Chapter Two
Scully seemed to be doing her very best not to argue loudly with Mulder.
"She's a child, Mulder. It's unprofessional."
"I'm not leaving her at the motel," he countered. "If nothing else she'll blow something up."
"Gee, thanks. And I can hear you both, you know." Anne sniped from the backseat of the gold Taurus.
"It'll be fine."
"Mulder, the Bureau will have your head for this!"
"Who's gonna tell them? You?" he turned on the charm of his dark eyes in an attempt to get her to cool down as they prepared to drive to the Budahas house.
"That's not the point. She's twelve."
"You're twenty-six, he's twenty-nine. Point?" Anne continued her backseat commentary from behind a Thomas Hardy novel, itching for a smoke. Her cigarettes were in his bag, which had been dropped off at the motel.
"She'll be quiet. Just hang around nearly invisible."
Anne whistled a few lines of 'Materiel Girl', which apparently made Scully's case. Anne looked like a Thai prostitute-tight and tall and poison green. Invisible was not part of the package.
"I will be quiet. I will not be invisible. " she specified. "And Dad, FYI, this is the most boring book in creation."
"Dickens is worse," Mulder promised.
"Mulder!" Scully had had it up to her ears. "Hardy and Dickens are both fine authors, Anne, you should try to read them."
"'Try' being the operative word. Dad, next left or we'll be circling for days and die of starvation."
"You have a map?"
"I simply know all that's knowable."
Actually, she'd looked it up on Scully's map while they were on the plane. But he didn't need to know that.
He took the next left. "Third house on the right-hand side," Anne added.
"Anne," Scully turned to her. "We need to be delicate with this. Mrs. Budahas has lost her husband in questionable circumstances. Try not to give in to your acerbic nature."
Anne gave Scully a thumbs-up. And received a raised eyebrow.
Mulder knocked on the door of the house. It was a single-family thing, white with three steps leading up to it. It had a neat lawn, one the neighbors had probably helped Mrs. Budahas keep up.
Personally, she'd never lived in a house like that. She'd lived in slums and Dumpsters in DC, depending on the season and how much of her family she had wanted to put up with. They hadn't ever looked for her when she had left. That information should hurt more then it did.
Mrs. Budahas opened the door. She was a birdlike woman, but wispy, dark hair all curly across her head, with the slightest flicker of eyelashes as she skipped her eyes over the three of them.
"Mrs. Budahas, I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder, this is Agent Dana Scully. We're here about your husband."
"Please come in."
She didn't remark on Anne, who was doing her best to look at everything. Photos of Colonel Budahas lined the wall of the living room, showing a star pilot in full regalia. His medals were in glass displays on the wall, and photos of him with his wife and family, even of their wedding. Everyone but her sat down.
"It started about a year ago," Anita Budahas began without preamble. "Bob developed this rash, under his arms." and her hands waved to show the space between elbow and armpit.
"At first we thought it was a reaction to the paint stripper, because of the renovations we'd been doing. But then he began to act oddly, yelling at the kids for no reason." she shrugged her shoulders under the paisley top. "Once, we were having a dinner party, and he sprinkled Tetra Meal-D all over his food."
Her hand mimed the motion Colonel Budahas must have used.
"He sprinkled fish food on his dinner?" Anne couldn't help but ask, incredulous. Anita nodded.
She wanted to know if he'd eaten it, too, but shut up when Scully glared at her.
"It's just…Bob took loyalty to his country as an oath, and now they treat us like strangers-"Anita cut herself off, eyes glittering.
"Mrs. Budahas, have you ever heard of this happening to anyone else?" Mulder asked softly.
Anita blinked at him. "Just one. Verla McClenan's husband, about two years ago. He had a breakdown of some kind. But it's not like he didn't get to come home."
She had finished in a whisper.
"Would it be possible to speak to Mrs. McClenan?" Scully asked.
Anita wiped her eyes swiftly. "Of course. She lives down the street. Let me get the kids and I'll take you."
And she swept off to collect her children and coat.
Anne leaned over to Mulder, about to speak, but he shushed her with a hand before she could start.
She really wanted a cigarette.
Verla McClenan had been less then pleased to be met with the Budahas family and two agents of the Bureau. But she let them see her husband, who was on the back porch.
He was making fly-fishing lures, using his own hair to wind around the flies, grinning to himself.
"How long has-" Scully started to ask.
"Almost two years now. The fly-fishing was his brother Hank's idea."
"Did the military ever say what caused this?" Mulder put in.
Anne caught the subtle shift in tone. Not for Verla McClenan was the gentleness that Anita had generated. No, she was being uncooperative. As such, she was treated with courtesy, but an edgy kind.
"Well, stress, I guess," she shrugged carelessly. "When you're the wife of a test pilot, you're just happy to have them home alive."
Mrs. McClenan detoured the room, stopping beside Mrs. Budahas. "Really, Anita-bringing the FBI to my house!" she whispered. Anita looked at her shoes.
"Well, thank you for your time, Mrs. McClenan," Mulder said, shooing the whole parade out the door, while Mrs. Budahas called her children.
Somehow, on the walk back to the Budahas house, Anne wound up with the kids. Their names were Charlie and Carol. They looked at Anne like she was from planet freak show.
"My dad's pretty good at finding people," she told them as they stared.
"A kid at school said the aliens took Dad," Carol piped up.
Well, what could she say? "Aliens usually return people, so that's the best case."
"Do you think aliens took him?" Charlie asked.
"I think we'll find out where he is. If aliens have him, we'll get him from the aliens. If the Air Force has him, we'll get him from the Air Force. That's how it works. We don't have a firm suspect list yet."
"Are you an agent?" Carol wanted to know.
"No. My dad's the agent. I'm like, I dunno, an assistant agent. I take care of annoying stuff for him, like setting up interviews with suspects and tracking down phone records," she made up as she went along.
"Don't you go to school?" Carol demanded.
"No. I kept blowing things up, so I got kicked out."
They stopped in front of the Budahas house, and Mulder handed Anita his card.
"Call us if you think of anything."
"We'll be at the Beach Grove Motel," Scully added.
Anita nodded.
After they started walking to the car, Mulder resumed his jaunty stride and began to talk.
"So, what'd you make of Uncle Fester down the block?"
"Mondo Bizarro," was Anne's contribution.
"It's called steriopity," Scully explained. "Memory loss brought on my extreme stress. Mulder, have you heard of the Aurora Project?"
"Yeah, sub-orbital spy craft. Piloted, too."
"Well, what if these guys flew those planes? Maybe they're the washouts."
"Did you see those photos in there? Colonel Budahas never washed out of anything in his life. These guys are trained to deal with stress."
Mulder had explained Occam's Razor to Anne once. Basically, it was the simplest solution, but it also limited the imagination. Anne argued that Occam's Razor needed to be used in conjunction with a wider imagination to be effective.
"Um, guys, isn't Ellen's Air Base one of the six places where wreckage from the Roswell crash were shipped? And, by that logic, couldn't the planes being flown be enough to cause physical stress in the pilot, enough to cause a breakdown?"
That incredulous eyebrow of Scully's was starting to annoy Anne big time.
"Good point," Mulder told her.
"Now that I've made such an excellent point, can we get some food?"
"Take out and a phone book," Mulder agreed. "Shall we canvas phones, Scully? Say over pizza?"
"You sure know how to show a girl a good time, " Scully said dryly.
They piled into the car, Anne in the backseat without her belt, pulling a notebook from her backpack.
"His idea of a movie night is The Blob," Anne confided to Scully. "Count yourself lucky that this is a work-related dinner."
Mulder had the good grace to laugh.