Written for the LJ 100 Crossovers challenge. Prompt: Ends
Research
Assistance
It was a dark and stormy night. Thunder rolled across the sky in successive waves of sound. Hardly had one thunder boom ended when on its heels, a lightning bolt struck an old oak tree outside the library. For a split second, the lights in a half mile radius flickered and paled. The concussion of the hit rattled the windows on the fourth floor of the library. Several students jumped and yelped, startled out of their frantic last-minute exam studies. The rustle of papers and nervous chatter followed as the late night denizens of the library settled back to their cramming like a flock of starlings startled from the trees. Covert glances were directed at the haggard-looking man in the far corner who appeared to be oblivious to the storm. He was their mystery man, an object of curiosity and speculation. For the past three days, he had appeared after dark and stayed until the doors finally closed at 2 a.m. He never spoke, although he would smile politely if approached and shake his head at the offer of assistance from assistants drawn to his haunted good looks and obvious obsessive devotion to his research. Each morning, the student workers would re-shelve esoteric volumes that had rarely been used and speculate about the mystery man's research.
Listening to the students' nervous chatter, Mulder marveled at their innocent fears. To them, a thunderstorm was sound and fury that might evoke a momentary atavistic fear of the anger of the gods, but didn't represent a real threat. He envied them their innocence. The storm warned him that the bloody trail he was following would be marked by another death. Sometime tomorrow, a body would be found with an arrow through the heart, an arrow carefully made out of elderberry. Five storms, five deaths, and Patterson would angrily demand why he hadn't solved the case. How many deaths was it going to take, he'd asked after the third death, before Mulder got up off his ass and told them how to find the killer? After the fourth death, Mulder had given up sleeping, opting instead to spend his nights searching old legends and painfully translating ancient texts with the help of a dictionary and sheer stubborn determination.
There were very few students left in the library when the closing announcement broke into Mulder's concentration. Another night, another dead-end, another death, he thought groggily. The weather reports predicted clear weather for the next four days with more storms rolling in from the coast by the weekend. Four days to find the key to the mystery and stop the killings. As he packed his briefcase, Mulder wearily acknowledged that he needed to broaden his search to more esoteric sources. He'd love to gain access to the special collections at Boston University or even Harvard, but Patterson wasn't likely to authorize his absence from the investigation long enough for him to drive to Boston and conduct serious research. If the killer followed the rough pattern Mulder had outlined, then Patterson would be focused on the newest crime scene and demanding that everyone on the team focus their full attention there as well. Pursuing alternate lines of investigation would be bad PR for a team already coming under heavy criticism from the local police for failing to develop new leads.
"Wasted another night, did you?" Patterson snapped as Mulder plodded slowly towards the crime scene. The other two members of the team were scouring the area looking for some trace of the killer, however infinitesimal. Patterson made a point of looking at his watch to emphasize the fact that Mulder was late.
Mulder gave him a hard look, but bit back the sarcastic rejoinder that at least he wasn't running around looking busy while accomplishing nothing like Patterson was doing. At least he wasn't wasting time retracing cold trails that hadn't produced a single lead the first three times they'd followed them. Two hours sleep hadn't improved his ability to find clues where there were none to be found, but Mulder went through the motions of trying. Patterson seemed to expect miracles and was becoming increasingly irritated with the Mulder's failure to produce one on demand.
"Well?" Patterson demanded when Mulder exited the crime scene area. "Come on, you should have something to go on by now. How many more people have to die before you give us a profile we can use to stop this killer?"
"I'm not a magician . . . sir." Mulder left a long pause before the sir to warn Patterson to back off his guilt games. He was tired of being made Patterson's personal scapegoat. He didn't need Patterson's help to feel responsible each time someone died while he struggled with a profile. Turning away from Patterson, he scrubbed his hands over his face and wished for sleep without dreams.
"Where are you going, now?" Patterson demanded to Mulder's back.
"Back to the library. The answer is there, not in your physical evidence. The killings are ritualistic. I just don't know which ritual and until I do, we're not going to stop the bastard," Mulder retorted in a voice raspy with exhaustion and stress.
"Tomorrow, Mulder. I want a working profile on my desk tomorrow morning. Do you understand?" Patterson shouted angrily as Mulder climbed into his car. As Mulder drove off, Patterson smiled in self-satisfaction. The boy was good, but he needed pressure to be really good and Patterson prided himself on providing the right degree of pressure to produce results.
The
Bell, Book, and Candle Antiquarian Bookstore
Providence, R.I.
Mulder stared at the narrow alleyway jutting off the street. A small metal sign inset into one of the buildings at the entrance clearly said Zachary Lane. He'd been told to find Zachary Lane, then follow it to an old bookstore that doubled as an esoteric research library. The research specialist at Brown University library had been helpful, but the university library simply didn't have the resources he was looking for. She recommended this obscure bookstore and even given him a list of possible titles to consult so Mulder couldn't even feel that he had been politely shown the door. He wasn't sure what bothered him the most: that the librarian had understood perfectly what he was looking for despite his somewhat vague search parameters or that there was a place in town that provided the sort of information the killer might have used in re-creating a long-forgotten ritual.
By the time Mulder had gone just a few feet into the alley, he felt as if he'd stepped out of the twentieth century and into the eighteenth. The Bell, Book, and Candle Bookstore occupied a weathered old brick building about two hundred feet down the alley. The sign was old, but obviously well maintained. A small bell rang as he opened the door and stepped into a well-lit cathedral of books. Books of all types lined the walls from floor to the top of a high vaulted ceiling. A rolling ladder stood against one wall of books. A circular iron staircase in the back of the shop led up to a balcony that allowed access to the top shelves. There must be close to five thousand books in just this room alone and Mulder saw a doorway off to his right that seemed to lead to another room equally crammed full of books.
"Welcome."
Startled, Mulder turned away from the mountain of books confronting him to see a young man perched behind a tall, old-fashioned bookkeeper's desk off to one side.
"One of these days, I'm going to have to put up a sign telling folks to look left to find the shop owner," the young man said with a smile.
Mulder shook his head briefly as he shifted expectations of dealing with a grizzled old book collector. An amused look in the young man's eyes suggested that he understood and was accustomed to giving newcomers a chance to re-orient themselves to his youth.
"Dora called a few minutes ago and said she'd sent a new research question my way," the young man said with an eager smile. "Said you were FBI and needed help with the recent killings. Always glad to help, if I can. My name's Barnabas Williams." Another grin followed this announcement and the young man paused for a moment as if half-expecting a comment.
"Glad to meet you. I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder," Mulder said carefully as he pulled out his badge and opened it for inspection. He had a feeling that he was missing something in this exchange of introductions.
"Ah, you're probably too young to remember the series. I'm named for a 200-year-old vampire on a soap opera," Williams said with a laugh. "Fox is a name I would have killed for as a kid."
Mulder gave him a sympathetic smile.
"OK, that should do it for the introductions. Dora said you were in a hurry and gave me a quick rundown on what you were looking for. I can't think of anything right offhand that has what you're looking for, but I have an excellent esoteric religious studies section. Let me get you settled there and you can browse through the books and see if anything's useful. I have a few manuscripts in the basement that might be helpful as well." With that, Williams took Mulder up the iron staircase to a small alcove that had a table and a small lamp. "I get researchers here every so often, so I finally fixed up a place you can read and take notes without clambering up and down that damned iron monstrosity. I'll leave the index file with you; it's arranged by title and author with an indication of which stack and shelf the book is on. The stacks aren't well lighted, but I'll leave a flashlight for you. You wouldn't believe the antique wiring in this place. The candle part of this place's name was probably very accurate in my grandfather's time."
Shedding his coat and briefcase, Mulder stared at the long aisles between a row of bookcases that seemed to stretch back into the shadows. Without further ado, Williams placed a small card file and a flashlight on the table and headed back towards the staircase. Left alone, Mulder took a deep breath and began thumbing through the card file.
Immersed in books, Mulder barely heard Williams come and go with two armloads of very old books that he laid carefully on the table. Following a barely perceptible trail through the books, Mulder began to understand the compulsion driving the murderer. So far, there was nothing he could use as evidence to back up his understanding, but every book he consulted seemed to refer back to an original source. The card file actually listed the book, but when Mulder went to the designated shelf he found that the book was missing. Another book had been inserted in its place. On a hunch, Mulder looked up this book and went to its correct location only to find an empty slot. If the killer had been here, he had covered his tracks well.
With flashlight in hand, Mulder spent some time making sure that the book he was looking hadn't been misfiled. Frustrated, Mulder leaned his head against a shelf of books. He was so close he could feel the solution trying to gel inside his brain. Feeling a strong tap on his shoulder, Mulder looked up expecting to see Barnabas. What he saw was impossible and he went stock still and wondered if he had finally cracked under pressure. Standing in the aisle was a very large orangutan with a concerned expression, a book in one hand, and a ball of string in the other.
"Ook," the orangutan said firmly with a faintly disapproving tone as he held out the book to him.
Gingerly, Mulder took the book. Somehow, in the middle of the madness of seeing an orangutan materialize in a bookstore, he took note of the fact that the book was the one he'd been looking for. Feeling mildly giddy and disoriented, Mulder nodded. It made sense to be polite to hallucinations, especially one that could probably pick him up and tuck him under its arms.
"Ook," the orangutan said with a satisfied air. Pointing emphatically at the empty slot where the book belonged, he said "Ook" again.
Mulder nodded and gamely indicated that he understood that when he was done, the book should be put back where it belonged. With a smile, the orangutan turned and walked down the aisle and turned the corner. Stunned, Mulder followed. He couldn't help himself. It wasn't everyday he encountered a helpful orangutan in a library and he couldn't just let it walk away without trying to find out where it came from. He was sure he was only a few steps behind the creature, but when he turned the corner, there was no sign of the ape. Mulder walked the entire aisle until he had satisfied himself that there was simply no place for a 300 pound orangutan to hide. It had to have been a hallucination, except that he was holding the book that had been missing a few moments ago.
"Later. I'll go mad, later," Mulder promised himself in a shaky voice. He had a profile to finish then he wanted a stiff drink followed by twelve hours uninterrupted sleep. After that, he wasn't sure. Orangutans simply don't materialize and de-materialize out of thin air. It might be time to give serious consideration to his long-standing plan to see a psychiatrist. It was probably past time he told Patterson to go to hell.
When Williams showed up two hours later to announce that the bookstore was closing, Mulder got up and carefully replaced the book where it belonged. He patted the binding as if telling the book to stay there, then gathered up his things. He had a profile that should provide the police with the necessary parameters to identify a suspect. He also had a letter addressed to Section Chief Blevins requesting immediate re-assignment. If he was going to start seeing things, he might as well get paid for it. There were files in the basement that listed cases stranger than this one. If he didn't want to show up in them, he needed to stop profiling, now.
Mulder simply smiled and nodded when Williams asked if he'd found what he needed and hastily exited the store. For a brief second, Mulder considered telling Williams that his bookstore was haunted by a 300 pound orangutan, but decided against it. The ape wasn't causing any trouble and seemed genuinely interested in keeping the collection in order. There were worse things than a book-loving orangutan, he thought as he reached the noisy, modern streets of Providence.
The End
End note: Barnabas Williams was named after the vampire, Barnabas Collins, in the original soap opera "Dark Shadows."
November 2006
