Dana Scully stood in the doorway of the cramped and eclectic basement office she shared with her partner, with her coat still on, steaming coffee in her hand, and a furrow deepening in her brow.

"Another case already? Mulder, we just got out of the hospital and back from Missouri. . .don't you want some time to decompress and recover?" She knew her voice held a hint of a whine, but she was so tired of planes, rental cares, and airports that she didn't care. She was barely through the door, but already she sensed the day heading down an entirely different course than she had hoped.

Mulder's nervous energy, as he paced around the office looking for something, answered her question. Now that he had a new project, what was 'decompressing' and 'recovering' for her would be a tortuous standstill for him.

"We're fine though now, right Scully?" Her faced throbbed and she wanted to say that he could speak for himself, but he just went on. "And it can't wait. Look at it this way: at least you're still packed."

"But I'm not," she protested. "I either had to throw away those clothes, or get them dry-cleaned. I'd have to pack again." She crossed her arms and watched him rummage around, feeling petulant. She had thought that she'd have at least one day to get through her email inbox, work on her write-ups at her desk rather than in between commuter flights on her laptop, and take a long lunch on the Mall while there were still some cherry blossoms. But no, Mulder already had another case on his radar, and the Missouri case was forgotten.

"Well you're a pro by now, right? Shouldn't take you long." He was clearly only half listening, as he sorted through stacks of arcane reference books, rifled through files, and lifted up his computer keyboard to glance underneath.

"What are you looking for?" she asked, giving in with a sigh. She was dismayed that she would have to face the banality of more travel, but at least the work itself was never boring. And judging by Mulder's level of distraction, it would be a good one.

He paused to peer into an open drawer before he answered, and she left the doorway to set down her coffee on her desk and shrug off her coat.

"Early this morning—I guess late last night for him—I got an interesting email on my Blackberry, which also said I should check out some documents faxed into our office. . . I've just looked at them—"

"So that's why you left before I got up," Scully interrupted pointedly.

He stopped searching and stared at her for a moment, sheepish.

"Why didn't you wake me?" she asked.

"I'm sorry, but you looked like you were really knocked out. . ." He grimaced. "Uh, I mean you just looked like you needed the sleep, and I wanted to check it out to see if it was worth our time." He checked her face for her OK.

"So the email and faxes. . ." she sighed, deciding to let the matter go, and he got back to his canvass.

"Right, they came from an investigation of what at first glance seemed like a pretty straight-forward case. But it soon became pretty clear that it was an X-File; apparently we left quite an impression at his office, and so he immediately thought of us."

"Mulder?" She had no idea what he was going on about.

"Special Agent Rory Montes—he's the one who emailed and faxed me. But it should be interesting to see what his SAC says when we show up; his email gives the ides that she wasn't too impressed with his idea of us joining the investigation."

"Show up where, exactly?" Scully prompted warily, perching on her desk and watching him hunt.

"Frisco!"

"So, back to the south again." She tried to sound nonchalant, but they had just, just come back from that part of the US.

"Huh?" He cocked his head at her. "Oh, no not Frisco, Texas. No. . . The City by the Bay, San Fran, where Tony Bennett left his heart. . .you know." She was treated to the sight of his wool-blend clad ass as he bent over to check under his desk.

"Oh. San Francisco," Scully annunciated.

"Oh right, we East Coasters say it all wrong, I do apologize," he smirked, straightening back up.

"So. . .back to California then," Scully mused.

"Yes, but I know you like California, Scully. . ." Mulder teased her, and she sighed.

It wasn't so much the places that bothered her, although most were not exactly what she'd call tourist destinations. It was the traveling to get to the places that wore her down. They had just been to San Francisco too, and it was a long flight, but at least it meant no interminable stretches on the interstate in a rental car once they arrived. Not only that, but it was true, she did like the place. She felt an affinity with the state and its cities since she mostly grew up in San Diego.

"Could be interesting," she allowed, somewhat grudgingly.

"Could be very interesting," Mulder agreed. Then, "Aha!" He plucked up several sheets of folded paper that had been lying flat in the crease of his chair, then plopped down in it.

"Okay, you ready?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"Last week, Marie and Geoff Love, 42 and 43, and Sarah Grant, 14, were all found brutally murdered," he recounted. "The couple's dog was also found killed at the scene. The hook is, the house was completely locked from the inside."

"A 'locked room' case," Scully noted. "No wonder you're interested. . .But Mulder, there've been numerous cases like that start off like this, and they always turn out to be murder-suicides or something."

"Or 'something.' The Medical Examiner has ruled out the possibility of murder-suicide, due to body placement and wounds' locations, and the blood spatter patterns photographed by the Forensic Service Department investigators concur with those findings."

"Do you have—"

"Montes's faxed and emailed documents don't include the detailed autopsy report, but they'll avail it to us in San Francisco, so that you can confirm those findings," Mulder told her, anticipating what she was about to ask. "But the ME's been lobbied heavily by the authorities to support the theory of murder-suicide, and so far he's standing firm."

"You haven't mentioned one possibility: what if all the windows and doors had been locked from the inside except one—the front door, say—and one of the victims then locked it after the perpetrator left, to ward against further attacks? Then the person succumbed to his or her injuries, thus locking up the three victims in the house.

"That is one theory, of course," Mulder agreed. "But the physical evidence pretty much rules it out. There was no blood trail from the three bodies to any doors or windows, and judging from the photos of these killings, there would be a blood trail, or at least some droplets. Check it out." He pivoted his monitor so that she could see the digital pictures he'd been emailed, and she slid off her desk and crossed over to his. Despite looking over countless crime scene pictures, some—like these—still had the power to affect her. She grimaced at the savagery in the images.

"So no," Mulder continued as she reached for his mouse to zoom in and visually inspect the wounds, "it looks like their injuries were pretty much immediately fatal, and that they were murdered immediately, one right after another. No time to lock up behind their fled killer. That aspect of the case is the first reason Montes gives for contacting us."

"Okaaay," Scully nodded. "A homicide. The details are certainly intriguing, I'll admit, but it's a case for the SFPD. How did the FBI get involved?"

"Yep, I'm getting to that. There's also a second reason he gave: there was additional blood found in another point of the house—and at a set of windows in this case—but that blood isn't directly correlated to the primary crime scene. No, rather we have another 'locked room' within the locked room scenario. . ."

Scully raised her eyebrows, totally lost, but not wanting to interrupt him now that he was getting into his flow. He lived for expositions like this.

"The Loves had three children, 2, 10, and 12. All of them are now missing, and the kidnapping element bounced the case to the FBI. They were all set to be home that night, according to the mother of Sarah Grant, the victim who was there as a babysitter. No ransom calls, so far. Now with the two younger children, Mikey and Jonathan, there's no solid evidence that they were in the playroom at the time. It appears as though they were—a videogame was mid-play on the kids' computer, a fresh, still-wet pacifier was lying next to a pile of blocks when the SFPD arrived on scene shortly afterwards—but it's not absolute."

"But the oldest?"

"Right. The oldest, the daughter Winnie. . .We have evidence that Winnie was in this particular room before she vanished inexplicably. A door which opened up into the room was found about two inches ajar, but it was blocked by a full dresser that had been pressed up against it. Once inside, the FSD found fresh blood smears on the dresser, apparently from when she shoved it up against the door and got cut by one of its nails. The windows, which are structurally unable to open wider than five inches, were also covered in her blood. They were fully intact, but there's some physical evidence that she used a wooden chair to try and break through.

"But for whatever reason, she was unsuccessful with that, and there were no other means of exit from the room. Yet somehow Winnie—and I'm betting Jonathan and Michael, too—disappeared from it, and there are still no traces of them at all.

"And we know the blood is hers. . .how?" Scully asked, though she could admit to herself that the fact there was blood but no victim inside a room blocked off from within was warrant enough for an X-File as it was.

"Well obviously we can't say so with absolute certainty because we don't have her DNA for comparison, but we can pretty damn much deduce that it is, since it's her blood-type, and her fingerprints that are in it, and hers alone. . .The parents did some sort of safety initiative with their kids' school a few months ago, where they fingerprinted them and made up cards, which the school kept on file. The SFPD compared them with the bloody prints and came up with a positive match."

Scully nodded, mulling over everything he had told her, and she suddenly came to a realization.

"Mulder," she said gently, looking into his eyes. "We've seen this sort of case before. . ."

He looked back for a moment, noting her expression, then looked away. "Yeah."

"Young kids disappearing from their rooms without a trace, just before they would have met a horrible fate. . ."

"Yeah Scully, I admit that it crossed my mind." He was suddenly grave now, but wouldn't meet her concerned gaze.

"Starlight," Scully said. "Do you really think that's what happened here, Mulder?"

He shrugged, and made a show of flattening out the creases in the folded fax.

"And if you do, do you really think you should take on this sort of case, and so soon? I don't know. . .maybe in this instance, when it's so personal, it's better left undisturbed."

His eyes suddenly flashed up at her. "The truth is never better left 'undisturbed,' Scully—especially in personal cases. . .And I know you agree with me." Finally he was looking into her eyes, and she was drawn in and exhilarated by his passion, as always. "I accept what happened to my sister, and I made peace with it—I did. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to detach myself now. It's a part of me. If I can help other families find closure, or some sense of what happened because of what I experienced, I sure as hell will!"

He looked defiant, like she was going to challenge him, but she didn't. It was his decision, and even if she was the one who would have to help him through any emotional fallout, she couldn't tell him what to do. She reached across his messy desk and curled her fingers around his.

"Alright, Mulder," she sighed, wanting to believe that he really, truly had made peace with his sister's death and that there wouldn't be any emotional fallout this time. "Let's go to San Francisco."