Hi everyone! Sorry about the delay, but it's going to take a little bit longer to postbecause I'm at the part that hasn't been written yet. Special thanks to RedRose15, my beta reader, for helping with the ending train of thought.:-) Anyway, enjoy the next chapter. :-)
Disclaimer still applies
Chapter 11
I sighed heavily as Mulder maneuvered the car through the early morning Atlanta traffic. We were on our way to Mrs. Monterale's apartment to execute a search warrant. With Leever's statement, Mrs. Monterale's fingerprints on the IOU, and Leever iding her from her driver's license, we had enough to get a search warrant.
Since Mrs. Monterale was a blonde, and Leever had said the woman had brown hair, we were looking for a wig. We were also looking for a .32 caliber revolver, which we had just learned from the ballistics report was the caliber used to shoot Audrey. Mr. Monterale had owned a .32. We also had a warrant that allowed us to search for anything pertaining to the case.
Miss Perkins was the one who answered the door in response to one of the officers' pounding. When she saw us, she nearly slammed the door but the officers kept her from doing it while Nicole informed her that we had a warrant to search the apartment. She didn't have much of a choice but to let us in when the officers pushed the door open and held it there.
"What's going on?" Mrs. Monterale asked, coming down the hallway. Her eyes were big and frightened, and more than a little confused.
"Mrs. Monterale, we have a warrant to search your apartment. Please have a seat on the sofa with Miss Perkins," Nicole told her.
We got down to work, searching the apartment from top to bottom. We had leave to search anywhere we liked; we could look in anything because there were lots of places that a gun or a wig could be hidden.
"Hey, Mulder, Agent Scully, c'mere," Nicole called from the bathroom.
We hurried into the bathroom and saw Nicole pointing under the sink. There, stuck up under the pipe, like the .44 had been, was a small revolver. Mulder carefully pulled it out with a gloved hand and it was very definitely a .32.
"Well, one thing down, one to go," he remarked. "I'll get this logged in."
"Okay."
We continued searching, but for awhile we didn't find anything. Finally, I worked my way into the bedroom. I looked under the bed, but there wasn't anything under there, not even dust bunnies, so I decided to look in the closet. No place like a closet to hide something.
I opened the folding mirror door and let a little gasp. There were so many hat and shoes boxes; it was like looking at a small store. I almost didn't know where to begin, so I just picked the box closest to me and started there.
"Find anything?" I heard Nicole ask behind me, and I shook my head no.
"Not yet anyway. It's gonna take a little while to go through all these boxes."
"I'll say. Do you want some help?"
"Not at the moment, but maybe you can check the dresser drawers?"
"Sure."
I pulled another box down from the top of the stack and opened it. And there inside was a brown wig. The hair was long and silky; it looked expensive.
"I found it."
Nicole came over and just shook her head. "Well, I guess we're done."
She photographed and bagged the wig, and then we headed back out to the living room.
"We found the wig," Nicole told Mulder in a low voice. "I'm ending this circus now."
"What are you doing?" I asked in the same low tone.
"Arresting Mrs. Monterale."
Before Mulder or I could say anything else, Nicole walked over to Mrs. Monterale and told her to stand up; that she was under arrest for the murder of Philip Monterale. She Mirandized Mrs. Monterale and then handcuffed her.
Mrs. Monterale started crying heavily, almost hysterically, and Miss Perkins was trying to calm her down, assuring her that her lawyer would meet her at the police station.
"You coming Scully?" Mulder asked as he started to follow them out the door.
"Not yet. I want to do a little more looking," I replied.
"Okay, but I don't think there's gonna be anything else to find. The crime techs did a pretty good job and we just about took this place apart."
"Just the same, I'm going to look a little while."
Mulder headed out and I went back to looking, but it was really only half heartedly. I didn't know if I really believed I would find something or if I just didn't want to watch Nicole interrogate Mrs. Monterale. It was so hard to believe that she had killed her husband. It had seemed to me like she really was telling the truth. Either that or she was a really good liar. And I had believed her. I had believed my gut.
What was hardest to believe was that my gut feeling was wrong. But maybe things had changed after all the years on the X-Files. Or maybe I had just wanted to prove Nicole wrong so badly that I had overlooked all the obvious evidence. I didn't know anymore.
After a while of fruitless searching through the apartment and ending in the bedroom, I decided that this was a waste of time. There wasn't anything in the apartment. I guessed what I had really been hoping for was something to prove Mrs. Monterale's innocence.
Then I heard a noise I hadn't heard before. It sounded like a low beeping, not unlike the beeping my cell phone made when it was low on battery. And not unlike the beeping Mulder and I had heard just before we found the bomb in our car. My heart leaped up and settled in my throat. There was no way this could be happening again.
It sounded like it was coming from the wall with the bullet holes. I swallowed and made my way over. I didn't know what I was going to find, but I hoped it wasn't another bomb.
I tried to locate where the sound was coming from, but I couldn't quite pinpoint it. I put my ear closer to the wall, but I still couldn't find it. I stepped back and looked at the wall and shook my head in frustration. Something wasn't right about it, or maybe something wasn't right about the picture; I didn't know what it was.
Then I looked closer at the picture and I realized what was wrong. The painting was Impressionistic, so there wasn't any real distinct image, but it looked like it was suppose to be a painting of a forest stream, running over rocks and boulders. And there in one of the boulders was a hole. I put my finger on the hole and felt that the surface wasn't flat like the rest of the painting, but instead curved out slightly. The beeping sounded like it was coming from behind the painting; it was possible there was something behind it.
I tried to pull the picture off the wall but instead of coming off, it swung like a door, opening to reveal the inside of a small safe. Or what was left of a small safe. The outer door had been removed and all that was left was the body of the safe. And sitting inside the safe was a video recorder.
Adrenaline shot through me like I made an arrest. Maybe, just maybe, there was tape in the recorder, and maybe, just maybe, it had caught the whole thing on tape. Maybe.
There were two possibilities as well. Either Mrs. Monterale knew nothing about this hidden camera, or she did know and there was something on it that she didn't want us to see, so she hadn't told. And in that case, there probably wouldn't be any tape in the recorder. One way or the other, I had to see if there was anything.
As luck would have it, there was a tape in the recorder, and it was at the end. Unfortunately, it was the type of tape that had to be inserted into a cassette, and I didn't see anything like that here, so I headed down to the crime lab.
Ben set the tape up for me and we both sat down to watch it. I felt more than a little revolted when I found out that Mr. Monterale had liked to record himself and Mrs. Monterale having sex. We fast forwarded through several X rated sections and the tape was nearing the end. Then something else popped up and Ben quickly stopped the tape.
We could see Mr. Monterale standing on one side of the bed, the side closest to the wall, and on the other side we could see Nicole. We both sat silently as we watched the tape play out. It even had audio.
"What are you doing here Nicole?" Mr. Monterale was asking.
We could see that he looked alarmed and nervous, and Nicole looked angry.
"I came to see if you would change you mind," Nicole said, her voice shaking.
"I told you, it's over. I'm going back to my wife. I told her I had an affair, but she forgave me and we're going to work on our marriage."
"You said you loved me."
"I was wrong. I love Alexis. I'm not going to do anything to hurt her. She told me she's pregnant. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure this baby has the best of everything, and that includes a complete and loving family."
We saw Nicole gulp and take a deep breath, and then she said, "Phil, I-I, I'm pregnant too. It's your baby."
"What do you want me to do? Leave Alexis. Look, I'll pay child support if you want, but I'm not leaving Alexis for you. I'm sorry you couldn't be more responsible."
"I don't want child support; I want you."
We saw Mr. Monterale shake his head, and he bent down out of sight for a moment. Then Nicole quickly reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a gun. At that moment, Mr. Monterale turned around and when he saw Nicole pointed the gun at him, he took a step back in surprise.
"Nic, what are you doing?" he asked, his voice tight with alarm.
"If my baby has to grow up without a father, then so does Alexis's."
"You can't do this."
"Haven't you ever heard that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? You bet I can do this."
Mr. Monterale turned quickly to reach for something but Nicole pulled the trigger, fast, six times and Mr. Monterale fell from view with a strangled groan. And then the tape ran out.
"Whoa," Ben exclaimed in disbelief. "It's hard to believe."
"I know," I agreed. Despite the evidence we had against Nicole, it was still hard to grasp. I actually felt nauseous now that I knew the truth.
Then I realized I needed to get down to the station and show this to Mulder, and stop the interrogation of Mrs. Monterale before something really bad happened.
When I got there, I found Mulder standing outside the interrogation room, looking in. Nicole was inside with Mrs. Monterale and another woman I presumed was her lawyer.
"Hey, did you find anything?" he asked when he saw me.
"Yeah, and we don't have to look any further."
"Why?"
"I want you to look at this tape," I told him, handing him the tape.
"What's on it?"
"Just watch it."
We headed into the briefing room and Mulder popped the tape into the VCR. As the footage I had seen just a few moments earlier rolled along, I watched his face. First it was disbelieving, then realization and finally anger. When the tape ran out, he turned to me and said, "This, this, jeez! She played us Scully."
"At least we know the truth now."
Mulder just sighed and shook his head again disbelievingly. I knew he didn't want to believe this, but this was the truth and we couldn't change what the truth was. Despite my personal dislike of Nicole, I didn't like this outcome of events anymore than he did. Not only had she murdered someone, but then she had tried to frame an innocent woman for the murder.
"What about Leever iding Mrs. Monterale from her driver's license? And what about Audrey getting shot? I know Nicole murdered Monterale, but that still doesn't explain these other things."
"Maybe if we dug deeper then we would find some explanations."
"But some of the stuff just doesn't seem possible. Nicole was here when we got the call that Audrey had been shot."
"But Mrs. Lincoln called us from the hospital, after Audrey had already been in surgery for a little while. Maybe Nicole got back to the precinct just before we did."
"All Mrs. Lincoln could remember about the woman was that she had brown hair. Now, unless Audrey can tell us more, we don't have any other evidence to tie Nicole to her getting shot. And what about Leever putting the bomb in our car? And then iding Mrs. Monterale as the woman who paid him six hundred thousand to do it."
"Mulder, you know as well as I do that those events are not coincidence. They are all somehow tied in with Nicole; we just have to prove how."
"I know. But right now we don't have to prove anything else about how she's involved with Monterale's murder. We have it on tape."
There wasn't anything left to do except to call the local District Attorney and have him set in motion the process of dismissing the charges against Mrs. Monterale. We briefly considered that we let the Atlanta PD handle things from here on out, but since there was a bombing involved, we decided that we would finish what we started.
When we walked into the room with the District Attorney and interrupted Nicole's interrogation, she looked surprised and angry.
"What's going on?" she asked, looking from me to Mulder and then at Henry Pettelli.
"We are dismissing all charges against Alexis Monterale because of new evidence regarding the case," DA Pettelli told her. "Mrs. Monterale, on behalf of the city of Atlanta, I offer my deepest apologies to you for all the trouble and grief we've caused you. I hope you'll accept my own condolences for your loss. If there's ever anything that the District Attorney's office can do for you, just let me know."
Mrs. Monterale nodded her tear stained face, and then her lawyer walked her out of the room, followed by the DA. He had told us that he would inform Nicole's superiors of the circumstances and what we were going to do.
"I don't know what you think you were trying to pull, but I don't like it. What, what is the deal here?" Nicole asked hotly.
"Nicole Beaumont, you're under arrest for the murder of Philip Monterale," Mulder told her. Her eyes opened wide and her face turned red; she looked about ready to slug Mulder across the face.
"I thought we already went through this crap," she hissed. "How many times do you need convincing that Mrs. Monterale is the one who killed Philip Monterale?"
"We know that's not true. By the way, you aren't armed are you?" I asked. When Nicole didn't answer, I cautiously approached her and did a quick but thorough frisk to make sure she wasn't carrying any weapons. She wasn't, so I went on. "After you left, I continued searching and found something that without a doubt shows that you are the killer."
"And just how do you know that she didn't plant that evidence?" Nicole asked Mulder.
"First of all, my partner would never, ever plant evidence, and secondly, there is no way to spin this evidence," Mulder shot her accusation down. "It's plain, hard, cold fact."
"Really? How can you have plain, hard, cold fact when I didn't do anything?"
"I guess you're one of those people who have to see it to believe it, aren't you," I remarked. "Well, that can be arranged."
We had a TV and VCR brought in, and then Mulder went to get the tape. I didn't say a word to Nicole the whole time he was gone and she didn't say anything to me. Sometimes I had found the best approach for interrogating suspects was to simply look at them and not a say word. Not too many people like that, but it looked like Nicole was one of those people who wasn't bothered by that tactic. It was probably because she had used it on her own suspects more than once.
When Mulder finally returned, he asked Nicole if she wanted to confess voluntarily, but she just gave him an incredulous laugh and cocked an eyebrow. So, Mulder popped the tape into the VCR and began to play it.
As the tape rolled along I watched Nicole's face carefully, looking for some sign that this was affecting her, but I saw nothing. Only an angry, insulted stare. She sat through the whole thing without flinching.
When it came to an end, Mulder asked her "I know why you said you did it on the tape, but it doesn't sound like a very good reason to me. If I wanted to make someone pay, I would've had them pay child support. It would have made his life a living hell. He would've had to hide what he was doing from his wife since he had told her he was cutting off relations with you."
"What makes you think I'm even pregnant?" Nicole asked.
"Why would you tell him you were if you weren't?" I countered.
"If you thought that was the only way to get back the man you loved, you'd do it in a heart beat. Later on you could tell him you had a miscarriage," she said, staring at me coldly. I briefly wondered if I would, but I didn't entertain the thought very long and I pressed on.
"You are pregnant though, aren't you?"
"What does it matter if I am?"
"It doesn't really matter to us, and I don't it will matter to any of the prosecuting authorities, but you do realize that your child is going to grow up with a mother in prison."
Nicole laughed derisively and shook her head, her eyes mocking us. "C'mon, I'll get a good lawyer, we might take it to trial and I'll plead temporary insanity. I wasn't myself at the time, I was scared, I couldn't think, I was a young, unmarried, pregnant woman with a mediocre income wondering how on earth I was going to raise a child without a father. Any jury will feel sorry for me and they won't convict me, or if they do, their going to recommend a light sentence to the judge, because I am pregnant, and they aren't going to want my child to grow up with a mother in jail"
"That all may be true, but you forgot a couple of things," said Mulder. "One, you shot Audrey Lincoln and that wasn't because you were a scared, unwed mother-to-be. You were covering up another crime: the murder of Philip Monterale. You see, she saw you kill him. We have her statement."
I saw Nicole flinch uncomfortably, but she didn't say anything.
"Secondly, you paid a man to put a bomb in our car. That's a federal offense," Mulder continued. "That had nothing to do with you being a scared, unwed mother-to-be either. You were trying to take out the two federal law enforcement officers investigating this case. And you know what, I bet if we press Leever hard enough he'll talk."
"You both think you're really smart, don't you?" Nicole snapped. "What makes you think that I would ever confess to any of these things even if I did do them?"
"You don't need to confess, because one way or another, we will show that you are responsible for both," I retorted.
"Go ahead, show away, 'cause you will fail."
Mulder shrugged and then called for one of the officers to take Nicole to booking. As she disappeared from view I slumped into one of the chairs with a heavy sigh.
"This is so wrong Mulder," I groaned, dropping my head into my hands. I heard Mulder agree with a sigh as he sat down in the chair across from.
"I know," he said with another sigh. "We might as well start talking to Leever, see if he'll give us what we want."
I nodded slowly. What I really wanted right at that moment was to go back to my hotel room and get some sleep. I had been up for almost twenty-four hours, with just a quick cat nap while we had waited for the search warrant to arrive. I was getting worried about Mulder too. He'd had even less sleep than me, and though he claimed he could go without sleep for awhile, people got sloppy and got hurt when they went without sleep for too long. I didn't think that it was a wise idea to go interrogate Leever without a couple hours of rest under our belt.
"Hey Mulder, I think we should back to the hotel and get a little sleep. We aren't exactly on the top of our game right now," I said, standing up and heading for the door. I was expecting a protest from Mulder, but to my surprise, he simply nodded and followed me.
"You must be getting' psychic Scully," he told me with a grin as we headed out the door. "I was just thinking the same thing."
I gave a small grin of my own, and for some reason, I felt a little lighter, a little less stressed. I realized being at odds with Mulder was very draining, maybe even more than working this case.
Four loud, sharp cracks split through the air and both Mulder and I jerked around, looking for the source of the sound. It registered that the sounds were gunshots and we grabbed for our service pistols instinctively.
"Which way'd it come from?" Mulder asked me in a low voice.
"I'm not sure," I replied in the same low tone, looking down the hall towards the interogation room.
We slowly advanced down the hallway, keeping our eyes and ears wide open. My whole body was on alert, ready to spring into action at any second.
When we finally got down to the booking room, Mulder cautiously peeked around the corner of the open door. Two or three seconds passed, and he let out a slow breath.
"Oh… shit."