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HOME OF BRIDGET SMITH
BIRMINGHAM, WI
MONDAY, OCTOBER 13th, 2008
1100
"Happy birthday to me," Mulder sang sarcastically as he popped a sunflower seed into his mouth and put the car in park. "Happy birthday to me," he continued, opening the door. "Happy birthday to Spooky, happy birthday to me."
The triple homicide was now a quadruple. Bridget Smith, a 40-year-old single mother of two, had died in the same manner as the other three: a single slit to the throat. Each body had significant post mortem stabbing, all in the same pattern. Two by the torso, one on the right leg, and three on the forearm, to make it look like defensive wounds.
The reason why it was clearly and undoubtedly an X-file, Mulder and Scully had found after reading the casefile, was because in every case, the single mother was killed in her bedroom with the doors and windows locked, and security alarms armed. The children, in every single case, were at sleepovers. And the security companies that serviced the houses not only were all different companies, but all showed the FBI the records that revealed the security alarm had not been turned off and then on again.
Thoughts of Eugene Victor Tooms fluttered through his mind as he approached the crime scene, and wished Scully was there. But unfortunately she was straightening out her little misadventure, and would arrive tomorrow at the earliest. Meanwhile Mulder was left to profile the Invisible Man by himself.
"Agent Mulder?" A balding man in jeans and a light parka asked, walking out of the front door of the house. "Detective Giles, Birmingham PD," he said, flashing his badge. "I thought you had a partner?"
"She's coming tomorrow," Mulder said, and extended his hand. "So this is the same story as the others?"
"Exact same story. You know, you probably don't hear this a lot but I'm relieved to have you guys here. Whoever this guy is, he's not your average killer."
"Can I see the bedroom?"
"You can see the whole damn house. You can have anything you want. Like I said, we're very happy to have you here."
Mulder couldn't hide the look of surprise on his face, but Detective Giles didn't seem to notice. He led the way into the small suburban home, and Mulder looked around at the incredibly tidy little house. He was led directly upstairs to the bedroom, where the tidiness stopped. The body on the bed hadn't been packed up yet and Mulder approached the ME, who was taking something from the woman's fingernails.
"Gina, Agent Mulder with the FBI. Agent Mulder, Gina Yong, Birmingham PD's ME," Giles introduced.
"Nice to meet you," Mulder said. He elected not to stick out his ungloved hand and shake the ME's. The state of her latex gloves told Mulder that she had been working for a while now and was about ready to pack up the body.
"Nice to meet you too," she said, and got back to work.
"What was the time of death?" Mulder asked.
"Early this morning, probably at about 5 or 6 am," the ME answered, but was clearly concentrating on something other than Mulder.
"May I ask if you found anything unusual in the other three autopsies, Dr. Yong?" Mulder asked.
The woman shrugged, and looked up. She looked slightly annoyed. "Not really, no. It would've been on my report if so. They all died from a single but deep slit to their throats, severing the jugular artery and blocking the airway. The stab wounds were the same in all three victims—four, now. Same pattern. If I was taking a wild guess, I'd say a serial killer. But what serial killer can get into a house with an alarm system, motion detector, and locked door?"
"I can think of at least one," Mulder muttered, and glanced around the room.
"Hm?" She inquired, not quite catching his last statement as she turned back to the examination.
"Nothing, just speculation. I'm gonna look around, if no one minds."
"Have a field day, Agent Mulder. I hope you find something," Giles said.
Mulder gave him a small smile and then walked over to a CSI kit on the floor, and extracted a pair of latex gloves and an evidence bag. He then began looking around the bedroom. The windows were shut and locked, and Mulder saw from the little boxes along the edges that they were also alarmed.
"Has suicide been considered?" Mulder asked.
"I ruled that out," Yong answered. "The cut to the throat is too long and too deep for someone to do it to themselves. They'd go into shock before being able to finish."
"Is it possible they could have used something to do it for them? Some kind of unique tool?"
"If they did, we haven't found anything at the crime scenes," Giles stated.
Mulder nodded, and continued walking through the room. He noticed a crucifix on the wall, a Catholic symbol, and stored the information away for further use.
"Where are the kids?"
"Social services, for now. They have a grandma coming to pick them up soon."
"Did they see anything?"
"The oldest one did. He was the one that opened the bedroom door when they got back from the sleepover. He was in shock when we got here. His younger sister called 911."
"How old?"
"Twelve and ten. They slept over at the house down the street. Some kind of party for a soccer league or something."
Mulder nodded as he paced the room. "What about the other kids?"
"All different ages. Some with siblings, some without. We couldn't find a pattern there."
"They didn't go to the same school, play on the same teams, anything like that?"
Giles shook his head. "No. The only pattern we've found is single suburban working moms. And two, including this one, were Christian—had some kind of religious symbols on the walls or statues on the dressers."
Mulder nodded, dissatisfied. He paced around the small bedroom for a little while longer, not noticing any kind of ritualistic items, anything to suggest a conjuring or otherwise. The dresser drawers had only clothes in them. The closet wasn't harboring any interesting boxes. It looked as if this lady had nothing to hide.
"I want to see the kids' rooms."
"This way," Giles said, and walked out of the room and down the hallway.
Mulder looked through both rooms before noticing something in the girl's room that he had also noticed in the boy's. Glancing at the Bible on her bed, he paged through it and realized it was a gift, but not from the mother. Someone named Greenwood…
He walked into the boy's room and found the same dedication. He looked through the kids' things once again, and found his answer. Amidst the boy's pile of messy papers that resembled Mulder's own desk, he found a six-month-old flyer for a non-denominational Christian Bible study for children. He looked at the start date on the flyer, and then looked at the dedication date on the Bible. They were exactly six months apart.
He checked with the girl's Bible, and it matched as well. "The kids attended a Christian Bible study for children and received these Bibles about two weeks ago," he told Giles. "You should check that out—see if the other kids attended it too. It could be where the killer found his victims."
Giles nodded, and took the flyer from Mulder. "I'll run a check on the teacher, find out where he lives. And I'll see if the other kids attended it too. Do you think this is a religious crime?"
"Possibly," Mulder said, glancing at the alarmed windows in the girl's room. "But it'd be some magic trick to slip in this house without someone being notified. If our killer was just interested in a hate crime, they probably would have attacked the women in their cars, or coming out of their houses. Something easier than breaking in here."
"So you think our killer wasn't looking just to kill them, but to make a statement."
"Could be," Mulder said, his tone non-committal. "It could also be that making statements isn't what our killer is into," he added, and left the room. "Can I get a look at the downstairs?"
"Absolutely," Giles said, and followed Mulder down the front steps. About a half hour later, Mulder asked to see the basement. The downstairs hadn't been very helpful. Surprisingly enough, the basement door was locked from the outside. "That's interesting," Mulder commented, and Giles took a snapshot of it before they opened the door, and climbed down the stairs. The minute he looked around at the basement, he whistled. "Wow. A single working mom and a hobbyist…"
"She was the only one with a woodshop," Giles said, glancing appreciatively at the equipment before them. "But the other mothers had hobbies as well. Rooms in their houses dedicated to their hobbies."
Mulder walked up to some of the machines, remembering his very light training at the hands of Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor, when he and Scully appeared on the show Tool Time not too long ago.
"This is a miter saw, isn't it?" Mulder asked.
Giles shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know anything about this stuff. It's some kinda saw."
Mulder checked that it was unplugged, and then ran his fingers over the base. He held up his index finger to Giles. "Dust," he commented. "For someone so into shop tools, she didn't clean them very well."
"Not true, Agent Mulder," Giles said, surveying the table saw, drill press, scroll saw, and bandsaw. "These are all clean."
Mulder looked at the garbage, where he found a single piece of wood and some dust dumped inside. Then he looked at the workbench. "She was down here…when it happened, she was down here. She was working." He pointed to the piece of wood, the chisel, and the hammer, all out on the bench. An iPod sat in its stereo cradle, and though the lights were turned off and the miter saw was unplugged, it was clear someone had left here in a hurry.
"How can you tell?"
"Someone who has a workshop like this doesn't leave their tools on the bench when they're done. And they don't leave their work sitting here, either. Or leave their iPod here to collect sawdust from the air." He pointed to the mask and safety glasses on the bench, and said, "Something scared her. She did what she felt was necessary to leave it safely, and then left. Locked the door behind her."
He turned to Giles. "She was up there in her working clothes but the ME estimated the time of death to be early this morning. She was working here late at night and then she locked herself in her bedroom. Something spooked her down here."
Giles nodded. "You could have something there. We found all the other hobby rooms locked at the crime scenes. Whatever scared the victims might have occurred while they were working. Then they get spooked and leave."
Mulder walked around the basement, past the workshop and over to a stack of boxes. It looked like an average basement, with randomly stored, no longer used items. Children's toys that she didn't have the heart to throw out, even though her kids were no longer interested. Boxes of clothes that either were too large or too small, or out of style. Camping equipment and…what was this? A box marked 'Church'.
Mulder inched his hand toward the tape to pull it open, when an incredibly cold wind bristled through the air, and then was gone. He turned, and looked at Giles. "Did you touch the air conditioning?"
"Huh?" Giles asked, looking up from the workbench.
"You feel that?"
"What?"
"That…never mind," he said. He looked at the box again, and tore open the tape. Inside were children's catechism books. From kindergarten through about sixth grade, probably recent for the twelve-year-old. CCD class folders, notebooks and even a few primary-colored rosaries, with smiley faces on each bead. A children's novel aimed at about first or second-grade readers, entitled, "Jesus Loves Me."
"Why would you pack up religious stuff if you're still religious?" Giles asked, and Mulder nearly jumped. The man had snuck up on him, and was now standing right behind him.
Mulder shook his head. "Maybe it's old stuff. Maybe they've outgrown this stage," he said. But even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. Some of the Catholic books had titles like Catholicism for Teens, and Mulder knew if the boy was twelve, this would have been bought recently. He needed to talk to Scully. She might see a connection here that he couldn't understand. For about the hundredth time since he stepped on the crime scene, he wished his other half was here.
Glancing around the basement, he realized he had just about looked through everything there, other than the Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Easter decorations. It wasn't a very large basement and most of it was taken up by the woodshop.
Walking back to the woodshop, Mulder looked at what the woman was making. Some kind of little toy train. He wondered if a sister or brother of hers had a child who would enjoy a toy like that.
Then he noticed the blueprints, hand-drawn probably by Bridget, for the little toy. They were pages long, and were concluded by a cute little drawing of a toddler with a bow in her hair, playing with the toy train. It was clear that this woman didn't do this for money, but because she enjoyed it.
"You said the other women were hobbyists. What did they do?"
"One woman collected stamps. Another did patterns for doll clothes, for her kid. The third woman was into books—she had an entire library in her house. Every kind of book you can imagine."
"You said two were Christian. Were they all religious?" Mulder asked.
Giles shrugged. "I don't know. We'd have to go back over the houses again and find out."
Mulder nodded. "Good idea. And find out who Greenwood is and get me an address. I need to call my partner and give her an update on this. I'll meet you back at the station," he said, thoughts already floating around his head about what could have done this.
Aliens were improbable. A ghost generally didn't have this kind of MO, but wasn't outside the realm of possibility. Another mutant like Tooms was still possible, and in fact made sense. Someone who could sneak down into the basement, make some noises loud enough to scare the woman into her bedroom, where he could crawl through the vent and kill her behind a locked door…
"Scully." Her voice surprised him. When had he dialed her? "Hello? Mulder?"
"Hey, yeah, it's me. Just wanted to give you an update. How are you doing?"
"Fine, almost done with meetings. I should be out there tonight."
"That's good. That's an improvement over tomorrow." Mulder exited the crime scene and walked toward his car.
"I'm sorry you're all alone on your birthday," she said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "I'll make it up to you."
As Mulder got into his car, he couldn't help but say, "Ooooh, Scully, you know what I like." He heard Scully chuckle and he said, "When you get to the motel room, I'll have a bubble-bath waiting for you."
"You're only saying that because you know what you get after the bubble-bath," Scully teased.
"Hey, it's my birthday!" Mulder protested with a grin. He started the car, and put his seatbelt on with one hand. Checking his mirrors briefly, he prepared to pull the car away. But his grin dropped suddenly and he did a double-take, staring at the rear view mirror.
"Mulder? Is everything okay?" Scully asked, confused by the silence.
"I thought I saw something," Mulder said absently, turning around to look at the back seat. He was beginning to get a very uncomfortable feeling about this case. With what Scully had seen in their townhouse, and what he had thought he had seen and felt from the crime scene photos, in the basement of Bridget Smith's house, and now in the car, he definitely wasn't enthusiastic about spending the next few hours without Scully.
"What did you see?" Scully demanded. "Are you in the car?"
"Yeah, just leaving the crime scene. It was in the rear view mirror, Scully. I don't know what it was…" But in truth, he did. It was the same orange-eyed figure he thought he had seen in the crime scene photos. Only this time, it had a body to go along with it.
"It might have been a trick of the light."
"Maybe," Mulder said, but they both knew he wasn't considering that possibility.
"I'll be there tonight. Then we can talk," Scully assured him.
"I could really use you on this one, Scully. It has to do with religion, I think."
"Religion?"
"Specifically Catholicism, but I need your opinion on that."
"All right…well, I'll do my best. I still expect that bubble-bath."
"Oh yeah, definitely," Mulder promised her, trying to get back into the original light-hearted mood.
"Be careful, Mulder. I'll see you soon."
"See you soon."