Disclaimers in Section 0/7

January Sun 2/7 : Eileen
by Justin Glasser and Dawn M. Pares

***

FBI Field Office
Bent, North Carolina
2:10 pm

From vast experience, Mulder knew that each FBI field office
was different.  Some, like those in New York and Chicago,
were made up of dozens of agents, all swimming in a sea of
cases, surrounded by the best in technology and support staff. 
Others, like this one in Bent, were outposts in the federal
government's war on crime, made up of two or three younger
agents who made their own coffee and typed their own
reports.  No matter how different the decorating was though,
or how pretty the secretaries, Mulder knew that each office
had one thing in common:  each was full of agents looking for
that elusive gift, the Case, the one that would get them out of
wherever they were and up to the next rung of the ladder.  The
Case that would give them a Name.

And Mulder also knew that acting ASAC Jonathon Christley
thought he had found his Case, and he was hanging on to it the
way a terrier will hold on to a piece of meat, all teeth and
snarling.

"Look," Scully was saying, "--we're here because you don't
want to interview Mrs. Bridge--"

Agent Christley nodded, head bobbing like a cork.  "I
understand, Agent Scully, I do."  His accent was slow and
drawn, reminding Mulder of Foghorn Leghorn.  "All I'm sayin'
is I don't understand why Washington sent two more agents. 
VICAP just got here--" He pointed vaguely.  Mulder tapped
on Scully's shoulder and headed off in that general direction.

"Where's he goin'?" Agent Christley asked, and Scully said
something in reply.  "I *know*," Christley said, "but I *told*
you--"

Mulder didn't hear the rest.


***
The VICAP guy must have been fairly new because Mulder
hadn't ever seen him before.  He stuck out his hand as the man
looked up.

"I hear you're VICAP," he said, smiling.  No sense in causing
trouble right away.

The man stood and took his hand.  He was tall and thin, a
light-skinned black man whose eyes reminded Mulder of
Gregory Hines.

"James Robertson."

"Fox Mulder."

Agent Robertson paused.  "Really?  Fox Mulder?"

Mulder smiled again, waiting for the joke, the story, the
questions about what was true.

"What are you doing here?" Robertson asked.

"Excuse me?"

"I thought I was the only profiler assigned," he said, sounding
flattered instead of insulted.

"My partner and I are checking out some random leads.  You
got anything?"

Robertson sighed.  "Not much.  Standard.  White male, 35-45,
no record, anti-social, blah, blah, blah.  And we've got all the
victims.  You want a copy of the file?"

"Got one, thanks."

Robertson stared at him for a moment, smiled, shook his head.

"You're a fucking legend, man.  It's an honor."

"Yeah, well."  Mulder was acutely aware of the heat in his
face.  "There's a fine line between famous and infamous, you
know?"

Robertson laughed a laugh surprisingly low and rumbling.

"I hear you, man.  Let me know if you need anything."

By the time Mulder got back to her, Scully had disposed of
Christley, and stood patiently by the door.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"Robertson.  VICAP.  Nice guy."

"Lemme guess," she said.  "He's heard of you?"

***

Home of Eileen Bridgeton
337 Grant Street
Bent,  North Carolina
3:01 pm

Eileen Bridgeton was an indifferent gardener, Scully thought,
if her patchy lawn and wilting flowers were any indication, but
her house was in good repair, and the front door looked
freshly painted.  Nevertheless, Scully still wasn't sure what she
was doing here waiting to ask her about the future.  She had
meant what she had said in the motel:  she had considered
Mrs. Bridgeton just an excuse, a way to get out of the office
and into a really juicy case.  Now she was afraid Mulder might
actually believe his own hype.

He gave her a consoling glance before knocking, and she
quelled the sudden desire to kick him by trying to decide what
this "psychic" was going to look like.

The woman was no gypsy.

Instead, Mrs. Bridgeton was a pale, freckled woman with
broad hips and a soft mouth.  Her hands fluttered nervously to
her throat when she saw them standing there. Her eyes were
the soft brown of a frightened deer.  She waved the two of
them in without asking their names or their business, and
when she turned to close the door behind them, Scully saw
that she had her hair pulled back with a plain elastic band. 
Mrs. Bridgeton wasn't a psychic: she was a housewife.

"I know why you're here," she said.

*Well, then you're one step ahead of me,* Scully thought,
suppressing the urge to groan.  She was always careful not to
look at Mulder at times like this.  It would be too easy to roll
her eyes.  

A wary looking boy with a baseball cap was shrugging an
athletic bag over his shoulder in the hallway.

"I got practice," he informed his mother, not looking at the
agents.

"Don't be late," she replied.  "My son, Brian," she said by way
of introduction.  The boy, maybe fourteen, nodded diffidently
in their direction and shouldered past Scully and out the front
door.

Eileen led them to a sitting room and offered to make tea.

"We're fine, Mrs. Bridgeton," Mulder said.  He took an easy
chair across from where the woman stood, pulling out his i.d.
and handing it to her.  She glanced at it, nodding. "If you don't
mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions about these dreams
you've been having."

"Oh, of course."  She sank onto the flowered couch, hands
toying with the hem of her blue chambray shirt.  She seemed
to be thinking of something sad.  Scully saw the skin around
her eyes tighten, then Mrs. Bridgeton sighed and folded her
fingers resolutely in her lap. "They started not long after my . .
. My husband died.  He was a firefighter, and . . . and he . . ."

Scully settled beside the woman, feeling sympathy well in her
chest.  Psychic or not, Eileen Bridgeton had been through a
lot.

"We understand that he was killed in a training accident."

Eileen nodded, wiping at her eyes.

"He fell . . . from a roof.  They still haven't been able to really
explain it to me.  It . . . it was just so . . . so pointless."

Mulder leaned forward then, his eyes warm and dark with
concern.

"I know it must have been very painful for you, Mrs.
Bridgeton.  Before he died, did you ever have any visions, like
the ones you described to the police?"

The woman shook her head.

"No.  Never.  But now that Frank's gone, I just don't feel . . .
safe anymore."  Her damp eyes focused on Scully's face.  "Do
you know what I mean?  Having Frank here . . . I mean, I
knew that his job was dangerous, but I always thought he'd be
here . . ."

Eileen unknit her fingers and closed one hand on Scully's
sleeve in the desperate grip of a drowning woman.

"But then he was gone, and Brian was so upset.  He hardly
said a word for a week after his father died.  Then he seemed
to perk up a little . . . and that's when the dreams started."

Mulder nodded, encouraging.  Scully was always surprised by
the intensity of his gaze when he was questioning a suspect or
a witness, as if he expected to draw the information out of
them solely with his desire to know.

"At first . . . at first I thought I'd just been watching too much
television.  After Frank, well, I started staying up real late,
flipping channels, not really watching anything, just . . . I don't
know, really.  But when I had the first dream, I just thought
maybe I'd fallen asleep with the television on, and maybe
picked up on 'Cops' or something."

A small, fleeting smile made her years younger and much
more like the pretty bride Scully had noted in the photograph
over the mantle.  Frank Bridgeton had had a kind face and a
mustache.  God, Scully thought, remembering her own father's
funeral.

"Then I just thought I was crazy," Eileen continued, 
"especially when I realized I'd been dreaming what came on
the news the next day."

Mrs. Bridgeton let Scully go in order to rest her hands in her
lap again.

"Mrs. Bridgeton, what made you decide to come forward and
report these visions?"  Mulder's voice was kind, but not
appeasing.  Scully could hear the sincerity of Mulder's words
and she found herself wanting to protect Eileen from it, from
Mulder's coaxing tone, his terrible understanding.  Scully
wasn't sure the woman was ready to believe herself psychic
any more than Scully was.

Eileen glanced at her before answering, as if asking
permission to continue.

"I didn't want to.  I thought everyone would think I was crazy. 
But then, then I thought I should come forward, if I could
help.  I had to."  Her desperate look made Scully glance at the
picture over the mantle again, see the strong face of a younger,
braver woman.  Eileen's reverie faded, though, and her face
crumpled.  "When I saw it on the news about that first body . .
. I had to tell the police that I'd known that already.  That I'd
dreamed it."  Her eyes, dark and pleading, sought Mulder's.

"Do you think I'm crazy, too?"

"No, Mrs. Bridgeton.  I don't.  Scully?"  He'd gotten to his feet
and, Scully nodded at him.  Scully squeezed Mrs. Bridgeton's
hand before standing up and following Mulder into the hall.

***

Mulder barely let the door close behind them before closing a
hand on her shoulder. "Scully, she could be the real thing."
His breath was a warm rush over her ear.

"Mulder." She let exasperation flavor her pause.  "I believe
that *she* believes she's psychic.  That doesn't mean she is."

"How can you explain the dreams?  She's known things about
the murders, about the victims, that haven't been released to
the media."

"Yes, the visions she's described have a startling similarity to
the crime scenes, but when you come right down to it, many of
her details are vague."

"Vague or not, how could she know them at all?"

"Mulder, this woman has recently experienced a traumatic loss
in her life.  Grief can do strange things to people.  Maybe she's
sleepwalking, or driving around in a trance state following
police cars . . ." She stopped, abruptly aware that she had
stumbled into a minefield of stupidity.  She hated it when her
explanations sounded less plausible than Mulder's.

His eyes actually  *twinkled*.  Scully sighed, scowling.

"'Trance driving'?  Scully, you're reaching here, admit it."

"I'll admit that I'm not sure how Mrs. Bridgeton knew details
about crimes she obviously did not commit, but I won't admit
that she's psychic.  You can't prove that, Mulder."

"And you can't prove to me she's not."  He leaned forward,
eyes alight, mouth curving into the grin that always made her
want to pinch him.

"Fine, Mulder.  Fine.  Why don't we just check the place out
first?"

He held up his hands in mock surrender.  "Where do you want
to start?"

"Your head on a platter."

"You wound me, Scully."

"She said her dreams started after Brian got better, right? 
Why don't we start with him."

"Be my guest, FBI woman."

Scully re-entered the sitting room and asked Mrs. Bridgeton's
leave to search the house.

"I'd like to start with your son's room, if that's okay?"

Eileen surprised her by blushing.

"Oh, I wish you wouldn't.  It's such a mess.  It's embarrassing. 
He's pretty good about keeping all his junk in his room, but
once it's in there, most of it ends up on the floor."

Scully found herself smiling.

"I have two brothers Mrs. Bridgeton.  Believe me, I know how
boys live."

Still faintly pink, Eileen nodded.

She led them up the stairs to a door hung with a sign. 
"BioHazard" it proclaimed in black letters over yellow and
black stripes.  Remembering Charlie and Bill's rooms during
their high school years, their mountains of clothes and debris,
Scully didn't doubt the sign's veracity.  She exchanged a look
with Mulder, fighting to suppress a smile, and opened the
door.

Drifts of clothes and stacks of Sports Illustrated littered the
floor.  One wall was apparently a shrine to Pamela Anderson,
another to the Chicago Bulls.  Mulder paused in front of
Pamela Anderson in a pink bikini.  Scully paused beside him.

"Are you picking up psychic vibrations, too?" she asked.

"Not with all the negative energy in the room . . . " He grinned
at her.

She prodded at a pile of tangled sweats with the toe of her
navy sling backs, and uncovered a broken CD case.

Mulder turned away from the poster.  "I think I'll check out
her bathroom.  Maybe she's been taking Psychic Vitamins."

Scully ignored him and continued to sort through piles of
unwashed laundry.  Her brother Charles had sometimes worn
the same socks three days in a row, and bragged about it. 
Brian seemed to have an endless supply of socks, however.  

Probably, he'd inherited all his father's.

That thought made her pause, made her wonder what she was
doing pawing through the belongings of a fourteen year old
whose father had no need for new socks.  She wondered if
they had been close, or if Brian was only close to his dad now,
when it was too late.  She was grateful suddenly for her father. 
She had been his favorite and everyone in the family had
known it: Ahab had never made any bones about telling her he
loved her.  He had driven her and pushed her and demanded
her best every time all the time, but he had also boasted about
her to his friends, had hung every award or commendation she
had ever received in his office right next to his own.  She
wondered if Mr. Bridgeton had kept his love for his son a
secret.

Besides an apparently endless supply of athletic socks, though,
Scully uncovered nothing unusual, or even interesting in the
search of Brian's room, until she opened the closet.

A predictable amount of ski and camping gear was crammed
behind the doors, and on the floor lay a flashlight, a writing
tablet, and a pen.

She crouched down and picked up the tablet, finger tapping
the open page.   The words "Dear Dad" had been engraved
into the page in pencil.  The paper was worn and rough in
places where it had been erased again and again. 

Then she saw the dull gleam of a metal box, and knew she'd
found what she'd been looking for. 

***

"What is it?"  Eileen's voice was confused.  "Is it a radio?"

Scully set the thing on the counter and glanced at Mulder.

"It's a police scanner, Mrs. Bridgeton," she said.  "It was in
your son's room, in his closet.  His closet is on the wall of your
bedroom.  I think this is the reason you've been dreaming
about crime scenes: you must hear the scanner in your sleep."

Mrs. Bridgeton looked equal parts shocked and relieved, and
Mulder's face was creased with disappointment.  Any desire
Scully may have had to say 'I told you so' died when she saw
the way his mouth tightened.

"Oh, how could I have been so stupid?  It's Frank's!  He used
to keep it in the garage.  He used to listen to it on his days off. 
Why on earth would Brian keep it in his closet?"

"Mrs. Bridgeton, you're not stupid, you've just been
preoccupied.  And Brian probably just misses his father." 
Scully resisted the urge to pat the woman's hand.

Nodding, Eileen fingered the dials of the police scanner.  She
turned her eyes to Scully.

"Thank you, Ms. Scully. I don't know what I would have done
if I'd kept having those dreams."

Scully smiled a rote smile of understanding and was surprised
by the feeling that came behind it.  Mrs. Bridgeton seemed
truly relieved.  They had exposed her as a fraud in a way, and
she was grateful for it.

"I'm glad we could help," Scully replied, feeling obliged to
mention Mulder's hand in it.  Without his interest in her
possible psychic abilities, Eileen Bridgeton may have been
plagued by nightmares for years.

"Thank you for your time, Mrs. Bridgeton," Mulder intoned. 
He no longer looked disappointed, just quiet.  They had done a
good thing here; Mulder could see that.

"Oh, it was no trouble.  No trouble at all."

All in a day's work, Scully thought, looking at Mrs.
Bridgeton's wan smile.

***

"Jinkies, Scooby," Mulder murmured under his breath.  He
turned the key in the ignition.

Scully indulged in some eye rolling and did not respond.

"For a minute there, Scully, I thought you were going to
unmask Mrs. Bridgeton for the fraud she was.  I was ready to
swear she was actually Jeb Parker, the foreman for the old
lumber mill."

"Mulder, your love of Hannah Barbera cartoons aside, I hadn't
planned to 'debunk' Mrs. Bridgeton.  I just happened to find
the reason behind her supposed psychic abilities."

"So did you identify more with Daphne or Velma?"

"Just drive, Mulder."

***

Motel 6
Bent, North Carolina
5:35 pm

"So, what do you want to do?" Scully was crashed in the
uncomfortable lounge chair near the head of the bed, her feet
freed from her high heels wiggling against the thin carpeting. 
She had pretty little feet, he thought, watching them brush
across the carpet.

"Is that an invitation?" He sat on the floor at the foot of the
bed, head tilted back and to the side so he could see her.  Her
stocking-feet made swishing sounds on the floor.

"The way I see it, Mulder, we've got two choices: stay here
and muck up Christley's chances at promotion by working his
case, or catch the next plane.  This isn't an X-file."

He nodded an upside-down nod.  "You wanna stay?"

She looked up over his head at the tv, the virulent curtains, the
cheap oil painting of a hunting dog with a duck in its mouth.

"Scully?"

"What would you say if I told you I might have something?"

"How do I love thee, let me count the ways."  He got up on his
knees and leaned over the edge of the bed.  "Show me."

She flopped the file open and pushed it toward him.  "I was
reading the M.E.'s report and I noticed this."  She indicated a
line with one manicured nail.

"' . . . victim has two diagonal cuts across the palm of the hand
. . . defense wounds . . . '" He looked up.  "So?"

"So she calls them defense wounds.  But Mulder--" Scully
flipped pages rapidly, to another report, and another.  "All of
these women have the same marks."

"That's textbook," he said, holding his hands up at her, palms
out.

"Sure, for victims killed by knives or other implements.  These
women were strangled *first.*  They have no other knife
wounds, no other cuts besides the ritual mutilation which
takes place post mortem.  If these are defense wounds,
Mulder, what were they defending themselves against?"

They sat for a moment, staring at each other from across the
expanse of bedspread.  

"Do we have photos?"

She nodded, turned more pages.

"Shit, Scully!  He's marking them!"

She nodded again, reaching behind her for her cell phone. 
Wordless, she pressed the buttons and held it out to him.  He
had a sudden and totally inappropriate desire to kiss her.

"Christley?  Mulder.  Get Robertson and get your ass to the
office.  We've got something."

***end 2/7***
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