Disclaimers: Not mine. Written for the X-Files Lyric Wheel. Mulder and Scully investigate, and the MOTW makes an appearance, sort of.

The surface of the lake is beyond still in the fading light of the moon. No ripple creases its surface; and to the Watcher in the shadows of the raft moored in its centre, no movement has ever marred the mock-gloss finish. None ever will. No wave carries tales of secrets below to the world above; the light of the moon reflects solid off the unmoving surface, and age weights heavy in the air. Stretched taut, imprisoned in its silence, the water simply is. A bright, tight forever drum.

Fox Mulder watched as his partner threw the last photograph onto his desk and sat back in her chair. "Alright, Mulder, where is it?" she asked finally, blue eyes scowling at him as it became apparent that he was going to force her to ask.

"Where is what?" he asked, grinning like a schoolboy, his body barely containing the energy that always assaulted him with the start of each fresh case. The look she shot him was lethal; and the mischief danced brighter in his eyes in unspoken reply. "It's right there, Scully," he responded, gesturing at the discarded file scattered over his desk, knowing the answer would be worse than useless to her, or she never would have asked the question in the first place.

Nevertheless, she picked up the scattered pages and straightened them. Laying the photos out, one at a time across the surface of his desk, she summarised quickly: "Eight bodies, all partially dismembered, all found reassembled in somewhat haphazard order on a raft moored in a lake in rural Massachusetts, all incidents taking place over a seven-week period, all found less than twenty-four hours after they disappeared, their clothing found discarded on the shore. Five incidents, no common connection between the victims other than location, apart from the two incidents covering the young lovers and the three siblings, where it is clear all victims in each party were together at time of disappearance. No discernable timetable; no correlation to unsolved cases in the area; no locals amongst the victims." She waited for his sub-vocalised agreement before finishing, "There's no X-File here, Mulder."

"Look again, Scully." Quick movements of his hands, scarcely looking at the papers he handled, he rearranged the photographs into a rough semblance of order on the desk. "Here, and here, and here. What does that look like to you?"

"A log, Mulder."

"A log which barely changes position over a seven week period in the middle of a lake that's deeper than any tree ever grown, Scully? That is only there when there's a body on the raft? That loops in and out of dead-calm water?" Idly, he let his finger trace the figure that was clear as daylight to him, following the lines above and invisibly below the water with equal confidence.

Disbelief was a mild term for the look she shot him. Incredulity would be nearer the mark. "You think Nessie killed these people, Mulder?" her voice betraying her rising irritation. "Mulder--"

"Loch Ness is in Scotland, Scully," he interrupted, maddening humour glinting irrepressible in his eyes. "This is northern Massachusetts. Pack your bags, Scully, we're going on vacation."

"I still don't see why we have to go undercover, Mulder," Scully commented with the air of one who knows the argument is lost but can't yet reconcile the illogic behind the victory. She unpacked the last of her clothing into the dresser drawers and looked around the room, wondering what she might have forgotten this time. No matter how often Mulder threw her onto a plane with little or no notice, there was always something... and it seemed the more time she had to pack, the more likely it was she'd leave behind something actually important.

"The police, the FBI, a private detective hired by one of the families -- noone's gotten anywhere, Scully. Someone knows something, but they're not talking to the law. Or the quasi-law. None of the victims were locals, or even regular vacationers here, so--"

"So we play bait for the loch ness monster," Scully groaned, throwing herself down on the double-bed. "Remind me how you talked me into this, Mulder?"

"Native charm," he replied, in a voice so deadbeat that it took her a moment to realise what had been said, and by then it was too late to throw the pillow she'd been resting her head on. She settled instead for simply ignoring the comment.

"I'm not even going to ask how you convinced Skinner to sign off on this. I don't think I want to know."

"Wise woman," he replied, and the sparkle in his eye as he did would have reconciled her to a great many things.

"Roy Durban, BDS," Mulder announced, holding out his hand. "And my wife, Maria. We just got here this evening."

"John Holtz. Welcome to the lake." Medium-height, balding, drunkard's eyes and the beginnings of a paunch, he gestured vaguely toward the far side of the beach gathering. "My wife's over there somewhere, with the kid. We come every year, two weeks in August. Get away from the office, you know." Barely pausing for Mulder's non-committal nod, he rushed on. "Grab yourselves some food, there's beer in the cooler over there. Help yourselves, we don't stand on formality around here. You're gonna love it here. It's a wonderful place, great for the kids, well, except for that business...." his air of benevolent geniality faltered and he trailed off, shaking his head portentously. "Nasty business, that."

"Business?" Mulder queried, trying to sound interested and ignorant, both. "What business?"

"Well, Ray--"

"Roy," Mulder muttered, mentally rolling his eyes as John Holtz's meaty arm settled about his shoulders. Resisting the urge to pick it up and throw it back at the man, he let himself be led off with only a single eloquent glance over his shoulder at Scully's laughing eyes.

"Sorry, Roy," the other man continued, too absorbed by his tale to take note of Mulder and Scully's byplay. "To be honest with ya, I'm kind of surprised you folks came at all, what with the goings-on around here." He shook his head, eyes gleaming in the firelight with the chance to prove his own importance. "Let me tell ya, Ray, I hope you haven't unpacked, 'cause you and the little lady may not be so keen to stay when y'hear the tale i have to tell ya...."

"What did you learn, Mulder?" Yawning delicately behind her hand, an ironic twinkle in her eye, Scully's tone was nevertheless all business. "Did John have anything interesting for his new pal Ray?"

Mulder groaned. "Don't remind me." A single glance at his partner was enough to confirm his suspicions. "You're enjoying this," he accused, mock-offendedly. "I spend the night being mauled by that man in the name of Law and Right, and all I get for it is a detailed rundown of John Holtz's theory on why the vagrant responsible is long gone from these parts."

"Really?" Scully responded drily, "what a surprise."

Deciding it was probably safer not to pursue that, Mulder asked instead, "What did you get?"

"The women are scared."

"Surprise."

"No less than four warned me not to go about alone."

"Surprise."

"Two more as good as told me that if I had any brains at all, I'd throw you into the car and leave right now, baggage be damned." A barely-perceptible lift of an eyebrow showed what she thought of that suggestion.

Mulder grinned. "And you told them....?"

"That we'd already paid for the house for two weeks, it was too late to get our money back, and you were far too tightfisted to not take what you've paid for."

He looked shocked. "Slander!"

She climbed into the bed, watched as he made for the door. "The kids think there's a monster in the lake." Reaching out, she flicked the light off. "Goodnight, Mulder."

"For kids who are convinced there's a monster in the lake, they're certainly not shy about swimming in it," Mulder muttered, flopping down onto the deckchair with a frustrated sigh. Next to him, Scully tilted her sunglasses down and looked up at him.

"Look on the bright side, Mulder. I'm finally getting some of these journals read."

He glanced at the stack beside her chair. "You've read all those?"

"There's only so many times I can listen to John Holtz preach law and order, Ray," she replied. "I might as well get something worthwhile out of this case."

"My wife, the doctor," he muttered ironically. "And it's Roy."

"Dr. Durban! Dr. Durban!" The voice was insistent and shrill, and accompanied by a pounding that dragged Mulder and Scully unerringly up from the depths of sleep. "Dr. Durban!" Muzzily, Mulder opened the door. "Mr. Durban, is the doctor in?" Practically jumping out of his skin with excitement and news, the boy thus revealed was maybe nine years of age and recognisable as one of the kids staying two houses down from them. And he wanted a Dr. Dur--

"Only, my Dad said to fetch her, 'cause o' her bein' a doctor and on account o' Matt Larkin spotting there's something on the raft...."

Scully. The boy was looking for Scully. "Just a minute," he told the boy, and shuffled back toward the bedroom to wake his partner.

Thirty minutes later they were in a rowboat and approaching the raft. Matt Larkin hadn't been mistaken; there was definitely something on it.

"It's the same as teh others, Mulder," Scully murmured, keeping her voice low so as not to carry over the water. "No chance at all he's still alive."

"ID?" Mulder questioned, voice just as low.

A faint touch of surprise coloured Scully's voice as she answered, "Holtz. It's John Holtz."

Mulder frowned. "That doesn't fit, Scully." Scanning the scene, his eyes caught on a flash of bright yellow half-hidden behind the hump of a severed leg. "Neither does that."

Disbelief coloured Scully's voice, "Is that a rubber duckie, Mulder?"

"Looks that way, yep." Absent-minded confirmation from Mulder. "They're always first-time tourists, Scully. Never locals, and never regular summer visitors. Only ever the bodies on the raft. Why Holtz? Why break the pattern now?"

"In case you hadn't noticed, we're about the only non-locals, non-regulars left on the lake, Mulder."

"Exactly. So why didn't it come after us?"

"He wasn't killed on the raft."

"No," Mulder concurred, voice low so as not to be overheard as they watched the familiar crime-scene drama playing out before them. It was odd to be watching on the sidelines instead of caught up in the thousand-and-one details entailed in working such a scene; but with no real idea of the culprit than they'd had before they'd come up here, they'd thought it better to maintain their cover a while longer. "He wasn't. Nor dismembered there."

"Just displayed." The distate was acid etched in her voice.

"Displayed?" Mulder frowned. "No. Put there, certainly; but he's not showcasing his work, Scully."

"Then why leave him there?"

He shrugged, "Beats me. The placement's not precise enough for display. It's more like he's trying to reassemble a puzzle, but he's not quite sure where the pieces should go." He caught himself, shook his head. "He wasn't killed here on the shore, either," continuing their previous line of thought, "which leaves the lake."

"Or somebody's basement, Mulder."

He shook his head. "No, Scully. They're killed and mutilated in the lake itself. Otherwise, why leave them on the raft? Why not just dump them on the beach? There's no visible trace on shore at all, apart from the clothes."

"And no patterning in those. Some are dumped in a heap, some scattered, some folded neatly." She watched as the body was transferred from the boat to a gurney, wincing as the handlers almost dropped it. "They took them off themselves. They went swimming, Mulder."

"Yeah." He moved a little closer to the water, further from the still, watchful knot of locals and the silent, scared regulars. They'd thought they'd been safe, immune; that it was only strangers at risk, and now-- "Nightswimming. The fear of getting caught, of recklessness and water, made real...."

Finally, the body was loaded into the ambulance. Scully turned to Mulder, "That's my cue."

"Hmm?" He watched the water, preoccupied. There was something....

Scully knew she'd lost his attention. She knew that look, knew what it meant; that there was something hovering just out of his grasp, a connection everyone else had missed and likely always would.

And in the meantime, the body was on its way to the city morgue, several towns away, and she was to ride along to 'give a statement' as the doctor-on-scene; thus allowing her to perform an autopsy, without denting her cover in the least. Convenient. Almost too convenient, with some of their cases... but, no, there wasn't even a bare hint of Mulder's favourite conspiracy theory in this one. There was barely even an X-File. "I'll be back this afternoon, Mulder. Try not to get into any trouble before then, hmm?"

Approaching footsteps caused Mulder to look up from where he was crouched on the shore, watching the lake. "Scully," he greeted shortly, returning to his contemplation. There was something....

"Mulder," she replied, equally quietly. "Don't look now, but half the population are waiting to see how you deal with your wife after such a dreadful ordeal." Voice ironic, and ever-so-slightly tense; he knew by heart the expression she'd be wearing to accompany it.

"Get anything?" Standing, he let her pull him into a hug that was far more awkward than it looked; but they were being watched, and it was, he knew, the sort of thing Roy Durban would endure from his wife after a day like this one. "Cause of death?"

Scully nodded against his shoulder, then briskly pushed away from him, cover satisfied. "Blood loss. His throat was cut."

Mulder blinked. "Cut?"

Scully nodded. "With a serrated blade. Hunting knife, most likely; well-honed, sharp. One slash across his throat, from behind. He was dismembered after death, with a chainsaw."

"He was cut apart?"

"Pretty much, yes. What did you expect, Mulder? Teeth marks?"

Mulder stared gloomily out over the water. "It would have been a start, Scully." Standing, he turned back towards the house. "Come on. I want you to take a look at the duck."

"The duck?" She followed after him, mind chasing the reference. Duck--- "Mulder?" the name came out sharper than intended, and the slight pause in his step told her more than she wanted to know about the answer to the question she hadn't asked yet. "What are you doing with material evidence, Mulder?"

"Naomi Holtz said her husband insisted on going swimming last night, overriding her objections. That he always went swimming at 3am on their last night at the lake, and that he 'wasn't about to be scared off like some lily-livered yellow-belly by some vagrant hobo that preyed on kids and women, and who had in any case long since left the area'." Mulder paused, casting an ironic glance back at his partner. "And that she thanked God she'd been able to talk him into letting their son stay home this year. The kid, by the way, was more than happy to have been left behind. He seems to have been well aware that there was something in the lake that preyed on swimmers at night." Another pause to catch her reaction. "He also said that if his father had just worn his swim-trunks like he'd begged him to, he'd still be alive this morning." Opening the door of the house, he led her into the den.

Scully blinked, as a piece of the puzzle slid sideways and fell into place with an almost audible click. "The killer is preying on skinnydippers. That would explain why no trace of clothing was ever on the bodies, and no blood ever on the clothing. Although not why select items of clothing were wet."

"Unless they started out clothed, and progressed to nude. Needed time to build up their nerve. It's not like years ago, when we were kids. You went skinny-dipping, didn't you, Scully?" he tried to imagine her, a ferocious strip of tomboy with scrapped elbows rushing into the lake, perhaps chased by a friend.

She ignored the question with sublime aplomb. "So we have a killer with something against skinny-dippers."

"And rubber duckies." Reaching for the tagged and bagged toy on the desk, he tossed it at her. She caught it moments before it collided with her face. "Tell me what you see, Scully."

She held the bag up to the light streaming in the window, examined the toy through the plastic. "It's a rubber duckie, Mulder. Common bathtoy; yellow and cheerful. Occasionally they squeak," squeezing gently through the plastic, "which this one clearly doesn't. Hollow. This one is fairly old, worn; at some point torn apart and then repaired. The repair itself is old; very likely someone's longlost childhood toy. It's been exposed to the elements for a long time, by the look of it. The puncture in the base looks comparatively recent. Probably from some kind of broken pipe or tubing."

"Why would anyone take the time to thrust a pipe through an abandoned rubber duckie, Scully? And then leave it beside a torn up corpse?"

Shrugging, she tossed the bag back on the desk. "Beats me, Mulder. Why would anybody take the time to kill and dismember John Holtz? And then leave him beside a rubber duckie?"

"You have to ask?" Mulder replied facetiously. Then, more seriously, "That doesn't look like a tooth mark to you, Scully?"

"Mulder," exasperated, "don't tell me. The lake monster killed the rubber duckie?"

"Yeah." Sober and serious, not at all what she wanted to hear from him right now. "It did."

"Mulder?"

"It's out there, Scully. I can feel it."

"Go back to bed, Mulder."

"I can almost taste it, Scully."

"Whatever killed those people was human, Mulder. Lake-monsters don't use power tools."

"Scully."

Waking fast was a skill she'd acquired as a kid, and it didn't desert her now. Mulder was standing by the window, staring out at the lake, and she could still feel the heat of his hand where he'd been shaking her shoulder a bare moment ago. She looked at the clock, then back at Mulder, unmoving by the window. "It's three a.m., Mulder."

"We're running out of time, Scully."

"Mulder," slowly, as though speaking to a somewhat-backward child, "it's three in the morning."

"Of course it is." Decisively, he moved from the window to the door, moonlight reflecting off his back. "That's when the killer strikes, Scully."

"At three a.m.?" The look she shot him sizzled the air between.

"At night."

She turned over, prepared to ignore him until he went away and she could get back to sleep. "Good night, Mulder," she said firmly.

"No time to sleep now, Scully." He pulled the sheet down from where she'd hauled it up over her face. "We have a killer to catch."

"Just like that, of course." After a few seconds she relinquished the struggle for the sheet as undignified, and resigned herself to another sleepless night. "What do you want, Mulder?"

"Come on." He hopped up from the bed, crossed to the door of her room. "We're going skinnydipping."

The pillow hit the closing door as she fell back to the bed with a groan.

They strolled hand-in-hand toward the lake, to all appearances a couple going for a midnight stroll.

"You're crazy, Mulder," she murmured as they neared the water. Trolling for a killer... it wasn't by far either the most insane or the most dangerous caper they'd ever pulled, but it still made her skin crawl, wondering who might be watching from the trees.

"You're helping me," he pointed out reasonably, pausing by the water's edge to kick off his shoes.

"Only because if I didn't, you'd do it anyway," she muttered. "And with no backup at all."

"True." The smile he gave her was reckless and alive as he paddled into the lake. "Water's warm," he announced. "and the moon is low tonight." He held out a hand, spoke a bit louder. "Let's go swimming, honey."

Honey? She'd get him for that.... assuming they both survived this night, that is.

He reached for the hem of his shirt, pulled it over his head and threw it to her, waded a bit deeper. She backed a bit further away from the lake, automatically folding the shirt before dropping it on nearby log. "I don't have my bathing suit, sweetheart," she replied sweetly.

"Neither do I," he winked. "Come on, honey, it'll be fun," he wheedled slyly. "Just like our honeymoon all over again."

She rolled her eyes and turned her back, checking the shore for movement. Was there a flicker, over there....

"What's the matter?" Mulder's voice floated over her shoulder. "You can't stand to see me naked anymore?"

"I don't think so," she replied absently to Mulder's continued teasing. "But you go ahead. Ill head back to the house, get us a snack ready." She turned round, grinned wickedly. "I'll be just like our honeymoon all over again, dear. As she made her way back toward the house, something wet and fabric flew over her shoulder. "You missed, dear!" she called back, watching without seeming to for that flicker of movement along the trees.... there. Wonder of wonders, it looked like Mulder's half-assed 'plan' might actually work....

She eased her gun from it's holster as she reached the house, then doubled back to watch the shoreline. It didn't take long for the shadow she'd spotted to move cautiously away from the trees, to where Mulder's clothing was heaped along the shore, and poke through it. Mulder, to all intents and purposes, was completely absorbed in the lake and the moonlight.

When she saw light glinting off metal, she moved. Flipped the outside lights, spotlighting the figure against the backdrop of the lake, weapon out and aimed. "FBI! Freeze...."

All in all, everything had gone surprisingly smoothly. The knife-blade she'd seen reflecting moonlight still had traces of blood from the other victims; they'd found the chainsaw used to dismember the bodies, and the unanswered questions were far fewer than their case reports normally contained. The killer was in custody and the evidence they'd found in the basement of his house incontrovertible. They even had a motive; a beloved granddaughter dead of a botched back-alley abortion, the result of a moonlit night and a midnight swim in a local swimming hole. The genesis of a serial killer.

If only all their cases turned out to be so explicable.

The killer caught, the crime solved, everything done but the paperwork. And Mulder, dressed once more in his customary suit and tie, was staring at the lake as though it held all the answers he'd ever sought.

"Mulder?"

He continued studying the waves intently. "What is it, Scully?"

"Our flight back to Washington leaves in two hours. It's time to leave for the airport, Mulder."

"We're missing something, Scully."

"We caught the man, Mulder."

He shook his head impatiently. "What about the monster in the lake, Scully?"

She blinked. "There isn't one, Mulder."

"How did the bodies get on the raft?"

"He put them there, Mulder."

"He says he didn't."

She rolled her eyes. "He killed them, Mulder. He cut them up. Who else would have?"

He stared out at the water, as though that were answer enough.

She sighed. "Nessie doesn't exist, Mulder. This case was never an X-File."

Was that a log, floating way out on the lake? Or was it moving...? "You don't know that, Scully."

"It wasn't an X-File," she repeated stubbornly.

A flash of yellow caught Mulder's eye. "What about the rubber duckie?" he asked, turning to look at his partner.

"What about it, Mulder?"

"Why would he put it there?"

She shrugged, suddenly tired. "Who knows, Mulder? Why didn't you ask him?"

"I did."

"And?"

"He says he's never seen it before in his life."

"He also says he left the bodies in the water, Mulder."

"Maybe he did."

She blinked. "Pardon?"

"Maybe he did," slowly, the glimmerings of an idea on the edge of his mind. "Maybe he did leave them in the water." He smiled at her, blindingly. "It was trying to put them back together, Scully."

She blinked again, confused. "He left them in the water because he was trying to put them back together?"

"No. The being in the lake. Don't you see, Scully? The rubber duckie, the one on the raft---it had been torn apart, and when it was put back together, it floated again as good as new. It wanted to do that with the people. Put them back together, fix them. That's why it put the bodies on the raft. Except it wasn't quite sure what order the pieces went; thus the haphazard placement. It couldn't understand why it didn't work with people, when it had with the yellow duck. That's it, Scully. That's the missing piece!"

"We're going to miss our flight, Mulder."

Lyrics courtesy of Arsenic.

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Should tarsh ever enter another Lyric Wheel again? Or are they a bad influence on her muses? Let her know what you thought of this scene at tarshaan@moonlit-eyrie.com
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