A few hours later Scully got a message asking her to go up to
Skinner's office. Mulder's presence was not requested. Though
she couldn't think of anything she'd done lately that would get
herself in trouble, she went with a sense of trepidation. When
Skinner's secretary showed her in, she said, "You asked to see
me, sir?" //Please don't let this be about anything Mulder did .
. .// she thought. She hated it when their superiors tried to
play them against one another.
"Have a seat, agent," Skinner said, gesturing toward an empty
chair. This was never a good sign. Scully smoothed her skirt
under her and sat down. "I just received a call from the Cape
Cod and Islands District Attorney's office," Skinner said. "They
said you'd volunteered to do the autopsy of a young woman in
Boston."
"Yes -- is that a problem?" Scully asked.
"No. In fact I think it's a wonderful idea," Skinner said.
"Sir?" Scully asked. Something was up. Skinner never called
anything she and Mulder did "wonderful."
"Agent Scully . . . there are people in the Bureau who don't
appreciate the work you and Agent Mulder do. They don't see its
value. This would be a good time for you to perform a service
they can appreciate. I can have you in Boston tonight so you can
do the autopsy first thing in the morning. Volunteering to do
work outside of normal office hours will reflect positively on
your next performance review," Skinner said.
As usual, Scully was left scrambling to read between the lines.
"Is the validity of my and Agent Mulder's work being questioned
more than usual, sir?" she asked.
"Why would you say that?" Skinner asked.
"You mentioned this would be 'a good time' to perform a service
others can appreciate," Scully said.
"It's always a good time for that. Your flight leaves at six."
When she didn't move at once, he added, "If you need to pack a
bag you might want to get going."
A few minutes later she was back in the basement, slamming the
door to the office. Mulder stood up behind his desk. "What
happened? What'd he say?" he asked.
"We're in trouble," Scully said. She pulled her purse from its
usual place in a file drawer and dropped it on her desk.
"For what? I haven't even broken my cell phone lately," Mulder
said. He crossed the room to stand by her side.
"I don't know. He was dropping hints about us needing to do PR
work to appease the powers that be. I get really tired of these
guessing games. Why can't he be straight with us for once?" She
retrieved her Dictaphone's batteries from where they sat charging
on a shelf and tossed them into her purse.
"He might be trying to do us a favor," Mulder said.
"Maybe. I can never tell. And he doesn't even ask me, 'Is a six
o'clock flight convenient for you?' It's, 'If you want to pack a
bag, you'd better *go.*" Scully recalled it was supposed to rain
that weekend. She strode toward their lopsided hat rack to grab
her umbrella.
Mulder caught her by the wrist, gently turning her toward
him. "Hey . . . hey, calm down. When was the last time you were
in Boston?" he asked.
"It's been a long time," she said. It was actually for his
father's funeral in 1993, but she thought it best not to mention
that.
"Well, when you get done with the autopsy I'll show you around.
It's a great city if you don't mind homicidal drivers," Mulder
said.
"Mulder, you're not going," she said.
"Yes, I am," he said.
"No, you're not. Skinner made it clear he was authorizing one
plane ticket. It was only by being an Assistant Director of the
FBI that he guaranteed me a flight out tonight at all."
"I can drive," Mulder said. She thought he was trying not to
laugh. It really bugged her when he thought she was funny.
"It's a six hour trip -- four, if I drive like I'm already in
Boston." He gently shook her wrist. "Come on," he said.
"I'll be doing the autopsy into the afternoon and then we'll just
have to turn around and come home," she said.
"Why? You think somebody's going to tell on us if we don't?" he
asked.
Scully found herself fighting a smile. "I'll actually need to
sleep before I do this autopsy," she said.
"You'll sleep," he said. He bent and kissed her gently just
below her ear. She was surprised and therefore vulnerable. She
felt her breath catch in her throat. "Between bouts of
screaming, wall-pounding sex." He placed his next kiss low on
her cheek. If she let him go on long enough he'd make it around
to her mouth.
"We're at work," she pointed out, but she didn't back away.
Mulder had always shown a perverse enjoyment of getting her
excited in public places where the chance of release was nil.
She turned and rested her hand against his cheek. His pupils
were widely dilated circles within rings of hazel-green;
arousal was like a narcotic.
Scully brushed her lips against his. He tasted faintly of salt,
faintly of the lemon he put in his tea. When he tightened his
arms around her ribcage she could feel the speed of his pulse in
his neck. Their physical relationship was very new and at times
its intensity was overwhelming.
Their kiss was interrupted by the distant whirr of elevator doors
opening and the squeal of unoiled cart wheels. A lot of old but
serviceable equipment was kept in the Hoover Building basement,
and Bureau support staff were frequently sent to bring it up to
the "inhabited" levels.
Coming to her senses, Scully squirmed out of Mulder's embrace
and brushed her tousled hair back behind her ears. It wasn't
even four o'clock yet, and the night seemed a long way off.
"Okay, that's enough. You're terrible," she said.
For a moment there was a wild look in Mulder's eyes, but
it soon faded to one of longing, like a man relinquishing
something long desired. Then that was gone too and he became
his everyday self, giving her his mock hurt routine.
"That's not what you said the other night," he said.
She pitched a wad of paper at him. Mulder picked up his coffee
mug and started speaking to it. "Did you like that, Cancer Man?
Huh? That turn you on?" His clowning did not completely
dissipate the tension. It was still there, like thunder in the
distance.
"Mulder, they are not bugging your coffee cup," Scully told him.
"You're right -- it's probably the electrical outlet that doesn't
work." He bent over to shout at the offending outlet, "Better
than 'Celebrity Skin,' isn't it Krycek, you pervert!"
Scully rifled through filing cabinet drawers, picking up the
things she would need in Boston. She told herself to get the
stupid grin off her face before she went down into the parking
garage. What was she so happy about, anyway? It never paid to
get too happy. Something was bound to happen and make things
worse than ever.
When she had everything she needed she stood on her toes to give
Mulder a little kiss, a decent kiss, on the mouth. "Goodbye,"
she said.
"See you," he said. She felt his eyes on her as she went out the
door. Maybe she'd have time to take a cool shower before she
got on the plane.
*****
As it turned out Scully did not spend the night screaming and
pounding the wall. She did dissolve into fits of giggles when
Mulder scooped her out of bed and attempted to fold her into a
fairly gymnastic sexual position in the tiny closet. He hit his
head on the mass of coat hangers and made them jangle. She
told him he had been alone with his porn collection for far too
long.
In the gray hour just before dawn Scully lay in bed with her head
resting in the hollow of Mulder's shoulder. He'd been asleep for
more than an hour, but sleep eluded her. She lay watching the
green numbers on the clock as they counted their inexorable way
toward 7 a.m. //Typical.// She placed her hand on his left
chest, felt the slow beat of his heart below the ribcage.
Her thoughts turned to Daniel. Neither quite awake or asleep,
her memories played themselves out as images and sensations.
It seemed that she was once again an ambitious young pathology
Resident, sitting in a lecture hall while Daniel addressed his
first-year med students. He strode back and forth before the
first row of seats, sometimes climbing up into the risers. All
his notes were in his head, so he was free to make eye contact
with as many students as possible. He smiled; he joked with
them. A few of the less charismatic staff members derisively
called him Dr. Elvis. It didn't matter. In a class of 100
students, every one of them would go home feeling as if Daniel
had been speaking to him or her personally.
That afternoon he had been speaking about an outbreak of
hemorrhagic fever in Bolivia. Not exactly romance novel stuff.
And yet the sunlight poured through the tall, narrow windows,
gilding away the gray in his hair and flashing off the cuff
studs of his blue-and-white striped shirt as he gestured.
He spoke so passionately that she almost felt as if she were
in church, watching a fiery preaching of the gospel.
Scully's first crush had been on a young deacon who helped
celebrate youth Masses near the Texas naval base where her
family lived in the late 70's.
In Daniel's classroom she felt like a wicked schoolgirl once
again, and relished every moment of it. All she had to do
was look attentive and innocent. No one had to know about
the desire in her heart.
Daniel knew. They held one another's gazes too long when he
said things like, "burning with a terrible fever," or "tossing
and turning in bed." He'd said, "It's nothing you'll ever
forget, is it, Dr. Scully, watching a man literally eaten from the
inside out, begging for relief with every breath?"
She'd said, "No, Dr. Waterston, it isn't."
The elation, the sense of conquest, hadn't lasted. He was
married, of course. His protestations about his unhappy marriage
sounded weak even to Scully's besotted ears.
She had given something away that afternoon in the lecture hall.
Too late, she realized it was the part of herself that guarded
her integrity and self-respect. Those qualities were much
harder to reclaim than they were to lose.
Her dream state shattered at the sound of the bedside clock: " .
. . fifty degrees and raining on this gloomy April Saturday.
Approximately 800 customers in western Barnstable County are
still without power due to the storm that blew through early
Thursday morning --"
Mulder moaned and rolled over to beat the alarm into silence.
He squinted at the clock's numbers and said, "Oh, God. I'm sorry
I ever got you into this."
"Don't worry about it," Scully said. "How can I resist the
opportunity to perform a service the Bureau can 'appreciate?'"
She slowly rolled up until she was sitting on the edge of the
bed. She wanted coffee. Maybe that would dispel the troubling
dream images in her head.
"Thank you," Mulder said. She turned and looked at him. In the
darkness his expression was unreadable, but he reached out and
caressed the small of her back. He clearly wanted the justice
system to do its best by the daughter of his old friend, and he
believed Scully was the best. That kind of faith was sobering.
"If having me do the autopsy helps the Herrons feel better, then
it's the right thing to do," Scully said. "I know what it's like
to lose someone, and then feel like the whole system is working
against you."
"You all right?" Mulder asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Just need to switch gears. I have to be in
pathology mode now."
He seemed to accept her explanation at face value. "Girlfriend,
you go *be* pathological," he said, swatting her lightly on
the behind.
She got up and went into the bathroom. When she turned on the
lights they made her squint. Soon she was under the spray of the
shower, washing the musky scent of lovemaking off her body.
//Mulder. Not Daniel, not Jack.// she reminded herself. //This
is a different situation. You're a different person.//
She was afraid she wasn't different enough.
Scully did not like herself when she was in love. Over and over
she'd started by giving away her heart, and ended up giving away
her soul instead.
Why did her love always seem to turn to self-betrayal?
Well for one thing, she tended to pick men who had other interests
more compelling than she was. Daniel had his wife, Jack had his
own ambitions and career at the Bureau. Mulder had his aliens.
No, that wasn't fair -- Mulder had shown a marked preference for
her over aliens on several occasions. Of course, that wasn't
exactly a ringing endorsement. She could just hear Father McCue
saying, //"Do you, Fox, swear to prefer Dana to aliens on most
occasions as long as you both shall live?"// She pressed her
hands to her eyes. "Oh my God, I am *nuts,*" she said.
*****
She decided to walk the few blocks to the ME's office rather than
contend with Boston's tangled nest of one-way streets. The
morning was cool, and purple-gray rain clouds hung low in the sky.
Except for a few pigeons, Scully had the wet sidewalks to
herself. The sound of her footfalls was like a meditation.
The night's fevered thoughts and desires fell away as she walked
among the stately red brick buildings of Boston University
Medical Center. This was the realm of learning and reason. //"Hic
locus est ubi mors gaudet succerrere vitae" -- Here is the place
where death delights to give aid to life.// Here she felt
competent and in control.
When she arrived at the Medical Examiner's Office the door was
locked and the windows were dark. She glanced at her watch and
found she was about 20 minutes early, so she composed herself to
wait. A few moments later the door opened. A heavyset man
whose pink face was splotched with spidered blood vessels leaned
out. Scully's overwhelming impression of him was that he was at
a high risk of developing melanoma. "You must be Dr. Scully,"
the man said. "Hi, I'm Rob Conlin, the morgue attendant. Come
on in." Scully noted the dropped r's and flattened o's of the
classic Boston accent in his speech.
"Thank you," she said, following him inside. "That's one of the
friendliest greetings I've ever had at a morgue."
Rob had a slightly wheezing laugh. "Oh, well, usually we have a
secretary out here, but right now it's just you and me."
That worried her slightly. "I am having a path assistant, aren't
I? And I thought the State Police detectives were coming."
"Sure, the police boys'll be here any time. As to the PA, I
don't know. This was all arranged kind of suddenly. Don't
worry about it though, Dr. Scully, I'll hold the flaps while you
sew," Rob said.
He showed her to the women's changing area, where she put on
green scrubs and folded her clothes carefully into a locker. The
place smelled like Lysol with just a hint of formalin. It was
the smell of science and it helped focus her.
When she walked into the body storage area itself she found Rob
there, already suited up. "We're doing C-3 today, aren't we?" he
asked. He checked the name card on the drawer. "Herron, Kristie
Ann?"
"That's right," Scully told him.
"Want me to get her out for you? No sense waiting for the
detectives just to get her on the table," Rob said.
"Sure, thank you," she told him. Drawer C-3 made no sound as Rob
slid it open. In one smooth motion he lifted the silver-gray
body bag from the drawer and laid it on a gurney. Scully was
impressed. Due to lack of muscle tone, cadavers were not easy to
move even when the decedent was light. Most morgue attendants
hauled and pushed bodies like sacks of potatoes. Clearly, Rob had
been at this job a while and knew his business.
The autopsy bays were on the second floor, and since none had
been assigned Scully appropriated one. All the room's cabinets
and counters were the same gleaming stainless steel as the
autopsy knives. The severity was relieved somewhat by a single
window, a nice change from the hospital basements Scully was used
to. Unfortunately, the tinted glass made the day outside look
even gloomier.
Rob helped her weigh the body and get it onto the autopsy table.
In extremis, Kristie Herron was 159 centimeters long and 102
pounds, close to Scully's own height and weight. Other than
that, it was hard to say what the girl had looked like in life.
A series of catastrophic impacts had shattered her skull, causing
her head to sag like a half-deflated balloon. The body had
clearly lain on its face for several hours. Deep-red livor
mortis colored most of what facial skin wasn't abraded away,
except for odd blanched spots where some irregularity in the
ground had provided enough pressure to keep blood from settling
in the tissues. Kristie was dressed as Joe Luce had described
her, in a neon yellow windbreaker, blue T-shirt and jeans, and
one inexpensive women's sneaker with no socks. Her bare foot,
which was perfect except for the livor on its anterior side, had
silver-painted toenails. The police had placed paper bags over
both of her hands.
Scully gently probed some of the wounds with her gloved fingers
while Rob stood by. Suddenly he turned his head and said,
"There's the back door buzzer. That'll be the detectives. I'll
go let 'em in."
Scully hadn't heard a sound. It had been a while since she'd
worked with an old-time morgue attendant like Rob -- the kind
who'd spent 25 years learning the morgue's rhythms and who seemed
to hear everything, see everything and know everything. It was
perhaps a bit disturbing to be with a person whose greatest
comfort level was among the dead.
A few minutes later, Rob led two men into the autopsy bay,
one in plainclothes and one in the blue uniform of the
Massachusetts State Police. "You haven't started yet, have
you?" the plainclothes man asked sharply.
"I'm just doing a very general external examination," Scully
said. //Don't let this guy start telling me how to do my job,//
she thought.
"I'm Detective Ron Davis," the plainclothes man said. "This is
Sergeant Ken Tihkoosue from the Oak Bluffs installation on
Martha's Vineyard." Davis was a tall, balding man with a russet-
colored mustache. Ethnology was not Scully specialty, but she
thought Tihkoosue's features looked Native American, perhaps
Iriquois.
"Good to met you. Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI," she said.
She peeled off one of her latex gloves to shake hands. Cops
never hesitated to shake her hand when she was in the middle of
an autopsy. Civilians tended to stare down at her hand and look
ill. Trying to make conversation, she said, "My partner's from
Martha's Vineyard."
"Really, what part?" Tihkoosue asked.
"He grew up in Chilmark and West Tisbury. His name is Fox
Mulder. You might know him," She said.
Tihkoosue shook his head and said, "By reputation only." Scully
hoped Mulder's reputation on the Vineyard wasn't as bad as he
thought it was.
Despite her concerns, both police officers were helpful during
the autopsy. Tihkoosue photographed the body's hands while
Davis held a small ruler next to the incised wounds. The cuts
were angry, red-brown furrows that ranged in length from a
centimeter-and-a-half to more than seven. Most were about half
a centimeter deep, well into the muscle layer without involving
bone. In a way that was a shame, since cut bone retained a much
more accurate impression of a weapon's blade than flesh did.
"These are all consistent with defense wounds," Scully said.
She moved her gloved fingers over the body's hands without
touching them. Paler subcutaneous tissue shone dully between
the edges of Kristie's slit skin. "Notice the roughly parallel
cuts between the left wrist and the little finger. That's a
classic blade-deflecting pattern." To illustrate, she swept her
left hand outward as if knocking away a knife with the side of
her palm. "The Y-shaped collection of wounds over here," she
pointed to the much-cut webbing between Kristie's right
forefinger and thumb, "was likely caused by blocking or grasping
an edged weapon." It was almost as if she were teaching forensic
pathology at Quantico again. Her voice was confident,
dispassionate, miles away from the emotional turmoil she'd felt
that morning. Even Davis had grown quiet and attentive.
"What about those diagonal cuts across the palms? They look
almost ritualistic," Tihkoosue said. He pointed to a deep cut
that ran across Kristie's right hand, then to its near mirror-
image on the left. The two wounds angled away from the body at
precisely the same degree, like the wings of a deadly butterfly.
"Here," Scully said. She picked up both wrists and rotated the
hands 180 degrees. When she held them palms up with the thumbs
together, they approximated a blocking gesture in front of the
abdomen. "Pull the fingers back," she said. Davis did so. The
wounds' inner edges met. They were not two cuts but one, formed
by a single slash across both hands. "All the hand damage
suggests the knife was held low or at a distance of several
inches. When a blade is closer people tend to block with their
forearms," Scully said. "Actually, I'm surprised there aren't
more sharp-force injuries to the rest of the body."
"It's hard to tell with the head and neck in the condition
they're in," Davis pointed out. "You think the damage from the
fall could have obliterated any obvious knife wounds?"
"I suppose it's possible. The internal exam will tell," Scully
said. She doubted there were hidden knife wounds in the tissues
of Kristie's throat. The flesh there was abraded and torn --
cracked, more precisely, in the manner expected when a body
struck a hard object with tremendous force -- but the wound edges
were jagged and irregular, not the signature smooth cuts of a
knife.
She turned her attention to the only other sharp-force injury on
the body, the through-and-through stabbing injury to the left
thigh. The entrance wound bore the purplish stamp of a hilt mark
above the slightly squared-off superior edge. Scully had been
able to form a general picture of the weapon: a long, thin,
single-edged knife that was honed quite sharp. It would be a
kitchen knife rather than a hunting or military model.
The scenario developing in her mind was that of a crime of
passion. The knife was a sort that might be grabbed from a
counter on impulse, the vicious wounds on Kristie's hands bore
witness to the attacker's fury. What had stopped him or her
from delivering a lethal blow?
There was a fine line between crime scene reconstruction and
psychological analysis and Scully knew she should not cross it.
Establishing motive was the duty of the detectives and the
District Attorney. Still, long association with Mulder had
gotten her in the habit of asking "why" as well as "how."
"I want to look at her clothing again," she said.
Davis set the ruler aside and went to open the paper bags that
Kristie's clothes had been neatly folded into. Scully exchanged
her bloodied latex gloves for clean ones and followed him. "What
are you thinking?" Davis asked.
"The wound pattern's so unusual I want to make sure I'm not
missing something," she said. She watched as Davis laid out the
jacket, T-shirt and jeans on a stainless-steel counter.
Forensically, the jacket was the most useful. Its rip-stop nylon
resisted puncture by semi-sharp natural objects like roots and
stones, but a fine blade drawn across it even lightly would fray
and part the fibers. Scully switched on the light beneath the
overhead cabinet to get a better view of the fabric, which was
crumpled and dried hard with blood and sea salt.
She'd noted before the clothing was removed that it bore far more
slash marks than the body did. This was normal and could result
from a number of things, such as near-misses or a blade passing
through more than one layer of fabric. What she wanted to verify
was that all the cutting and scoring marks were in the middle of
the body, between the approximate level of Kristie's breasts and
her knees. Scully ran her fingertips over the jacket's upper-
left chest, usually a prime target for an attacker wielding a
knife. Even probing and stretching of the cloth revealed no
defects.
"Is it possible the attacker was crouching or kneeling down?" she
asked. "Or maybe he has a disability of some kind, a limitation
in the movement of his shoulder?" She sensed Davis and
Tihkoosue's glance at one another. She looked up at them.
Tihkoosue said, "The man Kristie informed on to the DA in Boston
is a mid-level coke dealer. He took a bullet in the gut once and
it wrecked his spine. He uses a wheelchair now."
"I suppose that could account for this wound pattern, depending
on the length of his reach and the nature of his injury. How
accessible is the crime scene location?" Scully asked. From the
photos they'd shown her the area looked very wooded and wild.
"To a man in a wheelchair? It's not. That's the problem,"
Tihkoosue said, shaking his head.
"There are chairs designed to go off of paved surfaces," Scully
said.
Davis leafed through the folder he'd brought and removed several
crime scene photos. He held them fanned in front of her like a
hand of cards. Even from looking at the partially-covered
images Scully could see there was no track cut through the
underbrush such as a heavy-duty wheelchair would make. "Whoever
Kristie met out in those woods, they didn't roll there," Davis
said. "We're keeping the guy in mind though. His name is John
McBer, but on the street they call him 'Frosty,'"
"The snowman. Of course," Scully said. She considered whether
to discuss her findings in detail with Mulder. One the one hand,
his behavioral science background might help him make sense of
the strange wound pattern. On the other, Kristie was the
daughter of his boyhood friend. Hearing the grisly minutiae
might be excruciating for him.
In the end, Mulder made the decision for her. Scully was
examining tissue samples under a microscope when she heard his
familiar footsteps in the hall. She glanced up and saw that Rob
had left his task of stitching the body's skin back over the
skull. He must have gone to answer the back doorbell. Once
again, Scully had never heard it ring.
When Mulder appeared in the doorway, she darted past the
detectives and planted herself in front of him, her
hands pressed against the jambs. "Don't -- it's bad," she said.
Mulder looked startled at her protectiveness, but not as startled
as the morgue attendant behind him. Mulder had an FBI badge; how
could Rob know he shouldn't have admitted him?
"I knew it would be bad," Mulder said. He was wearing his off-
duty clothes, a black sweater and jeans, which made him seem more
out of place, more vulnerable. He put his hand on her shoulder
and gently pushed her aside.
"Help me cover her up," Scully snapped at Rob. The attendant
looked bewildered. "He knew her," she said. Rob hurried to grab
a sheet from one of the steel cabinets. The body block had been
removed from beneath Kristie's back, and the great, Y-shaped
incision in her torso closed. But all of Rob's careful stitches
could not repair her crushed skull or conceal the larval activity
in her wounds.
Scully and Rob draped a sheet over the body up to its shoulders.
At least the covering gave the poor dead woman some dignity.
Mulder gazed down at Kristie as he pulled on a pair of latex
gloves. His expression was almost puzzled, as if he were trying
to connect the ruin on the table with the child he had once
known.
"She's somewhere better -- this isn't her," Scully said, trying
to explain away the horror.
Much of the dead girl's hair had been shaved away so Scully could
examine her skull injuries. What hair remained was shoulder-
length and had perhaps been light brown in life. Mulder gently
smoothed the strands away from Kristie's face. "She was born in
the summer of 1973," he said. His voice had a strange, singsong
distance to it. "My sister fell in love with her at first
sight. She said she was going to baby-sit Kristie when she got
older. It was her turn to be the big girl. She brought over all
the baby toys she didn't play with anymore . . . started
pestering my mom for a little sister." Mulder cupped the side of
Kristie's face and caressed her bloodied cheek with his thumb.
He looked up at Scully. His hazel eyes were pained but clear.
"Homicide?" he asked softly.
Scully hesitated. The mode of death might be complex, since it
was unclear how Kristie had come to tumble off the cliff. Still,
the knife wounds had been no accident. She gave him the short
answer. "Yes. Homicide."
He continued to stroke Kristie's matted hair for some moments.
The room was silent. When a car passed on the wet street outside
the sound was an intrusion. At last Mulder turned away and
peeled off his gloves. He looked at the detectives and said,
"I'm going to help you find who did this."
Davis held his gaze as if seeking for meaning there. He turned
to Scully with a wordless question in his eyes.
"Detective Davis, This is my partner, Agent Mulder," Scully said.
He nodded to Mulder and said, "Thanks, Agent. I appreciate the
offer." He seemed respectful of Mulder's loss, but Scully heard
politics in his voice. The man thought Mulder was a nut.
"You'll want me later. Scully can tell you how to contact me,"
Mulder said. He threw his gloves in the trash and strode out the
door.
Everybody stared after him for a second. Then the men all looked
at Scully.
"He'll be all right," she said, suddenly uncomfortable. It was
as if the atoms in the air had picked up a charge. What had been
a slow, objective procedure performed in the name of science had
become something else, something with the keen edge of a crusade.
Mulder tended to have that effect on people.
*****
Skinner's office. Mulder's presence was not requested. Though
she couldn't think of anything she'd done lately that would get
herself in trouble, she went with a sense of trepidation. When
Skinner's secretary showed her in, she said, "You asked to see
me, sir?" //Please don't let this be about anything Mulder did .
. .// she thought. She hated it when their superiors tried to
play them against one another.
"Have a seat, agent," Skinner said, gesturing toward an empty
chair. This was never a good sign. Scully smoothed her skirt
under her and sat down. "I just received a call from the Cape
Cod and Islands District Attorney's office," Skinner said. "They
said you'd volunteered to do the autopsy of a young woman in
Boston."
"Yes -- is that a problem?" Scully asked.
"No. In fact I think it's a wonderful idea," Skinner said.
"Sir?" Scully asked. Something was up. Skinner never called
anything she and Mulder did "wonderful."
"Agent Scully . . . there are people in the Bureau who don't
appreciate the work you and Agent Mulder do. They don't see its
value. This would be a good time for you to perform a service
they can appreciate. I can have you in Boston tonight so you can
do the autopsy first thing in the morning. Volunteering to do
work outside of normal office hours will reflect positively on
your next performance review," Skinner said.
As usual, Scully was left scrambling to read between the lines.
"Is the validity of my and Agent Mulder's work being questioned
more than usual, sir?" she asked.
"Why would you say that?" Skinner asked.
"You mentioned this would be 'a good time' to perform a service
others can appreciate," Scully said.
"It's always a good time for that. Your flight leaves at six."
When she didn't move at once, he added, "If you need to pack a
bag you might want to get going."
A few minutes later she was back in the basement, slamming the
door to the office. Mulder stood up behind his desk. "What
happened? What'd he say?" he asked.
"We're in trouble," Scully said. She pulled her purse from its
usual place in a file drawer and dropped it on her desk.
"For what? I haven't even broken my cell phone lately," Mulder
said. He crossed the room to stand by her side.
"I don't know. He was dropping hints about us needing to do PR
work to appease the powers that be. I get really tired of these
guessing games. Why can't he be straight with us for once?" She
retrieved her Dictaphone's batteries from where they sat charging
on a shelf and tossed them into her purse.
"He might be trying to do us a favor," Mulder said.
"Maybe. I can never tell. And he doesn't even ask me, 'Is a six
o'clock flight convenient for you?' It's, 'If you want to pack a
bag, you'd better *go.*" Scully recalled it was supposed to rain
that weekend. She strode toward their lopsided hat rack to grab
her umbrella.
Mulder caught her by the wrist, gently turning her toward
him. "Hey . . . hey, calm down. When was the last time you were
in Boston?" he asked.
"It's been a long time," she said. It was actually for his
father's funeral in 1993, but she thought it best not to mention
that.
"Well, when you get done with the autopsy I'll show you around.
It's a great city if you don't mind homicidal drivers," Mulder
said.
"Mulder, you're not going," she said.
"Yes, I am," he said.
"No, you're not. Skinner made it clear he was authorizing one
plane ticket. It was only by being an Assistant Director of the
FBI that he guaranteed me a flight out tonight at all."
"I can drive," Mulder said. She thought he was trying not to
laugh. It really bugged her when he thought she was funny.
"It's a six hour trip -- four, if I drive like I'm already in
Boston." He gently shook her wrist. "Come on," he said.
"I'll be doing the autopsy into the afternoon and then we'll just
have to turn around and come home," she said.
"Why? You think somebody's going to tell on us if we don't?" he
asked.
Scully found herself fighting a smile. "I'll actually need to
sleep before I do this autopsy," she said.
"You'll sleep," he said. He bent and kissed her gently just
below her ear. She was surprised and therefore vulnerable. She
felt her breath catch in her throat. "Between bouts of
screaming, wall-pounding sex." He placed his next kiss low on
her cheek. If she let him go on long enough he'd make it around
to her mouth.
"We're at work," she pointed out, but she didn't back away.
Mulder had always shown a perverse enjoyment of getting her
excited in public places where the chance of release was nil.
She turned and rested her hand against his cheek. His pupils
were widely dilated circles within rings of hazel-green;
arousal was like a narcotic.
Scully brushed her lips against his. He tasted faintly of salt,
faintly of the lemon he put in his tea. When he tightened his
arms around her ribcage she could feel the speed of his pulse in
his neck. Their physical relationship was very new and at times
its intensity was overwhelming.
Their kiss was interrupted by the distant whirr of elevator doors
opening and the squeal of unoiled cart wheels. A lot of old but
serviceable equipment was kept in the Hoover Building basement,
and Bureau support staff were frequently sent to bring it up to
the "inhabited" levels.
Coming to her senses, Scully squirmed out of Mulder's embrace
and brushed her tousled hair back behind her ears. It wasn't
even four o'clock yet, and the night seemed a long way off.
"Okay, that's enough. You're terrible," she said.
For a moment there was a wild look in Mulder's eyes, but
it soon faded to one of longing, like a man relinquishing
something long desired. Then that was gone too and he became
his everyday self, giving her his mock hurt routine.
"That's not what you said the other night," he said.
She pitched a wad of paper at him. Mulder picked up his coffee
mug and started speaking to it. "Did you like that, Cancer Man?
Huh? That turn you on?" His clowning did not completely
dissipate the tension. It was still there, like thunder in the
distance.
"Mulder, they are not bugging your coffee cup," Scully told him.
"You're right -- it's probably the electrical outlet that doesn't
work." He bent over to shout at the offending outlet, "Better
than 'Celebrity Skin,' isn't it Krycek, you pervert!"
Scully rifled through filing cabinet drawers, picking up the
things she would need in Boston. She told herself to get the
stupid grin off her face before she went down into the parking
garage. What was she so happy about, anyway? It never paid to
get too happy. Something was bound to happen and make things
worse than ever.
When she had everything she needed she stood on her toes to give
Mulder a little kiss, a decent kiss, on the mouth. "Goodbye,"
she said.
"See you," he said. She felt his eyes on her as she went out the
door. Maybe she'd have time to take a cool shower before she
got on the plane.
*****
As it turned out Scully did not spend the night screaming and
pounding the wall. She did dissolve into fits of giggles when
Mulder scooped her out of bed and attempted to fold her into a
fairly gymnastic sexual position in the tiny closet. He hit his
head on the mass of coat hangers and made them jangle. She
told him he had been alone with his porn collection for far too
long.
In the gray hour just before dawn Scully lay in bed with her head
resting in the hollow of Mulder's shoulder. He'd been asleep for
more than an hour, but sleep eluded her. She lay watching the
green numbers on the clock as they counted their inexorable way
toward 7 a.m. //Typical.// She placed her hand on his left
chest, felt the slow beat of his heart below the ribcage.
Her thoughts turned to Daniel. Neither quite awake or asleep,
her memories played themselves out as images and sensations.
It seemed that she was once again an ambitious young pathology
Resident, sitting in a lecture hall while Daniel addressed his
first-year med students. He strode back and forth before the
first row of seats, sometimes climbing up into the risers. All
his notes were in his head, so he was free to make eye contact
with as many students as possible. He smiled; he joked with
them. A few of the less charismatic staff members derisively
called him Dr. Elvis. It didn't matter. In a class of 100
students, every one of them would go home feeling as if Daniel
had been speaking to him or her personally.
That afternoon he had been speaking about an outbreak of
hemorrhagic fever in Bolivia. Not exactly romance novel stuff.
And yet the sunlight poured through the tall, narrow windows,
gilding away the gray in his hair and flashing off the cuff
studs of his blue-and-white striped shirt as he gestured.
He spoke so passionately that she almost felt as if she were
in church, watching a fiery preaching of the gospel.
Scully's first crush had been on a young deacon who helped
celebrate youth Masses near the Texas naval base where her
family lived in the late 70's.
In Daniel's classroom she felt like a wicked schoolgirl once
again, and relished every moment of it. All she had to do
was look attentive and innocent. No one had to know about
the desire in her heart.
Daniel knew. They held one another's gazes too long when he
said things like, "burning with a terrible fever," or "tossing
and turning in bed." He'd said, "It's nothing you'll ever
forget, is it, Dr. Scully, watching a man literally eaten from the
inside out, begging for relief with every breath?"
She'd said, "No, Dr. Waterston, it isn't."
The elation, the sense of conquest, hadn't lasted. He was
married, of course. His protestations about his unhappy marriage
sounded weak even to Scully's besotted ears.
She had given something away that afternoon in the lecture hall.
Too late, she realized it was the part of herself that guarded
her integrity and self-respect. Those qualities were much
harder to reclaim than they were to lose.
Her dream state shattered at the sound of the bedside clock: " .
. . fifty degrees and raining on this gloomy April Saturday.
Approximately 800 customers in western Barnstable County are
still without power due to the storm that blew through early
Thursday morning --"
Mulder moaned and rolled over to beat the alarm into silence.
He squinted at the clock's numbers and said, "Oh, God. I'm sorry
I ever got you into this."
"Don't worry about it," Scully said. "How can I resist the
opportunity to perform a service the Bureau can 'appreciate?'"
She slowly rolled up until she was sitting on the edge of the
bed. She wanted coffee. Maybe that would dispel the troubling
dream images in her head.
"Thank you," Mulder said. She turned and looked at him. In the
darkness his expression was unreadable, but he reached out and
caressed the small of her back. He clearly wanted the justice
system to do its best by the daughter of his old friend, and he
believed Scully was the best. That kind of faith was sobering.
"If having me do the autopsy helps the Herrons feel better, then
it's the right thing to do," Scully said. "I know what it's like
to lose someone, and then feel like the whole system is working
against you."
"You all right?" Mulder asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Just need to switch gears. I have to be in
pathology mode now."
He seemed to accept her explanation at face value. "Girlfriend,
you go *be* pathological," he said, swatting her lightly on
the behind.
She got up and went into the bathroom. When she turned on the
lights they made her squint. Soon she was under the spray of the
shower, washing the musky scent of lovemaking off her body.
//Mulder. Not Daniel, not Jack.// she reminded herself. //This
is a different situation. You're a different person.//
She was afraid she wasn't different enough.
Scully did not like herself when she was in love. Over and over
she'd started by giving away her heart, and ended up giving away
her soul instead.
Why did her love always seem to turn to self-betrayal?
Well for one thing, she tended to pick men who had other interests
more compelling than she was. Daniel had his wife, Jack had his
own ambitions and career at the Bureau. Mulder had his aliens.
No, that wasn't fair -- Mulder had shown a marked preference for
her over aliens on several occasions. Of course, that wasn't
exactly a ringing endorsement. She could just hear Father McCue
saying, //"Do you, Fox, swear to prefer Dana to aliens on most
occasions as long as you both shall live?"// She pressed her
hands to her eyes. "Oh my God, I am *nuts,*" she said.
*****
She decided to walk the few blocks to the ME's office rather than
contend with Boston's tangled nest of one-way streets. The
morning was cool, and purple-gray rain clouds hung low in the sky.
Except for a few pigeons, Scully had the wet sidewalks to
herself. The sound of her footfalls was like a meditation.
The night's fevered thoughts and desires fell away as she walked
among the stately red brick buildings of Boston University
Medical Center. This was the realm of learning and reason. //"Hic
locus est ubi mors gaudet succerrere vitae" -- Here is the place
where death delights to give aid to life.// Here she felt
competent and in control.
When she arrived at the Medical Examiner's Office the door was
locked and the windows were dark. She glanced at her watch and
found she was about 20 minutes early, so she composed herself to
wait. A few moments later the door opened. A heavyset man
whose pink face was splotched with spidered blood vessels leaned
out. Scully's overwhelming impression of him was that he was at
a high risk of developing melanoma. "You must be Dr. Scully,"
the man said. "Hi, I'm Rob Conlin, the morgue attendant. Come
on in." Scully noted the dropped r's and flattened o's of the
classic Boston accent in his speech.
"Thank you," she said, following him inside. "That's one of the
friendliest greetings I've ever had at a morgue."
Rob had a slightly wheezing laugh. "Oh, well, usually we have a
secretary out here, but right now it's just you and me."
That worried her slightly. "I am having a path assistant, aren't
I? And I thought the State Police detectives were coming."
"Sure, the police boys'll be here any time. As to the PA, I
don't know. This was all arranged kind of suddenly. Don't
worry about it though, Dr. Scully, I'll hold the flaps while you
sew," Rob said.
He showed her to the women's changing area, where she put on
green scrubs and folded her clothes carefully into a locker. The
place smelled like Lysol with just a hint of formalin. It was
the smell of science and it helped focus her.
When she walked into the body storage area itself she found Rob
there, already suited up. "We're doing C-3 today, aren't we?" he
asked. He checked the name card on the drawer. "Herron, Kristie
Ann?"
"That's right," Scully told him.
"Want me to get her out for you? No sense waiting for the
detectives just to get her on the table," Rob said.
"Sure, thank you," she told him. Drawer C-3 made no sound as Rob
slid it open. In one smooth motion he lifted the silver-gray
body bag from the drawer and laid it on a gurney. Scully was
impressed. Due to lack of muscle tone, cadavers were not easy to
move even when the decedent was light. Most morgue attendants
hauled and pushed bodies like sacks of potatoes. Clearly, Rob had
been at this job a while and knew his business.
The autopsy bays were on the second floor, and since none had
been assigned Scully appropriated one. All the room's cabinets
and counters were the same gleaming stainless steel as the
autopsy knives. The severity was relieved somewhat by a single
window, a nice change from the hospital basements Scully was used
to. Unfortunately, the tinted glass made the day outside look
even gloomier.
Rob helped her weigh the body and get it onto the autopsy table.
In extremis, Kristie Herron was 159 centimeters long and 102
pounds, close to Scully's own height and weight. Other than
that, it was hard to say what the girl had looked like in life.
A series of catastrophic impacts had shattered her skull, causing
her head to sag like a half-deflated balloon. The body had
clearly lain on its face for several hours. Deep-red livor
mortis colored most of what facial skin wasn't abraded away,
except for odd blanched spots where some irregularity in the
ground had provided enough pressure to keep blood from settling
in the tissues. Kristie was dressed as Joe Luce had described
her, in a neon yellow windbreaker, blue T-shirt and jeans, and
one inexpensive women's sneaker with no socks. Her bare foot,
which was perfect except for the livor on its anterior side, had
silver-painted toenails. The police had placed paper bags over
both of her hands.
Scully gently probed some of the wounds with her gloved fingers
while Rob stood by. Suddenly he turned his head and said,
"There's the back door buzzer. That'll be the detectives. I'll
go let 'em in."
Scully hadn't heard a sound. It had been a while since she'd
worked with an old-time morgue attendant like Rob -- the kind
who'd spent 25 years learning the morgue's rhythms and who seemed
to hear everything, see everything and know everything. It was
perhaps a bit disturbing to be with a person whose greatest
comfort level was among the dead.
A few minutes later, Rob led two men into the autopsy bay,
one in plainclothes and one in the blue uniform of the
Massachusetts State Police. "You haven't started yet, have
you?" the plainclothes man asked sharply.
"I'm just doing a very general external examination," Scully
said. //Don't let this guy start telling me how to do my job,//
she thought.
"I'm Detective Ron Davis," the plainclothes man said. "This is
Sergeant Ken Tihkoosue from the Oak Bluffs installation on
Martha's Vineyard." Davis was a tall, balding man with a russet-
colored mustache. Ethnology was not Scully specialty, but she
thought Tihkoosue's features looked Native American, perhaps
Iriquois.
"Good to met you. Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI," she said.
She peeled off one of her latex gloves to shake hands. Cops
never hesitated to shake her hand when she was in the middle of
an autopsy. Civilians tended to stare down at her hand and look
ill. Trying to make conversation, she said, "My partner's from
Martha's Vineyard."
"Really, what part?" Tihkoosue asked.
"He grew up in Chilmark and West Tisbury. His name is Fox
Mulder. You might know him," She said.
Tihkoosue shook his head and said, "By reputation only." Scully
hoped Mulder's reputation on the Vineyard wasn't as bad as he
thought it was.
Despite her concerns, both police officers were helpful during
the autopsy. Tihkoosue photographed the body's hands while
Davis held a small ruler next to the incised wounds. The cuts
were angry, red-brown furrows that ranged in length from a
centimeter-and-a-half to more than seven. Most were about half
a centimeter deep, well into the muscle layer without involving
bone. In a way that was a shame, since cut bone retained a much
more accurate impression of a weapon's blade than flesh did.
"These are all consistent with defense wounds," Scully said.
She moved her gloved fingers over the body's hands without
touching them. Paler subcutaneous tissue shone dully between
the edges of Kristie's slit skin. "Notice the roughly parallel
cuts between the left wrist and the little finger. That's a
classic blade-deflecting pattern." To illustrate, she swept her
left hand outward as if knocking away a knife with the side of
her palm. "The Y-shaped collection of wounds over here," she
pointed to the much-cut webbing between Kristie's right
forefinger and thumb, "was likely caused by blocking or grasping
an edged weapon." It was almost as if she were teaching forensic
pathology at Quantico again. Her voice was confident,
dispassionate, miles away from the emotional turmoil she'd felt
that morning. Even Davis had grown quiet and attentive.
"What about those diagonal cuts across the palms? They look
almost ritualistic," Tihkoosue said. He pointed to a deep cut
that ran across Kristie's right hand, then to its near mirror-
image on the left. The two wounds angled away from the body at
precisely the same degree, like the wings of a deadly butterfly.
"Here," Scully said. She picked up both wrists and rotated the
hands 180 degrees. When she held them palms up with the thumbs
together, they approximated a blocking gesture in front of the
abdomen. "Pull the fingers back," she said. Davis did so. The
wounds' inner edges met. They were not two cuts but one, formed
by a single slash across both hands. "All the hand damage
suggests the knife was held low or at a distance of several
inches. When a blade is closer people tend to block with their
forearms," Scully said. "Actually, I'm surprised there aren't
more sharp-force injuries to the rest of the body."
"It's hard to tell with the head and neck in the condition
they're in," Davis pointed out. "You think the damage from the
fall could have obliterated any obvious knife wounds?"
"I suppose it's possible. The internal exam will tell," Scully
said. She doubted there were hidden knife wounds in the tissues
of Kristie's throat. The flesh there was abraded and torn --
cracked, more precisely, in the manner expected when a body
struck a hard object with tremendous force -- but the wound edges
were jagged and irregular, not the signature smooth cuts of a
knife.
She turned her attention to the only other sharp-force injury on
the body, the through-and-through stabbing injury to the left
thigh. The entrance wound bore the purplish stamp of a hilt mark
above the slightly squared-off superior edge. Scully had been
able to form a general picture of the weapon: a long, thin,
single-edged knife that was honed quite sharp. It would be a
kitchen knife rather than a hunting or military model.
The scenario developing in her mind was that of a crime of
passion. The knife was a sort that might be grabbed from a
counter on impulse, the vicious wounds on Kristie's hands bore
witness to the attacker's fury. What had stopped him or her
from delivering a lethal blow?
There was a fine line between crime scene reconstruction and
psychological analysis and Scully knew she should not cross it.
Establishing motive was the duty of the detectives and the
District Attorney. Still, long association with Mulder had
gotten her in the habit of asking "why" as well as "how."
"I want to look at her clothing again," she said.
Davis set the ruler aside and went to open the paper bags that
Kristie's clothes had been neatly folded into. Scully exchanged
her bloodied latex gloves for clean ones and followed him. "What
are you thinking?" Davis asked.
"The wound pattern's so unusual I want to make sure I'm not
missing something," she said. She watched as Davis laid out the
jacket, T-shirt and jeans on a stainless-steel counter.
Forensically, the jacket was the most useful. Its rip-stop nylon
resisted puncture by semi-sharp natural objects like roots and
stones, but a fine blade drawn across it even lightly would fray
and part the fibers. Scully switched on the light beneath the
overhead cabinet to get a better view of the fabric, which was
crumpled and dried hard with blood and sea salt.
She'd noted before the clothing was removed that it bore far more
slash marks than the body did. This was normal and could result
from a number of things, such as near-misses or a blade passing
through more than one layer of fabric. What she wanted to verify
was that all the cutting and scoring marks were in the middle of
the body, between the approximate level of Kristie's breasts and
her knees. Scully ran her fingertips over the jacket's upper-
left chest, usually a prime target for an attacker wielding a
knife. Even probing and stretching of the cloth revealed no
defects.
"Is it possible the attacker was crouching or kneeling down?" she
asked. "Or maybe he has a disability of some kind, a limitation
in the movement of his shoulder?" She sensed Davis and
Tihkoosue's glance at one another. She looked up at them.
Tihkoosue said, "The man Kristie informed on to the DA in Boston
is a mid-level coke dealer. He took a bullet in the gut once and
it wrecked his spine. He uses a wheelchair now."
"I suppose that could account for this wound pattern, depending
on the length of his reach and the nature of his injury. How
accessible is the crime scene location?" Scully asked. From the
photos they'd shown her the area looked very wooded and wild.
"To a man in a wheelchair? It's not. That's the problem,"
Tihkoosue said, shaking his head.
"There are chairs designed to go off of paved surfaces," Scully
said.
Davis leafed through the folder he'd brought and removed several
crime scene photos. He held them fanned in front of her like a
hand of cards. Even from looking at the partially-covered
images Scully could see there was no track cut through the
underbrush such as a heavy-duty wheelchair would make. "Whoever
Kristie met out in those woods, they didn't roll there," Davis
said. "We're keeping the guy in mind though. His name is John
McBer, but on the street they call him 'Frosty,'"
"The snowman. Of course," Scully said. She considered whether
to discuss her findings in detail with Mulder. One the one hand,
his behavioral science background might help him make sense of
the strange wound pattern. On the other, Kristie was the
daughter of his boyhood friend. Hearing the grisly minutiae
might be excruciating for him.
In the end, Mulder made the decision for her. Scully was
examining tissue samples under a microscope when she heard his
familiar footsteps in the hall. She glanced up and saw that Rob
had left his task of stitching the body's skin back over the
skull. He must have gone to answer the back doorbell. Once
again, Scully had never heard it ring.
When Mulder appeared in the doorway, she darted past the
detectives and planted herself in front of him, her
hands pressed against the jambs. "Don't -- it's bad," she said.
Mulder looked startled at her protectiveness, but not as startled
as the morgue attendant behind him. Mulder had an FBI badge; how
could Rob know he shouldn't have admitted him?
"I knew it would be bad," Mulder said. He was wearing his off-
duty clothes, a black sweater and jeans, which made him seem more
out of place, more vulnerable. He put his hand on her shoulder
and gently pushed her aside.
"Help me cover her up," Scully snapped at Rob. The attendant
looked bewildered. "He knew her," she said. Rob hurried to grab
a sheet from one of the steel cabinets. The body block had been
removed from beneath Kristie's back, and the great, Y-shaped
incision in her torso closed. But all of Rob's careful stitches
could not repair her crushed skull or conceal the larval activity
in her wounds.
Scully and Rob draped a sheet over the body up to its shoulders.
At least the covering gave the poor dead woman some dignity.
Mulder gazed down at Kristie as he pulled on a pair of latex
gloves. His expression was almost puzzled, as if he were trying
to connect the ruin on the table with the child he had once
known.
"She's somewhere better -- this isn't her," Scully said, trying
to explain away the horror.
Much of the dead girl's hair had been shaved away so Scully could
examine her skull injuries. What hair remained was shoulder-
length and had perhaps been light brown in life. Mulder gently
smoothed the strands away from Kristie's face. "She was born in
the summer of 1973," he said. His voice had a strange, singsong
distance to it. "My sister fell in love with her at first
sight. She said she was going to baby-sit Kristie when she got
older. It was her turn to be the big girl. She brought over all
the baby toys she didn't play with anymore . . . started
pestering my mom for a little sister." Mulder cupped the side of
Kristie's face and caressed her bloodied cheek with his thumb.
He looked up at Scully. His hazel eyes were pained but clear.
"Homicide?" he asked softly.
Scully hesitated. The mode of death might be complex, since it
was unclear how Kristie had come to tumble off the cliff. Still,
the knife wounds had been no accident. She gave him the short
answer. "Yes. Homicide."
He continued to stroke Kristie's matted hair for some moments.
The room was silent. When a car passed on the wet street outside
the sound was an intrusion. At last Mulder turned away and
peeled off his gloves. He looked at the detectives and said,
"I'm going to help you find who did this."
Davis held his gaze as if seeking for meaning there. He turned
to Scully with a wordless question in his eyes.
"Detective Davis, This is my partner, Agent Mulder," Scully said.
He nodded to Mulder and said, "Thanks, Agent. I appreciate the
offer." He seemed respectful of Mulder's loss, but Scully heard
politics in his voice. The man thought Mulder was a nut.
"You'll want me later. Scully can tell you how to contact me,"
Mulder said. He threw his gloves in the trash and strode out the
door.
Everybody stared after him for a second. Then the men all looked
at Scully.
"He'll be all right," she said, suddenly uncomfortable. It was
as if the atoms in the air had picked up a charge. What had been
a slow, objective procedure performed in the name of science had
become something else, something with the keen edge of a crusade.
Mulder tended to have that effect on people.
*****