Blood talks. It is nearly impossible to silence. It can sing; there are arias within its spatter laws, its obedience to physics and gravity. There is mathematical truth in it, absolutes of trigonometry and geometry that have the power to seduce a person, lead them by the hand right back to Genesis.
In crime scenes as violent as the ones spread over Scully's desk Genesis went by a different name. Point of origin. Where was the first blow struck? Where did the bloodshed begin? Distance, velocity and angle suck up the answer and plot out exactly where the body was when each subsequent blow was struck, how hard, how many times and in what sequence.
All of these things had been puzzled out for Scully, or if not for her especially, then for an audience of which she was one. The autopsy reports contained appendices that sometimes stretched to two hundred photographs. Pink string led off from each point of origin, criss-crossing over each other and eventually vanishing into a double-knotted, Polaroid horizon. Spatter stringing was the only logic that could be brought to bear on this type of crime scene. In each case, so many wounds had been inflicted on the victim that the overlapping shapes and layers of blood defeated the naked eye.
Scully stretched her arms up above her head, one hand bracing itself against the other. There was an ache between her shoulder blades that wouldn't go away and it seemed to be nearly the most important thing in her life that it did go away. She had done herself no favors by hunching over the floor where she had carefully laid out the scene Polaroids. They went from left to right, in chronological rows, like an animator's storyboard. After an afternoon spent bent over them, following along from the autopsy reports, she could feel the dull ache seeping into the small of her back again. It felt wrong to not even know how many days since it had manifested itself, as if the time before these killings was itself a mirage, something insubstantial and bled of memory.
Smooth white marionnette faces stared up at her from the floor, anchored in space by rows of pink string. Balloons yearning to float off into the stratosphere. The stringing told its own story in each Polaroid. The first blows were struck, without exception, into the victim's face. The lack of spatter corresponding with the severity of that first blow pointed to the killer's positioning. He was standing directly in front of the victim, face to face, blocking the blood from spraying onto the opposite surface. The result was a halo of spatters around a void surface area, a configuration that dominated each crime scene's initial stages. From the height at which the spatters marked the surface on which they were found, in each case, both killer and victim were standing.
There was always only one blow to the face. After that, the victim was walked for a stretch before being forced down on his hands and knees while the killer started swinging again. Satellite spatters told that story: round, circular droplets that could only achieve their shape at a ninety-degree angle, the blood dripping straight down to the floor from the face of a victim on his hands and knees. Close to these spatters, crime scene investigators found showers of cast-off blood from the backswing of the killer's weapon. In the early killings, the crime scene degenerated at this point into a frenzy of blows.
Spatter dripped onto spatter, creating a layering effect that made it impossible to be specific about the number of blows struck. Eventually the victim bled out, death marked by thick, coagulated puddles of blood flecked with brain tissue. At the end, the killer always struck his blows above the neck, even after the victim was dead. There were a litany of post-mortem blows concentrated on the victim's face. The skull was left split open like a coconut, brain tissue sprayed over nearby surface.
Trying to pinpoint exactly how many spatters may be overlaying each other would be like trying to see through the targeted surface itself, a Superman feat of vision. Which is not the same thing as saying that none of the blows struck can be accounted for. As the timeline of the killings advanced, so did the number of blows that were struck with enough separate emphasis to be countable. But at no time were less than sixty blows struck. The body of the victim itself could corroborate that to some extent but blood is more reliable than bone. Scully, who had handled both, was not surprised at how many fractures overlaid each other and how much bone was utterly crushed. Any jewellery that the victims were wearing had been driven into the bones of their hands, their fingers, their necks. Bone and tissue damage could map no more than half the story.
In the later cases, something extra, something inevitable was added. At first the killer waited until the victim was dead and had stopped bleeding out. Then he straddled the body and cut holes in the groin, in the neck, above the heart, on the inside of the thighs, into the anus and on the soles of the victims' feet. Scully had studied those Polaroids for a long time, the neat, dime-sized chunks cut out of the bottom of each foot both obscene and intimate. The excised flesh was not recovered from any of the crime scenes. A note in the margin of the tabled Polaroids stated the ghoulishly obvious: possible trophies.
Long, recurrent smears and a derangement of hand prints were found in the pools of blood around the dead bodies. The killer had not left semen in any of the holes he had cut but the slide of his knees on either side of the victim's thighs, his bloody handprints seeking purchase on the victim's chest, bruises at the victim's hips made by fingers that pressed hard enough to shift old blood under the skin: all of it pointed to the acting out of some protracted and particular sexual violation of the body. Scully had stared at the handwriting next to those Polaroids, her eyes boring into the note, searching for signs of shakiness on the loop of the h or in the rounding of the o each time it appeared.
As the killings progressed, the killer no longer waited until the victim was dead. He committed his violations on the body while the victim was still bleeding out. The fact remained, and was thankfully noted as such in a lone departure from the unemotive weighing of fact and conclusion, that it was unlikely the victim was in a state to appreciate what was being done to him. From the brain tissue - tiny, clotted flecks - sticking to the walls, the mirrored surface of a dressing table and on the ceiling over the bed, it was apparent that although the victim continued to bleed out, thus evidencing a blood pressure, he was most likely unconscious.
The very latest killings, three of them within two months of each other, marked an ominous escalation. There was no residual brain tissue and the medical examiner could not come to the conclusion that the victim was unconscious while the killer cut holes into him and performed sexual acts on him. The strong corona of spatters from the femoral artery, from the jugular and from other holes made in the body, pointed to a blood pressure that was far higher than one which could gel with an unconscious and reflexive bleed-out. Death was drawn out, following a long period of torture and mutilation.
The most recent body had been eviscerated after death.
Scully grimaced as she read the neat, handwritten notes accompanying the point of origin Polaroids. First blow directly to face. Only one blow, powerful but not enough to kill or render unconscious. Probable aim - to make an introduction. Facing vic. Intimate. Setting power balance of relationship with vic. To describe the volume and velocity of blood that had manifested itself in layer after overlapping layer of spatter pattern as a relationship, seemed obscene in the extreme. She remembered one of the more indelible forensic classes she had taken at college. The professor was lecturing on the mechanics of homicidal rage. As an exercise in comprehension she had asked the class to mimic the thirty five slashes made on the case study's body with a kitchen knife.
The cuts had been made with great force, some of them perforating into organs and sliding right through spleen and vertebrae, cleanly exiting the victim. Rage and hate lent the killer incredible strength and although his hands became slippery with blood, he continued a smooth pull-out of the weapon even as he went on burying it deep inside the victim's body. To the sound of their professor's countbacks, each student had raised their right arm so that their elbow was above their face and brought it down and back up again. They did it over and over again, thirty five times in forced succession.
Scully felt an unpleasant skitter of sympathy for the ache in her shoulder blades as she flashed back on the dull pain that had set into her right arm and shoulder after that class, pain that turned into a stiff, protesting lick of fire up and down those muscles for nearly a week. She stretched her arms back over her head again, knowing it for the exercise in futility that it was, and tried to imagine what inhuman reserve of strength could account for the striking of innumerable blows that slid through bone like a knife into butter, over and over again, in the same rhythm with which she was breathing. It was a feat that surpassed her imagination, still strangely bound and fettered in the leaps it made, even after exposure to Mulder.
Despite the egalitarian way in which the files had been shared out, she had taken copies of all twenty files. She told herself that there were sound reasons why she should read through all twenty files; the autopsy reports, at the very least. She was a doctor. She told herself this even as she looked for something inexplicable in each file, something that elevated itself past even this kind of nightmarish horror. She did not acknowledge the part of her brain that was numb in anticipation of Mulder's face making an appearance where the empty mask of a crime scene dummy ought to be. She ignored the hesitation that cramped her hands as they turned the pages of each report, against all logic, against reality, against the truth of Mulder's predicted series of separate murders.
Patches of blue sky gaped emptily in several of the Polaroids. When laid out by date, the Polaroids began inside houses, in back yards, inside bedrooms, always at night. The killer, if it was the same killer as they were hypothesising, had changed his M.O. in the later murders. He had progressed to daylight in widening circles of geography. The difference between the time of death and the time of discovery began to elongate. He learned fast. Just as Mulder had predicted. Wording and phrase changed from one autopsy report to another. In the first two killings, time of death was as sure and clean as black paint on white. Decomposed white male with early insect activity... purging hemolyzed fluid in the nares and mouth... teeth are not all present... excess fluid in the pericardial sac... inspection of serous cavities reveals evidence of fracture of ribs, sternum and pelvic walls.... contusion hemorrhage present in body walls...obvious lividity and rigor present... time of death is just over five hours... .
The next two killings drove out the time of death significantly beyond that. Significant increase in the anteroposterior diameter of the chest.... abdomen distended by gas.... anus dilated, significant deforming injuries present... hemorrhage present in the sternoclei-domastoid muscles of the anterior neck... rigor is starting to lyse but temperatures have been high...significant quantities of bacteria, protozoa and nematodes present in intestine and blood... time of death can be placed anywhere from twenty hours to thirty eight.
It didn't take genius to see the obvious, at least not once those twenty files had been culled by Mulder. Night turned to day, the thirty eight possible hours into weeks; skin marbled, abdomens discolored into shades of green, brown and violet, the trademark colors of decay. Organs burst and eyes bulged. Blood dried, changing from the siren call of bright red to a spent brown, to black. Tissue damage increased and hemorrhage spread through the bodies like a bushfire licking the land. The killer moved from the efficacy of blows to the head and face and the cowardice of necrophillia straight into the more intimate thrill of strangulation, of evisceration, of mutilation and torture.
Scully could feel sweat beading along her hairline and stopped more than once just to steady her breathing, the embarrassment of giving in to atmosphere somehow worsened by solitude. She thought of the holes cut into the victims' bodies and the missing status of that excised flesh. She thought of the bottle of white burgundy she deliberately put into the refrigerator before leaving her apartment that morning, knowing she would want recourse to it by evening. Now, thoughts of civilization made her sweat harder, made her want to gag.
She made herself get up instead, walk up a flight of stairs in the stairwell to the bathroom on the next level up from the basement, and ran cold water over her wrists, cooling the blood. She kept her eyes on the running water, imagining her blood slowing down, turning blue from red. Fanciful as the whole exercise was, when she came back she was able to concentrate on the remembered echo of Mulder's voice, saying, M.O. changes but signature only evolves.
Initially, the killer's M.O. was ruled by opportunity. If a bedroom window was open, and it was night time, he tried his luck. The spate of burglaries in Richmond during the life span of the twenty unsolved murders had risen sharply. The files showed intelligent attempts to link up the two offenses to each other, the detectives never taking long to reach the conclusion that what had started out as burglarizing had changed into a taste for murder.
Looking down the Mulder tunnel of hindsight, what was more probable was that the killer had a certain victim in mind and certain conditions in which he felt comfortable when starting out. Pot luck and when things didn't pan out, he took souvenirs. Something to commemorate the occasion. The intent was always there there but the execution had been botched. It made sense to her that there was no correlating spike of burglaries and break-ins around the other murders in Arlington and Chesterfield County. The killer's M.O. had changed to suit his growing confidence. Why pat the livestock in their backyards when you could just as easily do it in an alley, in a park, off a rail crossing, in their own car.
She tried to remember the Mulder Rules of Serial Evolution that he had once ticked off on his fingers, just to irritate her then random sense of unfairness at being partnered with him. Would you rather be doing this, Scully? Rule: why not do it as far away from your own daily imitations of Everyday Man? The further away you were from your own home ground, the less chance of discovery. Rule: the more daring, the less expected. Rule: day time is better than night time. Rule: learn from each inconvenience, each misspent moment, each hiccup that meant a moment of pleasure forsaken. Rule: do it differently next time so you avoid loss of time with the victim. Rule: calculate. Rule: be meticulous, carry a pocket dustbuster with you, dust is mostly made up of shed skin cells. Rule: experiment. Be honest with yourself: what is it that you really want to do?
This killer was a fan of the author. He changed M.O. as his confidence grew but his signature, the true measure of it, never changed. It blossomed, it grew gristle and sinew where only skeleton used to be, but it never changed. The bodies were all men in their mid to late thirties. Out of the twenty victims, eight had been openly homosexual in their orientation and lifestyle. Of the remaining twelve, at least another eight had been circumspect but unsecretive, leaving only four about whom there hadn't been enough evidence - speculative or otherwise - to be sure. The killer had lingered at each stage of thrill-kill only long enough to sip at it like a honey bee in a bouquet of flowers, each new violation beckoning him further, more tempting and luscious than the last.
The seven cases in Richmond seemed to be the glue holding together the start of the killer's signature, chronicling the evolution of M.O. and the fetish characteristics that accompanied the killings. Scully frowned at her desk, wallpapered with frozen screams and impossible angles of bone and skin. A number of things didn't gel. Why, when profiling units had been called in, when the signature was something even she with her Mulder-assisted eyes could see, when the killings were so obviously linked even if the timeline was a little lengthy - why weren't the later cases cross-referenced against the Richmond ones?
They should have been. The odds that they weren't crossed against each other were fantastic. Unbelievable, even. The Arlington and Chesterfield County case files made no mention of the seven Richmond killings. Scully frowned, a little prickle of unease working its way down her back. Twenty murders and nothing in the news, nothing in the papers, not a word on public record that she could remember. Even the seven Richmond killings, where the profiling unit and the detectives on the case had made the connection between each of the seven murders - she had never heard a word about them on the news or in the papers.
She was half-way through dialling Mulder's cellphone before she stopped herself. Both Mulder and Skinner were with the Millers. She had no idea what angle Mulder was playing but she didn't want to interrupt him. Be honest, you don't want to interrupt them. There was shame in that thought but enough truth as well that it got her far enough down the line of making the next phonecall.
A pleasant baritone answered after the eighth ring. "120th Precinct. Can I help you?"
"This is Agent Dana Scully of the FBI. I'm looking for a detective Legrande and a detective Sinclair."
"Hold the line, please."
After an indecently long wait, the baritone was back. "Who may I say is calling, ma'am?"
"Agent Dana Scully. FBI." Scully paced out the words.
The baritone didn't falter. If anything, he sounded even more pleasant. "Hold the line, please."
The voice that eventually returned to her was neither a baritone nor pleasant. "Legrande. Who wants to know?"
Gritting her teeth, Scully introduced herself again. "Agent Dana Scully, Detective Legrande. From the FBI. I was wondering if you had a few minutes to talk to me about the Richmond Seven."
A long silence came at her from the other end of the phone.
"Detective Legrande? You do know the unsolved murders to which I am referring?" She wondered if he had taken her words as an attempt at familiarity. "You and Detective Sinclair apparently came up with that name for them. The Richmond Seven. I thought it might jog your memory and that of Detective Sinclair. Is she still with the 120th?"
There was a rasping quality to Legrande's voice when he finally spoke which conjured up an image of a pack-a-day, forty-something fleshpot to Scully. "You can't talk to Sinclair, I guarantee you that much."
"Detective, if you think you have the autho--"
"She's dead. Doesn't matter what I think. Just the facts, Jack."
Scully hesitated, awkwardness heating a familiar path along her cheeks. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"Yeah well." If anything, his voice had turned softer but the hostility in it had gone up a notch. "Don't bust a gut over it, Agent Scully. It's not your concern. What's your interest in the Richmond Seven? That's what you're calling to agitate me about, right?"
"Yes, I mean - yes, that is what I'm calling about." She bit her lip. It's not personal, Dana. "My intention is not to agitate you, Detective. As I said, if you had a few minutes of your time that you could spare me, I'd like to ask you a few questions about the cases. The two of you ran the entire Seven, I'm just looking for something that might help us."
"Why would what I know about the Seven help you?"
Scully paused for a moment, not sure that the conversation was the most discreet it could be. Yet she got the feeling from Legrande that if she tried selective disclosure with him, he would know it and withdraw even the limited amount of cooperation he was extending to her. "A killer with all the trademarks and signature of the Richmond Seven killings seems to have turned up in a serial killer investigation being conducted by the FBI."
Of all the reactions she was expecting, the slow wheeze of Legrande doubling up with laughter - possibly even cracking a rib, he was laughing that hard - had not been odds-on favorite.
"Detective Legrande, I'm not sure what about that is amusing you." She could hear herself, stiff and invaded, her mother's voice whispering in her ear, Dana, how will you ever make any friends if you act like that?
"Oh boy. Boy oh boy. If that just ain't the whole fucking enchillada right there. Of course you're not fucking sure, fucking FBI."
"I see you've had a chance to catch your bre--"
" You guys put the rat squad to shame, you know that? Think you're fucking geniuses and come in talking your solid gold Fort Knox bullshit and then people get killed. That's what happens, Agent Scully. From the F-B-fuck-you-I. And now here you are telling me that you got my killer. Well, fuck me."
"Are you finished?" Frustration clawed at her. There was something here and all she had to do was get him to talk to her. That looked like it would happen about the time Atlantis rose out of the sea.
"I'm just getting started. You just ruined my day, no - make that my week. And me, a recovering alcoholic." She could hear him smiling down the phone line and she had an idea it wasn't a pretty sight.
Diplomacy wasn't getting her anywhere. "Your partner was killed in the line of duty, Detective Legrande. Would I be right to think that?"
"What's that to you?"
"Nothing. Only, I would think, with the greatest of respect, that you might want to be of any help you could be to any authority that was trying to bring her killer to justice, even one of whom you have a manifestly low opinion."
There was another long silence. Just when Scully began to think she had lost him, Legrande started talking again. "You don't know the first thing about the first thing. But you're not going to go away and you sound just about stupid enough not to let it go."
"Thank you, that's very generous of you."
"Well don't come the icepick-up-my-ass with me, now, Agent." He paused and exhaled noisily. "There's a bar. It's a coupla blocks down from the station house. Name of Geronimo's."
Scully looked down at the half-moon bites marking her palm. "You want to meet?"
"I get off shift in four hours. Add on twenty minutes to that and then show up at Gerry's. You're not there, then don't bother calling me again. I won't be a party to this shit twice."
"I'll be there. Thank you for agreeing to see me."
"Agent Scully? Another thing. Don't bring the files."
"I... I'm not familiar enough wi--"
"I'm plenty familiar for both of us. Bring your notes if you need to. Not the files."
He hung up without any preamble and she argued the wisdom of where she was headed back and forth with herself. In the end it didn't make much difference whether she could classify it as decision or indecision. If he turned out to be unhelpful then no one need be the wiser. Mulder, especially, did not need to know about dead ends.
Her fugitive inner-voice, never welcome at the best of times, whispered that she could not keep imagining his face on every dead body she saw. She discounted it as ruthlessly as she would a crystal ball. Her professional reservations about this case far outstripped any personal desire to see Mulder live to a ripe and selfishly old age. She could see him floundering just as clearly as she saw Skinner unable to shore him up. It didn't follow that she would have done a better job, of course. But there was certainty in her partnership with Mulder, and trust, a trust that he relied on with such implicit faith that it drove her to distraction.
Skinner was like a faded overlay of those basic tenets, a sepia-tinted promise of manpower. He had an authority and will that moved mountains but partnering a mountain was something altogether different to partnering Mulder. All that brute force meshed with Mulder's butterfly genius, when put to the test, didn't deliver. It made her think of the cynical-vampire genre of vampire movies - the fact that she could even identify sub-genres of that genre bolstering her case of Best Mulder Mindmeld right there and then - where it turned out that a badge was just a badge, a cross just a cross, killer rays of sunlight no more than an axial point between the earth and a dead star.
Right or wrong, she found herself at Geronimo's, at the appointed time, sitting at a perfectly nondescript table in a dim, nondescript bar that already had its share of regulars filling it. Legrande was late. Scully felt the familiar squeeze of insecurity below her ribs. Where Mulder used his misbegotten charm, she relied on the clean, earned authority of slapping the words 'Agent Scully, FBI' onto the table. It was her version of a foot in the door and Legrande was twenty minutes past succumbing to its voodoo. If he didn't show up, then what? She finally ordered a drink, a lime and tonic soda that she took a sip of and then let sit. She spent another five minutes watching drops of condensation slide down the glass and soak into the napkin it came with before Legrande showed up.
"Agent Scully?"
The voice matched the man. He probably came in a little over six feet, had a heavy, jowled face and a body that had gone to seed, an overweight advertisement for cardiac arrest.
"I was beginning to think--"
"Yeah, well." He sat down opposite her and looked at the file she had put down on the table. "I'm here now."
Nonplussed, she gestured at her glass and took a sip, parroting good manners. "Would you like to get a cup of coffee or something first?"
"Nothing personal but the quicker we do this, the sooner you get the hell out of my life, right?"
"Right." Scully picked up the file she had brought with her and said with unnecessary emphasis, "This is my own file."
"You remember the noise everybody made about all this mess?"
"No, I'm afraid I don't. Not really." She took off her jacket, a slight headache starting to make itself felt. She wanted to order some food but it didn't seem appropriate. "I remember things in the paper, but not properly."
"Everyone just went apeshit." LeGrande shook his head and stared at a point in the distance, over her right shoulder. "Suddenly all these high-income morons were getting civic, forming neighborhood watch groups from belly to butt, like you just would not believe. Stores sold out of window locks because one murder, the laundry window had been left open. Local police, politicians, you name it, everybody who never gave a rat's ass before... two of my men, undercover stakeout outside a john's house and this vigilant freaking citizen comes up to their car with a double-barrel, loaded with the safety off, and starts arresting them. Can you believe that shit?" Legrande laughed, a bitter wheeze that turned into a fullscale coughing fit.
Scully caught the bartender's eyes, not a difficult task. His gaze had been crawling over her since she got there. She gestured for some water despite Legrande's hands waving off the need.
"The smokes," he finally gasped, wiping thick fingers at his eyes. "Damn things kill you before they let you go."
"Pack a day?" Scully asked, hearing it in the rattle of his cough.
"Pack and a half."
The bartender brought over a glass of water, one of his thumbs dipped inside the rim. Scully leaned away from his arm which was closer to her than it was to Legrande. She didn't return his smile.
"Were you and Detective Sinclair partnered for long before the Richmond Seven came along?"
"Hell yes. They don't let kids near that kind of shit. We'd been partners maybe eight years then. You could look up and down but you wouldn't find a more solid cop than Sinclair. She would have made a fine Captain some day and no mistake."
As ruined as his face already was, Scully could see the grooves around his mouth and eyes tighten.
"Can you tell me about them, the murders?"
"Didn't get enough of it in the files?" Legrande raised a placating hand even as she opened her mouth. "Yeah, yeah. I know. Hear it from the mouth of the eyes that were there. I know how it is."
He contemplated the glass of water in front of him for a moment and then left it aside. "Two-story Georgian. That's where the first one was, some damn name like Kappel or Kappelmann. German anyway. What's he doing in that part of the world with a fucking house like that you gotta ask yourself. Still, anyway. He was pretty dead when the boyfriend found him."
Legrande shook his head, in sympathy or disgust, Scully couldn't tell.
"Didn't see nothing, of course. Debbie - Detective Sinclair - did the hand holding, put him through the whole nine yards. Nothing. Wasn't anyone either of them knew. We checked out the boyfriend, all the ex-boyfriends, the parents, the fag-haters they knew - nothing. We shook down the usual queer-fear morons but tell the truth, I never saw something like that from one of those heroes. They like getting on the news, marching with their banners and maybe kicking a queer to death or something if a bunch of them gets the chance. This, what I saw in that house....I never saw nothing like that before."
"I read the files," Scully said. "All of them. I never saw it on the news and I never heard about FBI involvement. But there were profilers on the case. It's in the reports. There's nothing there about leads or suspects or anything. All that manpower, the profiles and nothing came of it?"
Legrande looked at her reproachfully. He had strange eyes, easy to miss in the ruined folds of his face. In color they were not unusual, a bloodflecked and slightly mottled blue. But they reminded Scully of the maps her father used to show her when she was little, when the water held mystery and her father would take her out on his boat, named for her. There were swathes of coral islands, entire archipelagos that he maintained had never truly been discovered, though they were on the maps. The lie was in the way they had been drawn onto the maps, the undifferentiated contours of the islands like stars that had been sighted from afar, and never visited. Legrande's eyes made her think of those islands; they looked oddly parallel, as if the left one was the right and the right one was the left, drawn into his face by a stranger's hand.
"Something came of it, all right. Plenty. We made an arrest. Put the guy away for life."
His words rang over-loud in her ears, chasing her imaginings away. "An arrest? There's no mention of it on the file. And the case is open, the file was never closed."
"Yeah, well, the theory was that the guy we caught was working with a partner. I pulled a lot of rank, which back then I had, and the file stayed open. Believe me, somebody really wanted that file to become history, fast. It was some freaking miracle that we got this guy, what with orders being that we had to work the case with no publicity, no media, no nothing."
Scully didn't miss the emphasis Legrande was placing on his words. "You and Detective Sinclair had a different theory?"
"Hell, we picked the guy up. He was our collar. We interviewed him every which way but loose. He was a mickey, a total bugfuck, but he didn't kill anyone in his whole sorry life, I guarantee you."
She watched him scrub a hand over his mouth. His skin looked shiny, like it was making up its mind to sweat or not.
"Nothing's on the file," she said again.
"I never seen that file again, once Baumford was arrested for the murders. Hell, we didn't even arrest him in the end. Wasn't our case any more." He saw her frowning at him and nodded. "Hell of a thing, huh? There we were, working our butts off day and night for months and then, not even so much as a thank you kindly, the case was gone. All the files, everything. I never saw our Captain so set on palming something off in my goddamn life. We were in there, hollering and cursing and all the good it did, we shoulda just saved our breath to spit on his grave." Legrande shook his head. "God rest his soul," he said, contradicting himself.
"Baumford, that's his name? Where is he serving his sentence?"
"John Baumford, serving consecutive life terms in Buckingham Correctional Center in Virginia. Was serving, anyway."
Scully shut her eyes tightly and let a few seconds go by before opening them again. "Let me guess. Baumford met with an unfortunate accident and is dead."
" Nothing accidental about it. Hung himself."
"Your files don't mention Baumford but would I be correct in assuming that the murders stopped in Richmond after he was caught?"
Legrande nodded. He had taken out a small, elegant switchblade from his pocket and was methodically scoring the edge of the table with it. "Yeah. No one gave a shit anymore. Also, the word was that anybody looking to make their pension or whatever, would be better off not giving a shit, period."
Scully raised an eyebrow. "Where was this coming from?"
"Nobody knew. We tried making a few inquiries. Debbie, she was onto something, I think. She knew a few people in higher places. Me, I had eight years on the job and I liked being Detective just fine. I didn't need nobody's validation or a promo to the desk. Sinclair had her eyes on the prize. She called me the night before she died, saying she had something we needed to look at, regarding the Baumford case. I tried." He shrugged. "I tried to get somewhere, telling people. I did my best. You know how nuts it sounds? One big freaking conspiracy theory."
Scully looked at him. "I have some idea."
"The Captain didn't wanna know. Nobody did. Baumford had offed himself and nobody was getting carved up in the Richmond Seven style any more. So what if Sinclair called me the night before, wanting to talk about the case? Shit happens. That was their scumbag attitude, most of those pricks being people who worked side by side both of us more than once. Debbie partnered with a couple of them, she woulda had their backs more times than you or me knows about. She was older than me. Been around a lot longer, had a lot of respect, the woman thing notwithstanding, if you'll pardon my frankness."
He was speaking in the same even pitch but Scully could hear the anger behind his words. She thought of the universal joke that Mulder was to most of his colleagues, even people who had once worked up profiles with him, the way she had felt when she was first assigned to him and the sense of being underwater - swimming through a double life - had threatened to overcome her. Contrary to rumor, Scully had as much empathy as the next person. She just never knew what to do with it and this time was no different to the last.
She left the question of Debbie Sinclair in favor of another, more important one. "What made you so sure it wasn't Baumford?"
"After Debbie died, I went to see him. I knew his defense lawyer a little. He thought the same thing I did basically - no way was Baumford any kind of killer and no freaking way was he the one who did those killings."
"You talked to him? What did he say?"
"When he wasn't crying like a five year old, he kept swearing he didn't do it. I mean, he was pretty much the same as he was when we picked him up. Stressed and scared out of his mind that his pissy little vegetable-head life was being taken away from him."
"You asked him about the murders?"
Legrande snorted, which set him off coughing again and only when he was in a state to drink some water, did he answer. "Brought him a damn cigar and everything. He was a big cigar fan - had that kind of swagger to him when we first picked him up, all talk."
"If he was the same, then he should have talked to you, right?"
"He talked all right but not like the way I was hoping. He was kinda going thin on top, you know?" He passed a flat palm over his head by way of demonstration. "Soft looking. A little pretty. Nothing too much but things get exaggerated in a place like maximum security. He had that weak look about him. I seen it in cops and nothing good came out of them."
"He was being harassed?"
Legrande gave her that look again that Scully was beginning to label as distaste more than disgust. "He was jumped, pretty much first week he was in there and by the time I went to see him he had made the grade as someone's bitch. Even better, the guy was sharing him around. Two years in there and not a single visitor. I mean, if I was Baumford, best thing I could do was kill myself because unless something amazing happened he was total shark bait from then on. He knew it too. He would have sold his kid to the devil if he had one and it meant getting out of there."
Scully frowned. "Did he confess to the killings?"
"Sure. Way I heard it, Baumford confessed four, five times. So what. You think it's some big deal?" His eyes were patient when they fixed on her. "You get a guy like that in an interview room and he's dumb and he's non-aggressive. What you don't want to do is give him the good cop/bad cop routine and start yelling at him and banging on the table and keeping him hungry and shit. It just confuses guys like that and wears them down till all they want to do is tell you what you want to hear because they're thinking about all those TV specials where you got cops beating daylight out of suspects. "
"You think the confession was coerced?"
"I'm saying he was not the brightest I ever seen. Easily overcome, nervy and got confused the minute you threw more than two kinds of information at him. From what I heard about those confessions, they blabbed at him and blabbed at him and he just gave it all back to them. No difference two years later. He couldn't give me any information more than his confession, all of which he got, as far as I'm concerned, in that interrogation room from a coupla desperate cops with no freaking interview technique to speak of. And this was a guy who woulda done anything to leave. He was putting out the worst kind of crap at the end, begging me not to go and similar sorts of shit."
"I can understand that it was possible to believe that since the killings stopped once he was arrested. But what about later? Once they started up again in Arlington and Chesterfield County? Investigators must have come to the Richmond killings? There's nothing on those files about the Richmond Seven. Did you never speak to any of them?"
"You bet I did. Still got their cards at home, too. For all the good it did, I shoulda just saved myself the trouble."
"They didn't believe you?"
Legrande shook his head. "They came with a copycat theory already fixed in their minds and nothing I said changed their opinions on that. They talked to the FBI guys who got the confession, talked to Baumford who kept confessing and confessing, stupid dumb moron that he was, and me."
"And they didn't believe you," Scully said.
Legrande wiped his hand over his mouth again. "I wasn't running so hot then, as I recall it. My wife... we got a divorce long time before that but she finally met someone else. Wanted to take the kids to Florida, give em a fresh start with Husband Number Two. We were fighting out the custody thing in court."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah well, same old, same old. She married the man not the job. So there it was. They went to Florida in the end. She got custody and I got off the wagon. That's the shit that happens."
Scully didn't know what to say. Legrande looked grim enough for both of them.
"So you left it at that? You didn't take it any further?"
If possible, his eyes looked even more reproachful than before. "You think I didn't issue a regional to other departments? The hell I didn't. D.C., Maryland and all of Virginia. It never made it past the radar."
"That makes no sense at all."
"Sure, well poh-lice is another word for poh-litics now isn't it?"
"What do you mean?" Scully's voice was sharper than she intended it to be.
"It's always the personal with everything, you know? It's all about putting down cases, sure, but unless you get personal, you won't be putting down nothing. You gotta give some to get some. Sometimes you give too much. That's a fact, Jack. How you guys even turned up the file is a freaking mystery to me."
"You don't seem like the sort of man to give up easily."
Legrande nodded again, the movement being as much animation as he seemed capable of displaying. "You got that right. But if you're looking for Superman, you can't be listening to what I'm saying. I got busted down to beat cop for two years, my partner got killed chasing up this shit and I started getting a name for being a kook who thought he let the big one get away. You know what they called me? The Fisherman." He made a sound of disgust. "The Fisherman. Catch anything today, Fisherman? That's what I got for taking it further. That and a dead partner."
Scully's eyes flicked to his badge. "You're a Detective again."
"Yeah. I learned to keep my big mouth shut."
"You're talking to me, now." Scully regarded him thoughtfully. "Why would you do that when you've got so much to lose again? You're a ranked Detective again and you don't have long till you can collect on your pension. How do I know what your motivations are?"
"Motivations. You know what it's like going to those crime scenes? Telling parents their kids are dead? That there's nothing we can do, cause we can't catch the guy doing it?"
"I don't think you're the only law enforcement officer sitting here, if that's what you mean, Detective." She sounded strident to her own ears but damned if she would allow him to draw a line between them on this basis.
"How many of them came down to the station house to thank you, weeping snot and tears, because you caught the wrong guy? They ask you to come to their place so they can give you a meal, thank you somehow because they can't stand not doing something for the people who brought their son's killer to justice? You want motivations, you tell me if waking up at night seeing their faces, knowing Debbie is dead and nothing's gonna change that, is motivation. Cause lady, if you don't know that kind of motivation, I can't explain it to you."
She thought of Mulder and the belief, the unshakeable belief he had in the truth that would deliver men from themselves. He had absorbed more confessions and intimate details of the kind that Legrande was gifting her with, than she would know what to do with. It destroyed him even as it defined who he was, and she hated it. She hated to see him put himself away, out of reach, so he could become a million other people who might lead him to his weeping Madonna cut into stone somewhere, proclaiming itself inviolate, a miracle. A worse thought was whether she was fooling herself, telling herself she wanted to help when really she wanted to be the one to hand him his miracle, out of a haystack.
She became aware of Legrande's eyes fixed on her. "I understand motivation, Detective. Just as well as you. I don't need convincing."
He didn't say anything. He was not as apathetic and unobservant as he appeared.
"What happened to Detective Sinclair?"
His hand jitterbugged across his mouth again. "They said it was a pay-back. She had this case, not long before. Routine dump-n-scrub. Guy was killed execution style and it was all gang-related. The guy who did it, all but walked into the house and gave himself up to Sinclair. He confessed, wanted a plea-bargain, talking about his dopehead sister and how they both wanted out of all that shit. Come time for trial, he's screaming in the box about how police are all corrupt pigs and he been set up and how he was gonna get her, how he was gonna take her out. Next thing we know, the judge is giving him bail option and he's gone. Never turned up at trial. Turns out he don't have a sister neither."
Scully didn't want to hear it but she asked anyway, "She was murdered?"
"I had to ID her," he said. "Slice-n-dice. Didn't look nothing like herself any more, skirt all slashed up and her pantihose twisted like some sex crime. She always was superneat, the way she dressed, the way she liked things in her apartment. She had numbers on her spice rack, can you imagine that? All her clothes were in order of when she bought them and what colors they all were."
"Sounds like you were close." Scully was careful to sound noncommittal.
Legrande grunted. "That's one word for it. Not that it was anyone's business, what Debbie and I had going. And, nothing was going on when I was married, understand? Her own husband ran out on her almost two years before we met, lousy no-good drunk that he was. She knew the job, the way it worked. She understood." He shook his head slowly, his voice turning thick with incomprehension. "She wanted to be with me."
"I'm sorry," Scully said again, feeling inadequate and out of words.
"I wasn't there. She bled out in a dumpster behind a coupla restaurants. They stuffed her body in there, after. Fucking animals. If you'll pardon my French."
"You don't think it was a pay-back?"
"You know where it happened?" he asked her, abruptly. "Outside of her own apartment block, that's where."
Scully raised an eyebrow at him, puzzled. "I don't understand."
"It wasn't like we were-- people who needed to know, knew. About us. But we didn't advertize, you know? That type of shit leads to shit. Sure as hell nobody knew Debbie had moved in with me. She had a sister who took up her lease but Debbie's name stayed on the lease and that's the way it was. If this was that dumbass kid who did it, he woulda watched her some, known that she didn't live that side of town at all. No way was it him."
"What do you think she was doing there, then?"
"It was the night after she called me. Way our shifts were working that fortnight, I didn't get to see her in between. I figure she was meeting someone, someone who knew something. Knowing Debbie's mind, she woulda thought the best place to go was where she wouldn't run into anybody who knew her real well. And if she saw someone she didn't know real well, of course they were gonna think that she was going home."
"There could be logical explanations for all of it," Scully said, pushing away the twinge of betrayal that had become a reflexive companion to sentences like this.
"Oh yeah, I been down the logic path. Take one piece of shit, and I can swallow it, even if it looks like shit and smells like shit, there's a hundred to one chance maybe it isn't shit. I can buy that. But when the shit keeps on coming, I don't care what the odds say. This whole case stunk up my life for four damn years and it got me as low as I could go, and then some. People died for no reason. You think I got a career anymore? If I get my pension, I can count my lucky stars."
"If there's any basis to your theories, you might be creating more trouble for yourself by talking to me," Scully said.
Legrande shrugged, a roll of his shoulders that served as a reminder that he was broad as well as big. "It wasn't right what happened. Debbie dying like that. Even Baumford, that miserable pissant, deserved better. All those dead kids, not one of them near the dark side of 40 and their parents resting easy, thinking the right guy got his. It's not right."
"None of the FBI officers or the ISU profilers are on record. You wouldn't happen to remember who they were?"
"Yeah, I know them by heart."
Scully's relief must have shown on her face. "Agent Scully, I was kidding. I spent years trying to forget this shit, drinking my liver up the creek. I can remember a name or two - Leo Metcalfe, for instance - but I can't remember which one of those boys he was. I got them all written out though. In my personal file at home."
She handed over her card faster than he could ask for it. "Please call me as soon as you can." After another moment of thought, she gave him Mulder's card for good measure. "You can call him if you can't get me. He's my partner. He knows everything I do and more."
"I will. I will do that." His hand went for his mouth again, a vague look of loss passing over his face. She wondered if he even registered the action. He caught her looking.
"Yeah, well, there's all sorts of recovering alcoholics, didn't you know?" His sharply apologetic smile would have been attractive in an expansive, maudlin way if he wasn't carrying twenty of the sixty-odd years under his belt. Now it just made him look pained and tired.
"Will you..." She hesitated, empathy making itself felt in her stomach, even as she labelled his weakness and judged him for it. "Will you be all right?"
He raised a hand and waved her away, a touch of blessing about it. "You go on now, Agent Scully, F-B-I. Go find that freak. You make him pay. I'm not in that race any more."
Still she hovered a minute, looking through her bag for car keys that were in plain view. "I could give you a ride back to the station house."
His eyes creased a little at the edges, his gaze flicking towards the bar and then back at her again. "Well, we both know I'm going to be staying here a while longer. Go on, now. You get back to DC, find this asshole. Debbie would do the same, if she was in your shoes."
Scully found her legs equal to one more surge of energy and got to her feet smoothly, while putting a couple of bills on the table without looking at them. "Thank you for your help, Detective. You've got my card. I'd appreciate a call when you remember those names."
"I'd say you were welcome but, well..."
She nodded curtly and then turned around and walked away, making sure she didn't look back. Once she was clear of the ferry and off the Island, she eased her hands on the steering wheel and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. She was sweating a little but not noticeably so. She could hear Legrande's voice saying it's always about the personal. He was probably drinking himself into a stupor even as she drove. What business was it of hers anyway? But her hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel again and she worked hard for the rest of the drive on distilling the information she got from Legrande, until the memory of his sorrowful eyes and angry voice faded away. It was easier to do than Mulder made out.
When her cellphone rang an hour later, she felt enough of herself again to answer it with something close to a smile. "Scully."
"Agent Scully, this is Director Manning."
"Yes, Sir." She paused, still adjusting from the expectation of Mulder's voice. "Good afternoon, Sir."
"I understand you've been speaking to Detective Legrande of the 120th?"
Taken aback, Scully answered him almost at once. "That's correct, Sir."
"And did you find it to be useful meeting with Detective Legrande?" Manning sounded smooth and unhurried and she wondered if she was imagining the tension behind his words.
"I cannot say at this time, Sir. I have not yet reviewed my notes of our meeting."
"Ah. I see. Well, I would be grateful if you would come directly to my office for a debriefing when you return, Agent Scully." He didn't sound grateful at all, to Scully. Just cool and full of assumptions.
"Of course, Sir."
"Naturally it goes without saying that no one else is to be aware of your communications with Detective Legrande, pending approval from me."
"Sir, does that include Agent Mulder and Assistant Director Skinner?"
"Absolutely no one, Agent Scully. Are you reading me loud and clear?"
Roger that, Red Rover - me and my storm troopers are ready to hit the ground running, over and out. A regretful survey of career pros and cons didn't allow for that sentiment to be expressed but she tried to sound as repressed as her reputation made her out to be. "Yes, Sir. Affirmative that, Sir."
"Thank you, Agent. I'll expect you, shortly."
After Manning hung up, she stared at the cellphone for a moment. How the hell did he already know she had been talking to Legrande? More vexingly, if she called Mulder now and told him everything, what were the odds that he would act on it precipitately? Skinner would be more prudent but what point was there in calling him? In any case, they were in the same car.
Her stomach growled and she spared it a yearning thought before pulling over to the side of the road. She took out a notebook from her bag, along with a dictaphone that had seen better years, and began to write in it. Every few paragraphs or so, she paused to dictate a lengthier version of what she had written.
"You plan on sharing whatever passes for thought in your head, with me?" Skinner asked.
Mulder looked at him, half-leering, half-solemn, a look that denoted serious thought and never failed to work Skinner's every last nerve.
"Well?"
"It's just a question of handling Manning."
"Because jurisdiction is not going to be a problem for you, is that right?"
"Right."
"It's a problem for the Supreme Court, the FBI, the Civil damn Liberty bleeding hearts, but not you. Everyone but you."
"If it's not a problem for me, that's because it's not a problem." Mulder eyed him speculatively. "You're not confusing me with your gloryhound days in the field, are you?"
"The term is 'hound dog', Mulder."
"You're making that up."
"What makes you think Manning will let himself be handled?" Skinner shifted in his seat, trying to accomodate the stiffness in his legs, trying to distract himself from the desire to shake Mulder by the throat. An answering twinge in his right kneecap reminded him of exactly how old he was.
"We have jurisdiction, Walter."
Too old.
"You told me. I'd appreciate it if you could find it in your heart to give me a reason for it."
Mulder grinned at him, a shark fin cutting through a wash of unsuspecting waters. Skinner had a sudden, unwelcome longing to put his fingers over Mulder's mouth. Mulder, of course, would take it as some kind of acknowledgement. Or worse, approval. The pace at which Mulder moved, approval was the last thing he needed. Too fast. Too young.
"What if I told you that in my gifted profiling experience, the content of the phone call, the tone of the speaker, the vibe, the feel, the smell, all of it pointed to this guy being a long way away from Richmond?"
"You haven't heard the call yet," Skinner said, puzzled.
"Yeah, but I will."
The penny dropped. He stared at Mulder. "How far away from Richmond?"
"Far enough."
Skinner contained himself for close to two seconds before he said, "You cannot pull this kind of stunt. You could cost the investigation its direction. You could cost someone their li---" He broke off. Stared harder at Mulder. "You would never do that. What in goddamn are you up to, Mulder?"
Mulder opened his mouth, then closed it again, shaking his head. "I know what I'm doing."
Color lay along Mulder's cheekbones but Skinner couldn't excuse the dismissal in his voice. "You're skating, Mulder. The ice is thin and I am not so far away from wanting to hold your head under. If I were you, " he met the flash in Mulder's eyes with a mild smile "if I were you, I'd be ass-deep in full disclosure of any and all plans, plots and stupid fucking ideas. You understand me?"
Mulder's mouth thinned but when he spoke his voice was soft. "Stand down, Walter. He's not our UNSUB. But Manning doesn't know that. Manning can't know that. It would buy us a little time to run with the Millers angle. We could get our team in position for a night or two, watching them. That's all we need."
Skinner started with the obvious. "Why isn't he our guy?"
"There's no reason for him to call. He doesn't need to solicit attention. He doesn't want to make contact. He's an angry, psychotic loner - a successful one, too. He's just killed two cops on our doorstop."
Skinner shook his head, wondering why it reassured him to ask questions he already knew the answer to, just to hear Mulder say them aloud. Asked a question he didn't know the answer to. "What happens when it becomes clear - and it won't take that long, Mulder - this guy isn't the UNSUB?"
Mulder shrugged. "The Millers will be safe by then."
Skinner glared even as he understood the words behind the words. "I'm going to give you till the next time I ask. Then you better come up with something better than that."
They drove back in uneventful silence, Mulder dozing off a half-hour into the drive. Skinner had to nudge him awake when they got to the Bureau, not even disturbed by the transition to the undercover parking or the brief exchange of words at the ticketing booth.
"We're here?" His voice was muzzy although his eyes came all the way open at once.
"You fell asleep," Skinner said.
"Yeah." Mulder stretched his legs and cracked a couple of knuckles with relish, ignoring Skinner's wince. He smiled at Skinner. "Thanks."
Skinner was still scowling, puzzled, when they got into the Bureau. He didn't realize it until Mulder said, "Keep that look on your face and they're going to think you're the Tarzan to my rogue elephant."
It did nothing for his mood when he glanced around and took in the expressions of people around them. "You read too much Edgar Rice Burroughs," he said, and then put an arm around Mulder's shoulder, perversely satisfied by the startled silence that fell between them.
Around them, the buzz of people talking went up a notch before subsiding again. They were still watching them though. Skinner met a few pairs of eyes, drilling them with his own until they slid their gazes away. His hand felt heavy on Mulder's shoulder, disproportionately obscene when compared to the relative innocence of the gesture. It was easy to compare it to the way Mulder's shoulder felt pressed up against Skinner, without the layers of clothing between them. Easy enough to make him want to snatch his hand back. Instead he tightened it, just a little. Mulder's back was stiff but he hadn't moved so much as an inch away from Skinner, and he didn't now. Skinner didn't need to look at Mulder to see the bland, expressionless face he was wearing. There wasn't much point in trying to look behind it either; he knew at least that much from experience.
He only let go once they were both in the elevator, noiselessly speeding up towards Manning's office.
"What're they putting in your water, Walter?"
Can't leave it alone, just can't leave it alone, Skinner thought, hands clenching at his sides for a moment.
"A hand on your goddamn shoulder. That's all it was."
"Yeah, exactly." Mulder raised an arch eyebrow that had Skinner longing to pop him one. Right across his jaw. "It's not like they caught us in a briefing room, with our pants down. Oh, wait, that actually happen?"
"Shut up."
"Because you know, I'm not sure I'm clear on your method---"
"Mulder, you're not sure, I'm not clear, it just goes round and round with you and me, doesn't it? Just put it down to the case and stop twitching like you might have to step up to the plate and deliver on something. That'll suit us both."
He watched the amused look on Mulder's face fade away. "Fine."
"Stop doing that," Skinner said. Heard himself giving orders. "I'm not the asshole here, Mulder."
"You sure about that?"
The soft ping of the elevator cut in between them which, Skinner thought, was just as well. Desk men waved them through once the elevator doors opened. For once, Manning was heralding him in; Skinner had no trouble deciding that it was not a cause for celebration.
"There's even less light up here than down in the basement," Mulder said softly, while making an 'X' sign at the closed circuit camera inhabiting the top righthand corner of the reception area which led into Manning's office.
"Stop doing that," Skinner said. Then, because Mulder was waiting, "So what does that mean to you, the less light?"
Mulder's fingers unmade themselves obligingly. "Photophobia."
"What?"
"He probably suffers from photophobia."
Skinner drew an exasperated breath but was forced to exhale it uselessly as Manning's door opened and Gills beckoned them both in.
"Good to see you, Walter." Gills wore a faint, mocking smile.
"I know my way in," Skinner said, his temper about to get the better of him until Mulder caught his eye and mouthed a coquettish my hero at him.
"Ah, Walter." Manning was seated behind his desk, ostentatious in his role of spider to the flies. "I think everyone here knows each other."
Warned by the satisfaction in his words, Skinner came all the way inside and registered Scully's presence in the leftmost visitor's chair.
He nodded at her. "Agent Scully."
"Sir."
"Hi Scully," Mulder said, and then favored Manning with a sweet, distracted smile. His air was one of nutty-professordom.
All the goddamn world's a stage. Skinner looked on, exasperated.
"The infamous Fox Mulder. What a pleasure to see you again."
"It seems like only yesterday," Mulder said. "Sir."
"We agree on that, Fox." Manning looked at him. "It doesn't seem very long ago at all that I was hauling you out of the fires of a demanding bureaucracy, does it? Now here we are again. Sit, sit."
Hauling you out of--- Fox?? --- Skinner raised a brow at Mulder, smoothing the frown that threatened to accompany it. He had no desire to be transparent. He had even less desire to be the joker in the deck. If Mulder had some prior connection with Manning, he had most definitely had a million opportunities to put Skinner into the picture. Which, of course, only led to the conclusion that Mulder had deliberately chosen to keep Skinner in the dark. Which raised a few unwholesome questions, each of which would beget an answer if Skinner had anything to say about it.
"Agent Scully has been keeping me updated," Manning said and smiled at her.
Scully handed both of them a transcript of the phone call. The paper felt warm under Skinner's fingers, as though they had just been printed.
"Play the call, first," Mulder said.
Manning raised an eyebrow but motioned at Gills. After an unpleasant look at Mulder, Gills took a microtape out of one pocket and inserted it into Manning's dictaphone.
Skinner drew in a bit closer, instinctively, as the choppy whirr of empty tape started to play. His fingers closed over a nonexistent cigarette lighter in his pants pockets. He wasn't in Vietnam, he wasn't lying in some pissant puddle next to a nest of water vipers, and he didn't need a light to see by. Still, some habits were hard to shake.
The first voice on the tape was female. "Hello? Are you still there, Sir?"
"The desk sargeant took the call. It got patched through to her somehow," Gills said.
"We're following it up." Manning rolled up the volume control.
"Hey you sons of bitches, how you doing? I have to tell you, I'm disappointed. Here I am, cleaning up the neighborhood for you, getting rid of the garbage, and you can't even put me on the front page, gimme a couple of headliners. Scared I'll put you out of a job, I'm guessing."
"That's him," Gills said, unnecessarily.
The caller was obviously white and, to Skinner, sounded like he hadn't hit his serious thirties yet. He had a soft, barely-there Southern accent. Skinner looked over at Mulder. He was sure he wasn't the only one who could hear the strain in the caller's voice, like he was struggling with every word.
"I got another one here. Hey, asshole. Say your fucking name."
A frightened voice said something but it was too hard to decipher over the harsh, gulping breaths that accompanied it. The sound of an open palm striking skin followed, and then their caller again, more agitated, "Hey, moron! You wasting my time on purpose? I'll cut the next one off, you fucking, ungrateful, snotty half-breed. Tell them your name."
"Nathan. I'm Nathan Varma. He's got me." This time they could understand him, his voice still gargly but loud with panic.
"Sounds like he's choking on water or something," Mulder muttered.
"He may be bruised around the throat or chest. That can lead to internal abrasions that get encrusted once the blood dries and it cuts, giving a watery eff--"
Manning cut her off. "Thank you, Agent Scully. There's more on the tape."
"Yes, Sir."
Skinner exchanged a bland look with Scully. It hadn't escaped her attention either that Manning preferred to be light on the ugly details.
"I want some fucking respect. Write me and Nathan-baby up in the papers. Headline stuff." It was the caller again, sounding happier by the second. "If you don't get to the media before me, trust me, I'll be posting him to them in pieces, and how would you like that, you cocksucking, useless pricks? There's another body. I can tell you where to look. Left hand side of Bailey Bridge Road, Chesterfield County. Right off of 288, near the park. The left hand side of that road. I'm waiting. Me and the VIP jerk-off here, we're both waiting."
Then they were back to the loud, hissing sound of empty tape again. After a moment, Gills took the tape out, rebagged it and put it back into his pocket. Skinner realized his eyes were on that pocket and looked away.
"So." Manning's eyes were fixed on Mulder. "Your thoughts, Agent Mulder?"
Like their goddamn savior, Skinner thought, a little more sickened because he was no stranger to such expectations.
"The caller said he'd cut the other one off," Mulder said. "I thought Nathan hadn't been harmed."
"This isn't the tape the desk sargeant played." Scully gave Manning what Skinner liked to think of as her please-explain look. Please-explain-or-I'll-break-your-neck.
"What the hell are you playing at, John?" he asked, more as a matter of form than genuine inquiry. He had known the minute Gills turned up with the tape in his pocket.
Mulder laughed. "It's called an appropriate press response, Walter. Right?" He was addressing Manning now. "Am I right? You're going to air the other tape to the media."
"You may be a liability, Fox, but you're a bright one." Manning smiled. "Chip off the old block, is the expression, I think."
Skinner watched the blood flow up into the back of Mulder's neck.
"He's going to kill Nathan Varma," Mulder said. "Not piece by piece, but all at once. If you want to save him and get your name in the papers..." he gave Manning a hard, sunny smile "...without 'bloodbath' directly following it, then you give me a team to set up an around the clock watch over the Millers. The people Assistant Director Skinner and I went to see today. They are integrally connected to our UNSUB."
Me, Skinner echoed, inwardly setting his teeth against each other, aware he was being a little unfair. It grated anyway. This casual assumption of responsibility. Then you give me a team...
"You don't sound like you're saying he's our man." Manning's smile had disappeared.
Mulder slumped lower into his seat, the back of his pullover rising up behind him like an extra shoulder. It was easy, Skinner thought, if you didn't know him, to miss the way his eyes had hardened and the dark flush still lying along his neck.
"He's not the guy," Mulder said. "But if you want to squash this before it becomes a media feeding frenzy, you'll need my help. He's referring to Nathan by name. This is a personal attack on this one person. He's got some sort of history and probably a grudge against the family. He said 'VIP' - what's the family's standing?"
"The parents own a chain of local supermarkets," Manning said, reluctantly. "They're well known in the community."
"Why would the grudge be against the family and not the kid?" Skinner asked.
"He was distanced from Nathan. He wasn't talking about him as much as he was talking about publicizing the fact he had him and wanting some credit for it. He talked about the cops like they'd personally let him down in some way. It's a grudge. He's not going to take his time playing with Nathan the way our UNSUB would."
Manning interrupted. "So you're saying, what?"
Mulder did more than smile this time. He grinned. "He'll die if he's not rescued within twenty-four hours. I can save him by the end of tonight. Give me surveillance for the Millers."
Manning looked at him. "By what authority, Agent Mulder, do you propose the FBI can officially enter this investigation?" he asked, his hands clasped together, thumbs gently revolving around each other.
"Well, it sounded to me like this guy was from out of state. I wouldn't be surprised if there have been murders interstate that have similar characteristics."
"The caller said we'd find a body in Chesterfield County," Scully said, her eyes on Mulder. "That's not interstate."
"Yeah, well. I don't think that tape matters to anyone else but us, right, Sir?"
It took Skinner a moment to realize Mulder was addressing Manning, and not him.
"Also," Mulder said, the nearest thing to an apologetic smile shaping his mouth when he looked at Scully, "From the tone of his voice and the way in which he addressed the victim, in my professional opinion, if the interstate kidnapping angle doesn't pan out, we're still charged with determining if this fits the 44 Classification: violation of federal civil rights."
"Hate crimes?" Gills sounded as startled as he looked.
"I believe Agent Mulder was referring to the use of the word 'half-breed' by the caller," Manning murmured.
"Sir, why release a tape at all? We can bring matters to an end quietly, without anyone knowing any more about it. No one asks questions when the victim is successfully rescued. Then 'classified' really means 'classified'. The media won't push." Scully said.
"What if we don't catch him in time?" Skinner said, directing his question to Mulder and taking Scully's tangible disapproval in his stride. Somebody was going to ask the question. Better him than Manning.
"I will." Mulder said evenly. "As soon as I have permission to put a team on the Millers."
For a half-second Skinner found himself wanting to spare Scully the rest of the conversation. Only a half-second before he hung himself as the patronizing moron he was.
"And if you don't get that permission, Agent Mulder?" Manning asked.
"No Millers, no Nathan," Mulder replied promptly.
If he heard Scully murmur his name in warning, he didn't show it. Skinner said nothing. His control over Mulder didn't extend to these moments when Mulder was ace-high, prepared to go over the edge of the cliff in the name of his mutilated priorities.
Manning favored Scully with a smile. "Well, now. We seem to have come to the crux of the matter. You are prepared, Agent Mulder, to weigh the relative merit of one innocent life against another?"
Scully's reaction was predictable. At least, it was to Skinner; he saw Mulder's shoulders sag with relief. "Agent Mulder can save Varma. All you have to do is let him. Sir, if Agent Mulder says the Millers are integral to the killings, then they are. The only reason he would have to weigh up anything is if you make him."
"My, my. If only I could evoke a similar devotion from you, Simon." Manning turned to favor Skinner with a knowing look. "It's enough to make anyone jealous, isn't it?
Shame flooded him, hot and instinctive. He wasn't sure if it was so much the fact of jealousy or if the accusation itself was enough to provoke him. He kept his face neutral with an effort that threatened to lockjaw him.
Manning didn't stop. "But then, you always had your eyes on the big picture, Walter. Places to go, people to see, isn't that so?"
The urge to deflate Manning, to let him know all his threats would come to nothing as far as Scully was concerned, was tempting. If she hadn't left Mulder on the promise of promotion, then she would never leave him on the threat of demotion. Skinner still had a choice and it was a difference between Scully and him which he seized upon, daily.
Mulder stepped neatly into the oppressive gap. "What do you propose to do, Sir?"
Manning inclined his head, giving every appearance of a graceful surrender. "Who could deny you anything, Agent Mulder? You're not 'Spooky' for nothing. Loose your team on the Millers. I assume you'll want gag orders. We don't want the press getting hold of their story of being strongarmed by the FBI."
"Thank you, Sir."
"I'll see that your men get them before they go down to the Millers' residence. In the interim, Walter, I'll leave it to you and Agent Mulder to liase with police in Chesterfield County." He looked at Mulder. "I want Nathan Varma back in time for the evening news, Fox."
Mulder did his impression of a catatonic patient and Skinner used it as a cue to head towards the door.
"Agent Scully. If you could stay behind, please."
"What do you need Agent Scully for?" Skinner asked.
"Oh I thought I'd explained. Agent Scully will be releasing the tape to the media and fielding questions."
Scully's look left Skinner in no doubt as to what she thought of that. "Sir, I don't think that's appropriate."
Manning had already made up his mind and Mulder had lost Skinner too much ground for him to flex his muscles.
"Agent Scully. Under the circumstances, perhaps it's best."
Meaningless. He saw the moment she dismissed him and the contempt with which she did it.
Manning added fuel to the fire. "The media always find a woman so much more... sympathetic."
Gills spoke up, startling Skinner. It was so easy to forget he was in a room. "Sir, I would be pleased to lend Agent Scully my expertise in handling these sorts of conferences."
Something in his face led Skinner to realize that Manning had made a spur of the moment decision. Gills was originally slated to give the press conference.
"Agent Scully, I'm sure you'd be grateful for Agent Gill's offer?"
"Yes, Sir. I would." Scully's cheeks were flushed but she spoke clearly enough.
Mulder and he were nearly back at his office before Skinner bothered speaking to him.
"Is Scully going to forgive us for that one?"
Mulder blinked. "For what?"
"Oh for Christ's sake, Mulder. For feeding her to Manning like that."
Mulder looked vaguely uncomfortable. "She can handle herself."
"So that makes it all right?"
"I'm not going to discuss Scully or your abandonment issues with you."
Heartburn and hard-ons. That's what Mulder was to him, even when he was only half-willing to engage. Even half of a half, any response at all, and Skinner found himself in this inexcusable state. This ugly fascination with a man who could barely grasp the rudimentary notions of how to deal with people of the mainstream. Skinner considered himself one of those people. His place was firmly in the middle of the middle. If the centre held, then everything else would. He believed in that as much as Mulder believed in lights in the sky. Which of course made him fundamentally irrelevant to Mulder in a way he will not acknowledge.
Being alive to the impropriety of his reactions had never saved him from them, and he found himself now, imperiously closing his fingers around Mulder's bicep, propelling him into his office and closing the door behind them.
"Don't. Don't put up that wall and decide I'm on the need-to-know roster. I will not tolerate that from you."
"You can't demand things like that," Mulder said.
"Why not?"
He heard himself, stunted with wanting, and released Mulder's arm like it was the plague.
"You just can't," Mulder said, a faint scowl pulling at his mouth.
"Let me get it straight. I can make you suck my dick. I can't talk about Scully. I can't call you Fox although Manning can. I can be your confessional but I can't ask you to not shut me down when you feel like it. Am I getting warm here?"
"You didn't make me."
"What?"
Mulder fidgeted in place and mumbled harder. "You didn't make me suck your dick. I wanted to."
Skinner stared at him, anger cut off like a knotted garden hose, replaced with bewilderment. "Jesus Christ. Now you're a goddamn grammar nazi. Mulder, what in hell is the point of talking to you?"
"I'm..." Mulder gestured briefly, uselessly at the air and then looked at Skinner. "I'm not used to it."
He licked his lips nervously. Skinner wondered whether Mulder thought he was concealing a wooden ruler behind one hand. The sleight of hand necessary to delegate punishment to one part of Mulder while finding another part pleasing was beyond him.
He shook his head. "We don't have time for this."
"I tried telling you that."
"No, Mulder. You took a normal conversation and turned it into some kind of marathon debate that no normal lifespan has time for. That's what happened. You don't want to talk about Scully? Mere politics offend you? What do you think I do that allows you the freedom to go wildgoose chasing, using up people if it suits you?" He shook his head. "No. Screw you, Mulder."
He saw Mulder's mouth twist a bare second before he cut him off. "Do not. I mean it."
"I'm not that dysfunctional, Walter."
"Only you would think that's an olive branch," Skinner snapped, his head beginning to ache.
"I shouldn't have said that. Abandonment issues."
"Mulder." Skinner took his glasses off and rubbed at the pressure they left behind. "If you think that's why--"
"I know. I'm just saying I shouldn't have."
Only Mulder, he thought, putting his glasses back on and buzzing Kim. Only Mulder could take the satisfaction out of exposure so comprehensively.
"Sit down." he said and Mulder, after another fidgety moment of looking at Skinner as if he was the one with two heads, sat down in a chair opposite him.
Kim sounded waspish, which never boded well. "Sir, I have orders from Director Mann--"
"Yes, I know, Kim. Apologies on his behalf. Do you have the numbers--"
"Yes Sir, I have two numbers for you to call in Chesterfield County."
"Put me through to the first one and we'll see about the second."
"Yes Sir."
"Thank you, Kim."
"Yes Sir."
Skinner cut off the intercom connection and looked at Mulder. "You ready?"
"One travelling snake oil show coming up."
"I never bet my chips on a cure for warts yet, Mulder."
Mulder gave him a smile so brilliant and innocent of subterfuge that he was still shaking it off once they got through to the Chief of Police who turned out to be entirely cooperative, Skinner's phone call heralded no doubt by Manning.
"We have Special Investigations and uniform on stand-by here. What do you want us to do?"
Skinner gestured mutely and Mulder grinned at the speakerphone, his game face on. "Chief, Agent Mulder here. I've been listening to this guy. From the tone of his voice on the tape and what he's saying, he thinks you're all dumb shits. So let's use that. Play dumb. Get your men to go to Bailey Bridge Road just like he said but get them to search the opposite side of the road. Miss him completely."
"You think he'll be keeping an eye on us?"
"Chief, I think he lives on that road and that he'll be out there watching your guys. Maybe you'll get lucky and grab him right there. If not, he'll at least go straight back in the house and call you to tell you what idiots you are." Mulder exchanged a brief look with Skinner. "He's going to think that you are under instruction from us, instead of how it really is. He's going to think you're a bunch of yes-men for the FBI and that you can't even do what you're told.
There was a pause from the other side of the line and then the other man's voice came booming back into the room, rich with amusement. "Agent Mulder, what a cynical mind you have. I will instruct my divisions to do exactly as you say. We'll get Special Investigations ready with the trap to trace him back to wherever he's come from."
"Thank you Chief. You tell them to make a real public show looking for the body, and just to make sure he's on the level, make sure once you guys catch him, you look on the right hand side of the road, just like he told you."
"You don't think there's a body, Agent Mulder?"
"No, Chief. I do not."
"Well, best we get started. I'll be in touch."
They said their goodbyes and with a sense of what it felt like to be a tennis ball, Skinner moved them both down to a briefing room where Kroeger, Bagnio, Armstrong and Cooke - no doubt glued together like Goldilocks to a bowl of good porridge - were waiting to take fresh orders.
They walked straight into a brawl.
Kroeger was two steps away from Cooke, who was staring him down mulishly, Armstrong at his back. "Who the fuck do you think you are?"
Skinner looked at Mulder, who shrugged back at him.
"Shut up, Richard," Cooke said evenly.
For whatever reason, Mulder made no move to announce their presence. Skinner let him call that one and stood silently in the doorway next to him.
Kroeger had fixed his eyes on Cooke with something near to astonishment. "No way. No way did you just say that, you coke-bottle geek." Armstrong made a small sound of distress which had Kroeger's eyes swivelling to him, like a hyena with new prospects. "You must have me mixed up with that motherfucking starlet over there."
"Shut up, Richard. I'm warning you." Cooke took a step forward.
Kroeger leered at him. "Mikey there can suck your cock up and down the street but that doesn't make it any kind of precedent, loverboy."
Skinner glanced at Mulder who motioned him to hold his peace.
"Two more seconds, and that's it. You hear me?"
Mulder nodded.
"Shut up, Richard." Bagnio's smoother than silk voice raised itself. Skinner noticed that he was seated, but he wasn't far from Kroeger. Maybe the length of an outstretched arm. "Hmm. Sounds like a good tattoo."
Cooke took his lead from Bagnio and to Kroeger's noticeable fury, ran with it. "Yeah, except where he needs to get it engraved, you need a miner's hat to read it."
Armstrong shifted uneasily in his seat and then stopped when Kroeger glared at him, putting all his ferocity into it.
"All talk now, Cooke. How about your 'honorable discharge' from the SVU? Who was holding your cock then, Benny?"
"Enough," Bagnio said, warningly.
"That's enough," Skinner said, almost at the same time, and swallowed his irritation as Mulder preceded him by a heartbeat and was in the room, smiling at Bagnio and nodding greetings at the rest of them.
"We need to make some quick readjustments," Mulder said baldly. "I know you don't get along but you were hand picked. You're going to need each other this weekend."
Bagnio crossed one pant leg over the other, carefully hitching the material to suit his change in posture. Skinner saw Mulder's eyes flicker towards Bagnio. He compared it to Armstrong's deer-in-headlight squirming and felt his headache doubling in strength. A bunch of fucking misfits. Pimp Italiano with his European pants in one corner (and how does he afford that on his salary anyway?), a straight guy and the psycho and Armstrong bringing up the rear - as if anything needed to be said about that. No wonder it was Mulder who felt at home amongst them. Skinner's jaw itched with the wrongness of it.
"You're all going down to guard the Millers for the weekend."
Kroeger opened his mouth and closed it again. Skinner, watching from the sidelines, caught him trying to catch Bagnio's eye. Bagnio looked up at Skinner instead and nodded at him when he caught him staring. Skinner nodded woodenly back and made sure Bagnio saw him looking from him to Kroeger and then back again. Since when did Kroeger think that Bagnio was someone he could count on? Every mirror had two sides and he was watching Bagnio close enough that he wouldn't miss a thing.
There wasn't much other dissent. Cooke wanted to know what made the Millers so special.
Mulder looked at them all, conviction shining in his eyes. "The killer does. He knows the Millers. They know him. He'll come for them. I know he will."
No one said anything after that. Mulder in alleluia-mode was not entirely reassuring, no matter that he meant to be. Skinner talked adminstrative details - phone numbers, allowed frequencies, the fact that a back-up squad of uniforms would be on stand-by all weekend, etcetera - and calmed them all down again. It felt odd to be directing a team into the field at such close range without actually leading them in. He felt, forcibly, the difference between his desk and the danger that those men were passing into, with only their wits (and in Armstrong's case that was questionable) and a firearm to guarantee them safe passage back.
As they shuffled out Bagnio stopped by Mulder long enough to say in a low voice, "Watch your back."
"Thanks." Mulder gave him an appraising look. "Don't get lost in the woods."
"Moss on the north." Bagnio winked at Skinner.
Like Ali before the prize fight and the rooster on Christ's dying day all rolled into one, Skinner thought with disgust.
They waited until each man left and took the elevator down to the carpark. Mulder tried Scully's phone but she had it switched off.
"You can call her from the car," Skinner said.
"She'll call," Mulder said.
"Well, call from the house then. The media conference will be on the news by then."
"Nathan Varma, too."
"You think they'll find him in time for the conference?"
Mulder slanted a portentous look at him. "You think they'll find him at all?"
Skinner nodded. "You said they would."
"Yeah."
They were a few strides away from the car when Mulder said, for no reason Skinner could isolate, "Edgar Rice Burroughs isn't that bad."
Let it not be said that he could not rise to the occasion, whilst on foot. "I see. Now you're an apologist."
He caught the faint blink Mulder gave him and looked away, something callous about the smile he could feel pulling at his own mouth. He thought about the fact that it wasn't even twenty four hours since they had pulled bloodied bodies out of a still steamed up van. He remembered the wrongness of hearing Mulder call him by his first name in the Director's office, of hearing Mulder call the victim by his first name.
UNSUB.
He thinks of it as a term of endearment, a lover's nickname to be whispered between the sheets.
An apt name as any. It was as far as they would come to him. He would remain unknown, long after they each breathed their last breath, staring into his face. That much he had promised himself. A treat of sorts. He was not a stupid man and one of the hallmarks of intelligence is to recognize it when it presents itself in others. Agent Mulder had succeeded in disrupting everything he had worked so hard to set up around himself: the job, the house, the social persona, the clubs and diners and bars and lonely heart clubs that he had devoted his spare time to ferret out and the men who flocked to them. All of that would soon be useless. He had to ease off the brakes and swallow against the wave of bile scorching his throat. All of it would have to be jettisoned. Compounding insult to injury, he would have to stop his work, his mission of mercy. The risk would be too great.
"Quid pro quo."
He said it royally, as if it was a gift he was bestowing instead of a penalty. He liked to hear his own voice in the car, alone, at night. It felt right, natural.
Quid pro quo - a price had to be paid for all of this. This team, that profiler, and his lover (and the way they flaunted it, who didn't know that tawdry detail?) - all of them would have to pay it. If he had to give up everything that he held dear, so would they.
He was perfectly positioned to make the kind of move that would convey to even the most ignorant of men what genius, what artistry, what infinite mercy he was capable of. There was no way the profiler would catch up to him in time. There was nothing they knew that he didn't know. There were things he knew that they didn't know. Couldn't know.
Pride comes before a fall, son.
"Shut up, Dad."
He checked the gauge. Plenty of gas, and more in a can in the boot. A man couldn't be too careful. It was a long way to Virginia, walking, and the profiler needed to understand what he was up against. There would be no mistakes.
He met his own eyes in the rearview mirror and blew himself a kiss. It was important to plan ahead. He knew who he was going to take.
END OF PART 12
