by Mercutio
mercutio@europa.com
 

SUMMARY:  Mulder is assigned to track down serial killers to keep
his mind off of Scully's abduction, and acquires a bodyguard in the
process.  Some mild relationship angst and Mulder-baiting.

RATING:  R for descriptions of child abuse and sexual torture (not
terribly graphic, but certainly offensive to some) and profanity.
 

The Bodyguard, by Mercutio (mercutio@europa.com)
 

This was Mulder's third case in a month for the Violent Crimes
Section.  The first two still had unresolved paperwork chasing him
across the country as he bounced back and forth, first to
Philadelphia, then to Austin and now to Los Angeles.  They were
over now and not something he needed to think about.  Except that
he couldn't help thinking about it, couldn't just simply stop
time-sharing his brain with a serial killer because someone said
the case was over.  It took time to forget, not that he ever truly
forgot, but time at least to move on, to replace the immediacy of
the emotions with other, newer experiences.

Time he didn't have.

A.D. Skinner had taken the tack of piling more work than three
people could handle on him, perhaps on the theory that it would
keep him busy.  Too busy to think about Dana Scully.  Too busy to
chase after her, to find whoever had abducted her a month and six
days ago.  Mulder suspected it was the latter rather than the
former.  Skinner didn't strike him as the considerate or caring
sort.

Mulder twisted his shoulders, pulling them away from where he sat
propped up against the wall at the head of his bed in yet another
hotel room.  At least it was a new hotel.  The management of the
last one had started complaining about the noise at night.

Not that it was his fault.  He couldn't help the nightmares, which
only seemed to be getting worse.

Mulder set the folder down on the bed and started rubbing the
crease of his eyebrows tiredly.  It wouldn't help.  It was a
permanent headache now.

The first case had been the worst, actually.  Teenagers being
murdered on dates.  Always male.  Sometimes the girls had been
killed as well, but Mulder had seen at once that those were
incidental deaths.  Accidental, as dreadful as that sounded.
Someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The killer had shot
each of the male victims in the head at close range, usually in a
parked car -- a detail which had gotten the case confused as a copy
of the Son of Sam murders until Mulder had shown up -- and then
taken the body to perform various ritualistic mutilations on it.
The girls had all been killed or injured, shot immediately after
their dates, but no ritual had been performed, and the murderer
hadn't seemed to care whether they lived or not.

Mulder had lived with the case in his head for eight days, reliving
each one of the murders, *enjoying* them even as he went and threw
up afterwards.  He hadn't been able to eat anything resembling meat
for the duration of the case, and refused to eat vegetables on
general principles.  Unfortunately, sunflower seeds didn't provide
much in the way of nutrition, and his inability to sleep soundly
only made his situation worse.

And, in the end, when they caught the killer based on the
description given by one of the girls who had woken up in ICU,
Mulder had felt even worse.  He had dragged his soul through the
mud, wasted time he could have used looking for Scully, and all for
nothing.  He was unnecessary here.

Then they sent him to Texas.  That had been easier, relatively
speaking.  Fewer victims.  Patterns he had seen too many times
before to need any sort of emotional connection to write up his
initial profile.  It had really been nothing more than that; the
killer had already talked with police as Mulder's profile of him
had stated, and the efficient work of the Austin Police Department
had separated him out from all the other people who had done the
same thing based on that profile.  Piece of cake.  Except that
Mulder still hadn't been able to sleep, still had the images
running through his mind, and in his nightmares, the blood lust of
the first killer, hunting in the night.

Mulder was on the ragged edge now.  And the interview this morning
with Don Henderson, the Los Angeles ASAC, hadn't made it any
better.

"Agent Mulder," Henderson had said as Mulder walked into his
office.

"Sir."  Mulder said, subdued, operating on automatic.  He wasn't
offered a seat, so he stood, staring at the window over Henderson's
shoulder.

"You look like shit, Mulder."  Henderson waved a hand towards the
wall behind Mulder.  "For the rest of this case, you'll have a
babysitter.  Maybe he can do something about you."

Mulder turned.  A neatly dressed man stood up from the chair.  He
was a good ten years older than Mulder, his hair beginning to gray.
His suit was just as dark as Mulder's, although his hair was
shorter and his appearance not at all rumpled.

The other man nodded to Mulder.  "Special Agent Jack Sullivan.
From the Secret Service."

"Excuse me?" Mulder asked, startled into full awareness.

"The Secret Service has taken an interest in this case.  To make
things easier on everyone, I've asked Agent Sullivan to follow the
investigation with you. I'm sure you'll lend him all possible
assistance with his portion of the investigation. In return, Agent
Sullivan has agreed to look after you, and keep you out of the kind
of self-destructive loose cannon behavior you engaged in during
your last two cases.  Maybe the Secret Service can keep a better
eye on you than we can," Henderson said, seating himself behind his
desk.  "Because, God help us, I don't think anyone else could."  He
addressed Sullivan directly.  "Make sure he eats and sleeps before
I see him again."

Sullivan nodded, and turned to Mulder, ushering him out.

Mulder had been stiff with inner rage at the time, not speaking any
more than was absolutely necessary to Sullivan.  They didn't trust
him.  They never had.  First they'd sent Scully as a spy, then
Krycek, and now this man.  Perhaps Scully had turned out to be
something else, but that didn't change what the intent of sending
her had been.

And now he was sitting in his room, studying the case yet again
despite his orders to sleep, listening to the Secret Service agent
get settled in next door.  Where Scully would have been.

There was a knock at the connecting door.  Without moving, Mulder
called, "Come in."

Sullivan entered.  He looked impassively at Mulder.  "These doors
need to remain unlocked."

Mulder didn't want to hear it.  Any of it.  "Sure.  Fine.
Whatever."

"When was the last time you ate?"

Mulder picked up the bag of sunflower seeds lying at his side and
silently held it up for Sullivan's inspection.

"When was the last time you ate an actual meal?"

Mulder's expression grew genuinely irritated.  He didn't like
babysitters of any sort, and this wasn't this first time this had
happened to him.  The only thing he disliked more than having his
opinions disregarded and ridiculed was being treated with extreme
solicitousness, as though he were a child, incapable of taking care
of himself.  "They gave me something on the flight from Texas that
they pretended to call food.  If it really matters to you, go get
a pizza."

"Toppings?"

"See if they have chocolate-covered grasshoppers."

Sullivan left the room without a word and Mulder looked back at the
file sitting next to him on the bed, running his hand over it.  So
it was true what they said about the Service.  No sense of humor at
all.  This was going to be a fun week.

Hopefully he wouldn't be here any longer than that.

Sullivan came back into Mulder's room.  "Forty-five minutes.  They
didn't have grasshoppers, but they do have pine nuts."

"Pine nuts?" Mulder asked.

Sullivan nodded and took a seat, gazing steadily at Mulder.  "It's
a California thing."

His continued presence annoyed Mulder.  What the hell was he doing
there?  A Secret Service agent belonged in a serial killing
investigation like a Reticulan spaceship belonged on the White
House lawn.  Maybe less.  "So what's the Secret Service's
connection to this case?"

"Victim number four."

Mulder paused, eyes narrowing as he brought the details of that
file to mind.  Nothing leapt to his attention immediately.  It
certainly fit the pattern of the other killings.  "And?"

"And Kristin Duncan was the President's niece.  He's concerned
about finding the person who did this, and asked us to step in."

"So why haven't you?" Mulder asked, a threatening tone to his
voice.  "Why not just run this through your people and forget about
the amateur league?"

Sullivan shrugged, a glint of humor in his eyes.   "Maybe we
thought you needed some time with the big leagues so you could see
how it was done."

"Very funny."  Mulder stared at the man, then sighed and backed
down.  Sullivan had given as good as he'd gotten without getting
upset -- not something too many FBI agents could boast of -- and it
didn't look like Mulder was going to be able to go over his head
and get him reassigned either.  So he was stuck with the guy.  For
the moment, at any rate.

Ah, well.  It could have been worse.  He could have been Krycek.

Mulder picked up the case file, or part of it at any rate, and
tossed it at Sullivan.  "Read this."

Sullivan caught the file easily, and started reading through the
pages.

Mulder started talking while Sullivan was still reading the first
page.  "The papers are calling these the Mallrat Murders.  Southern
California, mostly the Los Angeles area rather than the Valley,
victims abducted from local malls, young children.  The killer
doesn't seem to be making a distinction between gender."  Mulder
smiled grimly.  The case was already giving him a headache.  "If
you look at the pictures..."

Sullivan looked up from the file.  "What pictures?"

Mulder paused for a moment, then waved a hand over the bed, which
was littered with files, note paper and photographs of all shapes
and kinds.  "They're here somewhere.  Anyway, if you look at the
pictures, you'll see that all the victims were young, still almost
sexless.  I think that matters more to him than the gender."

He took a long breath, wondering why he was bothering with the
detailed description of the case.  *It must be Scully's influence,*
he thought.  He would have told her about the case, was in the
habit of running each of his cases down for her --the ones she
heard about, anyway.  A small smile curved his lips before being
banished.  She was gone, and he was stuck here, working on catching
serial killers -- something any trainee fresh from the Academy
could be doing.  What he *needed* to be doing was looking for her,
not this.

"But Kristin Duncan was 14 years old," Sullivan objected, breaking
into Mulder's reverie.  "Isn't that a little old to call sexless?"

"Judging by the photo I saw, no."  Mulder made the concession of
digging through the mess on the bed to find the photograph.
"Here."

Sullivan took the photo from Mulder.  It showed Kristin with her
parents and her uncle and his wife, all dressed formally.  Kristin
was wearing a velvet dress more suited for a girl of 10, with a
wide Peter Pan collar, and polished patent leather shoes.  Her hair
was long, with bangs cut straight across her face.  In no way did
she look like a teenager.

"I see what you mean," Sullivan said, tucking the photograph into
the file.  He was familiar with Kristin Duncan, but had never
considered her appearance in terms of what it said about her
apparent age.

Mulder nodded.

"Do you have a profile yet?  Henderson said..."

"Henderson said that I was a burn-out who might possibly do a
decent job if someone sat on me night and day and forced me to stop
screwing off."

"Not to me he didn't."

"Yeah, well you kinda have to read between the lines.  He rejected
my first profile, the one I did on the plane on the way here.  Said
it was too general to be any good."

"Was it?"

Mulder shot him a cold look, then proceeded to shut the other man
out entirely,  concentrating on the case file.  When the pizza
arrived, he accepted the portion Sullivan handed to him without
comment, eating it from the pizza box the other man placed on the
bed.

****

"Scully!"  Mulder came upright in the bed, crying out Dana's name.
Sitting there in the half-dark of the room, which was illuminated
only by the test pattern on the TV, he stared blankly at the
curtained window opposite the bed.  He'd somehow managed to fall
asleep, still lying on top of the bedspread, fully clothed.  And
then the nightmares had come.

Next door, Sullivan heard the noise, and was in the room with
Mulder without even entirely waking up himself.

Automatically, he checked the room for sign of any intrusion, gun
drawn in his hand.  There was no one there but Mulder, not that he
had expected anything else.  Carefully, he set the safety on the
gun, then moved over to the bed where Mulder was still sitting,
unmoving.

Sullivan laid the gun down on the nightstand next to the bed.
Mulder's silence was eerie.  You'd think he'd have *some* reaction
to someone bursting in on him in the middle of the night with a
loaded gun.  But, no.

Keeping his voice low, he said, "Mulder?  Can you hear me, Mulder?"

Mulder shook his head like a dog shaking off water and looked over
at Sullivan.  Despair was drawn deeply into his face.  Sullivan
didn't move, didn't reach out to him, although his first reaction
was *Oh, shit.  I didn't know it was this bad.*

"I'm all right," Mulder said in a scratchy voice.  "You can go back
to your listening post now.  No more entertaining interludes from
the captive beast to lull the night away."

Sullivan was taken aback by the difference between the open,
heartbroken despair the younger man had displayed upon first waking
up and this... this almost callous indifference to his own
feelings.  But, hell, they were men, and men were supposed to be
tough, right?  Sullivan sighed.  Yeah, right.  What was happening
to Mulder was not in the least bit normal and he knew it.  And
while the psychological health of his charge was not his
responsibility, it could easily become so if Mulder became
suicidal.  And the look on his face when Sullivan had charged into
the room, gun in hand, did not bode well towards that end.

But if he stayed one minute longer, Mulder was sure to make some
smart ass comment...

Mulder beat him to the punch.  "Going to rock me to sleep, Agent
Sullivan?"

"Just wanted to make sure the bedbugs weren't biting, Agent
Mulder."  Sullivan retrieved his gun and left the room silently.

Mulder watched him go, then laid down, rolling to his side, burying
his face in the pillow.  The tears were buried too deep to allow
him the release of crying.  Instead, silent sobs racked his body,
muffled in the pillow, as he wrestled again with the guilt and the
pain.

****

In the morning, it was though nothing had happened.  Literally
nothing.  Mulder refused to acknowledge Sullivan's very existence.
He collected his papers and his laptop with the newly finished
profile on it and made his way down to his car, not troubling to
knock on Sullivan's door.

As Mulder walked past, Sullivan's door opened and the agent stepped
out, neatly dressed and obviously wide awake.  "Good morning, Agent
Mulder."

Mulder glanced at him and kept walking.  Sullivan followed him to
the parking lot, carrying a white bag and a briefcase.

When Mulder pulled out his keys, Sullivan spoke.  "I hope you won't
try anything as childish as not unlocking the passenger door and
leaving me here."

Mulder looked up, eyes gleaming a bit.  "Why, Agent Sullivan.  I'm
shocked.  How could you suspect me of such a thing?"  He got into
the car, and put the key into the ignition, pointedly ignoring
Sullivan.

Who pulled a set of keys out of his pocket, inserted one in the
door, and calmly slid into the passenger seat.  "Because I really
didn't want to admit to stealing your keys last night and taking
them to the locksmith to get a copy of the car key."  He opened the
bag he was carrying and pulled out a paper cup.  "I had breakfast
earlier.  I got you a coffee and a danish.  Now, drink up.  I want
to be able to tell Henderson that you actually did get something to
eat this morning."

Mulder sat there, staring at him in disbelief.  The man was simply
too competent to be real.  "Yes, Dad," Mulder said sarcastically,
taking the cup.  "God, even my mother was never as thorough as
you."  Scully had been, he thought.  But that wasn't something he
wanted to dwell on, and in any case, it sounded different coming
from Scully.

"Yeah, that's probably 'cause I'm a father of two.  My son's
thirteen, and my daughter's eight.  Gives me a lot of practice with
stubborn children who don't want to go to bed when you want them
to, won't sleep when you get them there, and seem intent on
achieving inner peace by malnutrition."

"Oh, great.  So I'm a child now."

"No, you're not.  You're a lot bigger.  And you've got a gun."

"Would that keep you from interfering in my life?"

"No."

Mulder drank some of the coffee and set the cup down before
silently accepting the danish.  He ate it while Sullivan watched
the hotel's gardener mow the lawn, then wiped his fingers off, took
another sip of coffee, and then finally started the car.

Henderson's secretary ushered them into his office as soon as they
arrived.

"You're late," he said unceremoniously.

"It's his fault," Mulder said, pointing at Sullivan.

Henderson ignored that.  "We have another victim.  Number eight.
He was found last night."

Mulder nodded, instantly focused on the case, which was much more
important to him than any amount of crossing the i's and dotting
the t's, or whatever bizarre rituals it was that they wanted him to
follow.  "I want to see that.  And I want to see the crime scene
for victim number four as well, Kristin Duncan."

"Why that one in particular?"

Mulder very carefully didn't look at Sullivan.  "Because I want to
see it.  I have the revised profile you wanted."  He squared his
chin.  "I can give it to you now, unless you want to tie up my time
with more meaningless bureaucratic nonsense because you can't
believe anyone could do this better than you can, even when you're
too blind to see the truth even when it's right in front of you."

Henderson looked him over for a long moment, then turned to
Sullivan.  "Get him out of here.  And try to make him keep his
mouth shut.  He isn't going to do his job very well if someone
strangles him before he does us some good on this case."

"Yes, sir."  Sullivan turned to Mulder, with the evident intent of
escorting him from the room.

Once they were outside, Sullivan said quietly.  "For a
psychologist, you certainly have a charming personality and an
intriguing way of winning friends and influencing people."

"You should see me on a bad day."

"Thank you for putting the Duncan case on the top of your list."
*Although it wasn't necessary to piss off Henderson in the
process,* Sullivan thought.

Mulder glanced over at him.  "It's nothing," he mumbled, looking
down.  "We have to go over them in some order."

"Yeah."  *And I know you did it for me, whether or not you'll admit
it,* Sullivan thought.  While he was nominally here to investigate
that particular case, being assigned to babysit Mulder as well
complicated matters.  Henderson had impressed on him the likelihood
of Mulder self-destructing, as well as the man's importance in
catching the killer.  Someone else could do it -- but no one else
would do it as quickly or as professionally.  Not that Sullivan had
seen a hint of professionalism yet in Mulder's behavior.

They got directions and drove to the place where the latest victim
had been found, in a bathroom in the Fox Hills Mall in Culver City.
Mulder and Sullivan got out of the car and walked over to the
officer waiting for them by his car, in front of the entrance to
the mall.

"Hi.  I'm Agent Fox Mulder, with the FBI, and this is Agent Jack
Sullivan.  I understand there's been another body found."

The officer nodded.  "Alec Baughson, LAPD.  Yeah, this is it."

"Do we know who the victim is yet?"

He shook his head.  "We're still trying to find that out.  No ID on
the body.  And mall security had no reports of anyone missing.
Should find out soon though.  If he has a family, they'll contact
us soon enough." His face and voice held doubt on the subject.  Los
Angeles had many homeless people, and still more people, especially
young people, who lived a nomadic or squatters' existence, finding
temporary "friends" and staying with them for days or years before
moving on.

"The body?"

"They took it away.  Autopsy's this morning."

"Pictures?"

"Yeah.  They said you'd ask for them."  He pulled them out and
handed them to Mulder, who flipped through them one by one before
handing them to Sullivan.  As with the other killings, the victim
was nude.  "The victim's clothing?"

"Already bagged."

Mulder nodded.  "Let's go."

Baughson led them inside, and up to the second level, then down to
the men's bathroom, which was sealed off from the public.  Another
officer was waiting there for them, keeping people out.

Sullivan and Mulder went in, Sullivan standing by the door,
watching Mulder look the scene over.  Although the body had been
removed and Forensics had already been there, the room was still
much as it had been the night before.

"The murder took place while the mall was still open," Mulder said
suddenly, turning around from where he stood by the bathroom
stalls.  "The killer locked the door after he got his victim in
here."

Baughson raised his eyebrows.  "Yeah.  That's right.  They found
the body just before the mall closed.  Somebody complained to the
security guard about having the bathroom out of order, and when
they sent the janitor to fix it, he found the body.  A real live
locked room mystery.  They wanted to ask you how the guy got out of
here; as you can see, there aren't any windows, and the vents
aren't big enough."

"Oh, they're big enough," Mulder said, thinking of Tooms.  "But you
can see traces of shoe prints on the toilet here.  I think your
janitor narrowly missed being victim number nine."

"Damn.  Nobody said anything about that.  We'll need to get
Forensics back in here."

"He's cool," Mulder said, loud enough for everyone to hear him, but
more to himself than anything else.  "He took a big risk there,
first by taking a victim with the mall open and then by waiting for
someone to find the body.  It could have been a security guard
rather than a janitor.  Someone who did a more careful check and
had a gun."  He swung around and paced back towards the door.  "Or
he's not getting high enough off the murders anymore and needed
that little extra thrill of almost getting caught to make it better
for him."

Sullivan saw the intense, fever-glitter brightness of Mulder's
eyes.  "That good or bad?"

"It depends," Mulder said, focusing on him.  "He isn't escalating
by taking more victims or more frequently, which is good for the
potential victims.  But if he keeps it up, he *is* going to get
caught, and the person who catches him like that is going to wish
they hadn't.  He'll be waiting, *wanting* to kill them."

Baughson spoke up.  "We can warn people.  Alert security guards,
janitors, the relevant personnel at the area malls, to take extra
precautions when entering a locked bathroom."

Mulder nodded.  "Let's just hope he doesn't leave the door unlocked
next time."

"Will he?"

"If the excitement of having the door locked isn't enough, yeah.
Probably.  He might do something else instead."  He went back to
circling the room, going first to the spot where the victim's
clothes had been stacked neatly in the corner.  They were in the
photographs, even though they were no longer there.  Mulder
visualized the scene in his mind.  The killer had made the boy
undress, had watched it with relish -- no, had watched it, every
piece of clothing coming off confirming in the killer's mind that
he deserved what the killer was about to do to him.

Mulder went over to the urinal where the body had been positioned,
reaching out and touching the drain, and rubbing his gloved
fingertips together.  It was still slightly wet.  Condensation,
or...

"Did they try to get a sample of fluid for analysis from the
urinal?"  There might have been enough fluid left when Forensics
was here for them to get a decent sample.

Baughson looked at a list from his notebook.  "Yeah."

Mulder didn't say anything, kneeling down next to the spot,
avoiding the blood on the floor.  It seemed to be dry, but there
was no use taking chances.  He closed his eyes and visualized the
pictures.  The boy had died in a kneeling position in front of the
urinal.  That wasn't in the photos, but it was consistent with two
of previous victims who had also been found near urinals, and
Mulder was certain that the autopsy of this victim would prove the
same to be true here.  He had been made to lick something from the
urinal -- no one was sure on that issue yet.  Urea had been found
in the mouths of some of the previous victims, but it was
impossible to say whether it was that of the killer.  Mulder
thought not.

The victim had been killed in that position, probably while still
begging for his life, his throat cut from behind, blood mostly
going over the urinal and the boy, and less to splatter on the
killer.  An improvement in his MO that had shown up first with
victim number three.

Then the victim had been raped, after his  death.  That wasn't
something that showed in the photographs, and wouldn't be known
definitively until the autopsy results were in, but Mulder knew it
had been done.  With the plunger from the bathroom.  It had been
removed as evidence, but it was in the pictures, too obvious to
miss, the end jammed down the victim's throat as far as the killer
could make it go.

He stood up, stripping off the gloves he had put on when he entered
the room.  There was nothing to see here that he hadn't seen before
in the other case files, other than the shoe prints in the stall
from the killer's latest embellishment to his style, but somehow
being here in person made it all more immediate, more real in his
mind.  More nightmarish.  And more effective.

"That's all I needed to see."  He nodded to Baughson.  "Thank you."

****
 

When they were in the car again, Mulder looked at Sullivan.  "This
murder happened at 9 p.m. last night.  The police knew about it
before ten.  Why wasn't I called in then?"

Sullivan stared at him for a moment, giving Mulder an utterly blank
face.

"You knew about this.  Don't try to tell me you didn't.  You were
up too early.  Ready to go."

"I knew.  You weren't in any condition to go in then.  And it
wouldn't have changed anything if you'd gotten there immediately."

"You don't know that.  Something crucial could be missing.  Things
could be changed.  And if we had found important evidence, time
would definitely be a factor."

"And if you had gone there last night, your judgment would have
been clouded by your lack of sleep and failure to eat."

Mulder stared at him stonily.  "I've been putting up with you
because I don't have any choice.  But if you hinder my
investigations, I will find some way to get rid of you.  Don't
stand in my way."

Sullivan matched glances with him.  "I understand your
point-of-view.  But I won't allow you to endanger your own
investigations."

Mulder shot him a glance that said very clearly, 'Fine.  We'll see
about that.'

****

Speaking as little as possible, Sullivan directed Mulder to the
site of the fourth killing.  It had long since been restored to
public use, all evidence that a crime had taken place there removed
weeks before.

"Too bad he only uses men's bathrooms," Mulder quipped as they got
to the door.  "This could be interesting otherwise."

Relieved that Mulder still seemed to be speaking to him -- not that
it would have kept him from doing his job if Mulder *had* stopped
communicating, but it would have excessively complicated matters --
Sullivan answered, "Why is that exactly?  Isn't it more difficult
for him to get his victims that way, especially the girls?  He
isn't hitting them over the head and dragging them in -- someone
would have noticed if he were."

Mulder shook his head.  "No, he's not."  He pointed to the door to
the women's bathroom.  "In all the sites where a female victim was
chosen, the women's bathroom is close to the men's.  It would have
been easy for him to grab someone just on their way out or in."

"But surely someone would have seen..."

"It's the age factor.  The children he's targeting are old enough
for their parents to send them in to the bathroom alone, but young
enough when it comes to the girls that it's not overly odd that
their 'father' is escorting them into the men's bathroom.  So no
casual observer walking by would have noticed anything unusual.
And as for observers *inside* the bathrooms, he's seems to have
been very careful at picking times when he won't be interrupted."
Mulder stood outside the door, facing Sullivan.  It was because
this needed explanation.  Not because he was avoiding facing
another place where a young girl had died.  Where even more lurid
images would arise to haunt him.  "That's the thing that's going to
catch up with him eventually.  These places are too public, and
what he does takes too long.  He's been lucky so far, but that
won't last much longer."

"Except that he's started locking the door."

Mulder shook his head slowly.  "I thought that earlier.  But it
could be..."  He thought about it for a minute.  "It might be that
he's been locking them for a while now -- it's just recently that
he's started waiting."

Sullivan looked a little pale.  "Then we can't wait for his luck to
run out."

"We never could.  Let's go."  Mulder pushed the door open and
walked inside.  He opened up the case file, using the notes and
photos to bring the scene to life.  This was the case Sullivan was
most interested in,and Mulder needed to get him involved in it.
Make the man feel useful; give him something to justify his job to
his bosses back home.  "This one happened in one of the stalls."

Mulder led the way over.  "Here.  Similar scenario to the one we
saw this morning.  Lab tests say it was her urine, though."  He
looked up at Sullivan to see if he had a reaction to that fact, but
Sullivan's face was professionally expressionless.  "He either
scared her into urinating or forced her into it.  Then he had her
turn around and kneel over the toilet bowl while he cut her throat.
Interestingly enough, he flushed the toilet before leaving -- the
bowl didn't have nearly as much blood in it as they would have
expected to find normally under those circumstances."

"Interesting?" Sullivan asked in a strangled voice.

"You develop a warped sense of interesting after a while with these
cases."  Mulder looked back down at the file, giving Sullivan a
moment to compose himself, although it was impossible to tell from
the man's face whether he needed it.  Mulder was deliberately
avoiding mentioning the victim's name.  It was easier to do this if
you didn't personalize them, although it was mostly for Sullivan's
sake, as it would have been for Scully's sake if she'd been here.
As she should have been here.  "This time, there was anal
penetration, with a comb that belonged to the victim.  It was again
left in her throat, deeply wedged in."

"Anything else to go on?" Sullivan asked.  This was where Mulder's
expertise would come in handy, because God only knew that there was
nothing he could do to further it, despite the infinite wisdom of
his superiors which had sent Sullivan here to investigate.

Mulder shook his head.  "Nothing that was found.  Again, no
witnesses.  Her mother had taken her and her brother with her
shopping.  The brother is six months old.  According to the mother,
she had taken them both into the women's bathroom.  The boy needed
a diaper change, and the girl asked if she could go and look at one
of the stores immediately outside.  The mother let her go, and when
she came out with her son, the girl was gone."

"God," Sullivan said in a low-voiced exclamation.

"Or someone anyway."

Sullivan took a deep breath and turned to Mulder.  "Is there
anything special about this particular scene?  Anything different
from the others?"

Mulder shrugged.  "There's minor differences between each of them.
The first one is the most interesting -- I want to look at that one
next.  He really took his time there; he'd been thinking about that
one and planning it for a very long time.  That victim was male.
It was also the clumsiest of the killings.  He's never given us as
many clues to go on since then."

Sullivan looked at his watch.  It was after three.  And if there
was nothing more to be gained here, they might as well move on.
Despite the fact that Sullivan had promised to do his best to
deliver results on this, he was capable of recognizing when further
effort was futile.  This case was going to be solved as part of an
overall whole, not by itself.  "Tomorrow.  You need to get that
profile turned in today, and then a meal."

"It can wait."

"So can the crime scene."

Mulder stared at Sullivan.  "The sooner we do this..."

"What?  We could tour all of the sites in one night, but you won't
find much more than you already have in those file folders of
yours.  And while you may have a point about seeing new scenes as
soon as possible, the old ones aren't as urgent.  You can do the
analysis from a table with food in front of you."

"I'm not hungry."

"I am."

"So go get something to eat.  You're not chained to me."

"That could be arranged."  Sullivan found himself wondering idly if
he were going to have to shoot Mulder in the leg to keep him from
running off without him.  It wouldn't look good on his final
report, but then, anyone who knew the man would understand.

"Fine."  Mulder stalked out, Sullivan following him.  Mulder was
angry, but to a certain extent he knew that the other man was
right.  There wasn't anything new at these scenes, and if there had
been something missed by the forensics team, it was too late now.
Too many people traipsed through here every day, obliterating all
traces of possible missed evidence.  The best work he could do was
in his own head, not out in the field.  And for that, he needed to
be alone, preferably back in his hotel room.

****

Mulder took his laptop inside the office building with him to print
out the file.  He could have put it on disk back in his hotel room
and left the laptop there, but with as much travel as he'd been
doing, he didn't trust that one would have stayed magnetized.
Sometimes strange things happened to disks with too much exposure
to airport security.  And aliens.  Serial killers were less
hazardous to equipment, but better to be safe.

Sullivan stayed with him, one step behind as they walked in through
the open floor of agents in the FBI's Los Angeles bureau.  Mulder
ignored him, going straight to the desk which Henderson had
assigned him for the duration of his stay here and which he had no
intention of using more than was absolutely necessary.

A head popping around the corner of the cubicle reminded him why.
"If it isn't the Spookster.  How're you doing on the Mallrat
Murders?"

Mulder didn't look up as he searched for one of the office's disks
to transfer the file onto.  With his luck , the only computers he
was going to be able find would be Macintoshes.  "They called me in
because you guys couldn't do anything with it.  How are you coping
with the performance anxiety?"

The other man's face clouded and grew vicious.  "I see you've
traded in your partner on a newer model.  Didn't she like your
technique in bed?  Or did she leave you for an alien?"

Sullivan watched with fascinated horror as Mulder went a sickly
grey.  "Something like that," Mulder said in an absolutely flat
voice.

The other man grew positively cocky, knowing from Mulder's reaction
that he'd scored a hit.  But before he could say anything else,
Sullivan stepped between the desk Mulder was sitting at and the
open side of the cubicle.  "I think you have business elsewhere."

"And who the hell do you think you are?  Spooky Junior?"

Without seeming to move, Sullivan drew himself up to his full
height and assumed the completely implacable expression that his
training with the Secret Service had only reinforced.  He had
always been an intimidating bastard.  He was now an intimidating
bastard who no one in their right mind would dare cross.

And neither did this man.  Under that level stare, he broke and
turned away, walking quickly in the opposite direction.

Sullivan watched him go, then turned around and looked casually at
Mulder.

"Think you could teach me that?" Mulder asked.

The Secret Service agent shrugged.  "He was a wuss."

Mulder grinned at the remark, and then held up the disk.  "Success.
I just need to give this to one of the secretaries to get it
printed and we're out of here."

"Don't want to print it yourself?"  As soon as the words were out
of his mouth, Sullivan regretted them.  Normally, he wouldn't be
this talkative with someone he was guarding -- it just wasn't done.
But then, he wasn't exactly guarding Mulder.  But for this once, he
wished he'd followed the dictates of his training rather than his
natural instincts, because Mulder looked stricken again, and
Sullivan knew why.  He wanted to get them out of this office as
soon as possible before some other insensitive bastard reminded
Mulder about his missing partner.

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Sullivan continued smoothly,
before Mulder could say a thing.  "I'm getting pretty hungry.  What
say we blow this joint?"

"I'm afraid I neglected to pack the TNT."

"Too bad."

****

Sullivan maneuvered Mulder into eating by the simple expedient of
beating him to the car, and then driving them to a restaurant.
Much to Sullivan's surprise, Mulder didn't say anything about the
underhanded tactics, but almost meekly went inside with him.

After they had ordered, while they were waiting for their meal,
Sullivan realized that Mulder's apparent acceptance of the
inevitability of dinner was more due to his being withdrawn into
himself than any realization that Sullivan would have gotten him to
eat if it had required two large henchmen and a Slimfast shake.  He
didn't know what Mulder was thinking about, if it was the case, or
his partner, but either way, he didn't like it.

To break Mulder out of his self-imposed silence, Sullivan threw out
a question.  "What did you put in that profile anyway?  I've always
been curious about exactly how you people do that.  Seems like
witchcraft."

Mulder looked up, lips twisting in a smile.  "Almost *spooky*,
maybe?"

There was that word again.  Sullivan had never heard the nickname
'Spooky Mulder', but he could tell there was something significant
attached to the phrase, something he wanted to avoid.  "Nah.  But
something I don't understand.  I mean, I read about this string of
killings in Atlanta once, a bunch of young boys, and they came up
with everything but the guy's birthday and favorite ice cream."

"Rocky Road.  Your ice cream of choice for serial killers."
Sullivan looked faintly alarmed at the remark, and Mulder waved a
dismissive hand.  "No.  That was a joke.  But seriously, a lot of
it is just observation, experience and intuition.  For instance, on
this case, the killer is an older man, not a young person.  I put
40 to 50 in my official profile, which is old for one of these,
although not unheard of.  The stressor that touched this off was
the death of the abuser, the person from the killer's past who did
these same things to him.  Possibly the emergence of repressed
memories, but I don't think so.  The killer's been thinking about
this for a long time, dwelling on it.  The death of his abuser
deprived him of an external target to seek revenge on, and when he
couldn't deal with not having that target there anymore, he started
looking for another release."  Mulder's eyes lit up as he put
another thought together, building a new theory.  "An older man
who's spent most of his life caring for a debilitated relative,
possibly a relative in a vegetative state.  He couldn't seek his
revenge while the person was alive, because they weren't aware
enough for it to be satisfying, and his guilt would have been too
great due to their helplessness, although he may have taken his
anger out in little ways.  But it wasn't until they died that he
realized how powerful his drive for revenge was."

Sullivan shook his head.  "Way beyond my level.  I majored in Bible
Lit."

"You did?" Mulder asked, appearing genuinely interested.

"Yeah."  Sullivan looked ashamed of himself.  The waitress arrived
with their plates, and he waited while she set them down.
"Thanks," he said, smiling at her, before picking up his fork and
turning back to Mulder.  "Not your usual educational background.
The guys get a kick out of it; most of them think I'm joking."

"Did you study just the Protestant version of the Bible, or all
versions?  And in the original languages or just translations?"

Sullivan cut a piece of his steak and popped in his mouth, chewing
and swallowing before answering.  "I don't speak Latin or Greek,
but the course material was pretty comprehensive.  Traced the
history of the Bible from its early roots with the Jewish faith,
out to the major variants in use today.  Even covered the Book of
Mormon."  He cut another piece, relieved to notice that Mulder was
eating during the explanation.  One less thing to have to take care
of.  "It's been a pretty useless degree.  I went into the service
after that -- the Marines -- reversed the usual pattern. getting my
degree first.   The military was a more useful path, career-wise."

"Not at all useless.  In fact, if I were still working in Violent
Crimes, I'd get your number.  Someone with a comprehensive
background in religious literary works would be invaluable.  You
don't know how many times a criminal, particularly serial killers,
will latch onto something from one or more religious traditions.
There were several cases when I would have done anything to have
someone available to consult who could identify *which* religious
tradition was involved and give some expert advice."

"You're not with Violent Crimes?  But I thought..." Sullivan shut
his mouth abruptly as Mulder went pale again.  *Good job, asshole.
Put your foot right in your mouth and screw it in tight.*

But Mulder recovered quickly.  "Yeah.  Well, I got out of VCS.
This is temporary.  I'm in charge of the X-Files now."

"Ah."  Under normal circumstances, Sullivan would have indulged his
curiosity on what exactly those were.  But right now, a
diversionary tactic seemed more appropriate.  "What kind of cases
did you have that called for someone with my background?  Maybe I
could tell you whether you would have been wasting your time to
call me at all."

Mulder was successfully diverted, and they had an stimulating
discussion during dinner on the ins and outs of religiously
oriented serial killing.

****

The next morning, Mulder made sure to knock conspicuously on the
door connecting Sullivan's room to his.  Sullivan opened it before
Mulder had knocked more than twice.

"Good to see you're actually there," Mulder said.

"Where'd you think I'd be?"

Mulder quirked his eyebrows.  "After last night, I half-expected
you to spend the night watching over me while I slept."

"How do you know I didn't?"

Instead of getting offended, Mulder dropped his eyes, almost
pouting.  "And I didn't even get tucked in."

Sullivan laughed.  "You're worse than my kids.  What, you didn't
like the bedtime story?"

"You told your kids stories about serial killers to get them to go
to sleep?"

"Doesn't everybody?"  Sullivan switched gears.  "While you were
sleeping in..."

Mulder looked a little taken aback.  Sleeping in?  He'd already
been up, gone running, come back and taken a shower.  And it wasn't
even eight yet.

"...I called and got directions for the place the first victim was
killed.  This one's in the San Fernando Valley.  The guy on the
phone wished me luck in getting there before noon."

"Trapped in a car with you for four hours.  I don't suppose you're
one of those people who insists on listening to country-western
music on long car trips."

"Is there any other kind?" Sullivan asked innocently, handing
Mulder a cup of coffee and a small white paper bag.

"Stop at the store before we get too far.  I need to pick up some
ear plugs."
 

The drive wasn't as long as had been gloomily predicted, and
Sullivan was rather surprised when *Mulder* insisted on turning the
radio on.  He tried to protest that he'd been joking, but Mulder
had none of that.  Which left nothing to do but to sit back and
enjoy the music.

No one met them at the mall when they arrived.  Sullivan took out
his notebook with the directions.  "We're going to the Food
Pavilion in the middle of the mall.  Second floor bathroom, next to
the El Pollo Loco."

*Scully would have teased me about investigating that as an
X-File,* Mulder thought, his throat closing over.  He could almost
hear her now.  'Crazy chicken running amok in a suburban mall.
Definitely something you'll want to look into, Mulder.'

Sullivan looked back at him, and Mulder quickened his steps,
following him.  When they arrived at their destination, he went in
and looked around, ignoring the other people already using the
bathroom, who in turn either ignored him or discreetly fled for the
exit.  Mulder stepped in behind him, and Sullivan glanced over.
"You said that the first was the most interesting."

"Yeah.  You read the file?"

Sullivan nodded.  "Didn't seem too much different than the others."

"It's not.  Not really.  But it's the first, and that makes it more
important."

"Unless there's another one before it that you don't know about."

"Ah, yes.  Therein lies the rub."  Mulder didn't look too dismayed.
"Still, I think someone would have mentioned finding a nude body in
a public restroom."  There were other possibilities.  The killer
could have started with someone else, a practice killing that
failed to fit the parameters of the following murders.  Unlikely in
this case, but possible.  Or even less likely, there *had* been
another killing, exactly like the others, only a second, unrelated
person had stolen the body for their own purposes.  Anything was
possible.

"Very logical of you."

"Thank you.  I took lessons."  From someone who he would most
likely never see again.  Logically, at any rate.  His heart said
something different, that both Scully and Samantha were still
alive, somewhere.  It had to be so.  He couldn't let it not be so.

Sullivan was watching him patiently.  "So what's important about
this one in particular?"

Mulder came back to himself with a start.  "A couple of things.
The victim here was male, thin, blonde-haired, described by his
mother as innocent looking.  Considering the nature of the crime,
that's probably a good description of the killer at the same age."

"Uh huh."  Sullivan was impressed.  He didn't know how much of this
would check out when all was said and done, but if it did, Mulder
was better than having a half dozen psychics running around.

"Then there's the physical evidence.  After this one, he started to
avoid touching them personally.  The others, he either ordered them
to do what he wanted themselves, or he used some sort of implement,
like the comb that we saw with the last victim.  Or the knife that
he's been using to kill them.  The evidence gathered here hasn't
been helpful yet, but it will be when it comes to trial when we
catch him."

"If we catch him."

"We will."  Mulder's cellular phone went off, and he answered it.
"Mulder."  He listened for a while, then nodded.  "We'll be there
as soon as possible."  He folded up the phone and stuck it back
into his pocket, a sick half-smile on his face.  "There's been
another killing.  Santa Monica this time.  A girl."

"So soon?  The last one was just two days ago.  Not even that."

"That's the way it is in the business.  He's been doing this too
long.  The thrill from the last one wasn't enough.  So he had to do
it again."

"I thought you said that the thrill of getting caught was
substituting for that."

Mulder shrugged.  "Maybe he changed his mind.  Maybe he realized it
was too risky.  Or it didn't live up to his expectations.  Didn't
satisfy the need the way that the killings do."  He smiled again,
still with a sickly lopsided look.  "If that were enough, he'd just
be a garden variety exhibitionist and we wouldn't be here at all."

"Suits me."

****

This time they got to the crime scene before the evidence had all
been removed, within two hours of the time that the body had been
discovered.  It would have been sooner if not for the traffic.
Police cars were still in front of the mall, and the building was
crowded with curious onlookers.

Mulder and Sullivan pushed their way through the crowd, showing
their badges as necessary.  A police officer directed them to the
site where the murder had taken place, in a bathroom in a back
corner of the mall, opposite the fountain.

The forensics team was waiting for them.  The body had been
removed, but the evidence collection process was still well
underway.

A dark haired woman met them halfway, holding out her hand.  "Linda
Lewis.  Forensics.  I understand you're working this case for the
FBI, Agent Mulder."

He nodded to her.  "Word gets around, I see."

She smiled back at him, then got down to business.  "Take a look at
this."

Mulder followed her across the room, Sullivan right behind him.
She pointed to the wall next to the urinal.  He crouched down and
looked.  "Well, I'll be..."

It was a bloody fingerprint, half-hidden by the bulk of the urinal,
not easily visible unless you looked right at it.  A large
fingerprint.  Too large for a child.

"He was careless," Mulder said.  "Something went wrong."

"I'll say," Lewis said.  "Look at this."  She waved at the room,
shaking her head.

The body was gone, loaded onto a gurney even as Mulder had walked
into the room.  But everything else was still in place.  And blood
was splashed everywhere.  Not just around the urinal, but spread
out over the floor.

"Something went really wrong," Mulder said.  He looked around.
"Where are her clothes?"  Before anyone could answer, he spotted
them lying in a heap half under one of the sinks.  He put on a pair
of plastic gloves and looked at them, touching them carefully.  A
white T-shirt, none too clean, a pair of very small denim jeans,
and a pair of pink silk underwear.  He gingerly went through the
pockets of the jeans.  Nothing.

He stood up, a faintly disappointed look on his face.  "I thought
I might find something..."

Lewis shook her head.  "We already went through those.  Haven't
bagged them yet; that's a little farther down the list.  Want to
see what she was carrying?"

Mulder nodded.  Lewis left the room and came back with a plastic
bag.  Mulder carefully upended it in one of the sinks.  Three
condoms.  A plastic wrapper, about a half inch wide and four inches
long.  A movie stub.  Forty three dollars and nineteen cents.  And
an ID card proclaiming the dead girl to be 22 years old.

"Find what you were looking for?"

"She was a prostitute."

"Excuse me?"

"That's what caused this."  Mulder waved at the blood-spattered
room, talking his conclusions out loud and not really caring if
anyone else could follow them or not.  "He never used much force on
his victims.  Not until after he killed them.  So when he forced
her to strip and told her to do whatever was first on his list
today, she sized him up and propositioned him.  Probably thought
she was saving her life.  Maybe thought it would be a thrill."

"And?"

"And he lost it."  Mulder shook his head, imagining it.  The killer
wanted pre-pubescent children.  Non-sexual.  The apparent age at
which he had undergone the majority of his abuse.  Not too many
prostitutes of that age.  Except this was L.A.  And a drug addict
might very well look considerably younger than her years.  Not
innocent, but thin enough to fit the killer's requirements.  Mulder
didn't want to think about who the dead prostitute's clientele had
been.  That was an entirely different kind of crime.  Not his job.

He dutifully continued cataloguing his impressions of the scene,
but his mind was on stand-by.  If he was right about his profile of
this person, then the case was virtually over.  As he had continued
collecting data and processing what he knew, he had been refining
the profile.  And Mulder felt that it was a near certainty that
this man had been arrested as juvenile for some crime, most likely
minor, such as shoplifting.  Something which his father or mother
would have insisted on making into formal charges, to 'teach the
boy a lesson'.  And that meant that his fingerprints would most
likely be on file, just waiting to be matched up with this newest
piece of evidence.

****

"So that's it?" Sullivan asked.  The fingerprint had been clear
enough to permit easy identification, and once Forensics was done
with it, it had been put through the computer.  Which had turned up
a match relatively quickly, in far less time than he and Mulder had
spent on leg work, much less how much time the combined police
forces involved had spent.

"That's it," Mulder confirmed with a weary nod.  "The police will
do the rest.  I may get called back when this goes to court, and
the paperwork will follow us for the rest of our lives, but that's
it."

"Anti-climatic."

"Envisioning breaking into his house with a search warrant,
throwing him to the ground and maybe roughing him up a bit while
you get the handcuffs on?"

"It'd be a good start."

"Yeah, well, if you want to get in on it, talk to Henderson.  He'll
get you in with the people who actually make the arrest.  But it
usually isn't that dramatic."  Sometimes it was worse, but at least
this time, there was no actual *need* for him to be involved.

"No.  All I need is to make sure that he's the same person who
killed Kristin Duncan, and that he's properly convicted of the
crime."

"Better start looking in the paper."

"For what?"

"A house.  You'll be here a while."

Sullivan shrugged.  "Whatever it takes.  They'll probably let me
fly back after the arrest is made."

Mulder studied him.  "Want me to have the desk clerk send you up a
copy of the Los Angeles Times?  I can tell him on my way out.  My
flight leaves at eight a.m."

Sullivan started to retort, then looked at Mulder, really looked at
him.  "Where are they sending you?  Out on another one of these?"

Mulder nodded.  "They want to.  But my flight's back to D.C.  I
have unfinished business."

*I'll bet you do,* Sullivan thought.  *And I'll bet it has
something to do with someone named Scully.*  But he didn't pry and
wouldn't.

****

Mulder sat, staring at the curtain between coach and first class,
on the plane back to D.C.  If only it were that easy to find
Scully.  A fingerprint left in an unlikely place, a search warrant,
and then that would be that.  There was no way it would ever be
that easy, given the forces arrayed against them.  But he would
find her.  He would get her back.  And she would be all right.  He
could live with himself no other way.
 

-the end-
 

---mercutio@europa.com---
"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.  You may have to work for it, however."
--Richard S. Bach, "Illusions"

From mercutio@europa.com Wed Jan 01 19:37:33 1997