By Captain pH
Chapter One
The large dark green phone receiver was being held to the ear of a ginger-haired woman who wore an eye patch.
"Again...?" she sighed before yelling out: "Sheriff! It's happening again!"
Nadine Hurley's shriek was the reason the bears around Twin Peaks always woke up a month before their regular US counterparts, thought Sheriff Harry Truman, hearing her cry from his office, through three separate office doors and two walls.
The clicking line had begun the day after the Miss Twin Peaks beauty pageant incident, almost a year ago. The telephone company had checked the wires and found no fault. Lucy, now off on maternity leave, had been able to ignore it. Nadine, filling in for Lucy, was more sensitive to the interruption, in turn disrupting everyone else. If there was one thing you could say for the impatient, brisk and, occasionally down-right rude, new receptionist, she kept the crazies and time wasters at bay.
Truman was walking into the reception area to placate Nadine when he saw the car pull up. It was driven by an attractive red-headed woman. The man in the passenger seat was gesturing to her and being ignored. As they stepped out he seemed to finish a sentence that made her roll her eyes.
"Sheriff Truman?" said the man, whose face, Truman thought, was oddly familiar. It was evening, when faces that far away lost their distinctive features in the half-light. The woods surrounding the sheriff's office and car park became all the more blacker, in contrast with the glowing sky, and trailing yellow-fringed clouds. Short hair, feline-like face, long grey mac, exuding an uncalled for confidence – this had to be FBI, thought Truman.
"Sheriff Truman, I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder, this is Special Agent Dana Scully, we're here to investigate the disappearance of Special Agent Dale Cooper."
"Then I suggest you check your files," said Truman curtly. "Special Agent Cooper has been locked up in a Washington psychiatric ward for almost a year. A year since he tried to kill Shelley Johnson. He was a good friend of mine, hell, the man was extraordinary, but I had to shoot him in the leg and pull him off her like he was an animal. You've got my report, why do you want to drag me through this again?"
"Sheriff Truman, I'm sorry to bring this up. I was a friend of Agent Cooper too. There are discrepancies in various reports that you could help us with. And Sheriff, I don't believe that Agent Dale Cooper is locked up in Washington any more than you do...I know about Bob."
The Sheriff took off his hat, ran a hand through his prematurely greying hair and sighed. He invited them in.
Jeez, this Mulder could drone, thought Truman. At least the other agents he'd encountered had dished out their weirdness with a smidgen of sparkle. The three of them sat in Truman's wood-panelled office, Truman behind his desk and Scully and Mulder opposite. She was staring up at the mounted stuffed stag head behind him which bore the words "The buck stopped here."
He was trying not to stare too long into her eyes, but every time she spoke, every word seemed long, like a loop, wrapping around him, pulling him towards her lips, and those eyes. Together with Mulder's voice it was like being interviewed by a hypnotist double act. Mulder did seem like a cut off Cooper's block in some respects. He knew, and genuinely believed in Bob, an evil spirit thought to possess humans, who had taken control of Leyland Palmer in order to rape and kill his daughter Laura. Mulder was also certain that the FBI had doctored Cooper's original reports into the Twin Peak's murders and that the man currently contained in a Washington psychiatric hospital (the exact room once occupied by his partner Windom Earle, added Mulder, as if this added extra weight to a conspiracy) was Dale Cooper in body alone.
Mulder leaned in, lowering his voice so Truman was forced forward to listen.
"I met Special Agent Cooper once, when I was a new agent. The man was an inspiration to me. Whatever, whoever is there now, it's not him."
Truman considered this. "If you're FBI," he said. "How do you know that this is a cover up?"
Mulder leaned back. "We don't all speak with one voice Sheriff. I'd like to know who shot JFK just as much as the next guy. I have a source in the bureau. Let's call them D. They had access to all Agent Cooper's tapes, the ones he took memos on while he was investigating in Twin Peaks. The later transcripts kept in the bureau bear little resemblance to the original tapes, and those originals are nowhere to be found. There's no reference to Bob, to spirits, to the lodges, to any of it. It's recorded as an assault and two murders, plain and simple."
"There was nothing simple about it," Truman interrupted.
"I know. D has explained a lot of what they remember when they transcribed the tapes. D says there was also a gap. Agent Cooper would normally have posted several tapes before he disappeared, but with the events of the pageant, and his...behaviour, it looks like he never sent them. I'm hoping we can find them. Maybe those tapes can help us find out what happened to him."
"I still don't get it. If the bureau wants to cover this up, why did they send you?" asked Truman.
"Let's say our department has a longer leash than most. This investigation hasn't exactly been ordered, and isn't exactly being monitored by the FBI."
Truman was facing Mulder, but trying to keep Scully in view. Mulder had said "our department" but, aside from a few polite questions about the objects in his office, Scully had remained largely silent.
"What department do you work for?"
"Well, the two of us are the department. We work on, what the bureau fondly terms X-files: paranormal, traditionally inexplicable cases. The bureau sent Scully here to join me a couple of weeks ago. She's..."
Mulder turned and gave her a smile. Truman couldn't tell how genuine it was.
"She's keeping an eye on me."
Truman stifled a "beautiful eyes" comment.
"Paranormal?" said Truman shaking his head. "You guys should just move your office next door. These days it's like almost nothing in Twin Peaks is normal. For a year now I've been called out to investigate ghosts, knocking sounds, poltergeists, werewolves, people claiming they're getting messages from hospital food. It's like all mad hell got let loose."
Mulder looked visibly relieved. Scully less so.
"Anyone ever mention aliens?" he asked.
"Not, well, not in the last year, but if it's aliens, then it's Major Garland Briggs you need to speak to. He and Cooper were, well I guess you could say close. They shared a lot of that 'spiritual' stuff. You know they were sort of alike. Really intense in that way. Anyway, he's involved in a lot of classified military stuff. I'm not sure how much I or he can tell you. You guys really aught to speak to him. Maybe he knows about the tapes. The man is a walking X-File."
Truman suddenly realised it was late. Lucy would have normally have come into the office to say goodbye, but Nadine just upped and left. Andy was only working part time and spent most of his time with Lucy. Hawk was off pursuing his own case. When their conversation stopped, the office was silent.
"I suggest you both check in at the Great Northern Hotel. You just follow the road straight around for a couple of miles up the hill. There's a spectacular waterfall there but you'll have to wait until morning to see it." He paused, remembering Cooper's voice, then added: "The rooms are very reasonably priced."
Neither Mulder nor Scully seemed to care. Truman was unsure if this was the bureau holding nothing back on expenses while looking after its own, or that no one in public office seemed to care about their cost to the tax payer any more. Truman would even knock off the mileage on his drive to and from work when doing expenses, even if no one would have noticed otherwise. As the agents returned to their car he saw Mulder eyeing the trees. Part of him wanted to call out "they're Douglas Firs". He didn't want to think about Cooper again and the face he saw when he'd tackled him out in the woods; Shelley screaming and bleeding, part of her ear bitten off. Cooper's face had been all deep lines, like he'd been carved clumsily from wood. Stooping, rolling, growling. Of course Harry knew it wasn't Dale Cooper. The self-assured Cooper had been a leader of men, like the Major. But something about Twin Peaks had done for them both, as if the woods felt threatened by such strength and had sought to cut them down. Both men were left torn out and hollow, pale shells of themselves. He'd initially been disappointed by Mulder and Scully. Well, Mulder at least. But if the forest destroyed strong men, maybe they had a hope.