Colton's Case

It was July. It was July in Virginia. It was July in Virginia with old, cranky windows and the building's a/c unit on the fritz.

Anne Hadrian wasn't a happy camper. In protest against the heat she had taken to spreading her blankets and some pillows on the fire escape outside the kitchen window so she could sleep at night, stale garbage creaking up to her on sluggish wafts of thick air. And during the day she went with Mulder to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, where she hid in the basement studying while he worked. It was somewhat cooler underground, even if the air was just as snarky about moving.

They had started her schooling together-basic algebra, biology, and classic English literature. She was buried in a Thomas Hardy novel in the other room when Mulder's phone rang. He'd gone out for coffee-how, on a day so hot she had no idea-and promised to bring her a tall cold something. Probably not beer, dammit. But he'd left to phone unmanned.

She could let the machine pick it up. Or she could answer it.

Of course, she couldn't resist.

"Mulder," she intoned crisply into the receiver. The great thing about Mulder was that his first name could belong to either a man or a woman, fooling the caller.

"Anne, what the hell are you doing?"

Shit. Busted.

"Hi Scully! What's shaking, mama?"

Dead silence. Then the receiver rendered Scully's judgment in measured tones.

"Don't ever answer interoffice lines with that name. Blevins will have Mulder's head."

"Can I use yours, then? And how do you know if it's interoffice?"

"The red lights blink which line is ringing. If none of the lights are blinking, it's interoffice. And don't ever say you're me."

"Gotcha. No lights, no using your name, no using Mulder's name. Can I use Blevins' name?"

"Is Mulder there?"

"No-Yes. He just walked in. With a can of crack, which is good or I'd have to do something awful to him."

A can of crack was what Anne called Coke. They exchanged the soda for the phone. The can snapped open, with a satisfying hiss and bubble, and danced down her throat.

"Sure," Mulder was saying into the phone. "We can be there in about an hour."

Anne put her things in her bag. It was a musty thing that she had aired out from the back of a closet. Supposedly Mulder had bought it during his Oxford days to hold his books. It was leather, a satchel that had the worn-in feel of a family heirloom. Slowly she was improving the smell and shine, with liberal applications of lamb's foot oil and tea bags.

"And where is there, pray tell o great paranormal investigator of the FBI?" Anne asked once he'd hung up.

He pulled on his suit jacket. "Baltimore. Homicide."

"Totally awesome." She finished the Coke in three gulps and dumped it in the trash on the way out.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Anne was master of the art of 'I am so invisible, you can't see how good I am'. Even with her heels sniping at the formal carpeting of the high-rise office, wearing a tawdry sequined top that went out of style with the disco beat, she was a fly on the wall. Cops and agents just parted for her.

Of course, gluing herself to Mulder probably helped. He really did look respectable. Until he opened his mouth.

Scully was in the office occupied by the deceased. Well, not anymore-he'd been moved out earlier. Anne sniffed-he hadn't been dead in there that long. The smell hadn't penetrated the furnishings.

"Hey Scully," Mulder greeted her from behind. She didn't even flinch.

"George Usher, found dead this morning," she began without preamble. "All windows locked form the inside, no evidence on the security cameras. This follows a college girl killed in her eight-by-ten cinderblock dorm room with all windows and doors locked from the inside. Both victims had their livers ripped out."

"Ouch." was Mulder's only comment.

Scully raised her eyebrow in a silent snort. "Tom's a friend of mine. He asked us to look into it, as a consult."

"So how's this an X-File? Besides the obvious impossible entry. Maybe telekinesis…"

"It's not. It's a favor for a friend."

"But why didn't he just come to me? Not that he can't go to you, or anything."

Scully snapped on her gloves, silently handing Anne a pair. She put them on, entranced by the unfolding story.

"You make people uncomfortable, Mulder. They think you're theories are a bit…"

"Spooky?" Mulder supplied. Anne saw his face shift into the tease he put on for Scully-lower lip starting to creep out, eyes a hint wider. "Do you think I'm spooky?"

Anne snorted. "Dad. Without even going into what you do for a living, may I point out that you think crunched-up Oreos in milk constitutes cereal, you mix all leftovers with fried eggs, and watch reruns of the original Godzilla and King Kong at least twice a week. That isn't just creepy, it's criminal. Particularly the leftovers."

"You just don't like me messing with the food you cook."

"Hell no. I put effort into that shit. If it needed fried eggs I would've made it with fried eggs. You ruin things. Routinely."

He stuck his tongue out at her. She returned the favor.

Anne could hear people behind her saying Agent Scully was inside. Anne promptly slipped over to where Scully's crime scene kit was set up, watching out the corner of her eye.

Scully introduced Colton and Mulder, who shook Colton's hand while his own was stuffed in latex. Anne decided Colton, with his flipped-back hair and twitchy nose, was some kind of preppy bastard bullshit.

He quickly confirmed her assessment. "So, Mulder. Was this the work of little green men?"

"Grey," Mulder informed him placidly.

"What?"

"Grey men. You said 'green men'. A Reticulan's skin tone is actually grey. They're famous for their extraction of terrestrial livers, due to iron depletion in the Reticulan galaxy."

He said this in seriousness, daring Colton to contradict him. Colton made a face but didn't say a word.

Oh, those two were going to be fun to work with.

Mulder came over beside her, leaned down in her ear as Colton and Scully talked. "What's the first rule of a crime scene?"

She whispered back. "Observe every detail and the big picture simultaneously."

"Okay. What do you see?"

"Usher was a neat freak with a spotless office."

"Does anything seem out of place based on that?"

She looked, trying to see as he saw. "Paper under the vent from a wastebasket."

"Let's check it out."

She had told him she wanted to work for the FBI. He'd promised to show her how it was done.

They knelt together. She bent over the paper, pushing some of her spiky hair back. "Black gunk. Like little toenail clippings."

"Good catch," he picked them up with a pair of tweezers so they could see better. It glinted tiredly.

She looked up at the vent, then stood, eyes close to the screws. "Paint's been scrapped at, like the screws were taken out."

Mulder supplanted her to dust for fingerprints.

Colton felt complied to pipe up. "What's he doing? Hey Mulder, that's a six-by-eighteen vent. Even if a Reticulan could get through, it's screwed in place."

Anne and Mulder looked at each other, then back at the loops and whorls revealed by the powder.

A long, lean print, clear as day. Hot damn.