Kelly's Café

Advance, Virginia

2:56 PM

Scully walked into the tiny café, and for a moment she smiled. It reminded her of a place she and Mulder and stopped at once. It was a small little shop, quite quaint, and there were only a few people dining and sipping coffee at this afternoon. Her partner was already sitting in a booth, twisting a coffee stirrer in his hands as he looked over the case folder for the thousandth time. He was determined to find something there they had overlooked. Scully took a moment to order coffee from the counter, she had a craving since before she started the autopsies, and she sat down across from Doggett with a mug in hand.

"Hey," she said, trying not to smile, "I just got a call on my cell phone. It was some teenage girl asking for an Agent Doggone-he's-hot. She sounded hot and bothered."

Doggett sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Hitting on the witnesses again, I see," Scully said. She was trying not to laugh.

"More like practically getting raped by them."

Scully laughed. "I'm sorry, John. I just couldn't help myself."

"It's all right."

"So did you find anything besides the John Doggett Fan Club?"

"Actually, we have a prime suspect now, and it's not Jason Voorhees."

"Oh, is it Michael Myers?"

"The actor or the serial killer?"

"Does it matter?"

"Actually," Doggett said as he laughed, "actually, it's a kid in Jaime and Teddy's class. Name's Jason Smith. Apparently Jaime's sister neglected to mention that she suspected Smith to the police. She just left them thinking it was a murderous zombie. Apparently, the kid is obsessed with horror films, which fits, and he was shot down by Jaime about a week ago."

"Aw, poor guy."

"I know. It's the story of my life too. Anyways, I'm thinking that out of jealousy he killed Teddy and then he killed her because she made him mad. Simple open and shut case, and I think we should be done with it after we question him." Doggett folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his seat. He smiled smugly, confident the job would be easy from here on out.

Scully, however, bit her lip hesitantly. "I wouldn't be so sure about that, Agent Doggett."

"And why's that?"

"Well, here, have a look at these." Scully threw some pictures from the autopsy on the table. "Now, looking at the blood work, things turned up like we expected. Drugs and alcohol were in their system, so I wasn't expecting to find much to support any thing out of the ordinary. Look at Jaime's neck."

"There's bruising."

"Yes, in the shape of thumbs. Huge thumbs at that. It appears she was strangled to death, and all other evidence, the slight caving of the lungs, is consistent with that."

"All right. So?"

"So, I thought I'd show you that before pulling out the weird part."

"Oh great."

Scully produced another set of pictures, this time from Teddy. "Okay, this is the before picture. Look at his neck. Do you see anything odd about it?"

"No. I don't see anything."

"I didn't either, but then I started to feel around it and accidentally stumbled over something. His neck, when I felt of it, it felt somehow…hollow, I guess you would say. So I decided to cut back the top layer of skin for a closer look." Scully slid a picture out from underneath the one she had just shown Doggett. "Notice anything odd now?"

"Did you cut him like this, Agent Scully?"

"No. I just cut back the epidermis. The rest…the rest is how he was when he came to us."

In the picture, the seventeen-year-old boy had the skin on the left side of his throat folded back. There was a hole, perfectly circular, that went all the way to the back of his neck. It was a clean hole, like a perfectly shaped handle had been pulled out of it.

About this time the waitress, who had been pouring coffee for the people on the other side of the café, came up to their table. "Excuse me, may I get you all anything?" she asked politely in a slight southern accent.

"Uh, no, I'm fine. Thank you," Scully said.

"I'm fine too," Doggett said.

"All right. Just holler if you need something," she said. She started to walk off, but the corner of her eye spied the photographs. "Oh! Pictures!" she exclaimed. "Are they of your kids?" Before Scully or Doggett could explain, she already had a picture in her hand. "Why, he's a handsome young…oh my god…" As soon as her face turned pale, it started turning green. She covered her hand over her mouth and threw the picture onto the table like the photo was on fire. "You are some sick people! Sick sick people! Just awful!" She flustered and started fanning her face with her hands.

"Calm down, ma'am," Scully said. She stood up and patted the woman on the arm.

"Don't touch me you awful…pervert! You awful pervert! You should be ashamed!"

"Actually, ma'am," Doggett began. "We're FBI agents. These are pictures from an autopsy that has to do with our investigation. It's about those local kids that were murdered about three days ago in the woods."

"Oh, well, I don't care who you are. You're still awful people. Cutting up an outstanding young man like Teddy Clark and then carrying around pictures of it. You people should be ashamed that you don't have more respect for a local legend than that. That boy was the best quarterback this county has seen in fourteen years!"

Scully sighed. "We're sorry, ma'am. We'll…try to be more respectful from now on."

"Well you should be."

Scully rolled her eyes as the woman walked off muttering about what awful people that the two annoyed agents were.

"Well," Scully said as she sat back down, "where were we before all of that happened?"

"I think we were looking at the hole in this outstanding young drug addict's throat," Doggett said. "What do you think could have caused this?"

"Well…judging by the size of the hole, and the way it narrows and comes to a point near the back of the neck…I would guess that he was stabbed with a harpoon."

Doggett started to laugh. Scully, however, did not. He looked up at her, hoping to see a smirk to let him know she was kidding, but she merely shrugged her shoulders. "But that's impossible," he said. "How did a harpoon just pass through the skin without touching it but destroyed everything past it?"

"Well…I have a theory about that."

"What?"

"That there wasn't a harpoon at all."

Doggett stared at her. He was "damned confused" again.

Seeing the lost look in her partner's eyes, Scully sighed, wondering the best way to explain it. "Did you ever see The Matrix?"

"Now Neo's a suspect?"

"No no no. Remember how things that happened in the Matrix were felt in the real world because if the brain thinks something is happening while in the Matrix, the brain makes it happen in the real world?"

"Yeah…"

"Well, I think that somehow Teddy here was so convinced that there was a madman shoving a harpoon through his throat that his brain actually killed off cells and moved tissue around because that's what it thought was happening. It's almost like a reverse placebo. Now, how the killer did this, I'm not sure. It could have been some kind of suggestive ability or some kind of telepathic ability. Those would be the most likely."

"So you're saying the killer talked this kid to death?"

Scully bit her lip for a moment, and nodded silently. "Or he may have thought him to death."

"I see." Now Doggett nodded slowly. "You know, that's a little out there."

"Do you have a better explanation for how he could have been killed with a phantom harpoon?"

Doggett started to say something, but instead just sighed. She was the experienced veteran, and he was still a rookie at this division. No matter how crazy it sounded, he didn't really have anything to argue with. "I guess we're looking for the person that has this ability then?"

"Yes, and I think Jason Smith is a good place to start."