Marriot Hotel
Times Square
New York
"Dr. Scully," the drawl drew out the woman's last name impossibly long, slightly rousing Neal from his doze as he glanced over to the corpulent skeptic sitting in the front row. He was a doctor from Atlanta, as best Neal could tell form the accent, and was so big it was a wonder he worked as a doctor at all seeing how unhealthy he was, let alone as a neurologist. And he'd been hitting point after point of Dr. Scully's presentation on her work with Sandhoff Disease for the last half–an-hour. For his part even Neal understood the process better than this man did, and he hardly understood medicine at all. Still, Dr. Scully's equanimity hardly fluttered as she took the man's questions, answering them directly and without so much as a quiver, as if she was well used to being challenged by a board of her peers.
"I realize the use of stem cell is still experimental at best, Dr. Lenhoff, but given the patience overall health and the fact that standard methods of treatment were starting to fail him, it was a risk I was willing to take. As it turned out it was a good risk, the stem cells have regenerated those parts of his brain that were being most damaged by the disease. While there is no guarantee that this is even a permanent cure or 'fix', it at least has stemmed the ravages of the disease for the moment. I don't know if it will ever allowed Christian Fearon to recover the motor skills he's lost, but it will at least prolong his life and prevent him from further degenerating for the time being."
"Would you suggest this sort of risky treatment for all such cases, Dr. Scully. After all, this is a rather dangerous and new territory we are wading into, and we lack the evidence to really support this as a widespread treatment." Lenhoff continued in a bored sort of drawl, as Neal contemplated what it would take to perhaps fake a fire alarm to get the out of this room. He doubted the man would ever shut up.
"Christian's case was unique in that we had only a small window of time between the failure of conventional treatment and the steady worsening of his condition. If given more time, more capability, perhaps I would have turned to more testing and evidence. But as we sometimes know in this business, as much as we would like to have hard proof and steady science on our side, sometimes action is the only course we can take. We just have to believe that in the end our cause is true and our decision is the right one. We have to have faith that in the end we worked in the best interest of our patient."
Her words rang with a certain conviction that struck Neal, and clearly struck the other doctor as well. Lenhoff demurred visibly, nodding as he took his seat. The room shifted and murmured as the doctors began to see the end in sight, eagerly seeking escape. Neal took the time to rise, folding up the copy of the Lone Gunmen's paper Mozzie had left with him, slipping out of the back of the room, unnoticed. He quietly made his way out before the press of the crowd, finding a quiet nook in the hallway near the meeting room, watching for Dr. Scully's bright head to come out of the door.
The room quickly expelled its occupants, as doctors made their way out of the doors, chatting amongst each other as they made their way down the hallway towards the banks of elevators and the hotel restaurants, eager to be up and stretching their legs. Neal didn't expect the Dr. Scully to be out with the first press. He waited patiently as the last stragglers made their way out, discussing various points of the presentation, before Dr. Lenhoff, and Dr. Scully made their way out of the door at the very tail end of the group. Lenhoff waddled beside the petite doctor, almost as if she were caught in the gravitational field of his own pompousness. His slow, syrupy, nasal voice fell all over himself as he attempted to apologize.
"It's not that I doubt your work, Dr. Scully, but stem cells are such a new, raw field. And what you did was quiet dangerous for the boy. There is no guarantee it will improve his lot in life. Perhaps it would have been better to let him go."
Her spine stiffened so hard, Neal almost thought it was made of titanium. Her tone was pleasant in its answer, but he could hear ice lacing each of her words. "Perhaps there are some who believe that it isn't worth raising the hopes of families in order to prolong the life of one child, doomed to die. But I took an oath coming out of medical school, the same one you took, that stated I would not take life. And frankly allowing that boy to die without trying my damndest to save him is tantamount to that very thing."
Lenhoff demurred again, but didn't seem to back down. "I know your faith, Dr. Scully, precludes those sorts of ideas, but if the boy isn't going to ever be better?"
"He will still lived happy and loved, and will live just as much under the sight of God as any healthy child would." Neal couldn't see her face, but he could imagine her eyes flashing dangerously. There was no way this guy was going to leave her alone anytime soon, and frankly he was annoying Neal in his own pomposity.
Without a second thought, he moved from his hiding place, sidling up alongside the smaller woman, a charming smile lighting his face as he greeted the pair. "Dr. Scully, I've been waiting to speak to you. I was dying to hear your presentation, and was so excited about your advances with stem cell research." He glanced at Lenhoff, throwing out a hand towards the man's large girth. "Dr. Stephen Sinclair, nice to meet you Dr. Lenhoff."
The other man was too startled to do anything but take Neal's proffered handshake. "Nice to meet you Dr. Sinclair."
Neal grasped his meaty hand firmly before turning back to Dr. Scully's cautious gaze. "I wanted to have a chance to discuss with you more of your ideas alone if I could, sort of pick your brain about some of the things you discussed in there. Christian Fearon's case fascinates me." He wasn't lying about that last part that did fascinate him.
"I'm free for lunch," she murmured, glancing at Lenhoff, whose face fell slightly at that. "If you care to join me?"
"I'd love to." Neal smiled apologetically at Lenhoff. "It was a pleasure, doctor."
Lenhoff hardly got off an answering nod before Neal gently reached for Dr. Scully's elbow, propelling her away from the giant man. She flinched visibly from the gentle placement of fingers, but relaxed with an awkward smile as he pulled away. She wasn't someone who appreciated her personal space being intruded on.
"I should be pissed as hell you are here stalking me, but I'm thankful that you were." She glanced over her shoulder, through her coppery hair at the other man, still waddling his way down the hallway. "Lenhoff has been one of the biggest opponents against my work, he's written many articles about it. Frankly I think he just likes to annoy me."
"You seem to handle him well enough." Neal had to admit she maneuvered the entire situation admirably, even Neal's sudden appearance. Did anything shake her at all?
"Well, when you've sat before as many OPR boards as I have, a few windbags with too much money and not enough patients hardly bother you." She smirked knowingly at Neal, glancing him up and down again in her calculating sort of way. "Though I can't imagine you've seen to many of those."
"OPR boards," Neal swallowed the excitement and dread those three letters brought up in him. "No, can't say I have."
"Didn't think so." She motioned towards a bar on the ground level of the building, fairly crowded with other conference attendees, but just enough so that the two of them chatting wouldn't draw too much attention. Inside doctors from the presentation gathered around the bar, exchanging stories and chatting about patient cases, as Neal followed the small woman's bright hair as it thread its way through the crowd. One lone table sat, empty in a corner, and she promptly claimed it, setting her briefcase down as she settled into one of the small chairs.
"Can I buy you a drink," Neal offered, the least he could do to get her to speak to him.
"Pinot Grigio," she nodded. A wine usually orange or gold in color, fruity in taste, with subtle and complex flavors if done right. Of all the pinots, it was the one wine that certainly wasn't anything like it appeared to be on the surface…interesting choice for her.
The harried looking waiter stopped by as Neal put in two wine orders, and slipped the waiter extra for their trouble. He highly doubted any of the highly paid doctors were going to do the same for him during their stay. Dr. Scully noticed, but said nothing as she watched him expectantly.
"Obviously I'm not here to discuss Sandhoff's Disease with you." He smiled winningly, earning at least a small acknowledgement in return. He was at least getting father than Peter had that morning.
"I'm curious why you are here Mr. Caffrey." She remembered his name all right. "You don't look as if you fit the FBI's standard pay grade."
"And why do you say that?"
A slow smirk rose on her bow-like mouth, as she reached slim fingers across to pluck at the lapel of his suit. "Either they are dressing their recruits better these days, or you charge some fairly hefty fees working with Agent Burke?"
"Not as hefty as I would like, but that is probably because of the jewelry they make me wear." He lifted the cuff of his pant leg, revealing the anklet he wore underneath. It was instinct, really, something told him that this woman would respect him, trust him more if she saw he wasn't a standard FBI yes man waiting to drag her and her former partner back into whatever it was she was trying to hide from.
Her eyes flickered to the anklet, then up at him with amused surprise. She considered him for the briefest of moments carefully before responding. "What is White Collar doing with a serial killer case that requires Fox Mulder?"
How in the hell did she figure that out? "How did you guess I was White Collar?"
"Burke clued me in first," she replied, smiling at the waiter who promptly brought them their drinks and earned another large bill out of Neal. She sipped at the wine before leaning back in her chair. "Burke couldn't get the information out of Drummy or Skinner. Drummy I know works Missing Persons, if Burke was a part of that division, he would have already known how to find Mulder."
"Why didn't Drummy tell him?"
"Drummy hated the fact that Mulder was involved in Dakota Whitney's case to begin with. He was her partner. She died. The further away from Fox Mulder he can get, the better." Regret laced her words as she pulled quickly from her wine again. "As for Skinner, Walter would sooner die than allow that information out to someone he didn't know or trust. And he knows most everyone in Violent Crimes. Which ruled Burke out of that area. New York is a giant field office, but it has concentrations in specific areas. If it wasn't Missing Persons or VCU, chances are it had to be White Collar."
"Chances…but you didn't know." Neal was fascinated by how she pieced this together.
"Not till you showed off your bracelet." She nodded to his ankle. "I knew you weren't FBI. There was something about you. To arrogant, to cocky, too smart ass…" She chuckled softly as Neal grinned broadly at her characterization.
"Completely against the FBI book?"
"So far out of it they would never even let you in the Academy." She smirked slightly, with a hint of sad reminiscence. "Reminds me a lot of Mulder to be honest. The same charm, the same wit, the same inability to fit into that mold. You're a slightly better dresser though. At least you aren't color blind."
"Color blind?"
"Mulder has trouble telling different shades of red and green from one another, its not normal red/green color blindness, he can see certain variants. But it makes dressing him difficult."
Dressing him…clearly this woman was more than just a work partner at one point in time with the man. Perhaps there was something going on there, like Peter indicated. Or perhaps they were so much in each others pockets, just the two of them in their tiny division that it almost seemed like there was more going on there. "So you were saying about figuring me out?"
"Well, if you are on a bracelet, that either means they are afraid of you being a flight risk, which means you are on parole or they are afraid that you might be taken, which means you've turned states witness. If you had performed the latter, you'd be in witness protection, not here chatting with me. So my guess is that you are an ex-con." She narrowed her eyes softly for a moment, studying him. "I think it was some sort of minor federal offense, it couldn't have been long. Securities, fraud, minor counterfeiting?"
"Forgery," Neal murmured, delighted she hit so close. This woman was scarily intelligent. "Four years, I was one of the best they ever caught."
"But they still caught you."
"Peter caught me," he shrugged, not feeling as sorry about that as he perhaps would have once before. "He's good at what he does."
"But not on serial killers." Now the conversation looped back to Fox Mulder.
"Did Mulder teach you how to do that?" Neal was still stunned how she could put it together.
"I am a woman of keen observation on my own, Mr. Caffrey, else I'd make a very poor doctor," she replied archly, but her eyes softened with a smile. "However, being with Fox Mulder you can't help but absorb a thing or two from him."
"He was that good?" Neal had heard it uttered for the past two days, he was curious to know if it were true.
"Frighteningly so." She sipped again from her wine briefly, her eyes focusing distantly for the briefest of moments. "I've seen Mulder go places few in the Bureau could manage with any sanity. Very scary places."
"And you still stayed by his side." Neal meant it as a loaded remark. She paused, eyeing him over her wine glass before setting it down, watching him.
"Why does the FBI want Mulder on this?" It was time to get to the point, and the directness returned with a vengeance.
"Do you remember the Jonathan Harvey case?" Neal met her frank gaze with his own. She paused, thinking, before nodding her head briefly.
"What if I told you that the FBI has a series of murders on their hands that mimicked that case down to the last detail?"
"I would say you had a good copycat."
"Would Mulder say that?" Neal leaned forward, his elbows against the table. "Or would Mulder say that the real killer got away years ago, projecting himself into someone else?"
Scully's mouth thinned slightly, her face tensing as she considered his words. "Mulder did say something like that, yes."
"I think that the FBI is a bit more willing to listen to that story now, fifteen years later."
"Why now?" She knew that under normal circumstances they wouldn't. Scully wasn't an idiot to the politics of the FBI.
"One of the women who died was the niece of Senator Robert Whitmore."
"He sits on the Justice Committee." It was starting to make sense to Scully now why Mulder was being called in.
"And he can and will make life for the FBI difficult. He will probably call them out on a bunch of their recent practices and decisions…like allowing a convicted art thief out of prison before his sentence was completed to work as a consultant to the FBI." There was desperation hiding under his calm words, and he didn't care if she knew it. He needed her to know it, to understand. "I can't say for sure whose bright idea it was to make this case Peter's. Frankly I'm not buying the idea that they wanted our expertise on it. I don't know why the VCU couldn't handle it themselves. But they gave it to us, and they want Mulder on it, and I'm just here doing my job, trying to get this solved, so I don't have to face another four years in prison because I was stupid."
She was silent for several long moments, watching him, considering. Her gaze was guarded, she really had no reason to trust him. But he could tell that his words made something of an impact on her, if nothing else out of sympathy for his plight. Something still was holding her back, an unnamed quality that not even he with his charm, with his sob story, with his role as the outsider could penetrate. Scully shook her head softly, apologetically as she reached for her briefcase.
"I'm sorry Mr. Caffrey, I wish I could help, but I'm afraid you are talking to the wrong person." She began to rise, bag in hand, but he reached out to stop her, quelling her as once again he physically invaded her space. She really didn't like that at all.
"Dr. Scully, please….we need his insight."
"The FBI had his insight once, Mr. Caffrey, and they spurned it. This isn't a game for him, you can't just yank him in and out whenever you feel like and expect him to go away quietly when you've found your bad guy. This was Mulder's life, and he was forced out of it, made to give it up. And no one in eight years has cared about that. He was laughed at, called 'spooky' behind his back." Neal winced at the pejorative he had heard from even his own comrades. "They wanted to use his brilliance when it suited him, and shove him in a closet when it didn't. And I won't….I can't put him through that again. I can't go through it again."
There was a certain sense of defeat in her words, something that was jarring next to the strength that this woman displayed so openly to him. What had happened to these two that caused the sort of pain hiding just underneath the calm surface of Dr. Scully? He doubted she would open up to him, but he wondered if Mozzie's prodding into the FBI files found anything that might open up the mystery a little wider.
There was one key he had, and one question she probably could answer for him. Carefully he reached into his pocket and pulled out the neatly folded copy of the Lone Gunmen paper he had brought with him. He'd spent much of the presentation flipping through it, using it to amuse himself when the doctor's jargon got too much for him. And while on the whole he thought it was a bucket of all sorts of quackery, he could see what the attraction of it was for Mozzie. He smoothed it out, face up on the table, and was far from surprised to see the look of recognition that filled the doctor's pretty face.
"You knew them, didn't you?" Neal nodded towards the paper, though he hardly needed to ask the question. The tears that unexpectedly filled her eyes clearly said she did. She sighed softly, sinking back into her chair.
"They were friends of Mulder's…three of the craziest paranoids you would ever meet, but….damn good friends." She wiped quickly at her brimming eyes, accepting gratefully the tissue Neal produced for her in as gentlemanly a fashion as possible. "They died….doing something insane, I never got the whole story. I pulled some strings to get them buried in Arlington. I thought they would find it funny they ended up there." She laughed in a watery sort of way. "They deserved to be there…they died heroes."
"Mulder was their informant then…the one in the Bureau?"
"Well, usually, though I can't say that they didn't quote me often enough in this thing." She snorted despite the tears, a soft chuckle erasing away some of the sadness. "Where did you get this?"
"A friend of mine knew them from some hacking circles. He was a fan." It was the best way Neal could describe Moz's fascination. "Dr. Scully, these guys died trying to get the truth out there to everyone, whether they wanted to hear it or not. And I have a feeling that Mulder shared that sentiment with them, correct."
Something horribly frightening passed across Scully's features before she nodded slowly, schooling herself against whatever Neal's words conjured up inside of her. "Mulder wouldn't allow for any more women to be hurt, no. He'd rather be involved, find the truth."
"But you don't want it?"
"It's not who we are anymore, Mr. Caffrey." She insisted on this firmly, shaking her head, sending remaining tears flying from her damp lashes.
"Don't you think Mulder should have the right to say yes or no on this?" Neal was wearing her down, he could see that. "This was his world at one point in time, Dr. Scully. And while it might not be anymore, that's not to say we still don't need him and what he brings to the table. Your friends would be ashamed of him if he didn't at least do that."
A long, tired sigh emanated from her as she fingered the yellowing pages of the old newspaper, memories from a different time earning a tired sort of smile. "I can put you in touch with him." She had to pull those words out of herself reluctantly. She was still not happy with this.
Near giddy relief filled Neal as he suppressed the triumphant grin that wanted to split his face. "Dr. Scully, the FBI appreciates this."
"Wait until you've spoken to Mulder first before you thank me."
"If you can give me his number, I can call him personally, perhaps Peter and I can go and speak to him…."
"No need," she shook coppery head, pulling out her Blackberry from her bag, and tapping the screen twice. She raised the phone to her ear as Neal watched, realization starting to form as the doctor wiped the last of the tears from her eyes.
"Hi there." The sadness that had enveloped the small woman now was gone in a flash of a brilliant, warm smile, a grin that seemed to forget that Neal was sitting there forming on her face. "The presentation went well, yes." She paused, her eyebrows rising, a tolerant rolling of eyes following soon after. "What am I wearing? Would you believe nothing but a smile, Mulder?"
Neal choked on the wine he had been trying to discreetly use to cover the snort that was forming. She ignored his spluttering as an evil smile crept across her face. "Of course, I might have to explain that to the handsome young man who just treated me to wine at the bar. No, I promise you don't have to shoot him, Mulder, in fact he would like to speak to you." She lowered the phone, holding it out to Neal's stunned, streaming face, a look of impish delight on her otherwise schooled features.
"Not all rumors are false, Mr. Caffrey. Of course I know where Fox Mulder is. He's been living with me for the last seven years."
On the other end of the line, Neal could hear a soft, masculine voice chuckle.
