Chapter 13
The investigation into Dr. Wang's abduction had stalled. Mulder had been reading through other abduction stories looking for similar cases. The rest of the Fringe team had moved on. They were currently working on a case in Kansas, where several people reported seeing flashes of buildings and people from another time period. Walter seemed convinced there were ripples in the fabric of space-time.
Mulder had just gotten home after a long day of fruitless research. He picked up the mail from his floor. He hadn't been at this address long enough for mail to be coming to him. Most of it was coupons addressed to the previous tenants "or current resident." Today there was a flyer for a nearby grocery store and an ad for a rhododendron festival in Amherst. He was about to toss them both in the recycling when something registered in his brain.
The Hampshire County Rhododendron Festival flyer wasn't addressed to the last resident. It was addressed to "Reynard Lis."
His heart began to pound.
"Reynard" was the pseudonym Jose Chung had used for him in the novel From Outer Space. It referred to a fox. Was this a message for him?
He quickly looked up the meaning of "Lis," and learned that it was a Polish surname that also meant 'fox'.
He searched for the Hampshire County Rhododendron Festival. According to the internet, there was no such thing.
He read over the ad. It said the festival would be held at Jerome Park. The dates listed had already passed. The only additional information was the unhelpful addendum "For more information, ask for Paul Clifford!"
There was no Jerome Park in Amherst, he found.
There was, however, a used bookstore in Amherst called St. Jerome's.
He took a sick day the next day, and a train to Amherst.
Who had sent him the message? And why? Was it possible that it was Scully? If it were Scully, how had she known where to find him? It could have been someone else. It could have been Skinner wanting a secret meeting. It might have been one of his old informants. It might even have been the Smoking Man or one of his cohorts luring him to his death.
Was it Scully?
St. Jerome's was a small, cramped, dusty bookshop, empty but for the petite woman with curly silver hair at the register.
"Good morning," she said cheerily. "Can I help you find anything?"
"Paul Clifford," he tried on a whim.
"Let me check." She typed at her computer. "You're in luck. We just got one in. I haven't even had a chance to shelve it yet. I'll be right back." She went into the back room, leaving the shop unattended, and returned a minute later with the book.
Paul Clifford was the title of the book, not the author, Mulder saw with surprise. He examined it, pretending to evaluate it. This copy was a few decades old, a scuffed, faded paperback. There was no writing on the inside cover.
"I'll give it to you for two dollars," the shopkeeper said helpfully.
He checked the back cover, finding a library checkout card.
The last date on the card, written in pen, was four days away. The year was 1810. The date before it was 11/12/2009.
This was not a typo, it was a message. But what did it mean?
He bought the book.
At the train station, he scoured the book for more clues. There were no messages written in the margins, no underlined sentences.
On the train he reasoned out what he knew. The date written on the library check-out card seemed to be a time for a meeting. 1810 was 6:10 in the evening in military time. That gave him four days to figure out the meeting place. It was possible that information would be in some future communication, another encoded message in the mail, maybe, but he doubted it. Whoever was sending him these messages was being excessively careful, and wasn't likely to use the same method to send more than one clue.
No. This wasn't a puzzle, it was a treasure hunt. The first clue led him to this book. This book gave him the time for a meeting; that information was useless without a meeting place. Dividing that information into two different modes of delivery would make it less likely that he would get the message. Most likely the meeting place was contained somewhere in this book.
On the first page, the blank paper before the cover, he noticed a stain. It looked like a droplet of ink in the shape of a lemon. There wasn't a corresponding stain on the front cover or the cover page. It reminded him of something, an old method of writing with a toothpick dipped in lemon juice as invisible ink.
At home, he cut the blank page out of the book. He used to heat the paper with an incandescent light bulb to reveal the message, but there wasn't a single incandescent bulb in his house. Instead he went to his stove and turned on a burner, and held the paper just above it, just far enough to keep it from burning.
Letters appeared in brown. An 'n', an 'I', another 'n'. The word 'Inn'. Above it, the letters 'ntre'. He shifted the paper to heat the word.
Lindentree. Lindentree Inn.
He heated the rest of the paper, finding the number 206.
A search in a phone book found a Lindentree Inn in the outskirts of Boston. He'd decided against searching for it on his computer. He had no reason to believe anyone would be spying on him, but it didn't hurt to be careful.