Chapter Text
An hour later he was pressing against Scully from behind and couldn’t even enjoy it, because there was Skinner again, and Nakamura and Green, too, not to mention the techs waiting in the filing section for the go-ahead to bring the evidence to an actual exam room.
“You’re sure?” Skinner asked again.
“Yes, sir,” Scully confirmed for the third time. They were lucky her impatience didn’t devolve into sarcasm like his did. She only pointed to the bone all laid out, similarities obvious even to non-experts.
Nakamura was rubbing his mouth, a gesture of contemplation that Mulder had a feeling he was going to get very familiar with. “Male or female?”
“Male, most likely. But I’d want every set of remains laid out to be certain.”
Green, who was chisel-jawed and slick-haired like Hollywood’s wet dream of the FBI, started motioning for the techs, but Skinner wasn’t finished.
“How the hell was this not caught?”
“We’re not forensics,” Green said, immediately defensive.
Nakamura, less concerned with covering his own ass, actually answered the question. “The case produced no viable suspects but a consistent churn of leads and inquiries because of the college—and there were tensions between the college cops, the local PD, the Vermont State Police and Washington over authority. I’m not sure it was ever officially made a cold case, and I doubt if a final inventory was ever done.”
Skinner nodded at Nakamura. “Look into it anyway. I want this victim identified.”
“If he was a victim,” Mulder pointed out. Everyone looked at him. I swear to God I don’t say this shit for attention, he wanted to protest to nobody.
“You think the perp strangled himself?” Green asked, already in a bluster. Oh, I bet you’re fun to work with.
“Just keeping an open mind,” he said, deliberately mild.
Scully immediately tensed, recognizing that he was baiting the other agent. “There are multiple reasons for fracture or breakage to the hyoid,” she said, defending him nonetheless, and it was amazing how badly he wanted to ruck up against her, wanted to nuzzle her neck or lick her face or just—fucking—chew on her hair or something, just to find some minuscule expression of this feeling of mine, mine, mine.
“Although strangulation is the most likely,” she added.
The feeling diminished. (It didn’t go away entirely, though. These days, it never did.)
“There could have been a fight after all,” Nakamura said thoughtfully. “One of the victims could have fought back, could have injured or killed the killer before succumbing.”
“So where’s the rest of him?” Skinner asked, as testy as ever.
Scully surveyed the bones as the techs finally inched their way past to start collecting and transporting them. “I guess we’ll find out.”
—
Three hours later, the remains of four people rested on four tables, their biers unadorned and harshly lit, and Mulder, agnostic though he was, offered his condolences to the bones. We cannot restore your lives, but we can restore your names. Six feet of solace isn’t much, but we will give it to you if we can.
Scully, the lines of goggles still pressed into her face, sighed beside him. Nakamura and Green were there, too, but they weren’t as comfortable with proximity to death as he was and so he ignored them. “General storage,” she said, her sadness more weary than angry, which was how he knew it was long past the end of the day. She should be home sleeping. He should be asking whether she wanted Italian or Chinese.
“What do we know?” he asked instead.
“Four bodies. All the duplication is in the small bones, so it’s a little forgivable it was overlooked. At least no one missed the fact that there were four skulls or seven tibias or something.”
He waited.
“Some of the absences could be explained by predation, but it’s unlikely. The small bones would go first, not last. It’s easier for scavengers to carry off a finger than an arm. Regardless: we have most of the remains for the three known victims; for the fourth, we only have bones from the hands, feet, throat, and head.”
“But not the skull.”
“No. Ear bones, a fragment of jaw, and teeth.”
Green made a sound halfway between a gag and a giggle, involuntary. They all gave him the courtesy of pretending they hadn’t heard.
“Can you tell if the teeth were pulled out before he died or after?”
Scully shook her head. “No, and there’s another problem. It’s not just the hyoid that’s broken, Mulder. It’s all of the fourth victim’s bones. Every single one of them is broken, even the teeth. Clean breaks, not shattering, enough to make me think it was deliberate.”
“You think someone was trying to obscure identity?”
She shook her head. “Why leave them at all, then?”
“To taunt us?” Green interjected, and Mulder wanted to smack him. Save me from pseudo-profilers who think every case is the next Zodiac.
“Killers who taunt authorities, in the rare instances they pop up, are more obvious,” he ground out instead. “If you want attention, leaving broken teeth in a random field in Vermont isn’t the way to get it.”
“Still, it’s a message of some kind,” Nakamura said, having regained his composure enough to approach the tables more closely. “It’s too deliberate not to be. But who’s the audience?”
“Mafia, do you think?” Green asked, coming up beside his partner, and great, a group project. His favorite.
“Ah yes, the famous Vermont mafia. All those Sicilian leaf peepers can get so territorial.”
Scully suppressed a grin and Green scowled at him. “Organized crime, I meant, sending a don’t-fuck-with-us message.”
Nakamura was rubbing his mouth. “The strangulation would make sense, at least. Hanging, whether from a rope or a silk cord, is a very official way to die, and organized crime loves to adopt the rituals of statehood.”
In spite of himself, Mulder liked this guy. A little.
“But leaving the hands and feet? That’s too weird. Too ritualistic,” Nakamura concluded.
“Cult?” Green offered.
Mulder wanted to tell them that he’d already ruled out a cult, but Nakamura beat him to it. “Mm, maybe, but if a cult had escalated to murder, possibly torture, and the mutilation of corpses, there would have been other incidents.”
Scully looked at Nakamura and nodded. They shared a look! Sonofabitch, that’s supposed to be my look! “We know it’s not a cult,” Mulder said loftily. “But the presence of ritualistic elements indicates an internal logic. How that logic functions…we’ll need to know more about this guy. Where are the files?”
“Are you on this case now?” Green said. His chest was puffed out in full territorial mode, but Nakamura broke the tension before it could really go anywhere by walking forward to inspect the fourth set of bones. “Good. We could use a profiler,” he said, distracted. “You got any ideas for what this could be, rather than what it isn’t?”
He had Mulder there. “I need more information,” Mulder evaded, scrambling. “But…a professional of some sort. Someone skilled at working with their hands. Breaking small bones—that requires control, finesse. A jeweler, a surgeon—I don’t know yet, but they’re careful. They’re not going to be the type to make many mistakes.”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Green said. “Eventually.”
Nakamura nodded. “But it makes sense to be on the lookout for the smaller slipups, rather than anything obvious.”
“Or things that he or we might not consider mistakes,” Scully added. “The season and timing of the killings—certain types of skilled workers don’t work nine to five.”
Nakamura nodded approvingly. “Good point. We’d know more if we could determine what kind of tool was used to break the bones—can you do that?”
“I can try to narrow it down,” Scully said. “Might take a few days, though. What’s our timeline on this?”
“It’s a cold case, but the anniversary is coming up. Might be press.”
“Or the killer could strike again,” Green added, hopeful in a way that Mulder both hated and grudgingly understood. “Escalation,” he added, like he was proud of himself for remembering the word.
“There…could be escalation,” Mulder admitted. “But the time span is excessive.”
Scully looked at him, and he knew they both thought Tooms.
“Livers are missing,” he said lightly. “Could have a long-lost cousin or something.”
“Absence of proof is not proof of absence,” she chided.
“What?” said Green. Nakamura was also looking at them funny.
He’d forgotten they were there. “Never mind,” he said. “Escalation in number of victims, and potentially in level of violence if we assume dismemberment, but why wait almost ten years?”
“Maybe he’s triggered by life events rather than impulse?” Scully mused.
“Or maybe he didn’t wait,” Nakamura said ominously. “Vermont’s not a busy place. Lots of forests, lots of places to hide. Maybe we’re missing victims.”
“Which means we might be wrong about the timing,” Scully added.
“He could be gearing up for another attack as we speak,” said Green, and dramatic as that was, Mulder was troubled to realize he might not be wrong.
—
They dutifully reported their suspicions to their superiors, but in a case that old it wasn’t enough to fear the worst. They needed more.
“I need a lead. Even a tenuous one,” Skinner said, and the directness of his gaze suggested that he was ready to run with pretext if context couldn’t be found. Nobody wanted a killer on the loose, especially one the FBI had previously failed to catch. “The additional bones are a good start, but technically they’re not new evidence, just overlooked. Keep working it with Green and Nakamura and get something we can use.”
“Sir, if personnel budgeting is a constraint, Agent Scully and I can absorb this into our workload.” Please let me go on an unsupervised investi-vacation with my hot partner.
Skinner eyed him. “If anything, this would be Nakamura’s case. He has seniority, his involvement predates yours, and I’m not convinced this is an X-File. Should I tell AD Horvath that they can take it from here?”
Shit, he’d been outmaneuvered. Time to take refuge in research. “Multiple tribes from across middle America tell stories of Wendigos, creatures that cannibalize humans, sometimes even breaking bones and gaining strength by devouring the marrow. They’re particularly active in winter, when starvation may threaten. This would be an ideal time for such a creature to reappear.”
Skinner looked at Scully. She looked ruefully back. “Wendigo syndrome is an attested medical condition. It’s largely culturally bound and the nuances are complex, but the psychosis does sometimes result in violent behavior.”
Mulder played it cool, but he hoped she could somehow pick up on what he was thinking at her: you must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire you, preferably somewhere private, because it will involve oral sex.
Skinner sighed. “Fine. I need more concrete leads to send you out there, but given your…various expertise, I do agree that this should be a joint investigation. Get me something by the end of the week.”
—
Mulder wanted to be a manager about as much as a shark wanted kneecaps, but he had to admit it would be nice to be able to bark orders as half-baked as “get me something” and have people hop to obey. Unfortunately, it was his lot in life to do the hopping—or in this case, the calling-of-the-local-cops, who so far had nothing to offer him.
Scully was having similarly poor luck. “The coroner who handled the case didn’t remember it, so they’ll go through their files and get back to me. Nakamura and Green won’t be briefing us until tomorrow, and I’ve already been through what they’ve given us. I don’t know who else we can call at this point. Time to call it a day?”
By an unspoken agreement, they went to her place after wrapping up. She had a parking space but he didn’t, and in the time it took him to find one she had ordered Thai and opened a bottle of wine.
“Pinot and pad see ew again?” he asked, letting himself in and seeing the menu on the table. “Your apartment might start featuring in Zagat, Scully. Quaint Georgetown eatery has impeccably tidy ambiance but slightly repetitive menu.”
She swirled her wine in the glass and didn’t answer, staring off into the middle distance like she hadn’t heard.
Undeterred, he plopped down beside her and motioned for the wine. She passed it over to him without seeming to register the motion, and he sipped it until she finally shook herself aware enough to motion for it back.
This case was going to be rough if she was already like this.
They sat in brooding silence until the food arrived, by which point the wine was mostly gone. Scully moved with a certain looseness to her joints when she got up, but the tension hadn’t left her shoulders.
Enough of this. He stole a mouthful of her noodles before starting his offensive, just in case it backfired and she refused to share later. “So,” he said. “It’s definitely aliens.”
She zoned back in. “What?” she asked sharply.
“Aliens. It’s aliens.”
“How do you figure?”
“Inexplicable triangular pattern, as viewed from above. It’s basically a crop circle but with people.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not even going to dignify the part where you said a triangle is basically a circle, and instead I’ll ask if you have any other evidence?”
He smiled at her. “Nope.”
She speared a shrimp with one chopstick. “So, it’s wild theory time. Mulder—” She had that petulant note in her voice that always came with a lecture, but cut herself off abruptly when she caught his expression. “You’re messing with me.”
“Solid thirty seconds to realize it, too,” he tsked. “Bad form tonight.”
She rolled her eyes. “I have other things on my mind.”
“Clearly. But you know what they say.”
She gave him a wary look. “What do they say?”
“Sharing is caring, Scully.” He went for one of her shrimp, but she fended him off by shifting her whole takeout container. “Aw, c’mon.”
She was unmoved by his pout, but her shoulders dropped a little of that tension. “Eat your own.”
“Yours tastes better,” he said, waggling his eyebrows with exaggerated lasciviousness.
She rolled her eyes. They were neither of them in the mood; she knew he was playing the lothario.
He would playact all night if that was what it took to melt off that tension she was carrying. Sometimes, though, it felt like taking a hair dryer to an iceberg. There was still so much trapped beneath the surface for both of them. Was this one of those times he needed to be direct, start chiseling instead of just hoping for a thaw?
She beat him to it. “What’s your actual theory?” she asked.
“I’m not sure I have one yet. Broken bones and strangulation, though? The violence may be precise, but it’s still extreme. It requires a lot of strength and a lot of precision.”
“And commitment,” Scully added.
That crystallized an inchoate thought for him. “Yeah. Can you imagine how boring it would be to break—not smash, but precisely break—that many bones? That’s not something you do casually. Or in a rage. You’d need privacy and time—and obsession. Whether that’s for personal gratification or some higher purpose I’m not sure yet, though.”
“Mm.” She slipped away again, into her thoughts or imaginings.
He made some notes in the case file, listing out male, 40-55. Heavyset. Profession/hobby requiring strength, manual dexterity. He thought about the victims, how they didn’t run. How the perp wouldn’t have had to give chase. Strong but maybe not fit.
“Was the campus undergoing renovation or construction, do you remember?” he asked, thinking with some reluctance of Gerry Schnauz. He saw the long shadow loom over her when he looked up, knew she was thinking of it, too. Sometimes he wished they weren’t quite so in synch.
“We can double-check, but I don’t think so. Not the victim’s dorms, anyhow. But looking at the campus handymen isn’t a bad idea.”
He went digging for more personnel files, which led them to wonder about other things, and soon they had spent much of the night on the couch, the last bits Thai gone cold, the wine glasses swapped out for tea (in her case) and sunflower seeds (in his).
(In a rare concession to his habits, she had gotten him a little glass bowl for the hulls. He tried dutifully to get most of them in rather than around it; he didn’t want a repeat of that time he forgot and discovered casings in every. Single. Pocket. Of everything he owned for the next two weeks. In life as in the bedroom, Scully played dirty.)
Scully started nodding off around 10, and then roused herself around 11 for what he called her ritual youth worship, a jab she was starting to ignore. He’d have to find another term to annoy her. Or not. The smell of her face cream had started to grow on him.
“Coming to bed?” she called.
“Not yet.”
She didn’t push it. They’d fought about it once—only once, but it had devolved more quickly than either of them had meant it to. They knew how to argue; they didn’t know how to fight. He got paranoid about ceding too much control, and she got defensive about losing what little she had, and the fear turned into taking pot shots at each other’s worst habits, a knock-down, drag-out battle that took them a week of sleeping apart to cool down from. They were still wary of fighting like that again, and so she let him indulge his insomnia and they kept their nightmares to themselves.
He knew how to sacrifice for her, knew exactly what it was to kill for her. But that didn’t mean he knew how to be in a relationship. And despite her far more convincing façade of a normal life, neither did she.
He switched on the TV but turned the sound all the way down, flicked around the channels until he found an episode of I Love Lucy so that he didn’t need to hear to follow the plot.
It was still so terrifying to have this. To be seeking—not answers—but understanding. He didn’t like to admit it, but it was so much easier to search for the truth than to have it, to tend to this fierce but still-tentative thing between them.
We have a case, though. He wasn’t sure if working cases was their way of solving their issues, or just holding them in abeyance. And maybe they would just never retire or take a vacation and it would all be fine.
He let himself sink into the details of the case, start turning the pieces over in his head. In the other room, he heard Scully click off the light.
It’ll be fine, right?