Title: Canticle

Author: CeilidhO

Summary and Disclaimer: Please see previous chapters.

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The rain hammered down on the dusty ground, filling the air with noise and the thick smell of wet dirt. The air was so full of rain that it seemed a continuous sheet of water, falling from the sky to wash away the earth. It swelled the banks of the tiny river until it began to lick hungrily at the sides of the narrow stone bridge that straddled it, a crumbling remnant of the greater glory days of the southwest.

Inside the hollowed out base of the bridge, a tiny figure whimpered at the rising water. Thin rivulets of water batted at its toes where it crouched, trickling into the stinking den that was rapidly becoming a horrible trap. The heavy manacles binding its ankles and wrists bit into the soft skin, raising thick red weals that oozed every time it moved.

In the darkness across the narrow river, crouched beside the opposite base of the bridge, he waited and watched. He laughed at the sounds of distress that echoed from the den, barely audible against the hammer and pound of the water that fell and rose all around the stone shelter. Deciding, he carefully slid the square of plywood at his side into the swelling water and climbed on it, shoving off and reaching the other side after a few hard strokes of his powerful hands. Darkness cloaking his movements, he slipped into the hollow towards the figure.

The whimpers suddenly escalated into full-throated screams, threading through the air and joining the howling fury of the weather in perfect compliment.

- - -

Highway 191
San Juan County, Utah
October 23, 2007
7: 42 pm

The windshield wipers swept ineffectually at the heavy sheets of rain that battered the car and made the highway slick and nearly impassable. Mulder squinted out at the road, sighing loudly, and Scully leaned her head against the window. She could feel the enormous raindrops slam into the glass pane, falling down the sheer surface in thick trails of cold.

They had only been out of the diner for a few minutes when the first drops of rain had begun to fall, tiny pinpricks of moisture easily batted aside by the windshield wipers. However, soon the rain had begun to fall in fat drops that burst and spread on impact, and finally it became massive sheets of water that showed no signs of easing. Even in the substantial climate shift between Salt Lake City and the southeastern corner of the state, the weather was the same, and the trip down was taking them hours longer than it should have.

Mulder looked over at Scully and shrugged. "We're going to have to give up, Scully. The car's sliding all over the road. It's not safe."

"Where are you suggesting we turn off?"

"There was a motel about ten miles back, just outside of Monticello."

Scully nodded, and Mulder slowed the car almost to a halt, then pulled it around in a tight turn, and finally accelerated slowly as they headed back north. They drove for almost ten minutes in silence, until the headlights flashed across a bedraggled sign reading 'Welcome to Monticello: Gateway to the Southeast'. As Scully watched, the headlights lit something else.

"Mulder!" she said quickly. "Pull over."

He swung the car onto the shoulder, and Scully grabbed her light coat from the backseat and threw open the door. She walked back a few feet, until the object caught her attention again. It was a tall stone angel, a sculpture carrying something in its arms, and at its feet was a faint plaque that Scully could not read in the near blackness. Shivering from the torrents of water streaming over her body, Scully jogged back to the car.

"Come here, Mulder, and bring the flashlight."

He was already halfway out the car when he'd seen her coming; he grabbed the wide-beam flashlight from the glove compartment and followed at a run. She was crouching at the foot of the sculpture, squinting at the metal plate. He turned on the flashlight and handed it to her, crouching down as well. She cast the white light over it.

"In loving memory," she read at a half yell over the noise of the weather. "Of our baby boy, John Ephram Redmond, brutally taken from us by the force of an evil man. Here he shall lie for the rest of the days of the world, here where his earthly body was found. Angels bore him away from the darkness, and they will cradle him until we can hold our son again in Paradise. March 3, 1992 – April 27, 2001."

They were silent for a long time, until Mulder finally said: "John Ephram Redmond. Hoffman's fourth."

Scully shone the flashlight up the stone folds of the angel's robes. In the massive stone arms lay the sculpted figure of a small boy, cradled against the vast chest. The child's eyes were closed, as if in sleep, and the angel cast its gentle gaze lovingly upon them, cherishing its tiny burden for the all the ages.

- - -

Coolidge Motor Lodge
Monticello, Utah
10: 21 pm

Scully stepped back into the bedroom from the steamy heat of the shower, toweling her hair rapidly. Mulder was reclined on the bed, remote in hand, but his eyes were fixed on something far away. She finished with her hair and pulled on one of Mulder's oversized t-shirts, crossing to the firm bed in a few steps. Mulder turned off the TV with a snap of white noise, and as soon as Scully was settled he flicked off the lamp.

She stared into the darkness for a moment, and then murmured quietly: "It seems unfair that one man should be insane, and that that should be allowed to irrevocably damage so many other lives, beyond any reasonable hope of repair."

"That's the nature of the world," Mulder replied softly. "People get damaged. There's only so much you can do about it."

"Maybe it's like surgery, what we do. It's what the professors taught us in medical school: if there's a hemorrhage, just do your best to clog the source. There is nothing you can do about the damage that has already been incurred. That's not your problem."

"They're probably right, Scully."

"But it seems that all we've been doing here is cleaning up the damage, the fallout, from one man's insanity. We clogged the source, but the tissue is still dying; the damage has become our problem. And we keep encountering it too; everywhere we cut into the body, the blood is still oozing, people are still bleeding damage from George Hoffman's inconceivable actions: Jude, the Holdermans, the devastated parents who put up that statue, the families of all the victims, even the killer.

"It makes me wonder, Mulder, if it's like this after every case. Every time, we think we've solved the case, closed the book, but we've really left behind a trail of broken and damaged people. Who is cleaning them up? Should we really be so surprised that one of them is striking back in such a horrific way as our killer? Whatever contact he had with Hoffman has left him so bleeding that he has found his only bandage in the butchering of those weaker than himself."

Mulder was completely silent. The rain slammed down on the roof above their heads. The morning came much too soon.

- - -

Brigham Residence
Aneth, San Juan County
October 24
10:19 am

Mrs. Elizabeth Brigham had only just sat Mulder and Scully down at the cluttered coffee table and apologized for the state of the house when Mulder's cell phone rang abruptly. He got up to answer it, and Scully was left alone with the specter of a woman who sat before her.

Elizabeth Brigham was petite and pretty in a bird-like way. It could easily be seen that her natural disposition was to 'Good Housekeeping' magazines and discreet hair products, to pastel sweaters and intense normality, and her current surroundings jarred painfully with that image. Her hair was greasy and lank, and her makeup easily two days old on her face. Her sweater was stained and her eyes were dull and full of naked dismay.

The smell of stale cigarette smoke hung in the air from the two Sheriff's deputies who were camped out in the kitchen, lounging beside the wiretap, tape recorder and tracer that were all plugged into the Brigham's' only phone. They seemed coarsely oblivious to the suffering of the small woman who was shaking before Scully. Scully got up and closed the connecting door to the kitchen.

"Mrs. Brigham, tell me about the day your son went missing."

The woman sent out a trembling breath. "He got on the school bus at eight-thirty on Friday morning. He was supposed to go to a friend's house after school, his friend Theo, but he never came home. I assumed that he'd stayed for dinner, and then I assumed he'd stayed for a movie or something afterwards; Simon isn't very good at calling to tell us plans. I tried his friend's house at about nine to tell Simon to come home, but there was no answer. I supposed they were out for dinner. I didn't really get worried until eleven o'clock, when I was just calling over there to ask Simon if he was planning to stay overnight, when the phone rang here."

Scully interrupted for a moment. "Mrs. Brigham, can I get the address of this friend's house, and the telephone number?"

"Of course," Mrs. Brigham said exhaustedly. She wrote on a scrap of paper lying on the coffee table, handed it to Scully, and then continued weakly. "So, the phone rang here, and it was Theo's mother Pamela. She said she was sorry that Simon couldn't spend the afternoon with them like we'd planned, and then she asked if he was sick. I panicked, and I asked to speak to Theo."

"What did Theo say?"

"He said that Simon had never met him after school. They're in different classes, so he figured that Simon had gotten sick and had gone home early."

Right then, Mulder barreled back into the room. "Mrs. Brigham," he asked urgently. "Have you participated in anything recently that might have gotten your family media attention, an appearance on TV, something like that?"

"Yes," she replied bemusedly. "We're very active in the community."

"Would it be in any way connected with the serial killer George Hoffman? The Choirmaster?"

"Yes it was," she replied again, looking nervously at Mulder. "We contributed a large sum of money to the creation of that lovely statue in Monticello, for that poor Redmond boy."

"Why?" Mulder demanded.

"It was a good cause. As well, we knew the family."

"What was the occasion for the media to be there?"

"The unveiling of the statue."

"You were on the news? Your family was interviewed?"

"Yes."

"All of you, even Simon?"

Scully glared at Mulder. His tone was badgering, even accusatory. "Mulder…" she hissed, but he ignored her.

"Yes," Mrs. Brigham said. "All of us."

Mulder seemed to be thinking intently. "Does Simon have an older brother?"

"Yes, Michael."

"How much older? Eight years?"

"Yes, exactly."

Mulder stood up quickly. "Thank you, Mrs. Brigham, you've been beyond helpful. We'll be in touch."

He ushered Scully out of the door and into the car, but she balked as she stepped off the porch. "Mulder, what the hell are you playing at? We hadn't nearly finished the interview. There were dozens of standard questions I still had to ask, dozens of facts I had to check… What's going on?"

He glanced around at the interested deputies on the porch, and answered in a low, urgent voice. "Scully, please just get in the car. I'll explain as we drive."

"No, Mulder, I won't. You've violated vital procedure, and want to know why right now, so I can go back in there and finish the interview."

"Scully, that was Alex Paring on the phone. He's had a major breakthrough on the profile, and I want to go through it with you now, because it could help us save Simon Brigham's life right now."

She sighed and climbed into the car. He was right behind her, and started the car quickly, leaving the disappointed deputies in a cloud of desert dust.

He began right away. "Paring has expanded on our previous working theory that the murders would be connected because of the wings and the Disciple names, that the new victims would all be members of families of former Hoffman victims. It was the best we could do with only one murder. But with Simon, there was no way that he was a member of a family of a Hoffman victim. However, the key element is still the families.

"Now, our guy is very different from George Hoffman in many ways. Right from the beginning, this murder had a very different feeling behind it than Hoffman's'. This killer is much younger, for one."

"Why would you say that?"

"He lacks the sophistication and restraint that was Hoffman's trademark right up until the end. It was only on the last few days, the days we were directly involved, that Hoffman got sloppy and careless. This guy has killed only five or six days ago, and he's already kidnapped another boy. He's anxious and overexcited; he's attracting too much attention.

"As well, he's killing vastly younger boys. Kidnapping a nine year-old and kidnapping a six-year old are markedly different tasks. To catch an older child, you need verbal, coercive and communication skills that our guy just doesn't possess. He doesn't talk them into it, he grabs them out of a schoolyard. Now that needs some strength, but grabbing a nine year-old needs much more. This killer is picking children more in his own strength range. These factors all seem to suggest that the killer is actually quite young. He's very young, and his psychological pathology seems to suggest he is someone who has been very damaged by Hoffman's murders."

Scully stared at him for a moment. "Mulder, you can't be proposing who I think you are as an actual, viable suspect."

Mulder didn't meet her eyes, just gazed out at the road and the bruised gray and violet sky. "We can't count him out, Scully. Jude fits the profile."

"I can't believe it," she spat. "He's twelve years old, for god's sake."

"Well," Mulder continued, "The main point is that he makes the grabs from the schoolyard, right? If no one noticed Simon and Matthew getting picked up by an older person, he's got to be young enough to pass as an older brother: in Matthew's case, as Jude or Cameron, in Simon's as Michael. And the family has to be connected somehow to Hoffman's victims. So, logically, he's got to find out about them somehow; the media is the easiest place."

"Where are you headed with this, Mulder?" Scully snapped.

"So Alex and I had this hunch, so we checked, and sure enough Simon has an older brother, an older brother who went to school with John Redmond in Monticello. With the age of the killer established between us, it's pretty obvious that he can't kidnap the fifteen year-old brother, but then he sees the family on TV, and notices Simon, who's the perfect age and has a Disciple name. And that's how it happened."

Scully frowned, and thought for a moment. "But how does it help us find the killer? Anyone can turn on the TV, or read about it in the paper."

"I was thinking about what you said last night, Scully, about how there are so many more victims than just the ones who are murdered. Who would be damaged enough by Hoffman to be driven to murder? And then I remembered something from the press conferences after Hoffman's death was announced. I remembered one of the family members of one of the boys saying that she was sorry she couldn't have been there to watch him die."

"Mulder, of course," Scully exclaimed. "Who is it who always demands the death penalty in courts? Who is it that attacks the defendants outside trials, gives press conferences demanding revenge? The families…"

"That was my thought exactly, and Alex agrees with me. The investigation is changing tack; we're going to visit each of the twelve families. The County Sheriff's department is itching to take over here anyway; we'll let them handle the routine stuff for now."

"Where are we going first?" asked Scully, freshly alive with energy.

"We're doing most of the out of state ones," Mulder replied, speeding up the car. "Philip McKenzie, Thomas Kent, James Mortimer, Simon Keene and Jamie Holtz."

Jamie Holtz. He had been the first victim Scully had worked on four years ago. He was the most vivid in her mind, the most intense. She had met his family and friends; she had felt like she had known him intimately. She had never told Mulder, but she always marked his birthday in her mind, his and Jude's. Jude. For her, it was impossible that he could be the killer. Impossible…

As the car sped north along the highway, Scully watched the sky grow darker. The bruised purple clouds swept through the sky, mingling together and gradually blotting out the light. The first few tiny drops collided with the windshield.

Mulder grinned, in high spirits from his breakthrough. "I thought this was the desert, Scully. What's with all the rain?"

"It's October," she flung back absently. "Nearly November. This is when we start to get rain, but not usually this far south this early. It's actually very unsafe; the ground is still too hard and can't absorb the water yet. There are flash floods around this time of year."

The sky continued to darken, and it appeared closer to five o'clock than noon. They flashed past the Blanding town limits, and Mulder talked to Paring on his cell phone for almost half an hour. The rain kept getting thicker and larger, and small tongues of lightning jumped between cloud fronts. The air outside was cold against Scully's cheek on the windowpane, and the highway rolled out in front of them.

Scully had just gotten out the file on Simon Brigham to check over some details when the thunder began, echoing on her ears and rolling across the broad land all around them.

"We're almost at the motel," Mulder assured her casually. "We'll stop there and check out, then continue on north. Maybe we'll sleep in Idaho somewhere."

The air was dusky and thick, and they slipped past the Monticello limits sign. A fork of lightning lit the sky, very close by. As Scully looked out the window at the exact moment of the flash, her heart stopped. Something was very wrong.

"Pull over right now, Mulder," she cried. "Get the flashlight and get out of the car."

For the second time in as many days, the car bumped up onto the shoulder and crunched through the gravel covering it. Scully was out of the car in a bound, the wind whipping her hair around her eyes and throwing raindrops down her collar. She grabbed the flashlight from Mulder, but the next bolt of lightning removed the need.

Stark white and red, naked and slashed, a body lay face down in the arms of the great stone angel.

Cradled in the solid arms, pressed to the sculpted chest, raised over the contours of the stone child beneath it, lay the mutilated body of Simon Brigham.

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A/N: Please review, as always! Thanks especially this chapter to thefreakyone, who gave me more feedback on this story and on "Disciple" than I could ever have hoped for.

Thanks to everybody for sticking with this story as it chugs its way along,

Ceilidh