Fic: Playing a Hunch (crossover: Cuddy/Mulder)
Title: Playing a Hunch
Pairing: Lisa Cuddy/Fox Mulder
Summary: A strange murder at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital sparks the attention of Special Agent Fox Mulder who is certain the crime is connected to another case from the past.
Note: A gift for katernater.
The crime scene tape collided with her waist, not because it had a desire to cause a greater problem in her day but because of her own faults; she was running too fast down a corridor that was slick enough to anyone not wearing rubber soled shoes. Her heels stamped adrenaline-induced patterns into the scuff marks already present, the black streaks of men with too important a job to worry about whether or not they were scuffing up the floor. The marks would disappear along with the blood, the latter of which the sight of had never managed to sway her the way it did to others, but now found itself devoid of even her most impartial glance. Something about blood smeared across the floor like a child's discarded finger paint just couldn't sit well at any time.
"Doctor Lisa Cuddy?"
Her head snapped around to meet the voice, whose issuer was not quite as tall and broad as the tremor suggested. "Detective Robert Stafford, Princeton P.D. I was one of two officers at the scene this morning. Will you be able to answer a few questions for us?"
"If you'll answer one for me." Her tone was hinging on the cusp of politeness and irritation, unlikely partners in any situation except for one of this specific nature. The tightness in her throat made her taste the bitterness of the coffee she had swallowed too quickly on the seven minute commute from home to work place, and she wished for a moment she had kept up her no caffeine pledge, it would be better right now.
"If you want to know what's going on," Detective Stafford said, "all we can tell you right now is that it's a homicide. The victim was an Edward Walker, identified by the medical bracelet on his -"
"Medical bracelet?" Cuddy's heart slammed into her throat, bright spots swelling up at the corners of her vision. She waited for no further confirmation or denial, or permission, instead pushed past Detective Stafford's well intentioned shoulder for a better look at what would give her nightmares for years to come.
Edward Walker had been admitted yesterday from the emergency room due to complications from a broken leg. The break hadn't been a clean one, instead the bone had cracked in three places and metal pins had to be inserted to make certain the alignment would stay, but he was scheduled for release tomorrow with a bundle of prescriptions to help him through the worst of the pain.
Cuddy closed her eyes.
"Doctor Cuddy," Detective Stafford said, his voice coming through the heavy curtain of her thoughts, "has anything like this ever happened before, in the hospital?"
"No." Cuddy found the means to speak and to shake her head. "No, not that I've ever been told, and I've been working here for several years, first as a resident. I was promoted to dean of medicine a little over five years ago."
"Your predecessor -"
"Doctor Bowman retired to Tallahassee, Florida when I became dean of medicine. I don't think he's going to be able to help you."
The sound of pen scratching against paper hummed from the medical examiner's fingers, the only sound in the hallway for five seconds' time. Either Detective Stafford was thinking over what to ask her next or he was taking a brief moment of pity on her for the pale shade her skin had taken and the way her small, white fingers were coiled around the handle of her briefcase as if it were an anchor to the ground.
"Doctor Cuddy, just one more question and then -"
"Actually, I have a question. Did you find them yet?"
Cuddy lifted her head again, this question asked by a new voice she hadn't heard before, one accompanied by the flat, clapping sound of black shoes against the hallway. The overhead lights hadn't been completely turned on, only those in the immediate area taped off by yellow and black, and so for the moment he was encased in a partial shadow, the briskness of his pace indicating this would not be the case for long.
"Find them?" Cuddy asked, her eyebrows lifting at the abruptness of the question.
"Them. You know, his organs. Heart, liver, lungs. Those are just the favorites, I'm sure more are missing, and I don't expect you to find them. But it can't hurt to ask, can it?"
Cuddy suppressed the desire to blanch, but Detective Stafford actually looked relieved. "You got here quickly," he said, then raised his voice to catch the attention of the other officers. "All right, this isn't our show anymore. Let's pack up and head out."
"Pack up?" Cuddy whirled an incredulous look around and found that was exactly what was happening. "You're going to leave now?"
Detective Stafford looked at her over his shoulder. "It's no longer a case for the Princeton P.D., Doctor Cuddy."
"No, it's not." The voice from further down the corridor had come closer now, bending at the waist to duck under the crime scene tape and then straightened again, not bothering to give the same courtesy to the askew knot of his tie. "This is out of Princeton's jurisdiction."
"Who are you?" Cuddy was too disoriented to be angry at the moment.
"Special Agent Fox Mulder, with the F.B.I."
- - -
“What does the F.B.I. want with Princeton Plainsboro?” Cuddy had detached herself from the array of blue uniforms and lead Agent Mulder to her office, the only place where news cameras could not see and chaos was absent. The shadows milling by outside were dismissed when she drew the curtains to a close and plunged them into solitude.
“The F.B.I. will be the first to apologize for my being here.” Mulder took up the chair across fro her desk and folded his hands against his lap, a remark which made Cuddy's back lift and stiffen. She had turned away from him long enough to set down her briefcase on her desk but now slowly gave a bewildered, irritated look back at him. Mulder seemed unperturbed by this and continued, “It's what my job is, but what doesn't matter is that no one believes me. Doesn't matter to me, but matters to them a great deal.”
“Agent Mulder, you -”
“With all due respect, Doctor Cuddy, I don't have time to hear it. I don't have time to hear that I don't know what I'm talking about, that I have to be out of my mind, that I'm chasing ghosts in the dark and that you want me out of your hospital as quickly and discreetly as possible before anyone figures out what I'm looking for and makes a public spectacle out of it.” Mulder's eyes were dark, hazel glints in the room's artificial lighting. “I'm not here to preach to the unlistening masses, I'm here to see that what happened to your patient doesn't happen again, that history doesn't repeat itself.”
Cuddy's mouth had frozen when he cut her off in mid speech and she hadn't found anything yet to say that could counter what he'd stated. Of all the things she could have expected, that wasn't one of them. “You think there's going to be another attack? How can you know that?”
“It happened before. Years ago. There's a record of it that no one wants to read, because there was no explanation for it. No reason to try and explain why perfectly healthy patients, at least recently deemed healthy by their medical overseers, had their hearts ripped out in the middle of the night where no one could see. All happened in hospitals, all under cover of night, but not even a night janitor heard the attack. It was as if it hadn't happened at all, but it was too gruesome to deny.”
“And you think that's going to happen here.” Cuddy didn't phrase it as a question, she didn't want to receive another answer from him. “You really think that there's some kind of serial killer targeting recently healthy patients in hospitals? That doesn't make any -”
“Doctor Cuddy, to most people my work itself doesn't make any sense. That doesn't make it any less true.” Mulder tapped his fingers against his knee in a patterned rhythm that seemed restless. “And it doesn't mean that any amount of you telling me you don't believe it is going to stop me from looking into it. Fifteen people have been recorded as murder victims with this particular method of attack, sixteen after yours, and I don't want to see anyone become number seventeen.”
There was absolute, raw conviction in his eyes and Cuddy had to remind herself for a second, in the back part of her mind, how insane this all was. If she hadn't taken that moment, it was highly possible she might have told Agent Mulder that was just fine, and what could she do to help? I didn't get through medical school to jeopardize my career by listening to ghost stories, she chided herself, vehemently at that. Whatever he's looking for, it isn't here.
“Agent Mulder -”
“Doctor Cuddy, I'm asking you for twenty-four hours. That's all. If in twenty-four hours there hasn't been another attack or, though the possibility is horrible, another murder with the same surroundings, I'll leave and send my sincerest apologies via a Hallmark card that I'm sorry for wasting your time. But do you really think you can afford to take that kind of risk? To chance anything happening to another innocent person?”
White hot anger flared itself up her spine, blossoming colord spots at the edges of Cuddy's vision. “Agent Mulder, I really -”
But he was right. She couldn't take that kind of chance and find out later there was something that could have been done to prevent it. Something, anything, which could have stopped another person from dying. Another person who had been granted a new, surprising and unlikely lease on life. It was too precious of a thing to gamble with.
Her mouth closed and Cuddy felt the overwhelming, nagging sensation she was going to need a bottle of Tylenol to get her through the next day.
“Twenty-four hours,” she said, and Mulder just smiled before closing the door to her office behind her.
- - -
The call came at three in the morning, and Cuddy was at the hospital by a record three-twenty, all regard for traffic limits and laws left behind in the warmth of the bed she had abandoned. Mulder was there, his shirt stained in a blossoming, child's fingerpaint rendition of a crimson flower, and he put himself between the sheet-covered body and Cuddy, telling her in not so many words that she might be acquainted with death but she didn't need this kind of image in her head.
Cuddy had listened through the dim, screaming fog of her mind and busied herself talking to the policemen on scene because if she didn't, she was going to look back.
Seven hours later found her in the hospital board room, surrounded by the same faces she saw when a patient needed a transplant or a decision needed to be reached regarding a hospital event's budget. Wilson had touched his fingers to the place between her shoulder blades when she had stepped past him, a silent gesture of question as to whether or not she was all right, and even House was making a not so secret spectacle of hovering a few seconds outside of the door, his dark eyes knowing and sharp. Cuddy was being treated as if she were harboring a great secret or a great tragedy, as some kind of royal figurehead when in reality she had never felt more fragile, more human.
The meeting passed in a blur, Agent Mulder giving his reasonings as to why the hospital needed to be under a state of watch, when and where the next attacks were likely to occur based on the pattern of those events in the past. No one so much as blinked out of turn, but Cuddy did notice that Mulder didn't seem pleased at all by the lack of conflict to his statements.
It seemed, to Cuddy, a very strange thing to be satisfied about, and if he would have looked pleased she might have doubted his integrity. But Mulder only looked strained, tired.
- - -
A week passed without incident, and the hospital board had come to a decision that whatever danger had run its course. No other issues were reported with patient injury aside from an elderly man breaking his hip when trying to get out of bed too quickly. Mulder had been moving from corridor to corridor with the consistency of a ghost's shadow, speaking in murmurs to someone on the other side of the cellular phone he rarely brought out otherwise and catching hold of Cuddy's gaze whenever they were in the same place long enough for it to happen. For her part Cuddy was trying for normalcy - no one outside of the hospital board and the family members of the victims knew the details of the murder (the media had tried but fallen respectively on their high-definition rear ends when trying for an exclusive scoop) and the last thing she was willing to do was instill a panic.
Mulder remained out of sight for the rest of the day, and the policemen (whose names Cuddy still didn't know and had yet to desire to become too acquainted with) came back with another update. No arrests made yet, but there were no further reports of attacks or assaults in any area surrouding the hospital, facts which led law enforcement officials to believe there was no longer any need for additional security. A nighttime patrol officer would circle the hospital and the surrounding streets to check for disturbances, but there didn't seem to be any need for further reinforcement.
Cuddy signed the release papers and the victim's body was relinquished to the family. The funeral was schedule for the next day.
- - -
When her phone rang again, this time just past midnight, adrenaline punched itself through her heart and all Cuddy could bring herself to think was not again. The telephone cord became tangled around her hand in her haste to catch the receiver even in her half asleep state.
“Please tell me there hasn't been -”
“No, there hasn't been another attack.”
“Agent Mulder?”
“Doctor Cuddy, I'm sorry to call this late but it couldn't wait until morning. There's something you need to know.”
Sounds of driving, of wind rushing past the glass of a car's windows - Cuddy would know that sound anywhere, it was the classic kind of interference she heard on more than one phone call with her sister. “Where are you going?”
“I'm on my way back to Washington.” Mulder's voice crackled once on the line - phone reception could be questionable along long stretches of highway. “I had a message from my supervisor that I need to be back at the bureau for a meeting at eight in the morning, and from the underlying tone I knew he meant it. It's the price that I've become willing to pay.”
“Price to pay for what?”
“For looking for the truth, Doctor Cuddy, which is why I had to call you on my way back. You're going to have a visitor over the next day or two. I'm not sure when he's coming, but he's -”
“Wait.” Cuddy sat up, the railings of her bed's headboard digging their scalloped curlicues into her back. She'd have the patterns embedded there for hours if she didn't change position soon, but for now she was too focused on the phone call. “How is your looking for some kind of truth related to this...person who's going to come and visit me? How do you even know he's coming?”
“Because he's going to ask you about me.”
- - -
Two hours later the phone was back on its cradle and Cuddy was still awake, staring at an invisible point on the ceiling which might have held significance before but now was blurring into a world of disoriented nothingness at the corners of her eyes. Her alarm would blare itself into life soon enough, telling her to get herself up and ready for the day, but all she could think about was the conversation still ringing in her mind with surprising clarity.
Mulder had talked for most of the time, leaving only enough room for her to interject questions and taking no offers for incredulous responses. And in that time Cuddy had learned of what happened in the basement of the federal building, of Mulder's quest to find his missing sister which had begun years ago and how despite an array of brightly colored, hard to deny proof there were still holes found in every discovery, a reason for someone to discredit what had to have some basis in fact, even if no one else wanted to see it. Mulder had, in essence, lost the entirety of any kind of respect he had in the federal building, given up what might well have been a promising career to chase what no one would call anything other than shadows, because he believed.
The expected visitor was the latest in a suited array of men with their assignment to find some kind of illegal means in what Mulder had discovered - to prove he had conducted an illegal search without going through the proper channels, stepped on the wrong pair of toes, committed some kind of act in the name of proving his suspicions - anything and more, he hadn't been sure but Cuddy had managed to place the full picture together. This man - Mulder had called him Detective Tritter - had an agenda of his own and that agenda didn't include the truth.
Cuddy closed her eyes and remembered the end of the conversation.
”Doctor Cuddy, I'm sorry you became involved in this. It shouldn't have had to be this way.”
“You're sorry because someone has an agenda against you? Someone that you've never met?”
“I'm just that kind of guy.”
It had been silent for a handful of moments and then she had heard the slowing of the surrounding air, the car bringing itself to an unseen halt.
“Tritter is going to accuse me of murder.”
“On what grounds?”
“The grounds that I've been toting this case file around for months looking for an answer and only one murder took place at your hospital. There isn't a pattern, it looks like an isolated incident, and I was at the scene of the crime.”
“It will never hold up in court.”
“If there is a trial, you'll be called as a witness. You'll have to testify. And I don't expect you to put yourself on the line for me, Doctor Cuddy. Not for the quest of a man who chases after shadows, even when they look like his own.”
“Agent Mulder -”
“Good night, Doctor Cuddy.”
He had disconnected the call before she had a chance to answer.
The quiet darkness of the room around her began to dissolve into the soft glow of morning, and Cuddy reached a hand over to touch the top of the alarm clock, to prevent it from blasting its music in her ear. The conversation rang in her ears, vivid and vibrant as if painted across her mind's eye in an artist's hand, leaving questions created and unanswered in a dissatisfying thrum of constant noise across the back of her mind. Agent Mulder might have been forthcoming with her, might have told her everything that she could have taken in during that two hour time, but what she didn't know or understand was why the federal government would try to bury the work of a man searching for something on their dime. It didn't make sense - the pieces were shaped like two and two but didn't come together to make four - and her mind was so muddled and tired that she knew she wouldn't find the answer that way.
But what Cuddy was very certain of, even as she swung her feet onto the chilled bedroom carpet, was that if Detective Tritter did arrive, if he did interrogate her the way Agent Mulder believed she would, there was only one thing she would offer to him, and that was the truth. The whole, absolute truth of the passing of events as she had seen it pan out. There wouldn't be the chance, at least not from her lips, for blame to be placed across Mulder's shoulders, and it wouldn't come from anywhere in the hospital either.
Mulder believed in serial killers who tore hearts from the chests of human beings, in shadows that chased back the people who might chase them, in a quest that couldn't be seen through the tunnel vision of every day life. And Cuddy didn't know if she believed in those things, but she did believe that Mulder did, and that was, somehow, enough.