Title: Canticle

Author: CeilidhO

Summary and Disclaimer: Please see previous chapters.

- - -

County Sheriff's Department
Monticello, San Juan County
October 25
7:12 am

"Death was due to strangulation, from what was likely a metal chain cinched around the neck. The time of death was approximately five hours before the discovery of the body, making it mid-morning on October 24, roughly three days after the initial abduction."

The County Coroner and the Sheriff nodded, and Scully closed the folder with a decisive wave of her hand. In reality, she was shaking with exhaustion and nausea. The hours after their discovery of Simon Brigham's body in the arms of John Redmond's stone angel had been filled with a whirl of rain and lights and cars, morgues and interviews and hysterical mothers. Her autopsy had taken place in the early hours of the morning, in the gray hours between four and six o'clock, and then she had squinted in front of a blue-lit computer screen and typed up a brusque report. Her mouth felt stale and cold and her eyes burned with dryness every time she blinked.

Scully let herself out of the office and into the early morning quiet of the Sheriff's Department, threading her way between desks and humming copy machines to the heavy glass door, which swung open under her hand and let in a puff of soft desert air, gentle with the remnants of the previous days' rain. The sun was still mostly silver as it hovered on the horizon, swathed in a gauze of pearlescent cloud, and the rocky landscape that stretched away around her seemed full of soft blue and purple tones.

Most welcome of all, Mulder stood beside the rental car in the empty parking lot, one hand on the silver hood, the other running absently through his hair. His eyes were creased as he stared into the distance, and his tie hung loose and lopsided on his chest, forgotten and limp.

"Hey," she said softly. He turned instantly, and a brief smile flitted across his features.

"Hey," he answered. "Are you ready to get back on that highway?"

"Always," she said, and stepped out into the fresh air and across the cool gravel surface. "Let's keep working."

- - -

When Scully's gritty eyes finally slid shut against the blur of the lightening desert, they opened again in the massive Catholic cathedral in San Diego, her favorite childhood church. She knew she was dreaming, but she didn't care; the architecture of the rafters was too beautiful, too entrancing.

"You came," a light voice said unexpectedly. "I've been waiting so long. Where were you?"

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I had to find you first."

Jude stepped out of the shadows by the confessional, coming to stand close by. "I hurt so much. Will I ever heal?"

Scully put her hand to his back, and it came away soaked in thick, dark blood. "You have to make a choice," she said firmly. "Who would you rather be? Saint Jude, finder of lost things; or Judas Iscariot, betrayer of all, betrayer of the world. Whose blood is really on my hands?"

Jude reached out in the drifting, lethargic manner of dreams, and touched his fingertips to the blood. With equally aimless determination, he touched his crimson soaked fingers to his pink tongue, and smiled a slow, secret smile.

- - -

Scully woke in the car with a gasp, instantly taking in the change of scenery. They were in a parking lot, the rocks of the desert just a smudge on the horizon, surrounded on all sides by asphalt and cars and metal buildings that glinted in the early morning sun. Mulder was shaking her shoulder gently.

"How long was I asleep?" she asked thickly.

Mulder glanced over, his eyes veiled behind smoked lenses. "Not long. We're at the County Airfield. AD Chilton has arranged a plane to take us to Montana."

She nodded groggily, and undoing her seatbelt, slipped out of the car. The morning sun had burned away some of the earlier haze, but the air was still soft against her skin as she closed the car door and set off across the parking lot. Mulder wasn't far behind her, and they only had to walk for a few minutes before they were on the tarmac and being hailed by a man in a reflecting vest.

"Agents Scully and Mulder? The plane's ready to go; the pilot's just waiting for you. Get yourselves on board." He pointed to the small bush plane just behind the hanger building. Just as they looked over, the engine choked and sputtered into life. Mulder smiled at Scully and clutched his briefcase before jogging toward the plane. She followed close behind him.

Inside, the plane had only two rows of seats, one for the pilots and one for the passengers. The air was close and humid, and the metal of the cabin reverberated with every revolution of the engine, deafening with grumbles and roars and clangs. When they'd strapped themselves in, the pilot gave thumbs up to the man on the tarmac, and the aircraft lumbered forward, finally lurching into the sky perilously close to the edge of the paved runway. The dun colored ground receded quickly below them, and out of the corner of her eye Scully saw Mulder settle into one of the numerous case files that he always carried. She watched the ground strip away beneath their rapid progress.

Gradually, the rocky flats gave way to low hills and plunging canyons, and then the low hills gave way to sharper hills, tinged dusky green from the grasses and shrubs that littered their surfaces. Finally the Green River flashed by in a cordon of silver, like a trail of mercury across the face of the world, and the hils became rounded mountains, dark with pine around their feet, shimmering white with snow at the tops, folding away into the horizon like lumps under a coverlet.

The plane buzzed over the Uintas, and far away to the west Scully thought shee could faintly see the flash and dazzle of the Salt Lake City office towers. As the next two hours passed in a haze, they followed the mountains north, flying beside them when they got too high, over them when they calmed into broad valleys in central Idaho, where Scully finally slept.

They landed in Butte in the early afternoon, and the air was chill around their ears as they walked to the rental car and set off back down I-15.

"Who's first?" Mulder asked.

"The family of James Mortimer, in Dillon. James was killed in March 1998. He was nine years old, and was the second victim." Scully glanced over the case file she'd pulled into her lap. Over the course of the long night the Salt Lake office had faxed copies of the case files on each of the victims they were charged with investigating. "Two siblings, a brother and a sister. The brother is twenty-four, and the sister is twenty. They both live near the parents, and agreed over the phone with Chilton's office to be there for the interview."

"The brother's the right age," Mulder observed.

"I'd say he's a little old, and rather remote. The killer had to get Simon Brigham's body to the statue in Monticello within five hours of death. I don't think it could be managed from here. As well, all of the victims lived in Utah. Why would he kill only so far from home? Hoffman killed as far away as here, but also right in his own backyard, so to speak. He just doesn't seem likely to me, Mulder."

Mulder shrugged. "We've just got to eliminate them, one family at a time."

Scully sighed. "One at a time."

- - -

It was the waiting that ate at his mind. It burned away at his body like acid, like poison, like he'd broken open a battery and poured the sick yellow fluid into his eye sockets. He jumped at small noises, he clawed at his own skin in the dead of night, ripping it off in hidden places, pale strips collecting under his fingernails. He'd always done that; it couldn't be helped.

Waiting felt like insects under his skin, like in the movies when scarab beetles burrowed under its surface in lumps of wriggling computer graphic. Everyone else always laughed and said 'cheesy' in that derisive way they always sounded, but he alone knew that the movie men had it right. He knew the feeling they were grasping for at their computer stations. He wondered how they knew. Did they do the dark things he did? Did they know the warm metal pleasure, the softness and the screaming release that exploded his senses and made him claw at his body the more, claw at the yielding warmth helpless beneath his hands?

Alone in his room, he had always felt the maddening itch and drive. No amount of reading or looking or learning or touching could satisfy the dark twists he found his mind reeling through, but he tried all the same. The feeling had never subsided, not until he first gave in and slashed at the yielding flesh of another being. But it always returned, like a foaming beast on his back, hissing and snarling and ripping and tearing at him until he almost screamed from the agony of waiting even just one howling second longer.

The Beast, he decided. The perfect name for this most animal of sensations. As he gave in to another spasm of ripping agony and tore at his skin in desperation, he knew he couldn't hold out much longer. It would have to be soon, or he would explode or implode or flay himself into a thousand dripping pieces.

Soon…

- - - Mortimer Residence
46 Hilton Road
Dillon, Montana
3: 01 pm

Mrs. Mortimer answered the door on the first ring, a simply dressed small town woman. Scully liked her instantly. There was something about the woman's small but collected carriage, an economy of structure, that seemed very much like her own mother.

"Mrs. Mortimer?" she said, as soon as the door was opened. "I'm Agent Dana Scully, and this is my partner Agent Fox Mulder. Our supervisor's office spoke to you on the phone?"

"Of course," she replied, "Come in, please."

They followed her into the open plan bungalow, and entered the living room across the floor of plush cream carpet. On the couch were a young man and woman, who stood as they came in.

"I'm Ed Mortimer," the young man said. "And this is my sister, Jane." He extended his hand to the agents, who shook it, and then that of his sister. When offered, Scully and Mulder took seats on the facing couch.

"First of all," Scully began, "I'm very sorry that we've come here today to bring up such a painful part of the past. I would- we would- much rather be here discussing anything else."

"However," Mulder added, "the fact remains that we are charged with an unpleasant investigation that requires us to dredge up the past. First, I'd like to ask you a few questions, Ed."

"Fire away."

"Where have you been for the last two weeks?"

"At home; at work."

"Can anyone verify that?"

"My wife, my mother and sister, my co-workers and employment records."

"What do you do, Mr. Mortimer?"

"I'm a contractor. Carpentry and renovation, mostly. I work for a firm, a contracting group, and I'm required to report to the site every day. They log me in."

"Those records would of course be made available to us?"

"Of course."

"How long have you had this job?"

"Just over five years, ever since I graduated from high school."

"And you're married?"

"Yes. I've got a small daughter as well."

Mulder sat back and nodded quietly. "Thank you, Mr. Mortimer. That's all from me."

Scully then asked similar questions of the sister, who turned out to be a newlywed community college student, also accounted for in the last two weeks. They then went over the circumstances of James' abduction, just like with the other families interviewed for this case. They asked the family about their feelings and activities after Hoffman's capture, and about whether they had bee involved in any memorial activities. The answers were all exactly as they suspected nothing out of order, so Scully then let the two of them go, with Mulder, to obtain statements from their spouses. Mrs. Mortimer offered her a cup of tea, and Scully accepted. When the woman vanished into the kitchen, Scully stood up and looked around the room.

On the mantelpiece were the usual set of framed photgraphs, taken against a false background at the local department store or school picture day. She scanned graduation photos of the two older children, a handful of baby photos she guessed were the granddaughter, and a loving portrait of the late Mr. Mortimer. Scully felt her throat swell slightly. This mantelpiece was a testament to the strength of a family who overcame, or did their best to overcome, the apalling tragedy that had ripped through their lives.

Suddenly, Scully's attention was caught by a glimmer of recognition. Tucked behind the other photographs was one she knew. It showed a grinning boy with a crooked front tooth and gleaming chesnut brown hair, set off by glowing blue eyes, posed in front of an artificial Christmas backdrop. How often, she thought, had she seen that picture, how often during the worst days of her life. She could still see its place on the whiteboard in her mind, the second one, the death that let the world know that a serial killer was at his horrific work among their children. 1998 had seemed very far in the past, in the work of another agent and almost another case. She suddenly wished she had paid more attention to this boy, stamped on that sterile board.

His mother returned with tea, and Scully turned from the picture, almost with guilt. Mrs. Mortimer smiled sadly.

"I've had nine years to mourn him, Agent Scully. It's quite amazing to me, really: this year will mark the point where Jimmy has been dead just as long as he was alive. It has actually helped me to put everything into perspective. I still love him- I always will- but his time in my life is long over. He lived, he was here, but now he's not. He taught me things, and his short life gave me some of my sweetest memories, as well as all of my most painful. He brought me to life, just as I gave him his, such a long time ago."

Scully had no idea how to respond, but she put out a hand to touch the woman's arm. She couldn't help comparing her to the other distraught mothers she had spoken to over the las few days, their confusion and their anguish, and wondered if they could ever reach this kind of resignation and composure.

Mrs. Mortimer smiled again, and moved towards the older looking stereo system. Scully hadn't seen one with a tape player for a very long time, but Mrs. Mortimer slipped a tape into the machine, snapping the door of it shut. She pressed a button, and a single note rose from the speakers, high and pure and sweet.

"This is Jimmy, leading his choir when he was only eight years old. He got quite a few solos in this concert, but this is the nicest one. I keep it for when missing him gets too hard."

Scully felt tears well in her eyes as the music floated through the room, beautiful and unearthly as church music always seemed to her. Disembodied, like it was God or His angels singing. With a horrible lurch, she realized that that was what Hoffman had heard in the choirboys' music, and she felt sick to her stomach.

Right at that moment, her cell phone rang with a jarring, harsh tone, and Scully scrambled in her pockets to find it, disoriented by the feelings the music had evoked. Mrs. Mortimer stopped the tape without a word.

"Hello?"

"It's Dan. I've got some bad news." Scully felt the world drop out from beneath her feet.

"It's not another…" She saw Mrs. Mortimer go pale, so she stepped a more discreet distance away.

"No, no, not yet, but we've just had a call from the Salt Lake P.D.. They thought we'd like to know, in light of our investigation, that there's been a domestic disturbance arrest at the Holdermans'. Jude and his brother are in State custody, and Mr. Holderman is being held for assault and battery."

- - - - - - - -
A/N: I am so, so sorry about how apallingly long this took. I was on vacation for three weeks, and had no access to the internet or any computer the whole time. I felt so guilty for going without even letting you all know through an author's note, but I didn't have time in the lead up to going.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I'll have another one ready as soon as I can. (The summer is a horrible time to try and write)

Please review! Ceilidh