Chapter Seven
Boston Police Department, Boston, Massachusetts
April 1st, 1999, 4:03 p.m.
"Oh, it's you, again," Sgt. Cook stated brusquely as he took a glimpse of Mulder's badge. "Well, what do you want, Agent Mulder?"
"Agent Scully brought a frame in yesterday to be examined by your forensics department. I'd like to be able to collect the evidence and bring it back to the Boston FBI field office for further study." Moments later, he decided to be courteous and added a 'please'. Cook gave him a sneer that Scully typically reserved for his choice of take-out food, and when he remembered the unpleasant thought, he shivered. Never the less, the sergeant removed a 'chain of custody' form from his top right handed drawer and pointed to the pen chained to the desk. "Don't forget to wash your hands when you're done with it."
Mulder agreed and shook the pen back and forth before starting to fill out his obligatory paperwork. "By the way, is Lieutenant Ashcroft in?" he asked while keeping a steady concentration on the form.
"What do I look like, his freakin' secretary?"
"Well, this is the Boston Police Department reception desk, isn't it?" A silence that passed over the two men made Mulder's eyes jump up towards Cook's hands, but when he realized that they were nowhere near his face, he buried his eyes back into the paper. Cook merely tapped the bureau and directed Mulder's attention to a dry erase board on the wall. Ashcroft's name was not amongst the names listed on the 'in/out' board with today's date.
"I see. I'm not sure how long this will take. Is it okay if I don't fill in a specific amount of time?" Mulder inquired and Cook shrugged.
"Typical feds. You don't even know how long it'll take for you to keep scratching your heads. Whatever. Just put down your badge number next to your printed name and sign below it."
"Would you prefer it if I did it with my own blood?" Cook slammed a drawer shut after opening a 3" black binder and let it drop onto the desk with a heavy bang. "I guess so. How long will the wait be?"
"I'm not sure how long this will take--there might not be a specific amount of time," Cook mimicked Mulder's mid-Atlantic drawl to the best of his ability, but Mulder understood the implication. It could be hours before he would be back to Scully and Williams. He signed the paper with a sigh, and Cook left him to probably make copies and file them into the heaping notebook.
"After I charged your phone last night, I was at least expecting a return phone call," Lloyd's husky voice called to him as she strolled towards the bureau nonchalantly. The sound of her heels was one of a defiant but extremely confident stride--one that made Mulder's innards recoil. The woman was on a mission, he decided.
A mission to make me forget everything but those luscious legs. I'd better get out of this before I step into another pile of refuse with Scully.
"Sorry about that." Okay, enough guilt trip. Down to business. He squared his shoulders and turned to face her dead on. He continued in a much more firm pitch. "Look, you lied to me last night. I don't see why I should continue even addressing the case with you."
"What on earth do you mean?" Lloyd's austerity surprised Mulder. He thought that she would instantaneously turn to the common feminine wile of innocent shock. However, he remained steadfast and strong on the outside.
"You gave me a car rental agreement as 'evidence' supporting your firm's embezzlement last night. And you also lied to my partner about the authenticity of that Renoir frame. If I had any tangible shred of proof of this, you'd be waiting to make a phone call right now to speak with your lawyer in a pair of handcuffs."
"Oh, you want to use those again? I thought you'd had enough last night," she answered haughtily.
"Quit it. We didn't sleep together last night--I would've remembered it very well."
"Then do you remember how you got back last night? I drove your car," Lloyd paused at the pragmatic moment, "...and we did it on the couch...in your room. I asked you what the hell was the matter with the bed, and all you simply said was that you hated sleeping on them."
"No. It's not possible."
"Face it, Mulder. If you want to keep kidding yourself like this was your prom night after too much champagne, go ahead. But if you want to behave properly like an adult, I can tell you everything." She knew all too well that his hunger and thirst was for the truth. As she turned on her heel, the cheeky grin on her face glowered. His hand lightly brushed her shoulder. That was enough apparently, to give her enough leeway to shove him into a nearby janitor's closet.
"Katherine, what're we doing in here?" Her response came through quite clearly as she blindly reached for his tie and ripped it off in the process. "Whoa, whoa, this is heavy." In the dark, he had to admit that he didn't mind it when the woman took charge--but oops, this was not Scully. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Remember when I told you that this case was all about misdirection?" Lloyd breathed, and he frantically began to grope behind himself for a doorknob or some means of escape.
"Vaguely, yeah. And this shouldn't go on like this..." She had his dress shirt also torn open, and now her hand headed south to grab him. "Uh...Jesus...wow. Uh...please, Lloyd, I'm very flattered, but-"
"But you're not ready yet. I know. That'll change in just a couple of minutes." Her hand briefly stroked him a couple of times, and he finally managed to trap her hand from doing anything else. Further words of rebuke were stifled when his cell phone disrupted him. Mulder forgot his distraction temporarily, and after he answered the phone, he released his grip on Lloyd. "Mulder."
"Mulder, it's me," Scully stated and went on. "Did you get our evidence yet?"
"Well, I'm kind of...waiting for the...Jesus! Will you stop!" Once again, Lloyd's evil hands were on the prowl, and he felt her touch. His ragged breaths were the telltale signs that he was again putting pleasure before business to Scully.
But just to make sure that she was not jumping to any conclusions, she carefully inserted a diplomatic inquiry into the conversation. "Mulder, where are you?"
"Uh...kind of in a dark spot right now," he said, becoming exacerbated with Lloyd. Unfortunately, Scully got the wrong impression and assumed he was cross with her. She paused briefly across the line to ponder his actions and heard him struggling against something. Large thudding sounds followed by his sharp intakes of breaths and a woman's laugh was enough proof to now vex her.
"That'd better not be who I think it is," she bellowed. "SAC Pendleton and I are headed over to the police station now."
"Wait a minute, what about Williams? Oof, finally." His wandering hand got hold of a doorknob, twisted it open, and nearly fell out of the closet with his pants down. As he seized his trousers, he lost the phone, and Lloyd caught it before it landed onto the ground. "What a teaser you are," she chuckled and hung up on Scully.
Half an hour later...
"I don't think I have to tell you how much your ass is going to be grass, Agent Scully," Pendleton scolded her furiously as they parked a few streets away from the police station. "And I'll be expecting some Cutty Sark as well as that J&B by tomorrow morning."
"You're not my direct superior," she growled as she nearly left him behind at her vigorous pace. "And like the FBI, I don't deal negotiations with terrorists or tyrants."
"What on god's green earth made you even think for one second that you could detain him for questioning with a fake warrant? No, wait. I'm getting it now." Scully swung the door open and nearly hit Pendleton in the process. "You wanted to hoodwink the blind guy. How low can you go, Agent?"
"Look, aren't you interested in the truth? Isn't that what we're meant to investigate?"
"By all means, Scully. But I'm also meant to keep my pension and health benefits...apparently they're not something you give a damn about. You should be--not every FBI agent makes it past his or her physical past the age 35." That ugly thought did flutter her insides for a fleeting moment, but she shook it off as she approached the reception desk.
"Sgt. Cook, you remember me? I'm Agent Scully, and this is SAC Lucas Pendleton from the Boston field office. Have you seen Agent Mulder recently?"
"Yeah, he was here a while ago--he made a request for some evidence. But when I got back with it, he was gone. Typical fed. You come around here flappin' your goddamn gums and orderin' all sorts of shit, but you never come back to step in it or clean it up. It's always left for us," Cook answered them angrily.
"Well, regardless of that, we need that frame. Could you get it back, please?" Pendleton asked.
"Sure. You'll just have to fill out the paperwork again."
"What?" Scully shouted.
"You're different agents. I can't go back into the evidence room without proper credentials from either of you. They have surveillance, you know?" He pointed to the camera above him with his pen, and both agents' eyes glanced upwards with indignation. Pendleton crossed his arms and stepped away from the counter. He motioned to Scully to come forward and handed her the sheet Cook offered.
"You got yourself into this. You can bail yourself out. Let me know when you're done. I gotta take care of some business," Pendleton said arrogantly and headed down the hallway for the public men's room.
"Unbelievable," Scully grumbled and fingered the chained pen to begin to fill out the paper, but her cell phone interrupted her train of negative thoughts. "Scully."
"Agent Scully, why am I hearing threats from a Collin Parker esquire out of Boston?" Skinner's voice nearly ripped her ear off, and she winced while trying to get the tethered pen to write. "He specifically called the Washington branch of the FBI demanding to speak with me and said that if Dominic Williams was not released from his prejudicial interrogation within two hours, he was going to file an $80 million suit against us. Now, I believe, that I am perfectly within my rights, Agent Scully, to want an explanation for this tomfoolery!"
"Well, sir...-"
"Move out of the way, red!" A police officer yelled and shouldered Scully aside as he forced a drunk up to Sgt. Cook. "Let me have the paperwork for a 502. I hate this shit. How come we have to fill out this crap for the drunk tank now?"
"One word--attorneys," Cook hollered back, and Scully covered her ear so that she could clearly think and explain to her boss while beginning to write.
"We did release Mr. Williams, sir...about half a minute after Parker had told us how many of his client's rights we'd violated. Mr. Williams is visually impaired and claims that we didn't let him take his cane with him, even though Agent Mulder and I guided him throughout the whole process."
"Why didn't you let him use his cane?"
"It could be used as a weapon."
"And what makes you so sure that he'd hit his target, considering the fact that you just told me he's blind?"
"Agent Mulder suspects extra sensory perception."
"Uh-huh. And do you concur with his suspicions?"
"Oh shit," she mumbled as the paper tore from her heavy pressure, and she tossed the pen aside. Scully had filled out the majority of the data, and she showed it to Cook. "Look, is this enough for you? Your pen ran out of ink."
"Scully!" Skinner screamed, and she pushed the cell phone into the front of her coat.
The officer accepted the sheet to study it carefully and gave her a caustic look. "I can't file this."
"Tape it up, then. And give me the goddamn frame!" Scully threw her badge across the bureau and brought the phone back up to her ear.
"I'm still waiting for an answer, Agent."
"Well, frankly, sir, I can't give any other sort of definition..."
"Yes or no will do, Scully."
"You can't prove that I wasn't doing nothin'...-" The impertinent noise of a Latin American young lady with golden hoop earrings storming in front of 2 more officers briefly distracted everyone in the background. "I ain't a sayin' nothing--"
"You sure got a lot of nothin' to say, honey," replied one.
"Scully!" Skinner again yelled, and this time Scully apprehensively said yes. "Yes, what!"
"I believe Agent Mulder."
"All right, then. Do you have an alleged perpetrator yet?"
"We did, but then we had to let him go."
"Do you have anything else to go on?"
"I'm in the middle of that right now."
"And where's Agent Mulder? I've been trying his cell phone for the past hour, which is why I finally called you."
"As soon as I have the painting frame in my hands, I'm going to go solve that problem. And I'm also going to ask for a warrant for another suspect--this one, I'm sure, will not be quite so difficult to prosecute."
"How long do you surmise your stay in Boston will be?"
"As long as I find Mulder in one piece, we'll be gone by tomorrow morning." But by the time I finish with him, he might be missing a few.
"Thank you, Agent Scully. I look forward to reading your compendium." With that, Skinner disconnected the line, and Sgt. Cook reappeared with the frame covered in a brown paper jacket.
"Finally. The piece de resistance," Pendleton remarked as he also entered the atrium. He gladly retrieved the package from Cook as the officer slid Scully's ID back to her. "Let's get the hell out of here."
"I'm not going anywhere until I locate Agent Mulder," Scully stubbornly announced. As if on cue, the reception desk's phone rang, and Cook answered it. She was just about to step away, but he held out the phone to her.
"It's for you, Agent Scully," Cook told her.
Maybe Mulder couldn't reach me on my cell because of Skinner. This had better be him.
"Mulder, where have you been?"
"Hate to shock you, Ms. Scully, but he's not here. But don't worry, he'll be fine in a few hours," Katherine Lloyd's voice on the line surprised her. Scully quickly shielded the receiver with her hand and signaled to Cook for some attention. "Can you get a trace on this call?" she asked.
"No need, Agent. I'll even give you the phone number of where I'm calling from. It's uh...--area code 641. 555. 9110. He's just around the corner from me."
"The FBI doesn't negotiate with-"
"I didn't kidnap him. I just put him down for the evening. Check out the phone number." With that, the line went dead, and Scully scrawled the number down hurriedly. Sgt. Cook spun around and gave the note to a non-uniformed cop. "Give me a minute," he said loudly as he traced the number through his computer. "It's a pay phone within our precinct."