January Sun 1/7: Skinner

by Dawn Pares and Justin Glasser

***
Crystal City Apartments
Washington DC
Early Morning

He was in the parking lot of a grocery store pushing a cart full
of stuff that he didn't usually buy: yogurt and grapefruit and
bean sprouts.  Sunlight glinted off the cars, making his head
throb. He wanted to get home and take his shoes off, put a
cold cloth on his head.  Have a shot of Stoli maybe, and a nice
grilled chicken breast for dinner, which was strange because
he didn't like chicken, really.  He was more of a steak man.

He kept feeling the urge to look over his shoulder, to push the
cart faster, to bolt, but he didn't.  That was foolish.  He had
nothing to fear.  Instead, he put his hand under his left arm,
groping for the gun, feeling the sweat trickle down the center
of his back, although it was only the middle of a sunny
afternoon in a crowded parking lot.  Then it wasn't.

Time changed, and it was dark and he was alone, hands
clasped behind his back, in the dark, alone, and afraid.  Afraid. 
Alone.  And then he wasn't alone.

That was worse.

Walter Skinner woke with a start, jerking up against the
bedclothes, choking against them as if he were drowning.

Still dark.

He sighed, collapsing against the pillows, turning his head to
see the blood-red numbers of the clock.

3:47

He groped for his glasses on the night table, pushed back the
blankets, and set his feet on the floor.  He never felt more like
an old man than he did in these morning hours, when he woke
smelling of fresh fear.  He was tired, dragged out, fed up.

The dreams had started about two weeks ago, and they always
started the same.  He was shopping, then it was dark, then,
sometimes, there was a voice dancing around the edges of his
brain.  A woman's voice or a man's--it varied.  He hardly heard
it before he woke up, damp with fear.  At first he would get
up, get a glass of water and go back to bed, but the dreams had
started to come back every time he closed his eyes.  He hadn't
slept a night through in six days and he was starting to feel it.

He made coffee and retired to the recliner, file folder in hand. 
He'd almost enjoy these early mornings if it weren't for the
sleep deprivation.  He was getting an amazing amount of work
done, and he liked the slow shift from night into day.  He liked
hearing the dim sounds of his building waking up, the
leisurely pace of his showers, the yellow light of the sun
reflected off the building across the way.  He almost wished
he had windows that faced east.  And, despite the fact that he
spent most of his time this way, he liked to be alone.  He'd
rather be asleep, but overall, alone wasn't bad.

What was bad was the exhaustion that would come later,
during the staff meetings or the boring paperwork.  His
afternoons were wars with sleep, but even if he lay down on
the leather couch and had Kim hold his calls, he couldn't rest. 
He'd stopped trying to take naps.  The afternoons were
murder.

The mornings, though, when he could tell himself a new day
had started and there was nothing wrong, when he could
almost believe that getting up at a quarter to four was just
getting a jump on the day . . . well, the mornings were fine.

***
J.  Edgar Hoover Building
Washington D.C.
8:01 am 

He stepped out of the elevator, eyes already grainy from
weariness, and shouldered impatiently through the usual
assortment of bureaucracy and administrative assistants.  Kim
sat at her desk as always, fingers flying over the keyboard. 
She got in at 7:30 everyday, because, as she had chirped to
him at one Secretary's Day lunch, she was a morning person.

"Morning, Kim," he said, pushing open his office door.

She spun in her chair.  "Mr. Skinner--" she began, but he had
already seen them, the thorns in his side, the banes of his
existence, the two people he liked more than anyone else he
knew in the FBI.

Scully sat in a chair like a normal human being, but Mulder
prowled, investigating the photos on the shelves.

"--pretty impressive--" he was saying, and Skinner knew from
the frame that Mulder was holding the picture of him with
Susannah Bilkes, his former partner's daughter.

"She's like a daughter to me, Mulder," he said.  "To what do I
owe this honor?"

"I didn't know you had a niece, sir," Mulder said, setting the
picture down and folding himself into the chair next to his
partner.

Sinking into his own chair, Skinner felt like a bag of wet sand. 
"God child," he said, waiting for the explanation, for the story,
for the bullshit rationale that Mulder was going to unravel on
him so that the federal government would pay for this next
phase of the Great American Alien Hunt.

Mulder stretched forward and handed him the omnipresent
manila file folder.

"What'm I looking at?" Skinner asked, skimming the police
reports.

"As of yesterday police have found four women--Janine
Graham, Gloria Arguilez, Kara Stoddard, and Teresa
Honeywell--each strangled, eviscerated, and left in empty
warehouses or storage facilities in Bent, North Carolina." 
Mulder's hand intruded on Skinner's field of vision and flipped
to the photos.  His fingers were well made and reassuring and
out of place next to pictures of the dead.  

Skinner felt the hair at the back of his neck rise as he looked at
the series of broken women, and he remembered the populated
darkness of his dreams.  This was the stuff of nightmares. 
Shrugging, he re-focused on the pictures in front of him. 

"This seems pretty straightforward, Mulder."  He looked up
into the younger man's eyes.  "Why are we interested in this
case?" 

Scully answered, her voice like silk in his ears.  He thought
briefly that he might be able to sleep if Agent Scully would
come and read to him.  

"Agent Mulder believes that we have a lead traditional
investigators may be overlooking."

Skinner waited.

Mulder stepped in.  "Police were contacted by an Eileen
Bridgeton, a housewife from Bent, who claims to know when
a woman is about to be taken or found."

"Really?"  Skinner couldn't disguise the sarcasm in his voice.

"She's been able to tell us details about the victims known
only to police.  Local talent hasn't even bothered to question
her, for obvious reasons, and--"

"And you want to go down and run a separate investigation."

"We want to aid an ongoing investigation by using alternative
methodologies," Agent Mulder said.  The man was a walking
bullshit machine.

"It does make sense, sir," Scully interjected.  "Considering
Mulder's background with VICAP and our experience with
this kind of phenomenon both real and feigned . . . "

"Fine."  Skinner pulled a pen out of his desk drawer.  "You're
going.  Have a good time."

Mulder almost smiled on his way out, but Skinner didn't even
have the ambition to be amused.  Mulder and Scully were off
on another wild goose chase at government expense.  He
hoped they helped catch a killer while they were down there,
but he couldn't even summon up the energy to care.

***
On Flight 247 
from Washington DC to Raleigh, NC
9:40 am

Mulder wasn't sure what had clued him in to the fact that his
boss was off his game--whether it was the strange look on
Skinner's face during Scully's recitation of the facts, or the
way he had shoved the 302 into Mulder's hand after he'd
signed it--but now, sitting in the airplane on his way to
Raleigh, Mulder was certain that in the life of Assistant
Director Skinner all was not well.

"What do you think, Scully?"

She looked up from her book, amused.  

"About Skinner," he added by way of explanation.

"He's got a nice set of shoulders.  Elaborate, Mulder."

"Did he seem strange to you?"

She closed her book, marking her place with her index finger. 
"He seemed tired.  But Mulder," she said, eyes twinkling.  "He
might just be tired of you."

"Us."

"No, just you, Mulder," she said, reopening her book. 
Conversation closed.

"So," he said, hunching down in his seat to peer at her book. 
"You're into the AD's shoulders?"

She glared, but she didn't mean it.  She also refused to be
drawn back into idle speculation.  Later, when he woke up
from his in-flight nap against her shoulder, he refused to feel
remorse for the drool.

***
He brought it up again in the rental car.  She was driving,
which made it that much easier to grill her: she couldn't devote
all of her energy to defending against him.

"Skinner's shoulders, hmm?" he said.

She sighed.  "Mulder, what exactly is this about?"

"I'm not sure."  That was true.  He wasn't sure what kept
bringing him back to Skinner's image, to the man sitting at his
desk handing over the 302, arm extended in resignation.  He
wasn't sure why the image was washed with sadness like a
watercolor painting left in the rain.  "Maybe it's just that we
got here too easily," he said.

"Too easily." Her eyebrow lifted.

"He just signed the form."

"You're complaining because Skinner let us come down here
without making us jump through flaming hoops first?"

Mulder shrugged.  When she put it that way it sounded so . . .
stupid.

"All I'm saying, Scully, is that it was not standard Skinner
behavior."

"Granted, Mulder."

She seemed content to leave it there, and she had conceded his
point, so he was forced to fall back on color commentary to
entertain himself.

"Look, Scully." He pointed at the billboard they were
whooshing past.  Scully had a lead foot.  "Grace Dairy. Grace
Cream, Grace Yogurt, Grace Butter...  'Amazing Grace, how
sweet the taste.'  Made right here in Bent.  Whattya know."

"Hmmph," she said.

"Tell me Scully," he said, turning to her.  "Has your butter
been saved?" He pointed a religious and accusatory finger at
her.  When he opened his mouth his voice came out slow and
loud, coated in a maple syrup accent. "Has your butter been
SAV-ED?"

She tossed him a glance, eyes barely leaving the road.  "I'm
Catholic, Mulder.  My dairy products don't have immortal
souls."

Mulder was still grinning when they pulled up in front of the
motel.

***

Motel 6
Bent, North Carolina
12:52 pm

They circled the hotel rooms like a couple of dogs, wandering
back and forth through the connecting door engaged in idle
banter until Scully's shoes lay beside the chair in one room and
Mulder's suit bag collapsed on the bed in the other.

"What's our itinerary?" he asked, sprawling on the polyester
bedspread and stretching for the remote control.  

"We meet with the ASAC at two and Mrs. Bridgeton expects
us at three.  I'm going to go take a shower."

"Let me know if you need any help," he called after her,
through the half-open door.  She shouted something back that
was probably "in your dreams."

He clicked on the tv and started flipping channels, clicking
through them while he worked through the facts of the case
mentally, performing what Bill Patterson had called the
"sift"--the culturing of fact into information that could be
used.  This was what he had always been best at, psychology
degree aside.  He could hold all of the facts in one place and
run his brain through them like running fingers through flour.

 . . . Four women, similar in appearance and age, sexually
assaulted, strangled.  Bodies mutilated post-mortem with a
single cut from sternum to pelvic bone.  Lack of fluid at the
scenes indicates victims are killed then moved to a public
location, found usually within twenty-four hours of death . . .
it all lead up to two things: one, the killer was murdering
women because they represented something or someone to
him, an influential woman, perhaps a mother, or a woman who
had rejected sexual advances, a wife or girlfriend.  Two, this
guy was sending a message.  He wanted these women found.

Far away, he heard Scully's shower go off, and a minute or
two later she appeared in the doorway, dressed and damp, her
naked face improbably young.

"Mulder," she said.  Mulder didn't answer, shifting his gaze to
his own folded hands. In his peripheral vision, Scully glowed
in her white robe, and he was paralyzed with tenderness. His
chest was tight with it; he stored such moments in his intricate
eidetic memory, these times when she was most at her ease
with him.  He wondered what was urgent enough to bring her
to him before her hair was dry. "Please tell me," she said, "that
this story was a facade designed to get us into the case."

"What are you saying, Scully?" he asked. 

"You don't really believe that this woman is psychic, do you?"

He returned his gaze to the t.v., squelching a smile.  "Won't
know 'til we get there."

"I should have known," he heard her mutter.

"Did you say something, Scully?"

The slam of the bathroom door and the roar of the hair dryer
were his only answers.  It was good to be on the road again.

***end 1/7***