7AN: Here we are, the last piece to this story. There's more on that at the end.
I hope you enjoy! Please let me know what you think!
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Bernie had given them the information that they requested early in the morning when he and his men came by to start sweeping the area, again, in search of any more pieces of the bodies that had already been found. Mulder and Scully had both accepted the questions and the ribbing about their first night in the same house as the Holinshed ghost, and Mulder had politely entertained Bernie so that Scully didn't have to work so hard to keep from rolling her eyes over the prospect of a murderous ghost.
After asking a few more questions of the local law enforcement, they scoured the list of "expected fingerprints" for the Holinshed House and started the work of contacting and meeting with and talking to each of the individuals on that list, as well as collecting whatever information they could about the people on the list from Bernie and his deputies.
The most challenging part of the whole thing had been not tipping people on the list off that they could very well be suspects in the murder. After all, if one of them was the killer, they had the potential to change their tactic in the panic of trying not to get caught and, in the process, they could potentially cause more damage before Scully and Mulder were able to figure out who was behind everything.
An agent named James Clive, from the Atlanta field office, joined them around dinner time. They took the man out to a local dive and, at a table in a back corner where they were distanced from locals, they filled him on what they knew already—which, arguably, wasn't very much.
Agent Clive's job was simply to stay with Belva Holinshed and keep watch over the woman. He wasn't to leave her side, at any time, for any reason. He wasn't investigating the murder; he was protecting the next likely victim. He'd been chosen, specifically, because he didn't believe in ghosts and, therefore, was less likely to have any kind of complications caused by an overactive imagination.
After they'd eaten, Scully had dedicated herself to pouring over notes she'd made about the conversations they'd had that day.
Mulder, too, had settled in his chair and munched on sunflower seeds while he reread his notes, but he was starting to believe that, if they were going to find a killer among the people they'd spoken to, it was going to be Scully that was truly going to win the day. He really felt like he had no leads, and he couldn't figure out any clear motive for anyone.
The hours had ticked by without Mulder feeling like he'd really learned anything new or developed any great theories. It was late—almost the hour when he'd consider suggesting to Scully that they ought to call it a night and try to look at things with fresh eyes in the morning—when they'd started hearing the nocturnal recreations of the deceased Willard Holinshed.
Mulder listened to them, the first few times that he'd heard anything, without speaking, but finally he got Scully's attention.
"Scully?"
"Hmmm?" Scully hummed, not looking up from what she was puzzling over.
"We agreed it's not—the chef, right?"
"Right," Scully said. "Or any of the strictly daytime help. The murders were likely committed at night under the guise of the ghost."
"We agreed it wasn't Belva Holinshed," Mulder ticked off.
Scully laughed to herself.
"Unless she's an incredible actress, it wouldn't be possible. The woman suffered two major strokes. She can barely feed herself," Scully said.
Mulder sighed.
"You can hear Mr. Holinshed wandering around," Mulder mused. "Or is that the house settling? The night nurse would have been gone for a while."
"It could be Agent Clive," Scully said.
"Except Belva's room is downstairs," Mulder said. "And it doesn't sound like the footsteps are below us, does it?"
Scully looked up from her notes. For a moment, she stared blankly at the wall. Mulder quickly realized that she was either thinking or listening. Either way, she didn't need him interrupting her.
When Scully got up quickly from the bed, Mulder didn't immediately think anything of it. His brain dismissed it as an urgent need for the bathroom or something else—nothing to be concerned about, and something that would likely cause her to be frustrated with him if he asked too many questions about her actions. When she moved to put on her pants, though, Mulder's confusion grew a little. Still, he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. The last thing he wanted to do was to be accused of hovering. It wasn't until she grabbed her cuffs and started to put on her gun that Mulder decided it was safe to ask what was happening.
"Scully—you going somewhere?" Mulder asked.
"Mr. Holinshed's moving around," Scully said. "I'm going to see if I can follow the footsteps."
Mulder laughed to himself.
"Are you going to shoot the ghost?" Mulder asked. "Because I think he's already got a great defense against gunshot wounds."
"I've got a hunch, Mulder. You can either come with me or stay here, the choice is yours."
Mulder didn't have to be told twice. He got up, immediately, and fastened on his own gun. He grabbed his cuffs and shoved a small flashlight in his pocket. He had no idea where they were going or what they were doing, but if Scully's hunch told her that she might need a weapon, he wasn't going to leave her trying to defend the both of them.
Mulder followed Scully through the darkened house, finally catching her attention. She didn't turn on a light, and neither did he. If the killer was roaming the halls, they wouldn't want the light to be an announcement that they were after him or her, and they wouldn't want the light to give away their exact location.
"Do you want to fill me in on what you think is going on?" Mulder asked, keeping his voice relatively low.
"I've been thinking about several things I heard today, Mulder, and I think I know who the killers are."
"Killers? Scully, last time I checked, we'd heard the killer was a ghost and we didn't even have a solid lead on a single suspect. Now you're telling me that we have multiple suspects?"
"Michael Holinshed," Scully said.
"Belva's son?"
Scully hummed.
They'd met Michael Holinshed for the first time that afternoon, thanks to the list of expected fingerprints. They'd asked him to meet them at the house, and they'd talked to him in the presence of law enforcement and under the guise of simply collecting all the information they could about the house, the ghost, and the murders. Mulder hadn't really thought that there was anything truly remarkable about Michael, but he'd spent less time talking to the man than Scully had. Admittedly, as well, there were simply times when Scully read someone differently than Mulder did—it was one of the reasons, in Mulder's opinion, that they were so often able to figure things out.
"What about him?"
"I didn't think too much about it until I overheard something that Sheriff Mason said to you in passing," Scully said. "He said that he supposed that, now, the Holinshed fortune would go to Michael."
"Mary was the oldest and Belva was following the tradition of leaving the fortune to her firstborn child," Mulder said, filling in details that he remembered from the conversation. He thought about it a moment. "You think Michael committed the murders to inherit the money?"
"The money, the house, and everything that goes with it," Scully said. "But—it wasn't just the money that got my attention. While I was talking to one of the deputies, Michael was nearby, and he occasionally added his input in the conversation. First, I asked about servant's entrances and exits. I was thinking about how the killer might have gotten in. How they might have placed the body parts. Even how they might have moved around without anybody noticing. These old houses used to be full of passageways, secret rooms and areas, staircases. Essentially, people could travel within the walls, Mulder. The primary reason, of course, would be because the servants were supposed to be separate from the family most of the time."
"But it would be perfect for the movements of a ghost, right?"
"The corporeal kind, yes," Scully said. "Something Michael said struck me, but I wasn't sure why—not right away. He said that even if some of the older generation still believed in the separation of the families and the servants, most people were beyond that kind of thinking, and those kinds of things hadn't been used in years. Almost immediately, the deputy said they hadn't found anything like that within the house, and Michael excused himself for a moment before I could question him further."
"It's more likely that the deputies hadn't looked for those kinds of spaces," Mulder offered.
"Or else they're the kinds of spaces that only people very familiar with the house would know about. I forgot to follow up on it when Michael returned, because the deputy started talking about motive and how Mary must have been involved in some kind of illicit affair with Robert Gaines. He said that the Holinshed ghost was most likely to murder because of something like that, since the Holinshed family greatly disapproved of that kind of moral transgression."
"So, you think Michael used the ghost as a way to hide the murder of Mary—while also keeping the family name clean," Mulder clarified.
"Possibly," Scully said. "Nobody knows anything about Mary and Robert that's anything beyond gossip. It's possible, though, that there's more to it than that."
"More motive than keeping the family name clean and inheriting all that money?" Mulder mused. He believed what Scully was saying, and even his stomach clenched at the likelihood of her theory. He followed her as she walked a few steps further down the corridor. "What else could there possibly be that could drive Michael Holinshed to murder?"
"The possibility of a perfect murder, for one thing, Mulder," Scully responded. "The past murders weren't even investigated. He might have simply gotten away with it…"
She never finished what she was going to say because they were both stopped when something came crashing down. Mulder saw the solid darkness move against a backdrop of less dense darkness in time to grab at Scully and snatch her backward into his arms. For just a moment, the loud crash and the nearness of the falling object stunned them both. It was only then that Mulder slipped his hand into his pocket and produced the small flashlight that he'd tucked there when he grabbed for his gun.
"Looks like a coat of arms," Scully said, her breathing a little raspy from the surprise of nearly being crushed by the large and heavy hunk of metal.
"The Holinsheds don't like gossip, Scully," Mulder mused.
"Do you hear that?" Scully breathed out.
"Footsteps," Mulder said.
"That's not a ghost, Mulder," Scully informed him—not that he was really inclined to believe in the ghost at this point.
Mulder called out Scully's name a little louder than he intended, but he assumed that much of the house might be waking up after the crash. He may not know exactly how it was that the coat of arms had fallen—whether its supports had been released from some other room, perhaps on the other side of the wall—but he knew that it had been intended to look like an accident, and it had been intended not to miss them.
Scully didn't respond to Mulder calling out after her. She'd taken off at a solid run. There was nothing that Mulder could do except to run after her, trying to shine the flashlight in the direction she was headed to give them both a little light as they moved through the darkness.
Mulder had to admit that he was simply following Scully. She seemed to know where she was going, and he had no idea where he was going, so it was only rational to let her take the lead. The footsteps they could hear were louder now than they had been, and Mulder followed Scully as she ducked into a room and wildly went searching the walls for a moment, practically running her body down the length of them.
"What are we looking for?" Mulder asked.
Scully didn't respond to him. Instead, she opened up a closet door and, disappearing inside, called out his name. Her voice sounded hollow, and Mulder quickly realized that it was because she'd found what she was looking for. Mulder ran into the steep, black staircase behind Scully, attempting to light her way as she shuffled down the steps far too quickly for any creature that couldn't see in the dark.
At the bottom of the stairwell, they came out into a room. Mulder couldn't tell anything about the room when he emerged seconds after Scully, but he heard footsteps—steps that didn't belong to Scully. He dropped his flashlight when something hit him from behind, and the light went sliding across the floor.
"Mulder!" Scully called out.
"Scully, look out!" Mulder called. Whatever had hit him hadn't done the trick. Whoever had hit him, though, came back to fight him. He could hear the person breathing heavily as he threw practically his entire body weight against Mulder. Mulder didn't know if it was Michael just from hearing him, but he knew it was a man—a man who didn't know much about fighting. If he'd killed the two victims, he'd had the element of surprise on his side to accomplish such a feat.
Mulder was honestly only half-heartedly fighting the man for a moment. They were doing little more than rolling around on the ground in something reminiscent of a playground brawl. He could hold the man off for a while, if he needed to, so that Scully could get him cuffed and under control.
But Scully hadn't come, and it wasn't until he heard her make a noise, which he couldn't quite identify, that Mulder's pulse truly picked up and he decided that he was done playing games with the man who may be Michael Holinshed. Mulder gathered up his strength and, with a great deal of determination, rolled the man over and pinned him to the ground. With surprise on his side, and simply being stronger than the man he was fighting, Mulder didn't find it too hard to roll the man over. He slammed the man's face against the floor, with his hand on the back of his head, to stun him. He'd apologize for that, later, if anyone cared. Then he cuffed the man before crawling quickly toward the flashlight.
He didn't need much help in identifying what was happening around him. Scully was involved in her own fight. As soon as he found the flashlight, he realized that the only reason she was still scuffling with her would-be attacker was because they both had their hands on Scully's weapon, and Scully hadn't yet been able to remedy that.
"Freeze," Mulder demanded, pulling his own weapon. "I'll shoot."
Scully and Cassidy both froze.
"He will," Scully assured the woman.
"You wouldn't risk killing your wife," Cassidy offered.
"The marriage has been rocky for years," Mulder said, biting the inside of his mouth so that he could tell the lie without laughing at it. "This could be the perfect cover-up. We're apprehending both of you and…whoops. That's what this was all about, right? A cover-up?"
Cassidy laughed. Mulder didn't believe the laughter, but she did relax her hold on Scully's gun a little. He could see a slight shift toward Scully's favor.
"They've never called in the FBI to investigate a Holinshed murder," Cassidy said. "Michael and me were gonna get married, but the old woman would've never let it happen. This way, that weren't gonna be no problem, and we were gonna have all this. Enough to keep us both going until we're as ancient and decrepit as Mrs. Holinshed. Michael promised me it would work. I just didn't leave at night like I said I would. Slipped down here and opened the door for him comin' in the back. He brought 'em both in and we cleaned them up in the servant's kitchen. They were never supposed to call in the FBI."
The whole time she talked, Michael yelled at her from the place where Mulder had handcuffed him. He wobbled around on the floor, and Mulder heard him fall over at least once when he'd made it to his knees. He lacked the physical skill to stand up with the cuffs. Listening to his struggle, Mulder was even more certain that he'd fallen into the Holinshed practice of bleeding and washing the dismembered bodies because, if all the pieces were found, they would likely tell the story that his victims had been shot—and probably while sleeping. They'd been dead when they'd been brought here and dismembered. Michael lacked the prowess to take them any other way.
And, more than likely, Michael had access to his sister's home and, perhaps, had even counted Robert as a friend and had access to his home. Those houses would need to be searched for evidence that law enforcement, blinded by what they wanted to believe, had likely missed.
It had been the perfect crime, and the amount of profanity and threats that Michael threw in Cassidy's direction told Mulder that the young woman wasn't lying.
Mulder slowly eased his way toward Scully and Cassidy. He kept the gun trained on Cassidy, but he doubted he'd have to use it. She was already feeling caught and defeated. With Michael handcuffed already, she didn't have too much fight left in her.
Scully could have easily made a quick move to regain possession of her gun, but it was clear that she didn't want to have to do that—not if Cassidy would simply hand it over and accept that this was done.
"Let Agent Scully have the gun, Cassidy," Mulder said. "You don't want another charge, Cassidy. You may be able to get a good deal. Talk to them about how it was that Michael came up with the plan and you just helped him. But if you shoot me or Agent Scully? Cassidy—there's going to be no leniency on you, then."
The young woman challenged him for a moment, staring at him, but then she relented. She released Scully's weapon. Scully sighed when she had it back in her hand, and she holstered it before she pulled her cuffs. Cassidy put up no fight at all. The same couldn't be said, exactly, for Michael who was attempting to make his way across the floor like some kind of angry and injured inchworm.
Mulder wrestled the man to his feet.
"I hope you weren't too sleepy, Mulder. I think we'll be spending the rest of the night with Sheriff Mason."
Mulder laughed to himself.
"I don't think anyone's sleeping around here anymore, Scully," Mulder said. "We've made enough noise to wake the dead."
Scully didn't say anything as she followed Mulder in search of a light switch to make a dignified exit from the room, but she did laugh at his pun, and that was enough for him.
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"Last time I saw your eyes roll back in your head like that, Scully, it wasn't you who was doing the eating," Mulder said with a smirk. This time, when Scully rolled her eyes, it was for an entirely different reason. Mulder laughed to himself. "Is it everything you wanted it to be, Scully?"
Scully hummed her happiness before she swallowed.
"It really is one of the best burgers," Scully mused. She chewed through another bite of the cheeseburger, her tongue darting out to catch some of the mess that she made, but leaving some behind. Mulder smiled to himself and leaned, wiping away some of the condiments from the corner of her mouth. She smiled at him as she chewed. "Is yours not good?" She asked.
"It's fine," Mulder said. "I'd just rather watch you eat yours, really."
He didn't point out to her that he was almost too exhausted to eat. He didn't point out to her that she'd slept like the dead while he'd driven a rental car from Mason, Georgia to Atlanta after neither of them had slept the night before because they'd been handling things pertaining to the Holinshed murders.
Mulder didn't begrudge Scully a few hours of sleep, and he certainly didn't begrudge her the cheeseburger that she was making look nearly pornographic.
"I just hope I get to keep it," Scully said, somewhat mournfully. She washed down what she was eating—condiments dripping through her fingers as she held the burger in one hand—with a long drink from her soda.
"If I remember correctly," Mulder said, "the alien is only a snob when it comes to puddle jumpers. That's why I insisted—since this time we don't have a deadline—that we drive to Atlanta. Only commercial flights, and possibly spacecrafts, are good enough for our alien."
"If this continues," Scully mused, "having me as a partner will be more trouble than it's worth. You'll have to request someone else."
"Never," Mulder assured her, sensing that, although she was mostly joking, there might be at least a hint of insecurity in her tone. "After all, if it hadn't been for you? I might still believe in the Holinshed ghost."
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AN: I thank anyone who read for reading. I hope you enjoyed this story and, if you're following along with the "universe," then I hope you enjoyed this piece to the longer narrative. I also hope that you'll join me on future pieces.
Thanks again for reading! Please let me know what you think!
