Sheriff Charlie Spooner had been the law in Hitchcock since Sheriff Dubbitt had retired in 1972. A short graying man with thin glasses, he stood in the wreckage of the old Laundromat and stared out the back of it into the open motel room behind it. Something had taken out a good half of both structures and nearly both roofs. Whatever it was that had caused the destruction had not left much of a trace of whatever it was. Spooner knocked a piece of wreckage with his foot out of the water spilling the floor as a few pipes stopped spraying.

"I guess the water department finally got my message." He commented as he noticed Fox Mulder wandering through from the motel. "Sir, I can't let you in here."

"Fox Mulder, government agent." Mulder flashed his identification. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Water boiler exploded." Spooner replied distantly as he eyed the agent. "Anything I missed?"

"Yes," Mulder gestured through the former back of the Laundromat to the missing back room of the structure parallel with Scully's now open motel room. "My partner was in the room in the motel right across the alley. I was wanting to know if she had been in it when the Laundromat exploded, that is, if it exploded."

"You have anything you really want to tell me." Spooner pulled Mulder out of the way of the contractor checking the damage for the accident report. The stout and balding figure removed his glasses to wipe the steam off with his shirt, groused about his wet feet and then closed his waterproof legal pad.

"Charlie," Carl Williams had lived in Hitchcock all his life. His father had opened the Bar and Grill in 1958 and did construction jobs on the side. "I can't figure out what caused the boiler to explode. Only thing I can determine is that it was hit with a piece of blunt trauma, but whether it was from the explosion or after is hard to tell."

"Did anyone see a giant woman?" Mulder asked.

"Aw, jiminy cricket…" Sheriff Spooner mumbled and tugged Mulder out of the way as Carl continued looking for something he missed. "I thought you said you was a FBI agent. You're one of those damn paranormal researchers, ain't ya?"

"Sheriff…"

"Look," Spooner continued. "It's been nearly more than forty years since Mrs. Archer died. She died. That's it. Nothing more. She didn't become no stinking…"

"Sheriff," Mulder started at him offensively. "I am with the FBI and I am here trying to confirm the veracity of the urban legend over Nancy Archer's death. If you would just follow my reasoning, I think my partner might have contacted whatever she might have been overwhelmed from back in 1957."

"You've been out on the old Fowler estate?" Charlie sneered exasperatingly. "Well, you're glad I didn't catch you out there. I'd have run you in, agent or not."

"Sheriff…"

"It's been a long time, agent." Spooner stood a bit shorter than Mulder. "No one wants to recall it. You're not going to find anyone who wants to recall anything. It never happened."

"Did anyone see the boiler explode?"

"No one."

"Three kids across the street." Carl looked up.

"Out after curfew…" Charlie replied. "And before you ask," He turned to Mulder. "It was a dark cloudy night. And before you ask, they didn't see any giant lady."

Mulder narrowed his eyes as sheriff Spooner turned to warn Carl from talking out of turn again. Stepping through the wrecked wall around old washing machines lying face down on the tile floor, he placed his foot into the remains of the maintenance room in back of the Laundromat. The path took him through the alley and into the opening of Scully's motel room. Sections of wall mixed with loose and broken bricks littered around him as he stooped to inspect the wall. It had been shattered neatly like a disassembled puzzle in both directions. Reaching for his cell phone, he looked to the sheriff and the contractor talking in hushed tones and then punched a few buttons on his cell. He tried to picture what it might have been like for her to discover her body physically increasing in size and her clothes shredding apart on her. She would have been terrified and scared out of her wits; maybe even desperate to get out of sight, but where could she hide? An empty warehouse? An old barn?

"Skinner, here…" The voice of his superior came from the phone.

"Chief," Mulder started. "I've got an…"

"Mulder," Walter Skinner removed his glasses irritatingly and responded. "What the heck are you doing in Hitchcock, California? Scully better be dragging you back on an airplane."

"Chief…" Mulder surveyed the wreckage space trying to judge how big Scully might have become. "I was going through the old files and I came out here to do a follow-up, and right now, I don't know where Scully is."

"You better not be telling me she was abducted."

"Nothing quite so believable…" Mulder pulled Scully's ruined torn jacket out from under the shattered back brickwall behind the motel.