Title:  Fragile
Author: Ophelia
E-Mail: OpheliaMac@aol.com
Rating: R--mature themes
Category: T, A
Spoilers: General Fourth Season, my own fanfic story, "Poison," 
and a story called "Favorite Child" by Lindsay, which gives an 
interesting interpretation on the choice the Consortium forced 
Bill Mulder to make.
Keywords: Mulder/Scully UST
Summary: Mulder and Scully are called in on a case described as 
an alien abduction, but Mulder suspects something both more 
commonplace and more sinister.  Mulder angst, Scully angst, 
imaginary small town in Wisconsin angst. 

*******************************************************
Disclaimer: (Sung to "All things Bright and Beautiful:") All 
things dark and horrible, each hidden evil plot, all things weird 
and miserable, Chris Carter owns the lot. Aaaaaa-men.
Other Disclaimer: There is neither sex nor "on-screen" violence 
in this story, but I'm serious about the R rating.  Not for kids 
or adults who become upset at realistically presented violent 
crime.
Other Other Disclaimer:  The Wisconsin F.B.I. field office is 
actually in Milwaukee.  While there probably is a New Castle, 
Wisconsin, I'm sure it's actually a very nice place and nothing 
like this has ever happened there.  :  )
************************************************************

Lifetree Counseling Center
Lake Davis, WS
Monday, June 8
10:13 a.m.



"How do you like your new medication, Thomas?" asked Dr. Lily. 
She smiled at him.  Dr. Lily had wide teeth like Dominoes and a 
round, squashed-in looking face.  

"Fine and dandy, Andy," said Thomas, rocking back and forth in 
his chair.  

"That's good to hear," she said.  "I have some good news for you. 
I got your most recent test results back yesterday, and you've 
made tremendous progress.  Do you remember last year about this 
time, when you were admitted to the Battleborough Psychiatric 
Unit?" 

"The men in white, they came at night.  We had a fight," Thomas 
said with a sly smile.

"You certainly did," said Dr. Lily.  "We worked hard to get you 
so you'd be safe without the restraints, didn't we?"

"How do you mean 'we,' Lily-Lee?" Thomas asked.  *She* hadn't 
been the one tied to the bed with the feeding tube shoved up her 
nose.  She hadn't gotten oozing sores on her back from being held 
in one position for days and days.

"Of course, I mean *you* worked hard," Dr. Lily said.  "And your 
hard work has paid off.  When you first came to Battleborough, 
they found your IQ was 87.  Your thought processes were so 
disordered that it was hard for you to think.  But after you 
started the new antipsychotics, your score went up to 124."  She 
smile grew even bigger, and Thomas thought her teeth looked like 
surfboards, like tombstones.  He smiled back at her, and 
visualized squeezing her squished-in head until it popped.

"Is that a good score, number 1-2-4?" Thomas asked.

"Yes, very.  It places you in the 'superior' category of 
intelligence.  Once you're fully stabilized on your medication, 
you could go to college.  Maybe you could study poetry.  Do you 
think you would like that?" asked Dr. Lily.

"I got a poem for you, Lily-Lou," Thomas told her.  He worked a 
piece of notebook paper out of his jeans pocket.  He had folded 
it until it was a hard, little wad.  He handed it over and she 
unfolded it carefully.

Dr. Lily read out loud: 



I know a secret the moon knows.

I know the place where the moon grows.



She grows to a round

To a scream in the night

Some lie down to die

Some come out to fight

I dance in her light



She screams without sound

She dies on the ground

I dance all around



I am naked and new

I am new like the moon

I am born again, too

I am torn from her womb.



I burn with her light

I am endlessly bright



I devour her womb

I am cradle and tomb

I am one with the moon.



When she stopped reading, Thomas saw a tear trickling down Dr. 
Lily's ugly face.  "Oh, Thomas," she said.  "You've come such a 
long way."




F.B.I. Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
June 9
Tuesday, 9:03 a.m.



"Let me get this straight," Mulder said.  "The Special Agent in 
Charge of the New Castle field office wants to call us out to 
Wisconsin because he thinks his daughter was abducted by aliens?"  
He sat at his desk with his fingers laced together, peering over 
the rims of his glasses at Scully.  In that pose, he looked 
rather like a disapproving high school teacher, she thought.  Of 
course, any high school teacher whose classroom walls were 
covered in photos of dismembered bodies, UFOs, and the occasional 
Penthouse pin-up would have been sent straight to the clink on 
general principles.  

"Actually, it's his wife who claims to have witnessed the 
abduction," she said.  "We got a letter from her faxed along with 
the missing person report.  It's a pretty moving plea."

She laid a thin stack of faxes on the desk in front of him, 
keeping only the mother's letter.  She read the last paragraph of 
it aloud:

"'My husband and I are getting desperate as days go by and we 
hear nothing.  Please, if there's anything you can think of that 
would help us find Danielle, let us know.  Dani is such a special 
girl and she would never hurt anyone.  She's going to be 
seventeen next month and I want to have her home on her birthday.  
I know you're very busy people, but if you could just come out 
and help us, even for a little while, I would be so grateful.  
Sincerely, Tina Sheppard.'"

Scully was not surprised to find that when she looked up from the 
note, Mulder's sardonic expression had softened considerably.  
"At the beginning of the letter she describes a classic abduction 
experience," Scully said.  "A bright light, a strange presence in 
the room, being paralyzed while her daughter sort of floated out 
the window."

He reached out for the letter and she handed it to him.  He 
examined it closely and then flipped through the other faxed 
pages.  "In the police report it says that Danielle's mother last 
saw her around 11 p.m. on the 6th, but didn't report her missing 
until the morning of the 7th," Mulder said.  "No mention of 
aliens here at all."

"In the letter she says something about suddenly recalling the 
bright light," Scully said.  "Presumably that was after she'd 
reported Danielle missing."  Frankly, Scully thought this 
abduction claim added up even less well than most, but she was 
interested in seeing Mulder's response to it.

"So, do you think they used the Ronco $9.95 mind-wipe on her, and 
that's why it wore off after only two days?" he asked.

"Is that *skepticism* I hear in your voice, Agent Mulder?" she 
asked, leaning on his desk with one hand.

"Is that *mockery* I hear in yours, Agent Scully?" he responded, 
giving her the disapproving look again.  "What bothers me about 
this situation is the way the mother just comes out and says, 'my 
daughter was abducted by aliens.'  When was the last time anyone 
told us that, much less somebody connected with the Bureau?  
You'd expect a parent in this situation to still be deep in 
denial, both about the aliens and about the fact that her child 
was abducted at all.  If you listen to parents' 911 calls, you'll 
hear a lot of: 'my child's run off,' or, 'he's not where I left 
him,' but almost never, 'little Jimmy's been abducted.'  They 
just can't get their brains around such a horrible idea."

"So you think this is all a hoax?" Scully asked.  

Mulder seemed to consider that carefully.  "I have a bad feeling 
the alien abduction claim is so much BS, yes," he said, "but 
there's real desperation in this note.  That one phrase the 
mother used--'she would never hurt anyone.'  It almost sounds as 
if she thinks Danielle is meeting with some fate she doesn't 
deserve, or that she's too gentle to defend herself from an 
attacker."

Scully nodded, surprised and pleased to discover that for once, 
she and her partner were in complete agreement.  "Well, what do 
you want to do?" she asked.  "This isn't an assignment.  We've 
been asked to investigate in an unofficial capacity.  It's up to 
you to decide whether you want to go or not."

He got up and paced around the room a bit, seeming lost in 
thought.  Eventually, he turned his back to her and laced his 
fingers behind his head.  When he did so his shirt bunched into 
tight creases, revealing the tension in his arms and shoulders.  
"Ah, shit," he said, almost despairingly.

"You're going anyway," Scully said.  It wasn't a command, it was 
a statement of fact  "Psychological analysis be damned."  She had 
never doubted he would go--in fact, she'd already arranged for 
their flight out.

"Yeah," he said, "although I suspect Danielle's parents only want 
me out there because they think I'm so stupid that I'll believe 
anything, so long as it involves space aliens.  The problem is, 
if I'm wrong, if I blow this off and then I find out that there 
really was something I could have done for this girl or her 
family, then I'll never forgive myself."  Mulder sighed.  "I am 
such a bleeding-heart loser," he said, and bowed his head as if 
in defeat.


Sheppard Home
Chisholm, WS
12:10 p.m., Central Time



It was raining dismally as the agents walked up the front door.  
It was chilly for June, too, and Mulder glanced over at Scully 
with a certain amount of concern.  The white linen suit she wore 
looked both professional and flattering, but he doubted it did 
much to keep the cold off her.  She looked stiff and 
uncomfortable.

He rang the doorbell and said, "Maybe the next alien abduction we 
investigate will be in Florida."

She smiled up at him briefly and said, "Yeah, that will be in 
August, at the height of the malaria season."

Mulder heard footsteps inside the house, and then a woman opened 
the door. She was fortyish, petite, with short, dark hair turning 
salt-and-pepper at the roots.  "You must be Agents Mulder and 
Scully," she said, "Come in, please.  I'm Christina Sheppard."  
Mrs. Sheppard wore a pink cardigan over her pale yellow sundress.  
Her eyes were reddened, as if with weeping, and the edges of a 
wadded tissue were visible in one hand.

She stepped aside so they could enter.  "It's a good thing you've 
both got suit jackets on--Grant likes it just arctic in here."  
Mrs. Sheppard spoke as if she were trying to make a joke, but it 
sounded forced and flat.  "Grant!" she called out, "the agents 
from Washington are here."  Mulder noted that Scully had rather 
glumly tucked her hands under her armpits, as if for warmth.  

True, the AC was turned up a little high in here, but Mulder 
found it odd that the first words out of Mrs. Sheppard's mouth 
had been an explanation of her unseasonable clothing.  Aliens 
aside, there were two reasons a girl of sixteen might vanish 
suddenly from her own home.  One, she could be a runaway.  Two, a 
family member was somehow involved, and investigators would 
uncover a history of domestic violence.  Mrs. Sheppard's sweater 
suggested the second explanation.

There came the sound of someone walking up stairs.  Grant 
Sheppard entered the foyer from a doorway that led off the 
entrance hall.  He was an imposing man; Mulder estimated him to 
be at least 6' 6", maybe 6' 7", and he was built like an oak 
door.  He had to duck around the ornamental lantern that hung 
from the foyer ceiling.  Sheppard's hair and mustache had begun 
to go silver, prematurely, Mulder thought, since his personnel 
file stated he was barely forty.  Under other circumstances, his 
face would have been ruggedly handsome, but now it looked haggard 
and sunken, like a man long sick.  

"Agents," he said, giving them a curt nod.  He took Mulder's hand 
and shook it firmly.

"Sir," Mulder answered.  The look on Sheppard's face as they 
shook hands was wary, almost fierce, whether in an instinctive 
reaction to having two strangers literally investigating on his 
home turf, or for some other reason, Mulder didn't know. 

Sheppard seemed more relaxed when he turned to shake Scully's 
hand.  "I know that this is a very hard time for you, sir, and 
we'll do our best to help," Scully said.

That got a flicker of a smile from the big man.  "Thank you," he 
said.

"Mrs. Sheppard, could I see the place where you saw the bright 
light?" Mulder asked.  He kept his tone gentle, compassionate.  
Whatever had really happened, the woman was obviously worried 
sick over her missing daughter, and Mulder understood what that 
was like.

Mrs. Sheppard smiled at him a little, despite the tears shining 
in her eyes.  She seemed relieved that Mulder hadn't challenged 
her immediately.  "Of course, it's upstairs," she said.  

She led the way to the stairs through a spacious and well-ordered 
living room.  Mulder took in the bookshelves and the comfortable 
furniture, getting a feel for the character of the house.  The 
few small knickknacks seemed of more sentimental than monetary 
value: glass animals, a pillar candle with polished rocks 
embedded in the surface.  Above the mantle was a framed portrait 
of the family, containing both parents, smiling and younger-
looking, a girl of about nine, and a boy, perhaps five.  

Having read the background information on the Sheppard family, 
Mulder knew that they had lost their young son just under two 
years ago in an accident on Lake Michigan.  He also knew that 
there was a civil rights suit pending against the New Castle 
field office, and that Sheppard had gotten some bad press over 
it.  On the whole, Mulder understood why the man looked as worn 
and haggard as he did.

Following Mrs. Sheppard up the stairs, Mulder directed a chatty 
commentary at her, like a country doctor trying to calm a nervous 
patient before an exam.  "Anteriograde amnesia is very common 
after a close encounter experience," he said, "particularly if 
there was a traumatic element to it.  I don't suppose you saw any 
figures in the light, heard any voices, anything like that?"

"No . . . no, not that I can recall," Mrs. Sheppard answered.  
"Just--just the light."

"Well that's also very common," Mulder said.  In his experience, 
one of the best ways to get the truth out of people was to make 
them feel at ease.  Subjects who expected to be challenged or 
confronted tended to clam up.

Mrs. Sheppard led them down an upstairs hallway to a partially-
opened door about halfway along.  "This is Dani's room," she 
said, her voice sounding shaky.  She pushed open the door and the 
others entered.

It was cleaner than some teens' rooms, but there was still a 
clothes pile tossed over a chair and a great heap of books and 
papers on the small desk.  The powder-blue bedspread was a bit 
wrinkled and indented, as if the bed had been sat on, but not 
slept in.  "Has anyone touched anything in here since Danielle 
was reported missing?" Mulder asked.

"No," Mrs. Sheppard answered.  "Grant was adamant about leaving 
everything alone, so as not to destroy clues."

Mulder thought: "Unless he wanted you out of the way so he could 
selectively remove clues himself."  Then he repented of that 
thought.  "You don't know he did anything to her," he told 
himself mentally, but then he argued back, "but you're pretty 
damn sure he and his wife aren't telling you all they know."

Mulder wandered over to the dresser, which had an impressive 
array of trophies on it from everything from interpretive speech 
competitions to basketball.  "Looks like she's a pretty 
accomplished kid," Mulder said.  The trophies were carefully 
arranged and the dresser top beneath them shone with recent 
cleaning.  

"Yes, she is," said Mrs. Sheppard, smiling with affectionate 
pride.  "Her team voted her MVP this past year.  Her coach has 
been telling us she should look into getting a sports scholarship 
when she starts applying to colleges this fall.  She'd never make 
it in a Division I school, of course, but at the smaller, liberal 
arts colleges she's interested in, a scholarship would be 
realistic, or so Mr. Williams tells us."

Mulder picked up the trophy closest to him and read the brass 
plate on the front.  It said: "Bovard Lutheran, WCIC Champs."  
While holding it, he ran his thumb under its base.  It came away 
with a thin rime of dust.

"What does she want to major in?" Mulder asked, setting the 
trophy back where he'd found it.

"She's looking into pre-law programs," Mrs. Sheppard said.

"She wants to be a lawyer, huh?  So you're gonna be putting 
crooks away just so she can spring 'em out?" Mulder asked, 
smiling at Sheppard.

The other man seemed to relax a little.  "Quite a thing, isn't 
it?" he answered.  For a moment he returned Mulder's smile, but 
his expression turned sad the moment he thought Mulder wasn't 
watching.

Mulder noted that Scully, probably under the pretext of giving 
Sheppard more room in the doorway, had taken up a position in the 
far corner by the desk, where she could observe the reactions of 
both Danielle's parents without appearing obtrusive.  No agent 
who'd been called "Drop Dead Red" during her Academy days could 
ever really fade into the woodwork, but Scully's size and her 
quiet, self-contained demeanor could make a worried eye pass over 
her.

The first thing Mulder went to examine was the window.  "You were 
standing in the doorway when you saw the light?" he asked.

He glanced back and saw Mrs. Sheppard nod.  Mulder pulled aside 
one of the fine, blue cotton drapes and found that the glass pane 
had been pushed up and locked, allowing the misty breeze to blow 
in.  Dampness of the curtain fabric confirmed it had been open 
for some time.  The screen was still in place, but he could see 
from scratches around its edges that it had frequently been 
removed.  There was a distance of ten feet to the ground, but 
that would have been no object to an eager boyfriend with a 
ladder.  Mulder pulled out the plastic tabs that secured the 
screen so he could remove it, then he leaned over to peer at the 
ledge outside the window.  Sure enough, there were more scrapes 
in the paint.

"Agent Mulder?" Mrs. Sheppard asked, "what are you looking for?"

"Scorch marks," he lied.  "Alien ships often leave scorch marks 
on objects in close proximity to them."  Actually they didn't--
which was one of the things that annoyed Scully so much about 
alleged alien landing sites.  She'd repeatedly cited the second 
law of thermodynamics as proof that something that generated 
enough power to cross interstellar distances should also radiate 
enormous amounts of waste heat.

"Do they always leave scorch marks?" Mrs. Sheppard, sounding 
worried, "because I don't think we have any."

"Oh, no," he said, flashing her a slightly demented grin.  "All 
alien abduction sites are unique, just as all human perpetrators 
are unique."  The worry lines between her brows deepened.

Over in her corner, Scully was quietly examining the clothes that 
lay strewn over the chair.  Mulder walked over and removed the 
chair from in front of her, saying, "Sorry, I'm going to need 
this."  

Left with clothes draped over her arm, Scully looked annoyed. 
Then she asked, "Mrs. Sheppard, should I just put these in here?" 
and pointed to the closet.

"Of course, thank you," said Mrs. Sheppard, paying no attention 
to her at all.  She was much more interested in watching Mulder 
carry the chair to the area by the bed, then set it down and step 
up on it.

Mulder was impressed by the ease with which Scully got permission 
to rummage in the closet.  He hadn't intended to give her that 
pretext; he'd just wanted the chair.  She'd seized the 
opportunity and run with it.

"What are you looking for now, Agent Mulder?" Mrs. Sheppard 
asked.

"Ectoplasmic residue," he told her, giving her his best burning-
eyed madman look.  One of the useful things about having a 
reputation as a loon was that you didn't have to come up with a 
plausible explanation for your actions.

"Residue?" Mrs. Sheppard asked.  She looked bewildered and a bit 
upset.  Mulder wondered if she were beginning to see through him, 
or if she was just having second thoughts about the wisdom of 
letting him into her house.

"Yes, the hulls of alien ships have a polarity slightly different 
from that of the earth's magnetic field.  When the xenotopically 
charged ions react with those of our atmosphere, they cause a 
type of condensation known as ectoplasmic residue.  'Ecto' 
meaning outer and 'plasmic' from plasma, meaning a viscous 
fluid," Mulder said.  He heard Scully's snort of laughter, which 
she turned quickly into a cough.

"I see," said Mrs. Sheppard.

He was actually looking for something he hoped he wouldn't find: 
evidence of blood-spatter.  If this was a covered-up domestic 
violence case, there might be blood spots in the ceiling corners 
where even a careful cleaner would have missed them.  He'd 
noticed when he'd entered the room that for a place inhabited by 
a teenager, the walls and ceiling were unusually devoid of 
cobwebs and dust.

"This 'ectoplasmic residue' winds up on the ceiling?" SAC 
Sheppard asked, his tone openly sarcastic.  

"Of course," Mulder said, giving him a look that asked, "Are you 
dense?"  "As Mrs. Sheppard reported, abductees are frequently 
seen floating, and the same gravity-repelling mechanism that 
causes this also causes the residue to end up around the 
ceiling."  Sheppard was looking at Mulder as if he were the 
dumbest man he'd ever met, and for once, that was fine with 
Mulder.  "They think you're a gullible idiot, so live down to 
their expectations," he thought.  "Act like the kind of guy who'd 
order a Ronco salad steamer and be thrilled by the free asparagus 
peeler that came with it. . ."

He ran his fingertips along the wall behind the bed, moving from 
left to right.  In the corner there was a small membrane of 
spiderweb missed by the cleaner or cleaners.  On the wall to the 
right of that, Mulder found three red-brown dashes, like the 
silhouettes of streaking comets.  His back was to the Sheppards, 
so as he rested his fingers against the marks he allowed himself 
the luxury of closing his eyes and swallowing.  All right, he 
thought, so here was something that looked like blood.  There was 
no evidence yet as to whose it was or how it got there.

Blood spatter interpretation was an art in itself and Mulder was 
hardly an expert, but as far as he could tell, the shape and 
length of the spatter marks indicated an origin in the area 
around the dresser.  That was midway between the bed and the 
door, or about where a person who'd gotten up from sitting on the 
bed would have confronted someone walking into the room.

He wanted to spray this place down with Luminol, which caused 
traces of blood to glow when the lights were out.  He wanted to 
get a decent forensics specialist in here to look at these 
spatter marks.  He wanted to do things with Jeri Ryan that were 
illegal in many states, too, and he knew that had about an equal 
chance of happening.  Jurisdiction was still very much an issue 
in this case.  While alleged alien abduction presumably counted 
as the transportation of a victim across a state line, at the 
moment the Chisholm PD was looking into Dani's disappearance and 
Mulder and Scully were here in a non-official capacity.  

"No residue up here," he said cheerfully and stepped down from 
the chair.  

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Mrs. Sheppard asked, 
rather anxiously.  If the whole thing hadn't been so tragic, it 
would have been amusing to watch her try so hard to fit the 
profile of an alien abduction witness.

"Inconclusive, I'm afraid," Mulder said, shaking his head.  "Mrs. 
Sheppard, would you mind if I looked around the rest of the 
house?  Especially at the windows?" he asked.  He thought it was 
just possible that the windows might show some evidence of a 
stranger's entry, but mostly he wanted to keep the Sheppards 
confused about what he was up to.  

Mrs. Sheppard looked surprised, but said, "Why, no.  Do you think 
that will help?"

"You can never gather too much information in the early stages of 
a case.  Especially about windows--windows and light fixtures."  
He gave her the madman look again.

"I see," she said, although she obviously didn't.  Mulder got his 
tour of the house, during which he pretended to take great 
interest in things like electrical outlets and heating vents.  It 
gave him the excuse to examine the place fairly closely, but 
everything seemed in order.  

The only discovery of note that he made was when he'd excused 
himself to use the bathroom that opened off the master bedroom.  
He'd used the sound of the flushing toilet to cover the noise of 
him popping open the medicine cabinet. He had not been surprised 
to see a large number of pill bottles containing current and 
recent prescriptions, mostly for Christina Sheppard.  One of the 
labels had caught his attention.  It read, "Ativan, 2 mg at 
bedtime," and had been prescribed by a Dr. Liebowitz on 5/26.  
Although the bottle claimed to hold a 30 day supply, he could see 
that it was nearly empty.  He thought he'd better run that by 
Scully when they got in the car.  

They made a cursory examination of the grounds outside the house, 
too, which was made rather uncomfortable by the continuous 
misting rain.  However, Mulder was able to tell that the weight 
of a ladder had not recently pressed into the moist soil beneath 
Dani's window.

Finally, the four of them worked their way around to the front of 
the house.  Once they stood in the shelter of the porch, Mrs. 
Sheppard lightly touched Mulder's arm and looked up at him with 
sad, gray eyes.  "Agent Mulder?  What do think?" she asked.  
Although he was now virtually certain the alien abduction had 
been a hoax, Mulder believed that this woman was genuinely 
frightened for her daughter, and he felt for her.  

"There's very little physical evidence to go on," he said 
truthfully, "but that in itself is common with alien abductions.  
The good news is that a very high percentage of alien abductees 
turn up alive and unharmed.  They're often disoriented though, 
and they aren't always released close to home.  Mrs. Sheppard, if 
Danielle were set free along a local highway, or anywhere not 
within walking distance of your house, are there any friends or 
relatives she might call for assistance?"

Mrs. Sheppard's eyes flooded when Mulder said the words "if she 
were set free."  

"She thinks someone has Danielle," he thought, "someone who might 
be keeping her against her will.  Now why isn't she coming 
forward with that information?"  He glanced up at SAC Sheppard, 
but his expression was simply that of a worried father, and 
provided no other information.  "Who do these people have a 
vested interest in protecting?" Mulder wondered.

"Dani's best friend is Amy Nelson," Mrs. Sheppard said.  "They've 
known each other since they were, oh, six or seven.  Danielle 
might go to her house if she were afraid or in trouble."

"Thank you," Mulder said, and pulled one of his business cards 
out of his wallet and handed it to her.  "That's got my cell 
phone number on it," he said, "and if for whatever reason you 
can't reach me with that, Agent Scully and I will be staying the 
Highland Motel over in Sweetwater.  If you find out anything, or 
if you can think of anything else, please, give me a call."  As 
he handed her the card he touched her hand and looked steadily 
into her eyes, so that she would understand his unspoken message: 
"If you start to get cold feet about obstructing this 
investigation, if you want to tell me what you really think 
happened, I'll understand; I'll keep it confidential."  Mrs. 
Sheppard looked away and withdrew her hand, but she accepted the 
card.

"Of course," she said, "thank you for your time."  Mulder and 
Sheppard shook hands again, during which the SAC seemed just as 
stiff and formal as when Mulder arrived.

As they walked toward the car Scully offered to drive, and Mulder 
tossed her the keys.  Once she popped the lock, he settled 
himself in the passenger seat and pulled off his damp suit 
jacket.  She hauled the driver's seat nearly all the way forward, 
buckled herself in and started the car. 

"So what did you think of all that, Mulder?" she asked as she 
pulled out of the drive.

"I think that I've seen a lot of weird stuff in my life, but I've 
never known aliens to abduct someone through a window and then 
replace the screen," Mulder said.

Scully smiled at him.  "I like this, Mulder.  Lucidity becomes 
you."

"What do you mean by that?" Mulder snapped. He glared at her.  
Hadn't he already been humiliated enough for one day?  "Don't 
tell me you think I'm an idiot, too."

"Easy, I was just teasing," she replied, glancing over at him.  
"Of course I don't think you're an idiot.  Your test scores at 
Quantico blew the hell out of mine, so if you're stupid I'd hate 
to see what that makes me."

Mollified, Mulder made a non-committal grunt and leaned forward 
to fiddle with the air blower controls.  He wanted to get dry 
without getting cold.

"I guess I just expected you to identify so strongly with the 
Sheppards that you'd automatically discount any discrepancies in 
their story," she said.

Mulder sighed and sat back from the dash.  "I may be eccentric," 
he said, "I may even be obsessed and neurotic.  But why do people 
assume that I'm blind?  The Sheppards are upset, all right, but 
they seem a little calm for people whose daughter has just been 
snatched by beings from another world.  

"I found what looked like dried blood droplets near the ceiling 
of Dani's room, Scully.  I admit that I'm no expert at analyzing 
these things, but since the drops were real small and elongated I 
think they came at the wall with a lot of speed and force.  I 
suppose it could have been a burst artery, but I'm thinking 
blunt-force trauma, really hard blows, to the head and face. As 
to how long they'd been there, I really couldn't tell you.  They 
looked good and dried."  

Scully gave him a strange look, as if he were spooking her out.  
"I want you to look at something," she said.  Without taking her 
eyes off the road, she worked a flat object out of the space 
between her shirt and jacket cuffs.  She handed it to him, and he 
saw it was a photograph of Danielle--grown up considerably since 
the picture hanging in the Sheppards' front room was taken.  She 
was a tall, slender young woman with elfin features, her honey-
colored hair pulled up into a braid.  She gave the camera a smile 
that would have done any sneaker ad proud as she stood by her 
trophy collection, wearing her white and blue Bovard basketball 
uniform. 

"It was pinned to the bulletin board by the desk," Scully said.

Mulder looked at her, then at the picture.  This was disturbing a 
potential crime scene.  This was removing an object from 
someone's house without their permission, while the F.B.I. was 
investigating in a purely non-official capacity. "Dana, you've 
been a very, *very* bad girl," he said.  "I think I love you."

"Just look at the picture," she said, giving him a slyly 
mischievous look.  "And keep your hands where I can see them."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, holding up his free hand with the fingers 
spread.  After gazing at it a moment, he dug out the case 
containing his reading glasses from his jacket pocket.  He had to 
be sure of what he thought he was seeing.  Once the glasses were 
settled on his nose, he looked at the picture again.  "This 
trophy in the front," he said, tapping the image with his finger.  
"It wasn't on the dresser."

"I noticed that," she said.  "I was wondering about blunt-force 
trauma before you even mentioned it.  That trophy's got a heavy, 
substantial look to it."  She was silent a moment, as if choosing 
her words carefully.    "Mulder," she said, "between the blood 
drops you saw and the fact that that trophy is missing, do you 
think we're looking at a murder weapon in that photo?"

"Jesus, I hope not," Mulder said.  The missing trophy appeared to 
be about eighteen inches tall, and it had a round, solid-looking 
wooden base.  It looked as if it could cause serious damage, if 
wielded by a sufficiently strong or furious person.  Mulder 
mentally reviewed what he'd seen of the Sheppards' behavior.  "I 
get the impression that Danielle's parents last saw her alive.  
They're worried about her, and I don't think they know where she 
is now.  I doubt they're trying to hide a murder from us."  

Scully nodded, looking very serious.  "I found some other 
interesting things," she said.  There's a crawlspace behind the 
closet in Dani's room.  It was covered by a  square of plywood 
painted to match the wall, and it looks like at one point there 
were screws holding it shut.  It's loose, now, and when I pulled 
it away I discovered an extensive liquor stash."

"How extensive?" Mulder asked, looking over at her.

"Tanqueray, Absolut, Seven Crown . . . let's just say she had a 
well-stocked bar," Scully said.  "She would have had trouble 
passing off a fake ID in a small town like this, especially as a 
lawman's daughter, which tells me there's probably a 21+ guy out 
there who was willing to spend a lot of cash to get this little 
high school girl drunk."  Mulder could hear protective anger in 
her voice.

"And another thing," Scully added, "when I was going through her 
clothes I found a few outfits you really would have liked."

He looked at her a bit suspiciously.  "Are you calling me a dirty 
old man, Scully?" he asked.

"Let's just say that you have adult tastes, and prudish, outdated 
Catholic that I am, I would not have let my teenage daughter go 
out the door in something that conformed to those tastes," Scully 
said.

"So I'm not a dirty old man, I'm just a pervert?" he asked.

"'O would some pow'r giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others 
see us?'" Scully quoted.  "Some of the clothes draped over Dani's 
chair smelled like cigarette smoke, too.  Her parents don't 
necessarily know she has these habits," she added.  "My sister 
used to get around my parents' dress rules by swapping stuff with 
girls at school.  She used to get off the bus in a knee-length 
skirt and white button-down blouse, then run for the bathroom and 
change into jeans and some half-transparent top."

"Did you rat on her?" Mulder asked, curious.

"No," she said, as if surprised that he'd ask.  "I admit to 
having been a spy and a snoop as a kid, but I wasn't a rat."

"Ah, so the attraction was merely to information for its own 
sake," Mulder said.  "How scientific of you.  My sister would 
have ratted on me."

"If you'd worn see-through girls' blouses to school, you'd have 
deserved to be ratted on," she said.

"What a sexist, non-PC thing to say," he said.  "But I'll give 
you this much, your snooping has extended our list of potential 
motives, if not suspects."

"Why not suspects?" Scully asked, glancing over at him.  

"Because the parents are protecting someone, and the list of 
people they'd do that for has got to be pretty short," Mulder 
said. "Actually, the little blood drops on the wall didn't tell 
me very much.  The reason I mentioned blunt-force trauma to the 
face is because that's one of the most common things you find in 
domestic violence cases.  A guy will punch his girlfriend's 
lights out, say, because that way he doesn't have to look her in 
the eye while he beats her.  She's an object to him now, 
something he can control."

"You think that she'd been disobeying her parents, and one of 
them flipped out and beat her?  Then what?  She ran away?" Scully 
asked.

"Could be," Mulder said.  "I have a bad feeling they know who 
she'd run to, and it isn't Amy Nelson.  Why would Sheppard call 
the Bureau in, other than the obvious fact that he's got a better 
chance of controlling the investigation that way?  I think he's 
afraid Danielle's been taken across state lines, maybe even 
against her will.  He wants a search on the nationwide level, but 
he doesn't want the Bureau prying into the reasons behind Dani's 
disappearance.  So he calls in the stupidest investigator he can 
think of: yours truly."  Mulder sighed.

"Well, he's got a big surprise coming, then," said Scully.

He smiled over at her, a little sadly.  "I just hope I can 
surprise him by returning his daughter alive, then by throwing 
his ass in jail for obstructing justice.  By the way, Scully, 
what can you tell me about Ativan?  That's a pain killer, isn't 
it?" he asked.

She looked surprised.  "Actually, it's a sedative, in the same 
drug class as Valium.  Why do you ask?" she said.

"Because as far as I can tell, Mrs. Sheppard has been taking 
about twice her prescribed dose of it since before Dani 
disappeared," Mulder answered.  "I raided the medicine cabinet."

"I seem to recall a certain Constitutional amendment about 
searches without probable cause," she said.  Her tone was 
teasing, giving him back his own for his comments about the photo 
theft.

"I guess we've both been very bad, then," he said.  "Back at the 
hotel we can arrest each other."

"In your dreams," she said, laughing.  "But seriously, Mulder, at 
higher dosages Ativan can cause dangerous side effects.  People 
have reported hallucinations, rage, irrational behavior, even 
amnesia."

"So if Mrs. Sheppard were strung out on pills, could that account 
for the bright light she told us about, and the gap in her 
memory?  And is it possible that she actually flipped out and 
beat Danielle, causing her to run away?" Mulder asked.  

"Yes," Scully said slowly, "yes, I think it could."

"'Curiouser and curiouser,'" Mulder quoted, running his finger 
over the photograph of Danielle Sheppard.  Whatever behavior 
problems the kid might be having, she still deserved to be able 
to grow up safe.  Mulder offered up a prayer to a God he didn't 
much believe in, asking him to let Danielle be found alive.


8798 Berchwood
New Castle, WS
2:12 p.m.


Thomas had a string tied around the neck of the family cat. "I 
love little pussy her coat is so warm, and if I don't hurt her 
she'll do me no harm," he thought, leering.  He'd used a slip 
knot, so the harder she struggled, the tighter the noose got.  
The string also functioned as a leash, and Thomas allowed the 
desperate cat just enough length to get her within snapping range 
of his Doberman puppy, which was tied to the front door.  In her 
frantic attempts to escape, the cat flung herself right under the 
dog's slavering jaws.

Thomas considered tying a noose around the dog's neck, too, so he 
could watch as it half-strangled itself trying to get the cat.  
He thought that would be pretty funny.  He decided against it 
though, partly because he wanted the dog to grow up loyal to him, 
and partly out of apathy.

There came the sound of someone stomping on the floor upstairs, 
and a woman shouted, "Shut that dog up!"  That would be Dawn 
Lisowski, who lived upstairs with her baby and her younger 
sister.  Dawn rented the second floor from Thomas' grandmother, 
but she acted as if she owned the place.  She thought she was too 
good to talk to him, too, except to yell at him.

His stepfather had been like that.  He'd made Thomas sleep at the 
foot of the stairs, without even a blanket.  He'd called him a 
bad dog.  He'd made Thomas' mother and sister hate him, too, and 
that's why he lived with Grandma, now.  Thomas remembered Dr. 
Lily's words and smiled.  Not a bad dog-a smart dog.  He thought 
about his secret and grinned even bigger.  Just thinking about 
what he could do to them, all of them, made him start to feel 
better.  He let go of the string and the cat streaked under the 
nearest couch, growling and hissing.  "Shut up, you bitch!" he 
shouted at Dawn upstairs.  

Sometimes in his head, he changed her name to Dong.  "Ding, dong, 
bell, pussy's in the well.  Who put her in?  Little Johnny 
Green," he said to himself.  When he was small his stepdad had 
explained about how all nursery rhymes were actually dirty.  He'd 
said that in "Mary had a little lamb," the lamb was the thing 
between Mary's legs.  Thomas thought that was pretty funny.  Even 
as a grownup, he liked to play with words and he liked to rhyme.  
Dr. Lily had once given him a poem called "Thomas the Rhymer," 
about a man who met the Fairy Queen, and he'd kept it safe 
beneath his mattress with his magazines.  Dawn was still shouting 
from upstairs about how he couldn't call her "bitch."  Thomas 
knew she'd complain to his grandmother when she got home, but he 
didn't care.  

He got up and went to the door to the basement.  The basement was 
Thomas' room and he had it all to himself.  There were no 
roommates here, no doctors or prying floor nurses to get in his 
way.

He ran down the steps, his slight weight not enough to cause much 
of a clatter.  Thomas was small and light with no wasted bulk, 
like an animal. "You're such a little shrimp, you'll never be a 
man.  You'll never amount to anything," his stepdad used to say.  
But he'd been wrong.  The proof was in a freezer in the corner.  
Thomas opened it and removed his prize, sealed in a Ziploc bag 
like his grandmother's pork chops.  He'd kept the woman's 
reproductive organs.

He recited aloud:

"I devour her womb

I am cradle and tomb

I am new like the moon."  But after some reflection, he'd decided 
not to do the devouring part.  He wanted to keep these for 
further study.  He thought of Dawn Lisowski, Dr. Lily, his mother 
and sister, even his grandmother.  Bitches, all of them, bitches.  
He'd opened one of their kind and seen what was inside.  He knew 
all there was to know about them.

His friend Paul had looked inside that woman and had run away.  
Even in the moonlight, he'd looked green, then he'd fled to the 
van and drove away.  Thomas had had to walk a long way after 
that, but that was all right.  He knew he was tough and strong, 
now.  There had been a time when he'd looked up to Paul, because 
he was older and had been with girls before and had almost gone 
to prison once.  But when it came right down to it, Paul had run 
while Thomas had stayed.

He smiled to himself and said, "Smart dog."  He giggled quietly 
in the darkened basement.


Nelson Home
Chisholm, WS
2:50 p.m.



"Jesus Christ, ref, are you blind?" Mulder shouted at the TV 
screen.  He sat on the edge of the couch in the den next to 
seventeen-year-old Amy, watching a video of the Bovard Lutheran 
Lady Chargers battling the Immaculate Conception Lancers for the 
regional girls' basketball championship.

The view on the TV zoomed in and out with nausea-inducing 
frequency, which Amy had explained was her father's attempt to 
create "special effects."  At the moment, most of the screen was 
filled up with an image of Danielle Sheppard's elbow as she 
rolled up off the floor to her feet.  "You can't get a foul more 
blatant than that!" Mulder told the unresponsive TV screen.  

The Lady Chargers had been keeping an impressively tight man-to-
man defense against the mostly bigger Lancers, who dashed back 
and forth through the key, vainly trying to open a passing lane.  
When the Lancers' point guard finally took a desperate shot, 
Danielle had darted in front of her opponent, turning to box her 
out.  The other girl apparently hadn't liked that and had shoved 
Dani out of the way, sending her tumbling to the floor.  No 
referee whistles were forthcoming.

The camera view whizzed back again, showing Dani getting up, Amy 
leaning over her, apparently asking if she was okay.  The Bovard 
coach seemed to be shouting at the ref.  Dani, limping slightly, 
walked over to the girl that had knocked her over.  She stood 
right in front of the girl and started yelling, pointing a finger 
at her.  Yelling turned to pushing, and then whistles sounded 
from all over the place.

Mulder groaned and sat back.  "Who *is* that guy?" he asked, 
pointing at the white haired ref who was scolding Dani but saying 
nothing to the girl who'd shoved her in the first place.  "What 
morgue did they dig him out of?"

"We call him Colonel Sanders," said Amy.  "My coach says he's 
probably just starting to get Alzheimer's, and not to let him get 
to us.  Half the time he makes stupid calls against the other 
team, so I guess it works out."

Mulder couldn't help smiling at her description of the man.  With 
his thick, black glasses and frizzled hair he did look a little 
like Colonel Sanders.  "Does Dani have trouble controlling her 
temper often?" he asked.  The reason he'd requested to see tapes 
of some of Bovard's roughest games was so he could observe how 
Dani acted under stress.

Amy shrugged.  "Sometimes, I guess," she said.  Amy was a pretty 
brunette whose athletic figure was mostly hidden by a pair of 
oversized overalls, which seemed to be the current fashion among 
teenagers.  Judging by the video, she also possessed a laser-like 
focus under pressure, which must help make up for the fact that 
she was slightly built and not much more than 5' 5" or 5' 6".  
Danielle appeared to be just as ferociously determined, but more 
explosive.

"Has she ever gotten into fights with friends, had run-ins with 
her teachers, anything like that?" Mulder asked.  

Amy shook her head.  "Mostly the teachers like her," she said.  
"She's gotten mad at certain friends before, but it's never been 
a big deal."

"So when she blows up like that, that's just on the basketball 
court?  Just when someone physically gets in her face?" Mulder 
asked.

Amy appeared to think about this.  "She won't even do that unless 
the ref is really stupid," she said.  "It's only when they make a 
call that's really unfair that she gets mad.  It's like if 
they're not going to do anything, then she's going to take it up 
with the other player herself."

"Her mom says she wants to be a lawyer," Mulder said.  "It sounds 
like Dani's pretty interested in fighting for what's fair."

"Yeah," Amy said.  "That's the thing that got her so much about 
her brother," she said.  "He was swimming in Lake Michigan when 
some drunk guy on a Jet-Ski ran right over him.  The swim area 
was marked, too, there were buoys and everything.  After it 
happened, Dani kept saying over and over how unfair it was that 
Aaron had to die just because somebody else was an idiot."

Mulder nodded.  He was starting to be able to identify with 
Danielle.  That was as it should be, since an understanding of 
Dani and her likely reactions was essential for him to accurately 
reconstruct the events surrounding her disappearance.  It also 
meant that, however this case turned out, it was probably going 
to break his heart.  "What about her parents?" Mulder asked.  
"How is Danielle's relationship with them?"

Amy was silent a moment, her light brows knitted together briefly 
as she seemed to consider her choice of words.  "Dani's folks 
have had problems ever since Aaron died," she said.  "She feels 
like they've pretty much ignored her for the last two years."

"Amy," Mulder said, "my partner found what she calls an 
'extensive liquor stash' behind a panel in Dani's closet.  Can 
you tell me anything about that?"

Amy immediately started looking nervous.  She glanced toward the 
kitchen where her mother was poring over medical textbooks.  Mrs. 
Nelson had explained that she was an RN working at a local 
hospital, and that she was taking courses to become a Nurse 
Practitioner.  "Do we have to talk about this here?" Amy asked.

"Is there somewhere else you'd feel more comfortable?" Mulder 
asked.

"Yeah, come on," she said.  She turned off the VCR and led him 
out the back door to a small concrete stoop partially sheltered 
by an aluminum awning.  The rain had finally stopped, but the 
stoop was still fairly damp.  Amy plunked herself down on it 
anyway, and after a moment's consideration, Mulder sat on the 
step below her.  He figured if he stood over her, being the 
grownup F.B.I. agent, she probably wouldn't trust him with what a 
teenager would consider "sensitive information."  

Apparently he'd made a good call, because as soon as he was 
settled on the step, looking up at Amy, she leaned forward and 
said softly, "The guy who buys booze for Dani is named Mark 
Ghallager.  He goes to school at Lewis and Clark University, over 
in Sweetwater.  We met him at a party there over a year ago.  A 
friend of ours was turning 18, and Mark supplied the keg."

"This all happened on campus?" Mulder asked.

"No, you can't have parties like that in a *dorm,*" Amy said, her 
tone slightly mocking.  "If the RA's didn't notice the keg, 
they'd sure notice the fifty kids running around with beer mugs 
in their hands.  There's some guys who rent a house just off 
campus, and the party was there.  Anyway, that was where Dani and 
I got to talking to Mark, and at first he seemed pretty cool.  
Well, I guess he's not *un*cool, he's just . . ." she shrugged, 
as if unable to find the right word.  Then she seemed to discover 
a new tack and continued: "I've got lots of friends that are 
different ages.  Some are older than me, some are younger, and 
that's cool.  That's how it should be.  But it's like almost 
*all* of Mark's friends are still in high school, and the guy's 
22.  What does that tell you?"

"He's not exactly a rocket scientist," Mulder said.

"Yeah, he's not exactly a rocket scientist," Amy said, nodding.  
"He obviously way liked Dani, and they went out a couple times, 
but he was a lot more into it than she was."

"Is that why he bought her all that alcohol?  He was trying to 
give her something that the guys in your school couldn't?" Mulder 
asked.

"Probably," Amy said.  "Dani wasn't trying to use him, you know.  
If she wanted him to buy for her, she'd give him money.  When he 
gave her random stuff it wasn't because she asked for it.  A lot 
of it was nasty, too--like marshmallow schnapps.  Marshmallow!  
That was *so* gross . . ."

Mulder smiled and refrained from pointing out that Mark would 
certainly have interpreted Dani's accepting of his gifts as a 
sign of interest.  "If Dani were in trouble and she didn't want 
her parents to find her, do you think she'd go stay with Mark?  
Do you think there's any chance she would leave the state with 
him? Mulder asked.

Amy's eyes went wide.  "No way!  Are you kidding?  Hours alone in 
Mark's car, listening to him whine and try to get her to go out 
with him?  Dani would check into a shelter, first."

"Has she ever done that?" Mulder asked.  "Has she ever talked 
about things getting bad at home, and wanting to run somewhere?"

Amy was silent a moment.  "She sometimes says she can't wait to 
go away to school," she said.  "She talked about going away a 
year early, for a while, 'cause she'll probably have enough 
credits by next winter.  Her and her dad have been fighting, 
lately.  He doesn't like that she hangs out with older guys, 
especially Mark.  Her dad *hates* Mark.  Also, Dani told me that 
her parents accused her of drinking, but they couldn't prove 
anything.  She was like, 'why did they ignore me completely for 
two years, and now the second I start to live my own life they're 
all in my face?'"

"Sounds like she thought it was pretty unfair," Mulder said.

"Totally," Amy agreed.  "Totally unfair.  You know her mom sleeps 
with Prince Valium," she said.  Mulder couldn't help but smile at 
the expression.  "And her dad drinks, too, which is all 
apparently okay," Amy continued, "but Dani drinking is the end of 
the freaking world.  It would be different if they weren't doing 
the exact same thing they were yelling at her for.  I told her 
about a hundred times she could come here if she ever needed to 
get out.  This is where she'd have come if she wanted out of her 
house, Agent Mulder, I'm sure of it."  Amy looked at him, for the 
first time seeming frightened.  "She's not dumb.  She wouldn't go 
wandering the streets."

"What do you think happened?" Mulder asked gently.

Amy was quiet a moment.  She shifted so that she could wrap her 
arms around her knees.  "The last time I saw her was Saturday 
night," she said.  "We'd been out in the graveyard with some 
people from school, hanging out and drinking wine coolers.  The 
guy Dani was kind of going out with said that he wouldn't get 
drunk, because he had to drive her home.  She would never ride 
with someone who'd been drinking, because of her brother.  But 
then Rob got smashed anyway, and Dani was totally pissed.  I 
walked with her to a gas station, where she called Mark to come 
take her home.  I went in the car, too, so maybe when her folks 
saw him pull up they wouldn't be so mad, because it would be 
clear they weren't on a date or anything.  Then she went in the 
house, and that's the last I saw of her."  Big, silent tears were 
running down Amy's face, now.  She looked down at the stoop, 
where she plucked at a crumbled spot in the cement with her 
fingers.

Mulder pulled a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and handed 
it to her.  "Do you think her parents could have hurt her?" he 
asked, as gently as he could.

She shook her head.  "I don't know," she said.  "I've known them 
forever, and they would never do that.  But then, she would never 
just run off, either.  I mean, no one could mess with Dani," she 
said, suddenly smiling despite the tears.  "If someone fucked 
with her, she'd totally kick their ass."

Mulder nodded, then scooted up so that he was sitting on the step 
next to her.  "It's okay, Amy.  We'll find her," he said.

She nodded, and cried anyway, curling up on herself in a way he 
interpreted as a plea for comfort.  He pulled her close and 
patted her back.  The bones of her shoulders were still as 
delicate as a child's.  "It's okay," he repeated.

Despite what he'd told her, his hopes for finding Dani well and 
alive were dimming.


F.B.I. Field Office
New Castle, WS
3:09 p.m.



Scully stood in the office lobby, waiting to meet with ASAC Terry 
Hsu.  The place didn't *look* like a field office thrown into 
turmoil.  The lobby, at least, was tidy, if cramped, with a few 
chairs, a rubber tree plant, and the flags of the U.S. and the 
Justice Department standing in the corners.  However, she knew 
that the local media was having a field day over a civil rights 
suit that had been filed against the F.B.I. in general and this 
office in particular.  She'd actually heard the flap while still 
back in Washington--the problem was that a black man had been 
nearly convicted of a series of murders committed by a white man.

This was rather ironic, since the lobby had a number of framed 
posters on the wall extolling the Constitution.  One of them was 
an old photo of a segregated drinking fountain, the "colored" 
half of it being little more than a rusty spigot.  The caption 
read, "Without the Constitution, separate might still be 
considered equal."  Scully was contemplating this she heard the 
lobby door open.

"Hi, I'm Agent Hsu.  You must be Agent Scully," said a man.  She 
turned and smiled at him.  He was short, stocky, in a black suit 
with a brush-cut hairstyle,  much like the standard conception of 
a Man in Black, except Men in Black never seemed to be Asian.  He 
had a much nicer smile than she'd ever seen on an MIB, too.  

She shook his hand and said, "Thank you for being willing to 
speak with me.  I won't take up too much of your time."

"By all means, take it up," said Agent Hsu.  "I've spent the 
afternoon racking my brains over the books of a company which 
sells products that don't seem to exist to customers who claim 
never to have heard of it.  This will be a welcome change."

Scully smiled and suggested, "Maybe we could walk around the 
block?"  It would be more politic to ask her questions outside of 
the office.

"Certainly," said Agent Hsu.  Moments later they were out in the 
humid, more-or-less fresh air.  It had stopped raining, but the 
cloud cover stayed dense and gloomy.  "Welcome to Great Lakes 
weather," he said.  "If it were up to me, you could keep it."

"I'm sure it's no better back in Washington," she said, as they 
started walking.  "My partner says that whenever he thinks of 
hell, he thinks of D.C. in the summer, only with more senators."

Agent Hsu laughed.  "That's pretty good," he said.  "Mind if I 
steal it?"

"Why not?  I did," Scully said.  "Agent Hsu, my partner and I 
were asked to come out here to help investigate the disappearance 
of SAC Sheppard's daughter."

Hsu nodded.  "That's pretty common knowledge," he said.  "Being 
snoops by profession, we Special Agents have a hard time keeping 
things from one another.  Well, at least here in the dull, Great 
White North, that is.  I'm sure in D.C. you guys have more 
interesting things than office gossip to occupy your minds with."

"You'd be surprised," Scully said, with a wry smile.  She and 
Mulder had spent *years* trying to quell a rumor that they'd once 
done something distinctly unprofessional in an elevator.  "I was 
wondering if you could tell me why Agent Mulder and I 
specifically were called in on this case, when you have many fine 
agents and police officers here in Wisconsin."

She looked over as Hsu, who'd stuck his tongue into the corner of 
his cheek.  It seemed a nervous gesture, as if he found this 
situation a little awkward.  "I have heard," he said, putting 
emphasis on the last word, "that there was some kind of unusual 
circumstances surrounding Danielle's disappearance, and that this 
was the kind of thing you people investigated."

"If you've heard of Agent Mulder and I, you probably know that 
one of the things we investigate is unexplained abductions.  Or 
as Agent Mulder would put it, alien abductions," she said.  "You 
may also be aware that I am considerably more skeptical about the 
paranormal nature of these events than he is.  Generally, I play 
the Devil's advocate and try to come up with a more conventional 
theory that fits the facts.  I was wondering if you could help me 
do that."

Hsu stopped and looked at the toes of his highly-polished shoes a 
moment.  "What exactly are you asking me, Agent Scully?" he 
asked, looking up to meet her eyes.  "I'm sure the Sheppards know 
much better than I do what happened on that night."

Scully nodded, choosing her next words carefully.  "The honesty 
and integrity of the Sheppards is not being called into 
question," she said.  "If they say that their daughter was 
abducted by aliens, then I'm sure that's what they believe.  
However, if something else, something more terrestrial, happened 
to Danielle, we would be doing her a tremendous disservice by 
staring up at the sky when she may need our help down here on the 
ground."  She looked steadily into Hsu's dark eyes, letting him 
think that one over.

He looked away first and started walking again.  Scully kept pace 
with him.  "I have to admit, I don't understand about the alien 
thing," he said, speaking softly.  "This is in confidence, isn't 
it?" 

"Absolutely," Scully replied.  

"I've never heard either Grant or Tina mention anything about 
believing in UFOs before now," he said.  "Actually, I'm pretty 
sure I remember Grant telling me he thought the whole idea was 
crap.  They have been under an enormous amount of stress, lately, 
though.  It's coming up on the second anniversary of when they 
lost their son, there's this lawsuit and the papers won't shut up 
about it, they've been having discipline problems with Danielle . 
. . I'm thinking their marriage is kind of rocky, now, too.  
They're both just barely hanging on."

"What kind of discipline problems have they been having with 
their daughter?" Scully asked.

"Grant wasn't real specific," Hsu said.  "I got the impression it 
was fairly normal, teenage things.  Missing curfew, hanging out 
with an older crowd that her parents didn't much like.  Grant did 
kind of mention that he'd let Dani slip through the cracks since 
Aaron died.  He'd assumed that Tina was watching out for her, but 
that turned out not to be the case.  To be frank, I think Tina's 
got a prescription drug problem.  If you call their house after a 
certain time of night and she answers, she's in the ozone.  
Anyway, Grant did say something about wanting to get control 
again before Dani went out and did something they'd all regret."

"Did he mention what that might be?" Scully asked.

"No.  I guess I assumed he meant get pregnant, get on drugs, be 
out on the road with some drunk and get killed.  The usual list 
of parental nightmares," said Hsu. 

"You never spoke to Tina or Dani about what was going on at 
home?" she asked.

He shook his head.  "Tina and I are friendly with each other, but 
we've never been close enough to discuss that kind of thing.  And 
Dani's a teenage girl--why would she talk about her problems with 
some old guy her dad works with?"

Scully nodded.  "Can you tell me a little about this impending 
lawsuit?" she asked.

Hsu groaned.  "Oh, God, do I have to go through it again?  Can't 
you just get all the juicy details at the closest newsstand?"

"Sure, if all you'd like me to know is a lot of journalists' 
conjecture," Scully said.  "From what I hear, Sheppard has made 
himself some enemies, and enemies of the father might want to 
bring harm to the daughter.  We might find Danielle quicker if we 
knew the straight facts."

"All right, all right," said Hsu with a sigh.  "Starting a couple 
of years ago, young girls started turning up dead in Milwaukee.  
They were four black girls and a white one, between the ages of 
nine and twelve, all gone missing from one, predominantly black 
area of the city.  All five were last seen on a Thursday 
afternoon at their school bus stop, all five turned up in alleys 
or vacant lots, dead by manual strangulation.  There was no sign 
of sexual assault, but the bodies had been masturbated over.  DNA 
tests revealed it was all the work of one individual.

"Rob Green, who was our profiler until about six months ago, 
figured serial killers usually pick their own race.  This is a 
black area of the city and nobody saw anything unusual, so the 
perp blends in, right?  He's gotta be a black guy.  So the 
Milwaukee PD spends months hunting for a black UNSUB, hauling 
guys in off the street left and right, and meanwhile kids keep 
dying.  By now the public's screaming and the cops are desperate 
to bust *somebody,* so they start targeting just about anybody 
who even remotely resembles the profile.  

"Finally, a grocery store owner catches the guy trying to choke a 
kid behind a Dumpster.  The guy's name is Gary Cheeseman--no 
shit--and he's a white guy who's supposed to be locked up in a 
local state mental hospital.  Turns out that the killings always 
happen on Thursday afternoons because a bar down the street from 
the hospital has a 'buy one, get one free' happy hour at that 
time, and some of the staff were in the habit of slipping out for 
a few cold ones.  The racial thing was completely irrelevant.  
Cheeseman didn't have a car so he had to kill within walking 
distance, and the race ratio of the area was about four blacks to 
one white.  Apart from the age and sex, the selection of kids was 
totally random.  Cheeseman didn't stand out in the area because 
he'd lived there all his life; a lot of the kids knew him, at 
least by sight.  It never occurred to the cops to peg him as a 
suspect because he was supposedly shut away in a locked-down 
facility.  If it wasn't for dumb luck, he'd probably still be out 
there.

"Anyway, the media and half a dozen civil rights groups started 
howling and pointing fingers at the Wisconsin PD, calling them a 
bunch of crypto-Klansmen and witch hunters, so the police pointed 
at the F.B.I. and said that it was our lousy profile that led 
them astray in the first place.  Grant made the political mistake 
of publicly standing behind Agent Green.  He said something to 
the effect that Green was a fine agent and that he'd come up with 
a profile that was very accurate in many key points.  Then the 
editor of one of the local papers quoted him and said that that 
was like saying that a cop who only buried one bullet in an 
innocent citizen's head had an aim that was 'very accurate in 
many key points.'"

"Ouch," Scully said.

"None of us is winning any popularity contests out here, needless 
to say," said Hsu.  

"How is Sheppard handling the bad press?" Scully asked.

"Well, it took some doing, but a few of us who consider ourselves 
his friends managed to convince him to stop talking to 
reporters," said Hsu.  "Grant's a lawman of the old school--he'll 
give you his version of the truth, unvarnished, take it or leave 
it.  Back when Hoover ran things, he'd have had nothing to worry 
about.  Now though, you need a Teflon tongue to . . . what's so 
funny?"

"Nothing," Scully said, lifting her hand to her mouth to hide her 
smile.  "Nothing.  Just thinking of someone else.  Somebody I 
never imagined would have gotten along with J. Edgar Hoover."

Hsu gave her a strange look but didn't press her to explain 
further.  "It's taken a lot of self-restraint for Grant to keep 
from ripping into these newsguys who call his house, who weaseled 
his number from God knows where.  I told him that they want him 
to go ape-shit on them.  They want a colorful quote they can 
splash all over the front page, so much the better if it makes 
him sound like a frothing maniac.  He told me that Dani had taken 
to answering the phone in Spanish, saying something like 'Hello, 
this is the Tiajuana bus terminal.'"

Scully smiled.  "Agent Hsu, have you ever know SAC Sheppard's 
temper to escalate into violence?  Has he ever used more force 
than was necessary with a difficult suspect, or maybe just used 
his size to intimidate an especially obnoxious reporter?"

Agent Hsu gave her a sharp look.  "Agent Scully, are you 
insinuating something?" he asked.

"No, Agent Hsu, I'm merely trying to be a thorough investigator 
and consider all possibilities surrounding Danielle Sheppard's 
disappearance," Scully replied.  "If it was your daughter, 
wouldn't you want me to do the same?"

He looked at her a moment, his expression like stone.  Finally he 
gave her a chilly smile and said, "I think I'd better be getting 
back to work, now.  You never know when I might get a break on my 
imaginary manufacturing company."

The Highland Motel
Sweetwater, WS
9:03 p.m.



Mulder sat at his motel room's little table, tapping the eraser 
of his pencil on a legal pad.  Across the top of the pad he had 
written, "Criminal Investigative Analysis."  He'd subdivided the 
page into four sections, and each of the sections had its own 
series of headings such as "probable relationship to victim," 
"probable occupation," and "probable vehicle type."  Most of the 
sheet was covered in the scribbled hieroglyphics that passed as 
his handwriting.  He was gazing down at it, lost in thought, when 
there came a knock at the door.

"Yeah," he called out.  He stood and opened the door to find 
Scully, laden down with fast-food takeout bags.  She'd changed 
into an off-duty outfit of jeans, a T-shirt and an open plaid 
flannel button-down which would help keep off the clammy chill.

"Here you go, Mulder," she said, handing over a bag.  "One 
'Biggie Piggie' combo meal to go--large onion rings, a chili 
cheese dog with everything, and a large iced tea, complete with 
mostly melted ice.  Should you require medical assistance in the 
night, please *don't* call me.  I think I'm glad my room's not 
even on the same floor as yours."

"So you're telling me that if I pass out, I don't get mouth-to-
mouth?" he asked, grinning evilly as he rummaged through the 
grease-stained bag like a raccoon "shopping" in the trash.  
"Aha," he said, removing a single onion ring.  "The perfect 'O 
ring,'" he held it up to the light as if it were a precious 
artifact.  "It was one of these that made the 'Challenger' blow 
up, you know."

"If you're lucky, that's all that'll blow up," she responded.  
"So how did you do today?  Get any good leads?"  She sat down on 
the bed and pulled her own dinner out of a second bag--a very 
flaccid looking salad in a plastic container, dressing on the 
side.  The very thought made Mulder want to shudder.

"Actually," he said, around a mouthful of the "perfect O ring," 
"I've gotten lucky already."  At her arch expression he added, 
"Not *that* way."  He reached under the table and brought out the 
basketball trophy he'd borrowed from Amy, a duplicate of the one 
missing from Dani's room.  He plunked it down on the table.  
"Voila!" he said, "which is French for, 'damn, I'm good.'"

"I see," Scully said.  "I wasn't aware that you spoke French."

"Neither are the French people.  I've kept it cleverly hidden all 
these years," Mulder replied.  

"Won't they be surprised," Scully said.

"Mais oui, ma petite pomme de terre," he said.  "Do you want to 
hear my reconstruction of the events surrounding Dani's 
disappearance?" 

"Please," she asked.  She shifted to the floor, apparently so she 
could set her salad dressing container down without fear of it 
spilling.  

"The first part of it wasn't too hard to figure, but it's ugly 
enough," Mulder said with a sigh.  "She came home about eleven 
o'clock on Saturday, half-drunk and in the car of a boy she'd 
been forbidden to see.  She was actually being more responsible 
than that sounds--the guy who was supposed to take her home ended 
up plastered and she refused to ride with him.

"So she comes in the house and Dad's waiting.  I think he gave 
her the pretty standard 'where the hell have you been young lady, 
get on up to your room' routine.  From what Amy Nelson told me, 
the father does some drinking, too, so he was likely none too 
reasonable himself.  Dani went to her room, sat down on the bed, 
and then her dad followed her in, still yelling at her.  

"I suspect what happened next is she laughed at him.  If not 
that, then she did something else that showed she didn't take him 
seriously, that he couldn't control her with his anger.  Maybe 
she flipped him off.  Anyway, Dani felt like she'd raised herself 
for the last two years and had done a pretty good job, and 
there's probably some truth to that.  She figured her dad was 
completely out of touch with her and that it was ridiculous for 
him to try and dictate her life.

"At that point I think Sheppard slapped her.  Maybe he pushed 
her, or did something else that turned this into a physical 
confrontation.  He'd lost control of just about everything else 
around him, and having his kid blow him off was too humiliating.  
He figured it was about time he brought Dani to heel.  

"Now, the basketball videos I saw at Amy's house show that Dani 
wasn't a girl who backed away from a fight.  I think she and her 
dad got into it.  Then, for at least one of them, something 
slipped.  Dani started feeling like she was really in danger, and 
the fighting escalated quick.  Here, you can help me test a 
theory," he said.  He dug a box of colored chalk out of a bag at 
his feet.  He pulled out a purple stick and rubbed it against the 
edges of the trophy.

Scully, who'd been sitting with her salad untouched in her lap, 
listening to his story with a horror-stricken expression, now 
looked bewildered, too.  "What are you doing, Mulder?" she asked.

He walked over to the TV and set the chalked trophy on top.  "You 
and I have about the same difference in height as Danielle and 
her father," he said.  "So why don't you stand here," he said, 
pointing to a spot to one side of the television.

She got up and did as he asked, but still looked wary.  "Now," he 
said, "say I make a grab at you, like this."  He wrapped his 
fingers around Scully's bicep and pulled her toward him, slowly, 
so as not to actually harm her, but with enough strength to 
simulate the feel of an attack.  Instinctively, she brought her 
free arm up.  "Okay," he said, "between you and me there's all 
this stuff on the dresser.  If you're getting real mad and scared 
you might just shove it across at me, hoping that hitting me with 
all those trophies will be enough to make me let you go.  Go on, 
push it at me as I pull you," he said.  He kept his tone gentle, 
since it was clear that even this simulated fight was making her 
a little uncomfortable.  Scully was wearing flat shoes, and now 
that she was pulled up close to him it was apparent just how much 
smaller than himself she was.  Rather to his surprise, Mulder 
found he could wrap his hand almost all the way around Scully's 
upper arm.  He could feel the tension in her muscles beneath her 
flannel shirt.

"Are you okay with this?" he asked her.  "I can do this on paper 
if you'd rather," he said.

"No," she said, "no, I'm fine. This is a lot more effective than 
working something out on paper." 

"Okay," he said, decided to take her at her word.  "So you bring 
your arm up and sort of backhand this stuff at me," he said, 
indicating the objects on the TV.  She slid her arm straight 
across the top of the television.  A flurry of ads hit Mulder in 
the chest and stomach, and the trophy base bumped into his solar 
plexus, leaving a chalk mark before toppling off the TV.  He 
caught it by its brass-wash pillar as it fell.

"Now I bring it back like this," he said, moving it across his 
body and then bringing it back against Scully's temple, leaving a 
chalk mark on her skin.  "You end up slammed against the 
dresser," he said, mentally re-setting this in Dani's room.  He 
gently nudged Scully until she was half leaning on the TV, half 
sprawled across the top.  "If I hit you again, the blow would 
land here," he said, bringing the trophy base back down and 
touching it to a spot a few inches above her left temple.  "That 
knocks you off the dresser and probably sends you to the floor."

Scully let her knees fold, but Mulder kept his hold on her arm, 
keeping her from falling down completely.  "If there was a third 
blow, it would catch you on the back of your head, here," he 
said, touching the base to a spot just below the crown of her 
skull, on her right side.  "Now, that way, the bottom edge hits 
you," he said, "which would probably cut the skin.  You drop your 
head, the base glances off your skull, and then it continues its 
momentum up  a bit before I can stop it.  If I stop suddenly 
here," Mulder said, his right hand held up at about 45 degrees 
from his body, "and I'm thinking, 'what the fuck am I doing?'  
That would shake a few blood drops off the base, which would end 
up approximately there," he said, pointing up toward the corner 
where the wall met the ceiling.  "That's about where I found the 
dried blood spots in Dani's room."

Scully looked up at him, admiration and a certain uneasiness 
evident in her face.  "Mulder that's amazing," she said.  

He let go of her and let her stand up.  "No, it's not, that's 
reconstructing an event through behavioral evidence.  It's no 
more amazing than what you do when you analyze evidence from an 
autopsy," he said.  Mulder spoke to her gently, knowing that 
Scully had taken her share of beatings in the line of duty and 
not wanting to trigger any unpleasant associations.  

She reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and he 
called out, "No--don't do that--wait."  He walked over to where 
he'd ditched his luggage by the bed and dug out a Polaroid from 
his bag.  He popped the flash up and asked, "So, will you think 
I'm sick if I take pictures?"

That, at least, got a smile out of her.  "That depends on what 
you want to use them for," she said.

"Just for boring, tedious, documentation and analysis," he said, 
circling to her side so he could photograph the chalk mark on her 
temple.  "Then for re-posting over the Internet at 
alt.sex.FBI.redheads." 

"There is no such newsgroup," she said, as he walked behind her 
to photograph the back of her head.  Then she added, "is there?"  

"That's for me to know and you to find out," he replied.  He got 
pictures of all the marks on Scully's head, and had her take a 
picture of the chalk mark on his shirt front, too, since Sheppard 
might have a bruise there. 

Mulder handed the photos over to Scully as they developed.  "So, 
looking at that wound pattern, what kind of effects do you think 
that would cause?" he asked.

"Well," she said, using her free hand to finally dust out the 
chalk from her hair, "the mark that worries me most is this one 
here."  She held up the shot of the mark on her left temple.  
"The bone is thin there, and it could easily fracture.  Actually, 
chunks of bone can get dented inward from a blow like that, and 
press into the meninges or even the brain."

"Could a victim still be conscious after that, maybe not even 
know how badly she'd been hurt?" Mulder asked.

"Sure," said Scully.  "Head wounds are notorious for seeming 
minor at first, and then turning life-threatening. The biggest 
danger is that of subdural hematoma--or bleeding in the brain.  
When that happens, pressure starts building up in the skull, 
blood clots start to form, and the patient can just stroke out, 
even right in the middle of a conversation.  Actually, that's 
basically what happened to my sister."

The slightly distracted tone of her voice as she said that both 
surprised and concerned him.  "Are you sure you're okay about all 
of this?" he asked.  "I mean, in its own way this is a pretty 
ugly case.  *I* find it disturbing, and I sure wouldn't blame you 
if you did, too."

She glanced up from the photos with that familiar, "you're-
trying-my-patience" look.  "Mulder I'm fine," she said.  "It's 
not as if I'm a little, shrinking violet.  I've seen a lot 
worse."

"Yeah, I know you have, it's just that--" her look of annoyance 
deepened into a look of warning.  "Never mind," he said.  "From a 
behavioral standpoint, it makes a big difference that Danielle 
was likely conscious," he said, quickly turning professional.  "I 
think that she *and* her parents decided what to do next.  She 
probably believed that her injuries were minor and that she 
didn't need to be rushed to a hospital.  They all would agree 
that she could use some first aid though, and that it was best 
she get out of the house for a while.  Therefore, I have profiled 
this person," he said.  He got up and grabbed the legal pad off 
of the table.  He tapped the section labeled "UNSUB D."

"The Sheppards wanted to leave Dani with someone they trusted, 
and especially for Mr. Sheppard, someone they could control.  So 
you're looking at a young person, almost certainly female, who's 
known the family for some time and probably has  some basic 
medical or first-aid training.  I came up with the probable 
occupation of EMT, since a nurse or a doctor would be older and 
have more training and experience, which would make them less 
easy to push around.  I made some inquiries as  to what starting 
pay for a local EMT is, and I doubt that this person can afford 
to live alone.  She'll have a roommate, probably a brother or 
sister, since I doubt Sheppard would hand Dani over to a woman 
who lives with a stranger.  Actually, I suspect its a brother.  
He may be younger or just kind of a loser, but in either case, 
he's dependent on his sister, either emotionally and financially.  
I say that because our EMT isn't a real tough or imposing person, 
but she still calls the shots around the house.  If she didn't, 
then Sheppard would run into the issue of controlling the 
information again. 

"The brother either works days or else part time, doing something 
kind of low-paying and menial that doesn't give him a lot of 
self-esteem.  I think he was home the night of the seventh when 
Dani's parents called.  That's a Saturday night at 11 o'clock, 
when a lot of young people would be out partying, but he's 
sitting home by himself, maybe smoking dope or drinking beer,  
which reinforces my suspicion that he's a loser.  

"The sister, by contrast, must be a hyper-responsible creature of 
habit.  I suspect that she works second shift on Saturdays and 
almost always comes straight home afterward.  The reason I know 
this is that the brother must have been sure she'd be home from 
work at any time.  If he'd told Dani's parents that his sister 
was out on a date and he didn't know when she'd be home, the 
Sheppards would have come up with a plan B.  

"As it was, I think Mr. Sheppard drove Dani, who was still 
conscious, out to where this brother and sister live, almost 
certainly a rented house.  Neighbors notice more in an apartment 
complex.  Dani kisses Dad good-bye, thinking that her friend will 
take care of her and they can out this whole ugly mess behind 
them.  She goes in to lie down and wait.  The only problem is, 
the EMT doesn't show.  I'll bet she either switched shifts with 
someone or had to pull a double.  She may even have told her 
brother that, but he was too stoned to notice.  

"The reason I think her roomie is a stoned brother is because he 
must have paid no attention to Dani from the moment she got to 
the house. Women are usually much better at stepping into a 
caretaking role than this.  Even guy with a half a brain would 
have tried to be at least a little helpful--he would have looked 
in on her occasionally.  From what you describe as the likely 
effects of her injuries, her condition would have been 
deteriorating, and this guy just didn't notice.  

"A couple of things could have happened next.  One, he finally 
went to take a look at her, found she was unconscious and 
couldn't be awakened, and took her to a hospital, where he parked 
her without any ID and then fled.  It's possible that she's a 
mystery patient in an intensive care ward somewhere.  If that 
didn't happen . . . well, my guess is he got a buddy to help him 
dump the body in the woods."

Scully sat on the edge of the bed, looking at him with wide eyes.  
He couldn't tell if her expression was one of admiration, or 
horror, or a mixture of both.  "Have you gone to the police with 
this?" she finally asked.

"No," he said.  "I don't want to draw the Sheppards into it yet.  
We may never get enough physical evidence to charge them, so I'll 
need to get a confession.  There's a better chance of that 
happening if I can take them by surprise.  I did call Amy 
Nelson's family, though, and I asked them to make up some 'Have 
you seen me' flyers with Dani's picture on them.  I suggested 
that they post them in the staff break rooms of local hospitals, 
in churches, especially Lutheran ones, and anywhere that hosts AA 
meetings.  Emergency workers are statistically more likely to 
have had alcoholic parents, and that's even the ones without 
wastoid brothers.  Unfortunately, I think the brother's skipped 
town, or else Sheppard would have had him by the throat.  I'm 
hoping to at least contact the sister, though.  Maybe we can 
trace events back through her."

"And then what?" Scully asked.

"And then we deal with whatever we find, although I have a bad 
feeling that it's not going to be anything good.  However this 
turns out, you and I can at least try to make sure that justice 
is served.  I think I can use this here," he said, tapping the 
top of the trophy, "to set the stage for a confession."  Seeing 
her look of disapproval, Mulder added, "I'm not talking 
entrapment, I just want to put a little pressure on, that's all.  
Make Sheppard wonder how much we know.  It might feel good to be 
on the other end of the ramrod, for once."

Scully shook her head and smiled.  "Mulder, you never cease to 
amaze me," she said.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" he asked.

"I'm not sure, but I'll bet we'll know before we leave 
Wisconsin," she said.  She gathered up her empty salad container 
and stuck it in the bag it came from, then got up to go.  Before 
she got to the door though, she stopped and turned around.  
"Mulder," she said, and then hesitated a moment, as if gathering 
courage to say something awkward.

He had a bad feeling she was about to say something nice and 
embarrass him, so he cut her off and said, "Ah, that's okay.  
Don't say anything--you don't want to be around me and my Biggie 
Piggie chili dog anyway."  He made as if to shoo her toward the 
door.  She allowed herself to be shooed but did not actually 
leave, which meant that Mulder had to stop dead in front of the 
door, suddenly sharing very close quarters with her.  She leaned 
her back against the door and looked up at him, her blue eyes 
sparkling with what was probably amusement at the consternation 
in his expression.  He hated it when she teased him like this.  
No--he loved it.  Hell, he didn't know.

"I wanted to tell you that I'm proud of the way you've handled 
this case so far," she said.  "I think you're right about the 
reason Sheppard called you out here.  He'd probably heard of your 
reaction to the cases involving Melissa Riedel and Lucy 
Householder, where you really allowed your buttons to be pushed.  
He was probably hoping that as soon as he presented you with the 
disappearance of a young girl, especially if it involved aliens, 
you'd lose all sense of reason and lead the investigation down 
the wrong path.  Instead, you've been consummately professional 
and you got on the right track immediately.  I can see why 
Violent Crimes was sorry to let you go."

Mulder gave her a half-smile and looked away from her, feeling 
suddenly bashful.  Was she actually *flirting* with him?  Was 
this all it took--working one mundane case that was really not as 
complicated as it looked?  He found himself thinking, "Scully, 
you tart, you," but he couldn't help feeling pleased.  He 
muttered something to the effect of "It was nothing."

"Well, *I* think it's something.  ASAC Hsu explained to me how 
easy it can be to miss behavioral clues and derail an 
investigation," she said.

Mulder was not good at taking compliments.  He didn't get very 
many, so this was usually not a problem.  At the moment, though, 
he was feeling a lot of conflicting things that added up to 
intense embarrassment.  Why did she have to stand so close to him 
when she said things like that?  He strongly suspected he was 
blushing, and he figured he had to get her out of his motel room 
before she made an utter, adolescent dork out of him.

"Go away," he told her.  Not terribly suave, not what Cary Grant 
would have said in this situation, but it got the point across.  
"You're obviously an alien hybrid who's kidnapped the real 
Scully."

"How do I know you're not an alien hybrid who's kidnapped the 
real Mulder?" she replied.  

He took a breath to respond, but stopped when he saw how she was 
looking at him.  Mischievous, waiting--not inviting anything, 
exactly, but very curious as to what he was going to do.  Some 
part of his brain told him, "Kiss her."  Then another part said, 
"What, are you *nuts?*"  It was as if someone had put the five 
years he and Scully had had together into his hand, then handed 
him some dice and said, "Double or nothing."  

Mulder balked.  He recalled something his father had once told 
him--"Never bet anything you can't afford to lose."  He backed 
away from Scully as if she'd been fire.  "Look, um, I've got 
stuff I have to do now," he said.  "I'll call you in the morning, 
okay?"

"Sure," she said.  Her expression was inscrutable--still amused, 
he thought, but was there anything else?  Disappointment?  
Relief?  Contempt?  He couldn't tell.  "See ya," she said and 
then opened the door to leave.  She hadn't taken more than a few 
steps down the cement walkway that ran outside the second floor 
rooms before he darted out after her.

"Scully?" he called out.

"What?" she asked, turning around.  

"I still believe I was right about the Riedel and Householder 
cases," he said.  He didn't say it to play "got you last."  He 
wanted to make sure she wasn't just telling him she was proud of 
him because she thought he'd gone normal on her.  It would have 
hurt to see disappointment in her face the next time they took on 
a real paranormal case.  

"Of course you do," she said.  She spoke kindly, but didn't 
elaborate.  He supposed that was all the reassurance he could 
expect.  Mulder leaned against the door jamb and watched as she 
descended the outdoor staircase to her room on the first floor.  
"I am either a master of wisdom and self restraint," he thought, 
"or the biggest coward in the history of the universe."


Mulder went running after that.  He had a lot of things to work 
out.  Full dark had fallen, and there was a halo of mist around 
the streetlights.  The roads seemed almost deserted; apparently 
Sweetwater rolled up its sidewalks early.  It was cool and 
peaceful, a perfect night for running.  He focused on the 
rhythmic splashing of his sneakers on the pavement, allowing his 
mind to slip into the daydream-like state in which he had some of 
his best insights.  He told himself that if he didn't have any, 
that was okay, too, he needed the simple, physical stress 
release.

Profiling work had always been stressful for him, for all that it 
could be very rewarding when he helped get a killer off the 
street.  People who'd never done profiling seemed to be 
fascinated by it, as if it were some combination of black magic 
and method acting, where a careless agent might wander too deeply 
into a killer's mind and become one of the monsters he studied.  
Well, that really had happened to Bill Patterson, but that was 
different.  

Actually, Mulder found looking through the eyes a killer far less 
distressing than looking through the eyes of his victim.  However 
painful, victimology was essential to understanding any violent 
crime.  Choice of and reaction to a particular victim said a lot 
about a criminal.  Did she fight back, for instance, or did she 
just hunker down and pray he'd let her go if she didn't cause 
trouble?  Which response made the killer more angry? 

The problem with this approach was that it didn't permit a 
profiler to distance himself from a victim the way most law 
enforcement personnel could.  A forensic pathologist might see 
the body on his autopsy table as a white female, weighing such-
and-such in extremis, who'd succumbed to cause of death X or Y.  
To a profiler, she had to be a person with a name, a family, 
hopes and aspirations that had been destroyed by someone's 
consciously malicious act.  Mulder hadn't been the only ISU 
worker who'd cried at body dump sites, at least surreptitiously.  

Agents who took a superior air about not getting "over-involved" 
in cases always pissed him off, and at times that included 
Scully.  They clearly had no idea what he was trying to 
accomplish.  It was the same as if he'd turned up his nose at 
them and said, "Oh, so you're doing this autopsy with the 
*lights* on?"

He told himself to let that thought go.  There was no sense in 
getting mad about it now.  He was trying to clear his mind, not 
get worked up over things he could do nothing about.  He took a 
deep breath and released it.  He was currently in what looked 
like a downscale residential area.  The streets were lined with 
older, clapboard houses with peeling paint; fleets of rusting 
cars stood on some of the lawns.  Thirty years ago, this would 
have been the embodiment of the American Dream.  He envisioned 
the young families of New Castle auto workers, growing up in the 
charmed economy of the post World War II years.  

Here as everywhere, all was eerily still.  

Now, had he come out here on a decent X-File, there would be a 
murderous, slavering mutant on his trail.  He turned and ran 
backward briefly, scanning the street behind him.  Nothing.  No 
skulking black vans, no eerie shadows where they didn't belong, 
no brilliant, zigzagging objects in the sky.  What the hell was 
this?  If he hadn't been sure before, the utter lack of creeping 
menaces told him now that the UFO abduction Mrs. Sheppard had 
reported had been a consummate fake.  

He turned around and ran properly.  Actually, he thought, the 
most painful part of profiling wasn't looking into the 
perpetrator or the victim.  It was looking into yourself.  The 
most frightening thing about all that had transpired in the 
Sheppard house was that he understood how it happened.  Law 
enforcement was a very stressful field, and there was tremendous 
pressure to "keep a stiff upper lip" and stuff any emotions that 
were triggered by an investigation.  This was keeping 
"objectivity."  This was being "professional."  Personally, 
Mulder thought that the day he could be blas� about the rape and 
murder of innocents was the day he quit the F.B.I., but he knew 
that was not the prevailing agency opinion.

Even still, there had been times when he'd gone into overload, 
and had come perilously close to hurting people he loved.  The 
example that frightened him most involved a woman he'd dated 
while working in the Violent Crimes Unit.  Her name was Special 
Agent Hollisue Fenwick, a pretty, blonde girl from Yellow Forks, 
Georgia, who'd aspired to join the F.B.I.'s elite Critical 
Incident Negotiation Team--the people who handled complex hostage 
situations.  Actually, last he'd heard, she'd not only been 
assigned to CINT but was working as one of their primary 
negotiators.  He'd missed her rather desperately while dealing 
with the whole Duane Barry fiasco.

Holli had been quite up front about her background.  She was the 
oldest daughter of a very dysfunctional, alcoholic family.  Her 
dad was both the county sheriff and a raging drunk, and half his 
kids had ended up in jail.  The other half had found careers in 
law enforcement.  Holli had explained that such an upbringing 
made her a natural crisis negotiator.  She had a method for 
smoothing over any conflict, which had annoyed the basically 
confrontational Mulder.  When he wanted to have something out 
with her he'd felt compelled to push her to the wall.

One time in particular, when he'd confronted her about her 
worrisome drinking habits, he'd felt a need to hammer his point 
home again and again.  Looking back on it, he realized he'd 
actually been pretty cruel.  Holli had finally shut him up by 
slapping him.  

For a few fleeting seconds, Fox had not been anyone he 
recognized.  He'd raised his hand to her, and when shock and fear 
registered on her face, he'd been glad.  All he could think of 
was that she'd screwed up.  He'd told her again and again that if 
she didn't watch out, she'd end up just like her dad, and she'd 
blown him off.  

At that point, Fox had flashed back to a murder scene he'd been 
at recently.  A woman's badly decomposed body had been found in a 
crawlspace beneath her house.  Her shirt and bra were pushed up 
and her jeans pulled down below her knees, then her body was left 
wrapped in a blanket.  

He'd told the cops at the time that no true sex killer would have 
exposed her breasts and genitals and then taken pains to hide 
them, first in the blanket and then in the crawlspace, where her 
kids wouldn't discover her body.  No one the victim hadn't known 
would have felt compelled to bludgeon her so viciously across the 
head and face.  Mulder had pegged this from the first as a 
domestic killing disguised as a lust murder.  Eventually, the 
victim's ex-boyfriend was brought up on charges.  

That image of the victim's beaten, decayed body had stopped him 
before he struck Hollisue.  Instead, he'd turned on his heel and 
gone into the front room, where he'd burst into tears of horror 
and remorse.  Holli had apparently figured that Fox was even more 
of a sensitive guy than she'd thought, and had sat with him while 
he cried, apologizing and trying to comfort him.  He'd never 
revealed the truth to her.  

Mulder realized that he'd jogged down a cul de sac, so he turned 
around.  It was about time to start back to the motel, anyway.  
Running back the way he'd come, he found himself thinking about 
all the qualities he didn't like in himself.  The barely 
repressed, son-of-a-bitchness that had scared him with Hollisue 
was one of the major things that kept him from sidling up to 
Scully and saying, "Hey baby, let *me* show you some unexplained 
phenomena."  At the age of thirty-six, he liked to think he knew 
himself pretty well, and he found that he wouldn't trust himself 
with the welfare of a woman he loved.  

The other problem was that he didn't think he could expose a 
lover to the dangers of the X-Files.  If Scully were to die while 
searching for the truth, Mulder knew he would be devastated, but 
he could endure going on.  He would mourn for her as a martyr, he 
would never again be the same, but he could continue their work 
in her absence, thinking that he was honoring her memory.  But if 
Scully were to die for him personally, having followed him into 
some mortal situation out of pure love, then he didn't think he 
could survive that.

Even if she didn't die--if Mulder was just continuously wondering 
what her motives were for risking herself--that would doubtless 
kill their friendship.  He wouldn't be able to be honest with 
her, he would feel a need to soft-pedal things to keep her from 
worrying, to keep her safe.  Scully would interpret that as both 
patronizing and insulting, and although he wouldn't intend any 
disrespect to her, she would have a point.  

One day, she would meet a man who'd be worthy of her, then she'd 
settle down and make lots of little Scullys.  Mulder liked to 
think that when that happened, he'd be man enough to let her go.  
Unfortunately, remembering how he'd felt when she took up with 
that loser Ed Jerse--whom she'd met in a tattoo parlor, for God's 
sake!--didn't give him a lot of hope.

By the time he got back to the motel, he was physically tired but 
hadn't found much emotional peace.  He stood in the parking lot 
for a few moments, ostensibly stretching out a sore hamstring but 
actually looking at the light in Scully's window.  The curtain 
was drawn, so he couldn't see anything, but her shadow would 
occasionally pass between him and the light inside.  She was 
probably pacing, making field notes into that Dictaphone of hers.  
He toyed with the idea of knocking on her door, but rejected that 
thought when he realized he didn't have anything to say to her.  
"Hi, I'm all sweaty and nasty now, but I just wanted to come in 
and stand near you for a while" didn't seem to cut it.  He told 
himself to get away from her window and go upstairs like a normal 
person.  "Stalker freak," he thought at himself.

Climbing the stairs, he recalled the times when he'd worked 
harrowing cases in the VCU.  He'd used to leave his office, work 
out to help dissipate the stress, then go home to Hollisue who'd 
rub his back and then go upstairs with him to make love.  He 
couldn't help sighing a little wistfully.  He definitely missed 
the sex.  Miss April could only get you so far, antigravity or no 
antigravity.  He was also saddened by the lack of physical 
affection in his life.  Although he and Scully cared for one 
another a great deal, they had a basically hands-off 
relationship.  Which was as it should be, he told himself as he 
reached his room, it was as it should be.

He entered the room and closed the door behind him, pulling his 
sweaty shirt up over his head in preparation for taking a cold 
shower.  "I will not have perverted thoughts about my partner," 
he told himself, "I will not have perverted thoughts about my 
partner . . ."

8798 Berchwood
New Castle, WS
10:03 p.m.


Thomas stood out in front of his house, wrapping his puppy's 
leather leash around his hands.  He pulled on it to test its 
strength.  It was thick, tough.  He smiled.  

It was a nice night out, some of the clouds had blown away, 
leaving patches where a few stars peeked through the urban light 
pollution.  Even though it was a week night, people were out.  
Winters in the north were long, and people came out to enjoy the 
warm, soft weather while they could.  Across the street a middle-
aged couple walked with their dog.  A couple of doors down old 
Mrs. Kostadourian sat rocking on her porch swing.  

A young woman on a bike coasted down the hill toward his house.  
Even in the dark Thomas could tell that she was pretty; slim, 
athletic, wearing a racily revealing tank top and bicycle shorts, 
her long brown hair pulled up into a braid.  When she got close, 
Thomas stepped out onto the street in front of her, making her 
stop.  "Hey," he said.  "My name is Thomas.  My puppy got away 
and fell down that hole.  Will you help me get him out?" he 
asked.  He slouched and held his hands and arms close to his 
sides, trying to look as small and meek as possible.  Sweet 
little Thomas.  Good little Thomas.  Smart dog.

The girl got off her bike and looked at him, uncertain.  "What 
hole?" she asked.

He led her through the chain link gate to the front yard of his 
house, then pointed to a depression in the ground, bounded by 
corrugated steel, that cleared a space around an opened basement 
window.  "He fell down there?" the girl asked.  Thomas nodded.  
She just looked at the window for a moment, seeming uneasy, her 
long fingers fidgeted on the handlebars of her bike.  "Why don't 
you talk to the people who own the house?" she asked.

"There's just a little old lady home," he said.  "She says she's 
too afraid to go down the stairs.  She says she'll fall."

"Well, I bet she'd let you go down there and look for him," she 
said.  "I've really got to go."  She gave him a strange look over 
her shoulder as she mounted her bike, then she rode away fast.  
Bitch, he thought.  He wrapped the leash so tight around his hand 
that it made his fingers tingle and burn.  He would have to get 
better at this.  He would need practice.  But that was okay, he 
thought.  His taste of pure power under the moonlight had left 
him thirsty for more, but it had also taught him that he had the 
strength to wait.  He had to wait for the right moment, the right 
victim, who would drop down into his lap like a ripe peach.  He 
was sure of it.  He could wait--he had all the time in the world.

Highland Motel
Sweetwater, WS
3:25 a. m.


Mulder awakened with a start.  He stared with wide eyes into the 
darkness, his heart hammering with primal, inexplicable fear.  
Had he heard a noise?  Sensed unfamiliar breathing in the room?  
He lay very still for a few, panic-stricken moments for deciding 
that these were probably not the case.  A dream, then, but of 
what?  It's contents slipped away from him like water running 
through his fingers, but it left an aftertaste of fear, sorrow, 
and oddly, shame.  Had he done something wrong?  Made some 
critical error in his investigation?  He couldn't think of 
anything.  He'd been annoyed at himself for letting Scully's 
teasing affect him as it had, but he'd been good.  He'd backed 
away from the situation and hadn't even said anything filthy to 
her.  His thoughts were another matter, but those were private.

Slowly, he reached out to click on the light.  This was the part 
that had always scared him the most as a kid.  It was when you 
moved from the relative safety beneath the covers that the 
monster knew you were awake, and it brushed its icy claws over 
your outstretched hand.  He turned the light on without incident.  
Most men might have been woefully embarrassed at awakening in the 
night, afraid of monsters, but most men had never had a liver-
eating mutant sneak through their heating vent as they slept.  
That put the whole nightmare thing in perspective.  A quick 
examination of the motel room revealed nothing out of the 
ordinary.  No one, or nothing, had snatched either of his shoes.  
There were no shadowy assassins hiding behind the shower curtain, 
there was no abnormally large flukeworm working its way up 
through the toilet.  Reluctantly, he concluded that he might not 
be being stalked by some malevolent power or hideous, unnamed 
creature.  He might just have had a scary dream.  But why didn't 
the fear let up when the lights were turned on?  He had a bad 
feeling that something *was* stalking him, but that it was 
something inside his own head.  There was some realization, or 
memory, that his conscious mind was trying to push away, which 
had begun to surface in the dream.

He went back to the bed and sat down.  He found that he did not 
want to pick at it to try and figure out what it had been.  It 
would come to him in its own time, he was sure.  He looked at the 
phone for a few moments before picking it up and punching in the 
number for Scully's room.  He already felt embarrassed as it 
rang.  He tried not to do this to her very often.

After a couple of rings her sleepy voice answered.  "Hello?" she 
asked.

"Hi . . . uh, it's just me," he said, settling the body of the 
phone on his lap.

"What's the matter?" she asked, sounding groggy and worried.  

"Nothing . . . well, I think nothing.  I woke up, and I dunno, I 
just felt like something was wrong," he said.

"You had a nightmare?" she asked.  She seemed to know the drill.  
He realized that he must do this to her more often than he'd 
thought.

"Yeah," he said.  "I guess so."

"About your sister?" she asked.

"No . . . that dream has a real distinct feel to it.  This was 
different . . . I can't remember what it was," he said.  Then he 
added, "Look, Scully, did I screw up somehow?  I woke up feeling 
like I've been a complete loser.  Have I been more of a jerk than 
usual?"

He heard her quiet laugh over the phone line.  "No, no more than 
usual," she said.  "Maybe you feel guilty for considering the 
Sheppards as suspects.  I can see why you'd identify with them 
and feel strongly about wanting to help them.  After all the 
denial and ridicule you've experienced, it can't feel good to 
have to discount someone's reported close encounter."

"Yeah," he agreed.  "That doesn't feel good."

"I told you I thought you were doing an excellent job on this 
case," Scully said.  "We're dealing with the possible abduction 
of a young girl, and we both know how crimes like that affect 
you, but you haven't let your emotions cloud your judgment.  
You're doing just fine, Mulder.  It's all right.  You can go back 
to sleep."

"Okay," he said.  He was beginning to think that he could sleep 
again, after all.  "Thanks, Scully.  I owe you," he said.  
Friends you could call at 3:30 in the morning after a bad dream 
you couldn't remember were few and far between for everyone, and 
for a diehard paranoid, the list was even shorter.  He wanted 
Scully to know that she was appreciated.

She yawned and said, "No problem.  I'll put it on your tab."

Al Frank's Family Restaurant and Cheese Emporium
Sweetwater, WS
8:28 a.m.



Al Frank's had a lot of cheese.  There was a whole side of the 
restaurant that was full of glass-door refrigerators, like a 
museum or aquarium of cheese.  Mulder had inspected these before 
letting the waitress lead him to a booth.  There was white cheese 
and yellow cheese and cheese with green-blue flecks in it, there 
were slabs of Pinconning cheese cut in the shape of Wisconsin.  
You could buy baseball hats and bumper stickers with the Al Frank 
logo on them, that also had a picture of a Cheshire cat 
disembodied smile and the words, "Say Cheese!"  

Regional character stuff like this was one of the things Mulder 
enjoyed most about traveling.  It helped him feel a connection to 
the various states that he served as a Federal Agent.  Having 
spent several years in Europe, he knew that while all countries 
had monuments and anthems, there was a particular type of kitschy 
crap--creatively thought out, self-consciously rustic, and self-
effacingly exploitative, that was distinctly American.  Let other 
people get misty-eyed over the Star Spangled Banner.  It was 
commemorative refrigerator magnets and figurines built out of 
glued-together shells that made Mulder want to put his hand over 
his heart.

Mulder's omelet, covered, of course, with lots of cheese, arrived 
at about the same time as Agent Scully.  "Middle American folk 
marketing," he said, gesturing around the restaurant with his 
fork.  "You've gotta love it.  I ordered you coffee, by the way--
cream, no sugar."  He nudged the steaming mug toward her.

"Thanks," she said, "but we ought to get this to go.  The Inas 
County sheriff just called me and said they've found a body in 
the woods west of New Castle."

Mulder set his fork down.  "Do they think it's Danielle?" he 
asked quietly.

"They don't know.  They've contacted the parents and asked that 
they release Dani's dental records," Scully said.

Mulder nodded, reading between the lines as to what that meant.  
"So in other words, we'll want breakfast before we go out to the 
dump site, not after," he said.

Continued in Part 2

*******************

Zillah Road
Rural Inas County
9:11 a.m.


The spot they were looking for was easy enough to find; it was 
the one with all the vehicles parked along the shoulder.  There 
were police cars from a half-dozen different jurisdictions, an 
EMS truck, a few unmarked cars and a van with the logo of a local 
TV news crew on it.  One of the journalists was pointing a 
microphone at a cop, who was speaking very earnestly, presumably 
telling the news crew to go away.  Numerous people, uniformed and 
not, trudged in and out of the woods, carrying clipboards, 
cameras, and Ziploc bags.  A cameraman pointed his lens at 
anything moving.

Mulder flashed his ID and badge at the nearest uniformed officer 
and asked who was in charge of the investigation.  The young man 
told him that an Officer Stienmetz of the Wisconsin State Police 
was the most senior officer at the scene.  Stienmetz turned out 
to be a tall, sturdy, dark-haired guy about Mulder's own age, who 
was standing a few yards into the trees sipping from a steaming 
Styrofoam coffee cup and looking grim.  When Mulder and Scully 
introduced themselves and asked to see the body, he said, "Sure.  
Actually, I was thinking about calling in the Feds, anyway, but I 
was worried about bringing out anyone that knew this missing 
girl's family.  I'll tell you right now, it's not a pretty 
scene."

"Has the Medical Examiner been able to estimate a time of death?" 
Scully asked.

"Well," said Stienmetz with a half-grin that was ironic rather 
than humorous, "he says that from the look of the insect larvae 
on the body, it's been about three days."

"The time's about right," Scully said quietly to Mulder.

"Can I ask why you wanted to bring in the F.B.I.?" Mulder asked.

Stienmetz looked from one of them to the other, as if trying to 
gauge what their reaction to his words would be.  "What if I told 
you that I had a bad feeling about this crime scene?  This wasn't 
some garden variety homicide.  I want to run the details of this 
dump site presentation through your VICAP database.  I haven't 
heard of something like this turning up before, but somehow it 
just has 'major offender' written all over it."

"I did profiling work with Violent Crimes and Major Offenders for 
three years, and Dr. Scully here has taught forensic autopsy 
techniques at Quantico," Mulder said.

Stienmetz blinked at them, looking both surprised and pleased.  
"Well damn, that's the first stroke of luck we've had all 
morning," he said.  As Mulder followed him back into the woods, 
he thought about how weird it was to have someone be *glad* to 
see him.  It was almost surreal.

The smell of death was pretty strong in the area, but it was only 
when Mulder saw the string that he knew how bad this was going to 
be.  White, household string, tied to a series of stakes, had 
been used to create a grid over the ground.  This was a technique 
used in gathering fragments of evidence after a bombing or a 
plane crash.  A police photographer stood near the center of the 
grid, taking shot after shot of the ground, and beside him 
hunkered a balding man wearing white evidence-handling gloves and 
a blue windbreaker with the words "Medical Examiner" printed on 
the back.  Although the reason for labeling law enforcement 
personnel was obvious to Mulder, particularly when there were 
several different agencies working together, sometimes it made 
him want to slap a bar code on his forehead, or wear a white T-
shirt reading "Generic."

Stienmetz called out to the ME, who got up and walked toward 
them, carefully stepping over the string lines.  When the man 
reached them, he asked, "You know what the best part of being a 
30-year smoker is?"

Looking a little taken aback, Scully asked, "What?"

"I have absolutely no sense of smell.  This could be a prosthesis 
for all the good it does me," he said, tapping his nose.

"Well . . . I guess every cloud has a silver lining," Scully 
said.  "Do you have an apparent cause of death?"

"Not one that leaps out at me, no," the ME said.  "No visible 
bullet or knife wounds, and the decomposition's too bad to see 
any bruising from strangulation.  I can tell you it's a female in 
her mid- to late teens, though, and that all the mutilation was 
post-mortem.  She probably died elsewhere and was brought here.  
I got a semen sample from her thigh, too."

"Any evidence of sexual assault?" Mulder asked.  His tone of 
voice was probably not entirely professional and detached, but 
the ME didn't seem to have noticed.

"I don't think so," he said.  "Certainly not while she was alive.  
You get a different insect pattern around running blood.  
Wonderful creatures, maggots," he continued, conversationally.  
"The accusing finger of a God who works in humble ways.  You 
folks go have a look--I'm going for a quick smoke."  With that, 
he brushed past them, heading back toward the road.

"And I thought all of you doctor types were stuffy," Mulder 
teased Scully.  She ignored him and led the way across the grid 
of string, where officers crouched to take photographs or to 
stick things into zipper-seal bags.  

The body lay on its back, naked, with its arms and legs spread-
eagled.  It had been disemboweled.  The disemboweling hadn't been 
done cleanly, as a hunter guts a deer, instead it looked as if 
the woman had been torn open.  The edges of the flesh around the 
abdomen were ragged and uneven.  Although he would wait for the 
opinions of people like Scully and the ME to be sure, to Mulder 
it looked as if the belly had been cut open with a small, dull 
blade like a penknife, or maybe even a set of keys.  Whoever had 
done this had not had a lot of dissection experience, and had not 
come prepared for the job.  Despite this evidence of 
disorganization, the body and its organs had been arranged in a 
distinct, almost geometrical pattern which was still apparent 
despite the depredations of animals and insects.  The intestines 
had been wound around and around the body in a spiral, the inner 
boundary of which touched the outstretched fingertips and the 
soles of the feet.  Mulder found himself reminded of Leonardo Da 
Vinci's famous silverpoint of a naked man, set in a circle and 
then a square.  When he looked up, he saw that there were little 
orange evidence marking flags in a larger area around the body, 
roughly describing a square.  

He squatted down by the head and examined the right temple.  The 
hair was dulled by death and filthy with dirt and blood, but he 
could tell that it was just past shoulder length and had been 
pulled back from the woman's face.  In the less bloody parts, he 
could see that it was a dark honey color.  Something deep inside 
Mulder felt cold and sick.  "Can I get some gloves over here?" he 
called out, and one of the officers brought him some.  He pulled 
the Polaroid of Scully with the chalk mark on her temple out of 
the inside pocket of his suit jacket.  Holding that in one gloved 
hand, he gently probed the skull with the other, looking for a 
corresponding dent.  He found one.  It was about three-quarters 
of an inch long and crescent-shaped, the shape you'd expect a 
hard, round object to make.  "Scully, come here," he said.  "Look 
at this."  He showed her the photo and then the place that the 
skull was dented.

Scully let out a low groan.


Later, back by the side of the road, Mulder was approached by 
Officer Stienmetz.  "So, did you come up with anything?" he 
asked.

"Yeah," Mulder said.  "I think you'll find that the cause of 
death was bleeding in the brain caused by several sharp blows to 
the head.  I agree with the Medical Examiner that she died 
elsewhere and was brought here.  The guy who mutilated her body 
wasn't the guy who killed her, I doubt they even know each other.  

"The mutilator will be a white male in his early to mid twenties, 
and if he knew the victim at all, it would be only by sight.  
He's unemployed, probably doesn't drive, and hasn't been 
convicted of sexual assault or homicide before, but he may have 
had an arson record as a juvenile," Mulder noticed Stienmetz 
staring at him, as if in shock.  "You might want to write this 
down," Mulder suggested, and then waited while the other man 
fished a pad and a pen from his uniform shirt pocket.  

Mulder continued then, "He's got an extensive psychiatric history 
and he may be heavily medicated.  I'd start looking for him by 
contacting the local Medicaid office.  The cost of antipsychotics 
and mood-regulating drugs can be pretty steep, and this guy has a 
cash flow problem.  You also might want to check if anybody's 
gone missing from local group homes for the mentally ill lately.  
If he's not in some kind of institutional setting, he'll live 
with a relative, almost certainly a lone, older female.  He'll be 
a scruffy guy, kind of ratty and dirty looking, and when you talk 
to him you'll know there's something weird about him.  He won't 
have a lot of friends because he gives people the creeps.  

"He probably collects stuff like bondage pornography and Nazi 
memorabilia, stuff he associates with power.  Some guys like him 
are police groupies and try to insinuate themselves into an 
investigation, but if he tries, he'll stick out like a sore 
thumb.  You might find handcuffs at his place, though, or a 
police-type dog like a Doberman or a German Shepherd.  When you 
catch up with him, I'd use a real direct approach.  If you can, 
get him on his front doorstep, but don't charge him, don't 
Mirandize him.  Say something like, 'What did you cut her up 
for?'  Use his name if you know it, and get real close when you 
talk to him.  Violate his personal space and make him nervous.  
this guy's not hard-core yet.  You might be able to shake him up 
enough that he'll spill it all right there."

Stienmetz was nodding and scribbling.  "All right, okay, all 
right," he kept saying.  When Mulder was done and turned to go, 
Stienmetz called out after him, "Hey, what about the murderer?  
If this guy just cut her up, what about the guy who killed her?"

"I'm not worried about the murderer," Mulder said.  "It's this 
guy, the mutilator, that scares me.  This is the kind of son-of-
a-bitch that escalates."

"Mulder?"  Her heard Scully call out.  She'd been speaking with 
the Medical Examiner and a couple of cops.  

"Yeah?" he called back.

She walked across the sodden meadow toward him, leading one of 
the cops.   "This is Sergeant Blair of the New Castle PD.  He 
says that he got something in the mail  yesterday that might be 
relevant to the case."

Blair was a shorter, red-headed guy with a build like a barrel.  
He was holding a piece of paper in one hand and looking rather 
embarrassed.  "I couldn't figure out why someone would send this 
to me," he said.  "I thought it was a crank.  To be honest, I 
wadded it up and threw it out.  I was only after  I heard about 
this body being found that I realized it might be important.  
Good thing the cleaners only come every other day," he said.  

He handed the crumpled sheet of notebook paper to Mulder, who 
smoothed it carefully and read: 

"Little boy blue, come blow your horn

The sheep's in the meadow

The cow's in the corn.

Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?

He's under a haystack, fast asleep.

Bye-bye, got to fly.


--Thomas the Rhymer"


"She wasn't exactly found in a meadow, but it was close," Blair 
said, almost apologetically.  "And there's the sheep, Sheppard 
thing.  Do you think this is the killer, taunting the police, or 
is it some nut who's yanking my chain?"

"I don't think it's the killer, but it might well be the guy who 
left her lying here.   Hang onto that," Mulder said, giving the 
note back to Blair.  "I think the guy's warning us that he'd like 
to become a killer.  If we can't catch him before he murders 
somebody, that note may help us establish intent.  I think he 
also just told us that he's a New Castle resident, and that if 
this body is Dani's, she died in that city.  He wouldn't have 
known that it was the Chisholm PD who were investigating her 
disappearance.  He sent the note to the department that he 
assumed would be handling the murder case."  

Scully made arrangements to go back to the county morgue with the 
Medical Examiner, while Mulder would go back to the motel to 
check on how his information gathering strategy was working.  
He'd asked the Nelsons if they would mind putting their own phone 
number on the "Have you seen me?" flyers, and they'd graciously 
agreed to do it.  Mulder was afraid that a small police 
department like Chisholm, which was already scrambling over its 
first major case in years, wouldn't have the time or manpower to 
wait for and evaluate the calls.  He'd coached the Nelsons on how 
to turn their answering machine into a call taping device, and 
had let them know which details of the case to leave out, to help 
screen false leads.  This plan was not necessarily legal, 
especially the taping part, but Mulder was operating on the 
principle that it was easier to get forgiveness than permission.

As he got into the car, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed 
the Nelsons' number.  It rang twice and then Mrs. Nelson 
answered.  "Hello?" she said.

"Mrs. Nelson, it's Agent Mulder," he said.  "How are things 
going?"  He decided that he wouldn't tell them about the body.  
There was no sense in upsetting them until there was a positive 
ID.

"Amy just called me a minute ago," Mrs. Nelson said.  "She was 
posting flyers at the St. Paul Lutheran Church in New Castle, as 
you suggested.  They're having a funeral there this morning for a 
boy that Amy and Dani knew.  His sister used to baby-sit both my 
daughter and the Sheppard kids -- her name is Bonnie Bremen.  For 
the last two years she's been working as an EMT at New Castle 
Receiving Hospital."

832 Westphalen
New Castle, WS
10:35 a.m.


The house Bonnie Bremen had shared with her brother looked pretty 
much as Mulder had imagined it.  It was very small, in a seedy 
area of the city, but reasonably well-maintained.  There was some 
white paint flaking off the wooden clapboard sides, which he 
attributed to an apathetic landlord.  The tiny lawn had been mown 
recently, however, and the mailbox was in the shape of a wooden 
Holstien cow.  Bonnie's little Geo hatchback was parked in the 
driveway.  

Mulder parked along the street and opened the chain-link gate 
that partitioned the sidewalk from the yard.  Shortly after he 
rang the bell, a young woman opened the door.  She had a slight, 
boyish figure and rounded features surrounded by a chin-length 
cloud of curly brown hair.  In better times, she probably had a 
bright-eyed, perky cuteness, but at the moment she looked drained 
and ill.  Her eyes were reddened and there were mascara smears on 
her cheeks.  "Thank you for being willing to speak with me, Miss 
Bremen.  I know this is a difficult time for you," Mulder said 
gently.  

She gave him the ghost of a smile.  "That's all right," she said.  
"There's nothing more I can do for Paul, but maybe I can still 
help Danielle.  Come on in."  Mulder followed her into the house.

"Can I get you anything?" she asked.  "I've got . . . well, I 
guess I've got water and diet soda.  It was about time for me to 
go shopping when--when this all happened."  She looked as if she 
were fiercely fighting back tears.  

"No, thank you very much," Mulder said.  He paused a moment, 
thinking of his own loss of Samantha and wondering if it would be 
appropriate to bring it up.  Finally he said, "I lost a sister 
when I was a boy.  We had no evidence to show that she was dead, 
but none to show that she was alive, either.  She just vanished.  
I guess I feel like I know a little of what you're going through.  
I'm very sorry to hear about your brother."

Bonnie smiled at him again, and this time it seemed sad, but 
genuine.  "Thank you," she said.  She settled herself into a blue 
armchair that was nice enough, but which did not at all match the 
rust-colored couch that Mulder sat on.  The couch fabric had 
pinpoint burn holes in it and still smelled of cigarette smoke, 
but there were no ashtrays in sight.  He guessed that Paul had 
been the smoker.

"Do you think you can tell me a little bit about what happened 
the night your brother died?" Mulder asked.

Bonnie looked down at her hands, which she held clasped in her 
lap.  She was wearing a calf-length hunter-green dress of some 
light material, which she'd probably worn to the funeral.  "I 
heard his accident report, and I didn't even know it," she said 
in a small, quiet voice.  "It came at about 4 a.m. over a police 
channel, which we keep tuned to in our EMS trucks.  We sometimes 
get to accident scenes before people call us, that way," she 
said, a subdued note of pride in her voice.  "The cop said that 
there was a van rollover accident out on Zillah Road, and I knew 
Paul had a van, but it never occurred to me that he'd be out 
there.  I mean, what's on Zillah Road?"

Mulder knew that the point was there was nothing there, but he 
refrained from mentioning it.  "They even talked about bringing 
the driver into New Castle Receiving," Bonnie continued, "but it 
turned out that an EMS crew from Duns Scotus was closer.  In a 
way I'm glad, because that would have been a terrible way to find 
out about Paul, to have him dying in my truck, but that way maybe 
I could have spent a few last minutes with him."  She stopped and 
brushed a few tears from her cheeks.  Deeply affected, Mulder 
just sat and listened.

"They say, um, they say that he'd been drinking and smoking pot 
before he got in the van," Bonnie said.  Her voice contained no 
anger or reproach, only a kind of sorrowful shock.  "I guess he 
was doing something like 50 on a wet dirt road when he missed a 
turn.  He tried to compensate, but he lost control and rolled the 
van.  He never would wear his seat belt.  He used to say that 
being thrown clear of an accident was safer, the big dummy."

"Do you usually work the late shift, Bonnie?" Mulder asked.

"No," she said.  "I made a deal with one of my co-workers that I 
would pull a double that night to cover his shift, then he'd 
cover for me next weekend, when a friend of mine's having a 
birthday party.  Doesn't look like I'll be going now, after all."

"Did Paul know you were going to be working late?" Mulder asked.

"Yeah," she said.  "Yeah, I always told him where I was going to 
be."

"Did he always remember?" Mulder asked.

"Well," she said with a little smile, "not always.  I write stuff 
down for him on the pad by the phone, in case anybody calls for 
me, but then he loses the piece of paper I wrote it on.  Paul's 
got A.D.D.  He can be a little goofy."

Mulder nodded.  "Do you know if he tried to call you that night, 
maybe around the time you would usually come home?"

She seemed to think about this.  "No," she said.  "To be honest, 
I was out most of the night.  It was a Saturday during wedding 
and graduation party season, so we had plenty of road accidents.  
But I never got a message or anything."

"What about Danielle's parents?  Did they call you the next day?" 
Mulder asked.

"Yeah," she said.  "They asked for her and seemed surprised when 
she wasn't here.  Actually, I was kind of worried that she'd lied 
to them about where she'd spent the night.  Dani's a basically 
good kid, but she's trying to be 21 at 16, you know?"

"Did you tell them about Paul?" Mulder asked.

Bonnie shook her head.  "I didn't know about Paul myself, then.  
I got the call about an hour later.  Why are you asking me all 
these questions about my brother?" she asked.  "Do you think he 
knew where Dani went?"

"Possibly," Mulder said.  "Dani's parents certainly seemed to 
think that she'd be here.  Did Paul have any friends that live in 
the neighborhood, who would kind of hang around the house?"

"Some," Bonnie said, not seeming to get where he was going with 
this.

"Would you describe any of them as kind of loser types?" Mulder 
asked.  "Guys that were smart, maybe, but never got past high 
school and had trouble keeping a job?  To be honest, we're 
looking for someone in connection with Dani's disappearance, and 
we think he might have met her while she was here with your 
brother.  This guy would have a history of mental problems, he'd 
be the sort who'd make you feel creepy, like you might not want 
him in your house.  He'd be kind of dirty and scruffy, and you 
wouldn't ever see him with girls or with a big group of kids."

A lone tear trickled down Bonnie's cheek.  "That sounds like most 
of my brother's friends," she said.

Inas County Morgue
11:47 a.m.


The x-rays were beautiful.  Unlike a living person, a cadaver 
could be bombarded with a tremendous amount of radiation, which 
meant that post-mortem x-rays were much more clear and bright 
than those taken before death.  The images taken of the body's 
skull were clipped up against a light panel, and Scully held the 
Polaroids taken of her own chalk-marked head next to them for 
comparison.  The fractures were exactly where Mulder said they 
would be.  Scully had also held the base of the borrowed trophy 
against the indentations in the skull, and the match was perfect.  
The ME had determined that the probable cause of death was 
bleeding in the brain.

Danielle Sheppard's dentist had faxed over copies of her dental 
records not twenty minutes ago.  The actual dental x-ray images 
that would provide proof beyond a doubt would be slower in 
coming, but Scully knew enough forensic dentistry to be able to 
decipher the written records.  "Tooth number 3--O-AM," said the 
chart, which meant that Dani's upper right first molar had a 
filling in the biting surface.  A bright spot of metal showed up 
in the identical place in the skull's mouth.  "Tooth number 27--
L-AM," read the next line on the chart.  The x-ray showed a 
restoration there, too.  Scully bent her head and closed her eyes 
a moment.

Mulder had been right.  His reconstruction of events had been 
correct in virtually every particular.  She sighed.  He was going 
to be devastated.


Mulder got Scully's call in the car.  He was very quiet for a few 
moments after she told him.  In his heart of hearts, he'd known 
this was coming, but that didn't make it any easier to hear.  

"Are you all right?" came Scully's voice through the static on 
the cell phone.

"Yeah," he said, although the rough, emotional edge to his voice 
was obvious even to him.  "Does the family know yet?" he asked.

"No, they don't know for sure," she said.  "The ME wanted to wait 
for the dental x-rays to come so there wouldn't be any doubt, but 
it's her, Mulder.  The dental records match, the skull fractures 
are exactly where you predicted."  There was nothing but the 
crackle of static over the line for a second or two.  Mulder 
found he couldn't repress a quiet  sniffle. "I'm sorry," Scully 
said.

"Yeah . . . um, get those x-rays, get whatever proof you need, go 
over to the dentist's if you have to.  I think we should go see 
the Sheppards this afternoon," Mulder said.  "Scully, have you 
ever had to tell someone that their child is dead before?"

More static on the line.  "No, no I've never had to do that," she 
said.

"Okay, I'll be the one to do it," he said,  "you just back me up 
with the medical evidence.  See if you can get that friend of 
Sheppard's to come along, too, Agent Hsu.  Having him there 
should help put the family at ease.  I'll call up Officers 
Steinmetz and Blair.  This is probably the best opportunity we'll 
have to get a confession."

Sheppard Home
1:20 p.m.



Scully thought she'd never had to sit through anything so hard.  
The news hadn't seemed to come as a surprise to the Sheppards, in 
fact, as soon as Mrs. Sheppard had opened the door and saw the 
uniformed officers, one of which was holding the borrowed trophy, 
Scully could tell she knew.  The reaction was catastrophic, 
anyway.

Mulder had sat down with the grieving parents on the living room 
couch, while Agent Hsu stood nearby.  Scully, Stienmetz and Blair 
found places to stand around the living room, both officers with 
their hats off.  Stienmetz, the officer who'd be working directly 
with the state prosecutor, was holding the trophy that was the 
duplicate of the murder weapon.  Everyone but the Sheppards and 
Mulder looked a little uncomfortable.  

Despite the fact that Mulder had come here to get a confession 
from people under extreme emotional duress, without formally 
charging or Mirandizing them, he was in complete crisis counselor 
mode.  He had his hand on Mrs. Sheppard's back and was speaking 
to her softly, offering his condolence and support.  Scully had 
no doubt that he was sincere--he really felt for these people.  
He was going to bust them, no question, but he felt for them.  
She thought, not for the first time, that her partner was a 
strange man.  Scully herself wasn't at all sure how she felt 
about his tactics in gaining a confession.  Stienmetz and Blair 
were exchanging glances.  Scully could tell that they were 
uneasy, too.

The Sheppards, particularly Dani's father, were having difficulty 
keeping their eyes off the trophy Stienmetz held cradled in the 
crook of his arm.  Mulder was clearly observing their reactions.  

At last he asked quietly, "She wasn't supposed to die, was she?"

"No," SAC Sheppard said softly, almost in a whisper.  Scully saw 
Agent Hsu close his eyes and look away.  He must have desperately 
hoped that Sheppard was innocent, and that this was all a 
misunderstanding that would blow over, Scully thought.  Things 
like this weren't supposed to happen to solid, respectable 
citizens.

"Bonnie was supposed to take care of her," Mulder continued.  His 
tone was very gentle, although his words were damning.  "You had 
no idea how badly she was hurt."  Sheppard was nodding the whole 
time.

"Sir, you need to state this in a formal confession," Mulder 
said.  "Bringing out the whole truth is the only thing that will 
help us catch and charge the person who left Dani out in the 
woods like that.  We need to catch him, before he hurts someone 
else.  I know you didn't want this to happen.  You loved 
Danielle.  You were mad at her, you wanted to hurt her, but you 
didn't want her to get hurt."

Scully thought that was an odd way of putting it, but Sheppard 
nodded vigorously.  Apparently, Mulder knew what he was talking 
about.  "You can't take back what you did," Mulder continued, 
"but you can go a little way toward atoning for it by taking 
responsibility and helping to make sure this mutilator gets taken 
off the streets."  Sheppard just nodded again.  

"Sir, we're going to have to charge you in the death of your 
daughter," Mulder said.  He looked up at Stienmetz, giving him a 
wordless go-ahead to Mirandize and arrest the Sheppards.  Any 
confession they made after that would hold up in court.


Afterward, Mulder sat on the hood of their rental car, head bent, 
hands jammed in his pockets.  Scully walked quietly up to him and 
sat on the hood, too.  "You all right?" she asked.  She ran her 
hand up and down his sleeve a couple of times, hoping the simple, 
physical contact would help.

He shrugged.  "Is Elvis dead?" he countered.

Taken aback, she answered, "That depends on who you ask."  

He looked over at her and gave her the ghost of his usual, 
mischievous grin.  "Well, there you go," he said. 

Scully smiled back, relieved.  "I'm glad to see you haven't lost 
your sense of humor," she said.

He sighed, a little shakily.  "Scully, if I ever lost the ability 
to point at the world's stupidity and laugh," he said, "I would 
probably never stop crying."

8798 Berchwood
New Castle, WS
2:53 p.m.


The big, smelly school bus dragged its way down the street to the 
bus stop on the corner.  Thomas watched out of the corner of his 
eye.  He'd changed back into his customary T-shirt and jeans 
after Paul's funeral, and was now ostensibly raking grass 
clippings from his grandmother's lawn.  He'd tied up his puppy in 
the basement, and he could hear it yipping through the open 
basement window.  He'd taken care to set the scene better, this 
time.

The bus stopped at the corner and let a bunch of yelling kids 
out.  Thomas had heard Dawn/Dong Lisowski's little sister 
blathering on the phone to her friend about how glad she was that 
the last week of school was coming and how she was going to work 
at McDonald's to get money to go partying.  Thomas knew how to 
listen in on Dawn/Dong Lisowski's phone line with a couple of 
alligator clips and a wire.

Dawn/Dong's parents had named their younger daughter Ronaldine 
Janet Phillips.  Ronaldine was a stupid, farty name, especially 
for someone who worked at McDonald's, and Ronaldine Janet 
Phillips knew it.  For her school friends, she had reinvented 
herself as R.J., but to Dawn/Dong she was Tootsie.  "Toot-toot-
tootsie, good-bye, Toot-toot-tootsie, don't cry," Thomas thought 
to himself, and smiled.  

Ronaldine/R.J./Tootsie was fifteen and had straight blond hair 
like her sister, but was shorter and fatter.  She smoked 
cigarettes because she thought it was cool and because she hoped 
it would make her lose weight.  She had told her friend on the 
phone that she was still a virgin, but she didn't want to be.  
Thomas figured she was the kind of girl who would sleep with boys 
who didn't love her because she wanted to be wanted.  
Ronaldine/R.J./Tootsie Phillips tried to be all bad and hot and 
cool, but really she was just some blond, teenage fat girl who 
couldn't even get a pity screw and who deep down felt like a 
loser.  Thomas thought that popping her open to see what was 
inside her would be interesting.  Besides, she lived in the 
upstairs of his house, so she was easy pickings.

Ronaldine/R.J./Tootsie came running down the walk, shouting over 
her shoulder to some of the other kids.  She looked round and 
bouncy and happy.  She even spoke to him, "Hi, Thomas," she said, 
as she kicked open the chain link gate with one grubby sneaker.  
She held her backpack slung over her shoulder, its top loop 
hooked on only one finger, and it looked like most of her papers 
were about to fall out the unzipped top.

"Hi, R.J.," he said softly.  He followed her to the foot of the 
outdoor staircase that led to rooms her sister rented.  "R.J.?" 
Thomas called out, before she had climbed very far.

"What?" she asked, turning around.

"Will you help me get my puppy out of the basement?" he asked.

She looked at him funny.  "Why can't you get him out?  It's your 
basement," she said.  Sometimes she was just as snotty as 
Dawn/Dong.  He figured that was about to change.

"Because he's hiding under my grandmother's freezer," he said.  
"I call and call, but he won't come out, and I can't reach back 
that far.  If you come down, maybe you can scare him so that he 
runs out from under it, and I can grab him."

"Well, what did you do to him to make him hide from you?" she 
asked.

"Nothing," Thomas said, in his most innocent voice.  "Please, 
R.J.?" He asked.  "I'd do it for you."

"Oh, okay," she said, dropping her bag on the ground.  The way 
she said that made it clear that she thought she was too good to 
help him, but she'd do it anyway, out of the greatness of her 
heart.  Bitch, he thought.  Just like all of them.

He led her through the front door and into the kitchen.  His 
grandmother was napping in her bedroom, and she would hear 
nothing.  She was mostly deaf, anyway.  Thomas grabbed the sturdy 
leather leash from off of the kitchen table.  It was already 
attached to a small dog collar.  "Once you catch him, I'll collar 
him," he said.  He walked to the basement door and then waited, 
so R.J. would go down first.  As soon as her back was to him he 
threaded the end of the leash through the collar, to make a 
noose.  "She'll go where the goblins go, below, below, below," he 
sang in his mind.  They went down, down.

R.J. stopped at the bottom of the stairs and said, "So where's--"  
Then Thomas threw the noose over her head and cinched it tight.  
He smiled, watching her blue eyes bulge as he threw the other end 
of the leash over a low rafter and pulled on it, yanking her up 
on her toes.  Before she could recover from the shock, he'd used 
his free hand to pull a pair of handcuffs out of his jeans pocket 
and then snapped one bracelet over her wrist.  He hauled that 
hand up toward the ceiling and snapped the other bracelet around 
a water pipe.  There, he thought, watching her gasp and struggle 
like a hooked, bloated fish.  Her lips were already turning a bit 
blue.  That was easy.  

Smart dog, he thought, and smiled. 

Highland Motel
Sweetwater, WS
3:10 p.m.


Mulder stood in front of the TV, towel-drying his hair.  Somehow, 
he'd just felt the need to wash after the events of the day.  He 
could hardly believe that it was only three in the afternoon.  
Half a box of what Scully referred to as "garbage pizza" was 
sitting on the room's little table, and on the TV was a Pay-Per-
View movie entitled "Beverly Hills Reform School Girls in 
Trouble."  Brilliant investigator though he was, Mulder could not 
detect the slightest evidence of a plot.

"Oh, Chad, Oh Brett . . ." moaned one of the female characters.  
He wasn't sure which one, they seemed kind of interchangeable.

"Oh, Tiffany!" answered a male character who could have been Chad 
or Brett.  They seemed kind of interchangeable too.  Just then 
someone knocked on his door.  

"Hang on," Mulder called out.  He waited a moment before going to 
answer it, being fairly curious as to what Chad, Brett and 
Tiffany were going to do with the ball of twine and the popsicle.  
Eventually he tore himself away and put his hand to the doorknob, 
only at the last minute deciding to look through the peephole to 
make sure it was Scully and not, for instance, the Alien Bounty 
Hunter.  

As it turned out, it was neither.  It was a little girl in a 
baseball uniform, toting a plastic bag and a donations can.  
Mulder was horrified to realize that he'd just about opened the 
door to a nine-year-old while wearing nothing but a pair of 
sweatpants, and while the TV was blaring the sounds of Chad, 
Brett and Tiffany doing . . . whatever it was they were doing.  
"Gimme a second," he said through the door and quickly turned the 
TV off.  He grabbed the T-shirt he'd thrown over a chair and 
pulled it on.  When he opened the door, the kid said, "Hi, my 
name is Megan.  Do you want to make a donation to youth league 
baseball?"  The way she said it made it sound as if she'd been 
repeating it all day.  Mulder scanned the second floor walkway 
and discovered that there was no parent in sight.  He mentally 
cursed to himself.  He *hated* it when people let their kids do 
things like this.  As a law enforcement officer and an abductee's 
brother, he knew the kind of things that could happen.  

"Uh, okay . . ." he said, and patted his pockets down.  Of 
course, his wallet was not in his sweatpants.  He realized that 
this was an opportunity to test this kid's level of safety 
awareness, and said, "You want to come in a minute?"  To his 
dismay, she said, "Sure," and followed him in.

Mulder fished his wallet out of his dress pants and pulled a five 
out.  He handed it to the girl, who handed him a small box of 
fairly nasty looking candy in exchange.  "Didn't your mom ever 
tell you not to sell candy to strangers?" he asked.

She looked at him as if he were stupid.  "Seriously, Megan, does 
your mom know where you are?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, sounding a little defensive.  "She's downstairs 
cleaning rooms.  She brings me to work with her sometimes, 
instead of leaving me at Latchkey."

Mulder thought, "Oh, that's a brilliant choice."  He walked Megan 
down to where her mother was working and tried to explain, gently 
and without causing her undue alarm, how allowing her pretty pre-
teen daughter to go alone into motel rooms where armed, dirty old 
men were watching porn was a very, very poor idea.  Satisfied 
that he'd gotten his point across, he trudged back upstairs to 
his room.

He needed to get out of the Midwest.  People here were so 
trusting, it depressed the hell out of him.  It was as if they'd 
open their door to absolutely any wacko who--suddenly he stopped 
at the top of the stairs.  He'd gotten an idea.


Scully looked up from the report she'd been typing on her laptop.  
Someone was knocking on her door.  When she opened it, Mulder was 
standing there in a T-shirt an sweatpants, no shoes, his hair wet 
and sticking up in odd directions.  He tried to hand her a small 
box labeled "Choco-Walnut Turtles," and said, "Hey lady, wanna 
make a contribution to support coed, naked law enforcement?  It 
helps keep Federal Agents off the street and out of trouble."

"Not on your life," she said, and attempted to shut the door on 
him.  He wormed his way in, anyway.  

"Actually, I had this idea about going door to door around the 
area of Bonnie Bremen's house," he said.  "I *know* the guy we're 
looking for lives somewhere around there, and I'm pretty sure I'd 
know him if I saw him.  If we could borrow even a few undercover 
officers from local departments, we could cover the neighborhood 
pretty quick."  

Scully looked up at him, taking in his disheveled looks, his air 
of slightly frantic nervous energy.  She felt pretty confident 
that he was running from his inevitable reaction to the events of 
the day; finding Dani's badly decomposed and mutilated body, 
getting a confession from her distraught parents.  "Do you have 
to do it right *now?*" she asked.  "If you slept on it, you'd 
come at the situation from a fresh perspective."  She refrained 
from pointing out that it would be a good idea for him to deal 
with the emotions that this case had already stirred up, rather 
than go out on a manhunt that would likely frustrate and upset 
him more.

"What--and let that mutilator get a little rest, too?" he asked.  
"I don't like the sound of that note Officer Blair showed me.  
'Thomas the Rhymer' already thinks he's smarter than the police, 
and he had the cojones to stay out in those woods a good long 
time, shredding Dani's body.  There are a lot of things about 
this situation that tell me he's a novice criminal, but his 
comfort level is escalating rapidly.  He's impulsive, he's 
sadistic, and he's not too tightly hinged.  I think that he'll 
want to try his teeth out on some living prey sooner rather than 
later."

When he put it that way, Scully had to concede that he was 
probably right.

8798 Berchwood
3:23 p. m. 


Thomas had tied a rope to the end of the leash, and tied the 
other end of the rope around a heavy cement block.  The block was 
supported by several books of different heights, so he could 
control the amount of strangling force applied to the girl's neck 
by adding or removing books.  She was hanging limp by her one 
shackled wrist now, her eyes unfocussed and her face an 
interesting color of purple.  Thomas thought it was sort of like 
hard-on purple, and the thought made him grin.  He reached up to 
touch her cheek to see if the skin was rigid.  While not hard-on 
rigid, the skin was taut enough.  He wondered, if he applied 
enough pressure to her neck, could he actually make her head pop?  
That would be pretty funny, he thought.  "All around the 
carpenter's bench, the monkey chased the weasel . . . " he sang 
softly.

He had taken a pair of scissors and cut her shirt and bra off.  
It wasn't much of a bra--Ronaldine/R.J./Tootsie probably wouldn't 
have any boobs at all if she wasn't fat, Thomas thought.  He'd 
taken a black magic marker and had drawn lines on her skin where 
he wanted to do the cutting.  He'd already made a little bundle 
of the knives and tools he wanted to use--the tiny knife on his 
keychain had been so useless for dissection.  The best thing he'd 
found was a pair of branch clippers from the garage.  He'd seen 
on TV how they snapped open people's ribcages with branch 
cutters.  He really wanted to get the heart out while it was 
still beating.  He wanted to strip himself naked and dance around 
in a woman's spraying, hot blood--like a renewal, a rebirth, but 
instead of getting squeezed out screaming and crying this time, 
he would tear himself out.  He would be new like the moon, born 
again into a world of pure power.  He giggled and did a little 
dance now, just thinking about it.  

The cutting would have to wait until later, until his grandmother 
went to bed.  He'd need to take her car in order to get the body 
out somewhere where no one would bother him.  That was all right, 
though, Grandma went to bed early, usually as soon as it was 
dark.  He could amuse himself until then.  

His new plaything had been quiet too long, and he frowned.  That 
was no fun.  He grabbed another few books from the heap on the 
floor and levered the cinderblock up. Ronaldine/R.J./Tootsie 
swung entirely by her wrist now, her head lying on her mostly-
flat chest.  Thomas perched on the edge of the cinderblock, 
contemplating her.  Could he have killed her so quickly?  That 
would be a shame.  Suddenly, her body shuddered and she took a 
deep gasp of air.  Thomas smiled.

Westphalen Street
New Castle, WS
4:12 p.m.


Scully flipped down the passenger-side sun shade and looked in 
the mirror attached to the back.  Mulder had convinced her to 
work at trying to resemble what he figured would be Thomas the 
Rhymer's victim of choice.  She was in her off-duty T-shirt, 
flannel button down and jeans, and wore minimal makeup.  Although 
with any luck the guys around the Bureau would be surprised to 
hear it, Scully put a lot of effort into constructing her 
professional "look."  She assembled her outfits and did her hair 
and face up just so, to create the Teflon/ice queen impression 
that got her taken seriously by law enforcement and criminals 
alike.  Without all that paraphernalia, and without the customary 
2 1/2 inch heels, Scully was a little freckle-faced redhead with 
round cheeks and big blue eyes.  After she'd put her hair up in a 
ponytail, Mulder had pronounced her "Cute as a button," and 
attempted to pinch her cheek like some doting aunt.  It was all 
she could do not to kick him.  The point was to look small, 
unimposing, and above all, nonthreatening.  Mulder had pointed 
out that a guy who had to start his predatory career with a dying 
woman wouldn't exactly be tops in the confidence department.

Her job was to go door to door in the general neighborhood, 
ostensibly hitting people up for donations to the National Center 
for Missing and Exploited Children.  Mulder had 
charmed/pleaded/cajoled a couple of New Castle female cops into 
doing the same thing a few streets over, and they'd all agreed 
that any money they actually collected really would go to NCMEC, 
so one way or the other, they were doing something useful.  The 
New Castle police had even had a small stash of NCMEC literature 
and buttons, so they all looked very official.  Although Scully 
was armed beneath her loose flannel shirt, Mulder had sternly 
told her not to go into any of the houses.  She was merely to 
stand on the front doorstep, scope out the house and its 
occupants, and report any promising leads.  So far, she'd come up 
with 3 dollars, 24 cents, and zero leads.

Mulder pulled the car around the corner to the next street.  "How 
you holding up, Scully?" he asked.

"Fine," she said, not looking over at him.  Although she 
understood why they were doing this, and would even have agreed 
that it ought to be done, it annoyed her to have to do it.  She 
did not *like* pounding pavement and wheedling spare change out 
of people who clearly wanted her off their doorstep.  She found 
it wearisome and rather humiliating.  "I'm just looking forward 
to the day when we hunt for a killer who gets off on wiseass male 
F.B.I. agents."  

He grinned at her.  "Hey, why wait 'till we find a killer?" he 
said.  "I'll take *anybody* who gets off on wiseass male F.B.I. 
agents."  

"My guess is we'll find proof of extraterrestrial life, first," 
she countered.

"We're almost done, here, Scully," he assured her.  "Just another 
couple of streets.  How about if I take you out to dinner 
afterward, as thanks for putting up with me?"

She gave him a slightly suspicious look.  "Another stellar meal 
at Al Frank's Cheese Emporium?" she asked.

"It doesn't have to be Al Frank's," he said.  "You can pick any 
cheese emporium you want."

"Lucky me," she said, as he slowed the car to a stop.  She got 
out and surveyed the street in front of her.  More slightly run-
down clapboard houses with pastel paint peeling from their sides.  
Most of the little yards were circled with chain-link fences, 
although some had been prettied up with colored plastic strips 
woven through the links.  Somewhere on the block, a dog yipped 
and yipped.  She pushed the car door shut and headed up to the 
first house, her rather creased brochures in hand.  Just as she 
got to the gate, a couple of papers blew across her feet.  She 
glanced up, and saw that there were a few more of them drifting 
diagonally across the street.  They'd clearly come from a yard a 
few houses down, where papers had blown all over and were only 
prevented from littering all the lawns of the block by the 
encircling low fence.  Scully walked back to the car and opened 
the door.  "I'm going to go check that place out," she said.

He followed her a short way in the car and then parked along the 
curb where he could watch her.  "My own, personal stalker," she 
thought, not for the first time.  She let herself in the gate of 
the house with the littered lawn and picked up one of the blown 
papers.  It was a schoolkid's social studies quiz, on which the 
student had to match the names of South American countries to 
their position on a map.  The kid, an R.J. Phillips, had only 
managed to pull a 60 percent, having confused Brazil with Belize.  
Scully sighed and dropped the paper, unsure if she felt depressed 
over the ignorance of today's kids, or over feeling old for just 
having a thought like that.  The papers were all blowing out of a 
bookbag that had been dumped at the foot of an outdoor staircase.  
When she examined it, she found that a set of house keys were 
still clipped to a D-ring on the bag.  The key ring sported a 
smiley-face change purse and a palm-sized mirror set in a green 
plastic daisy-shape.  Although not evident from the name, R.J. 
was apparently female.  Scully straightened up and looked at the 
wild mess on the lawn.  Warning bells going off in her mind--this 
wasn't right.  She gazed across the street to where Mulder sat in 
the car, paying gratifyingly close attention to what she was 
doing.  Maybe it wasn't so bad to have a personal stalker, after 
all.

She walked up the steps and rang the doorbell.


Thomas was experimenting with his knife collection when the bell 
rang.  His fat blond girltoy had duct tape over her mouth so she 
couldn't cry out, but she was conscious enough at the moment to 
lift her head, desperate hope filling her bloodshot, watering 
eyes.  Thomas found that annoyed him, so he pulled a couple of 
books out of the stack to jerk the noose tight around her neck.  
She made a tiny, whimpering sound and then low choking noises.  
Her hopeful expression was quickly extinguished as her face 
started to go purple again.  Hoping the unwanted visitor would go 
away, he turned back to the task at hand.  He was tracing the 
marker lines on the girl's body with the blade of one of his 
knives, causing a thin rivulet of blood to flow.  He thought it 
might be nice to do research first as to which knives were 
sharpest, whether smooth or serrated was better for cutting 
flesh, and so on.

The doorbell rang again.  Thomas hissed softly between his teeth.  
He didn't want extra people in the house.  His grandmother had 
been quiet all afternoon, and he didn't want her up and around 
looking for him, asking him annoying questions.  From upstairs, 
he heard the sound of the door opening.  "Anybody home?" called a 
woman's voice.  Cursing, Thomas threw the knife away in disgust.  
He tromped up the stairs to confront this intruder.


Scully stood at the top of the front steps, peering into the 
little house.  There was a small foyer before her, with a living 
room to the right and a kitchen to the left.  The furniture all 
seemed old, done in the oddly garish colors of the mid-70's, but 
faded in spots as if long exposed to sunlight.  She heard the 
sound of someone coming up a set of wooden stairs--someone who 
sounded none too happy.

A man exited the kitchen and came to stand in front of her.  
"What are you doing in my house?" he demanded.  He was a slight 
guy, maybe 5' 6", 140 pounds soaking wet, but Scully found 
herself not wanting to provoke him.  All the muscles of his body 
seemed tense, and he gave off a strange, wild energy.  His blue 
eyes fixed on her a little too intently, and his long, stringy 
hair and grubby clothes gave him a kind of street person 
appearance.  This guy was clearly not the home owner.

"Your sister's losing her things all over the lawn," Scully said, 
trying to give him a reassuring smile.  She was pretty damn sure 
R.J. wasn't his sister, but she wanted to see his reaction.

He looked at her blankly.  "What?" he asked.

Scully held one of the blown school papers out to him.  "Your 
sister, R.J.," she said.  "Her stuff is all over the lawn."

"Oh, oh yeah," the man said, a slow smile spreading over his 
face.  "She's a little mental," he said, tapping the side of his 
head with one finger.  "Mental Yentl's what we call her."

"Is Mrs. Phillips home?" Scully asked.  Another blank look.  
"Your mother?" she prompted.

"No--no, I live with my grandmother.  She's real old and sick, so 
she's sleeping.  Shhh," he said, putting his finger to his lips.  

"He'll live with an older female relative . . ." Mulder had said.

"I think you should go now," said the man.  He walked straight at 
her, obviously trying to back her toward the door.

"Don't you want your sister's papers?" Scully asked, not budging 
and again pushing the paper sheet at him.

This time he took it from her, and where his forefinger brushed 
it, it left a small smear of blood.  Scully saw it, and when she 
looked up at him she saw he knew she'd seen it.  Suddenly he 
slammed both his hands into her chest, knocking her backward and 
down the steps.  Scully had enough hand-to-hand training to roll 
with the fall, ending up on her feet and relatively unhurt.  She 
heard the sound of a lock being turned in the house, and then the 
sound of a car door slamming as Mulder came after her.

"Scully!" he was shouting.  "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she said, running for the bookbag and unclipping the 
keys.  "I think our friend in there just gave us probable cause."  
She ran back up to the door, retrieved the bloodied paper from 
the ground and handed it to Mulder.

"Shit," he said, as she tried the key in the lock.  It didn't 
fit.  

"You work at breaking it down, I'll try the door on the second 
floor," she said.  Something about the way the bag had been 
dropped at the foot of the stairs suggested to Scully that if the 
girl didn't live here, she was at least used to letting herself 
in.  What was it Mulder used to say--killers liked to start close 
to home?

She ran up the outdoor steps to the door set in the upstairs 
wall.  This time the key turned in the lock.  Scully found 
herself in a tiny makeshift living room that had certainly once 
been a bedroom.  The place was scattered with a young child's 
toys and a half-empty soda bottle stood on the cheap coffee 
table, but no one seemed to be home at the moment.  She quickly 
found the door that must lead to the stairs to the lower level.  
Although the door at the top of the steps had been bolted, the 
door at the bottom was not.  Scully went to the foyer and let 
Mulder in. 

By now a little old lady had tottered into the living room, and 
was demanding, "What on earth is going on here?"

Scully called out, "We're looking for your grandson," as she ran 
into the kitchen and found the door that she was pretty sure led 
to the basement.  She tried the knob--it turned, but there was 
some small bolt inside holding the door closed.  "Damn it," she 
said.

"Here," said Mulder, who proceeded to kick the door in, 
splintering the jamb and tearing the little bolt out with it.  
Brilliant, sensitive individual though he might be, reflected 
Scully, Mulder still made a really effective grunt.

She followed him down into the basement, where she smelled blood 
even before she saw it.  Once Mulder was out of her way, she 
could see a young girl, half-naked and covered in blood, who 
dangled limply from one wrist chained to an overhead water pipe.  
While Mulder went after their suspect, Scully tended to the 
victim.  

There were hideous purple ligature marks on her neck, and below 
that her tormentor had slashed her throat.  Dark blood was 
pouring out of the wound, but it wasn't spurting, which meant 
that as badly as he'd cut her, he'd missed the carotid artery.  
Knives and various tools were scattered over the ground, next to 
a strange set-up involving a stack of books, a cinderblock and a 
length of rope.  By the wall Scully found a pair of branch 
cutters, which she was able to use to chew through the links of 
the handcuff chain.  As the girl crumpled to the ground, Scully 
heard the sounds of Mulder "subduing" the suspect, which seemed 
to consist of beating him up.  Seeing the extent of the 
petechiae--blood vessels broken due to strangulation--in the 
girl's eyes, on her face, even on her shoulders and back, Scully 
found she didn't have much sympathy for the guy.

From the top of the stairs the grandmother was shouting, "Oh!  
Oh, stop!  I'm calling the police!"

"Ma'am, we are the police," Scully shouted back.  "You need to 
call an ambulance.  A young woman is dying down here."

Al Frank's Family Restaurant and Cheese Emporium
Sweetwater, WS
7:09 p.m.



Despite what Mulder had said, they ended up at the Cheese 
Emporium anyway.  Or rather, Scully did--so far, he hadn't even 
shown up.  Ordinarily, she would have been very annoyed, but 
under the circumstances she cut Mulder some slack.  If he forgot, 
then he forgot.  He'd had a rough day.  

Eventually, however, he walked through the restaurant doors, 
looking very tired and a little shell-shocked.  Scully was glad 
she'd thought to order him an iced tea.  He plunked down on the 
seat opposite her and drained about half the glass at one pull.  

"Should I have made it a double?" she asked.

He gave her a weary, lopsided grin.  "No thanks, I'm drivin'," he 
said.  "How's Ronaldine Phillips?"  

"Stabilized," she said.  "She lost a lot of blood and no one's 
sure if there's been damage to her brain due to oxygen 
deprivation, but the doctors think she'll pull though."

Mulder nodded.  Scully thought she saw the tension in his 
shoulders lessen, just perceptibly.  He rolled the iced tea glass 
between his hands.  "The New Castle PD got Thomas the Rhymer to 
give them a blood sample.  I'm virtually certain the DNA will 
match the semen found at the body dump site." he said.  "His real 
name is Thomas Edward Fairlight, 22 years old, no prior arrests.  
At the age of 16 he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.  
Five months ago he was released from Battleborough Psychiatric 
under the guardianship of his grandmother, and two days ago his 
psychiatrist proclaimed his progress 'excellent.'  Danielle 
Sheppard was already dead at the time."  He lifted his glass and 
took another sip.  "We found some interesting stuff in that 
basement of his.  You recall that I predicted he'd have a 
collection of bondage porn.  That wasn't exactly true--he'd 
snitched underwear catalogs from his neighbors' mail and then 
drawn wounds and restraints on the models.  Apparently he's a 
creative guy.  There were also several prints of the dissection 
drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, probably cut from library books.  
He had that famous 'Ecce Homo' picture--of the guy in the circle 
and the square, pinned up over his bed.  He'd added breasts to it 
and drew over the abdomen to make it look like the internal 
organs had been taken out."

"Just like he did to Danielle," Scully said gently.

"Yeah," Mulder said.  He was silent a moment, just watching the 
iced tea glass as he rolled it between his hands.  "I was right 
about the Doberman and the Nazi memorabilia, too," he said at 
last.  "He had an abridged, graphic novel copy of "Mein Kampf"--
go figure--stuck under his mattress.  He'd done some interesting 
things to those pictures, as well.  

"So am I too sexy for the F.B.I. or what?"  The boast fell flat, 
however, and Scully thought that he was trying to compensate for 
whatever he was feeling inside.

"You're spooky, all right," she assured him.  "Are you going to 
be okay?  You've had to deal with the abduction of two young 
girls in one day, plus a set of grieving parents.  That's got to 
be pretty hard."

He didn't answer immediately.  Instead he pressed his fingertips 
over his eyes and sighed.  "It doesn't seem too hard for anybody 
else.  Why do I have to be the wuss who can't stand the heat in 
the kitchen?  Why do I have to be the psycho-freak?  I feel like 
. . . I dunno.  I feel like such a complete loser." 

"What ever happened to being too sexy for the F.B.I.?" she teased 
him gently.  To her relief, that got something resembling a 
smile.

"All that proves is that everyone else is a bigger loser than 
me," he said.

"Go on back to the motel," Scully advised him.  "If there's 
anything I can bring you, let me know, but I think you ought to 
rest.  I think you ought to take it easy on yourself and not flog 
yourself so hard.  You did an excellent job with this case.  Two 
days, Mulder, and you cracked it wide open, on not much else 
besides behavioral evidence.  Everyone else thinks you're pretty 
cool.  They don't think you're a loser."

He was quiet for a moment, looking away from her.  Finally he 
relaxed a little, and she saw the customary wicked spark return 
to his eyes.  "You think you can send someone over who could flog 
me better?" he asked.

"Get out," she said, laughing.  "Go away, you pervert."  She 
stood and all but shooed him out the door.  As he backed toward 
the exit he tried digging out his wallet and saying, "Wait--I 
thought I was supposed to buy you dinner."

"I told you to get out," she said.  "Go and get some rest or I 
will drug you and stick that wallet where the sun doesn't shine."

"There are men who would pay handsomely for that service," he 
informed her.  She lifted her hand as if she intended to swat 
him, but he flashed her a sad smile and turned and left.  She 
stood in the doorway, watching him walk across the parking lot 
toward the motel across the street.  For some reason, the best 
way to comfort Mulder seemed to be to insult and threaten him.  
Scully surprised herself by spontaneously offering up a prayer 
for his protection.  Shaking her head, she went back into the 
Cheese Emporium to settle the bill.

Late that night


Fox cried out softy and stirred.  This wasn't what he wanted to 
see, not now of all times.  The terrible light--the sense of an 
unknown presence; the wave of terror and grief.  Some small, 
lucid corner of his mind told him that he'd known this was 
coming.  It always did.  The experience was always there, at the 
best of times only thinly veiled by busyness and the passage of 
years.  But for some part of Fox's core, no time had passed at 
all.  It was the eternal Now, November 27, 1973.

Blessedly, the image of the light faded and resolved itself into 
his first clear recollection afterward.  It was of his father 
shaking him.  ". . . what are you talking about?  Talk sense, 
boy!" Bill Mulder had demanded.  

"I dunno, Dad, they just took her," he'd protested.  At that 
point, Fox had burst into tears.  Disgusted with his weepiness 
and uselessness, Bill had given his son a shove and stalked away.  
Fox had turned to his mother then, who seemed no better able to 
deal with this situation than he was.

"Hush, Fox, I'm calling the police," she'd said, looking hard at 
his father.

"No, you won't," his father had said.  "I'm calling the 
Department first."  An argument followed, but as usual, his 
father won.  He'd shut himself in the bedroom and Fox could hear 
him shouting over the phone at someone.  Fox couldn't make out 
the words, though, because his mom was shouting at his dad 
through the bedroom door at the same time.  Terrified, confused, 
Fox stood amid the mess of plastic game pieces that he and 
Samantha had been playing with, praying that somehow things would 
be all right.  Eventually, the bedroom door slammed open.  He ran 
up the stairs, only to see his father vanish into the bathroom.  
Dad slammed that door, too, and then came the sound of water 
running in the sink.  It wasn't loud enough to cover the sound of 
him crying.

Tears?  Before calling the police, before even asking the 
neighbors if they'd seen a dark-haired little girl in a nightgown 
leave the house?  The grown Fox Mulder knew what the boy in the 
dream had only intuited: the reaction was totally wrong.  "It was 
his choice," Mulder's mother had once told him, "and I hated him 
for it."


Scully found her self pulled from the depths of dreamless sleep.  
Her eyes flicked open and she looked at the clock.  3:23.  Damn, 
she thought.  She hated it when she woke up in the middle of the 
night--chances were that she'd burn holes in the ceiling until 
dawn, now.  Then she heard the sound that had awakened her--
someone knocking at the door.  She knew who it had to be.  She 
rolled out of the bed and padded over to the door.  She was 
wearing her "decent" pajamas, an emerald satin two-piece.  The 
idea was that if she were called out in the middle of the night 
to chase shadowy hit men or mutants, she wouldn't be wearing 
anything that would get her arrested.  She'd been out on 
assignment with Mulder a lot of times, and she knew what to 
expect.

She opened the door and found Mulder standing there in a T-shirt 
and sweats, his arms wrapped around his ribcage, looking pale and 
sick and miserable.  "Come on in," was all she said.  

He took a few steps in and looked around a moment, as if unsure 
what to do with himself.  Then he pressed his hands to his face 
and wept.  The sobs came so hard that they seemed to drive the 
breath out of his body.  Scully sat down on the edge of the bed 
and coaxed him into sitting next to her.  She'd known this was 
coming.  In fact, she was surprised that it had taken so long to 
hit.  "It's all right," she told him gently, rubbing his back.  
"Hush, Mulder.  Hush, Fox."  Of course, it wasn't all right and 
Fox did not hush, but at least he turned to her and allowed her 
to hold him.

Eventually his cries of despair lessened into the softer, 
cleansing tears of grief, and then into silence.  He let her rock 
him a good while before he pulled away, wiping his eyes on the 
sleeve of his T-shirt.  "You doing better?" she asked.  He 
nodded.  "Were you dreaming about your sister?" she asked.  He 
didn't answer.  Sniffling, he got up and went into the bathroom.  
She heard him blowing his nose.  He came back with a large wad of 
tissue and sat down next to her again, resting his cheek against 
her sleep-tousled hair.

"Scully, can I tell you something?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"Sure," she said.  She reached out and took his hand, and he 
pressed hers back.

"I've been told outright a couple of times that my sister was 
abducted as insurance--to keep my dad quiet," he said.  She 
nodded, he'd told her that before.  "My mom once told me that he 
asked her to make a choice--which one of us she'd rather keep . . 
."  His voice broke over the last words and he turned away for 
few moments, apparently fighting for control.  She just rubbed 
his back and waited.  

Finally, he managed, "I think she figures he chose to keep me.  I 
mean, Dad was kind of a chauvinist pig and everything."

Surprised, Scully asked, "What makes you think he didn't?"

"Because that would make no sense," he said.  "If the Consortium 
wanted to make sure they had him by the short hairs, why would 
they take the kid he was least concerned about?  When was the 
last time you heard of them doing anyone any favors?"

Scully found she had no answer to that.  All she could think to 
say was, "Mulder, I'm so sorry."

"My dad was a vet, a government employee, a guy raised in an un-
PC world where it was very much women and children first, in 
terms of the people who deserved protection," Mulder said.  "Some 
of the worst beatings I ever got were for letting Sam wander off 
when I was supposed to be watching her."  Scully looked over at 
him, and saw a sad little half-smile on his face.  The expression 
was one of rueful grief mixed with love, she thought, for the 
little sister he'd lost, for his grieved, disillusioned mother, 
even for the father with whom he'd had a difficult, conflicted 
relationship.  "I think everything in my dad's background would 
have made him balk at putting a little girl in danger.  I was 
older, I was the guy . . . I think he told them to take me.  I 
wish they had," he said, very softly.  

Scully found tears welling up in her own eyes.  Mulder seemed to 
notice, and tossed some of his Kleenex into her lap.  "Here, have 
a tissue sample," he said.  She could not help laughing, despite 
her sadness. 

"I believe in evil," he said, as if that was the most logical 
segue in the world, "I've seen enough, and to be honest I've done 
enough, to know it exists.  But even I've got to admit that pure, 
sadistic evil--Thomas Fairlight evil--is pretty rare.  What's 
much more common is a combination of lesser sins that add up to 
evil.  Like Sheppard getting pissed and beating his daughter, 
then trying to cover it up.  That in itself is pretty bad, but 
when you throw in a wild card like Fairlight . . ." he shrugged, 
seeming at a loss for words.  "The scary thing is that all the 
little sins we commit, when we think no one will find out and 
which we figure won't do any harm, have the potential to add up 
into real, honest-to-God evil.  I mean, God knows I've done stuff 
I'm ashamed of . . ."

"Mulder," she said, forestalling any self-critical tirade he was 
planning to make, "there's a moral distinction between you and 
Thomas Fairlight.  Even between you and Grant Sheppard.  Have you 
ever lost control and beaten someone you loved?" she asked.  

"No," he responded, in a very small voice.

"Do you like hurting innocent, helpless people?" she asked.

"No," he repeated.

"Well, I know that you're not an angel, but it seems to me that 
you're way ahead of those guys right there," she said.

"Scully," he said, very softly, "I should have watched her 
better.  I should have--"

"Hush," she cut him off.  "You were just a little boy.  Even your 
dad couldn't protect her.  What could you have done?"

"They were supposed to take me instead.  I should have found a 
way.  Dad was so mad at me when he found me alone without her . . 
."

"Quiet," Scully told him.  "That's nonsense.  I'm sure even your 
father knew that it was nonsense to blame you.  You were a 
twelve-year-old child and you did the best you could--you pulled 
a gun on the people who threatened her, didn't you?  He couldn't 
have blamed you."

"You didn't know him," Mulder said.  "And anyway, they weren't 
people . . ." he sniffled and reached up to blot his eyes.  "When 
my mom told me that they'd taken Samantha to keep my dad quiet, I 
was almost glad, you know?  That's how deep the denial goes.  I 
figured that if she was supposed to be a bargaining chip, they'd 
have a stake in keeping her alive.  They'd have to take good care 
of her.  But Grant and Tina Sheppard thought that their daughter 
would be taken care of after they left her at the Bremen house, 
and what happened?  Once a kid's out of her parents' hands, she's 
friendless, helpless, people can do anything to her  . . ." his 
words ended in a soft cry.  

Scully hugged him tighter.  "Your mom and dad loved you," she 
said.  "maybe they weren't perfect in the way they showed it, but 
they loved you.  Your sister loved you.  Even if something 
terrible happened to her, it still wouldn't be your fault.  Not 
even if she bugged you.  Not even if you were afraid your parents 
liked her better--"  Her last words precipitated a renewed bout 
of weeping.  Scully could picture what was going through his 
mind.  Fox didn't speak much about his childhood, except for 
about the horrific abduction experience, but she'd gotten bits 
and pieces over the years.  Enough to create a vivid impression 
of a detached and demanding father, who might be willing to 
indulge the little daughter whom he didn't expect much of, but 
who held his firstborn son to a rigid set of standards.  Fox 
seemed to have taken a lot more physical punishment than 
Samantha, as well as a lot more censure in general.  How could he 
not resent the little sister who'd seemed to get such special 
treatment, however much he'd loved her?  How could he not 
secretly wish that she'd vanish?  "If it makes you feel any 
better," she told him, "I was about eight before I stopped asking 
my parents to take my kid brother Charles back to the hospital."

His breath caught mid-sob and then he was almost laughing.  "Your 
phantom brother Charles?  I thought they *had* gotten rid of 
him," he said.

"Just because you've never met him doesn't mean he doesn't 
exist," she said.

"I think you made him up," Fox said, teasing her a little 
shakily.

"Since when have you doubted the existence of things you haven't 
seen?" she asked.  He didn't answer.  Dana reached up to stroke 
his hair; she didn't think she'd ever been so fond of him.  "It's 
all right," she told him.  "You're all right.  You're a good 
person.  Don't let anyone tell you that you're a loser, or that 
there's something wrong with you."

"No," he said at last, his voice a little muffled from him 
pressing his face into her shoulder, "If someone finds the 
disemboweled body of a teenage girl in the woods and I *don't* 
freak out about it, if I *don't* cry, then I'll worry about 
what's wrong with me."  After a few moments he stood and said, 
"What if I just crashed over here?"  He pointed to indicate a 
chair in the corner of the room.  

"Fine with me," Scully said.  Actually, it would have been fine 
with her if he'd cuddled in bed with her, but she doubted that 
he'd be comfortable with that.  In her experience, women could 
easily see clothed, horizontal snuggling as a tender, non-sexual 
encounter, but men had a lot more difficulty about that.  She had 
chided Mulder enough about respecting her boundaries, and she 
thought it only fair that she respect his.  

He grabbed a spare blanket and pillow from out of the closet and 
settled himself in the chair, his head up against the wall.  
Almost immediately, his breathing became slow and regular, and he 
seemed to be sleeping as close to the sleep of the innocents that 
a hard-core and self-admitted paranoid could.  

Scully, by contrast, did not fall quickly into sleep.  "If I 
*don't* freak out about it," he'd said.  The F.B.I. agent in her 
said that Mulder's emotionalism was amateurish, even if 
understandable, given his background.  The lifelong Catholic in 
her told her that his reaction was the only decent one.  A tear 
ran down the bridge of her nose as she stared at the slumped-over 
figure of her partner, who was by now breathing deep and evenly.  
It was very like him to effortlessly take all her professional 
values and to stand them on their heads, she thought.  And it was 
very like him to be right.

Scully's Apartment
Next Evening


The events of the previous days had left Scully feeling raw, as 
if the layer of toughness that protected her from the horrors she 
encountered every day had been stripped away.  She'd gone through 
her usual self-comforting rituals; she'd taken a bath, turned off 
all the lights and lit candles, but these had had only a minimal 
effect.

She walked over to the laptop on her kitchen table and turned it 
on.  She was going to have to get this report written sooner or 
later, and she thought she might as well do it now if she wasn't 
going to be able to sleep.  She went to her CD player, thinking 
that she'd choose something soothing.  She ran her fingertips 
over the CDs that lay stacked on the shelves around the player.  
To her surprise, they stopped on an album she hadn't listened to 
in years: Sting's "Nothing Like the Sun."  It had been one of her 
sister's favorites, and she hadn't been able to listen to it 
since Melissa died.  She opened the dusty case and put the disk 
in the player, then settled down at her computer.

It had been a long time since she'd been able to write so 
straightforward a report.  It was short and to the point; from a 
legal and scientific perspective there was nothing left 
unexplained.  Trying to get some political leverage out of this, 
she had intended to end the report with the words, "Due to the 
excellent investigative instincts of Agent Mulder, and the high 
degree of professionalism and cooperation displayed by the 
various agencies involved, this case has been brought to a 
successful conclusion." 

Oddly, however, she felt no sense of closure.  It was as if the 
case had raised ghosts that refused to be put to rest.  She sat 
and watched her cursor blink at her until the screen saver came 
on.  It was a black screen with a scrolling marquee message, 
written in white: "Trust No One."  Mulder had put that on there, 
and she'd never bothered to change it.  She typed in her password 
to turn the saver off.  

She made a new paragraph at the end of her report and wrote, 
"CASE FILE ADDENDUM.  Agent Mulder made an interesting point at 
the time of case closure.  Speaking both as a private citizen and 
as an agent trained in Behavioral Psychology, he stated that it 
was the ordinary perpetrators, whose motives were understandable, 
if unconscionable, which he found most distressing, rather than 
Thomas Fairlight, whose crimes were incomprehensible and on the 
face more brutal.  Agent Mulder was disturbed by the Sheppards' 
very ordinariness, by their standing as leaders of the community 
and by their apparent good intentions, which were all destroyed 
by one moment of poor judgment.  His point was that not only can 
any of us at any time become victims, as law enforcement 
continually advises the public, but under the right 
circumstances, any of us can become victimizers."  Scully stopped 
and watched the cursor blink again.  

Finally, she typed, "Although this observation may have no place 
in a Federal case file, this investigator would like to note that 
it is the duty of the Justice Department to defend our citizens, 
but not to judge.  The faith which lies behind the statement, 'In 
God we trust,' teaches us that we are all fallen creatures, and 
no man or woman can with a clear conscience judge another."  She 
paused a moment and then wrote, "May God help us all."

She folded her hands and pressed them against her lips, looking 
at the last sentence.  She'd almost certainly be told to strike 
it out--separation of church and state and all--but somehow it 
felt right to have written it.  

Much to her surprise, she realized the CD had nearly played 
itself through.  The last song, beautiful and bittersweet, had 
been a particular favorite of Melissa's, and Dana found tears 
welling in her eyes as she listened.  

Sting's honey-rough voice whispered the final lyrics as the song 
faded into silence: 

"On and on the rain must fall
Like tears from a star,
Like tears from a star.

On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are."

*****************************************************************

The above lyrics are quoted without permission from "Fragile," a 
song on Sting's "Nothing Like the Sun."  All of the technical 
research in this story was gotten from former Special Agent John 
Douglas' excellent books: "Mindhunter," "Journey Into Darkness," 
and "Obsession," published through Simon & Schuster/Scribner, as 
well as from "Dead Men Do Tell Tales," by William R. Maples, 
Ph.D., published by Doubleday.  These books all make fascinating 
reading, and are worth checking out even if you never research 
anything.

*****************************************************************