Title: Overreach-Part 1
Author: Carrie, carrie42@mad.scientist.com
Rating: I guess PG or PG-13 for some gorry stuff.
Spoilers: None
Summery: Mulder and Scully investigate some mysterious deaths.
Disclaimer: I know, I know, they're not mine, I'm just gonna borrow them for a bit. I'll give them back in the same condition I found them. Promise.
FBI Basement Office
July 25, 7:59AM
Mulder entered his office, making a right to hang his coat on the rack next to the door.
"'Bout time..."
"And good morning to you too." Mulder crossed the room and sat opposite his partner in front of his desk. She offered him one of her infamous looks before checking her wrist watch.
"Mulder, you're officially...two hours, fifty-nine minutes and twenty-four seconds late. What happened to you?" She looked up from her wrist, crossed her arms in front of her and leaned back while waiting for his answer. Mulder adjusted himself awkwardly in his seat. He cleared his throat.
"I tried your cell, your home phone...no answer. Mulder?" He found a paper clip sitting on the edge of the desk to be suddenly very interesting. "I thought to myself, 'No, not Mulder. He wouldn't forget to meet me here after he'd called me at three A.M. last night, insisting that I come down here early this morning to see some new discovery.'" She briefly checked her watch again. "About three hours early to be precise." There was a small coughing sound from his direction.
Mulder kept his head down and fiddled with the paper clip in his hand, hoping to avoid impaling himself upon the glare he was sure was being sent his way. A few minutes of silence passed and he thought it might be safe to look up. Ouch. She was still sitting in the same position, arms crossed and delivering a look that could make the toughest of grown men cry. "I, um, slept in." Her posture remained the same.
"You slept in?"
"Well, ya," A short pause. "I was up till four putting together those slides." He gestured toward the slides set up to his right. She swiveled in the chair so that she faced the slides and motioned with her hand for him to get up and show her what she'd waited for over three hours for. He stood and nervously walked towards the slides, not quite trusting her enough at that moment to turn his back to her. He hadn't seen her that mad since...well, it'd been a while.
The first slide showed a man lying in a wet, grassy field, his complexion an interesting shade of blue and his body sickeningly bloated, so much so that the clothes he lay in were barely able to contain the once person held within them. "John Peftra, age twenty-three, was found dead by a farmer yesterday. This picture was taken from the fence. Notice that their aren't any footprints anywhere surrounding the body. Footprints which should have left clear imprints in the wet grass." He clicked to the next slide.
"Mulder, couldn't he have been there before it rained?" She raised an eyebrow at him and her position relaxed a bit. He turned momentarily to look at her with a sly smile.
The next slide showed a man in overalls standing talking to a cop, who was taking notes in front of a barbed wire fence. The body could be seen in the background, giving an idea of the distance the picture had been taken at. Scully guessed it to be about twenty feet beyond the fence. "A statement taken from the farmer, Mr. Phill Trenton, stated that he'd been out earlier that morning, after the rain, to tend to his cows in the adjoining field," Mulder turned again to give her a brief smile, "Apparently one had somehow gotten itself caught in the barbed wire fence. The footprints he left in the grass when freeing the animal are still there. When he was asked about seeing the body he stated that while freeing the cow he stopped to wave hello to two neighbors of his, Joy Bellarpe and her boyfriend, John Peftra as they passed by his farm on foot, going for an early morning walk. It was a few minutes later that he noticed the body from the fence."
"The saw the deceased alive along the road?" Scully adjusted herself in her chair, not at all surprised by the announcement made by her partner. She'd heard stranger things in the seven years they worked together.
"You guessed it." Mulder continued to show slides, ranting all the while about the X-File he'd stumbled upon when giving a friend in Buffalo a call the night before. Scully pretended to listen to the details as she sat there, her attention given to the discarded mangled paper clip. It was soon back to Mulder moments later when she realized he hadn't been talking for at least a full minute. "Scully...?"
"Um-hmm?" She looked up from her new toy toward the picture being projected. An instant smile spread over her face which was soon put into hiding as her partner spun around. She'd almost forgotten about her temporary escape from boredom as she waited for him this morning.
"Where did this come from?"
She tried her best to look oblivious. "I couldn't tell you." She had to raise her coffee cup in front of her face to hide the smile. She knew that thing would come in handy some day.
The projector was showing a picture of Mulder asleep with his head down on the desk, his head resting on his arms and facing to the side. He had a pencil stuck to his forehead, a PostIt Note sticking out of his mouth and on his glasses, which were half off of his face and draped down across it, he had a trail of drool running along the lenses.
The coffee cup was no longer doing it's job at hiding her amusement. The anger and embarrassment in his face were too much. 'Pay back time. That'll teach him to keep me waiting here for three hours.' She silently mused to herself. "I'd always wondered at where you'd gotten that strange mark on your forehead." She joked as she gestured toward the picture.
Mulder glared at her a moment then clicked on to the next slide before he turned around to face it. There was a picture of a discolored mark on the dead man's arm, a shape resembling the cent symbol. "No one's been able to explain the origin of this mark. It doesn't appear to be related to the cause of death, but no one can be sure."
"How so?" She was still fighting the smile, the tone of his voice made it clear that he was doing his best to seem as if he'd been able to move past the incident.
"Well, after hearing the story, no one in the town wants to go near the body. Actually, I was kind of hoping you'd be able to do the autopsy, find out what's going on inside there." He turned to face her and gave her the most innocent face her could muster while discretely flicking through the slides in the background. Scully's look of disapproval changed when she saw the napping picture pop up in the background.
"All right, Mulder, all right," she laughed, "just put that thing away."
* * *
Dimmy's Motel
July 25, 9:07PM
"Mulder, I don't see why we can't just start this in the morning." Scully whined as she slumped down on the end of her motel room bed. "It's nine o'clock, I'm tired and I haven't even had dinner yet."
Mulder look physically pained by her comment. "Scully, I wanted to get out there while there's still a bit of daylight to take a look at the crime scene. If we wait till tomorrow who knows what could have been tampered with."
"Mulder," she sighed inwardly, "I think if there were going to be any tampering done," she paused, "that ship has sailed.... The police have already been there."
"I just think we should go take a look before it rains again and makes our chance of finding something missed slim to none." He looked out the window next to the door for effect. "Looks like rain, Scully."
He looked at her with eyes so big she thought they just might pop out of their sockets. "No, Mulder. No." She purposefully shifted her gaze to the window. "Like I said, I haven't even had dinner yet. I'm starving. Nothing you could say can could possibly make me change my mind."
* * *
Highway 47
July 25, 9:17PM
Scully sat in the passenger seat of their Rent - A - Car munching on a sandwich from Dimmy's Diner. "Mulder, what did that guy say to you on the phone last night?" She spoke between bites.
"Just what I told you Scully, about the murder." He looked over at her briefly before returning his eyes to the road.
"No, I mean...you've got that eager look in your eyes again. I can't help but get the feeling that you're holding something back." His only response was a sly smile while he watched the road. "Mulder..." He slowed and turned onto a dirt road. "Mulder, what are you holding back?"
"Look Scully, we're here." He gestured with one finger lifted from the steering wheel to a farmers field. He pulled over and they exited the car, the Look from his partner pretended to go unnoticed as he walked over to the barbed wire fence and looked out into the field.
There was a trail of footprints leading into the field about ten feet to their left through a hole that had been cut in the fence and replaced with police tape. She followed Mulder's lead to, and then past the yellow ribbon into the field. They silently followed the trail of imprints in the grass for about ten feet.
Scully looked down at them puzzled. "They've stopped." She muttered more to herself than to her partner. The trail of footsteps stopped abruptly at this spot in the field, as if cut off. "What's that?" Scully motioned to a spot in the grass about ten feet ahead of them. She and Mulder moved in to take a closer look.
There was an impression left in the grass from where the body must've lain, but there were no footprints, other than the fresh ones they'd just made, leading up to the body. "That's impossible..." Scully muttered to herself. "There's no way the police could've removed the body and investigated the crime scene without leaving some sort of impression." She looked around her for the footprints she decided she must've overlooked. Giving up moments later, she looked up at Mulder, expecting him to give her some sort of explanation. All she got was a sly smile and a nod before he turned to go back to the car.
"Mulder..." She hurried behind him as he led the way, "Mulder, what did he tell you?" His only response was another smile over the roof of the car as he got into the drivers seat.
End of Part one.
What'd ya think? I'll try and have the second part up soon.