Title: Resurgam 
Author: Ophelia
E-Mail: OpheliaMac@aol.com

*****

Mulder found Scully awake when he returned.  She looked pale but 
seemed aware of her surroundings.  "Hi," he said.  "How you 
doing?"

"Better," she said. The unflattering fluorescent light made the 
dark circles under her eyes stand out.  She looked like she could 
sleep for a week.  

He sat down next to her and brushed his hand over her forehead.  
"You're not looking so good," he said.  "But then you should see 
that truck."

That only got the slightest flicker of amusement from her.  "They 
haven't found the little girl, have they?" she asked.

"No," Mulder said.  "Joey says they're working through the night.  
They'll find her."  Scully shut her eyes but made no reply.  
"What happened?" Mulder asked. "What did you see?"

"I told you," she said.  "I heard a child screaming out in the 
woods -- terrified, crying and crying.  I followed the sound all 
the way out to the crime scene area until I came to a house.  
There was blood all around it . . . and sitting in the snow was a 
girl, a very little girl holding a young baby in her arms, just 
weeks old.  Someone had almost cut its head off.  I fired in the 
air to scare off the attacker and tried to pick them up, but she 
had a knife and it cut my hand."

"Who had a knife?  The kid?" Mulder asked.  Scully nodded. 
"There's a little kid out there with a knife?" Mulder asked 
again.  The case was getting more bizarre by the minute.   

"She was trying to protect the baby . . . maybe not from me.  I 
don't think she was afraid of me; she wanted me to stay with her.  
I knew I had to get them out of there but she wouldn't let me 
pick her up.  I sat down with them . . . no, did I? I don't 
remember.  It seems like I was there a long time, and then 
suddenly you were beside me and I didn't know where I was."
Scully put her hand to her head as if trying set the chain of
events in a logical order.

Mulder hesitated, torn between pushing her for more information 
and letting her be.  He decided that he had to push if there 
really were dying children out there.  "Scully, Joe says that 
there aren't any buildings in the area where I found you.  He 
wants to know if you saw a landmark, anything else that you 
can--"

"I know what I saw," she snapped.  

"Okay, okay.  There was blood in the snow?" Mulder asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Lots of blood, arterial blood everywhere," Mulder said.

"Yes," she said again.  He bent and picked up one of her shoes 
from underneath the chair and held it toward her sole up.  There 
was mud caked between the white rubber treads but there was no 
blood visible.  Mulder turned the shoe right side up and showed 
her the rust-colored spots on the uppers.  This was not blood 
that had been churned up from the ground.  The round splotches 
were the kind made by blood that had fallen.  It was almost 
certainly from her own hands.

"Oh, God," Scully said.  "God."  She pressed her bandaged hands 
to her face.  

"It was dark.  You were confused," Mulder said.  

"The doctor wants to do a CT scan of my head.  I know why -- I 
told him I'd had cancer and he wants to see if there's a tumor in 
my brain making me hallucinate," Scully said.

Mulder hadn't considered that possibility.  The thought that she 
might be sick again was like an icy hand at his throat.  "It 
sounds like a good thing to check out," he said. 

"Mulder, if I have cancer that's metastasized to my brain then it 
doesn't matter if I have a CT done here or back in D.C. or 
nowhere at all," Scully said.  "I don't want to stay.  I want to 
go back to the hotel."

"So you're signing yourself out against medical advice?" Mulder 
asked.  He knew it was unfair to be upset about it.  He'd done 
the same thing many times. 

"He didn't say I had to stay.  My ribs are just bruised, and my 
hands aren't cut that badly.  Everything still works."  She 
slowly touched every finger of her left hand to her thumb.  From 
her expression he could see that it hurt her.
 
"I wish you'd have the CT done," Mulder said.

"Before all this happened I felt fine.  I had a check-up in 
February," she said.  She must have seen the worry on his face 
because she said, "I'll have it done in D.C.  I want to spend 
what's left of the night in a real bed."

"Okay," Mulder said, resigning himself to her decision.  He took 
her hand and lifted her swollen fingertips to his lips.  "I'll 
see if I can get your discharge papers."  He stood and walked 
over to the nurses' station.

It was unmanned just then, and as he waited he had time to think 
about his painfully divided feelings.   His first impulse was to 
believe everything Scully told him.  He could usually trust her 
perceptions more than he could trust his own, and yet in this 
case there was evidence that did not bear her story out.    If 
she was mistaken, if her mind truly had been affected by 
something unknown, then it was not these mystery children who 
were in danger. Instead, Scully herself was the person most at 
risk.  

In his mind's eye he saw Kristie's body on the autopsy table, and 
his fingers tightened around the edge of the nurses' station 
counter.  He directed a rare plea to Scully's God, //She believes 
in you.  She still trusts you after everything she's been 
through, and that ought to count for something.  I'd have told 
you to go to hell by now.   Prove that you're worthy of her 
trust.  Take care of her.//  

As always, Mulder had no sense that anyone was listening.  
   
*****

It was close to dawn when they left the hospital.  Scully's 
bloodied clothes were dry, but Mulder wrapped his own coat around 
her shoulders as an extra layer between her and the cold.  She 
curled up in the car's passenger seat with her face toward the 
window.

Neither partner spoke as they drove slowly back toward Nye House.  
The snow had stopped falling, but it blew over the road in weird 
little spinning flurries that obscured Mulder's vision.  These 
miniature blizzards were unpredictable and maddening.

His overtired mind began to imagine the elements had a will of 
their own.  The fitful wind seemed restless.  Visibility 
worsened in every intersection, and he started to suspect the 
night of an uneasy mischievousness just short of malice. 
The saner portion of his mind told him to pull over and rest 
before he put the car in a ditch, but some instinct warned 
him against stopping.  He looked over at Scully; she seemed 
relaxed.  Why was he anxious about parking along a quiet road 
on the outskirts of Edgartown?  

A shadow appeared in the headlights.  He pulled his foot off the 
pedal and hit the brakes, half expecting to hear a "thud" as he 
hit a dog or a baby deer.  But the shade dissolved the instant 
he looked straight at it.  Mulder blinked and tried to clear his 
head.  The dizzying swirl of snowflakes made it hard to think, 
much less focus on the road.  He could not shake the feeling that 
there was something outside the car.  

Scully sat up beside him, holding herself very still, as if 
listening.  "What is it?" he asked.  "What do you hear?"

"Nothing," she said softly.  In the dull-green dashboard light 
her expression was unreadable, but he sensed tension in every 
line of her body.

The watching silence seemed to grow louder.  "Yeah. I hear it 
too," Mulder said.  

Powdery snow swirled over the windshield.  Stray sleet pellets 
struck the glass like tiny, frustrated fists, as if to say: //In, 
in, in.  Let us in, in, in.//  

Slowly, like a child fascinated by fire but afraid of being 
burned, Scully lifted her bandaged fingers toward the windshield.  
The wind scoured the glass with ice dust as though it would wear 
away the barrier between itself and her.

"Don't," Mulder said.  He caught Scully's hand and pressed it 
down onto her lap.  The view went nearly white and gusts of wind 
made the car bob like a boat on a choppy sea.

"Mulder--" Scully said, gripping the dashboard with her free 
hand.

Mulder tapped the brakes, and the car's back end fishtailed 
toward the middle of the road.  He turned the wheel in the 
direction of the skid to try to stop the uncontrolled sliding. 
Tires squealed as he struggled to compensate for their 
still-powerful momentum, and the Ford barely skirted the edge 
of the narrow shoulder.  The back rotors made a whining noise
as one tire spun in space over the gully. Mulder downshifted 
quickly and the car lurched forward, sending up a shower of 
gravel.  After a bad moment when they seemed headed for the 
opposite ditch, he was able to guide the vehicle back into 
the right-hand lane.  

"Mulder, it's too icy.  Pull over," Scully urged.  

"No, that's what it wants -- to keep you out in the storm so it 
can have another shot at you," Mulder said.  Whatever the 
howling, blowing thing was, it seemed to have a special interest 
in Scully.  He wasn't about to stop and hand her over without a 
fight.  Instead he accelerated. 

"What are you *doing?*" Scully asked.

"Hang on," Mulder said.  In a low voice he added, "We'll see who 
blinks first."  

"Are you trying to kill us?" Scully cried.

He pressed the gas pedal, and the speedometer needle climbed past 
30, 35, 40 miles per hour.  Visibility was near zero; he was 
driving on sheer faith and desperation.  He spoke to the thing 
outside the window, "Go back.  Go back where you came from.  
She's not yours; leave her alone."

Scully screamed his name.  Brilliant lights flashed to Mulder's 
right and he heard the blare of a truck horn.  He glanced over 
and saw a big rig barreling toward them, just meters away.  Mulder 
hauled the wheel hard left and turned onto the intersecting road, 
barely ahead of the truck.  For a moment the 18-wheeler's 
headlights filled his entire rearview mirror.  

The car's momentum sent them hurtling off the road into a field, 
where frozen weeds lashed the Ford's sides as it jolted over 
uneven ground.  Mulder's teeth rattled as he brought the bucking 
car to a stop, facing north after having spun a full 270 degrees.  

His first thought as he shifted into park was that he hadn't done 
a bad job of rural combat driving.  Then he saw Scully huddled in 
the seat next to him, her bandaged hands over her eyes.  "Hey," 
he said, reaching out to touch her hair.  She tried to shrug his 
hand off.  "I'm sorry," he said.  "I'm sorry I scared you."  He 
got no response.  

"I was scared too," he admitted.  Could he explain to her why?  
What if she hadn't felt the hostile presence after all?  He 
glanced down the road in the direction the truck had gone.  The 
night-being seemed to have vanished with it, but Mulder didn't 
feel that his victory over it was conclusive.  "I thought I was 
doing the right thing," he said.

After a few seconds she scooted close and put her arms around 
him.  "You're okay," he told her.  "You're going to be all 
right."  

"What's happening to me?" she asked, her voice muffled against 
his chest.  

"You're going to be just fine," he insisted.  

"I want to stop up ahead," she said.

"Where?" Mulder asked, puzzled.  

She turned from him and pointed toward a building on the far 
corner, just visible in the blue-gray light of pre-dawn.  The 
marquis sign in front was a bright blur in a haze of drifting 
ground-snow, but its light was enough to illuminate a tall, white 
figure standing beyond it.  The pale form seemed to be draped in 
a heavy fabric which initially reminded Mulder of grave clothes.  
Then he recognized the silhouette's veil and gently inclined 
head.  It was a statue, probably a Madonna and child.  
  
"Sure," Mulder said.  He slowly made the bone-rattling drive back 
up to the road.  In his experience, spectral entities did not 
actually avoid churches, but it was probably a good idea for him 
to get out from behind the wheel until daylight.  The church 
seemed a better place to rest than an unsheltered spot along the 
roadside.  

When he pulled into the parking lot he asked, "Think we'll be 
able to find a spot?"  Scully gave him a thin smile.  The place 
was deserted.  The sign by the road identified the church as Our 
Lady of Refuge, and listed its earliest Mass time as 8:30 a.m., 
just over 90 minutes away.  "You don't want to stay for the 
service, do you?" Mulder asked.  

"No," Scully said.  "I just want a minute."  

He parked the car and then followed her up to the church doors.  
Ordinarily he would have asked if she wanted to be alone, but 
under the circumstances he didn't want her out of his sight.  She 
looked very pale and fragile under the gray bulk of his coat.  

The first two doors she tried were locked.  "It's still kinda 
early," Mulder said, when to his surprise the third door swung 
open at her pull.  "I guess they like early around here," he said 
as he followed her inside. The vestibule was dark and silent, its 
air filled with the chill of the snowy morning.  Mulder caught 
the faint wood-varnish smell he associated with churches, along 
with a smoky-pungent odor he supposed was incense.  

He'd been in law enforcement too long to feel comfortable in an 
unlocked and apparently empty building.  He eased the corner of 
his sweater up to make access to his weapon easier, and slipped
the safety off.  Hoping he wouldn't need the gun after all, he 
followed Scully into the darkened sanctuary by sound as much 
as by sight. 

Once his eyes adjusted, the sanctuary's layout surprised him; it 
was a small, boxlike affair with two straight rows of pews 
leading up to the altar.  The general effect was of a 30's-era 
Assembly of God church with statues of Mary and Joseph hanging 
roughly where the gospel choir ought to stand.  The blue sections 
of the tall, narrow stained-glass windows had begun to glow 
faintly, but the room's only significant light came from the 
ruby-colored Presence candle that rested on a shelf in the far 
corner.  

Mulder remained in the doorway as Scully walked down the aisle, 
lowered herself carefully onto to one knee, then rose and slid 
into a pew.  After a few moments he heard a soft "thunk" as she 
lowered the kneeler.  Her garments rustled as she knelt down. 

He stood and watched her with a mixture of tenderness and 
something akin to awe.  He had always been a little envious of 
her spiritual life. Even though he teased her about 
Christianity's more blatant contradictions, he would have liked 
to believe in her God, to have a connection to the source of 
inexhaustible comfort and strength she described.    

It was no mystery why people who detested religion were atheists.  
But Mulder desired to believe and could not, which was proof 
enough for him that such a God did not exist.  In his more 
paranoid moments he believed in another kind of transcendent 
being, one who heard prayers but did not answer, who watched the 
tortured writhings of humanity but did not act, or worse, who 
watched and smiled.  Maybe Scully would pray for him.  If her 
benevolent God existed after all, perhaps he would have mercy on 
Mulder for her sake.  

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the outer door 
opening.  Mulder felt the inward rush of colder air and stepped 
further into the sanctuary.  He rested his hand against his 
stomach, not far from the holster clipped to his waistband.  
//What if it's something I can't shoot?// he thought.  The small, 
shadowy figure that was Scully hadn't moved at all.  He wondered 
if she'd fallen asleep leaning against the pew in front of her.  

A voice called from the vestibule, "Hello?"  It was a man's, 
human and nervous-sounding.  Mulder relaxed a little.  

"Hello," he called back.  He returned to the doorway and found a 
bearded little man with thick glasses standing near the outer 
doors.  He was wearing sweat pants and an Edmonton Oilers 
sweatshirt, and in his hands he carried a flashlight and a mop 
which he brandished like a weapon.  

"The church is closed.  You shouldn't be here," the man said.

"I'm sorry -- the door was open," Mulder said.  "My partner was 
injured last night and she just wanted a few minutes.  We didn't 
mean any harm."  As an afterthought he pulled his ID wallet from 
his pocket and offered it to the man.

The man came forward hesitantly and shone his light on the FBI 
badge.  He looked back and forth between Mulder's face and his ID 
picture several times.  He did not appear to recognize Mulder's 
name, which in a way was a relief.  Mulder was fairly certain 
this church had been built after he became an adult and left the 
Island for good.  

"You're here because of that poor girl that died?" the man asked.

"Yes," Mulder said.  

"Well, bless you for that," the man said, seeming to relax.  "Is
your partner all right?"

"She will be," Mulder said.  The man looked past him into the 
sanctuary, and Mulder understood his wordless question.  "She's 
right in there," Mulder said.

The man leaned his mop against the wall and walked down the aisle 
toward Scully.  He put his hand on her shoulder and bent to speak 
to her softly, angling the flashlight so it didn't shine in her 
face.  Mulder heard Scully's whispered reply, "Yes, Father."

It hadn't occurred to Mulder that the little guy in the Oilers 
sweatshirt was the priest.  He immediately dubbed him Father 
Gretzky.  Whatever the man asked Scully next, she shook her head 
no. 

"Are you unable to take it?  I can give you a Host to take with 
you," Father Gretzky said.  

"No, Father.  Thank you," Scully said.

The priest seemed about to argue the point, but then relented.  
"If you change your mind, we have Mass at 8:30, 10, and 11:30 
this morning.  You can call for the Sacrament of Reconciliation 
at any time," he said. 
 
"Thank you, Father," Scully said.

The priest remained a moment, then lightly brushed her hair with 
his fingertips and turned to walk back up the aisle toward 
Mulder.  "I can give you a few more minutes, then I'll have to 
ask you to leave," he said.

"We won't be long," Mulder said.

Father Gretzky glanced back toward Scully, his expression one of 
concern.  "You're sure she's all right?" he asked softly.  

"She's tougher than she looks," Mulder said.  The priest nodded 
once, but didn't appear convinced.   

Dawn had come, pale and cold, by the time Mulder and Scully left 
the church.  "Did you just turn down Communion?" Mulder asked as 
he unlocked the car door.  She shot him a don't-you-start-too 
look.  Although no Catholic theologian, Mulder was aware that 
turning down the services of a priest on a high holy day was a 
very big deal, and not like Scully at all.  Suddenly he regretted 
all the times he'd twitted her about her faith.  The last thing 
he wanted to do was damage her relationship with God.  "That 
wasn't because of me, was it?" he asked.

"I told you once, Mulder.  Not everything is about you," Scully 
said.  

Mulder drew breath to argue with her, but then released it.  
She'd made it plain enough that she wanted him to butt out.  He 
popped the lock for her and she slid into the passenger seat.  
Both of them remained silent during the ride back to Nye House. 

*****

Late in the morning, Mulder awoke to the sensation of Scully 
shaking him.  "Mulder, wake up.  There's somebody at the door," 
she said, her voice husky with sleep.  He opened his eyes and 
looked up at her.  She sat up in bed next to him, wearing one of 
his button-down shirts.  The blue-and-white striped fabric had 
become as rumpled as the sheets lying bunched over her lap.  
Sunlight streamed from behind the closed curtains and backlit her 
tousled hair, giving her an irregular aura.  Mulder just 
stretched out and enjoyed the sight of her.  The sunlit morning 
almost let him forget the unexplained terrors of the night 
before, and there was nothing he wanted more than to spend the 
rest of the day in bed with her.

The phone trilled sharply.  With reluctance, Mulder rolled over 
and picked up the receiver.  "Mulder."

"Agent Mulder, this is Detective Davis from Yarmouth.  Can you 
come to the door?" the voice on the phone said.

"Yeah, hang on," Mulder said.  He got up and pulled on his jeans 
and a sweater.  With luck, Davis had caught Kristie's killer or 
rescued the two kids Scully saw in the storm last night.  Mulder 
didn't let his hopes get too high; he knew his luck tended to 
fall into the bad-to-none category.  

He opened the door to find the mustached detective tucking his 
cell phone into an inner pocket of his trench coat.  Davis' gray 
3-piece suit was immaculate except for the reddish Vineyard mud 
that clung to his cuffs and shoes.  Clearly he'd been up and busy 
for quite a while.  Mulder scratched his day-old growth of beard 
and felt like a slacker.  

"Sorry to have to disturb you, Agent.  How's your partner?" Davis 
asked.  Something in the detective's overly casual manner made it 
obvious he knew that Mulder need only turn around to ask.

Mulder could just feel Scully cringe, even though Davis hadn't 
said anything inappropriate.  In a way that made it worse -- 
someone with nothing to hide would have missed the embarrassing 
connotations of the question.  "She'll be fine.  How can I help 
you, Detective?" 

"A couple of troopers picked up John McBer outside Oak Bluffs 
last night, although he claimed to be Jim MacDonald at the time.  
They're holding him for driving under the influence," Davis said.

Mulder recognized the name of the drug dealer Kristie had been 
scheduled to testify against.  "Have you talked to him yet?" 

"No.  That's what I came to ask you to do," Davis said.  He must 
have read Mulder's doubtful look because said, "Chief Luce 
recommended you.  He said you'd been part of the FBI's Behavioral 
Science Unit and that you have a knack for interrogations."

"Joey said that?" Mulder asked.

"Actually he said that he'd known you since you were five years 
old, and that you were the greatest mind-fuck there ever was," 
Davis said.
 
Okay, that he could imagine Joe saying. "I take it McBer isn't 
desperate to confess to anything," Mulder said. 

Davis' brief smile didn't reach his eyes.  "You could say that.  
He's out on bond, charged with the murder of a narcotics agent in 
1997.  The case against him isn't great, but the prosecutor took 
it when Miss Herron turned State's evidence.  Now that she's dead, 
McBer knows he's got a good chance of getting off if he just 
keeps his mouth shut.  It all seems a little convenient."

Mulder ran his fingers back through his hair, trying to think.  
It had been a long time since he'd consulted on an interrogation.  
It had been a long time since anyone cared about his professional 
opinion on anything.  "Has he asked for his lawyer yet?"

"Not last I checked. All he knows is he was brought in for drunk 
driving and that the judge is almost certainly going to revoke 
his bond -- which was 3 million dollars, by the way," Davis said.  

"He posted that?" Mulder asked.  He tried to imagine the judge's 
reaction to the news that McBer had actually bonded out.  He was 
pretty sure he could guess the prosecutor's reaction.  The guy 
was probably ready to tear a phone book in half.  

"McBer's father used to own Youngstown Steel, but the family's 
not so rich they ought to have a spare 3 million lying around.  
I think he has some friends who are willing to pay up front to 
make sure he never has to say too much in court," Davis said.

Terrific.  Now McBer was a mob-connected drug dealer.  "You're 
right.  Those are about the longest odds on a confession I ever 
heard," Mulder said.

"If you're not comfortable just say so.  We can go ahead without 
you," Davis said.  Again, the words were neutral, but the way the 
detective looked steadily at Mulder made the statement into a 
challenge.  

Mulder wondered, did this man want his help that badly?  Or was 
it simply that the investigators had very little to lose?  If 
they gambled on the FBI's Least Wanted and everything hit the 
fan, they might just be able to shift some of the blame onto 
Mulder.  

He released his breath slowly and came to a decision.  "Okay.  
I'll need as much information on him as you can find.  If he's 
ever had a psyche evaluation done as part of a court proceeding 
or a prison intake, I'd really be interested in that." 

Davis nodded as if satisfied.  "I'll see what I can do.  How soon 
can you be ready?" 

"Give me 10 minutes to get rid of my Don Johnson look," Mulder 
said, running his hand over his beard stubble.

"Sure.  I'll call the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department and see 
what they can fax over," Davis said.  He retrieved his phone and 
walked toward the stairs dialing.   

*****

After Davis' question about her, Scully quietly retreated to the 
room's tiny bathroom.  She stood at the old-fashioned sink, 
unwinding the gauze around her hands while the two men talked in 
the doorway.  She felt very fragile, like a pane of glass.  If 
someone pushed her she felt she might fall to the floor and 
shatter.  

Scully looked at her reflection in the mirror with grim dismay.  
Her skin was very pale and dark circles stood out underneath her 
Eyes.  The ashy contrast made her eyes seem too bright, as if she 
had a high fever.  She remembered what Dr. Neumann in the ER had 
said about getting a CT scan done.  Gingerly, she pressed her 
fingertips against the flesh around her eyes and nose, the area 
that had once concealed the tumorous mass.  Her examination 
caused her no pain or bleeding.  If the cancer had returned it 
might have gone somewhere else, perhaps deeper into her brain.  

The priest at Our Lady of Refuge had offered her the Sacraments 
of Communion and Anointing of the Sick early that morning, and 
her refusal of both seemed very strange even to herself.  If she 
was going to refuse the Sacraments, why had she gone to the 
church in the first place?  

She'd been seeking comfort, safety . . . no, it was more than 
that.  She'd been seeking a connection to something beyond the 
suffocating limits of everyday experience -- something like the 
power she had touched out in the woods.  Yet the Sacraments were 
so bound up with life's prosaic milestones that she feared they 
would pull her back into the circle of ordinariness, away from 
the numinous edge she was contemplating. 

When she shut her eyes she could still see the woods by the 
graveyard -- moonlight sparkling on new-fallen snow, the pale 
little figures huddled in a spreading dark stain.  "Stay," the 
girl with the knife had said.  Scully still felt the pull of her 
call.  The vision's icy desolation spoke to her in a language 
she'd never heard outside her own dreams.  The child's loneliness 
was Scully's own.  It reminded her of the words of the psalm: 
like "deep calling to deep."  

When Scully lost her daughter and any future chance of 
motherhood, it was like having half of herself cut away.  The 
tiny children in the woods had lost their mother.  They needed 
her.  The three of them fit together, like fingers into a glove.  
Despite all reason, Scully ached to feel those small, chilled 
bodies nestled against her own, filling the terrible space Emily 
left.

She heard Mulder come back into the room, reciting a line from 
"Mission: Impossible" to himself: "Your mission, Mr. Phelps, 
should you choose to accept it . . ."

"What was that about?" Scully asked.  Somewhat to her surprise, 
she sounded almost like her usual self.  

"Detective Davis just asked me to help interrogate John McBer," 
Mulder said.  "Getting a confession out of him is going to be 
like selling Perrier to a drowning man."  He walked into the 
bathroom and Scully moved over to give him space at the sink.  
"How are your hands?" he asked.

"They're fine," she said.

He glanced down at her bruised and stitched skin and said, "In 
that case 'fine' doesn't look too good." He unzipped the small 
traveling case resting on the back of the sink and pulled out his 
electric razor.  

There was something bizarre about the two of them sharing a sink 
while calmly discussing murder and mayhem.  Just another morning 
in the Twilight Zone for Mulder and Mrs. Spooky.  "I'll be all 
right," she insisted.  

"If you're not, will you call me?  It doesn't matter if I'm still 
in with McBer.  Davis says they can get along without me anyway," 
Mulder said.

"I'll call you," Scully said.

He stopped unwinding the razor's cord and looked down at her.  
"Promise?" he asked.

She managed the three-fingered Girl Scouts' salute with her 
unbandaged right hand.  "Scout's honor," she said.

Mulder reached out and gently folded her first and fourth fingers 
down so she was flipping him off. "That's what you're really 
trying to tell me, isn't it?" 
  
Scully smiled despite herself, and for the first time she felt 
truly present in the room with him.  "I'm not the one who said 
it," she said.  "I think you should talk less and shave more.  
You've got a lot of Perrier to unload." 

He seemed to relax at the change in her manner.  "So I'll throw 
in one of those little drink umbrellas," he said.  She slipped by 
him as he hunted for an electrical outlet hidden in the dizzying 
Victorian pattern of the wallpaper.  

Scully sat down in the little round-backed chair by the window 
and waited until Mulder's razor started buzzing.  Once he was 
occupied, she used her cell phone to call Martha's Vineyard 
Hospital and ask if any injured children had been admitted late 
in the night.  None had.  She wasn't all that surprised; she'd 
already begun to suspect that the bloody little girl with the 
gray eyes had been beyond human help for a long, long time.  

Scully hit the "end" button and sat with her hands in her lap, 
folded around the black rectangle of the phone.  The knuckles of 
her right hand were swollen and discolored, with a line of black 
stitches like barbed wire marching across them. She lifted her 
left hand and looked at the cuts across the palm.  They were 
nearly identical to the defense wounds found on Kristie Herron's 
body.  

She felt she understood that troubled young woman, who in all 
likelihood had given birth to a stillborn child.  Scully wondered 
if Kristie had also felt called toward the darkness beyond the 
graveyard.  Had she known the risks and gone anyway, hoping what 
dwelled out there would fill the hollow space inside her?  

Mulder's razor switched off, and Scully quickly replaced her 
phone on a trunk at the end of the bed, among her bloodied 
clothes.  There was no real reason to keep her activities secret.  
Why should it bother Mulder if she called the hospital?  

The truth was she wanted to avoid his questions.  She feared he 
would sense her thoughts and be horrified.  Then he'd hover 
around her like a mother hen and keep her from -- Scully shied 
away from thinking, //returning to the bloodied spot among the 
crime scene markers.//  She told herself Mulder's well-meaning 
attention would simply get in her way.  She had a personal stake 
in this investigation now, too.  There were people she wanted to 
interview, and Irv Stuckey was high on the list.  

She made herself very busy putting on the less-soiled articles of 
her clothing as Mulder came out of the bathroom.  "Are there any 
drug stores open on Sunday around here?  I want to get the script 
for antibiotics filled as soon as possible.  Having my hands get 
infected is the last thing I need," she said.  

He looked a little taken aback by her sudden hurry to leave.  
"Probably not around Chilmark.  You could try down-island, 
Edgartown or Oak Bluffs," Mulder said.  

"All right, I'll do that.  Are you riding with Detective Davis, or 
do you need the car?" she asked. 

"I guess I don't need it," Mulder said.  He picked up his keys 
from the little oval nightstand and offered them to her.  

"Thanks," she said.  She stood on her toes and kissed him gently.  
He said nothing, but she felt his eyes on her as she gathered her 
things together and headed out the door.  

"See you," he called.

*****

Mulder felt uneasy as he watched his partner go.   Something was 
bothering her and she didn't want to talk about it, that much was 
plain.  He repressed his urge to follow and badger her into 
talking to him.  //If she wants privacy that's her prerogative.  
She doesn't have to tell you everything,// he thought.  The last 
thing either of them needed was for him to turn possessive out of 
fear of losing her.  

He gathered the few things he would need for the coming police 
interview with McBer: the Narcotics Anonymous book Scully had 
found in Kristie's bedroom; his reading glasses; his cell phone.  
As he locked up the room and walked down the hall to meet 
Detective Davis, he tried to keep his mind focused on the task 
ahead.  Scully was better at staying out of trouble than he was.  
She said she was fine, and he'd have to take her at her word. 

Davis was standing at the foot of the stairs.  "I talked to 
Suffolk County.  Most of the information you want is in Concord," 
he said, naming the state prison just outside Boston.  "McBer was 
there between '93 and '95 for cocaine possession.  They had him 
on intent to deliver too, but the court reversed the conviction 
on appeal.  The arrest wasn't as clean as it should've been."  
Mulder walked beside the detective as they crossed the front 
room.  "This time it has to be done right," Davis continued.  
"They call that lawyer of McBer's 'Jaws,' and it's not just 
because he's a legal shark.  The guy mouths off to the media a 
lot and gets them circling around an investigation.  He's gotten 
a couple of acquittals by essentially putting the arresting law 
enforcement agency on trial.  I think it's only fair to warn 
you."

Oh, great.  Skinner was going to love this.  Mulder stopped at 
the front door and said, "Being the scapegoat's nothing new for 
me, but I think it's fair that *you* know I'm not officially 
working this case.  I'm just here with my partner."

"Actually, you are working," Davis said. "Your A.D.'s been 
enthusiastic about having you guys involved with this 
investigation.  He left us an off-hours contact number Friday 
afternoon, and I got your official participation approved five 
minutes ago."  

"Skinner did what?" Mulder asked.  Skinner hated bad PR, and he 
was willing to officially assign Mulder to a job like this?  
There was no question that Scully's misgivings were confirmed -- 
something big was about to go down in D.C.  

Davis' look of satisfaction was unmistakable.  Mulder figured he 
was happy to have the FBI between him and the first volley of 
crap that the media was likely to throw.  "A.D. Skinner said he 
has the utmost confidence in you.  Back in Boston you yourself 
said we were going to want your help.  You getting cold feet?" 
the detective asked.

Open mouth, insert foot.  "No," Mulder said. "Let's get going."  
He followed Davis out to the car, wishing he'd gotten more than 
five hours of sleep the night before.  //You used to love doing 
this kind of thing under pressure,// he told himself.  He'd 
seldom experienced anything like the adrenaline high he got in 
the BSU, doing work other people could "appreciate," as Skinner 
put it.  //Then again, there was the insomnia, the chain smoking, 
the broken relationships . . .//

Once Davis pulled out of the gravel driveway and turned east 
toward Edgartown, Mulder pulled his cell phone from his jacket 
pocket and set Kristie's NA book on his lap.  The book was still 
wrapped in a battered dustjacket taken from a French/English 
dictionary. 

Davis glanced down at it. "What is that?" he asked.

"My partner and I found it at the Herrons' house last night," 
Mulder said.  He opened the cover and revealed the handwritten 
names and phone numbers that dotted the blank first page.  "Have 
you spoken to Brenda, Kim, Amber, Jane, Lisa, Kevin--"

Davis glared at him and said, "No.  You might have let us know 
you'd found that." 

"It was a busy night," Mulder said.  "I'm putting my first bet on 
Brenda," he said, pointing to the circled name with the star next 
to it.  There were three numbers below, labeled "H," "W," and 
"cell."  He dialed the "H" number with his thumb.  

He listened while the phone rang and rang. "Come on, Brenda," he 
said.  Finally there was a click and the answering machine picked 
up.  Mulder hung up and dialed her mobile phone, fidgeting with 
the torn dustjacket while the phone rang.  "This reminds me of 
the night before Junior Prom," he said, which got no noticeable 
reaction from Davis.  Scully would have thought it was funny.  

At last a woman answered.  "Hello?" She said.  

"Hi --  is this Brenda?"

A static-filled pause followed.  "Who is this?" the woman asked.  
Mulder got the impression that if he gave the wrong answer she'd 
hang up and call the cops.  He supposed a lot of ex-addicts had 
people they'd rather not take phone calls from.  

"I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI.  I'm helping 
investigate Kristie' Herron's death and I wanted to ask you a few 
questions," he said.

"This is a federal case?"  For some reason she sounded pleased. 
"Then you nailed McBer." 

"What makes you say that?" Mulder thought he'd managed to keep 
the excitement out of his voice.  He wished to God he was 
recording this phone call.

"You don't *know?*  His connections to the 'Columbian export 
business,'" Brenda said.  She had a deep, husky voice, like that 
of a woman who'd long been a heavy smoker.  "I hoped you'd 
caught whichever one of them did it."

"So you think McBer ordered a hit," Mulder said.  Davis was 
trying to keep one eye on the road and one eye on him.  Mulder 
wondered what the detective would have paid for a speaker phone 
just then.

"She lived out here all her life.  Don't expect me to believe she 
walked off that cliff by accident," Brenda said.

"Did she say anything that made you think she was afraid?" Mulder 
asked.

"Yeah, she did.  When she called me Tuesday night," Brenda said.  

"What time?"

"6:30 maybe -- no, 7, because it was already getting dark. It was 
weird because just a couple days before she told me she wasn't 
afraid of him anymore, that she was looking forward to putting 
him away.  Then all of a sudden she tells me she's not 
testifying; she's backing out; she's calling the D.A. to tell him 
the deal's off.  I told her, 'Girl, this is your *life.* The D.A. 
can reinstate those charges against you as fast as he dropped 
'em,' and she said she'd rather go to prison than get shot in an 
alley.  I was sure McBer had gotten to her somehow.  I asked her, 
'Who called you, Kristie?  Who's threatening you?'  But she kept 
saying, 'Nobody, nobody, nobody.'  She never would tell me what 
scared her so bad, but I got her to put off calling the D.A.  I 
wish I hadn't, now."

"You couldn't have known what would happen," Mulder said.  

"No."  Brenda's brash voice had grown quiet.  "You'll get him, 
won't you?  He's not going to get away with what he did?"

"We're going to do everything we can," Mulder said. "Is there 
anything else you can remember, something somebody said, even if 
it didn't seem important at the time?" 

"I've been trying to think, but I can't come up with anything 
that would prove he did it.  It's just a strong gut feeling.  
Believe me, if I could hand him over to you on a silver platter 
I would," she said.  

Mulder thanked her and gave her instructions on how to contact 
him in case she thought of anything else.  He pulled a notepad 
from his coat pocket and scratched a few notations into it.  

Davis seemed to be having trouble focusing on the road.  "Well, 
what did you get?" he asked.

"Enough to make me really interested in what McBer was doing last 
Tuesday," Mulder said, not bothering to look up from the paper.  
He'd often claimed his inner child was a little shit, and he was 
enjoying the detective's fidgeting immensely.  

There was only one ferry company that made runs to Martha's 
Vineyard during the off-season, and Mulder dialed its number from 
memory.  It didn't take long for the receptionist to find a deck 
hand who remembered a man in a wheelchair driving a specially 
modified Ford Prospector van.  The van required a double-wide 
parking space so the chair lift could operate, an accommodation 
that might have been difficult on a more crowded run.  The van 
and its driver were so unusual that the ferry worker could give 
the exact time and date he'd seen them: Tuesday, April 11, at the 
10:45 a.m. Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven crossing.  

Mulder shared this information with Davis, who made a few calls 
of his own to determine Kristie's schedule on the 11th.  Before 
they reached Edgartown they had a critical window of time: 
between 6:10, when Kristie clocked out at her job at a grocery 
store in Aquinnah, and just before 7 p.m. when she arrived home.  
The drive itself should not have taken more than 15 minutes.  

By the time they pulled into the lot behind the Dukes County 
House of Correction, Davis had stopped giving Mulder those dry, 
knowing looks.  Clearly, Mulder had come a long way from the 
nutcase in the autopsy bay in the detective's estimation.  As 
they stepped out of the car into the cutting spring wind, Davis 
asked, "What did you leave the BSU to do, again?"

"I work on the X-Files Unit," Mulder said, shrugging his coat 
more squarely onto his shoulders.  "I chase aliens.  I thought 
they'd told you that."

"Aliens," Davis said.  He didn't seem sure whether Mulder was 
serious or not.

"Aliens, mutants . . . we get a pretty good variety of cases, 
really," Mulder said, leading the way toward the small, unmarked 
door in the back of the building.  The Dukes County Jail did not 
look like a lock-up.  One hundred and twenty-five years old, it 
had been built to resemble a whaling captain's house, complete 
with a fanlight over the door and imposing white columns at the 
corners of the front porch.   

Mulder hit the buzzer that would alert the jail staff that they 
were waiting.  He turned to Davis, who stood with his hands 
tucked into his armpits.  The bright sunshine gave hardly any 
warmth at all.  "I had a case similar to this once," Mulder said.  
"A quadruple amputee who was able to master the art of astral 
projection decided to settle some old scores by committing 
several murders.  I admit I was worried about how to get charges 
filed, but one of his victims solved the problem by getting up 
out of his hospital bed and shooting the guy.  It's sort of a 
story about overcoming obstacles."

To his credit, Detective Davis simply would not be shocked.  He 
squinted up at Mulder and said, "I suppose you're going to tell 
me McBer can do this too?"

"Of course he can't," Mulder said, "It's obvious the cuts on 
Kristie's body were made by somebody with limited strength and 
mobility.  You think that in his revenge fantasies McBer would 
give himself the same physical disabilities he has in life?  Come 
on.  That's why I classify paranormal phenomena by motivation 
whenever possible.  It saves so much time that might be wasted in 
empty conjecture."

Whatever Davis' reply would have been, it was forestalled when 
the door opened and a brown-shirted corrections officer leaned 
out.  "Agent Mulder and Detective Davis?" the officer said.  
Mulder and Davis produced their badges.  "Follow me," the c.o. 
said. 

The room beyond was a kind of wire-mesh cage with a bank of metal 
drawers along one wall for officers to lock their weapons in.  As 
they disarmed, Davis glanced up at Mulder and muttered something 
about the Justice Department that ended with, "Only under 
Clinton."  

The c.o. produced a jangling collection of keys and opened the 
door to the cage, then the ordinary wooden door that led to the 
jail's cramped office space.  Among the too-numerous desks stood 
large group of officers, some wearing the browns of the Sheriff's 
Department and some in the blues of the State Police.  Joe Luce 
caught his eye and nodded at him.  Joe was in civilian clothes, 
jeans and a sweatshirt printed with the logo of a local marina.  
He looked about as tired as Mulder felt.  

"Mr. Mulder," a woman said.  Mulder looked over and saw Liz 
Hawley, late of the West Tisbury PD, wearing the star-shaped 
badge of the Dukes County sheriff.  Hawley had been one of the 
people most interested in charging Mulder with the murder of his 
father.  She was a heavy woman and the close-fitting shirt and 
slacks of the Sheriff's uniform didn't suit her, but there was 
clearly muscle under her bulk.  Mulder wouldn't have wanted to 
tangle with her in a dark alley.  She was giving him a cold stare 
right out of "High Noon."  

"Sheriff Hawley," Mulder said.  

"Chief Luce here tells us that your background at the FBI may 
help us pull a couple of investigations out of the fire.  If you 
have any ideas, we'd sure like to hear them," she said.  

//And then one of the boys'll git us a rope . . .// "Give me half 
an hour with McBer's file. I'll be able to give you 
recommendations after that," Mulder said.  

Hawley said, "I hope so."  

Mulder pretended not to notice the chilly looks the local 
officers gave him while a c.o. went to pull McBer's information 
off the fax machine.  There were people who could see past the 
death of Mulder's father, but no Island cop was going to forget 
John Lee Roche or what had almost happened to an eight-year-old 
mainland girl.  Under the circumstances, Mulder accepted their 
hostility as his due.  

The returning corrections officer handed him a stack of papers 
about the thickness of a small phone book.  Mulder appropriated a 
desk for himself and settled his reading glasses on his nose.  As 
he read through the blurry third-generation copies, he began to 
piece together the strategy he would use with their murder 
suspect.  

Soon his apprehensions began to fade.  The case was not 
impossible, and as he would have told anyone who asked, he was 
very good at what he did.

*****

Scully did not get out of Nye House as quickly as she wanted to, 
mostly because there was nowhere to go.  Her phone inquiries 
revealed that every store east of Vineyard Haven was shut down 
between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning.  She had to ask 
Leigh for some gauze for her hands, which were throbbing despite 
the Tylenol-3 tablets the ER doctor had discharged her with.  The 
little proprietress not only produced a first-aid kit but would 
not hear of her leaving without clean clothing.  Most of the 
clothes Scully had with her were spattered with dried blood from 
the night before. Unfortunately, Leigh was about Scully's height 
but much heavier, while her daughter Tammy was considerably 
taller.  Scully stood quietly by while Leigh rummaged in Tammy's 
closet, coming up with dusty clothes the young woman hadn't worn 
since high school.  

Leigh was more than happy holding up both ends of the 
conversation as she reminisced about her youth and Mulder's 
childhood.  "He was a great favorite of my mother's.  She used to 
have him recite "Annabelle Lee" for her.  He could memorize 
practically anything if he read it once or twice."

"Not Poe's "Annabelle Lee?" Scully asked, holding up a shapeless 
white sweater.  

"Oh, yes.  I remember one evening we were out with our guests in 
the garden, watching the fireflies come out.  Suddenly I heard my 
mother say, 'Aha!' and I turned to see her pull Fox from a clump 
of her raspberry bushes, still sucking juice off his fingers.  He 
was about eight or nine years old, just a skinny little fellow in 
shorts with scratches on his knees.  Mother pretended to be very 
cross and explained that this was little Fox Mulder from up the 
road and that he'd been into her raspberries again.  She said, 
'Fox, I won't scold you on one condition -- you must recite 
"Annabelle Lee" for everyone.'  We thought she was joking and 
everybody laughed.  Then he actually began reciting it.  He got 
such a smile on his face when he saw how amazed we were." 

Leigh shook out a dusty pair of stretch pants and said, "It *was* 
funny, hearing a fidgety little boy with two of his teeth missing 
say things like, 'this maiden she lived with no other thought, 
than to love and be loved by me.'  I'm sure he had no idea what 
half of it meant.  'The sepulcher there by the sea' indeed!  He 
was simply glad for all the attention and that he wasn't in 
trouble."

Mulder had not retained that innocence for long, and Scully felt 
a pang of tenderness for him that was almost grief.   "He never 
told me that story," she said.  "He doesn't talk about his 
childhood much at all."

"He may prefer not to think about it," Leigh said. "For a while 
he was a terribly, terribly unhappy boy.  He did odd jobs for my 
parents when he came to stay with his father.  He'd had some kind 
of falling out with the children he used to play with, and there 
really wasn't much for him to do except get into trouble -- and 
he was very good at doing that.  Not that it was all his fault.  
There probably wasn't anywhere on the Island he could go without 
meeting with the kind of attention he didn't want.  

"Once I found him in reading a comic book in the loft of the 
utility shed.  The picture on the cover was horrible -- bloody, 
screaming people running away from some kind of spaceship 
shooting fire.  The way he was hiding with it made me think he 
wasn't supposed to have it, but he didn't seem to be enjoying it 
at all.  How can I describe the look on his face?  Like a man 
looking through the newspaper for an obituary he doesn't want to 
see.  He seemed truly frightened, which was odd because he was a 
great big boy and here it was broad daylight.  I didn't have the 
heart to tease him about it.  All I asked was, 'How can you sleep 
at night after reading things like that?'  He looked up at me and 
said, 'I can't.' I believed him.  His face was so pale and he had 
dark circles under his eyes.  Had it been any other boy I'd have 
thought he was into drugs, but somehow not Fox.  He was quite 
rational, quite lucid . . . just so very frightened when there 
ought to have been nothing to fear.  It was a little disturbing, 
really."  Leigh shook her head.  Her thick glasses magnified her 
eyes so that they looked like a sorrowful bug's. "I can't say I 
was pleased to hear that he'd gone off to England to study the 
criminally insane.  I hoped he'd grow out of this . . . morbid 
phase.  But he never has, has he?"

"Not exactly," Scully admitted.

"I know it can't all be my mother's fault, but I don't expect all 
that Poe at such a young age could have been good for him," Leigh 
said.

"I've never heard him complain about it.  Besides, Mulder finds 
what he does very rewarding.  Well, he usually does," Scully 
said.  There had been notable exceptions, the Siberian gulag and 
so on, not that she was going to mention such things.  Even still, 
Leigh did not seem overly reassured.

In the end Scully selected one of the least dusty-looking 
outfits, a pair of black stretch pants and an oversized white 
button-down that would have been the height of fashion in about 
1988.  She thanked Leigh profusely for her help but insisted she 
had to do errands before the pain in her hands and bruised ribs 
became too much for her.  Leigh let her go somewhat reluctantly.  
It seemed the detectives and technicians who made up the rest of 
Nye House's current clientele weren't any fun to talk to.  

As Scully walked out to the car in the icy sunlight, she wondered 
if Leigh had tried to tell stories about Mulder's childhood to 
the other officers, too.  For his sake, she hoped not. 

*****

The office area of the Dukes County Jail was starting to look 
terrible, which was exactly what Mulder had in mind.  At his 
direction, the other officers had removed all personal items from 
their desks and cleared a large space in the middle of the room.  
Mulder jostled some of the overhead fluorescent bulbs until the 
room's corners were enveloped in flickering dimness.  When they 
were done, the only bright light shone directly down on a bare 
desk in the middle of the room.  

Mulder stood back, admiring his handiwork.  Sheriff Hawley walked 
up to him and asked, "All right, Agent Mulder, what is this . . . 
haunted house supposed to accomplish?" She gestured at the dimly 
pulsing lights.  

Mulder couldn't resist milking her annoyance for just a moment by 
sitting down on the desk and polishing his glasses on the sleeve 
of his shirt.  "It's meant to put McBer off-balance.  He's a 
classic anti-social personality -- a born manipulator.  He can't 
take control of a situation if he can't figure out what's going 
on."  

"And sitting in the dark will keep him from taking control," 
Hawley said.  

"He won't be in the dark.  He'll be right here in the light with 
me.  You guys will be in the dark, able to see him a lot better 
than he'll be able to see you.  It'll drive him crazy," he 
assured her.  

She gave him a cold, hard look.  "You'd better be right," she 
said.

"I'm right."  Mulder turned to Joe, who was looking uncomfortable 
in his borrowed corrections officer uniform.  "I want you to do 
two things when you bring him down.  Let him know the OUIL is a 
misdemeanor. Treat it as a hassle between him and the judge that 
set his bond.  If he figures out how much trouble he's in he's 
likely to clam up and call his lawyer.  Then tell him how the 
detectives called in this crazy FBI man to talk to him.  Say I 
chase aliens.  Tell him I'm obsessed with serial killers and I 
sleep with bloody crime scene photos pinned to the ceiling over 
my bed. Whatever it takes to get him curious about me.  He's 
going to have to sit and talk to me to find out if I live up to 
my reputation." 

"Aliens and serial killers.  Got it." 

"Good luck, Igor," Mulder said.  He thought Joe repressed a 
smile.  Joey had been an inspired Igor to Mulder's Dr. 
Frankenstein, back in the days when their psychological 
experiments were designed to run off their tagalong little 
sisters.  

As Joe left to get their suspect, Mulder stood and set his folded 
his glasses down on the desk. Given the logistics of bringing a 
disabled man down the stairs, it would likely be at least five 
minutes before McBer arrived.  Mulder was under enough pressure 
without spending the time before the interview under the hostile 
gaze of Hawley and her deputies.  He excused himself to the 
officer nearest the door and walked into the hall.  

He had no particular destination in mind, but found he headed 
instinctively for the front door and the jail's oddly inviting 
front porch.  The desk guard gave him a look of dull surprise as 
he signed in and out at the same time.  "I'll be right back," 
Mulder said.

When he stepped out onto the porch, a gust of icy wind whipped 
his hair and flattened his clothes against his body.  He had to 
shade his eyes from the brilliant sunlight, but exposure to the 
elements felt real and good.  All around him lay Edgartown's 
empty waterfront streets.  Restaurants, inns, and boathouses 
seemed well-kept but abandoned, waiting until the tourist season 
to unbolt their doors.  Down Dock Street he could see the bare 
masts of boats moored at the public wharf, and beyond them, 
Katama Bay shining almost too brightly to look at.  

Home.  He'd forgotten how much he loved this island, with its 
summer crowds and its wintertime desolation.  It made him feel a 
fresh wave of remorse for Roche.  He didn't remember much from 
the three-hour reaming he'd gotten from OPR after that case, but 
he did recall the general theme of betrayal.  There was a long 
list of things he was supposed to have betrayed, which he should 
have paid more attention to since he'd been required to sign it.  
At the time, what had hurt most was that he had betrayed the 
trust of Caitlin and her mother.  He had also betrayed the 
Vineyard and the people who had once been like family to him.  
Perhaps McBer was his chance to atone.  

Mulder took a deep breath and released it, willing himself to 
learn from the mistakes he'd made.  Wanting something from men 
like Roche and McBer was like arming them.  He had to distance 
himself from his desire to make good.  //Don't think about what 
you want.  Think about what he wants,// he told himself.  He had 
to make McBer want to cooperate with him.  //Just like selling 
Perrier to a drowning man,// he thought.  He glanced at his watch 
and saw his grace time was nearly up.  With regret, he turned and 
went back into the jail.  

No sooner had he settled himself at the office's newly-central 
desk than he heard voices in the hall.  Joe opened the door and 
held it while a stocky, dark-haired man in a wheelchair pushed 
himself in.  McBer was still in his civilian clothes: cowboy 
boots, black leather jacket, jeans, and a black T-shirt.  His 
long ponytail and droopy mustache gave him a sinister appearance, 
but Mulder knew those would be gone at any future trial.  Without 
all the fashion statements, McBer would be a fairly handsome man 
in his early 30's, sitting in a wheelchair.  He might even manage 
to look harmless.  Mulder wondered if Jaws the attorney would 
stoop to replacing the sleek-bodied chair McBer was using now 
with a clunky hospital model.  Davis had been right -- any 
incriminating statements Mulder got out of this guy had better be 
so clean they squeaked.

"This is Special Agent Fox Mulder from the FBI -- the guy I was 
telling you about," Joe said.
 
McBer looked curious about him all right.  Mulder wondered 
exactly what Joe had told him.  He held his hand out.  "John," he 
said.  He'd decided that the false intimacy of calling McBer by 
his first name would be more demoralizing.

The man took his hand and grimaced at the coldness of his skin.  
"Jesus -- where'd they find you, the morgue?" McBer asked.  
Mulder had put his glasses on after coming in, and they'd fogged 
over very slightly -- on the inside.  He had hoped McBer would 
notice.    

"Actually I'm from D.C.," he said.  G-Men, especially spooky 
ones, weren't supposed to have a sense of humor.  "John, I want 
to ask you some questions. I'm going to need to tape our 
conversation, if that's all right with you."

"Fine with me, so long as nobody fools with the tape," McBer 
said.

"You can have your lawyer ask for a copy of it if you're 
worried," Mulder said.  He turned the tape on and told McBer his 
rights, then asked him if he understood.  He did.  If this case 
went to hell, it would not be because Jaws made a successful bid 
to suppress the tape on 5th amendment grounds.  

"Could you state your full name please?" Mulder asked.

"John Edward McBer."

"Your address?"

"2700 Pebblestone, Boston, 02108."

The early questions were meant to set a rhythm, to get McBer 
comfortable.  

Mulder's dry voice and the regular ticks of the tape recorder 
created a sense of hypnotic calm.  Although the suspect remained 
relaxed and cooperative, he stole occasional glances at the 
officers in the dim corners of the room.  Mulder was glad he 
couldn't ignore them.  They were present to suggest the weight 
and power of the justice system that lay behind the crazy FBI man 
with the tape recorder.  

"Do you know why you're here, John?" Mulder asked.  His tone was 
almost gentle.  People gave more interesting answers to a 
psychologist than to a cop.  

"He says you want to talk to me about some murder," McBer said, 
gesturing toward Joe.  "I guess you're supposed to be the FBI's 
expert on sickos.  Did you really catch a guy who put people's 
organs in a blender?"
 
Mulder blinked in surprise.  When had Joe heard of his 
involvement in that case?  "You mean James Sproule?  I didn't 
catch him personally; I profiled him.  I studied his crimes until 
I felt I understood him."

McBer looked somewhere between doubtful and disgusted.  "You 
understand a guy who puts organs in a blender?" 

"As well as anybody sane can," Mulder said.

"Uh-huh."  McBer didn't seem convinced about the "sane" part.  
"So why'd he do it?" 

"He thought he needed to drink bodily fluids in order to 
survive," Mulder said.

"And you understand that?" McBer asked.  Mulder shrugged slightly 
as if he didn't see what the problem was.  

"You're either a liar or a psycho," said McBer.

"I assure you that I'm neither," Mulder said.  He looked intently 
into McBer's eyes a little longer than a sane person generally 
would.  The other man appeared uncomfortable but did not look 
away.  Before McBer could figure out how to respond, Mulder 
switched topics.  "I have something I'd like you to look at," 
Mulder said.  He opened a manila envelope and brought out a 
picture of Kristie, clipped from her obituary in that morning's 
paper.  He pushed it across the desk.  McBer glanced at it but 
did not pick it up.  

"Do you know who she is?" Mulder asked.

"No." He looked at the picture too long for that to be true.

"Her name is Kristie Ann Herron.  Sound familiar now?" Mulder 
leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, moving a bit further 
into the other man's space.  

"Oh, her. She dated this guy I used to know.  I heard he went to 
prison.  I haven't seen her in a couple of years."  

The line sounded rehearsed.  Out of the corner of his eye Mulder 
thought he saw Davis writing something in a notebook.  He made a 
point of turning to look, and McBer looked too.  Good.  

"Kristie was scheduled to testify against you in a murder trial.  
Did you know that?" Mulder asked.

McBer managed a rueful laugh that sounded almost natural.  He 
seemed to gain confidence as he spoke: "Unfortunately.  Look, 
Agent Mulder, that case was garbage.  They've got a little bit of 
circumstantial evidence and the testimony of a cokehead.  I mean, 
if she had all the information she said she had, why didn't she 
go to the police with it three years ago, when this supposedly 
happened?  Why did she wait until she was facing time on 
possession charges before she told anybody?  She made it up.  To 
be honest, I'm surprised the prosecutor took the case -- unless 
she was paying him in kind, if you know what I mean."  

Cold fury made Mulder long to pick McBer up and punch his lights 
out, wheelchair or no wheelchair.  //Do not react.  Don't give 
him any emotional response at all.//  He thought of Scully 
sitting next to him during the Roche interview, sympathetic and 
rock steady.  The memory dissipated some of the rage and reminded 
him how to behave.  //Let McBer fling shit.  It's not going to 
stick.// His voice remained nearly neutral as he said, "If she 
made it up, it's strange she knew so much about the crime scene."

"Maybe she shot this narc.  Maybe she saw Brian do it and she's 
protecting him.  How would I know?  All I know is it wasn't me."  
There was a hostile look in his eyes that told Mulder they were 
treading on dangerous ground.  If he spooked McBer too much about 
the '97 murder charge, he'd take the 5th and call Jaws.  

Mulder backed off for the moment.  "When was the last time you 
saw Kristie?" he asked.

McBer shrugged.  "I kind of distanced myself from that crowd 
about two years ago.  I had a little bit of trouble back in '93, 
and some friends finally convinced me I had to watch what company 
I was in.  They'll take you down for just sitting in a car with a 
guy who's dealing, you know?"

"So you saw her last in 1998," Mulder said.

"I guess.  Maybe.  I mean I didn't really know her that well.  
It's possible there was a party or something and she was there 
and I just didn't notice," McBer said.

"Did you come out to the Vineyard to see her?" Mulder asked.

"No.  I came out to visit a friend, Chuck Penry in Vineyard 
Haven.  His number's 508-693-5767 if you want to call him."  
Mulder wrote down the number, along with a shorthand note about 
McBer's alternating vagueness and excessive helpfulness.  That 
was a classic sign that a suspect was on the defensive, seeking 
to direct the interrogation.  Whether or not McBer had sensed his 
reaction to the comment about Kristie, Mulder had not lost 
control of the interview.  

Without looking up from his notepad, Mulder asked, "When did you 
get here?" This was a critical question, and he didn't trust 
himself not to telegraph his interest if he looked McBer in the 
eye.  

He heard McBer's clothing rustle as he shifted position.  
"Yesterday."

"What time?"

"The afternoon -- I don't know.  You could ask Chuck.  Maybe he 
could tell you."  Mulder was pretty sure Chuck had been coached 
to tell him something or other.  He made a note to find out what 
Chuck Penry did for a living.  

Mulder opened his manila folder and removed two pages he'd 
printed out on Hawley's computer.  One was the web page of the 
Three Sisters Market where Kristie had worked.  The photo 
included a partial image of the store's parking lot, for which 
Mulder thanked any deity that might exist.  He was pretty sure 
McBer had approached Kristie there.  The other page was a 
calendar for April, 2000.  He'd circled Tuesday the 11th in red 
marker, and wrote "6:15 p.m." in the date box.  

As soon as Mulder set the pages down on the desk, McBer became 
very still.  He looked steadily at the picture of the grocery 
store, and Mulder could almost see the wheels of calculation 
turning in his mind.  "What's that about?" McBer asked, gesturing 
at the papers.

"Do you remember what you were doing on this date?" Mulder asked, 
tapping the calendar square with the red markings.  

"I was home," McBer said.

"Alone?"

"No, I was fucking every member of the Dallas Cowgirls 
cheerleading squad.  Yes, I was alone," McBer said.

Mulder sat back, taking some of the pressure off McBer by moving 
away.  His goal was to wear the man down slowly, not drive him 
into a panic that would make him refuse to cooperate.  "You 
understand you're not accused of anything but the drunk driving 
charge and the other charge in Suffolk County," Mulder said.  He 
consciously avoided the word "murder."  

"Yes." McBer seemed to relax a little.

"Your cooperation is purely voluntary -- this guy let you know 
that, right?" Mulder asked, gesturing at Joe. 

"Yes," McBer said.  

"If you can help us rule you out, then we can just drop this and 
it won't go any further," Mulder said.  

"Fine.  I've had nothing to do with her," McBer said looking at 
Kristie's picture.  Significantly, he didn't ask what Mulder was 
going to rule him out as.  

Mulder returned to safe questions for a while, asking how long 
McBer had known Chuck Penry, what the two had planned to do on 
the Island, and so on.  He pushed the printout sheets to a corner 
of the desk where McBer would have to turn slightly to see them.  
Even though they were out of his direct line of sight, the man 
clearly found them distracting.  

After a time, McBer stopped giving long answers to anything.  The 
scare of seeing the circled date was starting to work on him.  
Mulder decided it was time to close in.  "Do you know what 
happened to her, John?" he asked, pushing Kristie's picture more 
squarely in front of her suspected killer.

"She's dead," McBer said.

"When did you find out?"

"Friday."

"Did somebody tell you?"  Mulder got no immediate answer.  He 
prompted, "Was it in the newspaper . . .?"  

"It was in the paper."

Mulder wrote that down.  "Which one?"

"I don't know."

"They run this picture with it?" Mulder asked, pointing to the 
obituary photo.  

"No."

"A different one?"

"It might have been a different one."  Only a local paper would 
bother to run a victim's picture.  If Kristie's death had been in 
the Boston papers at all, the article would have been buried on a 
back page.  McBer hadn't quite admitted he'd been on the Vineyard 
before Saturday afternoon, but it was a start.  Davis was 
scribbling something again.

"Do you remember how she died?" Mulder asked.

McBer shook his head slightly.  "She fell over a cliff or 
something.  I don't know."  His failure to mention the knife 
wounds was the first indication of his innocence so far.  

Mulder leaned forward on the desk again, placing his folded hands 
at the top edge of Kristie's picture.  He spoke very gently, "Did 
you kill her, John?"

McBer didn't meet his eyes.  "No."

"Did you plan to kill her?" 

"No."

"Did you threaten her?"

"I never even saw her."  McBer spoke through his clenched teeth, 
looking away at the printed calendar with its red ink markings.

"You want to hear a theory of mine?" McBer looked up at him.  His 
expression probably mirrored that of the murdered narcotics agent 
as he'd watched the specially modified van roll slowly to a stop.  
"I think you came here from Woods Hole at 10:45 a.m. on Tuesday 
the 11th.  You saw your friend Chuck and you made some 
'arrangements' with him.  About 5:30 you got in the van, drove 
out to the Three Sisters Market in Aquinnah and waited for 
Kristie to get off work.  You parked behind her car and sat with 
the engine running." Mulder said.  He wasn't sure McBer was 
breathing.  The look of horrified fascination on his face told 
Mulder he hadn't missed yet.  He continued, "She came out at 
around a quarter after six, and you rolled down the window and 
called her name.  To soften her up you reminded her you knew her 
secret -- that she'd lost a baby last year in Boston.  Did it 
make her cry, John?"  

It seemed to take McBer a moment to realize he'd been asked a 
question.  "I don't know what you're--" he began, but Mulder cut 
him off.

"While you had her there, trapped and scared, you leaned close to 
her and said, 'You'd better call the D.A. and tell him the deal's 
off.  Otherwise you'll end up just like that narc.'"  Mulder 
leaned in and pronounced the words in a menacing whisper, as 
McBer probably had.  McBer's jaw dropped.  He looked as if he 
half expected Mulder to stick out a forked tongue at him.  "The 
threat involved being shot in an alley, didn't it, John?  Or was 
the place you shot the narcotics officer more like an access road 
between warehouses?"

"I didn't shoot anybody," he said weakly.

"Did you push Kristie Herron over a cliff?" Mulder asked.

"I didn't -- I can't.  How am I supposed to get to the edge of a 
cliff?" McBer asked, holding his hands out to indicate his 
wheelchair.  

"If you're telling me it's impossible, then you're talking to the 
wrong guy.  I see impossible things happen every day," Mulder 
said.  He consciously imitated Skinner as he sat back and glared 
at the man.  Skinner had a glare like a scalpel.

"You're crazy," McBer said.  He turned to Joe and said, "This 
guy's a psycho." Joe didn't look at him.  Mulder watched real 
horror cross McBer's face as he realized he might get away with 
one murder he'd committed only to have some nutcase FBI man get 
him convicted of another murder he hadn't.  

"Are you willing to take a polygraph to prove I'm crazy?" Mulder 
asked.  McBer looked uneasy but tempted.  "You haven't got much 
to lose.  We can't use the results against you in court." 

"A polygraph about what?" McBer asked.

"Kristie Herron.  Whether you killed her.  Nothing about the 
other charge," Mulder said.  Actually, he was worried that with 
three years to justify the shooting to himself, McBer could beat 
the box on the '97 murder.  

McBer seemed to consider his options.  "Fine.  I'll do it," he 
said.  Mulder heard uniforms rustling all around the room as 
officers could hardly contain their surprise.  

"Let's be clear about this -- you're cooperating voluntarily.  
You can call a lawyer at any time.  Understand?" Mulder asked.  
McBer nodded.  Mulder asked, "Could you reply verbally for the 
tape?"

"Yes.  I got it."  

Mulder looked up at Joe and said, "Go."  Outside McBer's line of 
vision, Joe gave him a thumbs-up.  

"Come on, Mr. McBer.  We're going to a room down the hall," Joe 
said, leading the other man to the door.  The polygraph 
specialist from the Sheriff's Department was already standing by 
with a list of questions Mulder had written.  The sooner this was 
done, the better -- before their suspect had a chance to change 
his mind.  

After McBer left, Mulder signed off on the tape and shut the 
machine down.  The interview had taken just over 40 minutes.  
That wasn't bad, even for him.  He hadn't even used up both sides 
of the tape.  To his gratified surprise, a couple of people 
started to applaud, but icy stares from several officers cut the 
clapping off quickly.  The quiet that followed was strangely 
awkward and people began a dignified push to get out of the room.  

Mulder took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.  Suddenly he was 
very tired.  He heard footsteps on the hard carpet near the desk 
and looked up.  Sheriff Hawley stood there, looking at him in the 
way Scully's brother Bill generally did.  Mulder thought of it as 
the "I'd like to squash you like a bug" look.  "Sheriff," he 
said.

"You sure know how to get what you want from people, don't you, 
Mr. Mulder?" she asked.  "I always wondered how you managed to 
stay on this side of the cell bars.  I guess now I know."  He 
couldn't think of any good replies, which seemed to intensify her 
contempt.  She turned on her heel and walked out.  

Soon Mulder was alone in the dimly lit office.  //Yeah,// he 
thought, //I really know how to win friends and influence 
people.//

*****

Scully parked in the tiny gravel lot behind Oriel Photography, 
the little housefront shop Irv Stuckey ran in Menemsha.  It 
didn't surprise her that the man had to take a night job.  The 
village seemed to consist of a few dozen houses clustered around 
the edge of an ocean inlet.  She doubted it was much of a tourist 
magnet even in summer.  At the moment the only signs of 
habitation were a couple of very cold-looking men standing on the 
dock that ringed the harbor, fishing through holes chopped in the 
ice.  

The photography shop was a squat, two-story gray house with an 
outdoor staircase that led to a separate entrance on the second 
floor.  According to Leigh, Stuckey and his ex-wife lived in the 
upper story.  Scully got out of the car and headed for the 
stairs.  She found it eerie to be in the middle of a town and 
hear nothing but the wind and the sound of gravel crunching 
beneath her feet.  It reminded her of Mulder's childhood 
nightmare about being the last person alive in the world.  She 
wondered how many year-round residents of Menemsha had the same 
dream.  

The cold made her bruised ribs ache as she climbed the weathered 
steps that zig-zagged up the back of the house.  A rusty coffee 
can full of cigarette butts rested on the landing at the top.  
Unable to find a doorbell, she tapped on the door's glass panel 
with her gloved fingertips. Fortunately, the pane was loose and 
it rattled loudly.  

"Mr. Stuckey?" she called.  "Mr. Stuckey, I'm Special Agent Dana 
Scully with the FBI."  She waited for several seconds but got no 
reply.  Had he even heard her?  The stitches on her knuckles 
prevented her from knocking, so she tapped again and said, "I 
work with Fox Mulder.  I'm here to talk to you about the South 
Road Ghost."

Scully thought she heard voices inside.  She was about to tap a 
third time when a gray-haired woman with a face like a bulldog's 
peered out of the door's little window.  She heard the rattling 
of locks being undone, and then the door jarred open a crack.  
The bulldog-faced woman was quite short.  She glared up at Scully 
and said, "Store's closed.  This is a private entrance." 

"I know, ma'am.  I'm looking for Mr. Irv Stuckey.  I was told he 
lived here." Scully showed the woman her badge and ID.

"You arresting him for something?" the woman asked.  She sounded 
hopeful.  

"He contacted my partner and me about a case.  I only want to talk 
to him," Scully said.

"A 'case?'" the woman asked.  Suddenly she seemed to make a 
connection.  "You're from Washington," she said.

"That's right, ma'am.  From the FBI's X-Files Unit," Scully said.

The woman scowled and said, "Oh, for Christ's sake."  She turned 
and bellowed into the house, "Stuckey!  The Mulder kid sent some 
girl to talk to you about your fairy story."

A muffled voice replied, "Would you just shut up and send her 
down, Emma?"

"He'll see you downstairs," Emma said, and slammed the door.

"Charming," Scully said under her breath.  There was nothing else 
to do but walk back downstairs and around to the front entrance.  

The sheltered front porch was probably nice enough in summer, but 
at the moment a cold wind coming off the water cut right through 
Scully's coat and her borrowed clothes.  Trying to keep her back 
to the weather, she tugged the string of the heavy iron pull-bell 
that was bolted to the doorframe.  It sounded like what it had 
likely been, a 19th century fire alarm.  She heard a man inside 
say, "All right!  All right -- keep your pantyhose on." 

A little man with wispy gray hair opened the door and squinted at 
her out of the house's dimness.  He was wearing button-down long 
underwear and bulky gray socks.  "Mr. Stuckey?" Scully asked.

"So you read my fax after all," he said.  

"Yes.  I'd like to talk with you about that," Scully said.

"Come in," Irv said, moving aside out of the doorway.  Scully 
walked past him into the shop.  The windows had all been covered 
with an assortment of curtains, blankets, and sheets, but light 
from the open door revealed an old-fashioned cash register 
sitting on a counter at the back of the room.  A couple of space 
heaters glowed orange but illuminated nothing.  Once she was 
inside with the door closed, the gloom was formidable.  

"Give me just a minute," Irv said.  He walked back to a 
curtained-off inner door and passed through it into some unseen 
room.  

As her eyes adjusted, Scully realized there was a camp cot near 
the space heaters.  Irv had clearly just gotten out of it, half-
tumbling its blankets to the floor.  Somehow knowing this room 
served as Irv's bedroom made her uncomfortable.  She ran her 
hands over the wall by the door until she found a light switch. 

When she flicked it on she found herself in a tiny photo gallery.  
The walls were covered with matted prints, and photography 
equipment rested on shelves behind the counter.  A camera with a 
long telephoto lens was mounted on a tripod in the corner.    

Scully looked over some of the framed prints.  Many were standard 
photos of local architectural detail -- wood-shingled Victorian 
house spires, delicate fanlights above lavender or teal-painted 
doors, a round window behind the wrought-iron railing of a 
widow's walk.  

The nature photos were more to her liking.  Most were in black 
and white, and they tended to have a stark, almost Japanese 
asymmetry to them.  One print drew her particular attention.  
It was of an ice sheet with an irregular hole punched in it. 
The water inside was the strange, luminous green of the 
ice-locked sea, and deep below its surface lay something dark.  
No matter how hard Scully looked at the dark shape she could not 
make out its outline.  A rock?  A spar?  It created a sinister 
impression, as if it were waiting for someone to remain too long 
by the hole.  She glanced at the title, written in pencil on the 
mat: "Window Through The Ice."  

She frowned and looked up at the other pictures on the wall.  For 
the first time she realized how many of them were of literal 
windows, and the telephoto lens in the corner took on a darker 
significance.  The only human subject in the whole collection was 
a young girl, or rather her eyes, which were opened so wide they 
reflected back a tiny, distorted image of the photographer.  
Scully looked for a few seconds before turning away in distaste. 
She had the feeling there was some subtle violence in the 
picture, as if Irv were trying to peer inside the girl.  She 
thought that if it had been up to her, she would have questioned 
Irv Stuckey very carefully after Samantha Mulder disappeared.

Soon the man himself returned from the back room, tucking the 
tails of his flannel shirt into his creased and faded jeans.  Two 
dogs followed him, an enormous black Lab and a little, curly-
haired mutt.  The mutt trotted boldly up and sniffed Scully's 
shoe.  

"Step in something?" Irv asked.

"Not that I know of."  Normally she liked dogs, but she was 
starting to make up her mind not to like Irv's.  She didn't 
appreciate this one getting its wet nose all over the navy 
leather of her pump.  

"Hey, Meatloaf, back off," Irv said.  The dog scooted back 
slightly on its stubby legs, wagging its tail so hard its whole 
butt wiggled.  "Looks like you've been having some adventures out 
here, Miss Scully," Irv said.

Scully didn't like his little smirk, and she fixed him with as 
cold a look as she could manage.  "What makes you say that?" she 
asked.  She'd purposely kept her gloves on her bandaged hands in 
order to conceal the kind of adventures she'd been having.  

"You're wearing someone else's pants," Irv said, chuckling.

"Excuse me?"  She briefly considered slapping him.  Federal 
agents weren't allowed fits of ladylike indignation, which was a 
pity.  

"Come on now, look at you.  You've got on your tailored coat and 
your hair done just so.  You got on shoes that match your 
handbag, but none of it matches those baggy black pants.  They 
give you elephant knees, girl.  You take a spill in the bog and 
have to go slumming at the church bazaar?" Irv asked.  

Scully willed herself to stay professional and preserve some 
dignity.  "I can't remember the last time a man paid so much 
attention to my outfit, Mr. Stuckey," she said.  She didn't know 
why she was surprised.  All around her was evidence of Irv's 
relentless gaze. 

"Oh, I notice all kind of things," he said.  He smiled at her 
like an evil gnome.  

She was determined to steer the conversation back to the case.  
"I'd like you to explain some of the things in your fax, like 
what you meant about 'what happened in Boston,'" Scully said.  

"Oh, that.  The Herron girl had a child that died -- it was the 
dope that did it in.  I don't think she ever did tell her folks.  
A shame, the parents always seemed decent.  Of course, you never 
can tell," Irv said.  

"And how do you know all that?" Scully asked.

His smile broadened.  "I've got ways and ways," he said.  

"And I've got ways of reporting you for obtaining medical records 
under false pretenses," Scully said.

She was gratified when that wiped the grin off his face.  "I 
never did," he said.  "It's part of her police record.  The 
hospitals report these women when they come in pregnant, higher 
than a kite.  They throw some of 'em in jail, but not pretty 
girls with folks on the Vineyard, I guess."

"You wrote away for her police record?" Scully asked.

"Sure.  Sunshine laws are the best thing that ever happened to 
this country.  Sometimes they want you to pay through the nose 
for copying, but it's usually worth it.  I'm sure Fox would agree 
with me," Irv said. 

Scully thought the comparison did Mulder a great disservice.  
"Mulder doesn't go prying into the police records of his 
neighbors," she said.

"Oh, yes he does.  That boy never could leave a secret alone.  
Being an FBI agent and all, he doesn't even have to pay.  I bet 
on his off-hours he does nothing but pry.  Well, almost nothing 
but," Irv said.  Scully pretended not to see his knowing little 
leer, but it irked her. This was exactly the kind of subtle 
harassment she dreaded having to face from her co-workers, much 
less people she was interviewing.  
 
She gave him her best icy glare as she tried to drag him back on 
track.  "Explain to me about the South Road Ghost."

Irv shrugged.  "What's there to tell?  They say women who've 
murdered their children hear Mary Brown calling to them from deep 
in the woods.  It's always a wild night in winter, and some say 
you can hear the voices of those dead babies crying in the wind.  
If a woman follows the voices she'll be found slashed to death 
the next day.  I once spoke to an old down-island woman who knew 
someone it happened to.  Deaf lady -- never heard a thing in her 
life but her own dead child calling her name.  She went out into 
the woods around the graveyard and never came back."

Irv's smirk returned as he said, "You know, you ought to ask Fox 
about it.  Ask him what his mama heard out in those trees.  After 
all this time they won't find that girl of hers, not above the 
sod, anyway."

"Mr. Stuckey, that is enough," Scully snapped.  She was surprised 
at the depth of her anger at him; she was nearly shaking with it.  
"The rumors you've spread have caused his family a lot of pain.  
It's been 26 years, and it's time to stop."  Leigh Williams had 
told her how Mulder had gone from a friendly little boy to a 
withdrawn and unhappy adolescent.  How much of that suffering was 
Irv Stuckey directly responsible for?  

His pale blue eyes widened a moment at her vehemence, but he 
wasn't off-balance long.  "You're protective, aren't you?" he 
said slyly.  "I expect he likes that.  He always did have a thing 
for mother-figures.  I suppose that's only natural, Teena being 
the way she was.  Tell me, is he an enemas and plastic pants 
boy?"  

"What?" was all Scully could think to say.  Irv had gotten so 
inappropriate she hardly knew how to respond.

"Well, never mind -- it was his father who made him the time-bomb 
he is, anyway.  I'm surprised the FBI lets him walk around armed 
with all those excessive force citations in his file," Irv said.

"Where did you --" Scully began, then she realized she knew. "You 
made a FOIA request for the contents of his personnel file." 

"He's a federal employee.  His file's a public record," Irv said.  
"You'd be surprised at the kind of information you can get if you 
ask: probate records, filings with friend of the court . . ."  He 
gave Scully a look as if she was supposed to read something into 
that.  "Of course, they always ink out the names of minors.  Fox 
has a juvenile record in Connecticut, for instance, but it's 
sealed.  Oh -- you didn't know that?  Ask him about Fairfield 
County Juvenile Court sometime, or about the time he poisoned the 
cat.  I think that's what set old Sheriff Luce sniffing after 
him, more than anything else."

Scully forced herself to keep her mouth shut while she recited 
one of the Fatima prayers to herself, the one about people who 
needed God's mercy.  //You have too little respect for this man 
to let him enrage you,// she thought.  When she spoke it was 
deliberately, but without anger.  "Mr. Stuckey, what did you call 
us out here for?  If it was just to assassinate my partner's 
character, then you're wasting my time and yours."

"I called you out here to find the truth," he said.  "Isn't that 
what you people do?  I've seen your file too, Miss Scully.  
You're a scientist who's lately become interested in . . . how 
did they put it, 'extreme possibilities.' If there's something 
out there, you have to *know.*  Or do 'Texas killer bees' not 
ring a bell?"     

"I wouldn't be in such a hurry to get that information if I were 
you," Scully said.  "People have died because they knew too much 
about what's in those files."

"You're lovely when you're threatening, but I'll take my chances,"
Irv said.  "And since we're talking about the South Road Ghost, 
I wanted to ask you something.  I know you tried and failed to 
get custody of a child who died in 1998.  You claimed she was 
your daughter, though your personnel file says you have no 
children.  Last night when you were out ruining your real 
clothes, did you hear her calling you?"

Scully felt the blood drain from her face.  For a moment she had 
no words to respond.  Irv smiled, clearly enjoying her helpless 
outrage.  When she finally found her voice, it was only to say, 
"Go to Hell."    

She walked out of the house and slammed the door behind her.  By 
the time she got to the car, she was crying.  It was one thing to 
slander a grown man like Mulder, but to taunt Scully with her 
daughter's death was too cruel.  Who had Emily ever hurt, that 
Irv Stuckey should gloat over her fatal illness?  Scully's 
tires shot up arcs of gravel as she peeled out of the parking 
lot, determined not to give Irv the satisfaction of seeing her
cry.  As she turned into the street she saw his hand twitch a 
curtain closed over the window.

*****

The overcrowded Dukes County Jail could spare no space for a 
break room, but it did have two vending machines in a stairwell.  
Mulder had gotten his first real meal of the day out of those.  
He sat on the stairs, finishing off a soggy chicken salad 
sandwich and a Pepsi.  He hoped that the caffeine would help 
nurse his adrenaline rush along for a little while longer.  He 
could already feel the bone-deep fatigue that would set in once 
that energy wore off.  

There was a fair chance that the interview he'd just done would 
only be round one.  If the polygraph poked holes in McBer's story 
he might want to try and explain them away, and Mulder wouldn't 
deny him the opportunity.  In his experience, just about every 
suspect who remained talkative after a bad polygraph convicted 
himself.  

He glanced at his watch and saw that it was after three.  He 
wondered what Scully was doing.  The last time he'd seen her he'd 
gotten the distinct impression she was trying to get rid of him.  
His phone was in his jacket pocket, lying on the steps beside 
him.  He dug it out and dialed her cell number.  After several 
rings a cheerful voice told him, "The cellular unit you are 
trying to reach is turned off or out of the service area."  

Mulder punched the "off" button and told himself not to read too 
much into that.  Maybe she was sleeping.  Probably Darkest 
Chilmark didn't even have a cell tower.  Still, he couldn't shake 
the mental image of her wandering over some godforsaken up-island 
ridge, her injured hands tucked into her pockets for warmth, 
searching for something she didn't want to talk to him about.  
He'd done similar things before.  

It didn't mean he had to like it when she did them.  

His thoughts were interrupted when Joe opened the door to the 
stairwell.  Mulder stood up, dusting crumbs off his lap.  "How'd 
it go?" he asked.  He suspected that McBer and his accomplice 
had plotted against Kristie but were prevented from carrying out 
their plan by paranormal events.  Conspiracy to commit murder 
could still draw a life sentence in Massachusetts, however.

Joe seemed weary as he said, "McBer passed all the questions 
about the homicide.  The box said he was telling the truth when 
he told us he didn't kill Kristie and didn't know who did."

Mulder nodded.  That fit with his earlier assessment of paranormal
activity.  "What about meeting her and making threats?"

"He flunked."

//Got the sonofabitch.//  He felt a surge of energy, but the feeling
was more grim than satisfying.  Vindication was always bittersweet 
when you were a prophet of doom.  "What about the contract part?  
You get him on hiring a killer?"  

The other man shook his head.  "That one was inconclusive.  What 
we've got is good enough for a warrant -- when the State Police 
go through his phone records maybe they can establish a 
connection to somebody."

Mulder had his doubts, but he agreed it was worth a shot.  "Does 
McBer want to talk to me some more?"

"I think that's about that last thing he wants.  When I left he 
was asking to call his lawyer.  I think Davis is done with you 
for the day.  Speaking of which, you know what time it is?"  Joe 
pulled his pager from the pocket of his borrowed uniform and 
looked down at the screen as if it might bite.

"It's about quarter after three," Mulder told him.

"Oh, man . . ." Joe said, pushing the pager's display-change 
button again and again.  "I had this thing turned off in the 
interview room.  My sister's going to kill me.  I'm supposed to 
be home by now.  Someone has to stay with my mom while Cheryl 
goes to work."  

"Your mom's not sick, is she?" Mulder asked.  He had always liked 
Mrs. Luce.  

Joe gave him a strange look.  "It's just the MS.  The same thing 
she'd had for 20 years."

Mulder hadn't known she had anything.  He tried to recall what he 
knew about multiple sclerosis, which wasn't much.  "Is it bad?" 
he asked.

"Your dad didn't tell you any of this?" Joe asked.  

"My dad and I didn't talk much," Mulder said.  For years Mulder 
and his father saw each other only at weddings and funerals, and 
then it was pretty much just funerals.  It got so whenever Mulder 
heard his father's voice on the phone he wondered who had died.

"That's too bad," Joe replied.  He seemed about to ask a 
question, but something in Mulder's expression must have made him 
change his mind.  He looked away. "Anyway . . . I need to give 
Tom Brennan back his uniform.  This thing is driving me crazy."  
He tugged at the jail officer's too-tight shirt.  

"Hey, Joe?" 

"Yeah?" 

"You think your mom would mind if I went out there?  Just to see 
her . . . you know.  It's been a long time."  

"No, she wouldn't mind."  He looked surprised but not displeased 
at the request.  "She'd probably like that." 

Mulder was glad.  He hadn't gotten over his own mother deciding 
that she never needed to see him again.  He wanted somebody's 
mother to be happy to see him.

*****

Later, the two of them sat in Joe's blue Mercury, driving west on 
Rural Route 1 toward Chilmark.  The first several minutes were 
quiet and awkward.  Somehow the close confines of the car made 
all the things unsaid between them harder to ignore.  Mulder 
spent the time watching the familiar, oddly-named cross streets 
go by: Quenomica; Old Purchase; Dark Woods Road.  

He broke the silence as they passed Martha's Vineyard Airport, 
roughly the halfway mark.  "So, tell me about your mom," Mulder 
said, looking over at Joe.  

"Her health was really pretty good until recently," Joe said.  He 
kept his gaze on the road, which probably made talking about this 
sort of thing easier. "Actually she used to drive a van a lot 
like McBer's until her coordination got so bad she couldn't stop 
at red lights anymore.  That was scary as hell.  She spun out on 
bone-dry pavement and put the van into a ditch."  Joe shook his 
head.  He had a slightly distant look in his eyes, as if he were 
seeing the accident all over again.  "Cher and I had this whole 
care plan all worked out, but we were still thinking 'someday,' 
not 'today.'  It didn't matter -- none of it went the way we 
thought it would, anyway.  We both ended up moving back to the 
old house again, if you can believe that."

Mulder tried to imagine himself moving back in with his mother at 
the age of 38.  The idea was sobering.  Joe continued, "We're 
lucky that Cheryl's a visiting nurse.  Between me and her and her 
co-workers at VNA, Mom's got pretty close to round-the-clock 
care.  Not that it always helps.  The other week she accidentally 
put her hand down on a hot burner.  The whole thing is making her 
nuts -- she's been on her own since my dad died in '66, and now 
all of a sudden she's dependent.  Sometimes I think she hates us 
for trying to taking care of her.  You know you try to prepare 
yourself for the role reversal when your parents get older, but 
until it happens to you, you have no idea."

"I guess not," Mulder said.  His own mother had chosen to die 
rather than reverse those particular roles with him.

Joe glanced over, seeming embarrassed.  "I'm sorry -- I didn't 
mean you personally had no idea.  You just lost your mother.  Of 
course you do."  

"No.  My mother's death was kind of . . . sudden," Mulder said.  
He was unable to keep the edge of bitterness out of his voice.

"Oh."

Awkwardness again.  Mulder gave conversation another shot.  "I 
was wondering, how did you find out about me profiling James 
Sproule?" he asked.

"Your dad told me," Joe said.

"You sure?  I don't think I ever talked to him about that."

"Of course I'm sure.  He showed me the guy's mug shot in the 
paper.  I said Sproule looked like a librarian, and he agreed 
with me.  I was sure I'd never have pegged him."

"My name didn't come up in the article, did it?" Mulder asked.  
He didn't see why it would, since he hadn't made the actual 
arrest.  On the other hand, he didn't see how else his father 
could have known -- at least not through legitimate news sources.  

"To tell you the truth, I didn't read it.  Your dad stopped by 
the station while I was trying to do about five other things. I 
looked at the picture, said the guy looked like a librarian, and 
said good for you -- you caught a maniac."

"Did you and my dad talk often?" Mulder asked.

"Not all that often.  Every now and then."  

Mulder nodded.  He preferred to think his dad never talked to 
anybody except at funerals.  He didn't want that treatment to be 
especially for him.  

"Is it a problem?" Joe asked.

Mulder turned to the window so his face wouldn't give anything 
away.  "He didn't talk to me."

They passed groves of tupelo trees and frost-covered cranberry 
orchards without speaking.  At last, Joe said, "I was worried 
about that."

"About what?" Mulder asked.

"Sometimes I got the impression he hoped I would relay messages 
so he wouldn't have to call you himself.  I told him I wasn't the 
person he should be talking to.  I told him we weren't in 
contact, but it didn't seem to make a difference."

Mulder kept his gaze focused on the landscape outside.  With 
studied nonchalance, he asked, "What did he say?" 

"Different things.  Positive things, mostly.  He thought a lot of 
you."

Mulder wanted to believe what Joe said was true.  He wanted to 
believe a lot of things about his father.  Finally he asked, "You 
still have a funny feeling about my dad and my sister's 
disappearance?" 

The question seemed to make Joe uncomfortable.  "I don't know, 
Fox . . ." 

Mulder turned and glared him.  "You 'don't know?'  You guys 
practically ran my family out of town, and you don't know?"  

"I was ten years old when you lost your sister.  I didn't know 
what I thought about anything.  We had that fight in what -- 
1978?  It's been over longer than either of us was alive at the 
time.  Can't you drop it?" 

"It's not over," Mulder said.  He returned his gaze to the window 
and added, "It will never be over."   Not so long as he 
remembered her.  

"The part about me being a smartass fifteen-year-old is over," 
Joe said.  "Thank God we don't have to stay the people we were 20 
years ago."

The thought of two grown men, approaching middle age, scrapping 
like schoolboys in a sandlot was ridiculous.  Joe had a point.  
Mulder glowered at the junction between earth and sky until he'd 
convinced himself that he was angry at fate and not the man next 
to him.  Scully would tell him to relax: //Relax, Mulder.  You 
can go kick Fate's ass another day.//  He felt some of the 
tension leave his muscles.  "Sorry."  

"It's all right," Joe said.  "And I'm not jerking you around.  I 
really don't know how to answer your question.  None of it makes 
sense to me.  Logic tells me it's not real likely your sister 
would vanish the way she did without your family being involved, 
but I saw what happened to your parents after they lost her.  It 
was killing them.  The police interviewed you guys separately, 
together, the day after it happened, six months after . . . .  
I know you've seen the interview transcripts because I'm the one 
who mailed them to you after you wrote for them under FOIA. The 
only story that changed was yours, and you went from remembering
nothing to talking about bright lights and who-knows-what.  Even 
that makes no sense at all.  I can't explain any of it."

Mulder didn't want to argue anymore.  Joe's words made him feel 
very tired.  "Welcome to my life," he said.

*****

The first several minutes at the Luce house were chaos -- Cheryl 
had to get to work, her kids were supposed to be at their 
father's, Joe offered to take them but didn't know who would stay 
with his mother, and Mrs. Luce kept insisting she did not need a 
babysitter.  Mulder's offer to stay at the house was accepted 
with a gratitude that surprised him.  He wasn't sure if this 
meant old grudges had truly been forgotten or if domestic turmoil 
had driven the Luce family to acts of insanity.

At any rate, he and Mrs. Luce soon had the house to themselves.  
The two of them sat at the scarred oak dining table, he in a 
slat-backed chair, resting his chin in his hand, she in an 
electric scooter, running purple chenille yarn through a tabletop 
loom.  Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" played faintly from a radio in 
the kitchen.

"So what's that going to be?" he asked, gesturing at the purple 
fabric that was taking shape.

She smiled as if the question amused her.  "Maybe a placemat, 
maybe a scarf.  Depends on how quickly I get tired of weaving it.  
Really it's just something to do with my hands."  Despite Joe's 
concerns, she looked perfectly healthy.  Her blue eyes were clear 
and alert, and she carried herself like a young pine: as if her 
resiliency more than made up for any strength lost to lack of 
straightness. Still, Mulder hadn't been quite prepared for her 
white hair or the way the bones in her hands stood out.  It 
wasn't lost on him that the kitchen radio had a knitting needle 
taped on as an antenna extender.  He wondered when she'd given up 
knitting.

"You know I still have those mittens you made me," he said.  
Well, in a sense he still had them.  He suspected they were in a 
box buried in a storage unit in Greenwich, Connecticut.  

She looked up at him.  "Which ones?"  Then she seemed to 
remember.  "Oh! The ones where I let you pick the colors."  Five-
year-old Fox had picked every color she had, including the ones 
he'd never heard of: sepia, saffron, vermilion, aubergine.

"They matched everything," he said.

"Except each other.  That's right."  

"I'm surprised you were so nice to me, considering," Mulder said.  
At age five, he'd been just as fond of asking impossible 
questions as he was at age thirty-eight, and he'd been less 
tactful at the time.  

"You were a good boy," said Mrs. Luce, as if laying to rest
persistent rumors to the contrary. 

"Sure, good at driving you up a wall."  

She spoke in a comfortably distracted way as she tapped the 
newest row of yarn into place: "Mm -- you had an edge to you, 
yes, but I always thought there was a lot of anxiety behind that.  
Your mother seemed to be the same way: very intense, very -- 
anxious to please, maybe?"

Mulder smiled a little, remembering that side of her.  "She had a 
greater interest in conformity than I did.  I used to embarrass 
her." He remembered her reminding him to keep his inquisitive 
streak in check as she zipped up his jacket: "Don't ask about the 
accident or bother Mrs. Luce with questions.  She has enough to 
worry about as it is.  Remember, you're there to be polite and to 
help make Joey feel better.  If he or Mrs. Luce wants to talk 
about the funeral they'll let you know, so don't bring it up.  
And Fox, do not ask questions about why God kills people before 
taking them to heaven or what it's like to be dead."  Budding 
investigator that he was, the hush-hush treatment of death and 
dying had merely obsessed him with the subject.  

Trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible, he asked, "How 
well did you know my mother?" 

She paused in her work, perhaps hearing something significant in 
the question.  "Reasonably well, though I can't say we were 
close.  We never talked about much besides our children.  Why do 
you ask?"

"I guess . . ."  He ran his fingertips over a dent in the table.  
Somehow, it was easier to talk when he wasn't looking at her.  "I 
guess because lately I've been wondering how well I knew her."    

He heard her set down her shuttle.  "Has something happened?"

He hoped he'd said this enough times that he would stay calm when 
talking about it.  "I lost her recently."  The tremor was minor, 
but he could feel the telltale stillness inside of him, like 
something was in free fall.  He briefly considered not going on.  
When he spoke again, his voice broke like glass: "She never told 
me she was sick."  

The pressure building in his chest was probably a sob, but he 
never found out if he contained it.  A seizure-vision kicked in 
instead.  The sensation of reality shifting was physical, like 
falling onto a slab of concrete and passing straight through.  

He was five years old, leaning with his back against the Luces' 
front door.  The house smelled like funeral flowers.  Mr. Luce's 
shoes, caked with dried mud, rested on a sheet of old newspaper 
beside him.  The shoes made Fox uneasy.  He didn't think they 
should be there.  

Flowers were sitting in vases and jars all over the house, but he 
couldn't talk about them because he wasn't supposed to say 
"funeral."  He wasn't supposed to say "dying" or "dead" or 
"killed" either, but those words stayed in his head and worried 
him.  What if he got confused and said something bad by accident?  
No, he should say 'by mistake' -- he wasn't supposed to talk 
about accidents, either.  

He had said and done some bad things at the funeral and his dad 
had taken him out and smacked him.  He was ashamed of that.  He 
hadn't been able to explain that the church was a bad place for 
him to be and that staying there had been like not being able to 
breathe.  He thought Mr. Luce might feel the same way inside his 
wooden box.

Fox heard grownup footsteps on the stairs and fought the urge to 
suck his fingers like a baby.  He wrapped his hand around the 
doorknob instead.  Mrs. Luce came downstairs, wearing jeans and a 
ponytail like a teenager, but with a laundry basket balanced on 
her hip like a mom.  

She stopped on the last step and asked, "What's the matter?" 

"Whose shoes are those?"  Fox asked softly, although he was sure 
he knew.

She looked at him a moment, then turned to look out the window at 
the squirrels snatching seeds out of the birdfeeder.  Fox worried 
that she'd walk right by him without speaking.  Sometimes his mom 
did that after he asked a bad question.  That hurt his feelings 
worse than any spanking ever hurt.  

Instead, Mrs. Luce put down the basket and sat on the stairs.  
She looked like she might want to cry.  "Those are Joey and 
Cheryl's daddy's shoes," she said.

Fox's own daddy's shoes were in the same place at home.  "Is he 
here?" he asked, still very quiet.

She shook her head.  "No."  She spoke so softly it was almost not 
a word. 

"Then why are they here?"  He didn't understand how a man could 
line up his muddy shoes neatly by the door and then walk away 
forever.  How could there still be muddy shoes after a father had 
died?  How could everything look just the same?  

"They bother you?  You want me to get rid of them?"  She seemed 
to dislike him just then.

Fox nodded slowly.  He did not want to make her angry.  It was 
only that a man who was dead and in a box should not have his 
shoes waiting for him by the door. It was too sad to think 
they'd wait and wait and he'd never come home to wear them.

"Fine."  She got up and walked to the edge of the newspaper, but 
then she just stood there.  Fox got the idea she was thinking 
about leaving the shoes there and sending him home instead.  
Finally she picked them up, newspaper and all, and tossed them in 
the closet.  She shut the door as if there were a wild animal on 
the other side.  "Is that better?"  

Fox was too upset to answer.  He wished she would send him home.  
This house had a crushing feeling in it even worse than at the 
funeral.  He gave in to his babyish desire and sucked the two 
middle fingers of his left hand.  

Mrs. Luce started to look less angry and more sad as she watched 
him comfort himself.  "Is this about your daddy?"  Her voice 
reminded him of the way a top jittered and shook just before it 
fell down.  "Are you scared your daddy will go away and not come 
home?"  Fox nodded.  

Light footsteps sounded on the wooden floor.  Joey had given up 
playing alone in the back room and stood near the dining table, 
twisting the hem of his shirt in his hands.  "Come here," Mrs. 
Luce said, holding her hands out to both children.  

She sat on the stairs and pulled them into her lap.  "It was an 
accident.  It was an accident with a little tiny boat out on the 
big water.  Joey's daddy didn't mean to leave us.  He made a 
mistake and took the little boat out farther than it could go.  He 
didn't do it on purpose."  Fox curled into the hollow of her 
shoulder and wondered why she kept saying that.  It had never 
occurred to him that a parent would die on purpose and leave his 
child.  

Mrs. Luce rocked them. "What happened to Joey's daddy isn't going 
to happen to me, and it isn't going to happen to your mommy and 
daddy, Fox.  We're going to be here for a long, long time, until 
you're all grown up and you don't need us so much anymore."  It 
would have been easier to believe if she wasn't crying when she 
said it.   

Mulder's awareness returned to the present-day in sections.  The 
sensation of his body hunched over the table came first.  Mrs. 
Luce's voice, reedier than he remembered but still soothing, 
formed a bewildering bridge between the past and the present.  

"Fox, what is it?  What's the matter?"

At first he thought he was crying.  Then he realized he wasn't -- 
he was trying not to be sick.  He sat with his eyes closed, his 
forehead resting on his balled fists.  Sam Cooke was still 
warbling in the background: " . . . you thrill me, honest you do, 
honest you do."  The flashback must have lasted only seconds.  
This was not one of the waking nightmares of PTSD -- those 
happened in real time.  This was something electrochemical -- 
something deep.  He could almost hear the thin whine of Goldman's 
drill as he'd prepared to tunnel into Mulder's cerebral cortex, 
rooting for memories.  He'd found some, all right.  He turned his 
thoughts away from the vision of C.G.B. Spender pulling his 
mother close.

Mulder knocked the chair over as he got up.  "Sorry," he 
muttered.  He walked into the kitchen and turned on the tap, 
rinsing the sick taste from his mouth with handful after cupped 
handful of water.  

Mrs. Luce's electric scooter buzzed as she came up behind him.  
"Are you all right?  I don't understand what's happening.  Should 
I call the hospital?"

He shook his head.  He knew he owed her some kind of explanation.  
Which one should he give her -- the holes in his head or the 
alien virus that was slowly re-writing the genetic code in his 
brain?  No contest -- it was neither.  

Between rinsing and spitting he said: "'S a head injury -- old 
one.  I'll be all right.  Just gimme a minute."  

"For God's sake, Fox, are you seeing a doctor?" 

"Yeah."  Since the beginning of March, actually.  Oh, Scully's 
God would put a big, black mark in the book next to his name for 
that one.    

When he was finally done washing his mouth out, he soaked a dish 
towel in cold water, wrung it out and went to sit back down.  He 
placed the towel on the back of his neck.  "I'm sorry," he said.  
He was dimly aware that he'd been apologizing to her since the 
seizure hit him.  

"Don't be sorry.  What can I do for you?"  She positioned her 
scooter next to him and sponged his neck and forehead with the 
dishcloth.  

He interrupted her by shaking his head.  "Just tell me . . . did 
she love us?"

"Did who love you -- your mother?"  

He nodded.  

Mrs. Luce sat back as if to better read his expression.  Mulder 
wondered what she saw there that seemed to concern her so much.  
"Of course she loved you.  Of course.  Why would you even ask 
that?"

"She had this whole other life . . ." 

"A woman's life doesn't start when her children are born, you 
know," she said.

"It's not that.  There's this man, his name is C.G.B. Spender."  
Mulder hesitated to tell her the rest.  It seemed especially 
wicked to impugn the character of a woman who was no longer alive 
to defend herself.  He remembered how his mother had slapped him 
in her hurt and outrage. //"I am your mother and I will not stand 
here and listen to your accusations."//  

//I have to know,// Mulder thought, maybe making justifications 
to himself, maybe to the spirit of his mother.  "I know Spender 
was around when I was young.  I've seen pictures of him with my 
parents.  He told me . . . he came right out and told me he's my 
father.  He implied that he's Samantha's, too."

Mrs. Luce rested the damp rag in her lap.  There was horror in 
her expression, and compassion as well, but no shock, Mulder 
thought.  Definitely not shock.  Perhaps Churchill had looked so 
when Paris fell.  

"Bill Mulder was your father." She spoke firmly, as if reminding 
him of a duty he had forgotten.  "He fed you.  He clothed you.  
He saw that you got an education."

"I'm not denying that.  I'm not saying I'm not grateful.  It's 
just -- what if it's true?  Forget not knowing who my father was, 
I'd feel like I hardly knew who my mother was," Mulder said.

She looked at him hard.  "Bill Mulder was your father."  Her 
words had a finality to them, like a door closing.

That front was clearly futile, and Mulder turned away from it.  
"There's other things," he said.  It was hard to talk while 
looking into that steady blue gaze, so he got up and wandered 
over to the door to the kitchen.  The radio had started playing 
that damn Shirelles song: "While I'm far away from you my baby, 
I know it's hard for you my baby . . ." The last fucking thing he 
was in the mood for.  

"I think my mother knew what was going to happen to Samantha.  
Not that she could have stopped it, but she knew.  And she never 
told me.  She let me spend all those years looking."  He kept his 
gaze on the little window over the sink.  The orange berries of 
an ash tree growing outside were the only spot of color against 
the late winter landscape.

He heard Mrs. Luce sigh.  "The past is what you make it, Fox.  
Why make it terrible?"

He spoke as if he hadn't heard.  "The last thing she said to me 
was, 'There's so much I've left unsaid, for reasons I hope one 
day you'll understand.'  Actually, she said it to my machine.  
She didn't even wait for me to get home . . ."  His disordered 
mind offered up sensations: the smell of cold ashes, a leaky gas 
line making his eyes water.  He remembered the picture frames 
lying around empty but not the tableau on the couch.  //Please, 
God, don't let me have seen that . . .//  He knew she'd used a 
plastic bag -- probably got that idea from "Final Exit."  It was 
always bad when they used plastic.  He remembered what had been 
left of Ed Paulsen when they finally caught up with him in that 
cabin outside Marquette -- and what wasn't left.  Plastic was 
like a little greenhouse.  //Dammit, Paulsen had been dead for 
weeks.  This is different.//  He had a dim mental image of the 
blue-and-white couch and felt sick.  He'd probably seen.  //Oh, 
Scully . . . why didn't you keep me out of there?// 

In tears, he turned to Mrs. Luce, hoping she'd distract him from 
what he couldn't remember seeing and never wanted to see again.  
"She'd -- she'd taken the pictures and things, you know?  She 
burned 'em in the trash basket.  I mean, why would she do that?  
Like . . . like s-she wanted to wipe out everything to do with 
her life, or maybe just about Samantha and me . . ."

"Fox, slow down.  I don't understand."  Mrs. Luce held her hand 
out to him, the way she had when he was five and afraid of Mr. 
Luce's shoes.  

He walked by her and sat down.  She rubbed his shoulder in little 
circles.  When he felt calmer he continued, "My mother . . . she 
committed suicide, Mrs. Luce.  She had cancer, but that's not how 
she wanted to die.  I guess it was her right.  Maybe I wouldv'e 
seen it her way in time, I don't know.  But she never told me.  
She had the will and the papers all drawn up, she bought a 
goddamn grave plot and she never told me.  I didn't figure into 
this carefully thought-out plan.  I mean, we'd had some 
arguments; I accused her of some things.  But I thought it was 
mostly okay between us.  Now I don't know.  Do you think . . . do 
you think she'd do this to hurt me?  Because I sure have a hard 
time seeing it any other way."

"I wish I knew what to tell you."  Mrs. Luce took his hand in her 
free one, and Mulder noticed the brown burn marks on her fingers, 
as Joe had described.  He covered her fingers with his own.  "I 
just can't reconcile what you're telling me with what I knew of 
your mother.  She cherished you . . . .  I didn't know anyone 
who listened to her children the way your mother did.  It 
wasn't in fashion at the time.  She'd point out things and ask, 
'What is that, Fox?  What do you think it does?'  And she'd 
really listen to your explanation, whether it was right or
not.  I thought, 'That's really smart.  She's teaching him to 
think.' It sounds so obvious now, but it wasn't then.  

"I suppose it sounds wrong to say you were in love, but mothers 
and children are in love, in a very innocent way.  The two of you 
were obviously mad about each other."

Mulder bent his head, remembering a time when he and his mother 
were in love, when she was the sunlight at the center of his 
little universe.  Then something had gotten in the way, whether 
it was C.G.B. Spender or a multi-national abduction conspiracy or 
just the mismatch of personalities that sometimes happened 
between parents and children.  But after a while Fox's questions 
and hypotheses stopped being cute and became threatening, and his 
mother didn't want to listen anymore.  Maybe that was why he felt 
so cheated by her death.  Some people were able to recapture the 
tenderness of their early years at the end of their parents' 
lives, when the care-taking roles were reversed.  His mother had 
not been interested.  Did she not trust him?  Did she really not 
love him?

Mulder looked up and said, "Mrs. Luce?  Do your kids a favor and 
let them take care of you.  Maybe you don't need it, but they 
do."  

She drew breath as though she meant to argue with him, but then 
her expression softened, as if something, maybe pity, had 
persuaded her to let the dispute go.  He hoped it wasn't pity.  

Mulder's hair really wasn't long enough for her to brush it out
of his eyes, but she made the gesture anyway.  "I'll keep that 
in mind," she said. 

For a while he leaned with his chin in his hand, done crying, 
mostly, and just looked at her.  The mushy 50's song on the radio 
made him feel like they were two teenagers in a soda shop: "Life 
can never be exactly like we want it to be.  I can be satisfied 
just knowing that you love me  . . ."  

On second thought, the goofy-teen feeling was different.  He got 
that sometimes with Scully.  He and Mrs. Luce were more like a 
mother and her four-year-old, almost-lovers for an afternoon.  
Silly.  Well, maybe not so silly.  Perhaps long acquaintance with 
this sensible, self-reliant lady had influenced his choice of a 
woman who could take out a flesh-regenerating mutant with a 
defibrillator.  And Scully had done it in 4-inch heels, for God's 
sake -- the thought still gave him cheap thrills.  

He'd really been pretty fortunate in the women in his life;  
maybe letting go with grace was one way to show appreciation.  
"You remember telling me that you and my parents would still be 
around until Joey and I didn't need you so much anymore?" Mulder 
asked.

She blinked at him.  "I said that?" 

"So when exactly did you expect that to be?" 

"I . . . suppose I assumed that you wouldn't remember it by the 
time you were old enough to know what a lie that was."

Mulder broke into a rare laugh.  "That's what I thought."  He 
began to feel, if not comforted, then at least a grief that was 
closer to love than abandonment.  

The Shirelles continued their mildly annoying lullaby: "Each 
night before you go to bed my baby, Whisper a little prayer for 
me my baby . . ."  

Maybe it was time to start tying up the loose ends of his 
mother's life.  For instance, he hadn't gotten her a tombstone.  
He didn't know what date to put on it.  Scully had written 
"February 6 or 7" on the death certificate.  She was a 
conservative pathologist who refused to go out on a limb with 
time of death estimates, and in this instance her carefulness 
irked him.  

//Fine, I'll just put '2000.'  Let 'em guess.  'Christina Mulder, 
1941 - 2000.'  No, wait, she had 'Teena' on her license.  Did she 
change it legally?  I don't know.  Hell.//  Actually, he was 
pretty sure the name had originally been Krystina, sister of 
Katarin and Margrieta, who had quickly become Teena, Kathy and 
Margie for the same reason their mother gave up the Jewish 
religion in favor of a pale sort of Protestantism.  Europe had 
not been good to their family.

//So we've got the religion, the death date and the name all in 
doubt.  Phenomenal.//  What *did* he know about the woman he'd 
lived with for nearly eighteen years?   Mrs. Luce said she'd 
cherished him.  

Maybe.  

While he brooded, the Shirelles song, insubstantial as a kiss, 
drew to its end: " . . . and tell all the stars above, This is 
dedicated to the one I love."

It would have been funny, if only he hadn't started to cry.

*****

Scully slept deeply in Tammy Williams' girlhood bed.  She'd taken 
her Tylenol-3 before going to sleep, and the dopey, sluggish 
feeling insinuated itself into her dreams.  

She dreamt she was standing in Skinner's office, trying to 
present a complicated scientific argument about alien viruses 
while drunk.  She slurred her speech and kept dropping her laser 
pointer so that it rolled under AD Kersh's chair.  Worse, her 
extended family had dropped by and a crowd of them sat at the 
back of the room, looking horrified. 
 
Scully steadied herself by holding onto her AV cart and did her 
best to reconstruct a line of reasoning that had seemed so cogent 
the night before.  All she wanted to do was lie down and sleep, 
but there were reports to give, her reputation to preserve, if 
possible.  She avoided her mother's eyes, with their look of 
scalding hurt.  

Aiming her laser pointer at the blurry slide image on Skinner's 
wall, she said, "So this . . . this right here, is analogous to 
human RNA, and it, you know, transcribes backwards into DNA, but 
with three base pairs instead of two."  She looked up woozily and 
discovered that the slide did not show a strand of alien RNA, but 
instead an entire human chromosome.  Mortified, she said, "Wait -
- this is the wrong image.  Hang on."  She pushed the slide 
advance button but the carousel rotated backward.  A picture of 
Bethesda Naval Hospital appeared on the wall.

"Are you telling us an alien virus built *that?*" asked Nickerson 
from the Budget Department.  The bureaucrats sitting around the 
conference table all chuckled.  Skinner touched his fingertips to 
his forehead and looked pained.  

"No -- no, of course not.  I've just got the wrong slide on the--
"  She tried turning the carousel by hand, but only managed to 
pop it off its stand and send it crashing to the floor.  Scully 
grabbed for it and lost her laser pointer.  The little metal 
cylinder bounced on the carpet and rolled.  //Please don't let it 
stop at Kersh's feet . . .// It did.

He scooped it from the carpet and held it out to her.  "I believe 
this belongs to you, Agent Scully?" His voice was soft as a 
bullet clip sliding into place.

"Yes, sir.  I'm sorry . . . I'm a little disorganized."  Her 
words were a slurred mess.  

"I can see that," Kersh said.  

Her baby nephew cheeped in the corner.  Scully looked up at her 
parents, seated beneath Skinner's picture of the Attorney 
General.  Her father wouldn't look at her.  As she watched, he 
unclipped the orange visitor pass from the jacket of his Naval 
uniform and let it drop into his lap.  Her mother held his arm, 
whether seeking to give or receive comfort Scully wasn't sure.  
Margaret Scully's look was like an accusation, but one filled 
with sorrow and pity that her daughter had come to this.  

Scully moaned and stirred under the covers, becoming dimly aware 
of the throbbing of her injured hands.  Trying to wake herself 
was like dragging her body out of quicksand.  At last she opened 
her eyes, dry and swollen from the dusty pillow.  The room was in 
the half-shadow of late afternoon.  Her sleepy gaze took in her 
jacket and gun, laid over a chair, the black canvas case 
containing her laptop that rested on top of the dresser.  Symbols 
of authority and trustworthiness, assuring her that she was not 
the bumbling wretch of her dream.  But even as she regained full 
consciousness, the bone-deep feeling of shame would not leave 
her.  

She examined the emotion like a wound.  Where had it come from?  
Why did it feel so deep?  Irv Stuckey's words came back to her: 
//"I know you tried and failed to get custody of a child who died 
in 1998."//

No.  She wasn't going to let him make that her fault.  Emily had 
gotten the best mothering Scully was capable of, the best care 
medical science could offer.  She sat up and felt the room wobble 
around her.  The dust must have irritated her sinuses and caused 
drainage to back up into her ear canals.  She rooted around in 
her purse, looking for the meclizine HCl she sometimes took for 
motion sickness.  After several dizzy, nauseated seconds of 
frustration, she dumped the bag out on the floor.  The Chapstick-
shaped container of meclizine bounced out amid a hail of extra 
batteries, charge card receipts, and trial-size toiletry items.  
The little heap formed a sad sort of autobiography on the rug.  
Scully dry-swallowed a motion-sickness tablet and leaned back 
against the wall.

Lord, she really did feel drunk -- bad drunk, up at 5 a.m. after 
a night of too-sweet wine drunk.  A dirty, shameful feeling.  She 
recalled that she'd contaminated the scene of Kristie's death 
last night while trying to aid two phantom children.  No doubt 
the Troopers who'd searched the woods had some things to say 
about her today.  Yet humiliating as that was, she'd been acting 
in good faith.  Looking foolish was not a cause for true shame. 

This was something deeper, worse.  She remembered Emily's case 
worker, Susan Chambliss, explaining the reason behind her custody 
recommendation. //"You're a single woman who's never been married 
or had a long-term relationship. You're in a high stress, time 
intensive, and dangerous occupation . . ."//  Chambliss' smile 
had been compassionate, but the hard, distant look in her eyes 
suggested suspicion, both of Scully's motives and her abilities.  
Under that sweetly rejecting gaze, Scully saw herself as 
Chambliss must have seen her: a self-obsessed career woman who 
wanted to use a vulnerable little girl to fill some gaping 
emotional need of her own.  Not quite a monster, but a threat.

Inside, Scully was still protesting that it wasn't true.  She had 
survived her own near-fatal illness and had become stronger for 
it.  She'd had something to offer Emily that more "suitable" 
parents didn't -- empathy from personal experience.  She'd 
willingly entered that dark tunnel again, relived the experience 
"through the eyes of a child," as Chambliss had put it, in order 
to give Emily everything she could.  

Some self-punishing inner voice whispered, //And look at how it 
ended -- a little white coffin in St. Mary's, full of sand.//

Scully got up, nausea or no nausea.  She'd be damned if she'd 
lie around and let Irv Stuckey's words go to work on her again.  
She'd cried most of the way to Edgartown, where she'd forced 
herself to calm down so she could shop for essentials like a 
normal person.  

She'd finally found an open pharmacy and "Oscar's Dry Goods 
Store," which was much less quaint than it sounded and 
outrageously expensive.  Since it was just about the only open 
store in town, it could afford to be.  One wall was largely 
devoted to the sort of items that campers might need at the last 
minute, and Scully had picked out a pair of khaki fishing pants 
and a navy polo shirt with an embroidered lighthouse and the 
words, "Edgartown, MA" on the left breast.  The outfit was too 
expensive and would make her feel like a tour guide, but it would 
have to do.  

She pulled her new clothes out of their plastic bag and set 
herself to clipping tags and getting dressed.  The pant legs were 
too long and she had to roll them up.  Terrific.  The teenage 
camp counselor look.  Well, maybe Mulder would get off on it -- 
you never knew.  

He claimed to find her sexy when she woke up in the morning, 
despite the fact her hair was usually wild as a burning bush 
and she tended to sit half-conscious among the tangled sheets 
for a while, blinking in the lamplight like a lost subterranean
creature.  She had no idea what he saw in her then.  Certainly 
not something out of "Some Girls Do: Part III."        

She slid her feet into her blood-spattered orthopedic sneakers 
without having much of an idea where she was going.  Out.  Away 
from the cops who probably thought she was nuts and the Islanders 
who knew too much about Mulder, and about her by association.  

She attached her holster to the elastic waistband of her pants 
and thought about how Mulder must have felt in the days when this 
house was his refuge from public opinion.  The poor kid 
practically couldn't leave his front porch without running into 
people who knew everything there was to know about him, or who 
thought they did, anyway.  Talk about a way to raise a paranoid.  

That idea led back to Irv's accusation about the cat, and then 
once again to Emily.  //He's a hateful little man.  He has an 
evil mind, and most of what he says isn't true.//  But some of it 
was true.  Even Irv's lies were maybe just a little bit true.  
Just enough to hurt.

Scully threw her coat on.  Her cell phone had dropped out of her 
pocket and lay on the rug under the chair.  She looked at it and 
hesitated.  Mulder was worried about her, and the two of them had 
been out of contact for hours.  Actually, she'd had the phone 
turned off for much of the day.  She told herself she ought to 
call him, or at least take the phone with her.  

Ought to, but wouldn't.  Scully wanted to be alone, without 
having to answer questions, without having to grit her teeth and 
listen to advice.  At this point, even, "How did your day go?" 
would make her want to scream.  She left the phone where it was, 
hoping he'd understand.  After all, he knew what it was like to 
ache inside and to have other people's eyes following him, just 
watching and knowing.  

By the front door she ran into Davis and Tihkoosue -- almost 
literally.  Tihkoosue pushed the door in just as she was reaching 
for the knob.  "Uh -- sorry, Dr. Scully," he said, his dark eyes 
widening in surprise.  He glanced down at her hands with their 
bandages of clean white gauze.  "How are you doing?"

Scully stepped back to allow him and Davis into the room.  "I'm 
fine, thank you," she said, giving him a smile she hoped was 
briskly professional.  From the expression on his face, she 
gathered she looked ghastly.  "I wanted to tell you, I appreciate 
the work you and your men did last night." Better to bring the 
fiasco of the search up first.  Tap dancing around the subject 
would only be worse.  

"Sure -- no problem," Tihkoosue said.  "I just wish we'd been 
able to be more, you know, productive."  

He didn't say what would have been more productive, like 
sharpening pencils or alphabetizing his cereal cupboard, but the 
conversation ground to a miserable halt.  Davis broke the silence 
by saying, "We had a break in the case today.  Your partner may 
have helped us catch our man."

"He did?" Scully asked.  

Davis looked like a batter who'd expected a fastball and got 
pitched a turnip.

"I mean -- he did.  That's good," Scully said.

It was too late.  The detective's expression had shifted to the 
almost-neutral look of veiled speculation.  "That surprises you?" 
he asked.  She wondered if he'd start an office pool betting on 
when the nice young men in the clean white coats would finally 
come to get her.  

A hot, prickling feeling spread over her face and neck.  "No.  
Mulder's very good at what he does.  It's just --"  It was just 
that she'd so given herself over to the idea that Kristie's 
ordeal, like her own, had been at the hands of something more 
than human.  "It's just that was fast, that's all.  Even for 
him." 

"Oh," Davis said.  She figured he'd put his money on two weeks or 
less.

Tihkoosue cleared his throat and said, "So, uh, you're not going 
out again, are you, doctor?"  

They thought she was too big a dimwit to be allowed out alone.  
Scully tried to get mad instead of feeling embarrassed.  There 
was dignity in anger.  She gave them a chilly smile and said, 
"I'm sure you have work to do.  Don't let me keep you."  Her tone 
was curt enough, but she was pretty sure every blood vessel in 
her face was telegraphing how ridiculous she felt.  

She put her hand to her head as she walked out onto the snow-
dusted porch.  Tihkoosue's voice was still audible as she 
descended the steps.  "What was all that about?" he asked.

"I dunno," Davis answered.  "At first I thought *he* was nuts, 
and then--"  His words were muffled as he pulled the door shut.  

Scully headed for the field behind the house and the woods 
beyond, where there would be no people, no questions, no curious 
eyes.  As she tromped over the frozen grass, she passed garden 
furnishings she'd missed the night before: bare rose trellises; a 
bench-swing; a low, thorny thicket that was probably a descendant 
of the raspberry bushes Mulder had gotten into as a child.   

If Leigh's version of events was truer than Irv's, Mulder's 
childhood had been fairly happy until his family all but 
disintegrated when he was twelve.  By then he'd have been old 
enough to understand the extent of his loss, but too young to 
have any power to change things.  She told herself she pitied 
him.  

But as she left the garden for the wide-open field, she began to 
realize that pity was not what she was feeling at all.  Out under 
the inverted blue bowl of a winter sky, no ready help within 
shouting distance, she was envious of Fox Mulder.  She envied him 
the space he'd always had around him -- physical space to 
explore, his adventurous spirit unhindered by his would-be 
protectors, and the emotional space he'd succeeded in setting up 
between himself and the expectations of others.  If Mulder wanted 
to spend Christmas Day getting drunk and watching Three Stooges 
movies, no one was going to stop him.  She was sure he never, 
ever had nightmares about being embarrassed in front of his boss.    

By contrast, Scully's sense of self had been formed by a trinity 
of great institutions: her family, the Catholic Church, and the 
U.S. Navy.  She was still half-convinced they owned proprietary 
rights to her self-respect, and if she ever broke ranks she would 
become someone awful.  Actually, upon occasion she really had 
become someone awful, as when she'd spent more than a year trying 
to live down to Daniel Waterston's expectations.  It was 
difficult -- the emotional equivalent of foot-binding -- but 
she'd almost succeeded.  Most of her love affairs had been like 
that, like spending so many months wearing too-tight shoes, 
hoping she'd shrink into them.  Really, she only felt whole and 
sane when she was alone.  

She met no one as she followed the shallow trough of a bike path 
that skirted the edge of the woods.  Leigh had told her it was 
the longer, less difficult way to reach the little graveyard 
Mulder had found her in last night.  In her current mood, the 
isolation of the clearing with its leaning headstones was what 
she wanted.  

She nearly passed the graveyard before she noticed it.  The crime 
scene tape had been taken down, depriving her of a landmark.  
What caught her eye was the tallest of the headstones, a flat, 
narrow rectangle of slate that leaned sideways as if the earth 
had partially swallowed it.  Once she knew where to look, the 
other headstones, mostly broken, became distinguishable from the 
weeds and juniper canes around them.  

Last night's snow had obliterated all signs of the officers who'd 
tracked back and forth between the crime scene and the road.  If 
she hadn't known better, she'd have assumed she was the first 
visitor in a hundred years.  As she walked over to the tall 
headstone, the only sounds were her feet crunching the ice-coated 
snow and the soft "pee-whit" of a nuthatch.

Snow covered the top of the stone and adhered to its face, but 
Scully resisted the temptation to brush it off.  Somehow, the 
idea of imposing her sense of order on the place felt 
disrespectful.  She crouched down and found the worn inscription 
was still readable.  Across the top the name "Cartwright" was 
carved in heavy block letters.  An entire family was listed 
below, both with and without dates: Ezra, 1785; Wife, 1797; 
Thomas; John, 1772; Serena, 1774; Mary, 1780; and an eroded word 
at the bottom that might simply have been "child."  

How degrading, she thought, to spend eternity labeled simply as 
"Wife," -- or "child," for that matter.  Worse, Mrs. Cartwright 
had survived her husband by twelve years.  Had Ezra and his 
children waited that long for a tombstone, or was it carved 
sometime beforehand, already bearing the word "Wife" and lacking 
only a date?  How had Mrs. Cartwright felt while looking at her 
one-word epitaph, knowing that her identity would melt away with 
her flesh?  Poor "child" had neither a name nor a date.  The 
thought of that little spirit enduring centuries of well-meaning 
prayers essentially addressed to "occupant" was dismally lonely.  

Scully remembered the gray-eyed child from the night before, her 
hair tangled, her clothes soaked in blood.  //"Stay,"// she'd 
said.  And Scully had wanted to stay.  After all, they had so 
much in common.  One was exiled to the world of anonymous souls 
by fate, the other by choice.    

Susan Chambliss' words came back to her: //"You're a single woman 
who's never been married or had a long-term relationship . . ."//  
Scully bent and pressed her fingertips into the snow, seeking the 
shock of ice crystals against her skin, an assurance she was 
still part of this world.  

//Emily . . .// Scully had pushed away the people who wanted to 
love her, choosing to seek independence and the illusion of self-
sufficiency instead.  And when she'd finally met someone she 
was willing to give up that freedom for, she'd been found 
unworthy.  What if she *had* loved Emily in a self-serving, 
shortsighted way?  Chambliss had called her medical decisions 
into question.  Perhaps she'd pursued treatment too aggressively, 
or not aggressively enough.  

Scully shied from her worst fear as from meeting a corpse in the 
dark, but now it confronted her.  What if she'd made some weak, 
selfish decision that caused Emily to die?  

//"It's always a wild night in winter, and some say you can hear 
the voices of those dead babies crying in the wind,"// Irv had 
said.

The iodine smell of the San Diego PICU came back to her. In her 
mind, she heard the rushing sound of the self-contained air 
recirculation system that kept the quarantine area under negative 
pressure.  Emily lay in the room's only bed, a child unconscious 
and bathed in sweat, but solid and warm and real.  

Now, gone.
  
Scully repeated the words she'd whispered behind her paper mask, 
"I'm so sorry." 

//"I know you tried and failed to get custody of a child who died 
in 1998. . . . "//

The feel of Emily's cheek beneath her fingers, so soft, but hot 
as an oven door, was the most real thing she could recall.  It 
felt more real than this snow-covered graveyard, more real than 
the weight of her body pressing down upon the balls of her feet.  
"Forgive me, Emily." 

//"Last night when you were out ruining your real clothes, did 
you hear her calling you?"//

The shame of her nightmare pierced her.  It was as if Susan 
Chambliss' unspoken accusation had been transformed into a 
scarlet letter and sewn onto Scully's clothing.  The letter would 
be "M" for murderer.   God knew she'd never meant to hurt her 
little daughter, biological, adopted, or both.  She'd never meant 
to hurt her parents by being difficult and distant.  Her 
decisions had all seemed inevitable at the time.  Maybe that was 
every damned soul's excuse as it stood trembling before the gates 
of Hell.  

In a voice hoarse from tears and fatigue, she prayed, "Lord Jesus 
Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  Lord Jesus 
Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner . . ." 

She resisted the urge to move, to find somewhere less grim in 
which to pray.  Everything considered, it felt only fitting that 
she seek solace in the same environment she'd chosen to spend her 
career in: alone among the dead.

*****

As Mulder scraped his shoes off on Nye House's coconut fiber mat, 
all he wanted to do was take a shower and go to sleep beside 
Scully, preferably after making gentle, tender love.  No Stupid 
Spice Channel Tricks tonight.  In fact, he might be willing to 
settle for watching old movies on TV and falling asleep with his 
head in her lap.  

When he opened the door he found a few State Troopers standing 
near the front desk, talking in lowered voices.  Their 
conversation stopped the moment he entered the room.  Mulder 
ignored them and walked down the hall marked, "Employees Only 
Beyond This Point."  Tammy Williams' old room was the first one 
on the left.  

There was no answer at his knock, and when he opened the door, he 
saw that Scully's coat was gone, but her cell phone lay beneath a 
chair.  A closer inspection revealed that she'd left her purse 
but taken her gun.  "Your partner's gone out," one of the 
officers called.  Mulder didn't like the strange emphasis the man 
put on "out."  

He had a pretty good idea where she'd gone.  //Scully, don't do 
this to me.//  In the last 24 hours, he'd slept less and cried 
more than was good for his sanity.  The last thing he needed was 
to be chasing her over the empty hills with who-knew-what loose 
in the woods. 

The men in the front room gave him curious looks as he wearily 
headed back out the way he came.  As he'd feared, his car was 
parked in the gravel lot, its hood cold.  A line of footprints in 
the snow led from the Inn's front door toward the field behind 
Nye House.  They were wavy-soled orthopedic sneaker prints -- 
Scully's autopsy shoes.  

Mulder walked across the frozen field thinking -- what?  That 
when he found her, he'd grab her by the shoulders and shake her 
until her teeth rattled?  He'd send her to her room with no TV?  
Sure.  She'd shoot him first.

Mulder's anger slowly drained away as he hiked across the frozen 
field, leaving nothing but cold fear in its place.  Scully was 
practically all he had, and he was afraid he wouldn't survive 
losing her.  

He found her crouching in front of the old Cartwright tombstone 
in the South Road Burying Ground, her head bent, whispering to 
herself.  He was able to catch the sibilants in "Jesus" and 
"sinner."  

"Hi," he said.  

She jumped a little at the sound of his voice.  Scully brushed 
her cheeks with her fingertips before she turned to face him.  
"Hi."  

He walked over and crouched down next to her.  Gesturing at the 
tombstone, he said, "Ezra doesn't say much, but he's all right."

She dug in her pockets, presumably for a Kleenex. "I just needed 
some time alone." 

Mulder nodded, but didn't take the hint to go away.  He didn't 
think she needed to be alone out here, with her own and Kristie's 
blood spattering the trees not fifty yards away.  When her search 
for a tissue was unsuccessful, he gave her his clean 
handkerchief.  The one he'd dried his own tears with was in his 
back pocket.  "I used to come out here when I was a kid.  Joey 
and I had a tree fort over in that willow."  He pointed to a 
massive gray willow tree, now more dead than alive, which still 
had the remains of boards and some raveling ropes fastened to it.  

"Must've been nice," she said.  She blew her nose and folded the 
handkerchief neatly.  Mulder knew Scully's childhood had spanned 
seven states, and that if she and her siblings had built forts, 
she no longer knew where.  

"We had a good time," Mulder said.  He didn't bother asking how 
she was doing, since he knew the answer would only be "Fine."  He 
rubbed her back with his hand.  

"Mulder?"

"Mmm-hm?"

"Did you ever poison a cat?"

He looked over at her, saw the earnestness in her mascara-smudged 
eyes.  "What?"           

"I talked to Irv Stuckey today, and he said I should ask you 
about the time you poisoned the cat.  He said that was what sent 
Sheriff Luce 'sniffing' after you."

"Irv said . . . ?  Irv's an asshole," Mulder said.  After a 
moment he stood and walked a few steps away, fighting a powerful 
desire to go out to Menemsha and wring Irv's neck.  "I never 
killed anybody's cat."  He'd meant the statement to be a firm 
denial, but to his dismay he sounded hurt and resentful, like an 
eleven-year-old wrongfully accused.  

He heard the snow crunch beneath her feet as she stood and came 
over to him.  Scully threaded her arm through his and rested her 
head against his bicep.  "What happened?" 

He looked over at the broken tombstones, like jagged teeth 
sticking out of the ground.  This was not a story he much liked 
telling.  "Ah . . . hell.  I was rotten kid.  I knew I'd be in 
trouble if I hit my sister, so I mentally abused her instead.  
Sometimes when I got mad at her I said I'd do things . . . 
to her dolls or to her cat.  Never poison -- it was Baroque 
things, 'The Pit and the Pendulum' stuff.  It made her scream.  
I guess that's what I wanted."  He felt Scully's body tense 
against him, and he looked over, asking a wordless question.  

She shook her head against his arm.  "It's nothing.  It's just I 
had a rabbit once.  I called him Peter.  As in Cottontail.  A 
stupid name, but I was six.  My brother kept threatening to skin 
and cook him."

Mulder nodded, avoiding her eyes.  "Maybe your brother feels kind 
of bad about it now."

"Maybe."

"Kids say things, you know?"   

"Yes." 

"My sister's cat turned up dead at the bottom of the basement 
stairs one day."

Scully ran her bandaged hand up and down his forearm.  "That 
must've been awful."

"The cat had blood running out of her mouth.  She was an indoor 
cat and this was in March -- nothing outside to chew on, 
poisonous or not.  Samantha ran upstairs crying and told our mom 
the stuff I'd been saying.  Mom just lost it.  She took my dad's 
belt to me -- the worst whipping I ever got from her.  Didn't 
matter that I said I hadn't done anything.  I think she wanted to 
believe that I poisoned the cat, because it was better than the 
alternative."

For a moment, the chilly afternoon was so quiet.  There were no 
car noises this far out, not even the distant roar of airplane 
engines.  The only sounds were the wind and the calls of the 
birds.  Scully kept rubbing his arm. "Someone came in and did 
it," she said. 

"Yeah."  The word was almost a sigh. "This was early in the year 
we lost my sister. I think my father was fighting the Syndicate 
at the time, so they sent him a little message. 'Hand over one of 
your kids for our Project, or next time it'll be more than just 
the cat.'"
  
"That's horrible."

"I couldn't convince my mom I hadn't done it.  Before long I even 
had my sister believing me, which is saying something.  I guess 
your sister always knows if you're lying or not."  

Scully's sharp intake of breath was somewhere between a laugh and 
a gasp of pain.  He figured her bruised ribs were hurting her.  
"Melissa and I sounded exactly the same way when we lied.  I 
always knew."

"Well, Samantha knew.  She was--"  He decided not to describe 
that scene, himself lying across his bed, in more pain than he'd 
known existed, begging his mother for mercy while she blistered 
his behind and told him he'd done something very, very wicked.  
Samantha had stood on the other side of the bedroom door and 
shouted, "Don't you hit my brother!"     

"Anyway . . . she knew," Mulder said.  

He felt Scully shifting position as she looked up at him, but he 
kept his own gaze on a stand of black trees in the middle 
distance.  Almost three decades later, he was still ashamed.  Not 
so much because he'd been punished, but because his own mother 
thought him capable of doing such a thing.  Knowing what he did 
now about the sort of children who tortured animals, the 
accusation was actually worse.   

"Did your mom ever believe you?" Scully asked.

"Eventually.  It helped that my dad believed me, or at least he 
believed my sister.  Or maybe he knew something we didn't.  I 
don't know."  One of the braver things he'd done as a child was 
to stand in his pajamas in the middle of the living room, risking 
another spanking by simply being out of his room, and insist to 
his father that he hadn't killed the family cat.  Bill Mulder had 
looked a little gray around the lips as he'd stood in his damp 
raincoat, confronted by the whole family yelling at him.  He'd 
turned Fox around and sent him back upstairs with a surprisingly 
gentle nudge.  //"Go on up, son.  I'll talk to you later."//

"Cats do sometimes just die, you know," Scully said.

"You'd think that would have occurred to someone.  It sure didn't 
seem to occur to my parents, at least not as the most likely 
possibility.  There was something wrong, Scully.  Something they 
weren't going to tell me about.  They actually had the cat 
autopsied.  I mean, how weird is that?"

"When it's an animal, the procedure's usually called a necropsy, 
but it's not so unusual," Scully said.

"There was blood inside of her.  Or something.  My parents 
weren't very forthcoming with information.  The vet said she'd 
definitely eaten something poisonous, but he couldn't say what."

"No.  Isolating a toxin is hard enough now, and with the methods 
they had back in the early 70's it would have been worse. 
Probably even the FBI lab couldn't have identified the poison 
precisely.  If whatever the cat ingested had cleared her stomach, 
there was really no way for the vet to know."

Scully's tone was kinder than her clinical words implied.  He 
turned toward her and rested his cheek against the smooth curve 
of her bangs.  "Once my mom was sure I hadn't killed the cat, she 
wouldn't let my sister and I eat anywhere.  We had to come home 
from school for lunch.  She'd taste our food before she gave it 
to us, that sort of thing.  I think this may have been when the 
neighbors first realized that something was really wrong with us.  
It was about that time when Joey's uncle started telling Mrs. 
Luce that maybe her kids shouldn't play with us anymore.  I 
actually think he kind of liked me when I was little, it's just 
he could sense something really bad was coming down and didn't 
want his family involved.  I guess I can't blame him."

"As a law officer, it was his job to help you," Scully said.  
"You wouldn't turn away from a family in a desperate situation 
like that, would you?"  

"No."  Mulder mouthed the word more than he spoke it. "But I 
don't have kids to protect, you know?  If it was between a 
neighbor family and my own niece and nephew . . . I don't know.  
Anyway, people remembered what happened to the cat when my sister 
went missing.  I was the only other person home when it happened, 
and they figured I was already a pet-poisoning junior psycho."

"You weren't," she said firmly.  "I hope your mother apologized 
to you."

"She did, in her way."  She'd cupped his face in her hands, a 
gesture somewhere between a caress and a restraint to keep him 
from looking away.  //"Fox, if you didn't do this thing, I'm 
sorry."//  She'd scanned his eyes, probably both hoping and 
fearing to find innocence. 

//"I didn't, Mom.  I swear I didn't."// He'd been crying as he 
said it, afraid this would only make him seem guiltier.  *"If* 
you didn't," she'd said.  

"Did she comfort you?"

He nodded, rubbing his cheek against Scully's hair.  "She let me 
curl up in her lap while we watched some stupid nature show."  
Actually he'd lain with his head and shoulders in his mother's 
lap while his drawn-up knees sweated against the plastic-covered 
couch.  

Scully sometimes held him like this, because their size 
differential and the conventions of the sexes prevented him from 
sitting in her lap.  As a child, the reason had been quite 
different.  Fox had a seam of blisters where his buttocks met his 
thighs, and another cluster on his left hip, where the belt had 
snapped around.  Sitting in anyone's lap was quite beyond him.  

His mother had stroked his hair while they watched a bear stalk 
an otter community in too-vivid 70's Technicolor.  Samantha would 
normally have seized the chance to bump her big brother aside so 
she could assert her baby-of-the-family right to snuggle with 
Mom, but she climbed into their father's lap instead. She'd 
understood that Fox and his mother needed a chance to make up 
with one another.  Bill read a newspaper around the little girl.  
   
Hurting, sleepy from crying even though his bedtime was an hour 
away, Fox turned toward his mother and twisted the ends of her 
long, dark hair in his fingers.  The nature show announcer boomed 
behind him: //"Olivia nips and claws her kits away from the 
bear's snapping teeth."//  

The conversation Fox hadn't had with his mother that night 
remained one of the most powerful moments in their relationship.  
She'd rubbed his back through the terrycloth of his bathrobe and 
hadn't said: I'm so sorry I hurt you.  I would have forgiven you 
even if you had poisoned the cat.  I'm desperate to protect you 
and I don't know how.  

He'd looked up into her green eyes, big as a child's in her 
pretty face, and hadn't said: I forgive you because I know that 
you're scared.  Actually, I'd forgive you anything.  

"What're you thinking about?" Scully asked.  She slipped her hand 
beneath the folds of his coat and rested it in the small of his 
back, two of her fingers pressing against the waistband of his 
trousers.  She'd been taking tease lessons from him, wicked 
thing.  

"Nothing.  A long time ago," he said.  Better to turn the 
conversation back to her.  "What're you thinking about?"

"Nothing.  The last days.  Religion."  

The hand almost over his ass said otherwise.  He wondered if he 
were a magnet for people who sent mixed messages.  Between his 
relatives, lovers, ex-lovers, co-workers, and shadowy informants, 
the mind games got a little excessive.  

"That tombstone says, 'Resurgam,' or, 'I will rise again,'" she 
said, pointing the toe of her sneaker at one of the broken 
headstones.  Actually only part of the "s" and the "urgam" were 
left.  

Mulder, who tended to look at all things on the Vineyard with the 
eyes of childhood, had always had a vague assumption that 
"Surgam" was some kind of family name.  The Oxford grad in him 
was disgusted.  

Feeling a little too vulnerable to confess his ignorance, he 
said, "That guy's pretty confident for someone with a big rock 
over his head."       

"It's ironic, isn't it?  The first headstones were weights to 
keep the dead from walking, and now we carve messages about the 
Resurrection into them."

//I love you, I hate you, come here, go away . . . story of my 
life.//  "Those rocks right there are probably headstones too," 
Mulder said, pointing at two granite mounds beneath soft caps of 
snow.  

"Wow.  They didn't even rate a slate slab.  I can see the TV 
special right now: 'It's your headstone, Charlie Brown.'  'I got 
a rock.'"

Mulder had a twisted mental image of the Grim Reaper handing out 
all the good tombstones before Charlie Brown got to the front of 
the line.  "You're sick," he told her.  "I knew I liked something 
about you."  He kissed the top of her head. "This used to be a 
family graveyard.  Those rocks are probably covering poor 
relatives, servants, kids, maybe."  

She made a small, disgusted noise in her throat. 

"The 18th century didn't have the same ideas about kids that we 
do."

"I know."  

Mulder considered asking her whether she wanted to talk about 
what she'd seen last night, but there was something closed and 
self-protective about her.  At every chance she could, she'd 
turned their conversation back to him.   

"C'mere.  I want to show you something," he said.  He took her 
hand and led her toward the ruined foundations that lay a little 
to the east of the graveyard, not far from where he'd found her 
last night.  The structure had fallen down so long ago that a 
maple with a trunk the diameter of a woman's forearm grew inside 
what had once been solid walls.  At the moment, snow covered even 
the crumbling fieldstone wall base, but the building's outlines 
were hinted at by straight, contiguous gaps in the weeds and 
other vegetation.  The effect was a little eerie, as if the 
memory of the house had so impressed itself upon nature that even 
the grasses still respected boundaries that had long since ceased 
to exist.  

Mulder kicked at the approximate location of the wall base until 
the tip of his shoe struck rock.  He bent and cleared the half-
frozen mud and clotted leaves away until he exposed a low, flat 
chunk of Massachusetts brownstone.  

"There," he said with satisfaction.  "This was a house, a 
farmhouse from back before the Revolutionary War.  It belonged to 
the family buried back over there.  Actually, the cemetery used 
to be named after them before people forgot who they were and 
South Road became the major landmark.  On really old maps it's 
called the 'Brown-Cartwright Grave Yard.'  If you're curious 
about it, you can visit the Dukes County Historical Society.  
Lots of the little old ladies around here are grave-hunters.  
You'd be surprised."

Scully looked around wide-eyed, as if the place frightened her.  
"What happened to the people who lived here?" she asked.

"I think the house burned in about 1790-something.  I'm not sure 
about the family, but I can tell you there are still plenty of 
Browns and Cartwrights on the Vineyard," Mulder said.  He dug in 
the cold dirt along the wall line until his fingertips touched 
something hard and rough.  When he tugged it out and brushed the 
mud off, he found it was a jumble of rusted metal.  "Sometimes 
you find spoons out here, or old nails, or -- here's a nail here.  
You can tell it's original to the house because the head is just 
a kind of hammered-down section.  It looks like a miniature 
railroad spike."  He plucked the little chunk of twisted iron 
from the mass and held it out to Scully.  "See how the sharp end 
just kind of withers away?  That's because it was burned.  
Occasionally you find lumps of melted glass out here, too."  

She stretched her fingertips toward the object but then pulled 
away, as if it were still hot.  She looked up at him and asked, 
"Where did Irv's story come from?  I mean the South Road Ghost 
story."  

He sprinkled the twists of rusted iron back onto the ground and 
wiped his fingers on the hem of his coat.  

"The truth?" he asked.  "There's a book in the county library 
called 'Haunted Martha's Vineyard.'  Every Island child I knew 
checked that book out at some time or another, usually around 
Halloween.  That's where I got it from.  That's probably where 
Irv got it from.  As far as I know, there's no other record that 
the South Road Ghost ever existed."

"So what did I see, Mulder?  There were little children dying -- 
they were there and then not there.  You think I made the whole 
thing up?" Scully asked.

"No.  I don't think you made it up.  I think you saw something, 
probably even something paranormal.  All I'm saying is that this 
being may not be what it first appears.  I'll be honest -- I'm 
suspicious of a good story, where everything is explained and 
everything makes sense.  Real life just isn't like that.  So when 
someone tells me that this awful mom kills her kids and then 
she's doomed to walk the night inflicting vengeance on wayward 
women, it's a just little too neat.  It sounds like somebody's 
idea of poetic justice, exactly the kind of thing that people 
would invent.  

"Scully, if there is something out here . . . calling you, it may 
be choosing to present itself as part of a good story.  I mean, 
what attracts us more than the idea that the world makes sense?  
Because if we can understand the world, we can control it, and 
then we never have to get hurt again.  Right?"

She looked away toward some point on the horizon.  "You don't 
understand," she said.

"Then explain it to me." She didn't reply.  "Explain it so I can 
help you," he urged.

"Mulder," her voice was infinitely weary, as if she'd crossed a 
great distance to speak with him.  "This is just one of those 
things that isn't about you."

"If it's about you, it's about me." 

That was clearly the wrong thing to say.  Scully actually seemed 
to flinch.  

"Don't shut me out," he pleaded.  He felt about eleven years old, 
tormented unjustly, and yet desperate to be comforted by his 
tormentor.  Why did he most need the people he loved right after 
they'd hurt him?  

"It's okay," she said.  Her eyes remained distant but she held 
out her hand.  He took it in both of his own.  "It's okay.  
Things haven't changed between us.  This isn't about you. It's 
about me."

"You realize that's the second-biggest lie in the world after 
'the check is in the mail?'"

She pulled him close and held him.  "I'm not going anywhere."

"If I lost you, I just -- I wouldn't deal with it well."  He 
hugged her so tightly he could feel the bones of her shoulder 
blades pressing his forearm.  

He felt more than heard her gasp of pain.  "Mulder, don't."

Too late, he remembered her bruised ribcage and released her.

She pulled back from him.  Twilight came to the woods first, and 
in the dimness her pupils were very wide.  The shadows made her 
eyes seem infinitely deep, like black water locked beneath black 
ice.  What lay in that darkness was apparently not for him to 
know.  She placed two cool fingertips over his lips.  "Just 
don't."

He looked away first.  "Sure."

She slipped her arm through his.  "Come on.  It's cold, let's go 
back." 

He walked with her, guiding her steps along the quickest path 
back to the Inn.  They cast long shadows away to their right as 
they crossed the snowy field.  Lights had already appeared in 
some of Nye House's windows.  

"Mulder, can I ask you something?" she asked.

He glanced down at her, grateful to be distracted from the dread 
that had begun to dog him.  "What is it?" 

"Do you have a juvenile record in Connecticut?"

At first her question confused him.  "Do I have a what?"

"Irv told me to ask you about Fairfield County Juvenile Court 
sometime," Scully asked.

Mulder had a mental flash of himself at 15, staring at his too-
shiny wingtips and listening to a judge talk to his father.  "You 
know, I hate Irv.  Did he tell you how many books I never 
returned to the library, too?  Somewhere I have one from 1987."

"No.  Well, he asked whether you were into enemas and plastic 
pants," she said.

"That figures.  I hope you told him 'Yes.'"

She looked appalled.  "Of course I didn't.  I didn't think his 
question was even worth answering."

"By getting upset you just confirmed the idea in his mind.  You 
should have told him, yeah, I'm into plastic pants, and peanut 
butter and farm animals, and looking at posters of Freddy Mercury 
while I engage in autoerotic electric shock with the toaster.  
Then he wouldn't know what to believe."

"Sorry. I guess I'm not as up on my perversions as I should be," 
she said.

"Stick with me, kid.  I'll teach you everything there is to 
know."  He thought she tried to repress a smile.  "You already 
know the Juvenile Court story," he said.

She shook her head.  "No I don't."

"Yes, you do. You just didn't recognize it because Irv tried to 
make it sound worse.  Remember the third case we worked together 
-- maybe the fourth, when we were in Idaho staking out the guy 
who could telekinetically turn his microwave into a MAZER?"

"Oh . . ." He saw the glimmer of recollection in her eyes.  

The over-humid car with its persistent fried-food smell was 
permanently etched into his memory, as was the white curve of 
Scully's chin and throat, fuller then than it was now, backlit by 
halogen streetlights.  "You asked me if I thought I was capable 
of killing someone, and I said yes, because I'd been ready to 
kill Eric Magnus in the 10th grade."

"That's the kid you went after with -- what, a roll of dimes?"

"It was quarters." Eric had been the first one to wrap his fist 
around a roll of currency in order to harden the impact of his 
punch, but Fox had learned fast.  "He was the 'Chester the 
Molester' kid," Mulder said.  The older boy discovered early 
in Mulder's Greenwich High career that if he wanted to pick a 
fight with the weirdo Vineyard kid, all he had to do was whisper, 
"Who got your sister, Freak?  It was Chester the Molester."

"You didn't say they arrested you for that," she said.

"Yes, I did.  Remember me and Eric got into it on the street 
behind the school, and then somebody called the cops?  When 
the officer asked, 'What's going on here?' Eric said, 'Nothing,' 
and I said, 'I'm going to kill this motherfucker.'"   

"Oh, that's right . . . .  I forgot you have that Eagle Scout 
quality -- always honest," she said.  She pulled her arm loose 
and slipped it beneath his coat, tucking her fingertips into the 
top of his back pocket.  A good reason never to keep it buttoned, 
he thought.  He put his arm around her waist, and as they walked 
he could feel the muscles of her hip working.

"So after that they brought me in.  From their perspective, who 
started it wasn't important.  I was the one who threatened to 
kill someone.  

"Back then, every case with an underage defendant went to 
Juvenile Court.  I felt pretty lousy standing there in front of 
the judge, even though he spent most of his time telling off my 
parents."  

Mulder could still hear the gravelly voice of the Honorable Peter 
Shamsideen saying, //"Mr. and Mrs. Mulder, I am very sorry for 
the loss of your daughter.  But you must remember that you have a 
son who needs you."// Fox had kept his hands jammed in his 
pockets, even though he'd been told not to do that, and had been 
very close to crying, even though he'd been told not to do that 
either.  When Judge Shamsideen said, //"Young man, I hope you 
succeed in making something of your life,"// Fox had only managed 
a soft, //"Yessir."//  Mulder wasn't sure if being senior agent 
on the X-Files Unit would count as a success in Judge 
Shamsideen's opinion or not.    

"My sentence was therapy and community service -- the therapy 
really *was* a sentence, but the community service wasn't.  One 
of the cops had taken a certain liking to me, and he helped fix 
it so that I spent my unoccupied time at the police station, 
typing, taking out the trash, snooping through their case files, 
that sort of thing.  That was my introduction to forensic psyche, 
for what it's worth.  I was sitting at Detective Nagle's desk 
when I read an article in the 'Law Enforcement Bulletin' about 
Brian Murphy teaching behavioral science at Oxford -- the only 
place in the world teaching it at the time, besides Quantico.  So 
really, trying to kill Eric Magnus with a roll of quarters was 
the best thing that could have happened to me."     

By this time they'd reached the front porch of Nye House, its 
worn boards dusted with snow and shielded from the lit room 
inside by lacy half-curtains.  Maybe it was the location or the 
topic of their conversation, but Mulder felt like a teenager 
walking his girlfriend home.  

He looked down at her and saw her pupils were wide in the honey-
colored late afternoon light.  He bent and lightly touched his 
lips to hers, a tentative kiss that quickly turned hungry.  Her 
mouth had the faintly inorganic taste of lipstick.  He knew 
he'd have "Evening Rust #7" or whatever it was all over his 
mouth in a minute, but he didn't care.

After several seconds he pulled away and said, "Stay with me 
tonight.  I won't sleep well if you're alone."

Something in her face closed like a flower.  "Mulder . . ."

"Please," he said.  Begging anyone but her would've been 
intolerable.  "Why does it matter so much what other people 
think?"  

Her glance toward the covered window was so brief it probably 
hadn't been a conscious decision, but he caught it. Whatever 
she saw inside, it wasn't enough to make her move away.  

Scully looked up and ran her fingertips across his cheek, and he 
felt the slight drag of her skin over the stubble he developed 
late in the day.  The look on her face was almost sad.  "Okay," 
she said.  "Okay, I'll stay with you."    

He hoped that sorrowful look wasn't one of martyrdom.  He'd 
almost rather she leave him than stay with him out of pity.  
Almost, but not tonight.  Right now he was too needy, too tired 
and confused.

She lifted her face to kiss him and he bent to meet her more than 
halfway.  Her hands rested lightly on his elbows.  This time her 
kiss was schoolgirl-chaste, but he felt a powerful response 
gathering from his skin inward.  It was like sensing the momentum 
of an incoming wave by the way the tide drew back from the beach.

He did not prevent her from stepping away.  "Let's go in," she 
said.  The spark in her eyes was not schoolgirlish at all.  That 
was a look that could lead a man to damnation, and make him 
expect to enjoy the trip.  Perhaps her earlier manner had been 
tenderness rather than pity.  He hoped to God it was tenderness.  

As he took her hand and led her inside, the front room was 
blessedly empty.  The door shut softly behind them.