Chapter 3
Mulder looked up when she walked back out in a pair of jeans and a dark navy t-shirt.
"That's what you're wearing?" he asked, still collecting the bits of file he was able to obtain into a neat stack.
She faltered. "Why? You're in jeans. I thought this was off the clock."
"You don't have something, um…" He waved a hand at his own t-shirt. "More low-cut?"
"Excuse me?" Scully's eyebrows shot up. "Mulder, please tell me I misheard you."
"It's just that—well, Maurice Lenaghan works piano bars… you know—late crowd…" He bit his lip under her chilly gaze. "I was just hoping you could get a one-on-one conversation with him—you know, like a bar pick-up type conversation."
"Oh, is that my role in this?" Her voice arched, catching an edge. "I'm fine with what I have on, Mulder."
"Yes, but—"
"I have something low-cut and sexy you can wear, if you want to go ahead and do this on your own."
"Alright, alright!" He lifted up his hands. "I'm sorry. Let's just go. Your car or mine?"
"Mine." She ducked into the kitchen and filled up a bottle from the tap. "I just had it checked, and the mechanic said it runs 'like mascara on a soap actress.'" She chuckled. "He's kind of an oddball."
They walked down the stairwell, and out into the lot. Around them, the late-May weather showed off its best colors: a crisp breeze plucking at flowering petals, and a clear, cloudless blue sky. The car had warmed up under the full-fledged rays of the morning, and Mulder opened the driver's side door, leaning in to adjust Scully's seat back, to accommodate his frame. She hopped into the passenger's side and busied with the tapes in her console, choosing the music for the drive.
They pulled out through thick traffic that broke apart when Georgetown fell away behind them.
"Stop at a gas-station before we get on the interstate," she said. "We should get a couple more bottles of water."
Mulder glanced at her sideways. Since their unfortunate experience in Ohio, Scully had become especially paranoid about having water and snacks in the car at all times. There were some things that needed to be voiced about their encounter with the Dollhouse, but Scully hadn't offered anything in casual conversation, and Mulder didn't push. That was just the nature of how things passed between them; he knew to wait for the eventual voice of the self—the vulnerable, more real self—Scully strived to keep down, and he knew that when she did speak about it again, it would be because she needed some shred of logic from him, her myth-embracing partner of all people—something to comfort the anxiety brought on by the rattled science of her world. Scully spoke about her feelings on her terms, when she was ready… after a safe amount of time had passed.
"I'll pull over at the next one I see," he said.
Scully leaned over and turned up the music on the radio.
It was a five hour drive. The agents spent large stretches of it in comfortable silence, letting the rush of the highway, and the music on the tape-deck, cushion their individual surrender to introspection.
Scully leafed through the file Mulder had gathered, reading the few documents he could get his hands on between the pictures. Most were short background bios of the victims. A record of the interview with Maurice Lenaghan was in the ranks, and she found herself siding with the FBI's dismissal of the man: he seemed very accommodating to the investigation, open and informative about his contact with the victims, and completely innocent of any crime.
"Where are…" She sifted through the stack in her hands. "You couldn't get anything medical? Autopsies?"
Mulder cracked a sunflower seed between his teeth, and shook his head. "Just the cosmetics. The intern caught on to my angle, I think, when I asked for more. He mumbled something about a HIPPA violation, and ran off to look up Skinner's number."
She studied the photograph that most resembled Ophelia. "This creek is so shallow… a child would have trouble drowning in it. What had Skinner told you when he first sought out your profile? About the cause of death, I mean."
"He said the details of the case had to be kept away from me in order for me to legally be brought in as an experienced profiler… and he said the women had no sign of physical assault, drug overdose, or systematic failure of any kind."
"And?" she asked when Mulder paused, scratching his chin. "How did they die exactly?"
"That was when he became tense and uncomfortable. I guess the problem is that whatever medical records they collected made the cause of death a senseless toss-up. He did mention that the mother of one of the victims is throwing a picketing fit—screaming incompetence on the government's justice system. She's… very influential, so they have their asses against a wall, now. That's all I got."
Scully huffed, re-rustling through the photographs. "Why doesn't he just bring us in on the case? If I could at least read the autopsy reports—"
"Skinner, um," Mulder glanced at her, and bit down on another sunflower seed. "I think he's afraid that our particular department, and all the gossip that drench the X-Files, will damage the FBI's image in their response to the mother's concerns."
Scully looked up at him, frowning. "What?"
"He doesn't want to embarrass the Bureau." Mulder said in a flat voice. "When he handed me the report to fill out, I was labeled as an Oxford graduate experienced with profiling serial murderers. The X-files, and all my—our—work since those days, was neatly left out of the document."
"Ah…" She slunk back into her seat, and set the folder back into her lap as she stared at the rushing stretches of America beyond the ribbon of the highway. "What do you think it is?" she asked Mulder, after a while.
"Hm?"
"The cause of death?"
He shrugged. "That was always your talent… I just know how to profile. And I know he's the guy, Scully."
"Maurice Lenaghan." She nodded. "…Why?"
"It just fits."
It was just past three-thirty in the afternoon, when the agents found the bar. Mulder had done his own research. What Skinner omitted from his brief, Mulder had either pieced together on his own, or gathered over numerous phone calls to local establishments.
"'Piano Man?' he yells at me," he told Scully, chuckling. "'Yeah, he's got a regular gig here. Ticket's ten bucks.'" Mulder mimicked the jarring country accent to perfection. "I think Lenaghan actually goes by the hang of 'Piano Man,' at least out here in West Virginia."
She squinted against the light pouring into the windshield along a long, windowless building.
"Mulder, this doesn't look like a fancy piano bar…"
"Arnold's." he nodded. "I checked up on it. It used to be a strip club before they remodeled."
"Arnold's? That's an odd name—"
"For a strip joint?" he chuckled. "Yeah, I know. I thought it funny, too."
The building was on a stretch of road with no businesses close around. A rickety gas station lay a quarter mile behind them, and a gated housing development, flashing identical new green roofs, glistened several miles down the road.
"I think it was a town meeting," Mulder pointed toward the development, "that forced Arnold's to remodel into a more appropriate venue."
Scully studied the building. "They're closed, though, still. Mulder, when does the show start exact—"
"Shh, look." He brushed his fingers against her knee, quieting her as they ducked back against their seats, out of sight from another visitor.
A blue pick-up lurched off the road, into the lot of Arnold's, and scrunched against the gravel all the way up to the entrance. A man jumped out of the driver's side. He moved athletically, lithely, muscles springing. Scully first gaged him to be someone that worked a physically-straining job. The arms under his worn t-shirt were tanned from the sun, his jeans dirtied by constant wear. It was when she registered his pony-tail, that she remembered the shoulder length curls on Maurice Lenaghan's mug shot. She didn't catch his face as he disappeared into the bar.
"That's him," Mulder said.
"So, what now?"
Mulder frowned at the building. They were parked in the shadow of a tree.
"Go in," he nudged her.
"And say what?"
"Say you have to use the restroom, or something. See if you can talk to him."
Scully rubbed her arm. "Mulder—what do you want out of this exactly? Why don't we circle back when there's a crowd."
He bit his lip. "No, go in now. You're dressed as someone traveling—you've got a good angle for a one-on-one."
Scully sighed. "Fine," she unlocked the car door.
She climbed out into the beating sunlight and walked toward the door of the establishment.
It opened into a darkness—a pre-show stillness of a bar that wasn't open to customers yet. She waited for her eyes to adjust. In the far corner, she saw the man—Maurice Lenaghan—finagling with a piano. He struck a tuning fork, listening, as he dipped a finger onto a key.
The door closed behind her, clapping shut, and the man cursed.
"Jim, I said no noise when I tune," he yelled without bothering to turn.
A bearded man emerged into the aisle behind the bar and blinked at Scully.
"Bar's not open yet, Miss."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I was hoping to use the restroom—I've been driving a long while."
In the corner, Maurice Lenaghan paused and turned to the sound of her voice. His pony-tail curls caught the glint of the little sunlight that managed into the bare space. His eyes, caught that glint, too.
"I can wait," he said quietly to the man behind the bar top.