XF Friday Nights – Episode 5: “The Jersey Devil”
Title: It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World
Author: ML
Archive: just let me know where
Spoiler / Episode Reference: The Jersey Devil
Rating: All ages.
Disclaimer: I still don’t own them, darn it, just the action figures. But I’m grateful to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox, not to mention all the actors, for bringing these characters to life and giving me so much enjoyment.
Acknowledgments: to the Posse, always, and to Circe Invidiosa, who gives my stories a lovely home: http://ml.invidiosa.com
Author’s notes: This is the fifth story in an exploration of the early seasons. They are loosely tied together but can be read as standalones as well.
Synopsis: The survival skills you develop depend on the environment you live in. Missing scenes and different POVs from “The Jersey Devil”
x-x-x
-Medical Examiner’s Office, Atlantic City-
“Doctor Harris?”
Glenna Harris looked up from the report on her desk. Jordan, one of her assistants, stood in her doorway.
“Doctor Harris, could you come take a look at this? It’s the homeless man they brought in this morning.”
“You mean Roger Crockett,” Glenna suggested. She always insisted on her staff calling their clients by their names, if known.
“Yes, Mr. Crockett. His injuries…well, come see for yourself.”
She followed her assistant out of the office and into the autopsy bay. The dead man lay on the table. Internal examination hadn’t yet been started. The assistant directed Glenna’s attention to the man’s right shoulder. The right arm was missing. The wound was ragged, as if the arm had been gnawed off. But the teeth marks just below the clavicle were distinctive.
“Was the injury caused by what I think it was caused?” Jordan asked.
Glenna looked at the man’s shoulder, and the teeth marks below the clavicle a bit more closely. “Well, if you think it was caused by human teeth, I think you may be right.”
Jordan nodded, examining the wound more closely.
“Do you mind if I assist on this one?”
“Really?” Jordan asked, rather pleased that Dr. Harris would take the time, and call it an “assist”. She didn’t care what the cops said; Dr. Harris was a cool boss.
“It was a good catch, Jordan. And I think it would be good to have a second set of eyes on this one.”
Jordan smiled and continued with her work. Dr. Harris was tough and a little humorless, but she always gave credit where credit was due.
Can things get any weirder? Glenna thought later as she returned to her office. There had been reports of sightings of some kind of “wild man” amongst the homeless. The PD didn’t usually give much credence to these reports, considering the source reason enough not to.
But they might need to now, she reflected. Certainly this wasn’t the first time a homeless person had wandered into the wilderness and died from exposure, and not the first time that a body had been ravaged by something in the wild. But human bites?
The next day, things got weirder. It started with a call from an FBI agent. Not the local office; an agent from Washington, DC. He wanted to drive down with his partner to review the report and talk to Dr. Harris in person.
“News sure travels fast,” Glenna said to Jordan. “What did you do, sell the story to the National Enquirer?”
Jordan looked a little abashed. “Someone from the cop shop called and asked for the results to close out his report, and I told him. I didn’t speak to anyone else. Maybe Detective Thompson called them in?”
That sounds unlikely, Glenna thought. “You’re sure you didn’t tell anyone else?” Glenna pressed her assistant. “You know if this gets blown up, the cops won’t get blamed for spreading the story, we will. And then we’ll have Detective Thompson down on us for blowing a case.”
“Like he cares about some homeless guy,” Jordan muttered.
“Well, we care. And that will have to do. They’re on their way, it’s too late to do anything about it.”
When the FBI agent finally arrived, Glenna was surprised to see that his partner was female. And she was not just female, but a petite female, not at all whom Glenna Harris expected to see. She never thought about the fact of female FBI agents. They had to be as rare as female detectives were around here.
Agent Mulder asked the questions, but Agent Scully was the one who scrutinized the body most carefully. Agent Mulder’s questions seemed to indicate that he already had some idea of who or what had done this, but he wanted the proof.
Agent Scully listened but contributed little to the conversation. She watched her partner carefully, as if she was waiting for him to convince her. There was something not quite in sync with them, and Glenna wasn’t sure exactly what it was.
She liked the idea of having a contact at the FBI, and had no problem cooperating if asked. Weren’t they all on the same team, after all? Didn’t they all have the same goal in mind? Besides, what resources would the FBI bring to bear if they were interested?
“I don’t recall asking for the FBI’s involvement,” Detective Thompson said from the door of the examination room.
“We’re here in an unofficial capacity,” said Agent Mulder, which made Glenna feel like a fool. And learning that Agent Scully was a medical doctor was as much of a surprise to her as Scully’s surprise at learning _she_ was the reason that she and her partner had come to Atlantic City.
The detective hated the idea of anyone encroaching on his turf, as he’d made plain in the past. Now, he made it plain to the two agents. Actually, he ignored Agent Scully entirely and addressed himself to Agent Mulder. Agent Mulder seemed very calm, but there was a tightening of his jaw muscles that did not bode well.
“For God’s sakes, Tommy, this is no time to get pissy,” Glenna spoke up, more to alert the agents that Detective Thompson was not someone to cross, than to caution the detective. She knew that he would pay no attention to her request.
For several moments, it looked as if the two men might come to blows. Then, with a touch to his arm and a quiet, “Agent Mulder,” Agent Scully got her partner to back down.
Glenna watched them go with some regret. She would have liked the opportunity to talk more with Agent Scully.
Once the two FBI agents left, Tommy dropped even the pretense of politeness.
“What the hell were you thinking, talking to those guys?” he yelled. “Any information released on an active case should be cleared through me!”
“Calm down, Tommy,” Glenna said. “Whatever happened to cooperation?”
“This is a local case, and we’re handling it,” he raged. “I don’t want anyone giving the DA or anyone else the idea that we can’t handle this! I’ve talked to you before about your staff leaking stuff.”
“It wasn’t my staff,” Glenna interrupted. “I asked Jordan. I asked the dieners. No one said anything. It was one of your guys.”
“There is no way one of my guys would have said anything to the FBI about this,” Tommy insisted. “If this blows up, it’ll be your fault, and I’ll make sure everyone knows it.”
Oh, I’m sure you will, thought Glenna.
“And by the way,” he added as he reached the door. “Don’t you _ever_ talk to me like that in front of anyone again.”
x-x-x
-Homicide Squad Room, Atlantic City PD-
“I want you all to look out for some guy out there asking questions about Roger Crockett,” Detective Thompson told his squad.
“A reporter?” One of the men asked.
“No, worse. He’s FBI. He’s out of his jurisdiction. I don’t know what he’s looking for, but he ain’t gonna find it.”
There was a general murmur of agreement as Thompson dismissed his men and left the room.
“Hey Jack,” one of the men called to one of his colleagues.
“Yeah?” A scruffy-looking man, sipping tea out of a foam cup, responded. He looked like he’d just wandered off the streets to get warm, dressed in cast-off clothing and raggedy gloves.
“Aren’t you doing undercover at the homeless camp tonight?”
“Just like every night, until we catch this guy.”
“Well, maybe this Fed would like to help you tonight. You still got that picture your kid drew of the Devil?”
“Uh huh,” Jack answered cautiously.
“If the Fibbie comes around, show it to him.”
x-x-x
“Squad room…Hey Jack, where you calling from?” “The Galaxy Gateway.”
“Is the Fibbie with you?”
“Nah, he gave me his key. He’s taking my place tonight.”
“What’s the deal? Did he make you?”
“Nope, he thought I was the real deal. He took the bait. That picture my Jimmy drew — you woulda thought it was proof of Big Foot or something.”
“What a sucker. Okay, we’ll bring him in when we do a sweep. Just one more question for you: the Galaxy? Are you serious?”
“What can I say? The Feds are cheapskates.”
“No kiddin’.”
x-x-x
-Atlantic City Morgue, a few days later-
Glenna Harris was surprised to see Agent Mulder back.
She’d heard that Agent Mulder had gotten “lost in the system” over the weekend — a tactic seldom used on a brother officer unless they really wanted to send a message.
It appeared that Agent Mulder didn’t get that message, as here he was back again, partner in tow, along with a park ranger and another man, introduced as Dr. Diamond from the University of Maryland Anthropology Department.
“We heard that another body was recovered,” Agent Mulder said. He gestured toward Ranger Brouillet, who nodded. Mulder seemed not at all chastened by his prolonged tour of the Atlantic City jail system.
“Well, if they picked it up, nobody logged the body on the chart,” Glenna said. “I sure haven’t seen it.”
Agent Scully, stoic as always, stood by and listened, but did not seem to share Mulder’s enthusiasm.
“I’m afraid we may have called you down here for nothing,” Agent Scully said to Dr. Diamond.
“They’re sweeping it under the carpet,” Mulder insisted.
“Why?” Dr. Diamond asked.
“Any publicity and you’ve got the streets crawling with the kind of people who aren’t here to play the crap tables. Word gets out there’s something still on the loose, forget it,” Mulder said.
Without further ado, he led his companions out of the office, already making plans to find this other creature.
Dr. Harris picked up the phone. “Get me Detective Thompson. I want to know why a body found in the forest last night hasn’t been sent to the morgue.”
Two minutes later, Detective Thompson was at her office door. “I figured you’d just tell your friends at the FBI, that’s why,” he said.
“What are you doing with the body, giving it the ‘tour’?” Glenna asked.
“It’s really none of your business, is it?” Thompson said. “You get the bodies when we give you the bodies.”
“Much as you’d like to be, Tommy, you are not my boss,” Glenna reminded him. “I don’t answer to you.”
“You have a responsibility to the Department and to ensuring that information pertaining to a case isn’t released prematurely or to the wrong people, and you do answer for that! Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“The victim’s, same as you,” Glenna Harris said pointedly. “In any case, it’s too late, they already knew. I think you’re carrying this whole macho ‘I can handle this myself’ line too far, Tommy.”
“You just run your morgue, and leave the policing to me,” Detective Thompson snapped. “You body jockeys are all police wannabes. Think you know about investigations and what you’re really doing is obstructing justice.”
“Now, wait just a minute, Tommy. You have no right to come in here and make accusations –”
“I don’t have time for this,” Thompson said. “I have a murderer to catch. You just stick to your bodies.”
x-x-x
Case closed. She would never have heard it from Detective Thompson, but later that same day, two bodies were delivered to the morgue: a John and a Jane Doe, both showing signs of having lived outside of civilization for a long, long time.
She did not often let herself feel too much emotion toward her clients, but something about the circumstances of their lives, not their deaths, tugged at her. Life lived on the most primitive of levels. Life reduced to the essentials. How did you know you had a hard life if you never knew any other kind?
“Shot while attacking an officer,” she read on the attached report. It seemed wrong that it had been necessary to shoot an unarmed, naked woman for attacking a man who, presumably, was clothed and armed.
She shook her head and went back to her office.
x-x-x
The next day Glenna received a call which indicated that perhaps the case was not so open and shut as Tommy Thompson would like.
“Doctor Harris, this is Agent Dana Scully. I’d like to ask you a favor, if I may.”
Surprised, Glenna said, “Okay. Is this about the so-called ‘Jersey Devil’?”
“Yes, it is. We were unable to get jurisdiction in the case, but I thought if I called, colleague to colleague…I am a pathologist as well as an FBI agent. I didn’t know if you knew that.”
“I recall Agent Mulder saying something about you being a medical doctor. So it’s true? He wasn’t just saying that?”
“Agent Mulder doesn’t lie,” Agent Scully said. “I am a medical doctor.”
“No offense meant, Doctor Scully. Can I ask how you ended up in the FBI?” Glenna asked in spite of herself. So Agent Dana Scully could just as easily have been ME Dana Scully, dealing with the Tommy Thompsons of the world, instead of investigating cases herself.
A faint sigh mixed with a laugh could be heard before Scully said, “No offense taken. It’s a long story.”
Glenna waited but it seemed that there would be no further explanation. Instead, she asked, “Is this Agent Mulder’s request, or yours?”
There was a short pause, and then Agent Scully said, “It’s important to both of us to see it through to the end. Both Agent Mulder and I have an interest in the identities of both the bodies.”
“I see,” Glenna said.
“We’ve gotten permission from the Attorney General’s office to review the findings. Detective Thompson has agreed to release the results to us.”
“You could have had the AG just order us to release them, or sent an official request.”
“Yes, I could have. And procedurally, I suppose that’s the right thing to do. But I thought you’d appreciate being asked rather than ordered.”
“That’s a nice distinction,” Glenna murmured.
“Also, Dr. Diamond is interested. I’d like to ask if he could assist in the autopsy, and perhaps do a medical examination?”
“Are you the fixer, Agent Scully?” Glenna asked suddenly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you the one who smoothes the path when your partner pisses people off?”
“No,” Agent Scully said stiffly. “We are both here to solve cases, and to speak for the victims. It may well be that the so-called Jersey Devil was responsible for some deaths, but she was also a victim.”
“You don’t need to tell me that,” Glenna said. “But Detective Thompson sees it otherwise.”
“That’s why I didn’t go to him,” Scully said.
“So is this a woman-to-woman thing?”
“No, it’s a colleague-to-colleague thing,” Scully insisted.
“Okay then,” Glenna said, not convinced. “How long have you been in the FBI?”
“Long enough to know how things work,” Scully said. “How long have you been an ME?”
“Long enough to know how things work,” Glenna said in return.
Another short silence. Glenna broke it first.
“Have Doctor Diamond call me, and we can schedule a time for a medical examination of the body.”
“Thank you, Doctor Harris,” Dana Scully said. “I’ll let him know.”
“Good luck, Doctor Scully,” Glenna added.
“Thank you, Doctor Harris. You, too,” Scully replied.
-end-
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Some fun facts:
According to the FBI website, there are 12,000 Special Agents in the FBI, of which 2,000 are women.
According to Policeemployment.com, women make up about 12% of the total law enforcement field.
It annoyed me just a little bit that the ME was always referred to by her first name — when referred to by name at all — and not even a last name in the credits. So I gave her a last name and a little more to do.
Thanks for reading!