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. *****************************************************************