*NO ARCHIVE*   
      
   TITLE: The Pattern   
   RATING: R for strong language and adult themes   
   ARCHIVE: Ephemeral, Gossamer - yes. Others please ask.   
   AUTHOR: Joann Humby - jhumby@lineone.net   
      
   LEGALLY:   
   We all know the score. The characters are not mine, never will be.   
   They're owned by some combination of Fox, 1013 and CC.   
      
   =========   
      
   Hennessey was a good sounding board. He pressed; he cajoled; he   
   laughed, but he never bullied or demeaned. Which, so far as Mulder   
   was concerned, made him dangerous. The man was too damned easy to   
   talk to.   
      
   The technique worked on hardened cons and nervous witnesses, and   
   was just as effective on Fox Mulder. The fact that Hennessey had   
   passed Mulder's only half-formed theory onto Patterson was   
   infuriating, but it was also inevitable. Hennessey was a good Fed   
   as well as a sensible man, and good little G-Men liked to keep   
   their bosses in the loop.   
      
   "Don't look so pissed about it. I asked what you thought, because I   
   wanted to know."   
      
   Mulder responded with a shake of the head and a frustrated, "And I   
   told you what I thought, because I'm an idiot."   
      
   "Fuck that. You need help and you know it."   
      
   "I don't need Bill Patterson breathing fire at me every time I walk   
   past his office."   
      
   "So take another route to the coffee machine."   
      
   Despite his irritation, Mulder laughed. Hennessy was just about old   
   enough to be his father, but despite jokes about "the kid,"   
   Hennessey had never treated him as anything but an equal, right   
   down to a level of healthy disrespect for his reputation as a   
   rising star in the Bureau and an almost comic determination to slam   
   him into the floor whenever they played basketball.   
      
   "Right," said Hennessey, acknowledging Mulder's change of mood.   
   "Now can we get some work done? OK. Back to basics. Our UNSUB   
   chooses the suggestible and makes a suggestion. How does he find   
   them?"   
      
   "Counseling, lonely hearts clubs, prescription drugs, spiritual   
   healing groups, magazine subscriptions - I don't know. I've got   
   hundreds of possible markers but no solid common links." He pushed   
   the checklist across the desk, shrugged as Hennessey shook his head   
   in a gesture that said he'd take Mulder's word for it.   
      
   "Do they approach him?"   
      
   Mulder sighed, closing his eyes as he rocked back in his chair and   
   tried to dislodge the cobwebs from the corners of his brain. "I   
   think so. But I don't know why."   
      
   ---------   
      
   The Hammond family was past the stage of disbelief. No longer   
   caught up in the fantasy that if they could only wake up just right   
   then Kate would be alive again. They'd moved on.   
      
   Mulder had trouble looking them in the eye.   
      
   Hennessey did most of the talking which gave his colleague the   
   freedom to explore Kate's room in peace. Back home with a Masters   
   degree under her belt, Kate had been looking for the big break that   
   would turn her work for the local newspaper from a job into a   
   career.   
      
   Lonely, too. Old friends now old enough to be married, kids of   
   their own, houses and loans. New friends either hundreds of miles   
   away, still in school and heading towards their doctorates, or   
   scattered even further afield by the hunt for the right work. The   
   man she'd once considered her de facto fiance lived on the west   
   coast now and, after the first week of their separation, he hadn't   
   even bothered to return her calls.   
      
   Mom said that, "Just before she did it," they thought she was   
   looking happier, more settled, less frustrated by small town life.   
   Dad thought that maybe she'd met someone, but couldn't suggest a   
   who or a where.   
      
   Mulder had heard it all before. He'd interviewed the families of   
   two of the other victims. Followed it up with visits to friends and   
   colleagues.   
      
   The problem was that nothing they said made the deaths any   
   different from thousands of others. The "just when he seemed to be   
   getting better" idea was a standard thread in suicides the world   
   over. Depression so deep it could lead to death was frequently too   
   debilitating to allow such a decisive act. The energy might only   
   come once the exhaustion started to lift, perhaps even through   
   drugs or therapy.   
      
   Yet there was a crime here. Not just in the moral sense, nor even   
   simply in the eyes of God. There was the kind of crime that a   
   Federal Agent could investigate and the courts could stop. Mulder   
   was pretty sure about that.   
      
   Troubling though, to be so certain and yet to have no evidence. A   
   few doodles in a diary. A pattern for a tattoo.   
      
   And all drawn by the victims' own hands. Skilled artist or not,   
   precision graphic or awkward scribble. All their own work.   
      
   He'd hoped for better from the tattooed kid, fantasized that the   
   obvious answer might be the one that worked. But the man at the   
   Body Art shop dug the man's sketch out of the file and shrugged,   
   declaring it a customer original. With no links to the other   
   victims and no off-notes to make Mulder's skin tingle as they   
   spoke, the tattooist had slithered way back down the suspects'   
   list.   
      
   Or at least he would have done if they'd had any other suspects.   
      
   Kate's room was just as frustrating as the discussion that he kept   
   hearing snatches of. He returned to the living room to look through   
   the shelves that housed more of Kate's books. The conversation made   
   Mulder's ears burn. He knew Hennessey's questions before he asked   
   them. He could give better replies than her parents did.   
      
   What a fucking mess.   
      
   "Kate would have never done this."   
      
   Mulder mentally added the words "to us" to the statement and tried   
   not to sigh. The book titles were as eclectic as they were   
   predictable and if it were not for the fact that the woman was   
   trying to make a career in journalism then that might have given   
   him something to dissect. As it was, there was little here to get   
   his teeth into. Dogs and cats. Planes and boats. Wine and beer.   
   Unless?   
      
   He interrupted the stilted conversation running in the background.   
   "Who put the books on the shelves?"   
      
   His only reply was in the identical expressions of confusion on   
   their faces.   
      
   He tried again. "Are they as Kate left them? Did you move them?   
   Might someone else have moved them?"   
      
   Kate's mother walked across the room to join him. "I think they're   
   as she left them. I may have picked up one or two, but mostly. Is   
   it important?"   
      
   Important enough to take photos of? Yes.   
      
   Important enough to save somebody else's life? He had absolutely no   
   idea.   
      
   "I'm not sure, Mrs. Hammond. Do you have any pictures of her room   
   from when she was a child, or from when she was living away from   
   home?"   
      
   The woman nodded, exhausted and lost, but curious despite it all.   
   She headed to another set of shelves, pulling out photo albums and   
   looking so fucking hopeful that Mulder had to bite his tongue to   
   stop himself from screaming.   
      
   --------   
      
   2000   
      
   The look that Scully was giving him was of dark suspicion combined   
   with tightly wound need. Mulder just wished she'd ask the damned   
   question and get it over with.   
      
   Of course, it was no more possible for her to do that than it was   
   for him to answer it of his own free will.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)