Easy-E 24-Hour Diner,
11:06 p.m. March 17th, 1996
The coffee wasn't the greatest. Four packs of sugar and two creamers later, he could still taste the after wash of roasted beans on the back of his tongue. However, it was a little after eleven o'clock and Mulder had learned long ago that just because an eatery claimed to be open twenty-four hours a day didn't mean the quality didn't drop sharply after normal operating hours. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse.
The dull white light which the cracked neon tubes on the ceiling provided flickered on and off intermittently. In a far-off corner behind the counter the night shift waitress, a big woman with a birthmark under her right eye, stood idly, reading a stay issue of People Magazine and twisting a strand of her curly red hair. Cracking his neck, Mulder waited a few more minutes before giving in to boredom and signaling the waitress in the corner to bring him another cup. Catching her attention at last, she put aside her magazine and strode up the aisle, coffee pot in hand, easily guessing what Mulder's request would be.
"More creamers, hon?" she asked, digging her hand into a pocket of her apron as she poured him a fresh cup.
"No thanks," he replied, carefully sliding his manila folders out of the way in order to avoid dripping any of the hot brew on his files. It was an instinctive gesture; he sincerely doubted that anyone besides himself and Scully would ever have to look at them, but he was nothing if not careful with his precious X-Files.
"You sure are working late tonight, huh?" He looked up and caught the bemused, half-friendly and half-apologetic look on the waitress' face.
"Yeah. I'm not the only one apparently." He winced as those words shot out of his mouth, he hadn't meant to sound harsh. But instead of taking offense the big woman ("Venus" according to her nametag) merely snorted with what he could only assume was mirth. "I'm actually waiting for my partner to join me."
"What? You mean they actually make two of you stay up this late at night to work?"
Mulder nodded. "Or at least, I tend to and she has to go along with it."
Venus chortled. Leaning in, a mischievous twinkle lit up her eye. "I dunno hon, if I had a good-looking thing like you to work with, I don't think they'd have any trouble getting me to put in some extra hours." The wry humor caught Mulder off-guard. Before he could open his mouth and give her a witty reply, the doorbell chimed as a slim, well-dressed redhead walked in.
Venus turned around to observe the new arrival and, seeing her heading down the aisle towards the pair of them, she straightened up and turned to face the newly-arrived Scully.
"Hey there sweetie." Her voice was warm and friendly. "What can I get for ya?"
"Some coffee would be great, thanks." After three hours of steelworkers, Cleveland Browns, and Nascar Scully's careful, cultured voice seemed as out of place in the late-night diner as a grand piano, but to Mulder it felt like a breath of fresh air. She was obviously fairly tired, but none the worse for wear. Pouring out what was left of the pot into the second ceramic mug on the table, Venus laid a few more sugars for good measure and then slid back up the aisle, evidentially eager to finish up the story on People's "Sexiest Man Alive" for 1996.
"Gee Scully," Mulder's voice had taken the tone he usually reserved for minor annoyances, "I was about to get my first date in years and you just had to show up and blow it."
Scully's eyebrows arched. "What? You mean your precious filing cabinet finally broke down and proposed?"
Mulder broke out laughing. "Scully?" he tried to say between breaths, "I think that's the funniest thing you've said all year."
"Well, it's only March Mulder, give it some time." Slipping her spoon into her coffee cup, she reached for two of the pink packets on the table and ripped them open. Mulder waited, wanting to give Scully enough time to unwind. She had, after all, been in the morgue for the last few hours and he didn't want to pick her brains immediately. To his relief, she began on her own.
"Well Mulder," she said after having taken two gulps from her mug, "you're probably wondering what I've managed to come up with over the last couple hours."
"Gee, Scully, you read my mind." Stirring his coffee, he took another sip. Placing the mug down on the table, she reached into her briefcase and pulled out a single, slim brown folder. Instead of opening it as he expected she would, she laid it down on the table and slid it over to him. As he reached for it, she began.
"Mulder, I don't know what to say." It was a statement devoid of any particular emotion. She wasn't frustrated, frightened, or tired as far as he could tell. Merely curious. Opening the folder, he ran his eyes over the autopsy forms and the half a dozen snapshots taken of the victim on the table.
"As we first suspected, the victim indeed appears to have been frozen. All the telltale signs are there such as frostbite, the extreme blistering of outer tissue, not to mention the fact that we observed and touched his body at the apartment. While he had mostly thawed out by the time we got him on the table, his internal organs remained mostly frozen. That's one of the reasons it took so long for me to get over here." Nodding, Mulder slowly turned the pages and soaked up the relevant data. Everything appeared consistent with their initial findings.
"That of course, is not really a surprise Mulder," her tone betraying a certain sense of foreboding an anticipation. Yup, thought Mulder to himself, here it comes. "The big question of course is, how did he get there, and how did it happen, two questions which I am unable to answer at this time. But..." her eyes caught his "...I'm sure you have a theory, right Mulder."
Feigning surprise, Mulder replaced the file on the table and raised his hands in a defensive manner. "C'mon doctor Scully, aren't all scientific and medical breakthroughs first preceded by a theory which, no matter how absurd it may first appear, proves to be true in the long run." Scully reached behind her head and began to retie her loosening ponytail.
"Ok, Mulder. For the sake of expediency, I'll cut to the chase. What do you think is going on here. Aliens?" The moment the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them.
Mulder looked down, his eyes catching on a slight blemish on the white-brown enamel of the tabletop. "Scully, I hope I strike you as a little more skeptical than that." Looking back up, he was surprised to see Scully's soft green eyes fixed on his.
"Look Mulder," she said, her hands replacing the hair tie in its place and then dropping back to her knees. "I didn't mean to say that. It's just that..." pausing, she sighed. "It's just that it's getting late, I'm exhausted, and to be honest I'm kind of frustrated at having to come all the way out here to investigate a crime which, while intriguing, is hardly something I'd like to be giving up my weekend for. So, if I sound a little..." a lightly longer pause as she searched for the right word.
"-bitter?" He smiled, feigning innocence. She shot a relieved faux scowl at him.
"I was going to say 'flustered' but thanks for the help there Mulder. But if I sound a tiny bit flustered or tired or bitter, I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound dismissive, I hope you know that."
"I understand completely," he replied, nodding his head vigorously. "I know it isn't always easy to work with me, but I appreciate it just the same. And," glancing down at his watch, "I will cut to the chase so that we can retreat to the hotel and you can get your beauty rest and I can catch the late-night news."
"You mean the 'adults only' pay-per-view channels?"
Mulder shrugged. "I've seen them all already." Scully's lips turned up into a slight smile.
"So, Mulder, what's the theory?"
"Scully, what do you know about spontaneous human combustion?"
Her eyes narrowed. "You mean when people magically just explode into big balls of fire and are totally consumed?"
"Something like that."
"Well Mulder," she began, wracking her brain. "As best as I can remember its usually dismissed by most within the mainstream scientific community as little more than pseudo science. If I recall correctly it relies on the idea that the fat stores within the human body somehow get ignited and the person burns to death from the inside in a slow, agonizing death sequence."
Slowly nodding, Mulder dissolved the contents of a fresh packets of sugar into his coffee and stirred it in. "That's right Scully. Although SHC is often completely dismissed out of hand, there have been several cases of seemingly miraculous explosions centered on people who seem to just burst into flames and go on to burn in a spectacular fashion, only leaving a pile of ash behind.
"Yes Mulder, that's the theory. However like I said before, scientists continue to dismiss this idea on the basis that many attempts have been made to replicate this process on pig carcasses with little or no results and that the few cases of supposed SHC that have been submitted for scientific review to the authorities have usually proven to be cases of arson or murder, or people faking their own deaths." Draining what remained of her mug, Scully flagged down Venus and ordered another round. When she was safely out of earshot, she continued.
"Besides, what does this have to do with anything? The victims were frozen solid in their apartments, not burnt."
"Yes, but there are similarities. I mean, here we have two victims, each found frozen solid so that even their internal organs need to be thawed, apparently safe and sound in their apartments. The fact that these people were frozen and that the other people exploded into flames doesn't mean the same mechanism couldn't be at work."
"Well, yes Mulder, but that doesn't mean anything. Just because a man freezes to death in his apartment doesn't mean that he was the victim of some kind of crazy attack. I mean, sure it might sound implausible but we can't rule out that the men didn't forget to turn the heat on and froze to death."
"Come on Scully, the landlord said that the entire place is run off of central heating so if the unit fails in one apartment, it fails in them all. Furthermore, we both know that it hasn't dropped below freezing in Cleveland in over two weeks and that Yumashev was seen alive and well only two days ago when he was taking out the trash."
"Well, Mulder, it may sound crazy, but it's also possible that he was the victim of some kind of catastrophic internal reaction. I mean, I did a little reading on this before I came on over and I know that there has been a lot of work done in the last twenty years on the chemical properties of cooling. You know those icepacks you get in sports stores? It's been shown that ammonium nitrate when mixed with water causes a drastic endothermic reaction which can lead to spontaneous freezing."
It was Mulder's turn to raise his eyebrows. "You're telling me this guy ate an icepack?"
"I know it sounds crazy Mulder, but the principle could be the same. There are a dozen different ways to make an endothermic reaction occur, and maybe Yumashev just accidentally stumbled on a new one by some freak chemical accident. I mean, people kill themselves all the time when they accidentally mix bleach and ammonia in the toilet bowl and make chlorine gas."
Mulder was silent for a moment as he chewed on his plastic stirring stick, immersed in thought. Scully sat back in her booth, giving him time to collect his thoughts. Finally, he broke the silence.
"That's all very interesting Scully."
"But?"
"But I don't buy it. I mean, there are too many random factors to consider, too many implausabilities, like the heating in the apartment, the fact that the two men lived in the same neighborhood and were killed within days of each other. No, I think we're looking at something a lot less random than a couple of freak accidents."
"You think this was some kind of murder?"
"Well, we do have a precedent for it. You remember Cecil L'Ively? From two years ago."
Scully began twirling her hair absently. In a flash of afterthought Mulder noted that she shared more than just her hair color with Venus, she apparently had the same hair-twirling habits as well.
"You mean the arson suspect in Massachusetts? The case we had with Inspector Green?"
Mulder winced at Phoebe's name but nodded.
"Yeah, he's the one. But you do remember the details of the case, right? I mean, the man was a total and complete pyrokinetic. We watched him manipulate flames and pull them out of thin air on more than one occasion. If someone like him is capable of setting other people on fire, why shouldn't someone be able to do the same process only in reverse, freezing them to death?"
"Mulder..." she sighed, her voice sounding painfully thin, "we've been over this. Cecil L'Ively was a serial arsonist with a particular streak of sadism and a flair for the theatrical. Just because a guy says he can manipulate flames doesn't mean he's not working things behind the scenes."
"Granted Scully, but then again the investigation into the physical nature of L'Ively was sort of hampered by the fact that he died two weeks after his arrest as the result of his massive burns. We have no way of knowing what the man was truly capable of."
Raising her hands in a half-hearted protest, Scully shrugged. "Have if your way Mulder. Now, if it's all the same to you, can we continue this conversation in the morning. I'm about ready to drop."
"Of course Scully." Guessing at their purpose or perhaps merely eavesdropping, Venus appeared at the table second later with the check.
"All right kids, total comes to $18.63 with tax."
"$18.63?" Mulder's voice rose in protest. "But we've only had coffee."
"That's right sugar, about five pots worth." Placing her hands on her broad hips, Venus cracked a wide grin. "So, you gonna be a gentleman and pick up the tab, or are you and your lady friend sleeping in separate rooms tonight?"
Glancing over at Scully, Mulder shot her a roguish grin. Rolling her eyes, Scully took her files and slid them back into her briefcase.
"Both, as a matter of fact." she replied, cheerfully inserting a tone of false annoyance into her voice. "I have to call home Mulder, so I'll meet you outside." And with that, she slid out of the booth and went to use her phone, leaving a sheepish looking Mulder to fumble for his government-issue travel-reimbursement card under Venus' puzzled gaze.