***Chapter Three***
Cherry Hill Municipal Building
"You will have all permissions ready to go before we get back. Am I clear?"
"Agent Scully . . . "
"Do you want our help or not? Or should Agent Mulder and I go home?"
"Agent Mulder . . . " The ASAC looked at me in desperation. I just grinned and folded my arms.
"Well?" I was very glad she aimed that look at him, not me.
"We'll do our best, Agent Scully." I believe he was shivering. He topped her by at least a foot, was twice her weight and was maybe her father's age, but she had him shaking in his boots. There are times I think she got around the Bureau's height restriction because no one noticed how short she actually was.
"Good." She picked up the folders for the victims' families. "We'll be back after we do proper interviews." She turned on her heel and left. I followed.
There was no one home in the first place we visited. There was a for-sale sign in the front yard, and the house looked like it was a model for a housing development - neatly kept and furnished but no one lived there. On the second floor, I could see a baby's crib mobile in a window.
I looked at Scully. "He never went home. He's staying with friends or his parents until he sells the house and he can afford to move. He sent his mother to pack his clothes and give away hers. There's a fully furnished nursery. The file says there were no other children."
"There's no other address or phone number in his file, Mulder. We'll have to track him down at work. Idiots." She stared at the mobile for a moment and walked back to the car.
I shook off memories of a different house and got behind the wheel.
"Who's next, Scully?"
"William Browne. His wife was the second one killed. He has other kids, so I don't think he's moved."
* * *
Liam Browne seated us in his kitchen and, without asking, put up a pot of coffee and poured a box of cookies into a bowl, which he put on the table before he sat down.
"Why has it taken so long for the FBI to be involved?"
Scully and I looked at each other in confusion and anger.
"Mr. Browne . . . "
"As I said at the door, please call me Liam."
Scully nodded. "Liam, I'm Dana. The Philadelphia office has been involved in this case since shortly after Mrs. Browne died. Are you telling us that no one has either interviewed you or kept you informed?" Her eyes flashed.
"I've heard *nothing* since I identified Kerry's body, and the municipal police won't even answer my phone calls. So much for professional courtesy." He broke the cookie he held in his hand.
I thought back to his file.
"You're a police academy instructor, right?"
"Yeah, in Trenton. What's going on?" Trenton, New Jersey's capital city, was maybe twenty minutes away.
"We'll find out. I promise you, Liam. We'll find out." Scully's smile was not at all pretty. "Now, please tell us what you can remember about Kerry's last day."
"Coffee's done. How do you take it?" We let him take his time filling mugs and a milk pitcher and bringing it all to the table. "I can't stall any more, can I?"
I shook my head. "I know it's difficult, Liam."
"Damn, I miss her. She wasn't classically beautiful, you know. Not like you." Scully ducked her head. "But she was the most beautiful woman in the world to me. She was . . . she was bright and kind and so good. I think thirty years ago, or fifty years ago, she would have been a nun. She loved going to church. We met at church." He rubbed his eyes. "She . . . she loved kids. She loved teaching them, and she was a good teacher. The best. And she loved having them. She wanted a dozen."
Scully's face was tight. I wanted to touch her hand, but she wouldn't let me. She'd just tell me she was fine.
"Go on, Liam." Her voice was tight, too.
He looked at her. He must have caught something because he closed his eyes. "That day. What had she done that day? She got up early as usual and got the kids ready for school and day care. I made breakfast and the lunches. I like to cook; she hated it. Anyway, I left for work. She took the kids in the minivan to school and day care and she went on to the high school where she works . . . worked. Damn, it's been months." He took a sip of coffee. "She was supposed to go shopping after work. The older kids had a sitter and the younger kids were at day care until five."
"Where would she shop?" I put my cup down.
"One of the malls. I don't know which one. She needed clothes; said she was tired of her old maternity clothes. Kerry hated buying new clothes and maternity stuff is expensive as hell, but she was looking forward to this. Said she was looking forward to the time for herself. And she was going grocery shopping afterwards. Kids eat up everything."
"Was she supposed to be by herself?"
"Yeah, Mr . . . Mulder. She liked it that way."
"Just Mulder. Did she buy anything?"
"I don't think so." He ran his hands through his hair.
"No credit card records?"
"No, and I know she was going to save the cash for the food."
Before we could ask any more questions, a baby began to cry.
"Excuse me. Mikey needs me." He left the kitchen and climbed the stairs.
"Well, Mulder?"
"I don't know yet. Except that we now know more than the local cops *or* the Philly guys do, and that's from one interview."
"I'm going to hang these inept fools out to dry. They don't do their jobs right, and then they want *you* to bail them out. They can kiss their careers goodbye."
"Scully, where's your loyalty?"
"Right where it belongs, Mulder. With Liam Browne and a man hurting so much he can't bear to go home. And with two other widowers." That ASAC wasn't going to know what hit him.
Liam came in with a little boy who looked about eighteen months old in his arms. The child was rubbing his eyes. He looked at me and at Scully, and then turned to cling to his father.
"Sorry. Mikey hates to be alone at the moment. And he's not fond of strangers. I'm worried about what's going to happen when I have to go back to work." Liam carefully sat down with Mikey on his knees.
Mikey didn't know how lucky he was. His father wouldn't reject him one day and hug him the next; wouldn't spend half of Mikey's adolescence in alcohol induced rages and the other half in coldly calculating dismissal. His father wouldn't think of him as "merchandise." Even this tragedy hadn't made Liam into a man like my father.
I smiled at the little one. He blinked his eyes. They were clear and blue, with thick dark lashes and dark hair. I reached out to touch it, after looking at Liam for permission. It was so soft.
"Kerry was black Irish. Mikey looks just like her." Mikey smiled at me and held out his arms.
"May I?"
Liam nodded.
"Come here, big guy. Oh, you are big, too." I settled him down on my lap.
"Mulder, you're a natural." Scully grinned.
"Do you have any kids, Mulder?"
"Nope. I'm a born uncle." And if that woman in the coffee shop was my sister *and* she was telling the truth, I was one in reality, too. But since I'm not likely to see them, they might as well not exist.
Both Liam and Scully looked confused at what I said, but didn't press.
"Is there anything else you can tell us, Liam?" I dangled my hand in front of the baby, who laughed and tried to capture my fingers.
"Wha..? No. She never picked up the kids. I got phone calls wanting to know what had happened. The next day, someone found her in a dumpster by a fast food place, her belly . . . " Liam buried his head in his hands.
"Dada?" Mikey started to cry.
"Mikey, Dada's just fine."
"Let me hold him."
I gave the little one back to his father. He sat rocking the child.
"Mr. Browne? Liam . . . I hate to ask this of you now . . . "
"Yes?" His voice was strained, and he didn't look at Scully.
"I don't trust what anyone has done until now. Do we have your permission to disinter your wife so that I may autopsy her?"
"You?"
"I'm a pathologist."
"She's the best around, Liam. If there are any clues left to find, she'll find them."
Liam sat for a moment, patting Mikey.
"Yes, you may. Anything to catch that bastard."
"Thank you. We'll do our best."
Mikey still in his arms, Liam showed us to the door.
"If I think of anything more, I'll call you."
"Thanks. And we'll keep you informed." Scully wrote our cellphone numbers on a card and tucked it into his shirt pocket, since his arms were full of baby.
I kissed Mikey good-bye and we walked down to the car.
"You really are good with kids."
I shrugged. I like kids. We climbed into the car.
"Mulder?"
"Yeah, Scully?"
"What did you mean by calling yourself a 'born uncle'?"
I turned the key. "Organisms have offspring in order to insure that their genes continue to the next generation. Human offspring require long-term care. The presence of childless adults means that there would be a pool of potential care givers if the original parents were killed. Meanwhile, it is evolutionarily reasonable to care for a sibling's children since they share almost the same genes. Therefore, I was born to be an uncle."
"There are gay men with children, Mulder."
"I'm sure there always have been."
"You'd be a good father."
I didn't answer her. One learns how to parent from one's own parents, and the lessons I learned were not ones I cared to pass on.
***Chapter Four***
We found the other two families. They'd at least been interviewed by the Philadelphia office, but not very well. We got some interesting information to correlate - information that did not exist in the files we were given. One was the fact that all had gone shopping on their last day.
Scully was fuming again by the time we returned to the municipal building. The ASAC, Steven Goldberg, wanted to talk to her until he got a good look at her face. He may have been incompetent, but he was not a fool. He got out of her way.
She went straight for a phone.
"Kim? This is Agent Scully. Is AD Skinner available?" The ASAC turned pure white.
"Sir? I'd like to report some gross negligence . . . "
"Agent Mulder? Is she really talking to Skinner?" One of the junior agents looked at me.
"AD Skinner has the highest respect for Agent Scully."
The man blinked for a moment, but I know my face had no expression. It's one of my best tools.
"Were you able to trace Mr. Martin?" I decided to get down to business.
"Mr. Martin?" He looked confused.
"The husband of the first victim. Their house was empty."
"Oh. No. Do you want me to get on it, Agent Mulder?"
I looked at my partner, who was still listing complaints. The man followed my glance and scurried away to his computer.
I sat down with the notes from the interviews. The same story over and over again - a young pregnant woman disappeared sometime during a shopping trip and turned up dead the next day in a fast food dumpster, her baby torn from her body. The fetuses were not found anywhere. There were several malls in the area, and more shopping centers, and no McDonalds or Burger King or whatever had been used twice. Their cars were found abandoned miles away, the seats stained with the owner's blood, but no useful fingerprints.
I turned these facts over and over again in my mind. Pregnant. Shopping. Fast food. Fetuses. Which were important? What clue was I missing? What would make this fit? Did they stop for a bite before shopping?
"Agent Mulder? Agent Mulder!"
I woke up from my trance, blinking. "Yes?" It was my scurrying friend.
"This fell out of the folder this morning. I . . . well, I'd rather give it to *you*." He stole a glance at Scully.
It was a note, a bloody note wrapped in a plastic bag.
"It was found with the second body. The others may have been lost in the dumpsters."
"No one . . . what is your name, Agent?"
"Matt Stein. I'm sorry about that." He looked at Scully, who was just setting the phone down. "After last night, we were told not to cooperate with the . . . you know."
"Why was no mention of this made in the report?"
"I don't know. It's some sort of Bible reference." Stein gave me a pair of latex gloves so I could take it out of the bag. It read "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
"King James Version." Scully looked over my arm.
"Is that important?" Stein looked confused. "It's a standard translation, isn't it? I mean, something most Christians use?"
"Agent Scully, this is Agent Stein."
She nodded at him. "It was the most popular Protestant Bible for a long time. It's still the most popular among Fundamentalist groups. Catholics prefer a different Bible."
"I can't blame them. The other Bibles seem so dry compared to the KJV language." I stared at the note.
"So the UNSUB is a fundamentalist Christian of some sort?" Stein bounced a little. "At least, he's probably some sort of a Christian."
"It's an Old Testament quote, from Genesis, so it's not necessarily a Christian who left it."
Stein looked me strangely. "It doesn't seem like a Jewish thing, to put a quote from a Christian translation on a dead body."
"How do you mean?"
Stein frowned. "Most Jews aren't religious, so they wouldn't use a Bible quote anyway. Those that are probably wouldn't put a Bible quote on a dead body. If they were to do that, they'd either use a Jewish translation or do it themselves or just leave it in Hebrew."
I nodded. I still had to figure out what the quote meant. The other notes were long gone. "Thanks again, Agent Stein." He nodded at both of us and went back to his computer search.
"At least one person here has some sense." She sounded grim.
"What did Walter say?"
"Walter is fuming. He's starting a full investigation." She looked extremely satisfied. "Hungry, Mulder? It's about lunch time, and I have an afternoon of autopsies ahead of me."
"Where do you want to go for lunch?" She chose a diner, which meant I spent a half hour playing with crackers and the soup of the day, which was at least fun, and she could steal my fries. Or think she was stealing them - I order them for her.
Cooper Hospital
Then I watched her cut apart some dead women. There were only two of them, because we still couldn't track down one family and the other refused permission. One was Kerry Browne. I could see Mikey's black hair, but four months in a sealed casket had destroyed everything else.
I watched her lay open the woman's womb again, cutting the dark stitches the previous coroner had made, reopening those wounds. I had a flash of other hands - fleshy, masculine hands - and a different instrument, and a glimpse of dark blood.
I must have gasped.
"Mulder, what's wrong?"
"I'm fine, Scully. I just need to get some air."
She looked at me but just nodded as I bolted from the room. I leaned against the wall in the hallway, and tried to stop shivering.
"Agent Mulder?"
"Wh . . . Mr. Browne." He had Mikey in a stroller. "What are you doing here?"
"Kerry's . . . " He closed his eyes.
I nodded. "Agent Scully's in there now. She's . . . in good hands."
"Agent Scully doesn't seem the type for this sort of work."
"She's the best at what she does - in or out of the autopsy room." I knelt to tickle Mikey.
"You admire her a lot."
"She's one of the two people I trust most in this world. My . . . lover is the other." His eyes widened at this. "We're partners, Mr. Browne. We're best friends. We're practically brother and sister."
*And she's entirely available if you feel up to her standards, and are ready to date an armed woman - with a somewhat overprotective "brother" who is also armed. When you are ready to date at all.*
Liam clearly had worshiped his wife and was nowhere near ready to look again.
"I . . . see. How long will she be in there?"
"She just got started. She's usually thorough. Maybe a couple of hours. Do you want to find some coffee or something? Kerry will be . . . treated respectfully, I can assure you."
He nodded. We found the hospital cafeteria, and I played with the baby while he talked. He told me about meeting Kerry and their courtship and marriage. The baby cooed and smiled at me, and tried to say "Mulder," and when he needed to be changed, I did it. He sat happily in my arms and let me feed him bits of muffin. Liam asked about Scully and I told him how brilliant she was and what a good shot she was and that I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for her. He needed to talk to someone who didn't know Kerry at all. I could see the catharsis working on him. I didn't know what he felt about Scully, but then he wasn't ready to feel much besides grief yet.
It was no effort at all on my part to not talk about my own personal life. I don't think he'd have heard anyway.
Scully found us still there two hours later. She lifted an eyebrow at the sight of me snapping Mikey's overalls but didn't say anything much. Liam got her a cup of coffee.
"Agent Scully . . . did you find anything?" She'd put a file on the table.
She nodded. "I think I found out a little more about what the killer used, and even some scraps of clothing. Kerry fought. You should know that - Kerry fought."
Liam closed his eyes for a moment. "Thank you. I kept asking before, but no one could tell me. It doesn't make it easier, but it's something I needed to know."
"I . . . .said a prayer for her when I was finished and put her together again."
He nodded. "I'd better be going. The kids should be back from school soon and I need to be there for them. I'm going back to work next week." He smiled at me and put Mikey back in his stroller. I could hear "Bye-bye, Mullah!" all the way out the door.
"Did she fight, Scully?"
"Yeah. Her fingernails were full of skin and threads, and the original cuts were jagged, as if she were twisting away."
"None of that . . . "
"Was in the original report. I know. Incompetents." She was too tired to get angry. "Of course she fought. It was her life and her baby." She took her hair out of the ponytail. "Mulder, how are you? You ran out of the room pretty fast."
"I'm fine, Scully." There was that look again. "What tool did he use?"
"A Swiss Army knife. The cuts are consistent with the long blade. I used my own for comparison."
"A real Boy Scout."
"No Boy Scout would do that sort of good turn, Mulder." She finished her coffee and pulled her hair back again. "Back into the breach. You might as well stay here. Kerry's autopsy report is in this folder." I nodded and watched her walk slowly out of the hospital cafeteria.
She was still exhausted from Wyoming. I could see it in her eyes. If any of the people here had been even barely competent, she wouldn't need to do any of this. And maybe she wouldn't have had to cut open Mrs. Anderson, who'd only been dead a couple of weeks.
My arm itched, but I ignored it. Instead, I focused my attention on the report. Scully has atrocious handwriting, but I've had years of practice reading it. I asked her once if it were a special course she took in medical school. She told me there was, but she'd tested out of it.
Kerry had fought, but the UNSUB had bound her hands - there were burns from the tape, and even *they* had to note down that she'd been found that way. There was bruising on her face and a broken nose that had not been noted. She'd died from blood loss from her Swiss Army knife c-section/abortion. He'd hacked her open. For a moment, I had to fight to keep the coffee down. I was happy that Mikey had eaten my muffin. And then I had another flash of something warm and wet, and all I wanted to do was scream. Instead, I sat in that cafeteria and held my arms to my chest. I got a look or two, I suppose, but I attracted less attention than if I'd gone with my first impulse.
I don't remember all of the next two hours. I know I got some more coffee, and I know I read the report several times and took a lot of notes, and I know I kept thinking about that Biblical quote, but it doesn't seem to be enough to do to spend two hours. Scully looked even more exhausted when she found me a second time. She drank from my cup before she even said anything.
"I would have gotten you your own, Scully."
"I know. Mrs. Anderson didn't have anything incriminating in her fingernails. The UNSUB must have bound her hands first. He's learning from experience."
"Lord, I *hate* a smart serial killer." Scully smiled. My good turn for the day was complete.
She handed me the second report. "Let's go back to the hotel. I need a Jacuzzi before dinner."
"Okay, but I'm driving." She just nodded.