Chapter Four
Eastern Marion County Morgue, Indianapolis, Indiana
April 23rd, 2001, 2:06 p.m.
"And what time would you say you left last night?" a blonde male with blue eyes inquired of Jarod. His accent was one Jarod could not identify; he sounded too crass to be English but too proper to be an Aussie.
"Probably about twelve thirty," Verne answered and crossed his arms. "You know, Jacob, something strange is going on in this city."
Detective Jacob Cooper scribbled the last statement Jarod made in his red notebook and put away his pen. He walked toward the morgue's cold storage unit and pointed at it. "Is this the one? Number 25?"
"Yes." Cooper also pocketed his notes and took out a compact. He next brandished a makeup brush and dipped it inside of the blush.
"I already dusted the fridge for prints, Detective," Jarod told the man who whirled around. "It was the second thing I did after I called the station."
"What'd you use? I don't see any powder." Cooper turned back and squinted at the refrigerator.
"A solution called Sudan Black. It's good for use on non-porous surfaces."
"Since when did you become a crime scene investigator?"
"After I was a thief. Then I toured as a rigger." Jarod pointed to the bottle that was sitting near his surgical instruments.
"Good one," Cooper smiled and nodded briefly. "Okay, so you didn't find any prints. Who was the last person to leave this morgue?"
"I was."
"Were you alone?" At that moment, Scully and Mulder crossed the threshold into the examination room. She took immediate notice of the detective's gloved hands and withdrew her credentials.
"I'm Special Agent Dana Scully, and this is my partner, Dr. Fox Mulder. What's going on here?"
"Might I ask why the Bureau's suddenly interested in a missing dead body?" Cooper queried after taking a glimpse at her badge.
"A missing corpse?" Scully repeated the information incredulously.
"That's right, Agent Scully," Jarod confirmed, "Vanessa Walsh has disappeared from the morgue. I returned to this office after a short lunch at one-thirty and wanted to retrieve a sample for further study, but when I opened the refrigerator, she was gone."
"I can already guess whom we're dealing with," Mulder shook his head. "Were you going to tell me this anytime soon, Scully?"
"I wasn't absolutely sure about their involvement. You know how rock solid I need a lead to be before I follow through with it, Mulder," she responded serenely.
"May I continue, please?" Cooper interrupted them. "Thank you. I seem to be caught in the middle of a sinister plot here, and I would greatly appreciate being brought up to speed. But, first, Dr. Verne, please answer the question. Were you alone?"
"No, Agent Scully here was also present when I left last night. She's also a pathologist."
"Hmm, and so you two were autopsying this carcass?" Cooper went on.
"Yes, and I'd prefer it if you'd use the term 'victim', please. This was a murdered female human being, not just some run-over animal rotting on the side of the road," Scully corrected him.
"Duly noted, Dr. Scully. What's so damn important about the victim that has some high and mighty FBI agent all wound up about it?"
"Detective, look at this table. It's cold, steel, and lifeless. Are you married?" Jarod inquired of the investigator, who shook his head no. "All right, then imagine your sister lying here. She's been stripped naked of both her clothes and purse. Her throat's been pierced, and she bled to death for hours...painfully...probably where no one could hear her cries. We don't even know where she died—she was moved from the original place. Would you like to see her killer found so he can pay for his crimes?"
"Of course I would," Cooper hissed.
"Well we can't do that right now because the body's gone," Scully said in her honey over the rocks tone. She ran her tongue over her top lip and crossed her arms. His demeanor instantly changed, and his features softened.
"Was she raped?"
"No," Scully told him.
"My sister...got attacked last year. She was only seventeen—those bastards," Cooper nodded with sympathy. "She didn't get killed, but...I remember seeing her unconscious, beaten body in a slump on that sidewalk. I can't tell you how much rage filled me."
"Then help us, please," Jarod coaxed him and even lifted a hand to the detective's shoulder.
"It's a promise, Dr. Verne, Agent Scully. I'm sorry, what was your name again?" Cooper directed his question towards Mulder.
"Fox Mulder."
"I heard the title Dr. Mulder used. What's your practice?"
"Psychology, but I'm not licensed," Mulder stated. "I'm a criminal behaviorist, and I consult with the FBI from time to time."
"I'm not here on an official basis, Detective. Jarod and I discovered the body's condition together while I was here for a convention," Scully reported.
"Well, since I am here on a case, I guess it's time for the whole story. Go ahead and hit me," Cooper announced and pressed play on a tape recorder.
Scully went on to privy as much information as she could possibly remember about Vanessa Walsh's body as well as Theodore O'Shaungnessy's. However, she left out all details of the Consortium and their possible involvement. When she finished, he stopped the tape.
"Wow. Well, the first thing I think I can do is go over to the club district on the south side of town. That's where she was found, right?"
"Yes, but not necessarily where she was murdered," Jarod reminded him.
"Right. I'll get a couple of my associates to do some research on her. Since she was doing X, maybe she was a small time dealer, too. You never know, they come in all shapes and sizes. Oh, righto, while I'm thinking of it, should I get a few officers down to the western morgue and have them guard the building down there since this guy's got the same condition?"
"I bet that body's gone, too, but why not?" Mulder mumbled. Cooper's puzzled expression made the ex-FBI agent go on with a sigh. "If they're smart enough to remove their fingerprints from a scene and virtually leave without a trace, they will do the same thing over at that office. They'll do it probably faster, too, since we're onto them now."
"I've got too many questions and too few answers. Right now, I feel like going out and getting some. You wanna come, Dr. Mulder?"
"Thank you, but no. I would appreciate it if you'd keep me in the loop, though."
Scully's eyebrow raised in surprise; this was the first time in a long while that Mulder had denied himself access to an investigation. But as his eyes caught hers, she knew that he wanted more information—specifically from her.
Cooper parted without saying a goodbye; he was too occupied with a conversation on his mobile phone. Mulder reached over the gurney and grasped Jarod's hand confidently. "So you're Dr. Jarod Verne? It's a pleasure—Jarod."
"And I've been told to call you Mulder, not Fox," Jarod smiled and returned the shake.
Mulder's curiosity was piqued. "Now that's interesting. You don't happen to be able to speak with the dead, do you?"
"Um, no. I was a mortician once. But I wish I had that talent. Why do you think that?"
"Oh, no reason." He traded eye contact with Scully. "They're here," he sang.
"Who's they?" Jarod questioned Mulder and signaled them to follow him into his office.
"Well, I'm not absolutely sure of the key players' identities. I think Scully can fill us in on that," he nodded as all three of them sat.
"I'm not sure if I should be name dropping at this place. They might have bugged us," Scully swept her eyes around the room.
"Who would bug a coroner's office? The most exciting conversations I have are with myself," Jarod commented, which made Mulder grin.
"Some very powerful people who are very good at what they do," he responded.
"They must be, if they make an FBI agent nervous. Okay, then we'll talk someplace else. Have you eaten yet, Agent Mulder?" The Pretender removed a pen from an inkwell and wrote on a file folder Stay here for a moment. I'll be right back.
Mulder and Scully agreed without a word as they watched Verne disappear for a few minutes. "No, I haven't. How does Chinese sound, Scully?" Mulder asked out of the blue.
"Yummy," she replied sardonically. "You know, Mulder, there are better things in life than MSG."
"You're right. I live for Philly cheese-steaks—corn dogs are wonderful things, too."
"Remind me when our son grows up not to let you cook."
"Aye aye, Admiral Scully," Mulder saluted her and reached for her hand. She pulled away; her body language said what her mouth could not: not here and not now.
Thankfully, Verne reappeared just then with a gadget that looked like a portable metal detecting wand and started to sweep it around the room. "So where did we decide to eat?" he inquired and gave his visitors a jump.
"We were just discussing that. Do you like Chinese take-out?" Mulder wondered.
"I've tried sushi, but never Chinese. I hear that all the preservatives that they put into the food are really bad for your digestion tract," Jarod asserted, to which Scully gave Mulder an "I told you so" look. "But then again, I have tried Twinkies. They have a shelf life of up to twenty years if unopened. They're quite good, actually."
Scully's disdain returned, and as Jarod made a pass near the telephone, his wand began to ring as if a phone might. "Bingo," he muttered to himself and unplugged the landline. He made one more sweep and once satisfied, he set the instrument down onto his desk and sat behind it.
"That's clever. Most of those thingies just beep random noises," Scully reflected.
"Well, I was a security guard at a hotel in Vegas once. You just have to keep up with the technology," Jarod shrugged, which again, made Mulder smile. "The trick is to keep ahead of them. I also was a private eye for a week or so, too."
"So, uh, what made you quit?" Mulder caught the Pretender off guard.
But Jarod answered him quite seriously. "I kept on getting punched all the time. Tell me something, is that why they're called 'dicks'?"
"I never thought of it that way," he chuckled. "No, it's just a derogatory term like 'cop' for 'police officer'. So, Scully, I think we're safe now."
"Remember the man with the English accent? He's still alive; he didn't die in that car bomb like you thought. And Marita Covarrubias is still very well involved."
"How is it that you became reacquainted with him?" Mulder questioned Scully.
"I never told you this, but there's a reason why Skinner got so angry with you the last time you went off running after the truth. He trashed our case files—all of the ones that deal with the Consortium, anyway, because his life was in danger."
"Krycek?"
She nodded and crossed her legs. "There was a case amongst those files that Doggett and I reopened from one that dates back to eight years ago, Mulder. The Consortium's reconstructed the Litchfield program from its days of old, Mulder, and there was a pair of children that murdered their parents in Arizona just seven months ago. They killed the parents because of the virus."
"You mean to say that the children knew?"
"I'm not precisely sure how they did, but yes." She paused for a moment to let him absorb the history he missed and then continued. "There's something else you should know, though. Skinner didn't take the files because of his own life. He did it for me and William. The device that Krycek was carrying could also affect me due to the chip in the back of my neck."
"You know, when Skinner shot Krycek, I felt this peace enter me. It was for the first time in a long while that an enemy of mine received justice in full payment. I felt it leave when I entered the autopsy bay, and now I know why," Mulder's tone fell as his anger grew. "Scully, they can't win."
Jarod witnessed this conversation without a word, and it wasn't until his chair accidentally squeaked that they remembered he was even in their presence. "Does this organization have a name?" he finally spoke.
"No. It's made up of men who have the ultimate immunity to justice, so long as they protect our country from imminent invasion," Scully responded.
"So far, they've done a bang up job of it," Mulder smirked.
"Who're the invaders?"
"Maybe you should have asked which species from which planet," Mulder said.
"Uh...I'm kind of at a loss of words, here," Jarod told them as he scratched his head.
"It's understandable. Believe me, it was a long while before I could accept the fact that we are not alone in this universe," Scully commented.
"Let's not jump to any conclusions. I just remembered something, and I wonder if they thought to look here..." He arose from his seat, crossed the room to a small portable refrigerator, and opened it. "Aha. They didn't." Jarod triumphantly took out a test tube from a rack that had been marked with a blue sticker and showed Scully and Mulder his prize. "Ta-da."
"Is that Vanessa Walsh's blood?" Scully asked.
"Unequivocally yes. I withdrew it last night just before sewing up. Dana, you mentioned something called the Litchfield projects. Can you tell me what those involve, or is that information confidential?"
"I can tell you. But it's not something that I'd like Detective Cooper to know about."
"Your secret's safe with me." The Pretender closed the refrigerator, sat back down, and fingered the test tube as he listened to Scully.
"It's basically a program that engineers the ultimate undercover assassins, namely, children. You'd think, back in 1954, there was no such thing as cloning. However, some of America's most ingenious and fruitful scientists, the first genetic engineering of its kind was performed to create these children. They have the intelligence and strength of an adult--sometimes more in some cases. There were many cracks in the system; for instance, all adult Eves at the age of 50 develop suicidal tendencies. The males are named Adams, and I'm wondering if they've resurfaced, Mulder."
"You could be right," he acknowledged her.
"Well, I've got to hop over to the crime labs to process this for a workup. Is there anything else that you need me for right now?" Jarod questioned them. When they shook their heads no, he escorted them out of the office and left in his own vehicle.