Her Name on the Door: a Context Vignette
by Lee Burwasser

Rating - G
Category - V
Spoilers - Never Again
Keywords - none
Summary - the perks go with the work
Archive - anywhere, as long as the name stays with it
Feedback - sure lee46b@gateway.net
Disclaimer - XF characters belong to CC, 1013 and Fox

 

Assistant Director Walter Skinner stared at the now-silent phone and considered weird developments. This one was not as *flamboyantly* weird . . . He grabbed his coat and headed for the garage -- with a side trip on the way.

Outside the new X-Files office, he stood in front of the door, reading the two name plates: X-Files; Special Agent Fox Mulder. The door was ajar; he pushed it open and studied the room as he had the door. Agent Scully's desk was an island of order in an ocean of chaos. The desk, he recalled, dated from Agents Fowley and Spender's tenure; he couldn't recall which of them had used it.

He focused on Agent Mulder, who was clearly waiting for him to get around to business. "Thomas Griffith," he said.

"Washington office of the Centers for Disease Control. Scully reported that possible contagion from the Simpsons case, he came here to follow up or something, but missed her. She's going to try to catch him afternoon."

"How long was he here?"

"A few minutes."

"Did you . . . discuss . . . Agent Scully?"

"Discuss? I told him she was chasing down someone in the M.E.'s office, and I'd let her know he was looking for her when she checked in. He said thanks, left his card . . . and left."

"Did you say anything to make him think that Agent Scully is not in fact a federal agent?"

"WHAT?"

That had been Walter's reaction, too. It wasn't any more useful now than it had been then. He looked again at the door, touching one of the screw holes where a nameplate had been removed. Actually, where two had been removed and one restored. He looked again at Mulder, said "George Washington University Hospital," and headed for the garage.

At the hospital, they learned she was out of surgery but still out cold. The Metropolitan police were waiting. They could wait some more while the G-Men visited Intensive Care.

He had the same reaction he always did when he saw her unconscious. *God, she's tiny!* Without that incredible presence, she seemed too frail to be one man's sanity and another man's conscience. "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity" had gone by the wayside; "Semper Fidelis" was a hollow echo; Dana Scully was real.

Now much of her face was obscured by bandages. Most of what was visible was bruised. He took two deep breaths to calm himself, and left Mulder to his vigil.

Mr. Griffith was tucked into an out-of-the-way niche that gave visual privacy but was far from soundproof. Both Walter and the tall woman standing in the entrance could hear the decisive voice from inside.

" . . . trial lawyer, which I'm not. The only advice I'm competent to give you is to keep it zipped. Your mouth. I'll scare up someone who knows these ropes, so just stand mute until then." The owner of the voice, a medium-sized and medium-dark male Caucasian, stepped to the entrance and the woman turned to him. "Detective Wilson, I'm sure you overheard that, but for the record: my client is in need of a specialist, but until I find one, I am acting for him. For now, he is standing mute, and any effort to interrogate him will be in violation of his rights. Is that understood?"

"Quite understood, Counselor. When we move him, we'll leave word for you at the nurses' station."

"Thank you, Detective." He stared at Walter, but said nothing and left the area.

The tall woman turned a blandly polite gaze at Walter. "May I help you, sir?"

"Are you the arresting officer in the Griffith case?"

She nodded and produced her ID. "Detective Sergeant Rochelle Wilson."

Walter checked them briefly and produced his own. "AD Walter Skinner, FBI." He put them away. "What the hell is going on?"

Detective Wilson grinned. "Good question. Here's what we know: Mr. Piluski, a security guard at the Baker Building, was called in by Ms Canning, the secretary of Mr. Griffith. She reported a "hubbub" in Mr. Griffith's office, and requested him to break open the door, which was locked, and deal with it. When he pounded on the door, he heard someone unlock it, but whoever it was did not open it.

"Mr. Piluski opened the door and found a woman with a bloody face covering him with an impressive-looking handgun and a man on the floor with his hands cuffed behind him. The woman identified herself as Special Agent Dana Scully, and showed what looked like FBI credentials. The man on the floor called out that they were counterfeit, the woman was not a federal agent. Mr. Piluski decided he was out of his depth and called the paramedics and us, in that order.

"My partner and I arrived on the scene as the paramedics were finishing up with the woman. We heard her suggest that they take the man, too, as she was unsure whether she had injured him. I accompanied the ambulance, my partner stayed to take statements at the scene. He updated me by 'phone. When he gets here, and Ms Scully recovers consciousness, we'll sort all this out."

"I see," said Walter.

He was about to say more when someone called "Shelly!" Detective Wilson turned to the voice, and so did he. A rangy young black man wove his way toward them.

"Fred!" she called back. When he reached them, she introduced Walter to Detective Frederick Bailey, then introduced Griffith, "--who is standing mute on the advice of his lawyer. Keep him company while I see if Ms Scully is awake yet, will you?"

"Will do."

Walter and Detective Wilson headed back to Intensive Care, where they found Scully slightly muzzy, but awake. She sounded as though she had the mother of all stuffed-up noses.

Wilson began with polite formalities, then moved quickly to the case. "Ma'am, you have been accused of impersonating a federal agent, and being in possession of counterfeit identification as such. This is a serious accusation."

"I have the right to remain silent. I have the right . . ." Dana Scully recited the Miranda formula soberly, ending, "I fully understand these rights."

"Very good," said Wilson. "Now, neither your face nor your voice are at their most identifiable, but your fingers are uninjured . . ."

Scully smiled (it looked like she smiled) and nodded. "An orderly should be able to find letterhead and a stamp pad, if nothing else. Ask for some moist and dry towlettes, too, please, and then perhaps we can reduce the puzzle."

Walter was not about to wait. "I presume, Detective, that you impounded the suspect ID?"

"Of course. Here." She showed him but did not offer to let him touch.

"Yes. Well, that is a picture of Dana Scully, who is an agent of the Bureau. If Agent Scully identified herself to Mr. Griffith's secretary, then either this is Agent Scully or you have a locked room mystery."

Detective Wilson noted this down, then looked at Scully, who maybe-smiled again. "You won't want to wait for fingerprints to come in before getting a statement. I feel that two witnesses should be enough for my safety. Do you accept the Assistant Director's provisional ID?"

Wilson nodded and said, "Provisionally, yes."

"Good." Scully began her statement, first going over what Mulder had told Walter already. She continued, "My partner told me that Mr. Griffith had been to the office, our office, and was heading for his. I headed over there myself, and we finally connected. It's the usual outer-inner office arrangement, which I assume you have seen for yourself."

Wilson nodded.

"He invited me to the inner office. Once inside, he locked the door and asked, 'Does your boss know you're passing as an agent?'" She flushed -- it was visible even through the bruising -- and glanced briefly at Walter and back to Det. Wilson. "It was so off the wall that it succeeded. I was distracted enough for him to grab hold of me, which made subduing him a longer and more painful process than it should have been." She raised a hand to her bandaged face, then dropped it back into her lap. "By the time I had him cuffed, someone was pounding on the door. I unlocked it and stepped back. It was opened by a man in security uniform." The rest of her statement echoed Wilson's earlier report.

Det. Wilson finished note-taking and said, "Have you been informed of your current medical condition?"

"Yes. Reconstruction is always tricky, but they are confidant -- I should say, they are certain that everything will still function OK, and confident that it will look much as it did before."

Walter was an amateur boxer; he'd seen plenty of battered faces. He pictured Dana Scully's patrician nose bent askew, or flattened. He took a deep breath to calm himself, then moved to intercept Mulder. For once, he knew as surely as Scully what was on her partner's mind.

He pushed the younger man, almost gently, against the wall and held him there. "Agent Mulder," he said quietly, "you will not jeopardise the case against Mr. Griffith. You will not approach him, or speak to him. You will not approach his colleagues or intimates; you will not access his records, either personally or by proxy. You will stay away from him. Have you heard me, Agent Mulder? You. Will. Not. Jeopardise. This. Case." He punctuated the last sentence by thumping him against the wall at each word.

"I hear you," said Mulder.

"Are you going to stay away from Mr. Griffith?"

"Yes."

Walter let him go, and after a moment's hesitation stepped away and let him return to Scully's bedside.

Det. Wilson looked at him speculatively, but turned back to Scully and the case. "Why should Mr. Griffith insist that you were impersonating a federal agent? And why assault you?"

"The only thing that makes sense is that the impersonation charge was a distraction. And when things didn't go the way he expected, he realised he'd assaulted a federal agent and stuck to his story for lack of anything better."

Walter shook his head. "I think I know why he thinks so, but it still doesn't explain the assault."

Wilson focused on him, notebook at ready.

"I seldom visit the X-Files office, and when I do, I'm thinking of other things, so this was the first time I really thought about what I was seeing." He paused to arrange his words. "Kim does not have her name on my door, because she's not my partner. She's my secretary. And anyone visiting the X-Files office in Agent Scully's absence would not hesitate to call it one man's turf. One name on the door, and her desk is an island in an ocean."

Wilson looked at Mulder, who seemed to be going into shock.

"*That's* why!" he said. "That's why he was angry and excited all at once: he thought he'd been imposed on, and he thought he had the goods on someone."

"Come again?" said Wilson.

Mulder was up and pacing. "A rapist doesn't do it for the sexual pleasure in any sense we would recognise. He gets off on control, domination. And domination does not require physical force. Look at classic sexual harassment: spread for me or lose that promotion; spread for me or lose your job. Economic violence instead of physical. Threat of economic violence. Griffith blackmails his victims; gets something on them and threatens to expose it.

"You'll probably find that he's disdainful of rapists in the legal sense, may even have aided a victim to fight one off. He won't be into flirting, either: if they come after him, it's their idea, not his. Could make him feel like hunted rather than hunter. This may be the first time he's gotten into a physical altercation. When Scully was taken aback by his accusation, he thought she was subdued, safe to approach and dominate physically."

"Where are you getting all this?" demanded Wilson.

"He's a profiler," said Walter. "Doesn't do it regularly any more, but we still call him in for the problem cases. It may sound like voodo, but it's based on thorough knowledge, and a degree in forensic psychology."

"Defense will make it sound like entrapment," said Wilson. "Hot-shot profiler can tell the motivations of a man he's barely met, but doesn't know why his partner should get the perks to go with the work. Partner of how many years?" she addressed Scully.

"Six years, now."

"Did you ever bring it up?"

"No." Scully was a rotten liar. "Not specifically."

Walter added this to Mulder's shock and came to the obvious conclusion: she was protecting him.

Scully must have read his face, or Detective Sergeant Wilson's. She elaborated, "It has nothing to do with my being male or female. Our, ah, former Section Chief thought he was putting a spoke in Agent Mulder's wheel by assigning me as his partner. Agent Mulder was aware of this, and assumed I was a willing tool. He did not regard me as his partner, but as a spy. He was not about to offer me anything I did not demand, backed up by citing regulations. In time, he learned to trust me; by then, though, I was not a *new* partner, and he never thought in terms of changes brought about by my arrival."

Wilson did not look impressed. "So you regard him as an equal-opportunity jerk."

Scully flushed again, this time with anger, but returned a flat, "That is one way to put it."

"Prosecutor's going to love this," muttered Wilson, more to herself than the federal agents. If they didn't want this case traded away in plea bargaining, they had to convince her that it would fly. Young Detective Bailey seemed a lad with potential but no weight as yet. Wilson was the key.

Walter made himself sound purely FYI. "The X-Files is a . . . peculiar unit. Definitely criminal investigation, but there's no section it really fits into. So it got tucked away wherever it would fit, physically and organisationally. When Agent Scully was assigned to it, the unit was organisationally part of Violent Crimes and Major Offenders, but housed in the old copier room in the basement. Had it remained in VCMO, this matter would have worked itself out in the normal fashion. Because it consists of two people tucked into a corner of my office, so to speak, the situation went unnoticed until now, since I was the only one in a position to notice it, and I had no reason to think along those lines."

Wilson looked less than enthusiastic, but nodded. "A lot depends on what his lawyer lets him say." She closed her notebook and again addressed herself directly to Scully. "I think you're the first to get assaulted over it, but I guarantee that it's been costing you respect all this time. Your boss is dead right on the message it sends; that's a standard way to diminish, to marginalise. When you do the work, demand the perk."

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Exercise for the Reader: who is young Detective Bailey named for?
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