Chapter Text
“Explain to me again how this is an x-file?”
Mulder grinned. If there was one thing you could rely on Scully for (and, trust him, there was more than one thing), it was that no-nonsense skepticism she wore like others wore a smile. Contrary to what she might think, it was something he enjoyed about her, the logic with which she approached everything in her life, from how she cleaned her apartment to how she argued with him about their cases. And it certainly made the long car rides they were subjected to in their line of work more bearable, even something he looked forward to.
“A string of disappearances linked with wild animal sightings and attacks? That doesn’t sound at all unexplainable and/or out of the ordinary to you?” Mulder inquired teasingly.
“Mulder, I don’t see how it’s anything animal control and park rangers couldn’t handle on their own. It says here Laney Mullens was only identified as missing after her husband was attacked by a cougar in their house. The animal could’ve dragged her off for her cubs after attacking her and the husband,” Scully retorted.
“But that doesn’t explain how all the doors and windows were still locked and closed. You think the cougar unlocked the door, attacked Laney and David Mullens, dragged Laney back to her den, came back for David, and locked herself in? I know the animals in Florida are wild Scully, but they’re not that wild,” he argued back, slightly incredulously. It was one of her more unbelievable rationalizations. He knew she could do better.
Scully squared her shoulders. Oh, he was in for it.
“Sarah Johnson is our only other animal attack victim. The rest of the animal sighting didn’t result in violence. Their correlation with the missing persons could still be completely coincidental, we’re only examining sightings correlated to missing person reports. That’s cherry-picking data, there have probably been hundreds of sightings this year in the Everglades alone. If there was any crime committed here, I’d be looking into a handyman installing faulty locks, allowing the animals to access the homes,” she said sternly, “The uptick in missing persons is concerning but not altogether implausible when considering the proximity to a national park. They’re hotspots for disappearances, and before you even start Mulder, that’s due to the average person underestimating both how easy it is to get lost when going off an unpaved path and the supplies needed for hiking safely.”
That was more like it.
“But, you have to admit, four people going missing in a span of two months in town with a population under 5,000 is statistically significant,” Mulder started, “Besides, none of the missing persons went missing after going on a hike. Laney Mullens and Parker Jackson disappeared from their homes in the middle of the night, Catherine White while on her lunch break from work, and Marcus Rodriguez while he was on the way to the store.”
There had been a wild animal sighting within two hours of each of the victims disappearances. Eli Jackson, Parker Jackson’s ten-year-old son, had woken up to a large Burmese python coiling itself around his bed post. The boy had panicked, calling for his father, and ran to the neighbors crying and screaming when his father didn’t come to rescue him.
Likewise, neighbors had called the police when they heard the screams of David Mullens, though he had already bled out from five large lacerations on his abdomen by the time the cops had arrived. Animal control had to be called to collect the restless panther pacing the bedroom. Laney had only been discovered as missing afterwards, when no one could find her to inform her about her husband’s demise.
Catherine White and Marcus Rodriguez were even less cut and dry than the decidedly ambiguous prior cases. Catherine had simply vanished, never returning to clock back in at her job at the post office, though a heron had pecked at the doors for almost an hour, refusing to be shooed away by the employees and customers trying to enter. Marcus’s wife reported him missing when he never came back from Publix, even though he had a said he was just going to pick up some rice and carrots for dinner. That same day an alligator was hit by a Ford as it was walking across the road.
“We don’t know what they were thinking!” Scully hurtled back, “Maybe they were dissatisfied with their lives. That’s not uncommon in small towns like this, especially one as rural as Okeechobee. We’re also relatively close to Miami. Maybe they were caught up in the drug trade, or human trafficking.”
“You’re losing me again Scully,” Mulder teased. He loved it when he could get her up-in-arms like this, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows.
“Don’t flatter your sanity, I never had you,” Scully smirked.
***
An hour later, they pulled into the Gator’s Passing Motor Lodge Motel, a building more climbing fern than concrete. What he could see of the outside walls was an unflattering garish pink with green glass blocks acting as windows. Looking at them made him feel a bit seasick.
They were able to secure two adjoining rooms, which wasn’t surprising since the place looked like it hadn’t hosted a visitor since the 80s, though the chatty front desk receptionist bragged they got a lot of clientele coming down to play the slots at the nearby casino.
“You wouldn’t believe how many men have proposed to me with a tan line still on their ring finger,” she chittered, “I guess the place puts them in the gambling mood!”
Her name tag read Sharleen, and her skin was the pinkish-brown leather of someone who spent their whole youth baking under the Florida sun, slathered in tanning oil. Her short curly hair was the same shade of pink as the stucco outside. She couldn’t have been younger than seventy.
“Did it ever work?” Mulder inquired as he grabbed the room keys, mostly to humor the sweet old woman.
“Oh no, I never liked gamblers. My Marty didn’t even do scratchers,” the woman responded, happily pointing to framed picture of bald man with round glasses, who Mulder thought looked a bit like Skinner if you squinted. “You have rooms 104 and 105.”
“They’re adjoining?” Mulder confirmed.
Sharleen nodded and Mulder walked out the door back into the sweltering heat of mid-Spring Florida. He found Scully waiting for him still in the rental car, the air conditioner on so high it was blowing her hair back from her face. He knocked on the window to get her attention and held up the keys.
She stepped out and he handed her the key to room 105. They grabbed their bags and headed to their rooms, deciding at the door to shower and then order pizza and formulate a game plan for the next day.
Once they were both free of the sweat of the day and sufficiently cooled down they met in his room, Scully ordering the pizza and sneaking mushrooms onto it. They sat criss-cross applesauce across from each other on the green paisley bed spread, folders spread out around them like printer paper leaf litter.
“You haven’t told me your theory yet on the disappearances,” Scully nudged him.
“If I’m being honest, I’m not sure yet. This isn’t similar to any x-file I’ve seen, other than maybe that disappearing zoo animals case from last year, though this is more the opposite. It could be abductions; the animals being sent as some sort of distraction to detract attention from the missing people.”
“That seems like it would have the opposite effect, draw more attention.”
“I never claimed the aliens understood human psychology.”
Scully rolled his eyes at him, but he caught her lips curling up at the corners before she ducked her head.
“It seems like two of the missing people were reported as having disagreements with a Mr. Micheal Larrings before their disappearance. I say we get his address from the police station and head out to talk to him first thing tomorrow,” she suggested.
“Sounds good to me. I also want to you to reexamine David Mullens body, I called ahead and had them delay his release to the funeral home.”
“What do you want me to look for?”
“Anything that would be deemed out of the ordinary for an animal attack victim. Marks on his body, metal implants. I know his wife was the one that was taken but it can’t hurt to check.”
“Oh, of course,” Scully deadpanned.
“I also want to follow up on your hiking theory from earlier. There was a search conducted in the woods near the Mullens’ house, but I thought we could go check it out again, see if we turn up anything new.”
“I don’t think my sketchers will pair well with my suit.”
“We could come back here and change beforehand if you wanted to,” Mulder offered.
“No, I’ll bring them with me to question Larrings and change on the way. We should do the search first and then I’ll use the morgue showers to freshen up before I do the reexamination. That way we don’t have to go out of our way to come back to the motel.”
Mulder got up and started walking towards the door to his room. “If that works for you, it works for me. I’ll come wake you up at 8:00, I doubt Larrings will be up before then and you need your rest with the day we have planned,” he turned and grinned at her, “Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the mosquitos bite.”
“Goodnight Mulder,” she called back softly as he disappeared into the other room’s bathroom to brush his teeth.
***
As they picked along the dilapidated road to the trailer park that hosted Micheal Larrings’ place of residence, Mulder snuck furtive glances at Scully in the passenger seat. He knew she liked it when they got to go somewhere warmer for their excursions, though the cool dry air of California probably would have been preferable to the oppressive mugginess they were surrounded by now. He had always been an east coast boy, used to mild winters and summers and falls and springs and lifetimes, but he liked seeing the freckles become more prominent under her make-up, the flush of her cheeks a bit healthier.
By the time they pulled into the small stretch of dirt that acted as Larrings’ driveway, Mulder was sure the entire front of the rental sedan had been caked by the claylike mud that seemed ever-present in the small town. The trailer they walked up to looked older than him, the white corrugated aluminum that made up its body long rusted over. The windows and door were trimmed with pastel yellow, a few sad houseplants stood guard under the awning.
After a solid two minutes of knocking, the door swung open, and they were greeted with the sight of one Mr. Micheal Larrings. He was a balding man in his sixties with what remained of his cornsilk hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. He had a beer gut to rival all beer guts that came before it and a scowl that looked permanently affixed to his face.
“Whaddya want?” Larrings asked in an annoyed tone.
“I’m Special Agent Mulder with the FBI, this is my partner, Agent Scully. We’re here investigating a recent string of disappearances, and we wanted to talk to you to see if you knew anything that could help us,” Mulder introduced them, trying to angle his face so he didn’t have to smell the man’s sour beer breath.
“I haven’t heard nothing about it,” the man replied testily.
Scully cut in, “Sir, two of the people missing were reported as having had a disagreement with you prior to their disappearance. We just wanted to clarify what that was about.”
Larring glowered at her, but Scully didn’t flinch.
“You should be looking into the Indians for that. They did their voodoo human sacrifice before Columbus came, y’know, and I wouldn’t put it past them now.”
So, he was a racist too. That was motive for kidnapping Marcus, but the other victims had been white. Mulder bit his tongue to keep from telling the bigoted old man that, no, there was no evidence the Seminoles had ever participated in human sacrifice, and also Columbus had never even set foot in Florida, you idiot.
“None the less, sir, no one from the reservation was reported as having argued with any of the victims, but you were,” Scully stated coldly, “So, we can talk about this here or we can talk about this down at the station.”
They didn’t have nearly enough for a warrant, but Mulder seriously doubted the old man had two brain cells to rub together to figure that out. Larrings’ scowl deepened, but he stepped aside to let them in. The man didn’t invite them to sit, but seeing as how Mulder didn’t particularly relish the idea of having flees, he wasn’t too upset.
“Can you tell us what you and Laney Mullens argued about on the evening of March 28th?” Scully started.
“She came here to bitch about how I hadn’t fixed her car properly, it was still making a ruckus when she turned, blah, blah, blah. I told her I had changed her power steering fluid and if it was still having problems maybe she should learn how to drive. She said if I didn’t give her her money back she was gonna call the cops, so I gave it to her and reminded her not to let the door hit her ass on the way out.”
“So, you and Laney had a business disagreement?”
“Me and Laney had an attitude disagreement. That girl needed to learn when to shut her mouth.”
“And what about Marcus Rodriguez? Witnesses say they saw you two almost come to blows outside his garage the day he disappeared.”
“Rodriguez was trying to put me out of business! He came here from Tampa with all his “certificates” and shit, it was ridiculous. He was trying to steal my customers.”
Mulder cut in, “And that made you want to make Rodriguez disappear? He couldn’t take your customers if he wasn’t here anymore.”
“I never laid a hand on that boy! If he wanted to go and abandon his family like his daddy prolly did to him, that was his business,” Larrings’ face was starting to turn an ugly red color. If they were in a cartoon, steam would’ve been coming out of his ears.
“It seems like you had motive to hurt both of them,” Scully inquired, arching her eyebrow.
“Speaking of attitude adjustments! Just who do you think your talking to, missy? If I was you I’d learn to bite my tongue before I got a pop in the mouth.”
Scully’s eyes widened. He knew she was used to facing misogyny in the field, though usually it was more local law enforcement treating her like she was incompetent, calling her honey and baby, smirking condescendingly when she dared to give her input as a medical professional. The vitriolic bigotry was a more uncommon variation of the same song and dance.
Mulder stepped in front of Scully, glaring angrily at the man. “Mr. Larrings, I would suggest you take that back and apologize. Agent Scully is armed and believe me; she’s a good shot.”
When the man simply huffed and looked at his feet, the agents took it as their cue to leave. The shit Scully had to put up with never failed to piss him off. He knew she could handle herself, that she had to know how to in order to be able to work in a male dominated field like the FBI, and medical school before that. But sometimes he just wanted to wrap himself around her like a blanket, hole up in his apartment so no one could ever hurt her again. And maybe bash in the heads of all the idiots who had taken out their own inadequacies on her just because she was smarter than them, better.
“That guy was an idiot Scully. He didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.”
“Thanks Mulder,” she smiled tightly at him, “But I’m fine. Let’s just head to the woods.”
***
These definitely weren’t the woods of the pacific northwest they were used to trekking through on their cases. Thin roots of live oaks and cypress criss-crossed the path, tripping them up every five steps or so and he knew later he would be finding the sandy soil they were walking on in places you never wanted sand. It felt like he had lost at least a pint of blood to the mosquitos that swarmed around them. The foliage of the forest was so green it hurt his eyes a bit.
Mulder had left his suit jacket in the car, but he could feel that he had already sweated through his undershirt and button down, and Scully didn’t seem to be faring much better. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead and her shirt was so damp he could see the outline of her bra through it. Her face was redder than the time she had accidentally said “fuck” in front of Skinner after she stubbed her toe.
Just as he was about to ask her if she wanted to take a short break, maybe sit down and have some water, a loud roar followed by heavy footfalls sounded from about 100 yards in front of them. Mulder took off in the direction of the noise, Scully hot on his heels. The trail curved in front of him and he stumbled over a root sticking out of the ground, slowing him down for a second before he picked up the pace again. He stopped for a second to get his bearings and realized he couldn’t hear Scully behind him anymore. He whirled around but she was nowhere to be found. He took off back in the direction he had come from, calling out her name but receiving no response.
“Scully! Scully!”
He reared suddenly to a stop. There, standing in the middle of the path, was a cinnamon-colored black bear.