"Fine and dandy, Andy," said Thomas, rocking back and forth in his chair.
"That's good to hear," she said. "I have some good news for you. I got your most recent test results back yesterday, and you've made tremendous progress. Do you remember last year about this time, when you were admitted to the Battleborough Psychiatric Unit?"
"The men in white, they came at night. We had a fight," Thomas said with a sly smile.
"You certainly did," said Dr. Lily. "We worked hard to get you so you'd be safe without the restraints, didn't we?"
"How do you mean 'we,' Lily-Lee?" Thomas asked. She hadn't been the one tied to the bed with the feeding tube shoved up her nose. She hadn't gotten oozing sores on her back from being held in one position for days and days.
"Of course, I mean you worked hard," Dr. Lily said. "And your hard work has paid off. When you first came to Battleborough, they found your IQ was 87. Your thought processes were so disordered that it was hard for you to think. But after you started the new antipsychotics, your score went up to 124." She smile grew even bigger, and Thomas thought her teeth looked like surfboards, like tombstones. He smiled back at her, and visualized squeezing her squished-in head until it popped.
"Is that a good score, number 1-2-4?" Thomas asked.
"Yes, very. It places you in the 'superior' category of intelligence. Once you're fully stabilized on your medication, you could go to college. Maybe you could study poetry. Do you think you would like that?" asked Dr. Lily.
"I got a poem for you, Lily-Lou," Thomas told her. He worked a piece of notebook paper out of his jeans pocket. He had folded it until it was a hard, little wad. He handed it over and she unfolded it carefully.
Dr. Lily read out loud:
I know a secret the moon knows.
I know the place where the moon grows.
She grows to a round
To a scream in the night
Some lie down to die
Some come out to fight
I dance in her light
She screams without sound
She dies on the ground
I dance all around
I am naked and new
I am new like the moon
I am born again, too
I am torn from her womb.
I burn with her light
I am endlessly bright
I devour her womb
I am cradle and tomb
I am one with the moon.
When she stopped reading, Thomas saw a tear trickling down Dr. Lily's ugly face. "Oh, Thomas," she said. "You've come such a long way."
F.B.I. Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
June 9
Tuesday, 9:03 a.m.
"Let me get this straight," Mulder said. "The Special Agent in Charge of the New Castle field office wants to call us out to Wisconsin because he thinks his daughter was abducted by aliens?" He sat at his desk with his fingers laced together, peering over the rims of his glasses at Scully. In that pose, he looked rather like a disapproving high school teacher, she thought. Of course, any high school teacher whose classroom walls were covered in photos of dismembered bodies, UFOs, and the occasional Penthouse pin-up would have been sent straight to the clink on general principles.
"Actually, it's his wife who claims to have witnessed the abduction," she said. "We got a letter from her faxed along with the missing person report. It's a pretty moving plea."
She laid a thin stack of faxes on the desk in front of him, keeping only the mother's letter. She read the last paragraph of it aloud:
"'My husband and I are getting desperate as days go by and we hear nothing. Please, if there's anything you can think of that would help us find Danielle, let us know. Dani is such a special girl and she would never hurt anyone. She's going to be seventeen next month and I want to have her home on her birthday. I know you're very busy people, but if you could just come out and help us, even for a little while, I would be so grateful. Sincerely, Tina Sheppard.'"
Scully was not surprised to find that when she looked up from the note, Mulder's sardonic expression had softened considerably. "At the beginning of the letter she describes a classic abduction experience," Scully said. "A bright light, a strange presence in the room, being paralyzed while her daughter sort of floated out the window."
He reached out for the letter and she handed it to him. He examined it closely and then flipped through the other faxed pages. "In the police report it says that Danielle's mother last saw her around 11 p.m. on the 6th, but didn't report her missing until the morning of the 7th," Mulder said. "No mention of aliens here at all."
"In the letter she says something about suddenly recalling the bright light," Scully said. "Presumably that was after she'd reported Danielle missing." Frankly, Scully thought this abduction claim added up even less well than most, but she was interested in seeing Mulder's response to it.
"So, do you think they used the Ronco $9.95 mind-wipe on her, and that's why it wore off after only two days?" he asked.
"Is that skepticism I hear in your voice, Agent Mulder?" she asked, leaning on his desk with one hand.
"Is that mockery I hear in yours, Agent Scully?" he responded, giving her the disapproving look again. "What bothers me about this situation is the way the mother just comes out and says, 'my daughter was abducted by aliens.' When was the last time anyone told us that, much less somebody connected with the Bureau? You'd expect a parent in this situation to still be deep in denial, both about the aliens and about the fact that her child was abducted at all. If you listen to parents' 911 calls, you'll hear a lot of: 'my child's run off,' or, 'he's not where I left him,' but almost never, 'little Jimmy's been abducted.' They just can't get their brains around such a horrible idea."
"So you think this is all a hoax?" Scully asked.
Mulder seemed to consider that carefully. "I have a bad feeling the alien abduction claim is so much BS, yes," he said, "but there's real desperation in this note. That one phrase the mother used--'she would never hurt anyone.' It almost sounds as if she thinks Danielle is meeting with some fate she doesn't deserve, or that she's too gentle to defend herself from an attacker."
Scully nodded, surprised and pleased to discover that for once, she and her partner were in complete agreement. "Well, what do you want to do?" she asked. "This isn't an assignment. We've been asked to investigate in an unofficial capacity. It's up to you to decide whether you want to go or not."
He got up and paced around the room a bit, seeming lost in thought. Eventually, he turned his back to her and laced his fingers behind his head. When he did so his shirt bunched into tight creases, revealing the tension in his arms and shoulders. "Ah, shit," he said, almost despairingly.
"You're going anyway," Scully said. It wasn't a command, it was a statement of fact "Psychological analysis be damned." She had never doubted he would go--in fact, she'd already arranged for their flight out.
"Yeah," he said, "although I suspect Danielle's parents only want me out there because they think I'm so stupid that I'll believe anything, so long as it involves space aliens. The problem is, if I'm wrong, if I blow this off and then I find out that there really was something I could have done for this girl or her family, then I'll never forgive myself." Mulder sighed. "I am such a bleeding-heart loser," he said, and bowed his head as if in defeat.
Sheppard Home Chisholm, WS 12:10 p.m., Central Time
It was raining dismally as the agents walked up the front door. It was chilly for June, too, and Mulder glanced over at Scully with a certain amount of concern. The white linen suit she wore looked both professional and flattering, but he doubted it did much to keep the cold off her. She looked stiff and uncomfortable.
He rang the doorbell and said, "Maybe the next alien abduction we investigate will be in Florida."
She smiled up at him briefly and said, "Yeah, that will be in August, at the height of the malaria season."
Mulder heard footsteps inside the house, and then a woman opened the door. She was fortyish, petite, with short, dark hair turning salt-and-pepper at the roots. "You must be Agents Mulder and Scully," she said, "Come in, please. I'm Christina Sheppard." Mrs. Sheppard wore a pink cardigan over her pale yellow sundress. Her eyes were reddened, as if with weeping, and the edges of a wadded tissue were visible in one hand.
She stepped aside so they could enter. "It's a good thing you've both got suit jackets on--Grant likes it just arctic in here." Mrs. Sheppard spoke as if she were trying to make a joke, but it sounded forced and flat. "Grant!" she called out, "the agents from Washington are here." Mulder noted that Scully had rather glumly tucked her hands under her armpits, as if for warmth.
True, the AC was turned up a little high in here, but Mulder
found it odd that the first words out of Mrs. Sheppard's mouth
had been an explanation of her unseasonable clothing. Aliens
aside, there were two reasons a girl of sixteen might vanish
suddenly from her own home. One, she could be a runaway. Two, a
family member was somehow involved, and investigators would
uncover a history of domestic violence. Mrs. Sheppard's sweater
suggested the second explanation.
u
can't reach me with that, Agent Scully and I will be staying the
Highland Motel over in Sweetwater. If you find out anything, or
if you can think of anything else, please, give me a call." As
he handed her the card he touched her hand and looked steadily
into her eyes, so that she would understand his unspoken message:
"If you start to get cold feet about obstructing this
investigation, if you want to tell me what you really think
happened, I'll understand; I'll keep it confidential." Mrs.
Sheppard looked away and withdrew her hand, but she accepted the
card.
"Of course," she said, "thank you for your time." Mulder and Sheppard shook hands again, during which the SAC seemed just as stiff and formal as when Mulder arrived.
As they walked toward the car Scully offered to drive, and Mulder tossed her the keys. Once she popped the lock, he settled himself in the passenger seat and pulled off his damp suit jacket. She hauled the driver's seat nearly all the way forward, buckled herself in and started the car.
"So what did you think of all that, Mulder?" she asked as she pulled out of the drive.
"I think that I've seen a lot of weird stuff in my life, but I've never known aliens to abduct someone through a window and then replace the screen," Mulder said.
Scully smiled at him. "I like this, Mulder. Lucidity becomes you."
"What do you mean by that?" Mulder snapped. He glared at her. Hadn't he already been humiliated enough for one day? "Don't tell me you think I'm an idiot, too."
"Easy, I was just teasing," she replied, glancing over at him. "Of course I don't think you're an idiot. Your test scores at Quantico blew the hell out of mine, so if you're stupid I'd hate to see what that makes me."
Mollified, Mulder made a non-committal grunt and leaned forward to fiddle with the air blower controls. He wanted to get dry without getting cold.
"I guess I just expected you to identify so strongly with the Sheppards that you'd automatically discount any discrepancies in their story," she said.
Mulder sighed and sat back from the dash. "I may be eccentric," he said, "I may even be obsessed and neurotic. But why do people assume that I'm blind? The Sheppards are upset, all right, but they seem a little calm for people whose daughter has just been snatched by beings from another world.
"I found what looked like dried blood droplets near the ceiling of Dani's room, Scully. I admit that I'm no expert at analyzing these things, but since the drops were real small and elongated I think they came at the wall with a lot of speed and force. I suppose it could have been a burst artery, but I'm thinking blunt-force trauma, really hard blows, to the head and face. As to how long they'd been there, I really couldn't tell you. They looked good and dried."
Scully gave him a strange look, as if he were spooking her out.
"I want you to look at something," she said. Without taking her
eyes off the road, she worked a flat object out of the space
between her shirt and jacket cuffs. She handed it to him, and he
saw it was a photograph of Danielle--grown up considerably since
the picture hanging in the Sheppards' front room was taken. She
was a tall, slender young woman with elfin features, her honey-
colored hair pulled up into a braid. She gave the camera a smile
that would have done any sneaker ad proud as she stood by her
trophy collection, wearing her white and blue Bovard basketball
uniform.
"It was pinned to the bulletin board by the desk," Scully said.
Mulder looked at her, then at the picture. This was disturbing a potential crime scene. This was removing an object from someone's house without their permission, while the F.B.I. was investigating in a purely non-official capacity. "Dana, you've been a very, very bad girl," he said. "I think I love you."
"Just look at the picture," she said, giving him a slyly mischievous look. "And keep your hands where I can see them."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, holding up his free hand with the fingers spread. After gazing at it a moment, he dug out the case containing his reading glasses from his jacket pocket. He had to be sure of what he thought he was seeing. Once the glasses were settled on his nose, he looked at the picture again. "This trophy in the front," he said, tapping the image with his finger. "It wasn't on the dresser."
"I noticed that," she said. "I was wondering about blunt-force trauma before you even mentioned it. That trophy's got a heavy, substantial look to it." She was silent a moment, as if choosing her words carefully. "Mulder," she said, "between the blood drops you saw and the fact that that trophy is missing, do you think we're looking at a murder weapon in that photo?"
"Jesus, I hope not," Mulder said. The missing trophy appeared to be about eighteen inches tall, and it had a round, solid-looking wooden base. It looked as if it could cause serious damage, if wielded by a sufficiently strong or furious person. Mulder mentally reviewed what he'd seen of the Sheppards' behavior. "I get the impression that Danielle's parents last saw her alive. They're worried about her, and I don't think they know where she is now. I doubt they're trying to hide a murder from us."
Scully nodded, looking very serious. "I found some other interesting things," she said. There's a crawlspace behind the closet in Dani's room. It was covered by a square of plywood painted to match the wall, and it looks like at one point there were screws holding it shut. It's loose, now, and when I pulled it away I discovered an extensive liquor stash."
"How extensive?" Mulder asked, looking over at her.
"Tanqueray, Absolut, Seven Crown . . . let's just say she had a well-stocked bar," Scully said. "She would have had trouble passing off a fake ID in a small town like this, especially as a lawman's daughter, which tells me there's probably a 21+ guy out there who was willing to spend a lot of cash to get this little high school girl drunk." Mulder could hear protective anger in her voice.
"And another thing," Scully added, "when I was going through her clothes I found a few outfits you really would have liked."
He looked at her a bit suspiciously. "Are you calling me a dirty old man, Scully?" he asked.
"Let's just say that you have adult tastes, and prudish, outdated Catholic that I am, I would not have let my teenage daughter go out the door in something that conformed to those tastes," Scully said.
"So I'm not a dirty old man, I'm just a pervert?" he asked.
"'O would some pow'r giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us?'" Scully quoted. "Some of the clothes draped over Dani's chair smelled like cigarette smoke, too. Her parents don't necessarily know she has these habits," she added. "My sister used to get around my parents' dress rules by swapping stuff with girls at school. She used to get off the bus in a knee-length skirt and white button-down blouse, then run for the bathroom and change into jeans and some half-transparent top."
"Did you rat on her?" Mulder asked, curious.
"No," she said, as if surprised that he'd ask. "I admit to having been a spy and a snoop as a kid, but I wasn't a rat."
"Ah, so the attraction was merely to information for its own sake," Mulder said. "How scientific of you. My sister would have ratted on me."
"If you'd worn see-through girls' blouses to school, you'd have deserved to be ratted on," she said.
"What a sexist, non-PC thing to say," he said. "But I'll give you this much, your snooping has extended our list of potential motives, if not suspects."
"Why not suspects?" Scully asked, glancing over at him.
"Because the parents are protecting someone, and the list of people they'd do that for has got to be pretty short," Mulder said. "Actually, the little blood drops on the wall didn't tell me very much. The reason I mentioned blunt-force trauma to the face is because that's one of the most common things you find in domestic violence cases. A guy will punch his girlfriend's lights out, say, because that way he doesn't have to look her in the eye while he beats her. She's an object to him now, something he can control."
"You think that she'd been disobeying her parents, and one of them flipped out and beat her? Then what? She ran away?" Scully asked.
"Could be," Mulder said. "I have a bad feeling they know who she'd run to, and it isn't Amy Nelson. Why would Sheppard call the Bureau in, other than the obvious fact that he's got a better chance of controlling the investigation that way? I think he's afraid Danielle's been taken across state lines, maybe even against her will. He wants a search on the nationwide level, but he doesn't want the Bureau prying into the reasons behind Dani's disappearance. So he calls in the stupidest investigator he can think of: yours truly." Mulder sighed.
"Well, he's got a big surprise coming, then," said Scully.
He smiled over at her, a little sadly. "I just hope I can surprise him by returning his daughter alive, then by throwing his ass in jail for obstructing justice. By the way, Scully, what can you tell me about Ativan? That's a pain killer, isn't it?" he asked.
She looked surprised. "Actually, it's a sedative, in the same drug class as Valium. Why do you ask?" she said.
"Because as far as I can tell, Mrs. Sheppard has been taking about twice her prescribed dose of it since before Dani disappeared," Mulder answered. "I raided the medicine cabinet."
"I seem to recall a certain Constitutional amendment about searches without probable cause," she said. Her tone was teasing, giving him back his own for his comments about the photo theft.
"I guess we've both been very bad, then," he said. "Back at the hotel we can arrest each other."
"In your dreams," she said, laughing. "But seriously, Mulder, at higher dosages Ativan can cause dangerous side effects. People have reported hallucinations, rage, irrational behavior, even amnesia."
"So if Mrs. Sheppard were strung out on pills, could that account for the bright light she told us about, and the gap in her memory? And is it possible that she actually flipped out and beat Danielle, causing her to run away?" Mulder asked.
"Yes," Scully said slowly, "yes, I think it could."
"'Curiouser and curiouser,'" Mulder quoted, running his finger over the photograph of Danielle Sheppard. Whatever behavior problems the kid might be having, she still deserved to be able to grow up safe. Mulder offered up a prayer to a God he didn't much believe in, asking him to let Danielle be found alive.
8798 Berchwood New Castle, WS 2:12 p.m.
Thomas had a string tied around the neck of the family cat. "I love little pussy her coat is so warm, and if I don't hurt her she'll do me no harm," he thought, leering. He'd used a slip knot, so the harder she struggled, the tighter the noose got. The string also functioned as a leash, and Thomas allowed the desperate cat just enough length to get her within snapping range of his Doberman puppy, which was tied to the front door. In her frantic attempts to escape, the cat flung herself right under the dog's slavering jaws.
Thomas considered tying a noose around the dog's neck, too, so he could watch as it half-strangled itself trying to get the cat. He thought that would be pretty funny. He decided against it though, partly because he wanted the dog to grow up loyal to him, and partly out of apathy.
There came the sound of someone stomping on the floor upstairs, and a woman shouted, "Shut that dog up!" That would be Dawn Lisowski, who lived upstairs with her baby and her younger sister. Dawn rented the second floor from Thomas' grandmother, but she acted as if she owned the place. She thought she was too good to talk to him, too, except to yell at him.
His stepfather had been like that. He'd made Thomas sleep at the foot of the stairs, without even a blanket. He'd called him a bad dog. He'd made Thomas' mother and sister hate him, too, and that's why he lived with Grandma, now. Thomas remembered Dr. Lily's words and smiled. Not a bad dog-a smart dog. He thought about his secret and grinned even bigger. Just thinking about what he could do to them, all of them, made him start to feel better. He let go of the string and the cat streaked under the nearest couch, growling and hissing. "Shut up, you bitch!" he shouted at Dawn upstairs.
Sometimes in his head, he changed her name to Dong. "Ding, dong, bell, pussy's in the well. Who put her in? Little Johnny Green," he said to himself. When he was small his stepdad had explained about how all nursery rhymes were actually dirty. He'd said that in "Mary had a little lamb," the lamb was the thing between Mary's legs. Thomas thought that was pretty funny. Even as a grownup, he liked to play with words and he liked to rhyme. Dr. Lily had once given him a poem called "Thomas the Rhymer," about a man who met the Fairy Queen, and he'd kept it safe beneath his mattress with his magazines. Dawn was still shouting from upstairs about how he couldn't call her "bitch." Thomas knew she'd complain to his grandmother when she got home, but he didn't care.
He got up and went to the door to the basement. The basement was Thomas' room and he had it all to himself. There were no roommates here, no doctors or prying floor nurses to get in his way.
He ran down the steps, his slight weight not enough to cause much of a clatter. Thomas was small and light with no wasted bulk, like an animal. "You're such a little shrimp, you'll never be a man. You'll never amount to anything," his stepdad used to say. But he'd been wrong. The proof was in a freezer in the corner. Thomas opened it and removed his prize, sealed in a Ziploc bag like his grandmother's pork chops. He'd kept the woman's reproductive organs.
He recited aloud:
"I devour her womb
I am cradle and tomb
I am new like the moon." But after some reflection, he'd decided not to do the devouring part. He wanted to keep these for further study. He thought of Dawn Lisowski, Dr. Lily, his mother and sister, even his grandmother. Bitches, all of them, bitches. He'd opened one of their kind and seen what was inside. He knew all there was to know about them.
His friend Paul had looked inside that woman and had run away. Even in the moonlight, he'd looked green, then he'd fled to the van and drove away. Thomas had had to walk a long way after that, but that was all right. He knew he was tough and strong, now. There had been a time when he'd looked up to Paul, because he was older and had been with girls before and had almost gone to prison once. But when it came right down to it, Paul had run while Thomas had stayed.
He smiled to himself and said, "Smart dog." He giggled quietly in the darkened basement.
Nelson Home Chisholm, WS 2:50 p.m.
"Jesus Christ, ref, are you blind?" Mulder shouted at the TV screen. He sat on the edge of the couch in the den next to seventeen-year-old Amy, watching a video of the Bovard Lutheran Lady Chargers battling the Immaculate Conception Lancers for the regional girls' basketball championship.
The view on the TV zoomed in and out with nausea-inducing frequency, which Amy had explained was her father's attempt to create "special effects." At the moment, most of the screen was filled up with an image of Danielle Sheppard's elbow as she rolled up off the floor to her feet. "You can't get a foul more blatant than that!" Mulder told the unresponsive TV screen.
The Lady Chargers had been keeping an impressively tight man-to-
man defense against the mostly bigger Lancers, who dashed back
and forth through the key, vainly trying to open a passing lane.
When the Lancers' point guard finally took a desperate shot,
Danielle had darted in front of her opponent, turning to box her
out. The other girl apparently hadn't liked that and had shoved
Dani out of the way, sending her tumbling to the floor. No
referee whistles were forthcoming.
The camera view whizzed back again, showing Dani getting up, Amy leaning over her, apparently asking if she was okay. The Bovard coach seemed to be shouting at the ref. Dani, limping slightly, walked over to the girl that had knocked her over. She stood right in front of the girl and started yelling, pointing a finger at her. Yelling turned to pushing, and then whistles sounded from all over the place.
Mulder groaned and sat back. "Who is that guy?" he asked, pointing at the white haired ref who was scolding Dani but saying nothing to the girl who'd shoved her in the first place. "What morgue did they dig him out of?"
"We call him Colonel Sanders," said Amy. "My coach says he's probably just starting to get Alzheimer's, and not to let him get to us. Half the time he makes stupid calls against the other team, so I guess it works out."
Mulder couldn't help smiling at her description of the man. With his thick, black glasses and frizzled hair he did look a little like Colonel Sanders. "Does Dani have trouble controlling her temper often?" he asked. The reason he'd requested to see tapes of some of Bovard's roughest games was so he could observe how Dani acted under stress.
Amy shrugged. "Sometimes, I guess," she said. Amy was a pretty brunette whose athletic figure was mostly hidden by a pair of oversized overalls, which seemed to be the current fashion among teenagers. Judging by the video, she also possessed a laser-like focus under pressure, which must help make up for the fact that she was slightly built and not much more than 5' 5" or 5' 6". Danielle appeared to be just as ferociously determined, but more explosive.
"Has she ever gotten into fights with friends, had run-ins with her teachers, anything like that?" Mulder asked.
Amy shook her head. "Mostly the teachers like her," she said. "She's gotten mad at certain friends before, but it's never been a big deal."
"So when she blows up like that, that's just on the basketball court? Just when someone physically gets in her face?" Mulder asked.
Amy appeared to think about this. "She won't even do that unless the ref is really stupid," she said. "It's only when they make a call that's really unfair that she gets mad. It's like if they're not going to do anything, then she's going to take it up with the other player herself."
"Her mom says she wants to be a lawyer," Mulder said. "It sounds like Dani's pretty interested in fighting for what's fair."
"Yeah," Amy said. "That's the thing that got her so much about her brother," she said. "He was swimming in Lake Michigan when some drunk guy on a Jet-Ski ran right over him. The swim area was marked, too, there were buoys and everything. After it happened, Dani kept saying over and over how unfair it was that Aaron had to die just because somebody else was an idiot."
Mulder nodded. He was starting to be able to identify with Danielle. That was as it should be, since an understanding of Dani and her likely reactions was essential for him to accurately reconstruct the events surrounding her disappearance. It also meant that, however this case turned out, it was probably going to break his heart. "What about her parents?" Mulder asked. "How is Danielle's relationship with them?"
Amy was silent a moment, her light brows knitted together briefly as she seemed to consider her choice of words. "Dani's folks have had problems ever since Aaron died," she said. "She feels like they've pretty much ignored her for the last two years."
"Amy," Mulder said, "my partner found what she calls an 'extensive liquor stash' behind a panel in Dani's closet. Can you tell me anything about that?"
Amy immediately started looking nervous. She glanced toward the kitchen where her mother was poring over medical textbooks. Mrs. Nelson had explained that she was an RN working at a local hospital, and that she was taking courses to become a Nurse Practitioner. "Do we have to talk about this here?" Amy asked.
"Is there somewhere else you'd feel more comfortable?" Mulder asked.
"Yeah, come on," she said. She turned off the VCR and led him out the back door to a small concrete stoop partially sheltered by an aluminum awning. The rain had finally stopped, but the stoop was still fairly damp. Amy plunked herself down on it anyway, and after a moment's consideration, Mulder sat on the step below her. He figured if he stood over her, being the grownup F.B.I. agent, she probably wouldn't trust him with what a teenager would consider "sensitive information."
Apparently he'd made a good call, because as soon as he was settled on the step, looking up at Amy, she leaned forward and said softly, "The guy who buys booze for Dani is named Mark Ghallager. He goes to school at Lewis and Clark University, over in Sweetwater. We met him at a party there over a year ago. A friend of ours was turning 18, and Mark supplied the keg."
"This all happened on campus?" Mulder asked.
"No, you can't have parties like that in a dorm," Amy said, her tone slightly mocking. "If the RA's didn't notice the keg, they'd sure notice the fifty kids running around with beer mugs in their hands. There's some guys who rent a house just off campus, and the party was there. Anyway, that was where Dani and I got to talking to Mark, and at first he seemed pretty cool. Well, I guess he's not uncool, he's just . . ." she shrugged, as if unable to find the right word. Then she seemed to discover a new tack and continued: "I've got lots of friends that are different ages. Some are older than me, some are younger, and that's cool. That's how it should be. But it's like almost all of Mark's friends are still in high school, and the guy's 22. What does that tell you?"
"He's not exactly a rocket scientist," Mulder said.
"Yeah, he's not exactly a rocket scientist," Amy said, nodding. "He obviously way liked Dani, and they went out a couple times, but he was a lot more into it than she was."
"Is that why he bought her all that alcohol? He was trying to give her something that the guys in your school couldn't?" Mulder asked.
"Probably," Amy said. "Dani wasn't trying to use him, you know. If she wanted him to buy for her, she'd give him money. When he gave her random stuff it wasn't because she asked for it. A lot of it was nasty, too--like marshmallow schnapps. Marshmallow! That was so gross . . ."
Mulder smiled and refrained from pointing out that Mark would certainly have interpreted Dani's accepting of his gifts as a sign of interest. "If Dani were in trouble and she didn't want her parents to find her, do you think she'd go stay with Mark? Do you think there's any chance she would leave the state with him? Mulder asked.
Amy's eyes went wide. "No way! Are you kidding? Hours alone in Mark's car, listening to him whine and try to get her to go out with him? Dani would check into a shelter, first."
"Has she ever done that?" Mulder asked. "Has she ever talked about things getting bad at home, and wanting to run somewhere?"
Amy was silent a moment. "She sometimes says she can't wait to go away to school," she said. "She talked about going away a year early, for a while, 'cause she'll probably have enough credits by next winter. Her and her dad have been fighting, lately. He doesn't like that she hangs out with older guys, especially Mark. Her dad hates Mark. Also, Dani told me that her parents accused her of drinking, but they couldn't prove anything. She was like, 'why did they ignore me completely for two years, and now the second I start to live my own life they're all in my face?'"
"Sounds like she thought it was pretty unfair," Mulder said.
"Totally," Amy agreed. "Totally unfair. You know her mom sleeps with Prince Valium," she said. Mulder couldn't help but smile at the expression. "And her dad drinks, too, which is all apparently okay," Amy continued, "but Dani drinking is the end of the freaking world. It would be different if they weren't doing the exact same thing they were yelling at her for. I told her about a hundred times she could come here if she ever needed to get out. This is where she'd have come if she wanted out of her house, Agent Mulder, I'm sure of it." Amy looked at him, for the first time seeming frightened. "She's not dumb. She wouldn't go wandering the streets."
"What do you think happened?" Mulder asked gently.
Amy was quiet a moment. She shifted so that she could wrap her arms around her knees. "The last time I saw her was Saturday night," she said. "We'd been out in the graveyard with some people from school, hanging out and drinking wine coolers. The guy Dani was kind of going out with said that he wouldn't get drunk, because he had to drive her home. She would never ride with someone who'd been drinking, because of her brother. But then Rob got smashed anyway, and Dani was totally pissed. I walked with her to a gas station, where she called Mark to come take her home. I went in the car, too, so maybe when her folks saw him pull up they wouldn't be so mad, because it would be clear they weren't on a date or anything. Then she went in the house, and that's the last I saw of her." Big, silent tears were running down Amy's face, now. She looked down at the stoop, where she plucked at a crumbled spot in the cement with her fingers.
Mulder pulled a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Do you think her parents could have hurt her?" he asked, as gently as he could.
She shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I've known them forever, and they would never do that. But then, she would never just run off, either. I mean, no one could mess with Dani," she said, suddenly smiling despite the tears. "If someone fucked with her, she'd totally kick their ass."
Mulder nodded, then scooted up so that he was sitting on the step next to her. "It's okay, Amy. We'll find her," he said.
She nodded, and cried anyway, curling up on herself in a way he interpreted as a plea for comfort. He pulled her close and patted her back. The bones of her shoulders were still as delicate as a child's. "It's okay," he repeated.
Despite what he'd told her, his hopes for finding Dani well and alive were dimming.
F.B.I. Field Office New Castle, WS 3:09 p.m.
Scully stood in the office lobby, waiting to meet with ASAC Terry Hsu. The place didn't look like a field office thrown into turmoil. The lobby, at least, was tidy, if cramped, with a few chairs, a rubber tree plant, and the flags of the U.S. and the Justice Department standing in the corners. However, she knew that the local media was having a field day over a civil rights suit that had been filed against the F.B.I. in general and this office in particular. She'd actually heard the flap while still back in Washington--the problem was that a black man had been nearly convicted of a series of murders committed by a white man.
This was rather ironic, since the lobby had a number of framed posters on the wall extolling the Constitution. One of them was an old photo of a segregated drinking fountain, the "colored" half of it being little more than a rusty spigot. The caption read, "Without the Constitution, separate might still be considered equal." Scully was contemplating this she heard the lobby door open.
"Hi, I'm Agent Hsu. You must be Agent Scully," said a man. She turned and smiled at him. He was short, stocky, in a black suit with a brush-cut hairstyle, much like the standard conception of a Man in Black, except Men in Black never seemed to be Asian. He had a much nicer smile than she'd ever seen on an MIB, too.
She shook his hand and said, "Thank you for being willing to speak with me. I won't take up too much of your time."
"By all means, take it up," said Agent Hsu. "I've spent the afternoon racking my brains over the books of a company which sells products that don't seem to exist to customers who claim never to have heard of it. This will be a welcome change."
Scully smiled and suggested, "Maybe we could walk around the block?" It would be more politic to ask her questions outside of the office.
"Certainly," said Agent Hsu. Moments later they were out in the humid, more-or-less fresh air. It had stopped raining, but the cloud cover stayed dense and gloomy. "Welcome to Great Lakes weather," he said. "If it were up to me, you could keep it."
"I'm sure it's no better back in Washington," she said, as they started walking. "My partner says that whenever he thinks of hell, he thinks of D.C. in the summer, only with more senators."
Agent Hsu laughed. "That's pretty good," he said. "Mind if I steal it?"
"Why not? I did," Scully said. "Agent Hsu, my partner and I were asked to come out here to help investigate the disappearance of SAC Sheppard's daughter."
Hsu nodded. "That's pretty common knowledge," he said. "Being snoops by profession, we Special Agents have a hard time keeping things from one another. Well, at least here in the dull, Great White North, that is. I'm sure in D.C. you guys have more interesting things than office gossip to occupy your minds with."
"You'd be surprised," Scully said, with a wry smile. She and Mulder had spent years trying to quell a rumor that they'd once done something distinctly unprofessional in an elevator. "I was wondering if you could tell me why Agent Mulder and I specifically were called in on this case, when you have many fine agents and police officers here in Wisconsin."
She looked over as Hsu, who'd stuck his tongue into the corner of his cheek. It seemed a nervous gesture, as if he found this situation a little awkward. "I have heard," he said, putting emphasis on the last word, "that there was some kind of unusual circumstances surrounding Danielle's disappearance, and that this was the kind of thing you people investigated."
"If you've heard of Agent Mulder and I, you probably know that one of the things we investigate is unexplained abductions. Or as Agent Mulder would put it, alien abductions," she said. "You may also be aware that I am considerably more skeptical about the paranormal nature of these events than he is. Generally, I play the Devil's advocate and try to come up with a more conventional theory that fits the facts. I was wondering if you could help me do that."
Hsu stopped and looked at the toes of his highly-polished shoes a moment. "What exactly are you asking me, Agent Scully?" he asked, looking up to meet her eyes. "I'm sure the Sheppards know much better than I do what happened on that night."
Scully nodded, choosing her next words carefully. "The honesty and integrity of the Sheppards is not being called into question," she said. "If they say that their daughter was abducted by aliens, then I'm sure that's what they believe. However, if something else, something more terrestrial, happened to Danielle, we would be doing her a tremendous disservice by staring up at the sky when she may need our help down here on the ground." She looked steadily into Hsu's dark eyes, letting him think that one over.
He looked away first and started walking again. Scully kept pace with him. "I have to admit, I don't understand about the alien thing," he said, speaking softly. "This is in confidence, isn't it?"
"Absolutely," Scully replied.
"I've never heard either Grant or Tina mention anything about believing in UFOs before now," he said. "Actually, I'm pretty sure I remember Grant telling me he thought the whole idea was crap. They have been under an enormous amount of stress, lately, though. It's coming up on the second anniversary of when they lost their son, there's this lawsuit and the papers won't shut up about it, they've been having discipline problems with Danielle . . . I'm thinking their marriage is kind of rocky, now, too. They're both just barely hanging on."
"What kind of discipline problems have they been having with their daughter?" Scully asked.
"Grant wasn't real specific," Hsu said. "I got the impression it was fairly normal, teenage things. Missing curfew, hanging out with an older crowd that her parents didn't much like. Grant did kind of mention that he'd let Dani slip through the cracks since Aaron died. He'd assumed that Tina was watching out for her, but that turned out not to be the case. To be frank, I think Tina's got a prescription drug problem. If you call their house after a certain time of night and she answers, she's in the ozone. Anyway, Grant did say something about wanting to get control again before Dani went out and did something they'd all regret."
"Did he mention what that might be?" Scully asked.
"No. I guess I assumed he meant get pregnant, get on drugs, be out on the road with some drunk and get killed. The usual list of parental nightmares," said Hsu.
"You never spoke to Tina or Dani about what was going on at home?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Tina and I are friendly with each other, but we've never been close enough to discuss that kind of thing. And Dani's a teenage girl--why would she talk about her problems with some old guy her dad works with?"
Scully nodded. "Can you tell me a little about this impending lawsuit?" she asked.
Hsu groaned. "Oh, God, do I have to go through it again? Can't you just get all the juicy details at the closest newsstand?"
"Sure, if all you'd like me to know is a lot of journalists' conjecture," Scully said. "From what I hear, Sheppard has made himself some enemies, and enemies of the father might want to bring harm to the daughter. We might find Danielle quicker if we knew the straight facts."
"All right, all right," said Hsu with a sigh. "Starting a couple of years ago, young girls started turning up dead in Milwaukee. They were four black girls and a white one, between the ages of nine and twelve, all gone missing from one, predominantly black area of the city. All five were last seen on a Thursday afternoon at their school bus stop, all five turned up in alleys or vacant lots, dead by manual strangulation. There was no sign of sexual assault, but the bodies had been masturbated over. DNA tests revealed it was all the work of one individual.
"Rob Green, who was our profiler until about six months ago, figured serial killers usually pick their own race. This is a black area of the city and nobody saw anything unusual, so the perp blends in, right? He's gotta be a black guy. So the Milwaukee PD spends months hunting for a black UNSUB, hauling guys in off the street left and right, and meanwhile kids keep dying. By now the public's screaming and the cops are desperate to bust somebody, so they start targeting just about anybody who even remotely resembles the profile.
"Finally, a grocery store owner catches the guy trying to choke a kid behind a Dumpster. The guy's name is Gary Cheeseman--no shit--and he's a white guy who's supposed to be locked up in a local state mental hospital. Turns out that the killings always happen on Thursday afternoons because a bar down the street from the hospital has a 'buy one, get one free' happy hour at that time, and some of the staff were in the habit of slipping out for a few cold ones. The racial thing was completely irrelevant. Cheeseman didn't have a car so he had to kill within walking distance, and the race ratio of the area was about four blacks to one white. Apart from the age and sex, the selection of kids was totally random. Cheeseman didn't stand out in the area because he'd lived there all his life; a lot of the kids knew him, at least by sight. It never occurred to the cops to peg him as a suspect because he was supposedly shut away in a locked-down facility. If it wasn't for dumb luck, he'd probably still be out there.
"Anyway, the media and half a dozen civil rights groups started howling and pointing fingers at the Wisconsin PD, calling them a bunch of crypto-Klansmen and witch hunters, so the police pointed at the F.B.I. and said that it was our lousy profile that led them astray in the first place. Grant made the political mistake of publicly standing behind Agent Green. He said something to the effect that Green was a fine agent and that he'd come up with