going to be particularly startling, as autopsies went.
Turning her eyes back to the body, she let her gaze travel the length of its torso. She suspected that under the suit would be bruising and lacerations, the kind of trauma consistent with the torture their UNSUB liked to inflict on his victims. Again, this kind of overkill did no more than tell the knowledgeable observer that this was no ordinary murder. She winced as that phrase took shape in her mind. Only in America. Their UNSUB was a serial killer, but that hardly advanced their case any further. He wasn't trying to hide that fact from them. She didn't need to be a profiler to work that out.
There was very little visible blood loss. Either the cuts were inflicted post mortem or this was not the kill site. Of course, it had been raining and it was possible that much of the blood had been washed away but Scully thought it unlikely. She coughed, trying to clear the smell of wet moss and blood-sodden earth out of her throat. Although confirmation would wait on the complete autopsy protocol, judging from the relatively well-preserved, if butchered state of the body, death had been recent. Whatever skin was visible, had a uniform bluish, blotchy appearance.
She bent down again and pressed her fingers to the body's right hand. The skin went white which meant that he'd probably been dead less than ten hours, at least. Temps and swabs would have been taken already. Swatting disobedient bits of fringe out of her eyes, she looked around at the dank, dripping trees. In this weather, there would be plenty of infestation. She could see the maggots moving. Without benefit of the autopsy report, she would still hazard that the body had been dead for about a day and a half, give or take two to three hours.
Once it was stripped, it would probably be easier to tell if it had been moved after death from the lividity pattern. Autopsy results pending, she still thought it likely that, from what she had observed and Mulder's slim file on the sadistic nature of the deaths, this was not where the body had been tortured and killed. For one thing, the entire trunk and the air around the body stank of urine and defecation but Scully couldn't see any staining around or under the body. This seemed to her to suggest that the body had been moved from its original place of death. The relatively open stretch of clearing leading up to the road on two sides and the lack of any obvious signs of struggle, only served to reinforce this suspicion.
Not that it mattered. Locard's Principle or no, she was sure there would be nothing of the other crime scene left behind here. Not in this UNSUB's case. Even as she walked the spiral search pattern with the Sheriff, using the body as a starting point, Scully was certain of this. There was nothing they could learn here, nothing more than what Mulder had already predicted - a careful and insane taunt. That's what their UNSUB was delivering to their doorstep. He didn't mind them knowing about his Mulder fixation. It was something he was giving away for free. The very calculation of that clue robbed it of its utility. Again, as Mulder had noted, that was precisely what the UNSUB had intended.
She raked a hand through her hair again, pushing the weight of it out of her face impatiently, her fingers coming away damp. The pleasant dawn had given way to a heavy and humid day. Grimacing as a flashbulb went off next to her, she waited for the white flare to fade from the edge of her vision. The rise in temperature hadn't helped visibility. The weak, gray sky looked like it was here to stay, every bit as cranky and droopy as Scully herself felt. She could hear the whirring sound of the video tape being run, setting up a pulse behind the steady snapping of the scene camera. Waste of a morning. That's all this was.
This time the car was a Ford but just like every other car used by the UNSUB to transport his victims, it too was old and well-wiped. It had been parked off the main road, about half a mile in. Photographs of it were still being taken and Scully made sure to stay out of the circling officer's way. She examined for herself the UNSUB's path of entrance and exit and noted in passing, the lack of any markers. Finally she went back to view the body in the trunk of the Ford. It wasn't until she took a good, hard look at the discolored face that she realized her heart was pounding in her chest. Only then did she understand that she had been avoiding more than a passing glance at the dead man's face, all this time. Just in case. Just in case she saw Mulder's broken face looking back up at her, forever blind.
She looked long and hard, trying to capture the reality of it and stockpile it in her frozen mind. It wasn't Mulder. It really and truly wasn't. How could it have been him? Tiny beads of sweat came to life, clinging to her upper lip. She took a deep breath and concentrated on the disgrace that would dog her for the rest of her days if she gave in to her urge to be violently sick. After a moment, she focused her unseeing gaze again.
It was someone who had been surgically fixed to look as much like Mulder as possible, but it wasn't him. The face belonged to a male Caucasian, of or around Mulder's age, with the same dark, silky hair, now brushed through with stiff, coagulated patches of dried blood. Sightless green eyes shared centerstage with a very familiarly crooked nose drooping over a full mouth. It came close but even in repose the man was clearly not Fox Mulder. Scully was ashamed of the relief that jack-hammered through her.
She tried to imagine the man at her feet alive, with things to say, things to take pleasure in. She tried to imagine the invasion upon invasion he had suffered at the end of his life. Death, for him, even now, was a lonely affair. The only person who truly mourned him was a psychopath who wanted him to be someone else. Scully, in the throes of relief, could not judge herself his champion. She shut her eyes for a dizzying moment trying to combat the vision of this body as always having been just that. The rain must have battered at him as he lay there in the open boot of the car. She tried to imagine what that rain must have looked like, flowing over his face.
Instead her mind supplied her with yet another snapshot of Mulder on yet another roadtrip, in a rare moment of repose. They had been caught in a sudden, violent downpour. Scully had been driving, leaving Mulder to doze with his head cushioned against the seat rest. He had slept through it all while she had kept on hugging the shoulder of the road, the radio turned on soft and low. It was this that her mind fixed on; the sleek, smooth sheets of rainwater, curved around the windshield and how it had given the illusion of a secret world for just a moment.
Her cheeks, when she opened her eyes again, were dry tinder. She felt overtaken, hostage to a fact she could do nothing about. I'm not his minder, damn it. One of these days it will be him and then what am I supposed to do? Her cell phone suddenly shrilled into life, sending a small scouting group of finches bursting into the treetops, noisier than her phone. Jenkins looked like he wouldn't mind being one of them just at that moment. He probably came out here on weekends, picnicked with his grandchildren, if he had any, and fed the crumbs to the birds. With a nod that didn't even pretend to be apologetic, she stepped away from him and took the call.
"Scully."
"Scully? How's the site look?"
"Mulder, where are you?"
"We're on our way, Scully. Nearly there. In the middle of some..." Mulder paused and Scully heard him give an irritable sigh. "Some more trees."
She could nearly see him looking out the window in baffled displeasure and had to check the smile that wanted to quirk her mouth. It wasn't entirely without temper. Yet already her displeasure and the attack of fear she suffered earlier were beginning to feel trumped up and foolish, an unnecessary spasm.
"Scully? You there?"
"I'm here, Mulder. Maybe Skinner can give me an ETA?"
She heard Mulder grin and then report in an artificially prim voice. "Twenty minutes and not a minute sooner."
"I suppose you want me to fill you in, then?" Scully dryly inquired, keeping all hint of irritation out of her voice, knowing Mulder would hear it anyway. Of such small things was peace made.
"Scully, you're a queen."
Shaking her head, Scully acquiesced as she always did and fell comfortably into their familiar routine. She gave him her impressions of the dump scene, of the 'l'il lady' routine being pulled on her and a carefully detailed impression of the body. Mulder made small noises in the back of his throat from time to time to let her know he hadn't quietly lapsed into a coma. Without needing to say it out loud, they could both already smell the futility of the wasted morning. It was apparent even from Scully's hastily sketched summary that this was just like every other dump scene constructed by their UNSUB. Nothing given away for free.
Nevertheless, when the Range Rover did show up, she found that she was no longer carrying around the dourness that had been sticking to her all morning like skin formed over warm milk. She watched Mulder swing himself out of the Jeep in a smooth, hip-powered lick of movement. His eyes found her and he began walking towards her, already calling out god alone knew what. Both relief and something more difficult to reconcile had Scully offering up a wry smile, eyebrows taking him to task gently.
Jenkins shot her a curious look and then rested his gaze thoughtfully on Mulder. He thinks I'm simpering. Jerk. Mulder flashed her his trademark grin of apology and then bypassed her entirely. Descending instead on Jenkins in a torrent of questions and demands, he led the sheriff back towards the hub of uniforms. Skinner made his way over to Scully in a more measured manner. The neutral look he bestowed upon her gave her no small idea of what the ride up with Mulder must have been like.
"Is he like this all the time?"
Scully widened her eyes innocently. "You mean, does he always travel hopefully, Sir?"
"That's one way of putting it,'' Skinner said evenly.
She decided chivalry was a man's province. "Well, you should know better than me, Sir. I've never lived with Mulder."
"I was talking about his driving, Scully."
She disliked him intensely then, just for a split-second. He could have been more decent about it, she thought. He could have tried to lessen the gap between them. No matter what Skinner had intended by their private meeting, she felt far too informed and at the same time, unable to bear not knowing enough. She felt her jaw tightening as she pondered the thought that that was exactly what Skinner had intended. The idea of being manipulated to suit his flank didn't sit well with her. If that was what he was doing.
The desk between Skinner and her was a distance that she had been comfortable with. Apart from Mulder, no one else had access to her confidences nor she to theirs. And that was just how she liked it. It was unsettling to find herself handicapped by that distance now, to have to count it as a blind spot. She had no real reason to believe or disbelieve her instincts which told her Skinner had been honest with her. She had gone home that night after talking to Skinner, supposing that she did know of more unbelievable things. Voluntary celibacy, for instance. She'd woken up the next morning in a cold sweat. It was highly unbelievable. All of it. Everything that Skinner had said to her. Only time spent with Mulder could have made her so dangerously optimistic as to imagine it could be anything but impossible.
And if she believed one impossible thing, didn't that mean she had to believe all the rest of them as well? There were too many impossible things here. Skinner liked men? The Assistant Director of the FBI? She was supposed to believe that he had made it to that role without betraying a hint of his proclivities? Or, alternatively, he hadn't ever acted upon them? What had he been doing all this time, saving himself for the right man? Oh and Mulder was that man? Was she further supposed to believe that Skinner was so hemmed in on every side that he had needed to confide all this in her? In the hope that Mulder would talk to her about graver matters still? What could be graver? Nothing made sense as it should.
It wasn't as though she hadn't noticed lately the way in which each man had been pursuing the company of the other. But Scully had been neatly left out of the loop and any attempt to worm Mulder's motives out of him had been met with such varied and spectacular evasion that even she had relented. 'Left out', Dana? Out of what exactly, do you think? Well, never mind that for the moment. The most important question was what exactly Skinner had left her to find out for herself. Her instincts might be right and he might have been scrupulously honest with her but forthright? No, she didn't believe so. Only a fool would think otherwise. She was many things she would have preferred not to be but she wasn't a fool.
Maybe Skinner saw something of that in her eyes. When he next spoke, it was of the case. "How long have you been fielding these guys here?
Accepting his unspoken detente, she fell into step with him, matching his broad strides with a determination that bode no good for her heels.
"Too long, Sir."
Skinner flicked her an expressionless glance, more in keeping with what she was used to getting from him.
"Have you been able to come to an arrangement with whoever's in charge, about the transfer of data up to us?"
"I think we'll find that Mulder's getting on top of that one right now," Scully said dryly.
They found him deep in indecipherable conversation with Jenkins.
"That's fascinating. Packs of wild dogs after his death? Was anything ever documented?
"Oh absolutely, Agent Mulder, absolutely. I have some old photos that I was given by a priest I had a drink with, when I was in Khabarovsk. Maybe you'd like to see them?"
Mulder sighed unhappily. "I can't stay to see them."
Brightening in the next moment, he said, "Maybe you could send me some copies? When you send me the threshold assessment data that my guys can work up? You could just slip them in there, if you wanted."
Jenkins chuckled at that. "You sure you want to see them, Agent Mulder? I could have that data sent up to you as early as, oh say, mid-week?"
Mulder smiled incredulously like a man who had been asked if he'd like a top-up from the Fountain of Youth. "Are you kidding? I can't wait to see them. Look, here's my card. I'll be in touch."
"I'd better cut in before they exchange rings," Skinner muttered to Scully.
He cleared his throat before saying, "Sheriff Jenkins? Walter Skinner. FBI Assistant Director."
Jenkins turned his gaze on Skinner. "Some men might have said that the other way round, Mr. Skinner," he remarked dryly and shook Skinner's outstretched hand.
"I appreciate your men getting things under control, Sheriff," Skinner said. "It's not something any of us want the press swarming over, just at the moment."
"I wouldn't either. That dead man there goes by the name of Orin Piper but that sure isn't Orin's face I've been looking at.
Skinner smiled coolly. "I'm sure the resemblance must be clear to you?"
Jenkins shrugged, a hand going up to scratch the back of his baseball cap. "It's not exactly brain surgery, Mr Skinner," he said, his eyes flicking to Mulder.
"I was just telling your boy here..." He nodded at Mulder who had the grace to blush at being described that way. "...that there isn't much we can tell you about Orin, god rest his lazyass soul. He was just the town drunk. Pete down at the liquor store would run him a tab from time to time. Orin always came good for it sooner or later. People gave him odd jobs to do here and there. You could talk to Mary and John Clemens at the grocery store. Orin stopped in there now and again to buy some of the dailies, bread and milk and such like. But he wasn't much of a talker and I'm guessing no one's really going to be able to tell us when they last noticed him around."
Scully barely caught the fleeting glance Skinner exchanged with Mulder. Mulder looked down and frowned vaguely at the ground.
Surprising her with a quick study, Skinner replied, "I'm sure people around here would take better to you and your...boys asking them questions, Sheriff. And I'm sure they're more than capable of doing a thorough job."
Jenkins' eyes cut to Mulder for a moment. "I appreciate the confidence you have in me, Mr Skinner. We'll send everything to you, soon as we put our hands to it."
Just as Scully thought that Jenkins might have managed to block out her presence altogether, he turned to her and tipped the peak of his cap at her. "Hope I kept you good company, Agent Scully.
She fought the impulse to bob a curtsy and nodded politely back. "Sheriff. Thanks for your help."
Some shrewd light glinted at the back of his eyes. He reached out his hand suddenly, forcing Scully to shake it and held it a moment longer than necessary.
"Don't judge what you don't believe in, Agent Scully," he said, his voice much sharper than the lazy drawl she had been favored with, thus far. "There's evil abroad. As real as you or me."
One arched eyebrow and polite murmur later, Scully disentangled herself and headed for the car with Mulder and Skinner making tracks behind her.
"You offended him," Mulder said absently when he finally caught up with her, his hands scrabbling around in his pockets and finally coming up with a half-open packet of sunflower seeds.
"I offended him? Mulder, the man did everything but deport me off to a kitchen barefoot."
Mulder threw her one of his bright-eyed looks that made her want to topple him off the edge of a cliff. He opened his mouth and Scully forestalled him with a sharp shake of her head.
"Don't explain it to me. I don't care. I really don't. Why all the nuts we meet end up becoming blood brothers with you and nursing an instant hatred of me, I don't know. But you know what else? I don't care."
She watched his mouth quirk up at the corners even as his eyes roamed over the dump site restlessly. "Is that what you think that blonde was, Scully? The one who staged the psychic visitations in Montana? My blood sister?"
Scully snorted in derision. "It wasn't your blood she was after, Mulder, I'll tell you that much."
Mulder managed to sound bashful through the shark-like grin on his face. "Scully. Geez. Give your fantasies a rest. You're going to have to pay them overtime at this rate."
Skinner made a muffled noise of complaint behind them. She had managed to forget about him. She realized then that she was going to have to drive back by herself. Great. Just great. Why the hell did they bother coming down in the first place?
"All this way Mulder and you're not even going to take a stroll through the dump site?"
Both Mulder and Skinner blinked at her as though it was the most unreasonable question in the world.
"I can tell there's nothing more he has to say to me right now, Scully," Mulder said with an apologetic shrug.
More fringe in her eyes. She blinked it away, trying to contain her impatience. Resisting the urge to question Mulder's sixth sense, a task best left to the damned, she approached obliquely instead. "Why here? Why is this body suddenly out here, two hours out of the city when all the others have been around town? Isn't that significant?"
Mulder's shoulders twitched and then relaxed, as though he'd caught himself in mid-shrug. Don't handle me, Mulder.
"He's playing games, Scully. He's trying to get us nervous and impatient. He wants us to start second guessing what we know. I think he's getting edgy. That's the only thing we're going to learn from the location. The dump site will be clean again. I'm sure of it."
Scully nodded her head, unsure whether she believed Mulder but knowing that her input was at an end for now. "Well then, we'd better get back. I'll meet you both back at the briefing room."
Skinner and Mulder exchanged another of those tiny, fleeting looks.
Then Skinner cleared his throat and said in a carefully offhand manner, "I've got a few things to do before I come into the office today. Maybe you'd better go back with Scully, Mulder. We can't afford to waste time."
"I wasn't aware we were racing the clock, Sir?" She kept her voice even with an effort.
The steel was back in Skinner's voice when he replied and he didn't bother to correct her use of his title. "We're trying to stop a killer, Scully. Time is of the essence. Always."
"Scully, you can't be sick of me, already can you? Mulder tried to say it lightly but she could hear the dismay lacing his voice.
Oh, Mulder. You too? She suddenly felt too tired to argue. Fine. If they wanted to humor her, she'd let them. If Skinner was going to try so hard to throw her a bone, then maybe she needed it. If Mulder wanted them to all play together in the sandbox, well then, she could do that. At least until she got some answers.
Scully kept the headlights turned on even though it was nearly nine in the morning. A light drizzle had already begun to fall, scattering the soft yellow glow of the headlights. He slouched down even lower in his seat, feeling the hum of the engine under his feet. She was driving with the kind of absolute concentration that boded no good. Given the kind of dog days he had chalked up for himself in recent times, Mulder didn't try to wheedle her into talking to him. He had enough to occupy himself with, even if the only thing that would come to mind was the blowjob he gave Skinner.
He scrubbed disconsolately at the inside of his mouth with his tongue, remembering the other man's mouth pressed against it, warm and full of promises. Yet what was he supposed to do? Dead bodies, serial killers, alien conspiracies and at the bottom of it all, Sam, surrounding every atom in his body. How could Skinner be expected to understand any of it? Even their UNSUB, this monster they were chasing, was easier to sympathize with than Mulder was. His mind flashed onto Patterson and for a moment he was hard pressed not to toss his cookies right there and then. Know the artist, know the art. Patterson and his fucking mantras. He'd lived a lifetime in that part of his life before emerging like Rip Van Winkle to find a world that had moved on without him.
Still, half a life was better than no life. The time spent with the ISU counted as less than no life. There was kelp at the bottom of the ocean, living a more fulfilling life than he'd been at that time. All Patterson had wanted was a profiling machine and Mulder had fitted the profile of the perfect guy for the job. Only he wouldn't - couldn't - do it Patterson's way. For which he'd paid, in every possible way Patterson could think of. Yet at the same time, Mulder had been expected to go on getting in deeper and deeper, working himself to the bone while Patterson punished him for the very thing he wanted him to do. The asshole probably still thought Mulder had pushed himself as far as he had out of need for approval.
Only Mulder had known just how deep he'd been. Sleep had been a thing of prophecy, his subconscious frantically leaping tall buildings to keep pace with his conscious mind. Case after case after case of missing children. Patterson had been inflexible in the case assignments, relying on his uncanny ability to sense a man's motivation at five paces. How he had managed to keep his other foibles from him, Mulder was still not sure. He stared blindly out the window, watching the world through the lines of leftover rain that were trickling down the side of the glass. He never wanted to be that guy again.
Obstinately, his mind flipped back to Skinner. For all he knew, maybe all his fantasies about the guy were out of simple gratitude. Maybe he got on his knees for Skinner as a sign of good faith, just because he wasn't Patterson. Worse yet, maybe because he wasn't his father. Who really ever knows these things? All those shrinks that his parents sent him to snuggle up to. They'd seemed so omniscient back then; they had been the giants of his adolescence, all-seeing, all powerful. Now he knew that whatever they'd known had come from him. All the answers are inside you, Fox. Now he could play that game as well.
The only problem was that somewhere along the line, Fox got tired of playing the game with them, turned into Mulder and now even he couldn't get the answers out of himself. He was locked out, just like everyone else was. Not that anyone would believe that, not even Scully. She thought he worked at concealing answers from her, that he discounted her input from habit and arrogance. How to explain that he only had a finite number of tricks in his bag? That he wasn't under his own control? He couldn't. Instead he thrust and parried with her, like he did with everyone else, unable to explain either his failures or his successes.
The difference with Scully was that he trusted her enough to show her that he wasn't entirely sure either. That was all he had to give her and it was enough to keep them together. He didn't think he could do Skinner the same courtesy, let alone give him something more than that. He shut his eyes wearily, seeing the other man behind them, seeing himself sucking his cock, seeing Gills standing on the other side of the door.
Mulder wasn't aware he'd made a sound until Scully nailed him with a look and asked warily, "What is it, Mulder?"
He shook his head. "Nothing." She was better off on the outside of his head than on the inside.
Scully was still wound up, he could see it in the way her fingers were gripping the wheel, in the severe, straight line of her back.
"Mulder, there's a man out there trying to kill you. You're being forced to live a charade with Skinner, of all people. The man who holds the power of the XFiles over us. You took some kind of beating that neither you nor Skinner will tell me anything about. In fact, there's a lot you don't seem to want to talk about, Mulder." She paused, sending him a beseeching look with her wonderfully expressive eyes.
He thought how pale she looked in this light, nearly transparent; only her hair, aflame and alive, kept her from vanishing entirely. She had no idea how much he needed her, how much he wanted her to anchor him to her world. Just as she had no idea how futile her efforts were. Not for the first time, Mulder realized that for all that she was a part of him, she was not made for mixing. There were limits to even his brand of selfishness.
So instead of any one of the million things he could have tried to say, he just said, "It's not important, Scully. It's nothing you can help me with."
Scully remained silent for so long that he began to think he had gotten away with it. When she spoke, it wasn't just her deliberate tone that caught him by surprise.
"Stupid me, Mulder. I hadn't known, until Skinner told me, that this reluctance to share your thoughts on everything from A to Z, was localized to just me."
He frowned in sincere bewilderment. "What are you talking about?"
Scully didn't waste her time being coy. "Skinner met me, Mulder. A private meeting. He told me you were in trouble. That you were having problems coping with the nature of this investigation." She paused a moment and when she went on, her voice had lost a little of its composure. "What the hell does that mean, Mulder? Why can you discuss it with Skinner and not me?"
He could only say dumbly, "Skinner told you this? The two of you met to talk about me?"
Perhaps something of his hurt communicated itself to Scully. She flushed, the color creeping delicately downwards into her neck.
"Never mind, Mulder. I'm sorry. It's none of my business anyway."
He parried cautiously. "What isn't?"
"That whole thing - the you and Skinner thing. The background behind your bruises. Whatever. It's nothing to do with me."
"What 'me and Skinner thing'?"
Scully hesitated and then said carefully, a little defensively, "It seemed clear from what Skinner said and didn't say that there was some form of tension between the two of you. Given the nature of this investigation, all the time you've both spent together lately and...and the way Skinner talked about you...it seemed the right conclusion to make, Mulder."
He wanted to break something. The you and Skinner thing. Better yet, he wanted someone or something to break him.
He could hear himself inquiring nastily, "Oh, so now that you've waved it all in my face, now it has nothing to do with you?"
If only he could direct his voice to say the things he wanted to say, he would have told her to stop up her ears. He would have tried to warn her.
As it was, he only continued in a conversational voice, saying all the things he didn't want to say. "Skinner told you this? When? When did he tell you? Why didn't you tell me? It's a funny thing Scully. Just when I start thinking you might be trustworthy, you revert to type. The minute things get a little too complicated, a little too murky for your Miss Black-n-White pageant, you bail out on me. Thanks. Thanks for fucking nothing. What is it? You jealous because Skinner turns me on? Is that it, Scully?"
She looked like he'd slapped her. Just for a moment. But it was enough to make Mulder wince, dazed at how quickly they'd reached this point.
"I didn't mean..." He faltered, not knowing what to say. Too afraid to exacerbate the breach opening up between them. Besides, they both knew he had meant it, if only while he was saying it.
"Scully, I'm sorry. Please." Anxiously he pleaded with her, trying to find her eyes with his own. "Can we just forget about it?"
"No we can't." She was in that near-tears state that made her whisper fiercely, her voice hard and angry. "You make it so difficult to be with you, Mulder. You have so many needs and you take it out on me because I can't be all things to you. I'm just one person. I care but I'm just one person."
He said her name again, pleadingly. She didn't reply, her face settling into a tight mask. Lacking a stage, he was unsure how to convince her that she mustn't be damaged by him, that she needn't be. Uneasily aware that it wasn't all grounded in his love for her. If Scully left him, he'd be back to pulling rabbits out of hats by himself. Yet he knew he pushed and pushed at her and anyone else he could hold even slightly responsible, all the time covering up his indefensible expectations with flashes of prodigy, the relentless pursuit of truth. Scully knew, anyway. She knew.
Confirming it with her next words, she shook her head tightly at him, her eyelids reddening as she blinked away angry tears. "Just give it a rest, Mulder, okay? I'm not going to leave you. But I'm not going to be fed all these lies and half-truths, either. If you can't tell me what's really going on, well then, you can't. But I don't know how to help you when I don't know the first thing about any of this. So you think about that, Mulder. There's a man out there trying to kill you and if I find you somewhere, like one of thos--"
She stopped abruptly, biting back her words and by the time Mulder thought of anything more brilliant to say than 'sorry' or 'I don't know why I do this', a silence, both terrible and obstinate, had settled over them.
Skinner glared at his coffee cup accusingly before managing another tepid mouthful. It hadn't been a particularly discreet ruse. But it was about time Mulder and Scully thrashed things out between them. What better place for it than a long car ride? It's not like it was going to be easy for Mulder wherever they ended up talking. Better for all concerned if Scully had to concentrate on doing something, the cessation of which, would put her own life in danger. Maybe that would be incentive enough for her not to kill Mulder. Feeling slightly more optimistic with that piece of fiction clutched to his chest, he made his way over to the briefing room.
Took one look and forgot about optimism. Both Scully and Mulder glowered at him at him darkly. It was disconcerting enough to make him look away for a second and earn Armstrong who had just skittered into his line of vision, both the weight of his glare and a tight, apologetic smile to follow. Armstrong, in predictable form, stared back like a startled gazelle and then shot off to the back of the room. Scully then ignored him altogether.
Mulder, of course, took the added measure of making sure he really pissed him off. He sauntered up to Bagnio until he was close enough to rub noses if he wanted, and murmured something. Then turned to Skinner and favored him with a brilliant, infuriating smile, tilting the edges of his mouth into a mocking slant. Sexy as all hell. Skinner could feel his body responding despite the irritation that thrummed through him. It was the kind of smile that would have had a monk jerking off in under ten seconds flat. Luckily Skinner, who got it less often, had better control than that.
He swallowed a snort of derision and ruefully wondered if it was the worst idea in the world to beat the shit out of Mulder, even if it was what the brazen bastard wanted. Taking him in his stride because there was little else he could do right now, he nodded coolly around the room at each of the team, ignoring the brief, speculative look he got from Bagnio.
"Maybe you'd like to get this show on the road, Mulder?"
Mulder said with something bordering on a sneer, "I live to give, Sir."
Skinner was careful not to let his face, now set in impassive lines, betray any sign of his displeasure. Instead, he crossed his ankles and leant back in his chair, waiting.
Mulder stood up and came around the front of his desk and gestured to the pile of boxes by the door.
"I know this is going to hurt,' he said, smiling at Cooke and Armstrong reassuringly and then sending Kroeger a whole different kind of smile.
The kind of smile that made the older man lose some of the sulky air about him and brought his unpleasant smirk firmly back into play. Definitely not an improvement, Skinner thought absently, as he wondered what exactly had happened in that car to drive Mulder's folly this time. Threw Mulder an implacable look by way of warning. He was going to tell Skinner about it, one way or another. Mulder did no more than blink serenely at him, lower lip caught in a twist between his teeth. Great. That was all he needed, Mulder in enfant terrible mode. If he had been alone, he might have rubbed a hand over his face. As it was, he simply assumed an air of polite interest and watched.
"I've got a rough, very preliminary profile of our UNSUB that should help to reduce the time we spend going through past files," Mulder said, startling Scully's head into swinging up in a narrow gaze.
Skinner knew what she was thinking because he was thinking it too. How the hell did the asshole manage to keep on using every part of his brain, simultaneously?
The rest of the team looked resigned but cautiously hopeful of Mulder's prelim profile. Pens were clicked on and as far as Skinner could see, their two prime suspects seemed just as interested as anyone else in the room.
"Easy things first," Mulder said. "We all know our UNSUB is a sexual sadist. It's clear from the bodies he's been delivering us. Autopsy reports so far have shown that all the victims had been tortured pre-mortem. He enjoyed torturing them. We know that the actual cause of death in each case was manual strangulation. He doesn't see the torture he inflicts on them as part of the death process. At that point he is only focussed on remaking them and giving his own conflicted sexual fantasies the outlet they so desperately need."
Mulder paused and looked around gravely. "Think of their bodies as his personal playground. He is a god and he is enjoying himself. The death process is their punishment for having witnessed his pleasure, for having seen his real face, without the mask he wears for society. He likes to strangle them manually because he enjoys the closeness, the intimacy of choking them, releasing them, choking them again, re-releasing them and so on, until finally he kills them. He likes to see their fear and pain and hear them beg for mercy."
Armstrong piped up. "We can't look all over the country for him?"
Out of the mouth of babes, thought Skinner, with a flicker of amusement.
Mulder nodded. "That's right but I think we can narrow it down to just a few areas. As I said, I've worked up a rough profile. We know that he's cocky. But I'd add to that the fact that he's riddled with insecurities that he doesn't want to confront. This would keep him closer to his home ground. One of those insecurities is the fact that he imagines he should be in a much more powerful and well paid job than the one he's currently holding. We can assume that he will be working in a high-income, high-profile job - maybe a doctor, a lawyer, something like that."
Mulder paused, with what Skinner was sure must have been deliberate intent, and then drawled, "Maybe even law enforcement."
Cooke laughed nervously and Armstrong simply looked puzzled. Skinner could practically see his mind hard at work, tortuously trying to reconcile his notion of bad guys with what Mulder was telling him. Kroeger snickered and muttered that his salary alone would drive Mother Teresa to murder, never mind the hours. Bagnio looked amused but kept his own counsel. Skinner was neatly cataloguing all these reactions into individual files in his head when he felt Mulder's amused gaze alight on him, clearly reading every word going through Skinner's mind. He fought to keep a scowl off his face. He'd thought he was being discreet. Apparently not.
Mulder was not only disseminating the necessary information and doing his job better than anyone else in the process, he was also studying everyone in the room including Skinner. And doing it with far more discretion than Skinner had displayed. Sometimes he could understand why people made up the overinflated, paranormal aspects of profiling. No one wants to think that there's a way of thinking that can make their motivations and their thoughts as transparent as he was feeling right now.
Mulder continued talking, using a marker to write down the essential points on the whiteboard behind him as he went along.
"We're looking for a highly intelligent, white male with a chip on his shoulder about the way society undervalues his capacity to contribute to it. So far the bodies that we are aware of, have been found around Washington. I think he works or lives around these parts. When he first started off he would have stuck close to home because it was familiar. It was a secure place for him to be while he was testing the waters and learning his craft. Once he gained in confidence and started refining his killings, he would have branched out into the suburbs. He would have followed his own press enough to know it would be safer - and more vexing for the cops - to hit new territory."
"You mean, that's when he would have started really enjoying himself," Scully stated, unable to quite conceal her disgust.
Mulder nodded. "Exactly, Scully."
"But what about the latest body?" Bagnio asked. "That wasn't in DC. That was a couple of hours out of the metropolitan area."
"Sure," Mulder said, somewhat impatiently. "But you have to understand that he's gained in confidence now. He's still contained and isn't escalating. He's playing games. Whichever part of his mind is blocking his knowledge of these other bodies we're trying to locate, hasn't blocked off the migration of his essential signature and personality as a serial killer. He's doing exactly what he's already done in the past - branching out, playing with us, wanting to spread us thin and make us start placing unwarranted significance on the locations of the dump sites."
"Oh yeah, the schizoid theory. Right," Kroeger said, rolling his eyes.
Mulder threw him an amused look. "You didn't have a problem with it the first time I told you about it, Richard. Don't let a good night's sleep blur the facts. Our UNSUB is working on two psychopathic fronts. Unusual but hardly a historic aspect of the serial killer."
With that, Mulder turned back to the map, Kroeger clearly dismissed. Skinner grinned on the inside while maintaining a mandarin politeness on the outside. Bagnio, while nowhere as obvious as Kroeger, didn't seem particularly pleased at being left in Mulder's wake either. It was all putting Skinner into a very good mood, enfant terrible or no. He liked seeing Mulder flash his chameleon colors at people who thought they'd worked him out. The pleasure, he admitted readily to himself, came from not being one of the unfortunate fuckers at the time. So fucking what. He could bear some double-faced dealings when it came to his hobbies.
Mulder pulled down a map of Washington DC and started stabbing red mapping darts into different locales as he spoke.
"So, if you go by this," he said, "I'd say we should look into the well-to-do areas, the places where people whom our UNSUB resents every day of his life, with whom he comes into contact, are going to be living. He might sometimes be driven to slip into neighboring counties, especially a little later on once he became fully active because people would be on the look-out and harder to get off their guards. But concentrate on the better areas first. The murders will all occur on Friday nights or the weekends because this guy'll have a full time job. He's no drifter. The victims will be male. He gets it up for men."
Mulder looked around and waited a few moments for the team to finish making their notes.
"Okay," he said finally. "That's it. Let's start by looking back ten years - let's go back to the early '80s and start there. Let's start with Arlington and the west side of Richmond and see what we come up with. Rule out anything where guns were the cause of death. Look for something personal, something intimate. "
He could almost have thought Mulder was giving out tips on buying lingerie. Skinner shook the thought off, a little chilled by it. Given a focus, they all galvanized into action, himself included. It seems only sensible, is what he said, when Bagnio looked polite askance at his continued presence. At the moment he was just another pair of hands and glad to be.
Mulder divided the whiteboard up into 'negatives', 'maybes' and a more hopeful heading, simply titled 'Yes'. Boxes were divided up and they began to sift through them, not stopping when sandwiches were brought in a few hours later but simply eating over open files.
Skinner heard Scully saying patiently, "Mulder? Mulder? Here. Take this."
He looked up. Scully was placing a plate piled up with sandwiches under Mulder's nose. At least they weren't entirely at each other's throats then. Mulder frowned and then looking up at Scully, gave her a diffident smile and squeeze of the hand. She raised one arctic eyebrow but Skinner would have bet the bank that she squeezed Mulder's hand right back.
By sheer providence, there were still some sandwiches left when the tray reached Skinner. He found himself some ham and cheese ones and took the opportunity to stretch his legs out from under him. His fingertips felt disgustingly slick from handling autopsy photos. He could imagine Scully's admonishing look if he was to tell her. It was in his imagination, he knew. But he still couldn't help getting up and going down to the bathroom at the end of the corridor where he washed his hands.
He could hear thunder rumbling overhead and risked a look out the window on his way back. Dark, heavy clouds had gathered in the sky, coloring it a bruised purple. Just fucking great. As if there wasn't enough claustrophobia in their briefing room already, now they'd have to yell to hear themselves over the rain and thunder. He came back in and sat down, stretching his arms over his head before rolling up his shirt sleeves to above his elbows. The sooner he ate, the sooner he could get back to it.
He drew the line at brushing crumbs off autopsy photos though and sat back for a moment or two while he ate, watching Mulder instead. The man was entirely oblivious of his scrutiny. He was slumped over his files, his posture giving no indication of the sheer velocity of the thoughts which Skinner knew were racing in and out of that amazing mind; some kept, some discarded, everything decided in mere moments. Mulder's notes were spread all over his desk in windswept stacks, each teetering over the next, as if to achieve maximum suspense.
Skinner remembered watching some moronic commercial on tv for closet space. The guy, a dippy blond himbo with too many teeth, had brightly said that the way a person organizes themselves says a lot about who or what they were. He spent a few infatuated moments putting captions to Mulder's desk before stopping at 'Touched by a Hurricane' and remembering he was a middle-aged employee of the government, and as such, not entitled to have any fun on the premises. Certainly it was an abuse of power to be considering going over to Mulder, sweeping the latest lot of sunflower seed husks off his desk and shoving the rest of his neglected sandwiches down his throat. Just to make sure he ate.
Certainly it wasn't appropriate to imagine thanking Mulder for any compliance he might show by taking his cock out of his pants and stroking him relentlessly to orgasm, with an arm around his shoulder, supporting him. No, he couldn't remember seeing that in the manual. Mulder's ears must have been burning. He swivelled around in his chair suddenly and glared at Skinner, looking like nothing so much as a badtempered, bloodshot goblin. Skinner lifted his own sandwich in a one-handed salute and nodded austerely at Mulder's plate. Mulder frowned, opened his mouth to say something, stared hard at Skinner, snapped it shut again, frowned, and then abruptly swivelled back to slump over his desk once more. Skinner felt his face itching to split into a grin which under the circumstances would be just as inappropriate as anything else he was imagining.
He returned to his allotment of files, gradually slipping out of the fey jolt of humor into a more concentrated involvement with Mulder's prelim profile. Eventually, when Mulder called a temporary halt to proceedings, he was surprised to see that it was close to seven o'clock in the evening. The sandwiches had become a dim and slightly queasy memory. His eyes felt gritty from the constant peering at page after page of illegible, handwritten case notes and leprechaun typeface. He took his glasses off and resting his elbows on the desk for a moment, used his thumbs to massage the bridge of his nose where his glasses had been pinching the skin. Mulder looked just as crumpled and tired as he felt but had an added jitteriness about his movements that made Skinner think of windup toys in longlasting battery commercials.
"Okay, I want you all to finish up with the whiteboard and then we'll see what we have," Mulder said.
It came as no surprise to Skinner or anyone else, he suspected, that the lowest input came from Armstrong and Kroeger who had both worked the least number of files. From the way Mulder cut Armstrong off when he stuttered into an aborted explanation, it seemed a safe bet that he had known the way it would play out. Kroeger lightly put his hand on Mulder's shoulder and said something vague about having a lot of useless files to wade through. Mulder replied in a low, condescending tone that made Kroeger remove his hand immediately and laugh a little too loudly as he sauntered back to his desk.
The two names with the highest input, didn't exactly shock Skinner either - Mulder and Bagnio. He watched Bagnio approach Mulder after he'd put his files up on the whiteboard. He carefully stayed out of Mulder's personal space and said something that won a small, pleased smile from Mulder. Skinner didn't realize the face he was wearing until he met eyes with a stony Scully. Her expression dissolved into momentary astonishment before she looked away hurriedly. He reined himself back in tight and wondered if Bagnio had picked up on the change in relations between the two of them. He'd bear watching, Skinner decided coldly. Killer or no, he'd bear watching. He wrote his files onto the whiteboard and didn't bother to exchange sweet nothings with Mulder on his way back. There were other, better ways.
Mulder stared hard at the whiteboard. As he'd thought, the murders seemed to fall around Richmond and Arlington. There were ten in Richmond and seven in Arlington. There were three more in Chesterfield County which adjoined Richmond. If on closer scrutiny, the murders held up, they were looking at an UNSUB who had successfully committed twenty known murders. What about all the men no one missed? The ones who had nobody to care about them and report them missing? He noticed how quiet the room had become and wondered why it took a visual spread for them to keep remembering just what they were dealing with.
"Well?" he asked, a little impatiently. "Any thoughts?"
"Jesus, Mulder," Kroeger spoke up, an edge of disgust in his voice. "This is like water off a duck's back to you, isn't it? Shit, the guy is a killing machine. He's a fucking out of control psycho fucking maniac. Can't you even give us a little time to take it in? We're not all born to this shit like you."
Looking around him, Mulder saw enough eyes avoid his gaze carefully, that he understood that at least something of Kroeger's little speech had echoed in each of them. He waited a beat and then said neutrally, "Twenty murders. The ones we know about anyway. Let's put it up to thirty, let's say, to be fair. One extra for each year. I'd say it was more, personally. That still only comes out to three bodies a year. Right?"
Kroeger nodded, bemused and in the grip of the same shifty eyed revulsion that Bagnio, Cooke and Armstrong were looking at him with. Hell, Armstrong looked downright distressed.
"Okay, let's be more realistic now. The guy's definitely getting away with at least two more murders a year than we have up there on our board. So let's say forty murders. Twenty unknown and twenty known. That's still just four bodies a year."
"Fuck," Kroeger breathed, doing a good job of looking more mindfucked than he really was.
In fact, Mulder could see the thought tattooed on his forehead: 'I'm gonna make this asshole with the oh so great gift look like the freak he is. That'll fix him for fucking around with me.' Or - more likely - for not fucking around with him.
"Fuck!" Kroeger repeated in a louder, more confident tone of distaste. "Mulder, you don't know what sick is any more. You got too much of a taste for this shit."
Scully and Skinner were watching him patiently. In a way he knew he was showing off just a little for them. But for fuck's sake, he couldn't keep making this same point forever could he? He might as well make it good.
He gave Kroeger his slickest smile, the one that could sell the tshirt that said 'you've just been fucked by a Fox'. "You smoke, Kroeger?"
Kroeger blinked at him, taken by surprise and not following his train of thought.
"C'mon, c'mon. It's a simple question. Do you smoke?"
"What the fuck do you mean?"
"Cigarettes. You know what I'm talking about. You smoke or you don't smoke? Which one is it? Can't be both. This is an either-or question, don't you think? You should be able to answer it off the top of your head."
Kroeger turned resentful, realizing he had somehow ended up in the witness box. He muttered an affirmative in the sulky voice of a kid who knows he's not going to pick the magician's trick.
"Good. Good. Excellent." Mulder beamed at him patronizingly. "You smoke a lot, Richard? What - about a half pack a day? More?"
"Oh for fuck's sake, this is ridiculous. I don't know - yeah maybe that, half a pack. Not more." Kroeger glared around the room. "Not more than that," he repeated with emphasis, as if he'd put his finger on the important part of the interrogation.
"Okay, Richard," Mulder said quietly. "Now you tell me the last time you went three months without a cigarette."
Kroeger stared back dumbly at him.
"Get it? Do you understand what we're talking about here, Richard? Our UNSUB wants to kill as badly as you want a cigarette right now. This guy wants to cut holes into people, into human beings. He wants to stick his hands in to the elbow and caress their insides. He gets hard over it, Richard."
If you're our guy, this must be so difficult for you, you piece of shit.
Mulder modulated his voice until he was speaking in a low, confidential voice. "How bad do you want that cigarette now Richard? Bad? He's worse. Let me tell you that for free. He goes wild for it. He cuts them up while they're alive because he wants to hear them scream and scream and scream. Did you know that?"
"Shut up," Kroeger said in a hoarse whisper. His face had turned an unattractive, pasty shade of gray.
Mulder pressed on remorselessly. "He sticks knives up their asses, Richard. He has to squeeze his cock so that he doesn't come too soon because it makes him so hot."
He had no idea why Skinner was permitting this to go on but as the man said, make hay...
"This man is such a fucked up psychopath, so devoid of any human empathy or compassion or understanding that he can't get it up any other way. Hey and never mind the sex, he can't go on functioning any other way. He sits in their remains and in his own semen, blood all over his face and hands and cock, and that's the only time he has any peace. That's how bad it is for him, Richard. But he waited three months for it. You haven't had a cigarette in - what is it now - a couple of hours? How bad do you want that cigarette now?"
Kroeger flinched but said tightly, his voice under so much control that he could barely get the words out, "You can't compare the two, you crazy fuck."
"Would you do anything for it, Richard? If that cigarette - and we've established already that you like it for its own sake right?" Mulder smiled encouragement at Kroeger as he nodded without even really being aware he had done it. "Right. If that cigarette, Richard, that we've established you like to smoke, just in the ordinary course of things - if that cigarette is the only thing that's going to keep you sane, the only thing that lets you put up a weak facade of normality in front of your fellow human beings, the only thing that stops you from digging yourself a grave in the dirt and burying yourself alive, is there anything you wouldn't do for it? Would you, for instance let's say, let this guy cut a hole in your groin and stick his cock in there if he gave you a cigarette to smoke while he did it? Would that be okay at some point?"
"You're out of your fucking mind," Kroeger said, looking around the room at the others who watched in silence. He focussed on Skinner and said weakly with a laugh that ended up sounding suspiciously like a half-sob. "Christ! Make him stop already. This is fucking ridiculous."
Mulder had strolled halfway over to Kroeger's desk, without Kroeger noticing him do it. Now he was only inches away from him, swallowing up his field of vision.
"We're not talking about me, Richard," he said softly, pulling up the anchor of every corpse he'd ever seen and letting them all float up into his eyes. "Would you do anything for that cigarette? If I made you stay here all night while I told you about every twisted, terrible thing this man would do to you if he could, would you do anything then, Richard?
Kroeger shook his head violently and said in a hoarse voice, "No, I wouldn't. No I wouldn't. Just shut up, Mulder."
Mulder wasn't even warmed up. He said softly, musingly, "Would you do it yourself, Richard? If you had no other way of getting that cigarette? Would you get used to hearing someone scream until they lost their voice while you fuck them in their own blood? I bet you could get hard now if I held a cigarette up in front of you. I bet you could come from just the first drag, right?"
Kroeger stared back at him and Mulder felt heavy with triumph at the look on Kroeger's face. It was the look of a man who had worked out that no one was going to help him; no one was going to interefere, no matter what Mulder did to him.
"You freak bastard," Kroeger said, almost wonderingly. He bit his lip in a doomed effort to keep a snuffling sound at bay and shook his head in despair when it came out anyway. "Oh you freak bastard, you freak fucking crazy bastard."
Mulder got closer still and nearly whispered now, the room so silent that he could hear Kroeger breathing, like a steam engine pulling in at the platform. "Would you do it for the cigarette, Richard? If the only way you could stop my voice was to cut holes in me and stick your cock into those holes and fuck me until you come in me, would you do that? Would you drink from those holes, Richard? If I gave you a cigarette while you did it?"
Kroeger gave a harsh, trembling sigh. "You can't do this. This is harassment."
"I'm not going to stop." Mulder made himself sound kind when he said that. "I want to know what you'd do for a cigarette. Are you hard right now? If I reached out, now, what would I find, Richard? Are you that sick?"
Mulder made as if to lean forward and touch Kroeger and Kroeger moaned suddenly, jackknifing into speech, his face screwed up with loathing. "Yes, yes, you sick fuck, yes I'd do it, I'd do it, I'd do it. I'd cut your holes open, just shut up shut up I'd do it I'd fuck in the holes I'd drink your blood just shut up, just shut the fuck up."
Even so, Mulder didn't stop his whispered litany of horrors. He didn't stop until Kroeger finally gave up moaning and put his face into his hands and began to weep like a child. Only then did he fall silent, looking down at Kroeger with a sick, queasy feeling in his guts. It wasn't shame; it was adrenaline. Right then he was so pumped up he was afraid to even move a muscle in case he slammed through a wall or something like it. The room was still wreathed in a hushed, stricken silence. He knew no one would speak or make a move until he gave them leave. They were all his hostages, still shellshocked by this sudden act of terrorism. Not Skinner though. Skinner simply sat there, his long legs stretched out comfortably under him, and watched Mulder. He looked neither relaxed nor worried. He was just there. Like ballast, Mulder thought suddenly; like ballast without which the entire room would capsize.
One last thing. One more thing that had to be done because it would be unprofessional to stop where he had stopped. "Not my holes, Richard," Mulder gently corrected him. "You'd cut your own holes in me. You're afraid of your sexuality and you would never, ever stick your cock up my ass. That's dirty and disgusting. But nice try, anyway. You're getting the big picture now."
Kroeger continued to weep harshly into his hands, making broken, slushy sounds.
Mulder stood over him and looked around the room. Scully looked angry and slightly pale. The others didn't seem much better off. Even Bagnio had a faintly nauseated look on his face as he watched Kroeger sob. Looking at Armstrong and Cooke, Mulder had the feeling he just might have given them nightmares for life. Well, you know, join the club, guys. He'd made his point anyway. Better to drive it home, while he was here though. To make sure. He didn't want to have to do this twice.
He looked around carefully. "That's not even one hundredth of the terror the UNSUB perpetrates. He is a killing machine. Richard was right about that. But he is a highly intelligent and sophisticated machine who knows how to hold his urges in so that he can avoid detection. Do you understand me? He holds those enormously powerful, all consuming urges in with nothing more than his own self-control. What Richard just took, the UNSUB is hearing inside himself constantly. Every second of the day and night."
Mulder rammed the words home, his eyes boring holes through each of them. ""This guy is nowhere near escalation. He is perfecting his craft and becoming that little bit more invisible each day and he is suffering from a mental illness and still managing to get it right. There is no more time. Only more deaths."
He let himself shut down a little, let himself get colder. This was so tiring. Just getting them to see what's right there, under their noses. Distancing himself now so that there would be that respect between them, that barrier that only came from such displays of teeth and bludgeon. He could have told them day in and day out that there was a reason why he was leading this investigation, a reason why he knew the things he knew and they didn't. But show and tell always got the chasm between them and him across better. Now of course they'd all look at him in that way but that's just the way it had to be. Groupies were more Patterson's style, anyway.
"Water off a duck's back? I can feel the men he killed. I can feel their pain as he cut holes in them and tied torquinets around them so they didn't die right away. They felt everything. I know what they were going through as they were tortured for his sexual gratification. I understand what it's like to scream in terror and agony, realizing that it won't help, that it won't get him to stop."
And that's not all, folks.
"I know the pleasure he gets from it. I've been with him while he thinks, while he plans. I've planned along with him. I understand the glory, the immense gratification in this one moment out of his sorry, pathetic life in which his pent-up fantasies come true. I can feel his fulfilment as he is finally in control, completely able to manipulate and dominate another human being and take their last breath from them, to make them scream while they're dying, to deny them any compassion, anyone they love, to take everything from them, until they die as lonely as he is, in life."
"And do you know what his final thought is? What the only thing that touches his black hole of a heart is?"
Mulder looked at them fiercely, his ability to shut out their reactions, to control his own emotions, beginning to fray. He could feel the tears pricking the back of his throat as he said it.
"He feels sorry for himself. He sits in the blood and gore of these people he's butchered and tortured and he cries for himself, the fucking monster. He cries because at least they can leave. He cries because while he has taught them what it's like to die lonely and alone, they've left before he can show them how much worse his pain is than theirs. Their hours of misery and terror and loneliness is nothing to his own years and years of suffering."
Mulder could hear himself from a long way away, talking and talking, just talking, faster and faster. He was tripping over words but he couldn't stop.
"They have left him and although he has made them understand what real loneliness is, even if he has to put them to death to make them be with him, walk beside him, they always leave him in the end. He is still condemned to go on living while they have left him. And it's always over so soon. That's what he thinks, the sick fuck. So soon. Now he has to wait and plan and hold it all in and no one can know. He fools them all. He steps back into his everyday skin but he's not really there. He's reliving every glorious, orgasmic moment over and over and over again until he can repeat it and it's the loneliest existence a man can have. He feels so fucking sorry for himself and he hates everyone else who isn't him, who doesn't know what it's like to be him. He hates you and me in a way that you can't even begin to imagine. The darkness in him is absolute. He feels nothing normal, he makes it all up, he studies other people's reactions and mimics them in social situations. And he's so cunning, he's so clever, he keeps getting away with it, no one knows, no one knows what he's wearing under that face. They don't know what he's really thinking when he talks to them, when he looks at them, when he touches them. They can't imagine it."
It was Scully who stopped him, in the end. He knew he'd stopped because he could hear Kroeger's sobs again.
"Mulder, how-- how do you know--" She faltered. "How do you know that he cuts holes? That it's because he's in conflict with his homosexuality? How do you know what he--?" She stopped just as abruptly as she'd started, as though she'd just heard herself.
She's afraid of me. She may not know it but she's afraid of me. In case I do a Kroeger on her. They're all afraid of me. Of course they are. I could profile them all right now if I wanted to. I could do to them what I haven't even done to Kroeger. No wonder they're afraid. They should be afraid. The thought made him his stomach lurch.
He said bleakly, without looking at her, 'It's all in the files, Scully. It always is."
Then, suddenly, all of the air rushed out of his lungs and he couldn't breathe. It was as though he'd been floating a little outside of himself all this time, assessing and directing his performance. Now he felt like his body had been slammed back into his bones and the impact was so shattering that he could no longer function well enough to do the simplest things. Like breathe.
"Take a break," he said and was thankful to hear the words come out straight. "Just sit there and think about what I've said."
Then he was at the door, his hand fumbling for the knob and his vision blurring even as he opened the door carefully and went through it, closing it behind him. The corridor yawned and elongated in front of him, the walls on either side rushing towards him. He could taste bile and blood in his mouth, blood from where he'd bitten down on his tongue. He tried to move towards the bathroom at the end of the corridor but it was like treading on water. Then, not so suddenly, he was drowning. He felt his knees giving way and the ground rushed up at him at an impossible speed.
But he didn't fall. A hand gripped him firmly under one elbow and then his armpit. Then another hand and then gloriously, Skinner was pulling him upright, bearing his weight easily.
"Don't let anyone see," he said, tears suddenly beginning to flow past his closed eyelids. "I don't want them -- don't let them see."
"Alright, Mulder. Alright. Shut up."
Skinner half pushed, half propelled him along the corridor that he could no longer trust himself to look at. Darkness swam behind his eyes and a weird vertigo overcame him as he felt himself moving, crossing ground. It made him clutch at Skinner's arm, pinched gasps working at the back of his throat, threatening to become full-blown screams if he ever let them out. But he wouldn't. He never had. Not even when Sam was taken and his father had come in shouting at him, asking him what he'd done, what he'd done to her. And he wouldn't now, not while Skinner kept his grip on him.
Then time skipped away from him again and when he skipped back to himself, he was coughing and spluttering water. His head was firmly held under a tap and he had lost his shirt. He started gasping and flailing and the immovable grip at the back of his neck left it immediately.
"We have to stop meeting like this, Mulder."
Then Skinner was helping him ease down to the ground and bringing himself down to join Mulder. He opened his mouth to talk, to say something, anything, and had a wad of paper towels thrust at his face instead.
"Shut up and wipe yourself off," Skinner said rudely. "Then you can put your shirt back on."
Mulder took them gratefully and rubbed at his face and hair. "Why did you take my shirt off?"
"Because you were begging me not to let anyone see you like this. I don't think going back into that room--" Skinner paused as Mulder flinched and then continued implacably, "-- and you are going back into it. If I have to, there's no reason why you shouldn't. I didn't think going back in there looking like you had taken a shower with your clothes on would have been in keeping with the misson statement."
"Oh."
"Yes. Oh." Skinner said, not unkindly.
Mulder looked around for his shirt. Skinner handed it to him and Mulder shrugged it back on.
He was in the process of buttoning it up when Skinner remarked in the tone of a man asking the time, "Patterson really got you in touch with your inner self, didn't he?"
Mulder's fingers stumbled to a halt. Not looking at Skinner, he said lightly, "Nothing like being the instrument of your own destruction. Makes the weekends seem really tame."
Skinner grunted and then said, "You're not destroyed, Mulder. Just damaged."
Mulder shot him a shaky, cocky grin. "You really need to rethink your idea of what passes for good news."
"Idiot," Skinner said, his voice suddenly rougher than Mulder had heard it all day.
He slipped his hand around the back of Mulder's neck and squeezed, weighing him down momentarily. Then he pulled Mulder into his shoulder so that he was forced to slide closer into Skinner's body, hard and unyielding. Like a fucking futon. The complaint died, unvoiced, when Skinner started stroking his hair gently.
Just as he began to worry that he might purr, Skinner broke the peace by saying, "Being damaged doesn't mean dick, Mulder. We're all damaged."
Mulder jerked back in surprised protest. Or tried to, anyway. He felt his hair caught up and wrapped around Skinner's fist, just tightly enough so he could feel it.
Skinner's voice kept on, very reasonably. "What you just did in there was pure prodigy. I wish it didn't take what it does out of you but we both know we can accept that if it helps to catch this guy. Letting things catch up with you afterwards, like this, doesn't matter. Not as long as you let someone help you, Mulder. Do you hear me?"
"Thanks for the pearls. Let me go."
The fist in his hair tightened until he was forced to look up at Skinner, the drag of his hand making Mulder's eyes water.
"I heard you. Let me go?" Mulder suggested carefully. Skinner didn't let go. He didn't tighten his grip either. Instead he said, almost reflectively, "When this is over, I think I'm going to look Patterson up and break his neck for him."
Mulder was amused despite himself. "If that's not incentive, Walter, I don't know what is."
"I like it when you call me Walter."
Skinner trailed the back of his free hand down Mulder's chest, down to where the buttons had stopped being done up. He touched the open edges of Mulder's shirt, then slipped his hand inside. Mulder inhaled sharply, feeling Skinner's knuckles brush gently over his belly, tightening the muscles there. He turned his face into Skinner's shoulder, trying without success to smother a groan. Skinner gave no sign that he had heard him. Nor did he seem inclined to say anything himself. Mulder felt blunt fingertips skimming across his navel, circling and pressing against it knowingly.
He gasped, his face coming away from the cool haven of Skinner's shirt. "Fuck! We're still in Kansas, Walter."
He felt Skinner chuckle against him. "I know. Just being friendly." He let go of Mulder's head, sliding his hand out of his hair.
Mulder gaped at him. Openly. Skinner refused to say anything else and simply pushed Mulder off him ungently. Then stood up and offered Mulder, who was still sprawled on the floor, a helping hand. Bemused, Mulder got to his feet and began to do his shirt up the rest of the way. Skinner stood against the wall, his hands in his pant pockets, and watched.
Feeling a little awkward, Mulder said, "Thanks. For-- you know, getting me together."
All this earned him from Skinner was a mild frown. "Are you sure you're okay? I don't want you to look as if I've been kicking you around in a trough of water."
Mulder grinned ruefully. "I feel like a complete asshole. Not over Kroeger. Well, not really. But for lurching out like that."
"That's because you are a complete asshole," Skinner said, unperturbed. "Don't worry about it. They're all busy trying not to puke their guts up too. Even Scully."
He saw Skinner give him a look then. Not much of a look but enough to make Mulder rein himself in a little. "I know you met with Scully. She told me."
Skinner didn't reply. Instead he stared coolly back at Mulder until Mulder spoke again, his voice harder this time.
"Well? You got nothing to say, Walter?"
"What do you want me to say?" Skinner asked. "Scully's not stupid. I had to talk her into this. She wouldn't do it for free."
"You make it sound like you had to pay her off," Mulder protested.
"Everyone wants something, Mulder." Skinner's voice was impatient but not unkind. "Even when they care about you. It's not a bad thing unless you make it into something bad."
"You're a regular Yoda," Mulder said, disappointed in some indefinable way with the way the conversation was going. "Pity we have to cut this short but they're waiting for my encore."
Skinner didn't grace him with a reply. He had already come away from the wall and was walking towards the door. Mulder watched him cautiously for a moment until he was sure he hadn't lit any kind of fire under the other man's ass. Then he pushed past him to step out first, tensing up as he did, waiting for everything to start tilting crazily again. But nothing happened. It was just an ordinary, boring corridor. Skinner put his hand in the small of his back and gave him a gentle push into the corridor before falling into step with him.
As they neared the door of the briefing room, it occurred to Mulder to ask. "Why didn't you stop me when I was pushing Kroeger like that?"
Skinner smiled gently. It wasn't a nice smile. "You're not the only asshole in the world, Mulder."
END OF PART 9
