Title: Gutless (Chapter 3 of 16) Author: Magdeleine See Prologue for full headers; all posted chapters can be found at http://shannono.simplenet.com/gutless GUTLESS Chapter 3 Bob's Diner 9:47 PM "Is that all you're going to eat?" Scully watched her partner wolf down a slice of apple pie a la mode. Correction: his third slice of apple pie a la mode. The first piece had arrived at nine-twenty-seven P.M.; it had been gone in approximately thirty seconds. The second piece had vanished in under a minute. By comparison, Mulder was positively dawdling over this one. He grinned across the table at her. "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, Scully. This is great pie." "I thought your usual for pie binges was sweet potato, not apple." He paused, his fork suspended in midair. "Where'd you hear that?" She shrugged. "It's a rumor." He looked at her suspiciously for a moment and went back to shoveling pie into his mouth. She shook her head in wonder. "I suppose that a lecture about the questionable nutritional value of your meal would be in order, but I get the feeling that you know exactly what you're doing and simply don't care. Throwing caution to the wind, as it were." "Relax, Scully. We're in a little diner in the middle of Kansas. I'm just sticking with something I'm sure they'll get right -- as compared to, say, a chef salad." Mulder gestured toward Scully's plate. The chef salad -- oil and vinegar delivered on the side -- was woeful-looking. Scully had been picking through it, hoping to find something edible, and was almost ready to give up. "Although I'm sure the parrot will appreciate any leftovers. They do eat that sort of thing, don't they?" "It's possible. Although I've heard that this one likes a bitten-off finger now and then as a snack." "Ha, ha. Oh, that reminds me --" Mulder leaned sideways and rummaged in his pocket for a moment. He came up with a key on a clunky metal key ring. "Here." He slid it across the table at her. "Room one-twenty-one in the Mo-Z Inn, right next door. Knock yourself out." "Thanks." "The parrot's back in my room. I don't think he's gonna say anything useful without some prompting, so he'll be all right alone." He took another bite of pie. "Incidentally," he said with his mouth full, "Karen Schaeffer told me the parrot's name." "Do tell." Mulder held up a finger in a wordless 'wait' as he swallowed. "Guido." "Nice name." "Incidentally, Guido has quite the repertoire of Dean Martin songs. Sounds just like Dino, only with a head cold. You get used to it after a while." Scully gave him the eyebrow. "Mulder, you do realize that Guido will be *your* roommate, don't you?" "I've been meaning to discuss that with you." Mulder leaned back, the red vinyl of the booth seat squeaking at his movement. "Marjorie Bailey's sister will be here on Wednesday. That means that Guido is staying with us for tonight, tomorrow night, and Tuesday night." Scully gave up on her salad, sighed, and pushed it aside. "That means that you'll have a smelly roommate named Guido for three days," she said wryly. "Must be a dream come true. Congratulations." "Yeah. Thanks." He waved the joke aside. "I was wondering if you'd consider trading off nights." "Forget it, Mulder. The parrot was your idea. You wanted him, you got him, you keep him." Scully folded her arms across her chest and glared at her partner. Mulder shrugged mildly and took another bite of his pie. The vanilla ice cream had melted somewhat, and a milky drop trickled lazily across his lower lip; he caught it with a single swipe of his tongue. And, apparently to remove any residual stickiness, he ran his tongue over that spot again. Scully stared. Certainly he couldn't know what he was doing to her. It wasn't intentional. It couldn't be intentional. Mulder was preoccupied with his next bite of pie, without an iota of attention being paid to the abruptly aroused woman sitting across the table from him. This was definitely a Level Two day. God. Nothing to do but grit her teeth and hang on. "So." Mulder's voice snapped Scully back to attention. "Tell me about the autopsy." She guiltily jerked her gaze away from his lower lip, looking out across the booths of the nearly empty diner. Mulder misinterpreted the gesture, and shook his head. "Don't worry, there's nobody close enough to hear. I want details. Tell me." Scully sighed. "Mulder, there's really nothing new to tell." "Then go back over the old stuff. Red patch on the torso?" She nodded. "Just like the others." "Wounds, signs of restraints or a struggle?" "None." "And the internal organs --?" "All gone." Scully shrugged. "I took a close look at the other bodies. They're all the same. Completely hollowed out." Mulder considered this. "And there's nothing different about this corpse at all?" "They found some kind of dried residue on the outside of the mouth; we're sending a sample to the lab in Kansas City for analysis." Scully's eyes slipped briefly to Mulder's mouth, where a smear of ice cream traced a comma around the curve of his lower lip. She looked away. "That's the only sign of anything outside the body." "Well, whoever the killer is, he's certainly tidy." He ate the last bite of his pie and waved the empty fork at Scully. "Any damage done to the surrounding muscle tissue?" "A little here, a little there. The esophageal membranes in particular seem to have been scalded away." Mulder played with the little pool of melted ice cream on his plate, stirring the crust-crumbs into it with the tines of his fork. "Some kind of acid, maybe?" She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Maybe." It had been a short autopsy, but a maddening one, and hearing the same questions out loud that she'd been asking silently was giving her a headache. "I doubt it, though; there would have been some third-degree burns on the mouth and esophagus, and unless the victim was anesthetized, she would have put up some kind of a fight before enough acid could be poured down her throat to do this kind of damage." She sighed. "And the tox screen didn't come up with any sign of anesthetics." "Maybe ..." The tone of his voice had changed, and Scully glanced up to see Mulder gazing off into space. "Mulder," she said, her voice sharp. "What is it?" He twirled his fork thoughtfully for a moment, then tapped it against the plate with a scratchy clinking sound. "There have been documented cases of partial spontaneous combustion ..." "Oh, no." "Wait, Scully, just hear me out." Mulder leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, and lowered his voice almost conspiratorially. "Spontaneous combustion, almost by definition, is a phenomenon in which a body burns itself from the inside out. In many cases not only are the surroundings left untouched, but the victim's clothing is neither burnt nor singed, and in many cases parts of the victim's own body remain perfectly preserved." "I see where you're going with this," Scully said, mirroring his pose and lowering her own voice. This was, after all, a small town. "You're saying that this could be some kind of weird local variant on spontaneous combustion, a variant that only affects the soft tissue of the viscera and not the muscle tissue surrounding it." "Exactly." Mulder grinned, and waved his hand as though imagining a marquee. "Spontaneous visceral combustion." Scully took a deep breath. "I have several objections to that theory." "Fire away." His mouth twisted in a smile. "No pun intended." She gave him her stop-screwing-around face. "First of all, there have been no proven cases of spontaneous combustion." He shook his head sagely. "Ah, but there have been a great many cases in which there was no other answer. And when all logical answers have been disproved ..." Scully ignored him. "Secondly, even if I accept that such a thing is possible, there is no physical evidence of any burning. If I remember my X-Files correctly, cases characterized as spontaneous combustion usually leave a ... a slag covering of some kind on the ceiling directly above the body. There was no such evidence in any of these cases, Mulder." "Is there a third objection?" Mulder glanced down at his plate, trailing a finger through the tiny puddle of melted ice cream. "Yes." She stopped, completely forgetting the third objection as Mulder casually sucked the ice cream off the tip of his finger with a soft, wet sound; she watched, mesmerized, as he repeated the process. Swirling the finger in the melted ice cream. Lifting his hand. Parting his lips ... "Scully?" "Hmm?" "What's the third objection?" For a panicky moment, she couldn't even remember what he was talking about. Hoping to cover, she shook her head and waved a dismissive hand. "It's not important. What'd you find out from Karen Schaeffer, besides the name of the parrot?" "Some personal information. Karen was supposed to meet Marjorie so they could drive to Leotie for dinner; that obviously didn't go as planned." He shrugged. "Marjorie doesn't seem to have had that many friends. Sort of a recluse." "Speaking of Marjorie's social life, did you ask Karen about Jim Taymor?" Mulder pulled a notebook out of his pocket, glancing down at the indecipherable scrawls that lurched across the page. "I asked, but all she came up with was that he was Marjorie's boss." He examined her expression. "Expecting another answer?" "No, not exactly. Jean Denison already told me about their work relationship. I'm wondering, though, if there was some kind of ... personal relationship between them." Now Mulder looked curious. The notebook went back in his pocket. "Based on what? Something else Jean Denison said?" "No, actually, I think there might have been something going on that Jean didn't know about." Scully paused to consider her statement. "There is a picture of Jim Taymor in a heavy silver frame on Marjorie's night stand. He's a married man. I believe that there may be a possibility that the two of them might have been having an affair." "And this relates ... how?" "I'm not sure yet." Scully shrugged. "Just a lead I think we should follow up." "Hmm." Mulder studied her thoughtfully. "You have a theory, don't you?" Scully took a sip of iced tea and tried to ignore him. "You have a theory, I can tell." He tilted his head nearly sideways, trying to catch her eyes. "Scuh-lleeee." He grinned boyishly. "Come on. I showed you mine, now you show me yours." She half-smiled at him. "Gee, with a repertoire of sweet-talk like that, I can see why all the girls talk about you in homeroom." "I got a million of 'em. Come on, Scully." "This is just a preliminary theory," she temporized. "Don't tease me. Spill it." "All right." She closed her eyes briefly, bracing herself. "There was a case in London's Old Bailey in 1954; a pharmacist named Arthur Ford poisoned two women who worked for him. Apparently he put the poison into pieces of candy and gave them to the women; the women died within a few hours and the autopsies showed that the internal organs had been literally burned away by the drug." Mulder considered it, and nodded. "Sounds like a possible explanation. What was the drug?" Scully's mouth twisted sourly. "Cantharidin." She looked at him, and waited. It took a moment for the reference to filter through Mulder's brain, but when it did, his jaw dropped. "Cantharidin? SPANISH FLY?" Scully just looked at him, expressionless. Mulder threw his head back and burst out laughing. "Mulder, it's not that funny." He attempted to control himself, settled down into a broad smirk, and brought his eyes back level with Scully's. She raised an eyebrow. That was all it took; his lips twitched and all of a sudden he was laughing again. "Oh, Scully," he managed, "you should see the look on your face." Scully was not amused. "In the London case," she continued stoically, as though Mulder were not still chortling and wiping tears from his eyes, "the pharmacist was apparently trying to seduce the two women, counting on the rumored aphrodisiac effects of cantharidin to assist him in the matter. He took some of the drug himself, although for some reason he survived to be tried for manslaughter." Mulder finally stopped laughing, although a smile kept threatening to break out around the edges of the fist he had pressed loosely against his mouth. "All right," he said, "let me get this straight. You're saying that this organ displacement or disintegration or whatever it turns out to be could be caused by ... cantharidin?" The corners of his lips twitched involuntarily upwards at the word. Scully sighed deeply. "Mulder, if you're not going to take this seriously, there's really no point in continuing this discussion." "No, no, I'm listening, I swear." Mulder put on his best attentive expression, lacing his fingers together in a prayer-like posture. "Go on." She lifted both eyebrows. "If you so much as smile, I'm out of here." "I promise to be on my best behavior." Straight-faced, he traced an X on his lapel. "Cross my heart." "Fine." Scully reluctantly returned to the topic. "The corpse I examined today is similar to the ones in the 1954 case in a number of ways; primarily due to the intense congestion of blood in the genital area --" she shot a suspicious look at Mulder, but he remained pokerfaced and wide-eyed, "-- and of course the apparent disintegration of all the soft tissue of the organs." Mulder continued to watch Scully, and his unwavering attention was starting to make her a little uncomfortable. He had his elbows propped on the table, his hands hovering near his chin -- one hand curled in a loose fist and the other curled around it. His clear storm-colored eyes were focused earnestly on her face, and he was chewing lightly on one thumb. It was making her very uncomfortable. Uncomfortable was not quite the word to describe it. The right word was flitting behind that brick wall in Scully's mind, she could sense it back there, but she refused to peek through the chinks in the wall to get a look at it. "There are some differences ..." She wished he'd look away. "In the case of cantharidin, there would be necrosis of the esophageal mucous membranes, but in this case the membranes have been completely eaten away." He was still looking at her, his teeth clicking slightly against the side of his thumbnail. Scully was starting to think that this unrelenting stare might suffocate her. "If it was a traditional form of cantharidin poisoning, it would have taken over an hour for the victims to die, and we probably would have found some bloody vomitus nearby, possibly bloody fecal matter, something. In this case, however all four victims seem to have had an instantaneous death with no sign of a struggle or a drop of fluid misplaced." Mulder continued to look at her. "I'm finished, Mulder." "Can I ask one thing?" "Please do." He leaned his chin on his hands. "Where would someone find Spanish fly in Tehtonka, Kansas?" Scully shrugged. "Maybe they didn't find it in town. Maybe they drove to Wichita. Maybe somebody has an uncle who knows somebody in the business. That's not the point, Mulder." "I just thought it might come in handy to know where to shop." His eyes were full of mischief. "Unless you by some chance have a little baggie of cantharidin tucked away in your suitcase..." "Mulder." "I'd lend you some of mine, but I forgot it in my medicine cabinet back in DC. Darn the luck --" "All right, Mulder; that's it." Scully slid out of the booth, her heels slamming firmly on the floor; she pulled her trench coat off the seat and shrugged into it with quick, brisk movements. "Obviously you're not able to take this seriously right now. I have things to do. I'm going to go do them. I will see you later." "Scully --" She caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass door as she walked out, but she didn't look back. The Mo-Z Inn Room 121 It was a room much like any of the thousands of others she'd slept in; beige paint, rust-brown carpeting, a thin machine-quilted synthetic coverlet on the bed almost exactly matching the color of the carpet. An empty bookshelf hung sadly on the wall between the window and the bed, gathering nothing more literary than dust; a battered dresser with a television set bolted to it was jammed up against the opposite wall with a flat-cushioned excuse for an armchair next to it, ensuring that nobody inclined to sit in the armchair would actually be able to see the television. The room had the stuffy smell of rented air, of faint cigarette smoke and other people's bodies and the leathery smell of luggage. Scully hated that smell. She'd smelled it too often. The night sky rumbled again, lacing the heavy clouds with flickering lightning. There was no rain, and almost no wind, although a sudden cold gust rattled the windows as Scully opened them, hoping enough of a breeze would circulate to freshen the air in her room. With any luck, it wouldn't rain for at least another hour, and she could have fresh air before she went to bed. She toured the room as if it were a crime scene, turning back the tightly tucked covers on the bed to examine the sheets, rubbing the edge of her shoe against the grain of the carpet to check for insufficient vacuuming. Not bad. The bathroom seemed clean; it smelled of bleach, but bleach was much preferable to mildew. She ran the water in the shower experimentally, and found that the water pressure was strong and the shower head was adjustable. Not bad at all. There were, unfortunately, no towels. As Scully sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, explaining the towel situation to the guy at the front desk, she noticed that something else was missing. Her luggage. Great. Mulder had dumped her luggage in his room right along with his, again. She hung up and walked over to the connecting door. She hadn't heard him come in, but she knocked, just in case. "COME IN!" It didn't sound like Mulder. Scully frowned at the door and opened it anyway. The parking lot lights beamed through Mulder's open blinds, turning the room into a black-and-white cartoon sketch, shaded with gray. Scully spotted her luggage sitting next to Mulder's bed and grabbed it in a hurry, feeling strange about being in his room in the dark. There was the rustling, pumping sound of wings flapping. "HELLO!" She turned and saw the parrot for the first time. Gray, like the rest of the room. He leered at her, his beady little eyes glinting. "Hello, Guido." Guido bounced up and down on his perch like a feathered survivor of the club scene. "VOLAAAAARE! OHHHH-OH! CANTAAAAAARE! OH-OH-OH-OHHHH!" "That's just great," Scully sighed, and left the room. "Housekeeping!" Scully opened the door. The bosomy woman standing outside was dressed in jeans and a uniform tunic, with long hair hanging in a thick braid over one shoulder. The scratched metallic name tag over her heart informed Scully that "Housekeeping" was named "Mae." Mae held up a stack of white towels. "Here ya go. Sorry about the wait." "No problem." Scully held out her hands to accept the towels, but Mae didn't hand them over. Instead, she nodded towards Mulder's room. "Do you want to complain to management about the noise?" "Do I --?" Scully realized that Guido was still serenading the public next door. Astounding. She was already used to the damn bird. "Oh. No, that's okay." "Look, it's none of my business, but everyone else has been complaining." Mae leaned against the door frame with the air of a woman in the mood to gossip. "Jeff -- that's the manager -- says he's going to call the police if we get one more complaint about that parrot." Scully, who was *not* a woman in a mood to gossip, pulled her ID out of her pocket and flipped it open at eye level. "Believe me," she said, in a tone that brooked no argument, "the police don't want the parrot, either." Mae's eyes widened. "Ohhhh," she said, nodding sagely. "So the gorgeous guy with the parrot ..." "He's my partner." Scully snapped shut her ID, tucked it back in her pocket, and held out her hands for the towels. Again, Mae did not appear to notice. "Ohhh. Look, it's none of my business, but ..." Mae leaned in, her sharp eyes snapping with mischief. "How on earth do you sleep at night with a man like that in the next room?" "A couple drops of chloral hydrate will do the job every time," Scully said, straight-faced, and took the towels from Mae. "Thank you ..." "You need anything else, just call the front desk." "Yes, thank you, I'll do that." Scully waited politely for Mae to leave. Mae did not appear to be leaving. She leaned forward a little, pitching her voice to a low, confidential tone, dripping with innuendo. "And if your *partner* needs anything --" Scully shut the door. She stood under the water, head down, one hand on the wall. She hadn't shampooed, hadn't soaped up the washcloth -- very frankly hadn't dared to touch herself, convinced that the sensation would conjure up a fantasy of her partner's hands on her. Just standing there, letting the cold water flow over her, waiting to stop feeling as though her scalp was boiling. Mulder. Mulder sucking ice cream off his finger, Mulder licking his lips, Mulder watching her intently from across the table as that gorgeous mouth worked on his thumbnail. Mulder ... Her eyes drifted shut as she involuntarily imagined that mouth on her face, her lips, her breast ... her body's reaction to the fantasy was visceral and immediate, and she wrenched herself out of it with a stifled moan. Scully leaned her forehead against the cool tile and closed her eyes. God, that man made her *ache*. The cell phone rang twice before it truly registered on Scully where the noise was coming from. "Oh, hell." She turned off the water and struggled out of the shower, dripping everywhere. Mulder. What was he calling for? Did he expect her to come back and pay her half of the bill? She wrapped a towel around herself and dried her hands on it as she padded out of the bathroom to search through her discarded clothing for the phone. She snapped it open and held it slightly away from her head, afraid that her dripping hair would short out the phone. "Scully." "Agent Scully, this is Sheriff Volney." "Yes?" She frowned, puzzled; this was not the voice she had been expecting and it took a moment to change gears. "What is it?" "You might want to find your partner and get out to one-seventeen Franklin Street." "What?" Scully was having a little trouble hearing the sheriff with the phone four inches from her ear. In Mulder's room, Guido burst into a spirited rendition of 'I've Got You Under My Skin.' "Sheriff, could you repeat that?" "I said you might want to get out here. One-seventeen Franklin. There's been another murder." End of Chapter 3 (4 / 17 sections) Feedback to playwrtrx@aol.com All posted chapters can be found at http://shannono.simplenet.com/gutless