Their destination was the Captain Nehemiah Nye House, an inn
near the Wesquobsque Cliffs in Chilmark. Mulder had explained
that it was less than a mile from the scene of Kristie's death,
but Scully was still surprised and dismayed to find its gravel
parking lot entirely filled with police vehicles. Few of the
cars were marked, but the ramming bars and whip antennas were
dead giveaways.
Mulder ended up parking near a flooded ditch alongside the road.
At least it had mostly stopped raining by the time they got out
of the car.
"I know the family that runs this place, or at least I used to.
We'll see if that helps," he said.
Nye House turned out to be like something out of a Jane Austen
novel. The lobby had clearly once been Captain Nye's drawing
room, and it was arranged much as he must have left it. The
small cast-iron stove that once heated the room still stood in
one corner, and the furniture arranged in the waiting area had
the light, streamlined style favored in the early 19th century.
A shining brass ship's clock hung on one blue-and-gray papered
wall. It was almost exactly how Scully would have decorated her
own home if she'd had a lot more money and rather less
practicality.
At the far end of the room sat a light secretaire desk, its
surface covered in mounds of paper. Scully noted the key rack
hanging on the wall beside the desk was entirely empty. Mulder
walked up and rang the hand bell anyway. After a moment a stout
lady with short, salt-and-pepper curls came in through the room's
rear door. "Do you have a reservation?" she asked.
Mulder fished his Bureau ID out of his inner coat pocket and held
it out to her. The woman's back stiffened. "I'm sorry, but I've
told everything I know more than once. You people really have to
start talking to one another. I have a business to run here."
"Leigh," Mulder said.
Leigh's glasses magnified her brown eyes, which made her look
owlish when she blinked at him. She took another look at the ID,
glanced at Mulder's face, and her eyes went even wider.
"Well, *hello!* Why didn't you tell me you were coming? It's been
so long -- here I was thinking you were another one of these
mainland detectives. I'm just about embarrassed to death," she
said. She walked around the desk and hugged him. To Scully's
surprise, he returned the embrace without awkwardness. In her
experience, he was uncomfortable with physical affection in all
but the most intimate relationships.
"I didn't know I was coming until just a few hours ago," Mulder
said.
Leigh stepped back and said, "Then you heard?" Mulder nodded.
"Isn't it awful?" Leigh said. "I still can hardly believe it --
that poor girl. The Island's really changed for the worse, Fox.
More people coming and going all the time . . . some of them not
the sort I like to see around. The traffic means more business,
but I'd just as soon have it back the way it was 15 years ago.
It was safer. Speaking of which, it must've been at least that
long since I last saw you."
"More like 20 years ago," Mulder said. "The last summer I spent
here was the one before I went away to school."
"Has it been that long?" Leigh asked. "It must've been. It
must've been. Tammy was just a little thing then. Now she's
grown with a baby of her own." Leigh seized the opportunity to
pull a photo album from amid the clutter on the desk. "Here,
this is a picture of my granddaughter . . ."
It turned out to be more than just "a" picture, but Scully looked
through and praised them all. Emily's death had left a dry ache
in her that was soothed somewhat by talking about other peoples'
babies. As a result, Leigh Williams soon had a very high opinion
of her and was determined to find room for her and Mulder in Nye
House.
Leigh looked mildly scandalized when Mulder explained that one
room would do fine and neither agent had to be installed in
Tammy's old room. At that point Scully put her hand on his arm
and drew him aside. "Maybe it would be better if we didn't stay
together," she said quietly. "This place is crawling with police
officers. It wouldn't reflect well on the Bureau."
"The Bureau? The *Bureau?*" Mulder looked appalled. Leigh
tactfully found something to fuss with on her desk. In a low
voice Mulder asked, "At a time like this you're worried about
what the Bureau would think? We're off duty. Officially, I'm not
even here."
"Nobody else knows that," Scully said. She plead for his
understanding with her eyes, not wanting to explain in the
earshot of others. She had not forgotten the whispers and icy
stares of her classmates in medical school and the FBI Academy.
*Scully slept her way to the top* had been the conventional
wisdom. The fact that it wasn't true, and that at least in Jack's
case the affair was licit, hadn't made any difference. There
weren't many new lows for her career to sink to, but Scully
didn't want to see a look of delighted disgust in her colleagues'
eyes. The look that said, "I don't have to respect you now, and
I'm glad."
"Fine," Mulder said. "Whatever."
"I'd be glad to stay in your daughter's room, Mrs. Williams,"
Scully said. Leigh clearly thought Scully had fallen from
heaven.
Mulder looked as if the whole conversation made him want
to wash.
**********
Upstairs in his room, Mulder tossed his few packed belongings
onto the shelves of the armoire, mostly for an excuse to slam the
doors. He knew that he was more upset at Scully than the
situation really warranted.
So she wanted to sleep downstairs. So what? It would be no
different than when they were working -- which in fact Scully was.
No, this *was* different. He needed her, and she cared about the
Bureau's opinion of their personal life? "Why are you
surprised?" he asked himself aloud. He dropped down on the bed
and pressed his hands to his aching eyes. Scully had always been
skittish around issues of authority. She'd flouted rules to come
through for him before, but only after justifying herself by
appealing to her conception of a higher law. Apparently the
current situation wasn't worthy of such an exception.
//Were you so stupid that you thought she'd change just because
she started sleeping with you?// Such a hope was truly pathetic
-- the mindset of a neurotic fifteen-year-old. The only response
his exhausted mind could offer was, //But I love her.//
If he'd learned anything during the last several months, it was
that love, for all its virtues, was powerless to affect the
actions of the beloved. Christina Mulder, beloved mother, had
taken her own life without so much as mentioning her terminal
illness to her son. Kristie Herron, beloved daughter, had chosen
a dangerous life amid the drug culture of Boston that might have directly or
indirectly led to her death. Scully would do what she would do,
and his choices were to walk away or hang on and hope for the
best. Really, it was no choice at all. "You could at least try
to meet me closer to halfway," he said aloud.
He lay down, and hypnagogic images swam before him when he shut
his eyes. He saw faces mouthing incomprehensible words. He
hadn't had any more sleep than Scully had, and his mind was
considerably more troubled. When he fell asleep it was to
unsettling dreams -- a horror stalked him through familiar
rooms. The thing itself was never seen, but he recognized
the sound of its slow footfalls as it followed him through
the empty house. Whatever it was had been with him a long time.
It was dark when the phone's ringing startled him awake. He'd
developed a horrific headache in his sleep and he groaned as he
reached over to pick up the receiver. "Hello?"
"Fox?" came a woman's voice. Mulder struggled to place it.
"Yeah?" he said.
"It's Patty," the woman said. Moments from the past, sharp and
fragmented, spilled through his mind: a long, shining wave of
chestnut hair; a young woman's soft laugh; a green-and-white
bicycle with reddish Vineyard clay caught in its tire treads.
"Patty . . . How are you?" He regretted the words as soon as
he'd spoken them. //How do you think she is?//
"You heard?" she asked. He knew the emotion behind her nearly
calm voice. Grief left a person like the softened walls in many
of the Island's oldest buildings, where cracks in the plaster merely
hinted at the disintegration of the concrete behind. One touch
and the whole structure would crumble.
"I heard. I'm sorry," he said.
"I don't understand it. She was fine. She'd had a little
trouble and she was doing so well . . ." Her words fluttered up
and up, like frightened birds before a storm.
"Do you want me to go over there?" Mulder said.
"It's late, Fox -- no," she said.
"You sure?"
"No," she said, very quietly.
"Give me twenty minutes," Mulder said.
*************
Scully was lying on the narrow bed, resting her eyes. The rooms
the Williams family lived in were near the surprisingly modern
kitchen, in what Scully suspected had once been the maids'
quarters. Tammy's room was quite small and her mother had
apologized, explaining that lodging would be gratis if Scully
chose to stay. The little room lacked the romance of the guest
areas, but she found something soothing about the teen-girl
furnishings.
She was a good ten years older than Tammy, but the peeling
posters of 80's pop icons, the grainy photos of prom night and
graduation tucked into the mirror frame above the vanity, could
have come from one of her own college dorm rooms. She remembered
a time when she'd had girlfriends, before shadowy men and the
terrible light that haunted her dreams made her too afraid to
befriend anyone. For a few moments between sleep and waking, she
felt her sister's presence very near.
Minutes later Mulder knocked on the door. It had to be Mulder.
In hotels, strangers had a polite little knock -- an I-hope-I'm-
not-disturbing-you knock. Mulder just gave the door two sharp
raps, the knock of a person who believes he has the right to
enter, but knocks anyway for good manners' sake. "Hang on,"
Scully said groggily. She rolled off the bed onto her stocking
feet. When she opened the door the light in the hall seemed too
bright, and she squinted up at her partner. He had his coat on.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I'm going over to the Herrons'," he said.
She knew it was as close to an invitation as she was going to
get. She glanced back at the bedside clock and saw it was after
ten. "Now? You want me to talk about the autopsy results?" she
asked.
"No," he said. She waited for further explanation and got none.
He just wanted her presence.
"Let me find my shoes . . ." she said. She'd been dumb enough to
bring nearly-new shoes and she felt all the tight spots as her
feet slid back into them. In her head, she heard what her sister
would say: //Why do you follow him around like that? If Mulder
jumped off the Empire State Building, would you do it too?//
Then she heard her own answer, //Probably.//
Scully fought to repress a smile that was completely
inappropriate for a condolence call. Mulder clearly saw it
anyway.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said, lifting her still-damp jacket from where it
lay folded over the vanity chair. "Let's go."
Scully did not know what to expect as they pulled up outside the
secluded house near Menemsha Harbor. Like many houses she'd seen
on the western part of the island, the Herron's unpaved driveway
wound quite a distance into the trees -- or maybe it was unclear
where the driveway started and the dirt road stopped. Scully was
a little surprised at how undeveloped much of the land was. When
Mulder had told her his parents were next door when his sister
was abducted, she'd thought of "next door" in terms of the
cramped military housing units of her own youth. Here, "next
door" was not within the shouting distance of a young boy. The
knowledge helped bring home to her how alone and helpless
Mulder had felt as a 12-year-old all those years before.
Scully used the porch mat to scrape red, clayey mud off her shoes
while Mulder rang the doorbell. She heard footsteps inside, and
a young man's face appeared briefly in the door's window. There
was no sound of a latch being undone before the door opened.
The boy in the doorway looked about 17 or 18, tall but still
gangly. His hard, red-rimmed eyes seemed incongruous in his
youthful face. That was the magic of grief -- overnight it could
make a high school boy look like a bitter old man.
"Yeah?" the boy said.
"I'm Fox Mulder. I'm here to see Patty," Mulder said.
The boy closed the door. Scully heard him shout, "Mom!"
"Wonderful kid," Mulder muttered.
"He's just lost his sister," Scully said, then realized how
churlish it sounded to imply he didn't know what that was like.
He kept his eyes on the door as if he hadn't heard.
The misting rain was deceptively fine. The air clung like a damp
sponge. In the short amount of time they stood on the porch,
Scully began to feel wet all the way through and very cold.
Soon the door was opened again, this time by a tall woman,
perhaps ten years older than Mulder. "Fox," she said.
"Hi, Patty," Mulder said.
"Come in -- I'm sorry," Patty said, stepping aside to let them
into the warm house. She called out to her unseen son, "Matthew,
what's the matter with you? Why did you let them stand out in
the rain?" There was no reply. "He's upset," she explained. "I
think the boys are looking for someone to blame -- it's hard with
the police investigation up in the air. Maybe they blame me, I
don't know."
Scully tried to give her a reassuring smile, but she didn't
feel very reassuring. How many times had she played this exact
role -- a bearer of bad news, intruding on other people's grief.
Once they were all in the foyer, Scully noted a brief moment of
awkwardness between Mulder and Patty. Apparently they were not
so close that an embrace felt natural, but under the
circumstances a handshake would have been barbarous. Patty
reached out her arm, almost apologetically, as to a sympathetic
stranger. Mulder took it and pulled her against him. Suddenly
all strangeness between them was gone. She cried into his
shoulder, and he spoke to her all the half-nonsense words that
Scully had murmured to him so often since his mother's death:
"You'll be all right. You'll be okay. You'll get through this."
"I won't. I'll never be all right. You don't know what it's
like to lose a child. It's like dying every second," Patty said.
Scully knew what it was like. It was a memory she wanted to
distance herself from. She walked a few paces down a narrow
hallway defined by the staircase wall on one side and the kitchen
wall on the other. Framed photographs hung on both sides, but
the dim overhead light consigned many of them to obscurity. It
was just as well -- it helped Scully avoid the eyes of the Herron
children, young and smiling beneath plates of dusty glass.
She stopped before a picture of the young Patty Herron -- Patty
Todd, Mulder had called her, the girl Fox and Samantha had known.
She was quite pretty -- brown hair like a smooth autumn river
framed a shield-shaped face and brown eyes. The picture was from
the bust up, but Scully guessed Patty had had the sort of lanky,
athletic figure that Mulder preferred. She imagined him as a
too-tall grade-schooler, smitten with the pretty teen girl who
thought of herself as his babysitter. Scully wondered how he had
felt the day Kristie was born, the day Patty tied herself
irrevocably to the adult world, and to an adult man.
She heard the creak of a floorboard as someone entered the hall.
She looked up to see a tall young man whose brown eyes were the
image of the young Patty Herron's. The lower half of his face
was obscured by what was probably the first real beard he'd been
able to grow. "You're Dr. Scully?" he asked. There was a touch
of challenge in his voice.
"Yes," Scully said. "Mr. --"
"Herron. I'm Rich Herron," the man said. "You did the autopsy?"
"Yes," she said. Mr. Herron, I'm very sorry for your loss. This
must be a difficult time--"
He seemed barely to have heard her. "How did my sister die?" he
asked.
Scully knew the hopeless quest of a murder victim's relatives --
the desperate search for answers which brought no comfort. "She
fell," Scully said. "She died from a head injury. It was
instantaneous; she felt no pain--"
"The police said she was stabbed. Now she fell? Nobody is
giving us a straight answer," Rich said.
In defense Scully went into investigator mode. "It's really very
early in the investigation. The police need time to be thorough-
-"
"Rich, please," Patty called. She appeared at the other
end of the hall, wiping her eyes with her fingers. "Please come
sit down -- I'm sorry," she said to Scully, gesturing toward
the living room on the other side of the staircase.
Scully followed her, trying not to feel the weight of Rich
Herron's glare. Once in the living room, she down on the
end of a blue-and-white flowered couch. A defeated-looking
Matthew sat on a smaller couch with his hands clasped on
his knees. On a table beside him were a few nautical-themed
knickknacks, including a model of a Banks schooner -- once an
emblem of New England. Sailor's daughter that she was,
Scully's attention was drawn to the other model ships in the
room: an old-fashioned three-masted frigate, a second schooner,
and a sleeker modern racing yacht. The pictures on the walls
were of ocean views, except for one that
showed the smiling Herrons on a dock, all wearing matching polo
shirts and navy slacks -- a work uniform. The family must have a
business near the harbor.
Mulder sat down next to her and put his hand over hers. His
touch felt very warm and she realized she was still chilled
through from the night outside. Reflexively she glanced up to
see if anyone noticed the display of intimacy. Matthew met her
eyes without showing any particular interest. //Let it go,// she
told herself. There was being a private person, and there was
being paranoid. If she was too reticent to be close to Mulder in
public, he'd think she was ashamed of him. Still, it felt very
strange to sit holding his hand in front of strangers.
"Is there anything I can get you at all?" Patty asked, as if it
were quite natural to play the hostess under these circumstances.
Mulder's cousin Debbie had said the same thing over and over at
his mother's hastily-arranged memorial. Mulder himself had
refused to speak to anyone in more than monosyllables.
"We're fine, Patty," Mulder said.
Rich and a man who was probably his father walked into the room.
Mark Herron couldn't have been much past his mid-fifties, but he
moved as slowly as an old man as he sat down in an armchair.
His hands, loose at his sides like a sleepwalkers', bore the
nut-colored tan that old sailors never lost. Suddenly Scully was
glad that her own father had not lived to see Melissa's murder.
She looked up at Patty and said, "Mrs. Herron, I lost my own
daughter two years ago at Christmas. You're right -- it is like
dying every second. All I can tell you is that in time, it
becomes more bearable." She sensed Mulder looking at her. Self-
disclosure was hardly her usual style. Perhaps it was the somber
mood of Lent that made her speak. Perhaps it was this family's
connection with the sea -- she didn't know.
However, for the first time, some of the terrible vacantness left
Patty's eyes. Scully saw that her face, though heavier beneath
her practical short haircut, was still pretty. "Thank you,"
Patty said.
Mulder pressed her hand between both of his, and she didn't pull
away. It was as if the wind were coming from a new direction --
suddenly she and Mulder were not the insensitive investigators,
here to ask intrusive questions and give no information in
return.
"Dr. Scully . . . what happened to our daughter?" Mark asked.
"Mr. Herron, if anybody really knows what happened to her,
they're not cooperating with the police. All I can give you is a
medical opinion -- a very incomplete answer," Scully said.
"She says Kristie wasn't stabbed -- she fell," Rich said.
"An accident?" Patty asked. She sounded almost hopeful.
"I don't think so," Scully said, as gently as she could. "She
had experienced some sharp-force injuries, probably from a knife.
The wounds were relatively minor, but they show that she met
someone who intended to do her harm."
"She was afraid of knives," Matthew said.
Mulder turned toward him, and Scully sensed a new tension through
her partner's skin, like a slack wire suddenly drawn taught.
Spooky had a lead. "Why do you say that?" he asked.
"From watching movies with her, mostly, or hearing campfire
stories . . . the kind about maniacs, you know . . ." Matt
avoided mentioning "in the woods," but Scully understood, and felt
cold inside. "When it got to the knife part she could never
watch," Matt continued. "She'd kind of curl up and put her hands
over her eyes. She told me once she wasn't afraid of guns,
because getting shot was quick, but a knife would be the worst
way to die." Patty made a soft noise as if her breath had been
choked off.
"Matt, did anybody else know she was afraid of knives?" Mulder
asked.
"I don't know . . . maybe. Probably. She used to go to the
horror movies when they came out, you know, but at the knife
parts she'd turn away. Some guys like that -- when a girl gets
scared," Matthew said.
"Did she often date guys who liked it when she got scared?"
Mulder asked.
Scully watched the family's reactions as they made the
connection. Mark and Patty glanced at one another. "We didn't
like a lot of the boys she saw -- off-islanders, mostly, party
guys," Mark said. "Some of these people have a lifestyle you
wouldn't believe."
"They're not all bad just because they have money," Matthew said.
"I don't care -- I didn't want them hanging around my daughter,"
Mark snapped. "We had her working with us down at the marina
during the summers, and she'd meet these guys when they brought
their boats in. They'd start giving her that oily smile, and I'd
try to discourage them . . . I suppose that just made them more
attractive to her. Maybe we should have taken her out of the
boathouse altogether. She wanted to spend those six weeks in
Alaska -- do you remember?" He glanced up at Patty.
Patty did not meet his eyes. She said, "Mark . . ."
Mark Herron's wave of pain was palpable. Scully did not look at
him, and she sensed that others did not either, until he cleared
his throat and said, "Anyway . . . we didn't let her go. We
needed her here, or we thought we did. And then . . . then she
was gone, and there was nothing we could do." He pressed his
great, square hand over his eyes and wept.
Scully felt sympathy warring with embarrassment for how the man
must feel, or perhaps it was for how a man like her father would
have felt if he cried in front of strangers. From respect as
much as discomfort, she kept her gaze on the toes of her shoes.
Mulder did not seem to feel awkward. He, more than any man she'd
known, was comfortable in the presence of people in tears. He
pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and offered it, but was
ignored.
Patty stooped to put her arm around her husband's shoulders,
their heads pressed together. The Herron brothers were still
and silent, Rich standing like a guardian behind the couch where
Matthew sat. They were circling the wagons, as Scully's own
family had -- as Mulder's strangely had not at his mother's
memorial. Teena Mulder's wake had not been so much a gathering
of the clans as a collection of grieving persons who all just
happened to be in the same room.
At last Mark said, "I'm sorry," then got up and walked out of the
room. A spell seemed to have been broken. Both Rich and Matthew
immediately left as well, one heading for the kitchen and one
walking upstairs. Patty dropped down into the chair her husband
had just vacated.
"Are you sure it gets better?" she asked Scully.
"I turned to God," Scully said. "It helped a little."
"Patty, I know you've been over this before, but is there
anything, or anyone, that stands out in your memory as being
possibly related to Kristie's death?" Mulder asked.
Patty shook her head slowly. "There was Brian Griffin, the man
she was dating when they were arrested, but they convicted him
under the three strikes law. He's doing life in prison. She
was going to testify in the trial of John McBer, and I've told
the police all I know about him, which isn't much. I didn't
think this new boyfriend, Randy, was much of a step up from
Brian, but he never seemed threatening at all. These last few
months were so ordinary, Fox. So relatively normal. I wouldn't
let myself hope at first. She'd quit drugs and relapsed before -
- she'd never made it past 90 days. But when three months
passed, and then six . . . I began to hope. I thought, 'She's
finally making it. God wouldn't take her from us now.' I guess
that shows you how much I knew."
"Unlike Agent Scully, I tend *not* to turn to God when things get
bad," Mulder said. "It's kind of like wearing a huge 'Kick Me'
sign on your back."
Scully worked not to take offense at his comment. He made it no
secret that he thought organized religion in general was stupid
and Christianity even more so. She was aware that he had his
reasons. Still, it wouldn't kill him to show her faith a little
respect.
Scully looked up at Patty and said, "Kristie died drug-free, Mrs.
Herron. At least God let her have that victory."
"Thank him for that," Patty said. Some of the tension seemed to
leave her body, but it left her looking even more broken and
vulnerable. Scully remembered the days after she lost Emily, and
wondered if tension wasn't all that was keeping Patty together.
"We don't want to overstay our welcome, but would you mind if I
looked around just a little bit?" Mulder asked.
"You're welcome to, but the detectives turned the place upside-
down," Patty said. "I went over her room again myself, looking
at every scrap of paper I could find for a name, a phone number .
. . anything."
"We won't stay long," Mulder assured her.
At his request Patty led them upstairs to what had been Kristie's
room. Once they were there, she left them.
The place had already begun to have a vacant feel, probably because
the room had clearly been "processed." The sheets were gone,
likely sent to Boston for hair and fiber analysis. That alone
told Scully that the boyfriend was a suspect. Depressions in
the beige carpet showed that every item of furniture had been
moved and placed back slightly wrong. A few small, everyday
traces remained of Kristie's life: two empty kitchen glasses
on the desk near a fist-sized clutch of keys; a book splayed
open under the bed, a smiley face, clearly old, painted with
nail polish on the side of a bookshelf.
Mulder started poking around in the bookshelf. Scully stood out
of his way near the door. Before long she was leaning against
the door frame, repressing an urge to slide down onto the floor
and close her eyes. When she'd volunteered to help, she'd had
no idea this case would be so exhausting or emotionally
harrowing. The fact that Mulder was taking such an active
interest in the investigation when he wasn't even part of it was
starting to irritate her. "What are you looking for?" she asked.
When he didn't answer immediately, she added, "Don't tell me,
Let me guess. You don't know."
"Okay, You can guess. I won't tell you," he said.
The silence stretched on. Scully looked at her watch. "It's
nearly midnight," she said. "We should let these people get some
sleep."
"Give me two more minutes," Mulder said. He was pulling out each
of the books on the bookshelf and examining their spines. In
Mulder terms, "two minutes" could be interminable, so Scully gave
up and began pulling out books too.
"Tell me what I'm looking for," she said.
"A book where the dust jacket doesn't match the book inside," he
said.
The third book she pulled out had a jacket that was slightly too
tall, causing the paper to be crushed back over the cover. "You
mean like this?" she asked. She slipped the jacket of an
English-French dictionary off the book, and revealed the words,
"Narcotics Anonymous" stamped in gold on the cover.
"Nice shooting, Tex," Mulder said. "A lot of recovering addicts
don't like to be seen carrying this around. Even some ex-
alcoholics look down on the guys trying to kick coke or heroin.
That's why you see decorative book covers or things like this."
He took the book from her and opened it. Inside the front cover
were dozens of names and phone numbers written in a rainbow
assortment of ballpoint pen ink. One name, Brenda, was circled
with a star next to it.
Mulder flipped the page and found a note on the other side:
"Happy 6 month anniversary, baby! Never forget we're
powerless. Love, Randy."
"Joey'll love this," Mulder asked.
"You're hot all right," she said. He continued to page through
the book. Scully asked, "Can we go now?" He looked down at her,
seemed hesitant. The discovery had revived his spirit and
energy, and she knew he would have happily worked through the
night. "It's late," she said. "I *am* going to church tomorrow."
"Right -- right, okay," Mulder said, folding the book closed. To
his credit, he said goodbye to Patty and drove Scully back to
Nye House without betraying any resentment. But he was quiet on
the slow, jostling ride through the rain. Scully thought she
knew what he was thinking. Their work as FBI partners was as
seamless as it could be, but to become true partners in a
personal sense would require a lot of sacrifice and effort.
When they got back to the inn he did not press her to come
upstairs with him, and she was glad. She needed time to sit with
her thoughts and center herself. Exchanging her damp wool
blazer and skirt for her pajamas was like striking off a ball and
chain. As she returned from brushing her teeth in the Williams
family's bathroom, she ran into Leigh. The little proprietress
was more than happy to give her a tourist guide that showed the
locations of various island churches. St. Paul of Tarsus in
Vineyard Haven seemed to be marginally the most convenient, and
Scully set her sights on the 11:30 service, somewhat less than 12
hours away.
Perhaps it was weariness that clouded her judgment, or else a
deep ache for the glow of the Presence candle at Mass, but
something impelled her to slip back into the bathroom and remove
the little tea light in a glass bowl that was serving as a night
light. Cradling it in both hands, she carried it back to her
room and set it on the dresser. When she turned out the electric
light, the mirror on the dresser reflected the little candle's
illumination, doubling it. Candlelight is the kindest of lights,
and Scully was briefly surprised by her own image in the mirror.
The half-light showed her skin smooth and translucent as a young
girl's, and it lent a jewel-like depth to her eyes. The
reflected face seemed to have come from another time. It was
certainly worlds away from the Agent Scully who worked under the
unforgiving glare of florescent bulbs, often up to her elbows in
a body that even wild dogs would avoid.
She turned away from the haunting image in the mirror. It was no
more she than the unflattering photo on her Bureau ID was. She
fished out of her purse the little cloth bag containing the
rosary her great-aunt had given her many years ago. She lay
down on the bed and opened the bag. The ruby-glass beads
spilled out into her hand like so many little drops of blood.
Some small, prideful part of her was still embarrassed to be
carrying this symbol of Catholicism's medieval legacy. The
modern Church, the 21st century Church, had a renewed confidence
in science and scholarship. The orthodox faithful were engaged
in debates about world politics and biomedical ethics at the
highest levels. That was a faith you could proclaim in public.
The soft rattle of beads and whispered prayers in the dark were
like the presence of an eccentric elderly relative -- something
that could neither be disavowed nor discussed with outsiders.
And yet, and yet . . . . There was something very soothing about
the simple, repeated prayers. Mulder, and Melissa, for that
matter, had pointed out the rosary's similarities to Buddhist
prayer beads and the practice of chanting the Sanskrit name of
the Lotus Sutra. The comparison used to annoy her, but after
having experienced a profound sense of the Divine in a Buddhist
Temple, it no longer did so. If the Christian "peace which
passeth all understanding" was related to the Buddhist
Enlightenment, then so much the better for Christians and
Buddhists.
She ran her thumbs over the tarnished silver crucifix, trying
to come up with some profound prayer intention that fit her
somber assignment and the season. Eloquence failed her, and
the best she could do was offer up an anguished identification
with Mary as the mother of a murdered child. More in emotions
than words, she asked God to take care of Emily, Melissa,
Kristie, and Kristie's poor baby, born too soon. Suddenly
it occurred to her to add to the list the murdered children of
Mary Brown, purported South Road Ghost. The thought surprised
her, since she'd almost forgotten about the story that brought
her and Mulder out here in the first place.
Maybe it was the primitive glory of the candlelight that inspired
her, or the fact that the wind had picked up outside and was
making a thin screaming noise in the trees. In any case, her
thoughts called up disturbing images. Scully crossed herself and
began a whispered recitation of the Creed of Nicea, more
beautiful than the shorter Apostles' Creed: // . . . God from
God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made
. . .//
The more than 36 hours she'd gone without good sleep caught up
with her quickly. The last thoughts she had before
unconsciousness claimed her were the Creed's final words: //We
look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world
to come.//
Something awakened her deep in the night. Scully lay with her
heart pounding, her hands gripping the sheets. The candle had
gone out and the room was in darkness. A dream? No -- she had
the dim awareness of a sensation, a sound, that had awakened her.
She remembered the look of calm, inexorable madness on Donnie
Pfaster's face, and fought panic. Where had she put her weapon?
On the chair by the desk -- too far to reach. Had someone
entered the room and picked it up, ready to use it against her?
She heard stumbling footsteps outside in the hall. "Power's out.
Where's the damn flashlight? I thought you lit the candle in
here, Leigh."
"I did," Leigh said.
Scully glanced up at the dresser. What had possessed her to take
the candle from the bathroom?
"Here -- Jim, don't just walk into things, stand still. The
flashlight's up in the cabinet somewhere."
Scully had a small flashlight attached to her keys. Where were
they? Then she heard the noise that had awakened her -- a
shriek, high-pitched and far away, but human and terrified beyond
reason. The cry trailed up and up, past the range of a woman's
voice and far past that of a man's.
//Oh, God, it's a child.// She rolled out of bed and onto her
feet, finding her keys and the flashlight on the desk by touch.
With the light on she could see to open her bag and pull out
clothes. She pulled pants and a jacket on over her pajamas and
stuffed her feet into her autopsy shoes, which were easier to
run in than heels. Finally she clipped her gun onto her
waistband and strode out the door.
"Agent Scully?" she heard Leigh call.
"There's somebody out in the storm -- I think it's a child.
Tell Agent Mulder. He'll know what to do," Scully called back.
She didn't stop to answer more questions as she walked through
the front room and out the door.
The damp iciness of the wind nearly took her breath away. She
could see pellets of sleet in the narrow beam of her flashlight.
A moment of indecision seized her -- should she wait for help?
This was no night to become lost. She glanced up at the inn,
thought of Mulder and the other officers in there. There were no
lights in any of the windows. As she hesitated she heard the cry
again, and that answered her question.
The sound seemed to be carried on the wind, which was coming from
the south. Holding her jacket closed with one hand and her
little flashlight with the other, Scully set off across the
sleet-encrusted meadow behind Nye House, heading toward the
cliffs and the Atlantic Ocean.
*****
near the Wesquobsque Cliffs in Chilmark. Mulder had explained
that it was less than a mile from the scene of Kristie's death,
but Scully was still surprised and dismayed to find its gravel
parking lot entirely filled with police vehicles. Few of the
cars were marked, but the ramming bars and whip antennas were
dead giveaways.
Mulder ended up parking near a flooded ditch alongside the road.
At least it had mostly stopped raining by the time they got out
of the car.
"I know the family that runs this place, or at least I used to.
We'll see if that helps," he said.
Nye House turned out to be like something out of a Jane Austen
novel. The lobby had clearly once been Captain Nye's drawing
room, and it was arranged much as he must have left it. The
small cast-iron stove that once heated the room still stood in
one corner, and the furniture arranged in the waiting area had
the light, streamlined style favored in the early 19th century.
A shining brass ship's clock hung on one blue-and-gray papered
wall. It was almost exactly how Scully would have decorated her
own home if she'd had a lot more money and rather less
practicality.
At the far end of the room sat a light secretaire desk, its
surface covered in mounds of paper. Scully noted the key rack
hanging on the wall beside the desk was entirely empty. Mulder
walked up and rang the hand bell anyway. After a moment a stout
lady with short, salt-and-pepper curls came in through the room's
rear door. "Do you have a reservation?" she asked.
Mulder fished his Bureau ID out of his inner coat pocket and held
it out to her. The woman's back stiffened. "I'm sorry, but I've
told everything I know more than once. You people really have to
start talking to one another. I have a business to run here."
"Leigh," Mulder said.
Leigh's glasses magnified her brown eyes, which made her look
owlish when she blinked at him. She took another look at the ID,
glanced at Mulder's face, and her eyes went even wider.
"Well, *hello!* Why didn't you tell me you were coming? It's been
so long -- here I was thinking you were another one of these
mainland detectives. I'm just about embarrassed to death," she
said. She walked around the desk and hugged him. To Scully's
surprise, he returned the embrace without awkwardness. In her
experience, he was uncomfortable with physical affection in all
but the most intimate relationships.
"I didn't know I was coming until just a few hours ago," Mulder
said.
Leigh stepped back and said, "Then you heard?" Mulder nodded.
"Isn't it awful?" Leigh said. "I still can hardly believe it --
that poor girl. The Island's really changed for the worse, Fox.
More people coming and going all the time . . . some of them not
the sort I like to see around. The traffic means more business,
but I'd just as soon have it back the way it was 15 years ago.
It was safer. Speaking of which, it must've been at least that
long since I last saw you."
"More like 20 years ago," Mulder said. "The last summer I spent
here was the one before I went away to school."
"Has it been that long?" Leigh asked. "It must've been. It
must've been. Tammy was just a little thing then. Now she's
grown with a baby of her own." Leigh seized the opportunity to
pull a photo album from amid the clutter on the desk. "Here,
this is a picture of my granddaughter . . ."
It turned out to be more than just "a" picture, but Scully looked
through and praised them all. Emily's death had left a dry ache
in her that was soothed somewhat by talking about other peoples'
babies. As a result, Leigh Williams soon had a very high opinion
of her and was determined to find room for her and Mulder in Nye
House.
Leigh looked mildly scandalized when Mulder explained that one
room would do fine and neither agent had to be installed in
Tammy's old room. At that point Scully put her hand on his arm
and drew him aside. "Maybe it would be better if we didn't stay
together," she said quietly. "This place is crawling with police
officers. It wouldn't reflect well on the Bureau."
"The Bureau? The *Bureau?*" Mulder looked appalled. Leigh
tactfully found something to fuss with on her desk. In a low
voice Mulder asked, "At a time like this you're worried about
what the Bureau would think? We're off duty. Officially, I'm not
even here."
"Nobody else knows that," Scully said. She plead for his
understanding with her eyes, not wanting to explain in the
earshot of others. She had not forgotten the whispers and icy
stares of her classmates in medical school and the FBI Academy.
*Scully slept her way to the top* had been the conventional
wisdom. The fact that it wasn't true, and that at least in Jack's
case the affair was licit, hadn't made any difference. There
weren't many new lows for her career to sink to, but Scully
didn't want to see a look of delighted disgust in her colleagues'
eyes. The look that said, "I don't have to respect you now, and
I'm glad."
"Fine," Mulder said. "Whatever."
"I'd be glad to stay in your daughter's room, Mrs. Williams,"
Scully said. Leigh clearly thought Scully had fallen from
heaven.
Mulder looked as if the whole conversation made him want
to wash.
**********
Upstairs in his room, Mulder tossed his few packed belongings
onto the shelves of the armoire, mostly for an excuse to slam the
doors. He knew that he was more upset at Scully than the
situation really warranted.
So she wanted to sleep downstairs. So what? It would be no
different than when they were working -- which in fact Scully was.
No, this *was* different. He needed her, and she cared about the
Bureau's opinion of their personal life? "Why are you
surprised?" he asked himself aloud. He dropped down on the bed
and pressed his hands to his aching eyes. Scully had always been
skittish around issues of authority. She'd flouted rules to come
through for him before, but only after justifying herself by
appealing to her conception of a higher law. Apparently the
current situation wasn't worthy of such an exception.
//Were you so stupid that you thought she'd change just because
she started sleeping with you?// Such a hope was truly pathetic
-- the mindset of a neurotic fifteen-year-old. The only response
his exhausted mind could offer was, //But I love her.//
If he'd learned anything during the last several months, it was
that love, for all its virtues, was powerless to affect the
actions of the beloved. Christina Mulder, beloved mother, had
taken her own life without so much as mentioning her terminal
illness to her son. Kristie Herron, beloved daughter, had chosen
a dangerous life amid the drug culture of Boston that might have directly or
indirectly led to her death. Scully would do what she would do,
and his choices were to walk away or hang on and hope for the
best. Really, it was no choice at all. "You could at least try
to meet me closer to halfway," he said aloud.
He lay down, and hypnagogic images swam before him when he shut
his eyes. He saw faces mouthing incomprehensible words. He
hadn't had any more sleep than Scully had, and his mind was
considerably more troubled. When he fell asleep it was to
unsettling dreams -- a horror stalked him through familiar
rooms. The thing itself was never seen, but he recognized
the sound of its slow footfalls as it followed him through
the empty house. Whatever it was had been with him a long time.
It was dark when the phone's ringing startled him awake. He'd
developed a horrific headache in his sleep and he groaned as he
reached over to pick up the receiver. "Hello?"
"Fox?" came a woman's voice. Mulder struggled to place it.
"Yeah?" he said.
"It's Patty," the woman said. Moments from the past, sharp and
fragmented, spilled through his mind: a long, shining wave of
chestnut hair; a young woman's soft laugh; a green-and-white
bicycle with reddish Vineyard clay caught in its tire treads.
"Patty . . . How are you?" He regretted the words as soon as
he'd spoken them. //How do you think she is?//
"You heard?" she asked. He knew the emotion behind her nearly
calm voice. Grief left a person like the softened walls in many
of the Island's oldest buildings, where cracks in the plaster merely
hinted at the disintegration of the concrete behind. One touch
and the whole structure would crumble.
"I heard. I'm sorry," he said.
"I don't understand it. She was fine. She'd had a little
trouble and she was doing so well . . ." Her words fluttered up
and up, like frightened birds before a storm.
"Do you want me to go over there?" Mulder said.
"It's late, Fox -- no," she said.
"You sure?"
"No," she said, very quietly.
"Give me twenty minutes," Mulder said.
*************
Scully was lying on the narrow bed, resting her eyes. The rooms
the Williams family lived in were near the surprisingly modern
kitchen, in what Scully suspected had once been the maids'
quarters. Tammy's room was quite small and her mother had
apologized, explaining that lodging would be gratis if Scully
chose to stay. The little room lacked the romance of the guest
areas, but she found something soothing about the teen-girl
furnishings.
She was a good ten years older than Tammy, but the peeling
posters of 80's pop icons, the grainy photos of prom night and
graduation tucked into the mirror frame above the vanity, could
have come from one of her own college dorm rooms. She remembered
a time when she'd had girlfriends, before shadowy men and the
terrible light that haunted her dreams made her too afraid to
befriend anyone. For a few moments between sleep and waking, she
felt her sister's presence very near.
Minutes later Mulder knocked on the door. It had to be Mulder.
In hotels, strangers had a polite little knock -- an I-hope-I'm-
not-disturbing-you knock. Mulder just gave the door two sharp
raps, the knock of a person who believes he has the right to
enter, but knocks anyway for good manners' sake. "Hang on,"
Scully said groggily. She rolled off the bed onto her stocking
feet. When she opened the door the light in the hall seemed too
bright, and she squinted up at her partner. He had his coat on.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I'm going over to the Herrons'," he said.
She knew it was as close to an invitation as she was going to
get. She glanced back at the bedside clock and saw it was after
ten. "Now? You want me to talk about the autopsy results?" she
asked.
"No," he said. She waited for further explanation and got none.
He just wanted her presence.
"Let me find my shoes . . ." she said. She'd been dumb enough to
bring nearly-new shoes and she felt all the tight spots as her
feet slid back into them. In her head, she heard what her sister
would say: //Why do you follow him around like that? If Mulder
jumped off the Empire State Building, would you do it too?//
Then she heard her own answer, //Probably.//
Scully fought to repress a smile that was completely
inappropriate for a condolence call. Mulder clearly saw it
anyway.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said, lifting her still-damp jacket from where it
lay folded over the vanity chair. "Let's go."
Scully did not know what to expect as they pulled up outside the
secluded house near Menemsha Harbor. Like many houses she'd seen
on the western part of the island, the Herron's unpaved driveway
wound quite a distance into the trees -- or maybe it was unclear
where the driveway started and the dirt road stopped. Scully was
a little surprised at how undeveloped much of the land was. When
Mulder had told her his parents were next door when his sister
was abducted, she'd thought of "next door" in terms of the
cramped military housing units of her own youth. Here, "next
door" was not within the shouting distance of a young boy. The
knowledge helped bring home to her how alone and helpless
Mulder had felt as a 12-year-old all those years before.
Scully used the porch mat to scrape red, clayey mud off her shoes
while Mulder rang the doorbell. She heard footsteps inside, and
a young man's face appeared briefly in the door's window. There
was no sound of a latch being undone before the door opened.
The boy in the doorway looked about 17 or 18, tall but still
gangly. His hard, red-rimmed eyes seemed incongruous in his
youthful face. That was the magic of grief -- overnight it could
make a high school boy look like a bitter old man.
"Yeah?" the boy said.
"I'm Fox Mulder. I'm here to see Patty," Mulder said.
The boy closed the door. Scully heard him shout, "Mom!"
"Wonderful kid," Mulder muttered.
"He's just lost his sister," Scully said, then realized how
churlish it sounded to imply he didn't know what that was like.
He kept his eyes on the door as if he hadn't heard.
The misting rain was deceptively fine. The air clung like a damp
sponge. In the short amount of time they stood on the porch,
Scully began to feel wet all the way through and very cold.
Soon the door was opened again, this time by a tall woman,
perhaps ten years older than Mulder. "Fox," she said.
"Hi, Patty," Mulder said.
"Come in -- I'm sorry," Patty said, stepping aside to let them
into the warm house. She called out to her unseen son, "Matthew,
what's the matter with you? Why did you let them stand out in
the rain?" There was no reply. "He's upset," she explained. "I
think the boys are looking for someone to blame -- it's hard with
the police investigation up in the air. Maybe they blame me, I
don't know."
Scully tried to give her a reassuring smile, but she didn't
feel very reassuring. How many times had she played this exact
role -- a bearer of bad news, intruding on other people's grief.
Once they were all in the foyer, Scully noted a brief moment of
awkwardness between Mulder and Patty. Apparently they were not
so close that an embrace felt natural, but under the
circumstances a handshake would have been barbarous. Patty
reached out her arm, almost apologetically, as to a sympathetic
stranger. Mulder took it and pulled her against him. Suddenly
all strangeness between them was gone. She cried into his
shoulder, and he spoke to her all the half-nonsense words that
Scully had murmured to him so often since his mother's death:
"You'll be all right. You'll be okay. You'll get through this."
"I won't. I'll never be all right. You don't know what it's
like to lose a child. It's like dying every second," Patty said.
Scully knew what it was like. It was a memory she wanted to
distance herself from. She walked a few paces down a narrow
hallway defined by the staircase wall on one side and the kitchen
wall on the other. Framed photographs hung on both sides, but
the dim overhead light consigned many of them to obscurity. It
was just as well -- it helped Scully avoid the eyes of the Herron
children, young and smiling beneath plates of dusty glass.
She stopped before a picture of the young Patty Herron -- Patty
Todd, Mulder had called her, the girl Fox and Samantha had known.
She was quite pretty -- brown hair like a smooth autumn river
framed a shield-shaped face and brown eyes. The picture was from
the bust up, but Scully guessed Patty had had the sort of lanky,
athletic figure that Mulder preferred. She imagined him as a
too-tall grade-schooler, smitten with the pretty teen girl who
thought of herself as his babysitter. Scully wondered how he had
felt the day Kristie was born, the day Patty tied herself
irrevocably to the adult world, and to an adult man.
She heard the creak of a floorboard as someone entered the hall.
She looked up to see a tall young man whose brown eyes were the
image of the young Patty Herron's. The lower half of his face
was obscured by what was probably the first real beard he'd been
able to grow. "You're Dr. Scully?" he asked. There was a touch
of challenge in his voice.
"Yes," Scully said. "Mr. --"
"Herron. I'm Rich Herron," the man said. "You did the autopsy?"
"Yes," she said. Mr. Herron, I'm very sorry for your loss. This
must be a difficult time--"
He seemed barely to have heard her. "How did my sister die?" he
asked.
Scully knew the hopeless quest of a murder victim's relatives --
the desperate search for answers which brought no comfort. "She
fell," Scully said. "She died from a head injury. It was
instantaneous; she felt no pain--"
"The police said she was stabbed. Now she fell? Nobody is
giving us a straight answer," Rich said.
In defense Scully went into investigator mode. "It's really very
early in the investigation. The police need time to be thorough-
-"
"Rich, please," Patty called. She appeared at the other
end of the hall, wiping her eyes with her fingers. "Please come
sit down -- I'm sorry," she said to Scully, gesturing toward
the living room on the other side of the staircase.
Scully followed her, trying not to feel the weight of Rich
Herron's glare. Once in the living room, she down on the
end of a blue-and-white flowered couch. A defeated-looking
Matthew sat on a smaller couch with his hands clasped on
his knees. On a table beside him were a few nautical-themed
knickknacks, including a model of a Banks schooner -- once an
emblem of New England. Sailor's daughter that she was,
Scully's attention was drawn to the other model ships in the
room: an old-fashioned three-masted frigate, a second schooner,
and a sleeker modern racing yacht. The pictures on the walls
were of ocean views, except for one that
showed the smiling Herrons on a dock, all wearing matching polo
shirts and navy slacks -- a work uniform. The family must have a
business near the harbor.
Mulder sat down next to her and put his hand over hers. His
touch felt very warm and she realized she was still chilled
through from the night outside. Reflexively she glanced up to
see if anyone noticed the display of intimacy. Matthew met her
eyes without showing any particular interest. //Let it go,// she
told herself. There was being a private person, and there was
being paranoid. If she was too reticent to be close to Mulder in
public, he'd think she was ashamed of him. Still, it felt very
strange to sit holding his hand in front of strangers.
"Is there anything I can get you at all?" Patty asked, as if it
were quite natural to play the hostess under these circumstances.
Mulder's cousin Debbie had said the same thing over and over at
his mother's hastily-arranged memorial. Mulder himself had
refused to speak to anyone in more than monosyllables.
"We're fine, Patty," Mulder said.
Rich and a man who was probably his father walked into the room.
Mark Herron couldn't have been much past his mid-fifties, but he
moved as slowly as an old man as he sat down in an armchair.
His hands, loose at his sides like a sleepwalkers', bore the
nut-colored tan that old sailors never lost. Suddenly Scully was
glad that her own father had not lived to see Melissa's murder.
She looked up at Patty and said, "Mrs. Herron, I lost my own
daughter two years ago at Christmas. You're right -- it is like
dying every second. All I can tell you is that in time, it
becomes more bearable." She sensed Mulder looking at her. Self-
disclosure was hardly her usual style. Perhaps it was the somber
mood of Lent that made her speak. Perhaps it was this family's
connection with the sea -- she didn't know.
However, for the first time, some of the terrible vacantness left
Patty's eyes. Scully saw that her face, though heavier beneath
her practical short haircut, was still pretty. "Thank you,"
Patty said.
Mulder pressed her hand between both of his, and she didn't pull
away. It was as if the wind were coming from a new direction --
suddenly she and Mulder were not the insensitive investigators,
here to ask intrusive questions and give no information in
return.
"Dr. Scully . . . what happened to our daughter?" Mark asked.
"Mr. Herron, if anybody really knows what happened to her,
they're not cooperating with the police. All I can give you is a
medical opinion -- a very incomplete answer," Scully said.
"She says Kristie wasn't stabbed -- she fell," Rich said.
"An accident?" Patty asked. She sounded almost hopeful.
"I don't think so," Scully said, as gently as she could. "She
had experienced some sharp-force injuries, probably from a knife.
The wounds were relatively minor, but they show that she met
someone who intended to do her harm."
"She was afraid of knives," Matthew said.
Mulder turned toward him, and Scully sensed a new tension through
her partner's skin, like a slack wire suddenly drawn taught.
Spooky had a lead. "Why do you say that?" he asked.
"From watching movies with her, mostly, or hearing campfire
stories . . . the kind about maniacs, you know . . ." Matt
avoided mentioning "in the woods," but Scully understood, and felt
cold inside. "When it got to the knife part she could never
watch," Matt continued. "She'd kind of curl up and put her hands
over her eyes. She told me once she wasn't afraid of guns,
because getting shot was quick, but a knife would be the worst
way to die." Patty made a soft noise as if her breath had been
choked off.
"Matt, did anybody else know she was afraid of knives?" Mulder
asked.
"I don't know . . . maybe. Probably. She used to go to the
horror movies when they came out, you know, but at the knife
parts she'd turn away. Some guys like that -- when a girl gets
scared," Matthew said.
"Did she often date guys who liked it when she got scared?"
Mulder asked.
Scully watched the family's reactions as they made the
connection. Mark and Patty glanced at one another. "We didn't
like a lot of the boys she saw -- off-islanders, mostly, party
guys," Mark said. "Some of these people have a lifestyle you
wouldn't believe."
"They're not all bad just because they have money," Matthew said.
"I don't care -- I didn't want them hanging around my daughter,"
Mark snapped. "We had her working with us down at the marina
during the summers, and she'd meet these guys when they brought
their boats in. They'd start giving her that oily smile, and I'd
try to discourage them . . . I suppose that just made them more
attractive to her. Maybe we should have taken her out of the
boathouse altogether. She wanted to spend those six weeks in
Alaska -- do you remember?" He glanced up at Patty.
Patty did not meet his eyes. She said, "Mark . . ."
Mark Herron's wave of pain was palpable. Scully did not look at
him, and she sensed that others did not either, until he cleared
his throat and said, "Anyway . . . we didn't let her go. We
needed her here, or we thought we did. And then . . . then she
was gone, and there was nothing we could do." He pressed his
great, square hand over his eyes and wept.
Scully felt sympathy warring with embarrassment for how the man
must feel, or perhaps it was for how a man like her father would
have felt if he cried in front of strangers. From respect as
much as discomfort, she kept her gaze on the toes of her shoes.
Mulder did not seem to feel awkward. He, more than any man she'd
known, was comfortable in the presence of people in tears. He
pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and offered it, but was
ignored.
Patty stooped to put her arm around her husband's shoulders,
their heads pressed together. The Herron brothers were still
and silent, Rich standing like a guardian behind the couch where
Matthew sat. They were circling the wagons, as Scully's own
family had -- as Mulder's strangely had not at his mother's
memorial. Teena Mulder's wake had not been so much a gathering
of the clans as a collection of grieving persons who all just
happened to be in the same room.
At last Mark said, "I'm sorry," then got up and walked out of the
room. A spell seemed to have been broken. Both Rich and Matthew
immediately left as well, one heading for the kitchen and one
walking upstairs. Patty dropped down into the chair her husband
had just vacated.
"Are you sure it gets better?" she asked Scully.
"I turned to God," Scully said. "It helped a little."
"Patty, I know you've been over this before, but is there
anything, or anyone, that stands out in your memory as being
possibly related to Kristie's death?" Mulder asked.
Patty shook her head slowly. "There was Brian Griffin, the man
she was dating when they were arrested, but they convicted him
under the three strikes law. He's doing life in prison. She
was going to testify in the trial of John McBer, and I've told
the police all I know about him, which isn't much. I didn't
think this new boyfriend, Randy, was much of a step up from
Brian, but he never seemed threatening at all. These last few
months were so ordinary, Fox. So relatively normal. I wouldn't
let myself hope at first. She'd quit drugs and relapsed before -
- she'd never made it past 90 days. But when three months
passed, and then six . . . I began to hope. I thought, 'She's
finally making it. God wouldn't take her from us now.' I guess
that shows you how much I knew."
"Unlike Agent Scully, I tend *not* to turn to God when things get
bad," Mulder said. "It's kind of like wearing a huge 'Kick Me'
sign on your back."
Scully worked not to take offense at his comment. He made it no
secret that he thought organized religion in general was stupid
and Christianity even more so. She was aware that he had his
reasons. Still, it wouldn't kill him to show her faith a little
respect.
Scully looked up at Patty and said, "Kristie died drug-free, Mrs.
Herron. At least God let her have that victory."
"Thank him for that," Patty said. Some of the tension seemed to
leave her body, but it left her looking even more broken and
vulnerable. Scully remembered the days after she lost Emily, and
wondered if tension wasn't all that was keeping Patty together.
"We don't want to overstay our welcome, but would you mind if I
looked around just a little bit?" Mulder asked.
"You're welcome to, but the detectives turned the place upside-
down," Patty said. "I went over her room again myself, looking
at every scrap of paper I could find for a name, a phone number .
. . anything."
"We won't stay long," Mulder assured her.
At his request Patty led them upstairs to what had been Kristie's
room. Once they were there, she left them.
The place had already begun to have a vacant feel, probably because
the room had clearly been "processed." The sheets were gone,
likely sent to Boston for hair and fiber analysis. That alone
told Scully that the boyfriend was a suspect. Depressions in
the beige carpet showed that every item of furniture had been
moved and placed back slightly wrong. A few small, everyday
traces remained of Kristie's life: two empty kitchen glasses
on the desk near a fist-sized clutch of keys; a book splayed
open under the bed, a smiley face, clearly old, painted with
nail polish on the side of a bookshelf.
Mulder started poking around in the bookshelf. Scully stood out
of his way near the door. Before long she was leaning against
the door frame, repressing an urge to slide down onto the floor
and close her eyes. When she'd volunteered to help, she'd had
no idea this case would be so exhausting or emotionally
harrowing. The fact that Mulder was taking such an active
interest in the investigation when he wasn't even part of it was
starting to irritate her. "What are you looking for?" she asked.
When he didn't answer immediately, she added, "Don't tell me,
Let me guess. You don't know."
"Okay, You can guess. I won't tell you," he said.
The silence stretched on. Scully looked at her watch. "It's
nearly midnight," she said. "We should let these people get some
sleep."
"Give me two more minutes," Mulder said. He was pulling out each
of the books on the bookshelf and examining their spines. In
Mulder terms, "two minutes" could be interminable, so Scully gave
up and began pulling out books too.
"Tell me what I'm looking for," she said.
"A book where the dust jacket doesn't match the book inside," he
said.
The third book she pulled out had a jacket that was slightly too
tall, causing the paper to be crushed back over the cover. "You
mean like this?" she asked. She slipped the jacket of an
English-French dictionary off the book, and revealed the words,
"Narcotics Anonymous" stamped in gold on the cover.
"Nice shooting, Tex," Mulder said. "A lot of recovering addicts
don't like to be seen carrying this around. Even some ex-
alcoholics look down on the guys trying to kick coke or heroin.
That's why you see decorative book covers or things like this."
He took the book from her and opened it. Inside the front cover
were dozens of names and phone numbers written in a rainbow
assortment of ballpoint pen ink. One name, Brenda, was circled
with a star next to it.
Mulder flipped the page and found a note on the other side:
"Happy 6 month anniversary, baby! Never forget we're
powerless. Love, Randy."
"Joey'll love this," Mulder asked.
"You're hot all right," she said. He continued to page through
the book. Scully asked, "Can we go now?" He looked down at her,
seemed hesitant. The discovery had revived his spirit and
energy, and she knew he would have happily worked through the
night. "It's late," she said. "I *am* going to church tomorrow."
"Right -- right, okay," Mulder said, folding the book closed. To
his credit, he said goodbye to Patty and drove Scully back to
Nye House without betraying any resentment. But he was quiet on
the slow, jostling ride through the rain. Scully thought she
knew what he was thinking. Their work as FBI partners was as
seamless as it could be, but to become true partners in a
personal sense would require a lot of sacrifice and effort.
When they got back to the inn he did not press her to come
upstairs with him, and she was glad. She needed time to sit with
her thoughts and center herself. Exchanging her damp wool
blazer and skirt for her pajamas was like striking off a ball and
chain. As she returned from brushing her teeth in the Williams
family's bathroom, she ran into Leigh. The little proprietress
was more than happy to give her a tourist guide that showed the
locations of various island churches. St. Paul of Tarsus in
Vineyard Haven seemed to be marginally the most convenient, and
Scully set her sights on the 11:30 service, somewhat less than 12
hours away.
Perhaps it was weariness that clouded her judgment, or else a
deep ache for the glow of the Presence candle at Mass, but
something impelled her to slip back into the bathroom and remove
the little tea light in a glass bowl that was serving as a night
light. Cradling it in both hands, she carried it back to her
room and set it on the dresser. When she turned out the electric
light, the mirror on the dresser reflected the little candle's
illumination, doubling it. Candlelight is the kindest of lights,
and Scully was briefly surprised by her own image in the mirror.
The half-light showed her skin smooth and translucent as a young
girl's, and it lent a jewel-like depth to her eyes. The
reflected face seemed to have come from another time. It was
certainly worlds away from the Agent Scully who worked under the
unforgiving glare of florescent bulbs, often up to her elbows in
a body that even wild dogs would avoid.
She turned away from the haunting image in the mirror. It was no
more she than the unflattering photo on her Bureau ID was. She
fished out of her purse the little cloth bag containing the
rosary her great-aunt had given her many years ago. She lay
down on the bed and opened the bag. The ruby-glass beads
spilled out into her hand like so many little drops of blood.
Some small, prideful part of her was still embarrassed to be
carrying this symbol of Catholicism's medieval legacy. The
modern Church, the 21st century Church, had a renewed confidence
in science and scholarship. The orthodox faithful were engaged
in debates about world politics and biomedical ethics at the
highest levels. That was a faith you could proclaim in public.
The soft rattle of beads and whispered prayers in the dark were
like the presence of an eccentric elderly relative -- something
that could neither be disavowed nor discussed with outsiders.
And yet, and yet . . . . There was something very soothing about
the simple, repeated prayers. Mulder, and Melissa, for that
matter, had pointed out the rosary's similarities to Buddhist
prayer beads and the practice of chanting the Sanskrit name of
the Lotus Sutra. The comparison used to annoy her, but after
having experienced a profound sense of the Divine in a Buddhist
Temple, it no longer did so. If the Christian "peace which
passeth all understanding" was related to the Buddhist
Enlightenment, then so much the better for Christians and
Buddhists.
She ran her thumbs over the tarnished silver crucifix, trying
to come up with some profound prayer intention that fit her
somber assignment and the season. Eloquence failed her, and
the best she could do was offer up an anguished identification
with Mary as the mother of a murdered child. More in emotions
than words, she asked God to take care of Emily, Melissa,
Kristie, and Kristie's poor baby, born too soon. Suddenly
it occurred to her to add to the list the murdered children of
Mary Brown, purported South Road Ghost. The thought surprised
her, since she'd almost forgotten about the story that brought
her and Mulder out here in the first place.
Maybe it was the primitive glory of the candlelight that inspired
her, or the fact that the wind had picked up outside and was
making a thin screaming noise in the trees. In any case, her
thoughts called up disturbing images. Scully crossed herself and
began a whispered recitation of the Creed of Nicea, more
beautiful than the shorter Apostles' Creed: // . . . God from
God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made
. . .//
The more than 36 hours she'd gone without good sleep caught up
with her quickly. The last thoughts she had before
unconsciousness claimed her were the Creed's final words: //We
look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world
to come.//
Something awakened her deep in the night. Scully lay with her
heart pounding, her hands gripping the sheets. The candle had
gone out and the room was in darkness. A dream? No -- she had
the dim awareness of a sensation, a sound, that had awakened her.
She remembered the look of calm, inexorable madness on Donnie
Pfaster's face, and fought panic. Where had she put her weapon?
On the chair by the desk -- too far to reach. Had someone
entered the room and picked it up, ready to use it against her?
She heard stumbling footsteps outside in the hall. "Power's out.
Where's the damn flashlight? I thought you lit the candle in
here, Leigh."
"I did," Leigh said.
Scully glanced up at the dresser. What had possessed her to take
the candle from the bathroom?
"Here -- Jim, don't just walk into things, stand still. The
flashlight's up in the cabinet somewhere."
Scully had a small flashlight attached to her keys. Where were
they? Then she heard the noise that had awakened her -- a
shriek, high-pitched and far away, but human and terrified beyond
reason. The cry trailed up and up, past the range of a woman's
voice and far past that of a man's.
//Oh, God, it's a child.// She rolled out of bed and onto her
feet, finding her keys and the flashlight on the desk by touch.
With the light on she could see to open her bag and pull out
clothes. She pulled pants and a jacket on over her pajamas and
stuffed her feet into her autopsy shoes, which were easier to
run in than heels. Finally she clipped her gun onto her
waistband and strode out the door.
"Agent Scully?" she heard Leigh call.
"There's somebody out in the storm -- I think it's a child.
Tell Agent Mulder. He'll know what to do," Scully called back.
She didn't stop to answer more questions as she walked through
the front room and out the door.
The damp iciness of the wind nearly took her breath away. She
could see pellets of sleet in the narrow beam of her flashlight.
A moment of indecision seized her -- should she wait for help?
This was no night to become lost. She glanced up at the inn,
thought of Mulder and the other officers in there. There were no
lights in any of the windows. As she hesitated she heard the cry
again, and that answered her question.
The sound seemed to be carried on the wind, which was coming from
the south. Holding her jacket closed with one hand and her
little flashlight with the other, Scully set off across the
sleet-encrusted meadow behind Nye House, heading toward the
cliffs and the Atlantic Ocean.
*****