Below the Surface [CSI/The X-Files; Grissom/Catherine, Mulder/Scully]
TITLE: Below the Surface
CHAPTER 4: Lake Thing
FANDOM(S): CSI, The X-Files
PAIRING(S): Mulder/Scully, Grissom/Catherine
SPOILERS: [CSI: Fourth season]; [X-Files: Seventh season]
RATING: R (for language, violence, etc.)
SUMMARY: "So you're saying that we're looking for the Swamp Thing."
*****
"Dr. Grissom, I apologize for having to tell your team they couldn't work the case..." Scully apologized as she and Mulder took the chairs opposite Grissom's desk.
While Grissom took his seat behind his desk, Catherine followed him and perched on the edge of the desk, to his right, turning her body slightly to face the agents. Grissom waved off Scully's apology. "Don't worry about it," he told her, shrugging nonchalantly. "They'll get over it."
Catherine smirked at him. "They'll get over it, Gil, but they'll never let you forget it," she teased.
"Well, given the circumstances," Mulder broke in, "I highly doubt any of you would easily forget this case, anyway."
After a moment in which the pair nodded thoughtfully, Scully cleared her throat. "Speaking of which... let's discuss what you've come across in autopsy."
"Basically," Catherine sighed, "None of the four victims we found show any apparent cause of death, other than the fact that they have no internal organs."
"Have the victims been identified?" Mulder asked, putzing with his tie yet again. He only stopped when Scully, who'd been eyeing him, reached over and feather-lightly slapped his hand.
Grissom shook his head. "Not yet, but our assistant coroner is in the process of taking fingerprints and getting DNA samples."
"And the chief medical examiner?" Scully questioned, her perfectly shaped brows furrowing. "The one that initially performed the autopsies? Where is he?"
"He's left for the day," Grissom replied. "His next shift starts at ten this evening."
Scully nodded thoughtfully, pursing her lips... and cast a glance toward her partner before turning her eyes back to the criminalists. "I'd like to see the bodies, Dr. Grissom."
**
"Okay," Scully sighed, finishing snapping on a pair of latex gloves... clad in a baby blue forensics lab coat. She leaned over the first body. "Let's see what we've got. No apparent stab wounds or gunshot wounds... no bite marks or abrasions of any kind--"
"Scully, check out the belly button," Mulder broke in, peeking under the sheet of the corpse beside Scully.
She threw him a questioning look, but raised the sheet on her own cadaver nonetheless, her eyes settling on the bruise circling the navel. "Trauma around the navel area..." she murmured, "Almost looks like a--"
"Hickey," Catherine piped up, standing beside Grissom a few feet behind the agents.
Scully smiled politely. "Thank you." After returning her eyes to the body, she sighed once more. "Well... I can't even begin to tell you what killed this man," she murmured, to no one person in particular. "But whatever it is, it killed him over forty-eight hours ago."
"How can you tell?" Mulder asked, leaning over his partner to peek over her shoulder... which was no difficult task. Even with the three-inch pumps she wore everyday, Scully stood no taller than five-feet six-inches... compared to Mulder's height of six-foot-two. He often found it adorable that she had to crane her neck to look up at him... though realizing that, over the years, she must have accumulated quite a neck problem.
Scully glimpsed quick at her partner, unconsciously sucking in a breath inaudibly as she could while he leaned close. "You can tell by the absence of rigor mortis that his death occurred over twelve hours ago... and then by discoloration of the body, and the amount of swelling from being underwater, that places his time of death to at least two days ago."
While Mulder leaned closer to examine the bruising around the victim's navel, Scully stole the opportunity to regain her senses... his close proximity having succeeded in temporarily crushing her ability to concentrate. She moved away from him, heading over to where Grissom and Catherine stood near the large stainless steel sink. "I think the first thing we need to do would be to I.D. the victims."
Grissom nodded. "Like I said, that's already being taken care of. We've got DNA samples and fingerprints running through the computer right now."
She nodded, then turned her attention to the strawberry-blonde at the graveshift supervisor's side. "While the computer's processing the samples and fingerprints, it might be helpful to start searching the list of missing persons." She shrugged. "It might even be quicker... and it could help establish more accurate times of death."
Catherine nodded. "Gotcha." She threw a glance at Grissom before heading for the door.
Grissom glanced from Scully... to Catherine... then back again. "Gil..." Catherine murmured, gesturing to the door. "You coming?"
He eyed the redheaded federal agent, waiting for an indication of what to do, and when she raised her eyebrows pointedly and nodded at Catherine, he frowned. "You don't have any other questions for us?"
Scully shook her head slowly. "Right now, Mulder and I need to examine the bodies a bit further... see if we can somehow come up with an idea of what happened to these people."
"Ahh." Grissom nodded, then leaned slightly to glance at Agent Mulder, who was approaching Scully from behind. "You don't need any help with that?"
Mulder smiled, settling his hand discreetly on the small of Scully's back. "That's alright. We kinda like our alone time." When he began to tickle the small of her back, she turned sharply over her shoulder and sent him a glare... which only made his grin widen.
Scully narrowed her eyes at her partner's boldness before turning back to the criminalists still lingering. "We'll come find you when we're done. Hopefully we'll have some pertinent information for you."
Grissom nodded and, with one more wary glance at the federal agents... he turned on his heel to follow Catherine out of the morgue. Once they were gone, Scully settled her glare on Mulder once more. "You're pure evil," she muttered.
He threw her a boyish grin. "Don't act like you didn't love that, Scully."
She opened her mouth to vehemently deny his accusation... but found she could only smirk at the look on his face. She rolled her eyes. "Come on, let's get back to the bodies," she sighed, and headed to the other side of the gurney from her partner... deciding that any more closeness could be downright dangerous.
**
"Cath..." Grissom murmured as he headed into the AV lab, finding her already seated at one of the several computer monitors.
She turned over her shoulder briefly to smile her greeting at him, before turning her attention back to the monitor in front of her. "Come sit down," she beckoned him. "I'm going through the missing persons list."
"Find anything yet?"
She shook her head, pressing her gloss-kissed lips into a firm line as Grissom sat down beside her... completely unaware that this mannerism of hers could always hold his attention. "Just a whole buncha nothin'," she sighed... then almost as soon as the statement left her lips, her eyes widened. "Wait a minute..."
Grissom followed her gaze to the computer screen, his jaw dropping just slightly as he eyed what had popped up. "Jane Doe..." he murmured.
Catherine nodded slowly. "Yep. Also known as Trisha Fields, a housewife from Henderson... missing since Friday."
"That was six days ago," he breathed incredulously. He met his partner's eyes. "If she's been missing for six days... and dead almost as long... wouldn't you think she'd have come out of the water far more bloated than the rest?"
Catherine shrugged. "Well... she came up without her internal organs, so maybe their absence ritarded the swelling."
He frowned thoughtfully, and printed the page they were currently on. "We should contact the husband for questioning," he muttered, grabbing the paper as soon as it was spit out of the printer... his eyes scanning the information once again.
Catherine eyed him. "Don't tell me you think it's foul play..." she murmured in a low voice.
He shrugged. "I don't know what it is, Catherine. But I'm not going to rule anything out."
"Alright," she sighed, turning her eyes back to the screen. "Let's see what else we've got."
After forty-five more tedious minutes of browsing the list of missing persons, they'd identified three of their four victims. Trisha Fields had been missing the longest... then Bryan Griffith, missing for four days... followed by Jason Davis, missing for three days. "Well!" Catherine huffed, watching Grissom rifle through the papers they'd printed on each of their victims. She met his eyes. "Looks like we've got some questioning to do."
**
"Scully..."
"Hmm?" She raised her head from inspecting the empty body in front of her... using her wrist to move her chin-length strawberry strands out of her eyes.
Mulder glanced up at her with a look of utter boredom on his features... his full lips settled in the most boyish of pouts. "Have you found anything yet?"
She sighed. "Hemorrhagic tissue... some evidence that the organs were removed in a violent, fast-paced manner, and traces of blood in the navel." She raised her eyebrows. "You?"
"I don't know what to look for!" He gestured toward the body adjacent to the one Scully had been examining, running his non-gloved hand through his hair. He gestured to her. "You're the doctor. Why are you making me examine the bodies?"
She rolled her eyes. "If you're going to whine, Mulder, maybe you can go help Grissom and Catherine with their missing persons work."
"You'd miss me too much, Scully," he murmured, and turned his eyes back down to the cadaver on the table. He furrowed his brow. "Hey..."
"What?"
"How common are 'outie' belly buttons?"
This question drew her attention away from her inspection, and she slowly turned her eyes back up to Mulder's. "Well, statistics show that approximately only ten percent of the population have outie belly buttons. Why?"
"Well, this guy's got an outie." He nodded at his cadaver, then at hers. "Your guy's got an outie." He shrugged. "How much would you be willing to bet that the other two have outies, too?"
She slowly furrowed her brow in confusion, leaning on the autopsy table with one hand while placing the other on her hip. "What are you saying, Mulder? That these people were killed for not having 'normal' belly buttons?" She smirked.
"No, I'm saying that maybe their organs were removed through the belly button." He gestured to her. "You said yourself you found traces of blood in the navel."
"Well... yes, but... nothing excessive," she replied, shrugging. "If the internal organs had been removed through the belly button, there would be mass amounts of blood."
"What if they'd been removed underwater? That'd get rid of some of the blood, wouldn't it?" he challenged... eyes twinkling. He loved Dana Scully dearly... treasured her over his own life... but her strict rationalism and science drove him up a wall sometimes. Over the seven years they'd worked together, her scientific explanations hadn't been right once. They'd always been trumped by Mulder's strong belief in the paranormal.
Scully narrowed her eyes at her partner... adoring his challenging look he bestowed upon her so often, though it annoyed her immensely. "So you're saying that we're looking for the Swamp Thing."
He smirked, holding up a finger to correct her, moving for the door. "Lake Thing," he muttered, and headed out of the morgue, his smirk only widening smugly when he felt her follow... her glare piercing him through his back.
TBC
CHAPTER 4: Lake Thing
FANDOM(S): CSI, The X-Files
PAIRING(S): Mulder/Scully, Grissom/Catherine
SPOILERS: [CSI: Fourth season]; [X-Files: Seventh season]
RATING: R (for language, violence, etc.)
SUMMARY: "So you're saying that we're looking for the Swamp Thing."
*****
"Dr. Grissom, I apologize for having to tell your team they couldn't work the case..." Scully apologized as she and Mulder took the chairs opposite Grissom's desk.
While Grissom took his seat behind his desk, Catherine followed him and perched on the edge of the desk, to his right, turning her body slightly to face the agents. Grissom waved off Scully's apology. "Don't worry about it," he told her, shrugging nonchalantly. "They'll get over it."
Catherine smirked at him. "They'll get over it, Gil, but they'll never let you forget it," she teased.
"Well, given the circumstances," Mulder broke in, "I highly doubt any of you would easily forget this case, anyway."
After a moment in which the pair nodded thoughtfully, Scully cleared her throat. "Speaking of which... let's discuss what you've come across in autopsy."
"Basically," Catherine sighed, "None of the four victims we found show any apparent cause of death, other than the fact that they have no internal organs."
"Have the victims been identified?" Mulder asked, putzing with his tie yet again. He only stopped when Scully, who'd been eyeing him, reached over and feather-lightly slapped his hand.
Grissom shook his head. "Not yet, but our assistant coroner is in the process of taking fingerprints and getting DNA samples."
"And the chief medical examiner?" Scully questioned, her perfectly shaped brows furrowing. "The one that initially performed the autopsies? Where is he?"
"He's left for the day," Grissom replied. "His next shift starts at ten this evening."
Scully nodded thoughtfully, pursing her lips... and cast a glance toward her partner before turning her eyes back to the criminalists. "I'd like to see the bodies, Dr. Grissom."
**
"Okay," Scully sighed, finishing snapping on a pair of latex gloves... clad in a baby blue forensics lab coat. She leaned over the first body. "Let's see what we've got. No apparent stab wounds or gunshot wounds... no bite marks or abrasions of any kind--"
"Scully, check out the belly button," Mulder broke in, peeking under the sheet of the corpse beside Scully.
She threw him a questioning look, but raised the sheet on her own cadaver nonetheless, her eyes settling on the bruise circling the navel. "Trauma around the navel area..." she murmured, "Almost looks like a--"
"Hickey," Catherine piped up, standing beside Grissom a few feet behind the agents.
Scully smiled politely. "Thank you." After returning her eyes to the body, she sighed once more. "Well... I can't even begin to tell you what killed this man," she murmured, to no one person in particular. "But whatever it is, it killed him over forty-eight hours ago."
"How can you tell?" Mulder asked, leaning over his partner to peek over her shoulder... which was no difficult task. Even with the three-inch pumps she wore everyday, Scully stood no taller than five-feet six-inches... compared to Mulder's height of six-foot-two. He often found it adorable that she had to crane her neck to look up at him... though realizing that, over the years, she must have accumulated quite a neck problem.
Scully glimpsed quick at her partner, unconsciously sucking in a breath inaudibly as she could while he leaned close. "You can tell by the absence of rigor mortis that his death occurred over twelve hours ago... and then by discoloration of the body, and the amount of swelling from being underwater, that places his time of death to at least two days ago."
While Mulder leaned closer to examine the bruising around the victim's navel, Scully stole the opportunity to regain her senses... his close proximity having succeeded in temporarily crushing her ability to concentrate. She moved away from him, heading over to where Grissom and Catherine stood near the large stainless steel sink. "I think the first thing we need to do would be to I.D. the victims."
Grissom nodded. "Like I said, that's already being taken care of. We've got DNA samples and fingerprints running through the computer right now."
She nodded, then turned her attention to the strawberry-blonde at the graveshift supervisor's side. "While the computer's processing the samples and fingerprints, it might be helpful to start searching the list of missing persons." She shrugged. "It might even be quicker... and it could help establish more accurate times of death."
Catherine nodded. "Gotcha." She threw a glance at Grissom before heading for the door.
Grissom glanced from Scully... to Catherine... then back again. "Gil..." Catherine murmured, gesturing to the door. "You coming?"
He eyed the redheaded federal agent, waiting for an indication of what to do, and when she raised her eyebrows pointedly and nodded at Catherine, he frowned. "You don't have any other questions for us?"
Scully shook her head slowly. "Right now, Mulder and I need to examine the bodies a bit further... see if we can somehow come up with an idea of what happened to these people."
"Ahh." Grissom nodded, then leaned slightly to glance at Agent Mulder, who was approaching Scully from behind. "You don't need any help with that?"
Mulder smiled, settling his hand discreetly on the small of Scully's back. "That's alright. We kinda like our alone time." When he began to tickle the small of her back, she turned sharply over her shoulder and sent him a glare... which only made his grin widen.
Scully narrowed her eyes at her partner's boldness before turning back to the criminalists still lingering. "We'll come find you when we're done. Hopefully we'll have some pertinent information for you."
Grissom nodded and, with one more wary glance at the federal agents... he turned on his heel to follow Catherine out of the morgue. Once they were gone, Scully settled her glare on Mulder once more. "You're pure evil," she muttered.
He threw her a boyish grin. "Don't act like you didn't love that, Scully."
She opened her mouth to vehemently deny his accusation... but found she could only smirk at the look on his face. She rolled her eyes. "Come on, let's get back to the bodies," she sighed, and headed to the other side of the gurney from her partner... deciding that any more closeness could be downright dangerous.
**
"Cath..." Grissom murmured as he headed into the AV lab, finding her already seated at one of the several computer monitors.
She turned over her shoulder briefly to smile her greeting at him, before turning her attention back to the monitor in front of her. "Come sit down," she beckoned him. "I'm going through the missing persons list."
"Find anything yet?"
She shook her head, pressing her gloss-kissed lips into a firm line as Grissom sat down beside her... completely unaware that this mannerism of hers could always hold his attention. "Just a whole buncha nothin'," she sighed... then almost as soon as the statement left her lips, her eyes widened. "Wait a minute..."
Grissom followed her gaze to the computer screen, his jaw dropping just slightly as he eyed what had popped up. "Jane Doe..." he murmured.
Catherine nodded slowly. "Yep. Also known as Trisha Fields, a housewife from Henderson... missing since Friday."
"That was six days ago," he breathed incredulously. He met his partner's eyes. "If she's been missing for six days... and dead almost as long... wouldn't you think she'd have come out of the water far more bloated than the rest?"
Catherine shrugged. "Well... she came up without her internal organs, so maybe their absence ritarded the swelling."
He frowned thoughtfully, and printed the page they were currently on. "We should contact the husband for questioning," he muttered, grabbing the paper as soon as it was spit out of the printer... his eyes scanning the information once again.
Catherine eyed him. "Don't tell me you think it's foul play..." she murmured in a low voice.
He shrugged. "I don't know what it is, Catherine. But I'm not going to rule anything out."
"Alright," she sighed, turning her eyes back to the screen. "Let's see what else we've got."
After forty-five more tedious minutes of browsing the list of missing persons, they'd identified three of their four victims. Trisha Fields had been missing the longest... then Bryan Griffith, missing for four days... followed by Jason Davis, missing for three days. "Well!" Catherine huffed, watching Grissom rifle through the papers they'd printed on each of their victims. She met his eyes. "Looks like we've got some questioning to do."
**
"Scully..."
"Hmm?" She raised her head from inspecting the empty body in front of her... using her wrist to move her chin-length strawberry strands out of her eyes.
Mulder glanced up at her with a look of utter boredom on his features... his full lips settled in the most boyish of pouts. "Have you found anything yet?"
She sighed. "Hemorrhagic tissue... some evidence that the organs were removed in a violent, fast-paced manner, and traces of blood in the navel." She raised her eyebrows. "You?"
"I don't know what to look for!" He gestured toward the body adjacent to the one Scully had been examining, running his non-gloved hand through his hair. He gestured to her. "You're the doctor. Why are you making me examine the bodies?"
She rolled her eyes. "If you're going to whine, Mulder, maybe you can go help Grissom and Catherine with their missing persons work."
"You'd miss me too much, Scully," he murmured, and turned his eyes back down to the cadaver on the table. He furrowed his brow. "Hey..."
"What?"
"How common are 'outie' belly buttons?"
This question drew her attention away from her inspection, and she slowly turned her eyes back up to Mulder's. "Well, statistics show that approximately only ten percent of the population have outie belly buttons. Why?"
"Well, this guy's got an outie." He nodded at his cadaver, then at hers. "Your guy's got an outie." He shrugged. "How much would you be willing to bet that the other two have outies, too?"
She slowly furrowed her brow in confusion, leaning on the autopsy table with one hand while placing the other on her hip. "What are you saying, Mulder? That these people were killed for not having 'normal' belly buttons?" She smirked.
"No, I'm saying that maybe their organs were removed through the belly button." He gestured to her. "You said yourself you found traces of blood in the navel."
"Well... yes, but... nothing excessive," she replied, shrugging. "If the internal organs had been removed through the belly button, there would be mass amounts of blood."
"What if they'd been removed underwater? That'd get rid of some of the blood, wouldn't it?" he challenged... eyes twinkling. He loved Dana Scully dearly... treasured her over his own life... but her strict rationalism and science drove him up a wall sometimes. Over the seven years they'd worked together, her scientific explanations hadn't been right once. They'd always been trumped by Mulder's strong belief in the paranormal.
Scully narrowed her eyes at her partner... adoring his challenging look he bestowed upon her so often, though it annoyed her immensely. "So you're saying that we're looking for the Swamp Thing."
He smirked, holding up a finger to correct her, moving for the door. "Lake Thing," he muttered, and headed out of the morgue, his smirk only widening smugly when he felt her follow... her glare piercing him through his back.
TBC