Title: Blood Oranges Author: Syntax6 Rating: NC-17; minors please read elsewhere Classification: SRA, and W, for whodunnit Thanks very much to Fawn Liebowitz and Beaker for their on- going help. XxXxX Chapter One XxXxX I like to cut them slowly, with a small knife. It's hard sometimes to keep them lying white and quivering on the table while I decide where to put the first mark, but this is a process that cannot be rushed. It's no good if it is over too quickly. So when they cry, I tell myself that it's okay because it is the last time they will need those tears. Soon I will make all the pain go away forever. But this one is not crying yet. She is looking up at me with huge black eyes that have gone glassy from the barbiturates I fed her earlier. When I move her tangled brown hair off her cheek, she does not even twitch a muscle. Her pale chest rises up and down with each shallow breath, and I trace my gloved finger lightly over the ridge of her breastbone. She doesn't jerk away like some of the others before her, and I congratulate myself again on such a fine choice. Of course some part of me knows this is wrong, but I can't make myself stop. I don't really want to stop. I've been this way since...well, since I can remember. I think maybe it all started back in Mr. Gilroy's biology class, when I held the knife for the first time. Everyone else was busy complaining about the sickly sweet smell of the formaldehyde or giggling over the rubbery frog bodies, but my palms were sweating with anticipation and excitement. The knife was cool and sharp in my hand, and I tried not to shake very much when I approached the pinned frog. Naturally, Betsy Dombrauer with the blond curls did not mind when I said I wanted to do the cutting. I can still remember how the frog split open with one single slice. That night, I dreamt over and over again of the steel blade as it slit through the frog's soft, gray belly. It made me feel calm, and I knew I had to cut again. Soon. The girl on the table whimpers into the rag in her mouth as I slice the first cut across her abdomen. It's a clean cut, and the blood line is straight and narrow. I add a second line above it, touching my handiwork as I go along. On my fingers, her blood is warm through the tight latex, and I wish I could feel its wetness as well. My victim wriggles against her leather restraints as I cut into her flesh twice more. She is crying now, whimpering, and I see that she is older than I had originally thought. Over thirty, maybe. Thirty years of pain that I am helping to erase. One more line. This one I draw from her collarbone all the way to her navel. It's deeper than the rest, and I can feel the blood pounding through me in response to the sight of the red rivulets streaming over her ribcage. After three more deep cuts, the woman goes limp on the table, her eyes closed and her head lolled to the side. She is still alive, but there is blood everywhere. I can taste it in the air as I remove my shirt. It is time for the most important part. Glancing down at my naked chest, I see that the scar from the last time is still an angry red, and I guess that I must be cutting them closer together now. Six in all, is it? I think that is what the papers have been saying. Well, five so far...six isn't finished yet. I take her wrist and wait until the faint pulse flutters and stops beneath my fingertips. She is gone. She seems so peaceful in her death, and it is this peace I have come for. I want to smell it, taste it, wrap myself in it until the screaming inside my head is completely gone. The small knife hurts me only for a minute as I cut my own stomach, and I can barely hold back a moan of ecstasy. When the dark, red drops slide warmly over my skin, I climb on top of the girl, my body flat against hers. Our blood merges in a wet smear. My eyes close. I breathe in deeply, and the screaming fades away. XxXxX "A little...higher." Mulder shifted accordingly, never stopping the steady rhythm of his hips between her legs. "Like this?" he breathed against her face. "Mmmm, yeah." Scully's eyes drifted closed again as she concentrated all her thought on the thick feel of his penis moving deeply inside her. "You sure?" he panted, thrusting more firmly. "Want to.." *thrust* "Make sure it's..." *thrust* "A happy birthday." It was about to be a *very* happy birthday, if he would just shut up and keep the hips going. Unlike Mulder, she did not multi-task very well, and consequently had to choose one form of intercourse over the other. Verbal was running a very distant second at this point. She drew her knees up fractionally as her body tensed for the big finale. Another second of teetering, and she fell completely over the edge, jerking against him in rhythmic pleasure. "Mulder, now!" she blurted, just in case he wanted to join her. He did. With low moan and three quick thrusts, he went rigid in her arms and then collapsed heavily on top of her, panting warm breaths on the side of her face. She hid her face in his neck, kissing him lightly. His hot, sweaty weight was a welcome comfort in her still-spinning world. He answered by giving her hair a messy caress, and a moment later his low voice tickled the sensitized skin near her ear. "I think the books were right about the female sexual peak being around thirty-five." Eyes still closed, she smiled and squeezed his hips with the insides of her knees. "Are you complaining about my past performance?" "No." He raised himself up a few inches to look down at her. "I'm just really looking forward to the coming year." She laughed then, and he tumbled them over the bed until she rested half-sprawled on top of him. Feeling around behind her for the edge of the blanket, she drew the soft cotton over their cooling bodies. He kissed her head and was asleep within minutes. It was always this way. He could hold a perfectly fine discourse *during* the act, but once the curtain fell, so did he. Today it was okay with her just to snuggle. The Merlot from dinner had made her extra sleepy, and she was technically still recovering from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Another year of cheated death, she thought with some amazement as she gently touched the scar. Happy damn birthday, indeed. No wonder the sex had been so exhilarating. She nuzzled his chest in another silent "thank-you", and realized suddenly that the aerobic workout had left her thirsty as well as tired. Extricating herself gently from his warm, heavy arms, she slipped on a robe and went to the kitchen. Once there, she sipped a glass of water and studiously ignored the dinner dishes congealing with Alfredo sauce from the seafood primavera, concentrating instead on the framed Kandinsky reprint Mulder had given her. It was a chaotic, colorful piece, with too many shapes and images to process all at once. At the bottom, he had taped over the actual title with his own: "Sex with Scully". She smiled, remembering. Tonight they would have needed a full gallery. Mulder had been teasing her earlier, but she really did feel differently about sex now than she had in her twenties. Perhaps it was the wisdom of age that allowed her to let go of all the youthful insecurities--Does this position make me look like an idiot? Should I moan more? Less? What does he want now?--and just enjoy the moment. Her body might not be perfect, but it satisfied her fine and Mulder certainly wasn't complaining. Mulder. He was the other main reason she suddenly found herself craving sex all the time. It was not just that he was a creative and caring lover, though certainly that was true enough. But for the first time in her life she was making love with someone she trusted with her whole self--her intellect, her sexuality, all her shortcomings and all the tender places inside that she usually kept so well hidden. It was scary and wonderful and the most amazing thing that had ever happened to her. Thank God he seemed to feel the same way. She rubbed at the tape with one finger for a moment before deciding to leave it in place a little while longer. Looking at it was actually making her feel aroused again, and she wondered idly if from then on, she was going to get turned on every time she walked into her living room. One could only hope. Setting her glass in the sink, she noted that the clock read nearly midnight. Perhaps Mulder would have recovered enough to squeeze in a quick round of sleepy sex before the day was officially over. He seemed dead to the world when she returned to the bedroom, and the sight of him caused her to emit a sympathetic yawn. Maybe it was time to call it a night. She tugged at the sash on her robe, but stopped abruptly when the phone rang. Mulder jerked, blinking sleepily at her in the dim light. "Phone?" She nodded, looking at her cordless and realizing it was not the source of the ringing. The noise was coming from Mulder's pants. "It's your cell phone," she said, moving to retrieve his rumpled pants from the floor and extracting the chirping black phone from his pocket. She tossed it to where he sat up in bed. "Hello?" he said, sounding vaguely puzzled. Scully watched him carefully, trying to determine who could be calling him so late. There was no big case to worry about these days, and outside of the occasional shadowy informant, she was the only one who ever phoned him at this hour. "I see," Mulder was saying as he got up from the bed. "When did this happen?" She waited for him to turn and give some sort of hint about who the caller was. Instead, he went naked into the bathroom and shut the door. She jerked at the sound of the "click" and blinked in surprise at the white door. What the hell was this all about? He had not pulled the cloak and dagger routine on her since their first year together, when he still thought she might be spying on him. Tightening the sash on her robe, Scully took three steps toward the door, intent on listening the murmurs coming from within. Then she stopped. Spying was spying, and she wasn't about to become guilty of it now. She would just have to wait. Curling in a nearby arm chair, she watched the door expectantly, half-needing, half-dreading the moment he would come back out. At last, he did. He sat down heavily on the bed, his head bowed and his back to her. It was apparently not good news. "Mulder?" she said, rising slowly from the chair. She padded across the room until she stood near his shoulder. "What is it, Mulder?" she asked softly. "Who was on the phone?" He looked up at her, his expression unreadable, and answered her question with one of his own. "Are you well enough to travel, Scully?" The remark did nothing to lessen her anxiety. "I'm fine," she said as calmly as she could. "What is going on?" "I put in for some profiling work to keep us off of wire-tap duty," he replied, sounding wooden and hollow. "There's been a series of pretty brutal murders up in Cambridge over the last few months, and they want us to look into it." Scully frowned, not content with his explanation. He was busy getting dressed in slow motion, as if his mind were already somewhere far away. Clearly, there was more to the phone call than he was telling. "What sort of murders?" she asked carefully. "Mutilations. Someone is carving women alive." "My God." She sucked in a sharp breath, already imagining the terrible autopsies ahead. "How many so far?" "They just found the sixth one a few hours ago." He shrugged on his shirt and began buttoning it from the bottom. He seemed just a little too focused on the menial task. "Mulder?" When he did not answer, she walked over to where he stood and laid a hand on his arm. He jumped. "Mulder, what is it?" she asked urgently, searching his shuttered face for any clues. He was as pale as the January sky. After a long minute, he swallowed twice and answered her. "The latest victim...the one they found tonight on the street...her name was Elizabeth Callahan." Scully drew back a bit in surprise. "You knew her?" He nodded slowly, and his eyes drifted shut. He reached for her hands, which he squeezed painfully. Her heart started to pound as she realized there was still more to this story. "You were...you were lovers?" "In a way," he whispered. His eyes opened, black and bottomless as he seemed to look right through her. "She was my wife." XxXxX Continued in chapter two. Chapter Two The winter that greeted them outside Logan Airport on Wednesday morning was an ugly step-sister to the kind found in story books. No glistening, white capped trees or smiling snowmen. This winter was about bitter wind that chilled to the bone and brown slush that surrounded every curb, waiting for each hapless victim to plunge ankle-deep into its icy depths. It covered the bleak concrete landscape of Logan like a frozen death shroud. As they walked along the wet and slick sidewalk toward their rental car, Mulder risked a sideways glance at Scully. Usually she would feel his eyes on her and meet his gaze. Not this time. She had not looked directly at him since he had come out of the bathroom and told her that Elizabeth was dead. He could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was still smarting from his clumsy revelation. Some people would get angry with only their faces, but Scully managed to use her whole body. It seemed to him that she had not blinked once during the two hour plane ride from D.C., as though even her eyelashes were angry with him. He supposed he should try to explain. To give some sort of account of his actions, at least. But he could not think of anything to say to her that wasn't a lie. "I'm sorry I never told you" would be ridiculous because he had quite deliberately kept his marriage a secret from her. He had promised not to tell, and after everything that had happened, it was easier just to keep the promise. And safer. If Scully had been in the empty hospital room with him on that last day, she might understand that he had done the best he could. He had gotten the hell out of there and never looked back. Until now. He wondered what Scully would say if he told her the first thought he had after hearing about Elizabeth's death was "I suppose she finally got what she wanted." She would probably be sick. Of course she would. Who wouldn't be, given such a terrible statement? But at least then she would also have a sense of the truth. He had been a fucking lousy husband when Elizabeth was alive, and there was no reason to think he would suddenly get it right at this point. Their usual nondescript Taurus was waiting for them at the curb, and Mulder scrawled his name on the young man's clipboard in return for the keys. After they had loaded the suitcases in the trunk, the man smiled cheerily. "I hope you and your wife enjoy your stay in Boston," he said. Mulder flinched, and Scully froze. Warily, he glanced at her again, and this time she looked right back at him. Her cool blue eyes held his for a long, painful moment before she turned without a word and got into the car. He was left alone in the stinging wind. XxXxX Ten minutes into the trip to the Cambridge Police Station, Scully pulled her frozen fingers away from the heated vents and sighed. The story was not going to become any easier to hear, so she steeled herself enough to ask, "Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to read about it in her background files like everybody else?" His hands tightened on the wheel, and he looked at her cautiously. "What exactly do you want to know?" Oh, no. No way. She saw the loophole in that question instantly, and it sent a fresh surge of anger through her. What she did not ask, he would not have to tell. More lies by omission, that was what he was proposing. She drew a shaky breath and shook her head. "No, Mulder," she said, her voice just on the edge of tremor. "I am *not* going to let you shift this onto me. Given the circumstances, I think it's outrageous of you to even try." "I wasn't..." "You were." He frowned and lapsed into silence. For several moments, the only sound in the car was the rushing of the stale hot air through the dashboard vents. "I'm sorry about this," he said at length. "I never meant to hurt you." His words caused unexpected tears to pool in her eyes as she realized suddenly how hurt she really was. "That's difficult to believe," she managed after a minute. "I don't know how you could have thought that keeping something like this from me wouldn't hurt." "I didn't think you would ever find out." "And that's supposed to make it okay?" she demanded angrily, turning in her seat to face him. The back of her throat was raw with pain. "Just what else am I never supposed to find out, Mulder?" Startled, he looked at her with mild horror. "Nothing! I swear to you, Scully, there's nothing else!" The attempted reassurance only caused sadness to swell inside her, and she turned her head to look out the window at the choppy gray Charles river. He's been lying all along, said a voice in her head. Who's to say he's not doing it again now? Despite the warmth in the car, she shivered. "You have to believe me, Scully." His voice was rough and tight. "I would never lie to you, not like this. I'm not keeping anything else from you, I promise." He snatched one of her hands from where it was balled in her lap and squeezed her with painful desperation. "Please...you have to believe me." She looked his face, pale and tired, his eyes dark with naked fear. It was like looking into an emotional mirror. "I can't," she whispered achingly, and then carefully withdrew her hand. "I want to, Mulder, but I just can't right now." "Scully..." "No." She cut him off. "I can't." This was not a conversation she was ready to have. Not when she still felt so bruised inside. In a few minutes she was going to have to hear the evidence and view the body, pretending all the while that this case was just like any other. The pain was going to have to wait. After another minute of stilted silence, Mulder began nodding slowly. "Okay," he said quietly, but he did not look at her. "Okay, Scully. Just the facts then, all right?" She nodded, not yet trusting her voice. She resisted the urge to screw her eyes shut as he began talking. "Elizabeth grew up in my neighborhood. Sometimes she would play with me and Sam, but mainly she kept to herself. Her mother had died when she was still a baby, and her father liked to keep her home with him. She said he needed the company." Grown men should not require the company of little girls, Scully thought, and a terrible idea occurred to her. Uncertain how Mulder would respond, she held back the ugly question. He heard it anyway. "Yeah, I think now he may have been abusing her. It would explain a lot." "She never said anything to you about him?" Mulder rubbed his eyes with one hand. "Oh, she talked about him constantly." He glanced at her once and sighed. "But it was mostly positive. The only time I caught a hint of something weird was Christmas, 1990. Liz and I wanted to spend the holiday in Vermont, just the two of us, and for some reason she seemed really afraid to tell her father. I wasn't around when she made the phone call, but when I got home I found her sitting in the bathtub with all her clothes on, crying. Needless to say, we spent Christmas with the old man." Scully closed her eyes for a moment, his words still churning in her mind. It was "Liz" now, was it? She was not sure why this small detail hurt so much, but it did. "How long...how long were you married?" "Fifteen months. I ran into her on the Vineyard in the summer of 1989, and we got to talking. I don't know exactly how it happened, but we were married by that November." "Seems awfully fast." Tinged with disapproval, the words were out of Scully's mouth before she could stop them. "Too fast," he agreed softly. "It was wrong almost from the start..." His voice trailed off, as if he had been sucked into the past right before her eyes. Whatever had happened with Liz, he was clearly still haunted by the memory. How could you not tell me? The mournful question vibrated inside her, but she did not let it out. Instead, she treated him like any other background witness, gathering only the information necessary to solve the homicide. "When was the last time you saw her?" He let out a deep breath. "Almost eight years ago exactly. February 21, 1991." A quick and sudden ending? That seemed rather strange, since Mulder was not one to let go easily of those he loved. "No contact since then?" she pressed, watching him closely. He shook his head. "Not even a letter or a phone call?" "I signed the papers and never saw her again." His mouth twitched at the corners, and she wondered what emotion he was holding back. Anger? Regret? "Why did it end?" she asked after a minute. His mouth opened but no sound came out. He swallowed once, then tried again. "When you see her, you'll know," he managed finally. "What will I know?" He did not answer, instead steering the car into the Cambridge PD parking lot. When he moved for the door handle, she stopped him abruptly, straining against the seat belt to touch his arm. "Mulder, answer me. What will I know?" He froze with his back to her, his elbow stiff under the thick wool overcoat. "Some people take their whole lives to die," he murmured to the window, and then slipped his arm free. XxXxX So her name was Elizabeth Callahan. In the bar she had said it was Elise. Still, I don't mind that she lied to me. We all do whatever we can to make it through the day, and surely Elizabeth was no different. At least now she can be at peace. My own lies are getting more complicated. They found Elizabeth only three hours after I dropped her off, which is the fastest time yet. As much as I don't like to leave the women lying in the snow for very long, I think next time I will have to chose a more circumspect location. Perhaps the cemetery would be appropriate. I make myself read the papers even though what they say is disgusting. No one seems to understand. That asshole reporter from the Herald has named me "The Slash and Dash Killer", and it seems like this one is going to stick. I heard two guys talking about it in line at the coffee shop this morning, in between their discussion of the bigger guy's new motorcycle and the Patriots' upcoming game against the Broncos. On the news, they are warning women to be careful. To stay home at night or at least not to go out alone. I can only shake my head at these earnest warnings, because they won't make a bit of difference. The women I choose will never stay home. It's too quiet there. These are women on the run from their own demons, and they prowl the streets almost constantly, trying to create a moving target. These women will not be out with friends because they do not really have any friends. There is only me. XxXxX The Cambridge Police Department was not much different from the hundreds of others he had visited. Kept up a bit better, perhaps. The desks were not as scarred as those in the local D.C. stations, and the linoleum floor was not worn through to the cement beneath. The paint on the walls was fresh, but it was the same drab gray-green he had seen endless times before. Except, of course, that this visit was very different. This time Elizabeth was dead. Scully kept pace with him as they made their way to Chief Englehart's office, and he was glad for the reassuring click of her heels echoing through the corridor. It might be a temporary détente, but at least she had not left him yet. Then again, she had not heard the whole, terrible tale. At the door to Englehart's office, he met her eyes briefly before knocking on the translucent glass window. "Come in," came the call from the other side, and he led the way into the Chief's office. It was like walking into a sauna. A portly man of about sixty, Englehart sat behind his desk with his sleeves rolled up past his elbows and his red, striped tie hanging loosely around his neck. "You must be the Feds I asked for." He rose from his chair and extended one beefy hand across the desk. Mulder accepted it. "I'm Fox Mulder and this is Dana Scully." "Please, sit down," he said, indicating the leather chairs in front of him. "I appreciate you coming so quickly." He picked up the phone on his desk, putting the receiver to his shoulder. "Sorry about the heat in here. The whole floor is on the fritz today." Then he punched a couple of numbers and said into the phone, "Hey, Marta. Send Bertelli and Jacobsen up here, will you? Thanks." Mulder pulled at his own tie as he shifted uncomfortably in the chair. "We saw the headlines on the newspapers outside," he told Englehart. "Seems like you've got a pretty panicked city on your hands." The Chief heaved a deep sigh and leaned back in his chair. "You're telling me. The phones are ringing constantly. I'm having daily press conferences at this point, and the damnedest part is I never have anything new to say except that there's been another death. The Mayor is about ready to pull my plug." He moved to sit with his hands folded on the desk. "That's why I thought maybe you guys could help. Maybe do a profile or something, so we know what kind of character we're dealing with." Mulder fidgeted again, not at all sure he wanted to try to climb inside the mind of the man who had killed Elizabeth. He was not even sure that he could. "You have no suspects at all right now?" "Not a one so far," grumbled Englehart. "We've had our guys going back through computer records for anyone in the area with priors for kidnapping or assault with a knife. There's been a couple possibilities, but nothing that's panned out. Bertelli and Jacobsen can fill you in on the details. They've been on this since the whole goddamn mess started back in June." Nine months of chasing a monster with no breaks in sight. Sometimes he managed to forget why he had left the BSU, but this sort of thing always brought it right back. He was about to ask if there was any sign of sexual assault on the victims when there was another knock at the door. "Come," called Englehart, and a man and a woman entered the office. The woman was perhaps forty, dressed in an olive- colored pantsuit and wore her thick brown hair in a French braid; she carried a stack of folders in her arms. The man was younger, closer to thirty, but with an early-receding hairline and belligerent eyes that passed coolly over both Mulder and Scully. "These are the Feds I was telling you about earlier," Englehart explained. "Agents Mulder and Scully." "Claudia Bertelli," said the woman, extending her hand first to Scully and then to Mulder. "I'm the one who caught the case." Yeah, she looked like it, too, Mulder decided as he took in her lined face and tired eyes. The man, who stood leaning with his back against the wall, nodded once in a curt greeting. "Robert Jacobsen," he said. Scully was eyeing the folders in Bertelli's hands. "Are those the files?" she asked. The other woman nodded and handed them over. "All we have. We're still in the process of gathering information on the latest victim, Elizabeth Callaran." "Callahan," corrected Mulder and Scully at the same time. "That's right, Callahan," Bertelli agreed, thumbing through her notes. She glanced curiously from Scully to Mulder. "You've already got the details?" Mulder glanced at Scully, who looked away. He cleared his throat. "No, not much. Just what we were told on the phone last night." Bertelli sighed. "Then you pretty much have the latest. We are trying to nail down the specifics of Callahan's movements last night, but so far it's been hard. She seems to have been somewhat of a loner." "That's not news," commented Jacobsen from his post by the wall. "All the vics were pretty isolated." Scully began flipping through one of the folders. "What about other characteristics linking the victims?" "Well, they all lived in the Cambridge area," Bertelli said. "All were youngish white women, but beyond that there don't seem to be any other physical similarities. Two were jobless at the time of their deaths, and the others had working class positions like temping and waiting tables." Mulder swallowed with difficulty. When he had known her, Elizabeth had dreamed of being a painter. He did not know much about art, but she had seemed to him to have an amazing raw talent. Her canvases always contained two pictures, one obvious and the other hidden underneath in the background. He had thought they were just clever optical illusions. By the time he understood the real meaning behind her work, it had been too late. "The biggest link so far is Dempsey's," Bertelli finished. "It's a bar on Mass Ave, and three of the six victims were there on the night of their death." "What about the other three?" Scully asked, glancing down at the files in her lap. "Elizabeth we don't know about yet. The other two we just don't know about. No one can recall if they were at the bar that night, but Anne Hingham had definitely been there in the past. Laurie Scofield is still an unknown." "I assume you've looked at the employees and the regulars," Mulder said, glancing at Jacobsen. The man scowled. "No, we local yokels just sit around and wait for the FBI to tell us what it all means." Bertelli frowned, and the Chief got up from his chair. "That's enough, Sergeant," he admonished Jacobsen. "I know we're all a little tense around here now, but we will maintain a civil atmosphere." Jacobsen held up his palms. "Hey, I'm civil. I'm just waiting for the big insights we're supposed to get from these people." "Rob, please. We've talked about this," said Bertelli quietly. "Yeah, and my opinion hasn't changed." He pushed away from the wall and crossed to where Mulder and Scully sat. "No offense, but I've seen this profiling shit before, and I think it's complete bunk. So maybe he has issues with his Mommy or he wasn't potty-trained right. Who really gives a fuck? I know everything I need to know about this psycho from watching his handiwork for the past nine months, so you'll pardon me if I skip psychoanalysis and spend my time on an actual investigation." "That hasn't been working very well for you so far, has it?" retorted Mulder mildly, and Jacobsen glared at him. "Screw this," he muttered, stalking out of the office and slamming the door behind him. Bertelli gave a small, tight smile of apology. "This has been a tough case," she said. "For all of us. But Rob has been taking it particularly hard." "You don't have to explain," Scully assured her gently. "I'm sure the situation has been stressful on everyone involved." Mulder watched the exchange between the two women with interest, each playing peacemaker with just a few simple words. He wondered suddenly how many times he'd left Scully in Bertelli's role--offering the awkward explanation for his abrupt and arrogant departure. "Yes, it's fine," he added abruptly, rising from his chair. "Jacobsen's right anyway, that profiles alone do not catch killers. They can only point you in the right direction." The Chief sighed. "We sure as hell could use some pointing right about now." Scully got up then, too. "I'd like to get a look at the body, if that's possible," she murmured. Mulder stopped short, glancing down at her and trying to read her expression, but she was refusing to meet his eyes again. "Of course," Englehart answered, rising also. "Bertelli or Jacobsen can take you down to the morgue right now." Mulder looked up. "And I'd like to talk to the bartender at Dempsey's." "Joseph King," Bertelli said as they walked toward the door. She cocked her head at Mulder. "We've spoken to him several times before." "Well, I'd like the chance to question him myself." They reached the elevator, and Bertelli hit the button. "I'm not trying to second-guess you," she assured him. "I just think it's interesting that you would start with him." Mulder shrugged. "You want to know what goes on in a bar, you talk to the guy pouring the drinks." "Especially when he has a record for assault," agreed Bertelli lightly. Beside him, Scully inhaled sharply. "With a knife?" Bertelli nodded once, her expression grim. "With a knife." XxXxX Scully removed her leather gloves as she walked down the hallway toward the M.E.'s basement office. The door was partially open, and the light was on. She knocked gently. "Oh, hello." A slender woman in a white coat turned from her desk. Her blond hair was pinned in a neat bun, and gold, wire-rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose. Her hand was cold when Scully shook it. "Haley Atkins," she said with a small smile. "You must be the doctor from the FBI." "Dana Scully." "It's very nice to meet you. Chief Englehart said you would be coming by to see about Elizabeth Callahan." Scully's stomach turned over, but she managed to nod. "Yes, that's right." "I just finished her about an hour ago myself," Dr. Atkins said, retrieving a chart from her desk. She scanned it once. "Cause of death was massive blood loss due to multiple stab wounds to the torso." "May I see your notes?" "Of course." Scully was impressed that her hands did not tremble as she accepted the charts. At the top was printed "ELIZABETH CALLAHAN" in neat, bold letters. You can do this, she coached herself mentally. Focus on the facts. It was easier said than done. She could feel her breathing become shallow as all the words seemed to run together on the page... Leftclaviclepuncturedliverseverehemorrageseventytwodegrees. At the bottom of the second page was Dr. Atkin's final assessment: Thirty-seven knife wounds in total. Scully abruptly lowered the chart, taking several deep breaths to fight her rising nausea. "Is there a water fountain nearby?" she asked. "Right around the corner. Are you okay?" "I'm fine," Scully murmured as she left the room and hurried down the hall. After several sips of cool water, she leaned back against the wall with her eyes closed, feeling slightly less ill. What a fine impression she must be making by falling apart before she even examined the body. Elizabeth's body. Mulder's wife. She covered her face with her hands and took another slow, deep breath. Youcandothisyoucandothis. With measured steps she made her way back to Dr. Atkins' office. "Everything all right?" queried the other woman in a concerned voice. Scully felt herself color slightly. In the course of her career, she had undoubtedly seen and survived things that would have given Dr. Atkins nightmares for the rest of her life, but at this point she was willing to have the other woman believe her problem was a weak stomach rather than spill the truth. She felt a renewed sense of anger at Mulder for putting her in such a terrible position in the first place. Never once had he stopped to ask her if she would mind cutting up his dead wife. "Yes, thank you, I'm fine. It's just been a long night." Dr. Atkins nodded. "I understand completely. Would you like another moment to rest up, or would you like to see her now?" "Yes, please, if you'll just show me where." At that moment, a tall thin man with huge black eyes appeared in the doorway. Scully jumped a bit because he had made no noise on his approach. "I have the samples ready to take to the lab," he said in a gravelly voice. "Thank you, Howard. Could you get out the Callahan body before you go, please?" He nodded, and left as silently as he had arrived. "An assistant?" asked Scully. "Yes, Howard is my technician. He doesn't have a lot to say, but he's been great about reducing the workload around here. If you need anything in terms of lab tests and such, just ask him and he'll help you out." "Hmmm," Scully replied noncommittally, and squinted down the hall to where he had disappeared. Maybe she would ask. But maybe not. XxXxX In the main autopsy room, Howard removed Elizabeth Callahan from her refrigerated chamber and placed her on a silver autopsy bay. He lowered the sheet until she lay naked, stark white and staring under the bright florescent lights. Smoothing her hair back in a rhythmic caress, he stood over her for a long moment. Then he shook his head. He had heard that they brought in a fancy doctor from the FBI to see about the murders. That must be the redhead in Dr. Atkins' office. Who would have thought there would be two female pathologists? The new lady seemed nice. Pretty, too. Not as pretty as Dr. Atkins, but still... He patted Elizabeth one last time and sighed. He wondered what he would say if anyone ever thought to ask *him* about the deaths. Hopefully, no one ever would. XxXxX She seemed more naked than any body Scully had ever encountered before. Logically, of course, this was not possible, but she felt it was true all the same. Elizabeth was whiter, somehow. Or maybe more still. Whatever it was, the effect was nerve- jangling, and for the first time Scully felt a little like a voyeur. She set her tape recorder aside for a moment and approached the woman slowly. Yes, she could see it now. All the Mulder hooks were there--long hair with legs to match, sculpted cheekbones and ample breasts. Alive, Elizabeth Callahan had no doubt been a beautiful woman. Now she was covered with gaping lines that stood out sharply against her pale skin. Her lips were cracked and devoid of color, and her nipples had shriveled to grayish-blue stubs. Death had spared none of her earlier charms. Scully snapped on her gloves but made no move to actually touch the body. "Who are you?" she whispered over the dead woman. "Why did he hide you for so long?" Elizabeth answered her with the perfect silence of the dead. Scully closed her eyes and swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. Out of all the women in the world, Mulder had picked this one to marry. But then something had gone terribly wrong. It was time to find out what. She opened her eyes again and reached for the tape recorder. Her finger poised on the buttons, she murmured, "Whatever happened between you and Mulder...whatever he did or you did, I don't know. But I do know that you didn't deserve this." Three hours later, Dr. Atkins had disappeared somewhere, and Scully was scribbling some notes when her cell phone rang, startling her in the dimly lit office. "It's me, Scully." "Mulder." She was too worn out to say much else. There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. "Was it...did you..." He stopped and started again in a low whisper. "Are you okay, Scully?" Now he finally asks, she thought, but did not have the energy to put much anger into the sentiment. "I'm fine," she lied, because it was easier than trying to come up with words to describe how she really felt. She sat up a little straighter in her chair. "Mulder..." He was quiet, but she could hear him breathing. God, how to put this? "Mulder, there were old scars. Scars on her wrists." "Yes." She rubbed her fingers at her temple. "These scars were lengthwise up the arm, Mulder. She really meant it." "I know she did, Scully....I'm the one who found her." XxXxX Continued in Chapter Three. XxXxX Chapter Three xXxXx It was dark when Scully finally left the Cambridge morgue, night having greedily claimed half of the afternoon hours for its own. She waited in the freezing rain with only a briefcase full of dead women to shield her from the gnawing wind. Her taxi arrived ten minutes late, on a wave of icy slush that splashed onto the sidewalk and caught her squarely across her knees. Damp and chilled, she huddled on the far side of the vinyl seat, not paying any attention to the passing scenery. Her feet were frozen inside her boots, and her fingers were white and stiff. She cupped her hands over her mouth and blew gently to try to warm them. It was the kind of bone-deep cold that always reminded her of the cancer, when she had lost so much weight it was impossible to ever be really warm. She had spent months with hands as cold as the dead themselves. Months of autopsies performed by the woman with a backstage pass, she thought wearily. Surrounded by death from the inside out. Elizabeth's white face passed through her mind, and Scully shivered. Mulder's wife had had her own kind of macabre dress rehearsal. Even if he had found her relatively quickly, the large cuts on her arms must have given her an up-close and personal look at her own death. Eight years later, death had finally looked back. Still huddled deep inside her coat, Scully leaned her head back against the seat and dreamed of a long shower with the setting turned all the way to "H". Thousands of prickly hot needles on her skin, driving away the numbness. Her joints ached with fatigue. She shifted slightly on the seat, trying to get comfortable, and her hand brushed something sharp. Squinting in the darkness, she peered down to see what was there. It was a rip. No, not a rip. A cut. Someone had taken a knife to the cheap, black vinyl, splitting it open about three inches so that the foam stuffing pushed through the covering. Scully fingered the sharp edges around the hole, thinking suddenly of Elizabeth's killer. You want to know, too, don't you? she mused silently. You want to know what it feels like when everything stops. With a jerk, she yanked her hand back into her lap, shaking slightly. She blinked rapidly in surprise. Where the hell had that come from? The taxi suddenly lurched to a halt in front of the hotel. "Ten dollar, sixty," said the man in front without turning around. She hastily shoved some money at the driver and tried to push aside the voice from her head, but it followed her as she hurried into the bright warmth of the lobby. Distracted as she was, it was not surprising that she failed to notice the figure watching her from the bench near the windows. XxXxX I did not expect they would send a woman. When I first heard they were bringing in the FBI, I pictured a couple of Ken dolls in pin-stripe suits with sunglasses. It was even kind of exciting to learn that I rated an honest-to-God profiler. But Englehart's press conference never said anything about a woman. I should know because I was there. It was kind of amusing to watch the reporters heckling away at him like a pack of crows as he sweated out their questions under the bright camera lights. Blind as he was, I doubt he could have noticed me in the back. I used to go to every one of his daily soirées in the Cambridge PD press room, but lately I've had to scale back my outings. Mistakes are for other people, that's what Father always said. The day Helen died, he yelled at her for leaving her new bike in the driveway. Stupidstupidstupid. I can still see his face, purple from screaming, and how he carried on so long that Momma had to bring the inhaler from the bedroom. It was stupid of me to take so many of the women from Dempsey's. Convenience is nice, but it can also make you lazy. The next time I will be more careful. If I were really smart, I would get my ass out of the lobby of this hotel before I am spotted. It's a foolish risk to be here, and I cannot afford stupidity right now. She looks tired as she checks into her room. Pale and cold, like the women are when I drop them off. I watch as she picks up her bags and heads for the elevators without even a glance in my direction. In my pocket, the knife is sharp against my thumb. XxXxX Mulder entered the hotel elevator carrying a large portion of green curried beef and an even greater helping of guilt. Scully had sounded so tired on the phone, her voice laced with the same traces of painful exhaustion he had heard in the New York hospital room only a few weeks ago. Thirty-six hours with no sleep was probably not what the doctors had in mind when they had suggested she ease her way back into work. Hell of a welcome back party you've thrown here, he congratulated himself. Good show. But the guilt was not because he was sorry about bringing her along on the case. Quite the opposite--it was because he was *not* sorry. He had made Elizabeth so many promises he never kept, and this was his absolute last chance to get it right. In the end, he just hoped Scully would be able to forgive him for it. Reaching her door, he knocked gently, just in case she was sleeping. She answered within a few seconds, wearing flannel pajama bottoms and an over-sized gray sweatshirt from the University of Maryland that nearly swallowed her whole. It felt like days since he had touched her. "Hi," he said awkwardly, holding up the bag. "I thought you might like some dinner." She eyed the bag for a second and then nodded, widening the door so he could enter. "I was just making some tea." Brushing the worst of the rain from his coat, he stepped into her brightly-lit room. The six victims' files were spread in semi-circle across her bed, and the sight of them pricked his conscience again. Clearly he was not the only one pushing himself hard on this case. Dripping icy water onto the rug, he watched her silently gather the folders into one neat pile and set them aside. Elizabeth was on top. When she had finished, she turned and frowned at him with disapproval. "Mulder, you're soaking wet." He glanced down at himself sheepishly. Not wanting to presume anything, he had not even taken off his coat. "Yeah. The rain has really picked up outside." "Well, there's a clean towel in the bathroom," she said, taking the bag of food from his hands. "Just hang it up when you're done, all right?" He nodded dumbly. It was not an effusive welcome, but he noticed that she set out both paper plates for dinner. He rubbed his hair until it stood on end and then dabbed at the wet trails of water on the back of his neck. Dutifully, he hung the wet towel next to hers before returning to the round table, where Scully was busy doling out equal portions of the curry with a plastic spoon. He approached her hesitantly, stopping just inches behind her back. She stilled instantly but did not turn around. He touched her shoulder with three fingers. "Scully, about today...I'm sorry. I know I should have explained better..." She bowed her head and shuddered slightly under his touch. "Not yet, Mulder, okay? Let's just eat first." "Okay," he agreed softly, hoping that it really would be. They ate his peace offering in relative silence, since all topics at hand led back to the same terrible place. When at last the dishes had been cleared away, she rose with her mug in hand, heading back toward the hot-plate. She turned to him. "Would you like some more tea?" He gave a wry smile and fingered the rim of his own mug. "For this conversation? I think my tea better be fifty proof." Scully's eyebrows lifted a touch. "Not the worst idea you've ever had," she replied after a beat, and she retrieved a miniature bottle of brandy from the nearby wooden cabinet. Apparently Scully also felt the need for a little false courage tonight. Not to mention distance. She took her tea and brandy over to the bed, where she curled up with her back against the headboard, about as far away as she could get from him and still be in the same room. He felt a moment of overwhelming relief. It would be easier this way, to tell the story without having to look her in the eyes. Scully's eyes never lied. But after a moment he moved to the small settee across from the bed. His willful blindness had nearly killed Elizabeth; he was not going to look away now. Scully sat motionless on the bed, staring into her mug and not saying a word while the heater delivered its own clanking monologue. When finally he could not bear it any longer, he asked her, "What are you thinking?" She gave a tiny shake of her head, her eyes still on her tea. "I just..." "You just what?" he prompted when she trailed off. She sighed. "I thought I knew you, Mulder." He scooted forward on his perch. "Scully, you do know me! You know me better than anyone in the world." "Well, apparently that's not saying very much." Her eyes met his, translucent with pain, and his insides tore open like wet tissue paper. "You're wrong, Scully," he insisted unsteadily. "It means everything. At least to me it does." She lowered the mug from her lips to frown at him. "It means everything to me, too, Mulder. Why else do you think it hurts so damn much?" He flinched at her sharp words, fingers tightening around the warm porcelain. "And I'm sorry for that, really I am." She went back to staring at her tea, and he sighed. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I should have told you that I was married before. But Scully...what happened with Elizabeth, it was all in the past. It has nothing to do with us." She was silent for a long minute. "It scares me that you might actually believe that, Mulder." He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Didn't she understand? He *had* to believe it. It was the only way he could bring himself to share her bed at night. "I just wanted it to be different this time," he murmured at the ceiling. "Well, you got your wish," she answered darkly. "This sure as hell feels different to me." He jerked upright. "What do you mean, 'different'?" "I mean two days ago, I thought you had never been married. Now I know you were. To me, that is a big difference." He shook his head. "It's just one thing, Scully. A stupid, awful mistake I made a long time ago. But it's a mistake that has been there since I first met you...nothing's different now. It doesn't change who I am or how I feel about you." She exhaled in exasperation, setting her mug on the night stand. "You really don't get it, do you? I don't care that you were married before." Now he was confused. "I don't..." "Okay, that's not completely true," she amended, interrupting him. "Yes, I care. A lot. But I care more that you kept it from me, Mulder. Here I was, just trusting that if there was anything important like this, you would tell me about it. Instead, I find out you were deliberately hiding this marriage from me, and now I can't stop wondering what other secrets might be waiting out there for me." He rubbed his hand over his eyes in frustration. "Scully, I told you there's nothing else." "You say it was just a mistake that doesn't matter," she continued in a carefully controlled voice. "But your actions speak otherwise, Mulder. Your purposeful silence about your marriage spells out its importance more clearly than words ever could." "I didn't have the words to explain it," he answered simply. She gave him a sad, reproachful look, tears threatening in her eyes. "You might have tried," she whispered painfully. "For me, you might have tried." "Scully..." He half-rose from his seat, needing to comfort her, but she stopped him with a vehement shake of her head. "No." Her chin trembled, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, looking away from him. He slowly sank back into the chair. "I'm so sorry, Scully." She nodded a little, still not looking at him. "I know you are, but I think it's for the wrong reasons." "Tell me what I can do," he urged her. "Tell me how to make it better." She made a sound that was part sniffle, part laugh. "Don't you think I would if I knew? I can't give you the magic words, Mulder. You can't just find the right phrase or gesture and expect it will all go away." "I know, I know." He leaned heavily back in his seat. God, he was tired. His eyes felt like they had been vacuumed dry, but to sleep meant going back to his own empty room, where the solitary bed would remind him just how completely he had fucked up. "I guess...I guess we should just try to get past this case," he said after a long silence. Scully shifted on the bed so that her arms looped around her knees. "It would be a start," she agreed softly. "Especially for you." He looked at her sharply, meeting her calm gaze with some surprise. Then he half-smiled. "You see? Better than anyone, Scully...that's how well you know me." She seemed to hug herself tighter. "Sometimes," she allowed. "But it doesn't take a clinical degree to understand that you and Elizabeth parted under pretty emotional circumstances." "Everything with Elizabeth was emotional--the highest highs dissolving into the lowest lows. At first, the roller coaster ride was exciting, but after awhile..." He shrugged. "I just needed to get off." Scully hesitated. "Is that when she..." "No. Well, maybe." He sighed and drained the last of his tea in one fiery gulp. "It's complicated." Scully waited patiently while he tried to figure out where to begin the story. "She needed me," he said finally. "She needed me in a way no one had before or ever has since. And I guess that in my way I needed her, too." "Needed her how?" Scully asked softly, her chin on her knees. He considered for a moment. "Elizabeth had this sweet, gentle quality to her...naive almost, but with an inner sadness that gave her depth. When we met again, I was spending my time working cases just like this one, where I got to see all the ways people found to exploit and torture one another. Every day was a new variety of evil wearing a human face." His mouth twitched in a self-deprecating smile. "That sort of stuff becomes hard on the psyche after awhile." "Of course it does." He nodded. "Yeah, well anyway, Liz was a direct contrast to the shit I dealt with on the job. Plus she had known Samantha. It wasn't very often I found someone I could talk to about her." He rose from his seat and began slowly pacing the room. "I guess you could say that for a short time, Liz and I filled a hole in each other's lives." Stopping short, he shoved his hands in his pockets. "Or maybe I'm just kidding myself to think we were ever really happy." Scully was watching him silently, and he squirmed under her gaze, resuming his random trips across the carpet. When he did not make any attempt to continue the story, she asked, "What happened in the end, Mulder? Why did she try to kill herself?" Ah, the million dollar question. He had come up with so many answers to it over the years. Which one would Scully want to hear? He stopped pacing to stand near the round table, where he fiddled absently with a left-over paper napkin. "She asked me to stay that night," he said finally. "But then she always asked me to stay. It was almost to the point that I hated going home because I knew eventually I was going to have to leave again and hurt her. But that February, I thought we had been doing a little better. Liz was painting again, and I was busy surveilling this guy who was suspected of murdering three teenage boys. Henry Finklestein, that was his name. Funny, the parts you remember... "Anyway, the Finklestein case was actually in town, and I thought that would make her happier, you know? For awhile, I even made it home for dinner a couple of nights a week." "Did she ever try to talk to you about why she wanted you home so badly?" "If she did, I wasn't listening hard enough." He sighed, pushing the napkin around on the smooth table-top with one finger. "I knew it made her unhappy and nervous to be alone. She was always sad whenever I had leave town, but I never thought..." He broke off suddenly and snapped his hand away from the table. "I suggested she get a dog." The words hung heavy in the air for a long time. Finally he ambled back to his original seat and slumped down with his eyes closed. "We busted Finklestein that night...caught him in his apartment with a fifteen year old runaway. Some of the guys wanted to go out to the bars and celebrate, but I figured I should get back to Liz. The apartment was totally dark when I got home. At first I just thought she was sleeping." He shook his head faintly. "Took me at least five minutes to find her." "I'm sorry, Mulder." He barely heard her, still picturing the stark white bathroom and a tub full of bloody water. And Liz...pale as the walls surrounding her, with her dark hair wet and clinging to her head. "There was so much blood," he whispered. "I thought she was already dead." "But she wasn't," Scully pointed out gently. "You saved her." He shook his head. "No, I just stopped her from dying." "Mulder, you..." "I should have known, Scully." He sat up with a jerk, trapping her under the force of his own anger. "Seven years of psychology classes...seven fucking years and I never saw what was coming! I had no problem climbing inside the heads of the worst kind of sociopaths, predicting their every goddamn move, but I couldn't read my own wife! What the fuck does that say about me?" Scully was silent. "Yeah, that's what I thought," he said bitterly. "You loved her," Scully murmured after a minute. "It's often hard to see the people we love clearly." "Well, Liz would have been better off without my kind of love. I nearly destroyed her." "No, Mulder," she corrected quietly. "She nearly destroyed herself." "While I stood by without doing a damn thing. Same difference." Scully was quiet again for a few minutes. Then she asked, "Is that when it ended?" He ran a hand through his hair and nodded. "Pretty much. Her father showed up at the hospital to ream me out over what happened to his daughter. He didn't have much to say that I wasn't already saying to myself." "Let me guess...he was the one who pushed for the divorce." "You win the washer-dryer," he answered wearily. "Alan Callahan had the lawyers in before the next night. Only he didn't want to stop at divorce. He went all the way up to an annulment." "Did you talk to Elizabeth at all? What did she want?" "She was pretty sedated when I saw her, but we spoke for a few minutes." He dropped his eyes to the floor. "She kept apologizing to me, can you imagine that? Said she was sorry for disappointing me." Scully considered for a minute. "It sounds like she was very troubled." "She was," he sighed. "And not all of it was me. I knew that even then. The doctors told me it wasn't her first attempt--she'd swallowed a bunch of pills in college, but her roommate found her and called the paramedics." He blinked several times to keep the tears away. "I wish I'd known earlier," he continued in a hushed voice. "Maybe then..." He broke off with a shake of his head. "I don't know. I guess there are a whole lot of maybes." "You aren't responsible for what happened, Mulder." He rubbed his shaking hands together and managed a small smile. "But I'm not completely blameless, Scully. I should have paid more attention to her. I should have known something was very wrong." Scully uncurled from her position and moved to sit on the end of the bed, facing him. "Mulder, tell me the truth...why didn't you mention any of this to me before?" Why, indeed? He thought for a long moment. "I guess...I guess I felt that if I never talked about it, then it would be like it never really happened. Erased, just like the legal papers said." "Except it did happen." He dropped his head in acknowledgment. "Yes." Scully took a deep breath. "Mulder, I think you should know..." He looked up. "What?" "When I did the exam today, I found abrasions on her wrists and ankles, probably caused by a nylon rope. She struggled, Mulder, right up until the end. Whatever choices she made eight years ago, Elizabeth did not want this kind of death." He held her eyes for a long time. This was pure Scully, emotionally generous even when he had given her no reason to be. He nearly started shaking. "I should have told you," he whispered tightly. "I'm sorry." She reached for his hands and squeezed. "I know," she murmured, leaning over so that their foreheads nearly touched. He could feel her breathing. "It's just going to take time, Mulder. You can't make it better all in one night." He managed a tired nod. "I know that, I do. I just..." He broke off in frustration, pulling his hands free. "I just want you to know how sorry I am." "Mulder, listen to me." Reluctantly, he met her eyes. "I know you want me to be okay again, and I know you want to take away the hurt. But my feelings are my responsibility, not yours. It's not up to you to change how I feel." He was quiet for a long time, thinking about what she had said. She touched his knee gently. "And Mulder..." He looked up at her. "You weren't responsible for Elizabeth's feelings, either. Think about that for awhile, would you?" He smiled weakly. "I'll try." "Good." She withdrew her hands and glanced in the direction of the victims' files. "What did you get out of the bartender? Anything?" Joe King. He had almost forgotten about him. "He was off the night of Liz's murder, apparently at a gym in Newton between eight and ten p.m. No alibi after that." He scratched the back of his head. "I can tell you that he was less than thrilled to be interviewed again. His portion of the conversation can be summed up this way: He didn't do 'no murders', all cops are pigs, and we can go to hell." "Sounds like a real charmer." "Yeah, that's my problem with him, too. He's an angry guy, there's no question. From the special glares he gave Bertelli, I'd even say he has a particular resentment of women...at least women in authority." "But the victims weren't powerful women," Scully interrupted. "They were shy and vulnerable, lonely even." He sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. "Well, you could argue that he was displacing his anger onto more manageable targets, but that's not how I read the murders. Our killer puts the clothes back on the women before dumping the bodies--he cares about them. Maybe he even sees himself as rescuing them from their loneliness, I don't know." "Almost like he identifies with them," Scully mused to herself. Mulder looked at her with some surprise. "I wouldn't have phrased it quite like that, but yeah, I think maybe something about their isolation strikes a chord with him. Probably he was a loner growing up." Scully opened her mouth to say something, and then quickly shut again. "What?" he asked her. She shook her head. "I was just wondering...when you do profiles, do you really get to think like the killer?" "You mean like do I hear his voice in my head?" She nodded. "Sometimes, yeah." He studied her carefully. "Why do you ask?" "No special reason. Just curious about the process, that's all." Scully had always been a bad liar, and on two days with no sleep she was even worse than usual. Her eyes were trained on the bedspread, where she was picking at imaginary lint. But he decided not to call her on the fib; after all, he was in no position to be demanding absolute honesty from anyone. "What about the victims' files? Did you find anything else of interest there?" "If you're asking if I found anything to connect the women other than what Bertelli and Jacobsen told us this morning, the answer is no. That bar, Dempsey's, seems to be the only substantive link." She hesitated. "There was one other thing, though." "What?" "All the women were drugged with barbiturates before they were killed." "So they were unconscious during the murders?" She shook her head. "No, Dr. Atkins seems to think they were awake, and I tend to agree. There wasn't that much of the drug left in their systems, which suggests that they were given a pretty mild dose." "Injection marks?" "None that I saw. If they were picked up at the bar, it's possible the killer slipped the drug in their drink." He leaned back on the settee and started at the ceiling. "That's interesting. It means that the killer wanted them unconscious for the trip back from the bar to the murder site, but awake for the actual murder. It could be he doesn't have the physical strength to abduct the women on his own." "Or he's trying to spare them any extra fear." Again, her observation made him sit up and take notice. "What makes you say that?" She looked uncomfortable. "Well, it's like you said, Mulder...he identifies with the women...he can feel their pain." "I didn't say that, Scully. You did." "I did?" She frowned. "Oh." He got up from his chair and moved to sit next to her on the bed. "Scully, is there something you'd like to tell me? Was there something else in the files that bothered you?" "Of course not," she bristled. "Other than what I told you, there was nothing else that stuck out as important." She stood abruptly. "It's really late, and we could both use some sleep. Why don't we just resume this conversation over breakfast?" He regarded her from his place on the bed. "Scully, are you sure you're okay?" "I'm fine, Mulder," she said, annoyed. "I'm just tired." He blinked at her another moment, searching her face for the real reason he was being suddenly dismissed. For once, he could not read any indication of what she was thinking. He rose slowly and gathered his coat. She herded him gently toward the door. He paused before opening it. "I'm in room 1521 if you need me." She nodded. "Okay." He hesitated a moment before leaning down to kiss her lightly on the forehead. "Night, Scully." The look on her face made him think she might grab him and hold on tight, but the moment passed and she only nodded again. "Good night, Mulder. I'll see you tomorrow." Outside in the hallway, he stared at her door for a few minutes and then decided to go have one last drink at the bar. If he waited until he was too exhausted to stand, it might be possible to ignore the overwhelming silence of his hotel room. The dimly lit hotel bar was nearly empty when he walked in and selected a stool. Strains of canned jazz played from the overhead speakers. "Give me whatever you have on tap," he told the man in the green vest as he grabbed a handful of peanuts from the dish. The beer appeared in front of him almost immediately. He downed half of it on the first drink. "Is this seat taken?" A female voice floated from behind his shoulder. He turned, half-expecting Scully even though his brain had already concluded the voice was not right. Instead, it was Detective Bertelli. "Uh, no," he stammered, moving his damp napkin over. "Please, sit down." "Thanks. Don't mind if I do." And she took the seat next to him. XxXxX End Chapter Three