THE HIT
Title: "The Hit" (1/1)
Author: Plausible Deniability
Address: pdeniability@hotmail.com
Category: S with some H
Rating: R (sexual situations; mature language)
Spoilers: Vague mytharc references; and "Tempus Fugit" (4.17) never happened.
Keywords: Pendrell
Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the television program "The X Files" are the creations and property of Chris Carter, Fox Broadcasting, and Ten-Thirteen Productions, and have been used without permission. Also, this story is modeled -- and very closely, too, I might add -- on "The Catbird Seat" by James Thurber. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Pendrell is driven to a desperate act.
THANKS to Dasha for her encouragement, and to Becky, who inspired this with a question she asked while beta reading my last story. This is what happens when I try to write slash.
----
"Mr. Martin bought the pack of Camels on Monday night in the most
crowded cigar store on Broadway."
-- James Thurber, "The Catbird Seat"
****
Agent Pendrell bought the pack of Morleys late Wednesday afternoon in the busiest grocery store in Alexandria. The store was crowded with people shopping on their way home from work. Pendrell placed the pack on the conveyer belt with his frozen chicken and his Tartar Control toothpaste, and the cashier never looked up. Pendrell had always been scrupulously anti-smoking, and if any of his staff from the Sci-Crime Lab had spotted him with the Morleys they would have been shocked; but no one he knew spotted him.
It was the third day since Pendrell had decided to eliminate Fox Mulder. He favored the word "eliminate," because it had a nice, safe, antiseptic ring to it, as if Mulder were simply a speck on a test tube to be sterilized away. Pendrell's only problem with the task ahead of him was that murder was such an unscientific proposition, lacking controlled conditions. His plan was unfamiliarly risky, almost James Bond-like in its daring. Yet that was also the beauty of the thing: no one would ever connect its bold violence with the bashful patience of shy, brainy Jamie Pendrell, lab tech extraordinaire, the man who regularly performed imaging spectroscopy accurate to within a thousandth of a micron. No one would ever connect it -- unless he happened to be caught red-handed.
Sitting in his organized, uncluttered apartment, nursing his bottle of strawberry Yoo-hoo, Pendrell brooded on his awful brushes with Agent Mulder. Mulder's abrasive monotone had first disturbed the quiet of the Sci-Crime lab some three years before. "I need your help with something, Pendrell," he had muttered, tossing valuable evidence onto the laboratory countertop as if he were slinging a bag of trash into a garbage chute. The man's seed-chewing arrogance had horrified Pendrell, but Pendrell had kept his equilibrium, calmly promising the results with a polite smile. "Move this job to the front of the line, would you, because it just may be my key to the Truth," Agent Mulder had announced self-importantly, and then he had turned to where the celestial Agent Scully stood waiting for him in the doorway...
But he mustn't get into Mulder's relationship with Agent Scully, Pendrell reminded himself, fidgeting unhappily. It was Mulder's dangerously unbalanced ramblings and his unscientific approach to investigations that had sealed his fate, not his involvement with that rarefied creature. Though, of course, it was difficult to ignore the destructive hold Mulder seemed to have on Agent Scully, the way he loomed over her and ordered her about and even, sometimes, dared to touch her. "Let me know what the autopsy turns up," he would say to her, his hand snaking out to settle on the curve of her back. Follow me, worship me, become my willing slave...
Agent Pendrell forced all of that out of his head. It was appalling, it made his blood boil, but he was a reasonable man, and not the sort who would commit homicide purely out of jealousy. Never mind that a trusting spirit like Agent Scully couldn't see through Mulder's rambling inanities and his foolhardy tendencies. Never mind that she sometimes looked at Mulder as if he were a king and she were a lowly peasant. No, Mulder had attacked science and precision, single-handedly impeaching those principles which Pendrell held most dear, and *that* was the reason he had to die.
Oh, yes, Mulder was a dangerous loose cannon. Pendrell couldn't even understand him half the time. "The Truth is out there," Mulder would declare vaguely, pronouncing the word with a capital letter. Loyal Agent Scully would nod supportively, while Mulder launched into one of his wild theories about conspiracies and monsters and little gray men. Pendrell had tried to point out the fallacies in Mulder's thinking, that his so-called alien implants were just computer chips and that pathogens did not have to be extraterrestrial to be deadly, but Agent Mulder could not be bothered with troublesome facts.
The last straw had come Monday morning. Pendrell had been sitting at his desk, glancing longingly at the door every now and then in the faint hope that Agent Scully might have some kind of evidence to be analyzed. And then, wonder of wonders, she really had appeared, sending his heart into a bound -- but she'd been followed closely by the lanky, smirking Agent Mulder.
She had needed a smear of some caustic green goo identified. Pendrell had taken the specimen from her with a small but professional smile, handling the sample carefully. "I'll get right on this for you, Agent Scully," he had promised.
Mulder had given him an insinuating look, as if he could name something else that Pendrell would like to get right on.
Pendrell had scraped a small quantity of the green goo off onto a slide. "If you can give me just a couple of hours for the spectrographic analysis, Agent Scully, I can let you know the precise chemical make-up, and why it's so reactive."
"There's no need to bother Scully with it. She has an autopsy to perform," Mulder had said, pushing in between Pendrell and his partner. "Just call me when you have the results. All I want to know is whether it's human blood or not."
"Well, of course it's not human blood," said Pendrell reflexively, looking at Mulder in dismay. "I mean, it's *green* -- "
Mulder had smiled with supreme condescension. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Agent Pendrell, then are dreamt of in your spectroscopy."
Agent Scully had given Pendrell a small, sympathetic glance. Or perhaps sympathetic was the wrong word. Really, it was more pitying than anything else.
That was when Pendrell had decided that Agent Mulder had to die, and die soon.
****
Pendrell stuck painstakingly to his routine the next day. He might have been a little preoccupied, might even have chewed his nails once before he caught himself, but nothing he did would have caused suspicion in anyone. He saw Mulder only once, and then only from a distance. He worked diligently, left at his usual time, and then carefully drove himself home, stopping at all the yellow lights. Reliable and cautious: that's what he was, that's what he always had been.
When he got home, he had a bottle of Yoo-hoo, read his mail, and fixed himself dinner, just the way he always did. It was Thursday, so he loaded the dishwasher and ran it, just the way he always did. He turned on the evening news and then watched Jeopardy, also according to routine. Then, as soon as he'd confirmed that the accountant he was pulling for wasn't going to win at Final Jeopardy, he put on his coat and gloves, picked up the Morleys, and slipped out into the street.
When the cold air hit him, he realized he was sweating under his collar. He wondered if he was doing the right thing, taking the Morleys with him to Agent Mulder's apartment. He planned to light one and leave it burning beside the dead body, to suggest that Mulder had been murdered by some shadowy acquaintance, possibly that weary older man Pendrell had sometimes noticed lurking in the basement corridor. Now he wondered if the cigarette idea might not be unnecessarily risky. He doubted he would be able to take any convincing puffs on it. There was not only the DNA he might leave behind to consider, but also the fact that just bringing a lit cigarette that close to his face would probably send him into an ugly coughing fit.
Pendrell knew where Mulder lived, since dead bodies tended to turn up with alarming regularity in Agent Mulder's building, and the Sci-Crime lab had worked on several of the cases. It was a two-mile walk. If he walked at a fairly constant speed, he figured he would get to Mulder's apartment building at 8:05, give or take two minutes. At that hour on a Thursday he figured most people would be watching Must-See TV, and he felt confident that he could slip inside unnoticed. His palms grew slightly damp as it occurred to him that he might see someone he knew. If that happened, or if Mulder were not home, or if Agent Scully happened to be visiting the terrible man, he would just have to abandon his plan. The important thing, he reminded himself, was caution.
He checked his watch when he reached Agent Mulder's building. It was 8:04. A man and a woman stood by the front door, apparently waiting for a ride. Luckily, they were facing away from him. He held his breath, ducked his head, and brushed by them. Once inside the lobby, he made a bee-line for the elevator call button. The elevator doors opened and he jumped inside, pushing the button for Mulder's floor in the same motion.
When the elevator doors opened again, Pendrell stuck his head out and looked up and down. The upstairs hallway was deserted. He edged out of the elevator, hurrying on tiptoe toward Mulder's door. Then he took a deep, steadying breath, and rapped three times.
"Agent Pendrell," said Mulder when he opened the door. He was nearly knocked off his feet as Pendrell charged past him into the relative safety of the apartment interior. "Hey! What's going on?"
Pendrell stared at him, opened his mouth, and found that he could not get anything out.
"Is something wrong? Is someone after you?" Mulder asked, closing the door behind them. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I -- " gurgled Pendrell. Oh, God, his heart was racing like a rabbit's. "Uh -- no."
The corner of Mulder's mouth lifted in a smirk. "You sure?"
"Yes, I was just -- I was passing by -- "
Mulder laughed. "Breathe, Agent Pendrell. Scully's not here."
Pendrell did breathe: shakily, nervously. "We're alone, then?"
"Yes, nobody's around." Mulder surveyed him in amusement. "Are you having a panic attack or something?"
"Oh no," Pendrell said. "Just a little winded. I took the stairs."
"Well, let me get you a beer, then." Mulder started toward his kitchen, calling out over his shoulder, "Take off your coat."
Pendrell looked wildly about the living room, searching for Mulder's gun. It had to be here somewhere. He couldn't use his own weapon -- it would be too easy to trace. Where was the gun? His eyes flitted all about the room, from the TV to the black leather couch to the glowing fish tank.
He paced over to the desk. Damn it, where did the man keep his weapon? He moved some papers aside, hunting. He spotted a strange-looking device on the desktop, a silver pen with a button on the side. He picked it up and examined it. He pushed the button, and a long sharp spike came hissing out. Pendrell dropped the thing as if he had been burned. He couldn't kill Mulder with an ice pick.
"Here you go," said Mulder, appearing suddenly and holding out a Lowenbrau. "Hey, you've still got your coat and your gloves on."
As Mulder's hand closed on the back of his collar to help him off with his coat, Pendrell realized the absurdity of his plan: the Morleys, the absent gun, his triphammer heartbeat. What was he doing here? What had made him think he could really go through with this? He was an FBI lab technician, for heaven's sake, not a killer. What an utter dreamland he had been living in.
"Are you going to drink that beer with your gloves on?" asked Mulder, smirking.
Dazed, Pendrell looked down at the Lowenbrau in his hand. "Yes," he said faintly.
Mulder laughed again.
What must he think of me?, wondered Pendrell miserably. What kind of disturbed individual just shows up on a man's doorstep, and then stands around drinking a beer in black leather gloves? What kind of hopeless lunatic appears out of nowhere and without explanation, in the apartment of another man?
And then it hit him. It hit him like a wonderful bolt from above, the idea sparking and spreading and growing grandly into flame.
He reached casually into his pocket, and took out the Morleys. Very deliberately, beer suspended from one hand, he opened the cellophane, shook out a cigarette, and lit it.
Mulder's eyes widened. "You -- you smoke Morleys?"
Pendrell took a convincing puff on the cigarette, surprising himself when he didn't choke. "Oh, yes, we all do," he answered vaguely. "Though most of us only do it in private. But we all smoke them -- me, A.D. Skinner..."
"Skinner?"
"Oh, yes," said Pendrell, "Skinner especially. I remember we were lying in bed together just last night, and he remarked to me that there was nothing better than a good smoke after sex."
Mulder goggled at him.
"Of course, that was only after I removed the ball gag from his mouth," Pendrell added. "Before that, the best that he could manage was a lot of grunting."
Mulder's face had gone completely slack. "Skinner? Walter Skinner?"
"He was one of the first in my bitch stable." Pendrell sucked ostentatiously on the Morley, and drowned the urge to cough with a long pull on his beer. "Skinner, and your former partner Krycek, and of course we all got hooked on Morleys by your older friend who -- "
"God!"
Pendrell felt a giddy thrill. He wondered where all of this was coming from. For heaven's sake, he wasn't even sure what a ball gag was. "Anyway, that's what brings me here tonight. After all your talk of wanting to know the Truth, we want to make you a member of our little group. You know, conspiring, spreading disinformation, fucking ourselves blue."
Mulder took a step backwards, his hands held up defensively. "In the first place, I'm -- I'm straight -- "
"Oh, I think you'll want to reconsider," said Pendrell with a sly, worldly puff. "We have so many interesting secrets, you know, and I only use the spreader bar when I have to."
Mulder could not seem to manage anything except "God!"
Pendrell decided he had made his point. He walked over and retrieved his coat from the leather couch where Mulder had tossed it. "Until you do join my little harem, let's just keep this meeting between ourselves, shall we?" he said, the cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He started for the door.
He stopped just as he was reaching for the doorknob. He turned back to Mulder, unzipped his pants, and exposed himself. "The Truth is right here," he said, pointing. Then he tucked himself back in his pants, zipped up, and went striding out the door.
He got out of the building without another soul seeing him.
The next thing he knew, Pendrell found himself in his apartment. He could not remember walking home, although he knew he must have done so. He sat down at his dinette table, and drank another strawberry Yoo-hoo. He had to stop sipping it periodically to grin. He felt curiously buoyant. When he finished his drink, he went to his VCR, rewound the tape in the machine, and watched the episode of "Friends" he had recorded from start to finish.
He fell asleep that night, smiling, before the 11:00 news was over.
****
The next morning, Pendrell arrived outside the Sci-Crime lab precisely at his usual time. When he pushed open the door, there was Agent Mulder waiting for him, trembling with agitation.
"You!" Mulder shouted, pointing accusingly. "Don't think you're going to get away with this! I'm going to bring you down, you and your black-lunged cronies both, you bastard! I know the Truth!"
"Excuse me?" said Pendrell, staring at Mulder in wide-eyed astonishment.
"Just you wait!" Mulder thundered, and stormed out of the lab.
Two of Pendrell's techs, Agent Lofton and Agent Gooden, exchanged shocked looks. "What the hell was that about?" asked Agent Gooden.
Pendrell shrugged, and walked calmly to his desk. "Your guess is as good as mine."
The lab fell into its quiet routine, at least for the next ten minutes. At the end of that time, Agent Gooden stood up, stretched with theatrical nonchalance, and then sauntered out.
He was back five minutes later. "Learn anything?" Pendrell heard Lofton ask him when he returned.
"His door was closed, but I could hear him hollering at his partner."
Pendrell kept his head down, working diligently.
****
An hour later, Assistant Director Skinner sent for Agent Pendrell. Soon the head of the Sci-Crime lab, clean-cut, polite, deferential, stood on the carpet in Skinner's office.
"Agent Pendrell," the A.D. said in his terse way, "how long have you been with the Bureau now?"
"Eight years, sir."
"And how long as head of the Sci-Crime lab?"
"Four and a half years, sir."
Skinner regarded him steadily for a moment. "You're a rather young man to have held a position like that for nearly five years."
Pendrell felt a pleased flush creep over his face, like litmus paper pinking in the presence of an acid. "Yes, sir. I was very fortunate in a series of rapid promotions."
Skinner's expression remained flinty. "Agent, please do me the kindness to tell me what you were doing at 8:00 last night."
Pendrell hesitated only a second for the appropriate puzzled deliberation. "Of course, sir. At 8:00 I was watching an episode of 'Friends,' and unloading the dishes from my dishwasher."
"'Friends'?"
"Yes, sir. Phoebe had her babies, and Joey was suffering from a kidney stone."
Skinner's jaw worked. "I see."
"Is there some problem, sir?" asked Pendrell.
Skinner looked away for a moment, the light glinting off his glasses as he gathered his thoughts. He sighed. "I hardly know how to tell you this, Agent Pendrell, but I'm afraid that you've become the target of another agent's delusional paranoia."
Pendrell blinked. "I have, sir?"
"Agent Scully was here not half an hour ago, informing me with great reluctance that Agent Mulder has suffered some sort of nervous breakdown. He thinks you visited him last night. He's taken it into his head that you are a" -- Skinner groped for the proper word -- "a criminal mastermind."
Skinner frowned at Pendrell's strangled little gasp.
"I'm afraid that's not even the worst of it," he continued. "His delusions go beyond mere government conspiracies. He's also convinced that you are the head of some sordid all-male sex ring, and that other persons from his past are part of it." Skinner's jaw clenched. "Myself included."
Pendrell stood mutely, a pained look on his face.
"I've just spoken to the Bureau psychologist, and she informs me that it's normal, in cases like these, for the delusional patient to fix on a rival, however harmless. I believe Agents Mulder and Scully visited you in the lab this past Monday?"
Pendrell nodded.
"I have the feeling that Agent Mulder perceives your rapport with Agent Scully as some sort of threat. Fellow scientists, and all that. I'm sorry about this, Agent Pendrell. Knowing Agent Mulder as I do, I should have sensed that this was coming."
"Oh no, sir," said Pendrell. "Of course it's not your fault."
The door of Skinner's office crashed open, and a wild-eyed Agent Mulder flew through it, Agent Scully close on his heels.
Pendrell darted to the security of Skinner's side of the desk. "You think you're so clever," Mulder screamed at him, "with your geeky little labcoat and your stammering and your oh-so-innocent face. But I'm on to you! I'm on to you! I know the Truth!"
"Agent Mulder, that is quite enough," snapped the A.D.
Mulder directed his fevered gaze on Skinner. "I should have known you'd protect him. After all, you're part of his bitch stable."
Agent Scully gasped.
"Where do you hide your Morleys?" demanded Mulder. "Where, Skinner? With your ball gag and your spreader bar?"
Skinner pushed a button on his phone. Two enormous agents, former nose tackles both, materialized as if out of nowhere.
Mulder tried to throw off their restraining hands. "You can't do this!" he shouted. "I know the Truth! They're lovers, I tell you! They're both part of a gigantic conspiracy being perpetrated against every citizen of this country! Damn it, you have to listen to me!"
He was still shouting when they dragged him, kicking and struggling, down the hallway and into the elevator.
Silence reigned in Skinner's office. Finally the A.D. looked regretfully from Scully to Pendrell. "You both have my sincere apologies, Agents, for a scene which I am sure must have been as distasteful to both of you as it was to me." He took off his glasses, and polished them slowly. "I knew Agent Mulder was not the most stable of men, but I never thought it would come to this."
Pendrell stared down at his shoes. "You don't need to apologize, sir."
"Of course not, sir," said Agent Scully. "He was my partner, I should have realized -- "
Skinner cut her off with an imperious gesture. "Agent Scully, don't blame yourself. The truth is, none of us fully recognized just how dangerously unbalanced Agent Mulder really was." He put his glasses back on, his face a stoic mask. "We've all had a pretty turbulent morning. I think the two of you deserve a long lunch. That will be all."
Agent Scully nodded bleakly. Pendrell could see that she was very upset. As they moved together toward the doorway, he put his hand on the small of her back, in a purely supportive gesture. She cast him a grateful look.
They made their way sadly down the hall.
They got in the elevator and the doors closed behind them, leaving them alone together in the quiet. Pendrell pushed the button for the ground floor, and tried not to be too obvious about stealing glances at Agent Scully's drooping profile.
Finally she broke the silence.
"Agent Pendrell," she asked in a small, uncertain voice, "am I the only one who has no idea what a spreader bar is...?"
****
END