This one is for the customers at work, who fill me with such great joy and such resounding dread.
I don't own the X-Files. Duh.
In June, the FBI grapevine mysteriously comes knocking from around the corner by the water cooler (really really not accidentally) to let me know that Jerry's screwed up.
Acutally, it's more, "Spooky ruined another one." Followed, I assume, by "That's it for Scully," although I didn't stick around to follow up on it. Poor Jerry.
Who am I kidding? Jerry and I haven't worked together in ages. Poor Scully.
The next week I hear a remark about "Spooky and the Mrs." in the cafeteria and I know. Scully's losing the respect of her peers working with me.
As much as I pretend I don't care, I don't want Scully to lose the respect of her peers. I have to get her out of the basement and that's all there is to it. My career's already ruined. No reason to ruin hers.
Strictly speaking, she's on a voluntary assignment, and if she were to transfer back to Quantico they'd pretty much have to let her.
Of course, this goal is not easy to accomplish. It's hard to see her coming into the office smirking like an idiot and quoting Glengarry Glen Ross (the movie, not the play) under her breath and not want her to stay. After our action-packed first cases, though, I do try to tone things down a bit. It helps that my personal Deep Throat has gone silent, and my sister is still missing with nary a peep and other than that we really have nothing to do but sit back, twiddle our thumbs, and wait.
A few things are going on, of course. I get asked to do some profiling – in the most minimal sense – for some bank robberies that are being tracked by an agent named Jack Willis (Scully looks really studious every time he calls but I don't know why) and Scully dutifully fills out her living will since she's now in the field, a process that takes an entire day for her to explain exactly what she wants in various circumstances, since I'm witnessing the thing.
What can I say? It ate up a day.
The NASA microwave survey gets canceled a month into the project, causing me to mope around for an entire week, much to Scully's confusion; and I have a call from some guy named Arlinsky at the Smithsonian who wants an opinion about a UFO photograph (fake). Mom guilt trips me into going on vacation to visit her for a week of depressing boredom as we tiptoe around each other trying not to talk. Yet another prankster starts sending me letters about yet another "my wife was kidnapped by aliens" hoax in January. Scully is still working with me. I thought for sure the New Year would bring a resolution for her to move out of the basement and get on with her life.
The bank robberies continue, and I get more involved in the profiling. Scully does a lot of autopsies to fill her time, but she always returns to the basement, all the way through May and into June. In fact, it's not until July that another genuine X-File makes it's appearance on our doorstep.
It begins with Scully coming back from lunch late, grinning like the cat that swallowed the canary, several goldfish, and the dog's favorite chew toy. "Guess what?"
I am busy cleaning barbecue sauce off my jacket, so I just mutter "What?" in her general direction.
"This man I went to the Academy with, Tom Colton, is working a case in Maryland that sounds like an X-File. Not one of the old ones either. We'll be able to watch it develop firsthand."
Shouldn't I be excited about this in her place? And why did she even bring it here? "So why don't we drive up there and take a look then?"
Something in her pauses, for just a second. "Sure." But she doesn't sound sure anymore. She sounds almost reluctant to bring me along, and I wonder what it is she's afraid will happen.
It's about an hour drive to Baltimore from Washington in which Scully tells me what little she knows about the case. "It's a murder, Mulder."
Helpful, she is. "What kind of murder?"
"Random victims, livers removed, no forced entry."
Livers removed? "So where's the X-File?"
"Mulder, it's probably nothing."
We wouldn't drive to Maryland for nothing. "What's nothing?"
"They can't find the point of entry," she mutters.
She's kidding. "They can't what, Scully? I can't hear."
"There's no point of entry," she grumbles louder, checking the address against the numbers on the building next to us. "Two more blocks."
No point of entry. Livers removed. This sounds familiar – I think it's happened before, but I can't remember the details except that there's no arrest made and it's somewhere in the X- Files. I think it was a long time ago – and that that killer has to be dead. Doesn't he?
But then, if he can get into a locked room...
Scully parks the car and we enter an office building. In the elevator, she drops the reason she's uneasy. "I went to the Academy with the Agent in Charge – his name's Tom Colton."
I don't respond except with a raised eyebrow.
"Mulder, you should know he's a little... hesitant to work with you."
Spooky strikes again.
"It's not that he doesn't know your reputation –" we move out of the elevator and down a hallway toward the crime scene tape "- it's just that he's heard that you're a little unorthodox and he likes things by the book."
Not good enough. "So what you're saying is that he doesn't want me here because he knows my reputation."
She leads me into the office. "No, Mulder. He knows my reputation, and he asked me to join the case. When I told him I thought you should take a look, he agreed, but he was a little worried it was outside your purview." She sounds like she almost believes that explanation. I put on a glove and start giving the dead guy's desk a once-over, but it's obvious that someone's already done that.
I'm not letting her off the hook. "So why didn't they ask me?"
"They're friends of mine from the academy," she reminds me, "I'm sure they just felt more comfortable talking to me."
I know what she's not saying, but I'm gonna make her say it anyway. We've been dancing around it for the last year. "Why would I make them so uncomfortable?"
"It probably has to do with your reputation," she says, resigned to the fact that no matter how she tries to pretend it's not true, I'm always going to be Spooky.
But maybe she won't spend her life as Mrs. Spooky. "Reputation? I have a reputation?"
"Mulder, look. Colton plays by the book and you don't. They feel your methods, your theories are..."
She's finally come out and said it. Good on her. I'll be expecting her resignation any day. "Spooky? Do you think I'm spooky?"
"Agent Scully's in here sir," says a voice from the hall, and then a man about Scully's age walks in. He walks up to Scully and says, "Dana, sorry I'm late," without a glance at me, and I don't like him.
Scully tries to ignore the slight. "We just got here. Er, Fox Mulder, Tom Colton." We shake hands, and try to break each other's grips.
"So, Mulder, what do you think, does this look like the work of little green men?"
I hate people. Especially FBI people. "Grey."
"Excuse me?"
If he expects me to be an ass, I can play the part well. "Grey. You said green men, a Reticulan skin tone is actually gray, they're notorious for their extraction of terrestrial human livers." Inspiration strikes, born of desperation to make this asshole squirm. "Due to iron depletion in the Reticulan galaxy."
He blinks. That's all. "You can't be serious."
Yeah, well, I can't take this anymore. "Do you have any idea what liver and onions go for on Reticula?" I need to get away from this prick and have a look around. "scuse me."
Colton continues to talk to Scully, who I can tell is the one he really wants here anyway. "Dana, I've been thinking about this and I have a theory, might explain a lot, tell me what you think."
There's a small metal filing on a newspaper on the floor that I pick up with my tweezers.
"What if the guy enters..."
Right above it is a ventilation shaft. I pick up the fingerprint guy's brush and dust the cover of the shaft, because that's the only point of entry, isn't it. Windows won't open, door is an obvious no, and this is the only other hole in the wall, ceiling, or floor.
"Hold on a second. What in the hell's he doing?"
Making Colton squirm is just an added bonus.
"Err, that vent is six inches by about eighteen, even if a Reticulan could crawl through, it's screwed in place."
I pull the brush away to reveal the weirdest fingerprint that I have ever seen.
The drive back to Washington is tense. Scully is staring at the print like it will magically start talking and explain why it's three inches long and only half an inch thick. I choose not to interrupt her pondering. If she has any brain at all she'll get the hell out of Dodge.
But she still comes into work the next morning, after I've been here all night looking up that X-File. Lucky for her, I am now ready to report on it. Oh, how she must enjoy these reports.
She walks into the office and sits down in her chair, which I have placed next to mine in front of the miniscule light board. "Mulder, I don't know how Colton's going to deal with that fingerprint you found."
No hello, how'd you sleep. Nope, not from Scully. I pull out the X File. "Scully, this is a little bigger than Colton realizes."
"How so?"
I show her the fingerprint slides. "This is the print I took yesterday from Usher's office, these others are from an X-file. Ten murders, Baltimore area, undetermined points of entry, each victim had their liver removed. These prints were discovered at five of the ten crime scenes."
"Ten murders? Colton never mentioned-"
I cut her off. "Most likely, he's not aware of them. These two prints were lifted five years before he was born at Palhatton Mill. And these three were lifted probably, five years before his mother was even born."
"Are you saying, these prints are from the 1960's and the 1930's?"
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I pull off my glasses and set them down on the desk as Scully gets up to pace around the room. "And fingerprinting was just coming into it's own in 1903, but there was a murder involving an extracted liver." It wasn't like I could have slept last night anyway.
She pushes away from me, from my light board, and from the insanity of what I'm proposing. "Of course." I don't know what kind of solace she's expecting to get from the walls behind the desk, but at the moment I have an autopsy photo of a murdered woman that some coroner thought might be Samantha, two crop circle photos, six UFO photos, and a couple of mug shots, so I don't think she'll be getting any comfort off that any time soon, but she's still staring at my wall like it contains all the answers to the known universe.
Time to get back to the good ol' FBI system. "Now that's five murders every thirty years. That makes two more to go this year."
She turns to face me. "You're saying these are copycats."
With really huge fingers. "What did we learn in our first day at the academy, Scully? Each fingerprint is unique, these are a perfect match."
"Are you suggesting that I go before the Violent Crime Section and present a profile declaring that these murders were done by aliens?"
What the hell? No. "No, of course not, I find no evidence of alien involvement."
"Well, what then? That, that this is the work of a hundred year old serial killer who is capable of overpowering a healthy six foot two businessman?"
It really is weird, isn't it? "And he should stick out in a crowd with ten inch fingers."
"Look, bottom line, this is Colton's case."
No, it isn't. "Our X-file dates back to 1903, we had it first."
"Mulder, they don't want you involved. They don't want to hear your theories. That's why Blevins has you hidden away down here."
And for some reason, you won't leave me here to rot, Mrs. Spooky. "You're down here too. Look, why don't we agree to this, they'll have their investigation, we'll have ours and never the twain shall meet." She looks up at me as I stand next to her in my own private den of insanity and for just a second I think that somehow she's as stuck here as I am. I force the thought quickly away. "Agreed?"
So by the next day Scully had dutifully typed up her report and submitted it, and then she stopped by the office to tell me she was going home to sleep because she had to do a stakeout all night.
The only thing wrong with that is that it's a waste of time. Serial killers sometimes return to the scene, but not this one. He's already beaten the building. They should have had me do the profile. After all, I am the professional profiler in this office, am I not?
But nooo, Spooky's not good enough anymore.
She was gone before I had a chance to object to her stakeout.
I killed time until five and then went home but I can't focus on anything. And it's not like I can sleep anyway. So I drove over to Baltimore and park in the visitor parking lot down the street, then I walk up to George Usher's parking lot.
If you use the standard FBI stakeout model, there should be a car by each entrance. In this case that's every duct, drainpipe, fire escape, and garbage chute. I have to wander by a LOT of cars to find Scully, but I just try to make it obvious that I'm trying to be seen, and no one stops me.
She's sitting in her car when I approach, talking on the walkie. And that's when I realize how stupid I'm being. Didn't I want her out of the basement? Didn't I want her to leave before I ruin her career the way I've ruined my own? And here I am, trying to stop her from doing real work?
I'm an idiot.
I turn aside before she sees me, taking my frustrations out on an innocent beer can, before it hits me. I've just made a scary noise in a garage full of tense FBI agents looking for people who make scary noises.
Shit.
So I run. The idea that they can't catch me is ludicrous, but if I made it in I should be able to make it out okay once I get off this level. I jump through a convenient hole in the wall and keep running, but -
Click.
That's a gun.
Pointed by Scully, though. I raise my hands anyway. "You wouldn't shoot an unarmed man, would ya copper?"
She heads away from me, annoyed. "Mulder, what the hell are you doing here?"
Might as well fulfill the original mission. "He's not coming back here, his thrill is derived from the challenge of seemingly impossible entry. He's already beaten this place, if you'd read the X-file on the case, you'd come to the same conclusion."
"Mulder, you are jeopardizing my stakeout."
I give up. So I make a peace offering. "Seeds?"I ask, holding out my bag of sunflower seeds. She ignores me, so I continue my lecture. "You're wasting your time, I'm going home."
I can't believe I just drove an hour to tell Scully she's wasting her time.
Which is about when I hear the noise. Kind of a metallic bang type thing. I follow the sound and hear something moving – and see a duct wiggling.
I need Scully.
She's about to get back in her car when I find her, but she responds right away when I tell her, "Scully, call for backup and get over here."
I don't even hear the call, but I do know she follows. I wait until she is standing around the corner from the duct with me and point to the one that's wiggling – like she can't see. "In there."
We both approach, cautiously. She points her gun and yells, "Federal Agent, I'm armed. Proceed down the vent, slowly."
Someone's foot kicks open the hatch and a man exits. Several more agents come running, Colton included. Random people in suits arrest him, and Scully was right.
Scully was right.
I was wrong.
I turn to Scully. "You were right."
They read the man his rights and take him to the local PD. Colton has him fingerprinted while I grab my files out of my car. Eugene Victor Tooms does not have ten-inch fingers, but I make a quick dash upstairs anyway.
I scan my prints into the computers and pull up the fingerprint matching program. There they are, side by side. The problem, as far as I can see, is that they're a radically different shape.
Sometimes prints get lifted off of something weird and we have to reshape them, so the computer will allow you to change the shape of a print. I access that feature, stretching Tooms' print until it's the same size as the one from my X-File.
Match.
Well how about that.
So I dash back downstairs. Colton is just about to administer a polygraph. While he's out in the hallway talking to the press, or his boss, or someone he feels he needs to impress, I duck into the room where the polygraph is being set up.
"Excuse me, can I see the questions list please?" I ask the woman setting up the machine.
"Who are you?"
"Agent Mulder. I've been working the case and there's a couple of things I want to make sure get asked."
"And you don't want the pretty boy to forget, huh? Well, go right ahead," she tells me, "hit me." She pulls out a pad of paper and a pen.
Here we go. "I want to ask if he's over one hundred years old-" she raises an eyebrow, "And if he was ever in Palhatton Mill-" the eyebrow lowers- "In 1933."
She sets down the pad and paper. "What's your name again?"
"Special Agent Fox Mulder."
"Well, Spooky," she says, "I'll ask your questions, but the answers won't tell you jack."
"Is your full name Eugene Victor Tooms?"
"Yes."
We're standing in the observation booth watching the test.
"Are you a resident of the state of Maryland?"
"Yes."
"Are you an employee of the Baltimore Municipal Animal Control?"
"Yes."
A good examiner will never add inflections to the questions she asks. That's what makes these observations extremely dull.
"Is it your intent to lie to me about anything here, today?"
"No."
"Were you ever enrolled in college?"
"Yes."
"Were you ever enrolled in medical school?"
"No."
"Have you ever removed a liver from a human being?"
"No."
The fact that he doesn't even flinch when we ask him that tells me something. He's too calm. He's prepared.
"Have you ever killed a living creature?"
"Yes."
"Have you ever killed a human being?"
"No."
Again, no flinching. Nothing.
"Were you ever in George Usher's office?"
"No."
"Did you kill George Usher?"
"No."
"Are you over one hundred years old?"
Here we go.
"That must be a control question," says Colton.
Time to break that news. "I had her ask it."
Scully, sitting next to me, doesn't bat an eye.
"No."
"Have you ever been to Palhatton Mill?"
"Yes."
"In 1933?"
Scully turns to look at me with an unreadable expression.
Colton twitches but stays silent.
"No."
"Are you afraid you might fail this test?"
"Well, yes, because I didn't do anything."
"That concludes the test. I'll discuss your results with Agent Colton and you'll be notified later today."
When they lead Tooms back to his cell, Colton turns on me. "What the hell was that?"
I can't think of a good response that he'll accept so I just shrug.
"Shit." He pushes by me and goes into the next room. The rest of us follow at a distance. "Did he pass?" he asks the examiner.
"Well, the results indicate zero deviation from baseline."
I move over to the table to get a better look.
"He nailed it, A plus, as far as I'm concerned, the subject did not kill those two people." She's already moving the results away from where I'm sitting so I stand up and look over her shoulder.
The detective walks in to tell us, "Maintenance people at the office building, confirm the call to animal control regarding a bad smell. They found a dead cat in the ventilation ducts on the second floor."
"Well, that's that," says Colton.
"It still doesn't explain what he was doing there that late at night," Scully points out.
"So, he's one of the few civil servants we have with initiative, and we busted him for it," Detective Johnson says.
Scully rolls her eyes. "He was crawling up an air duct, by himself, without alerting security."
Colton jumps in. "Dana, he passed the test, his story checks out, he's not the guy. It doesn't mean that your profile's incorrect."
But I've finally got a good look, and Tooms didn't pass everything. "Scully's right, it is the guy."
"Whatta you got, Mulder?" asks Johnson. He sounds exasperated, and I haven't even had time to annoy him yet. Colton must be talking.
I took a course in interpreting polygraphs at Quantico, even if I never get to use it. "He lied on questions eleven and thirteen, his electrodermal and cardiographic response nearly go off the chart."
Detective Johnson loses his friendly tone. "Is number eleven the hundred year old question? Well, let me tell ya, I had a reaction to that stupid question. And what the hell is this Palhatton Mill thing?"
But they didn't know it had happened before. "Two murders with matching MO's occurred in Palhatton Mill in 1933, just look at the chart."
"My interpretation of those reactions..." buts in the examiner.
The detective is undeterred. "I don't need you or that machine, telling me if Tooms was alive in 33."
A valid point. Still, "He's the guy."
"I'm letting him go."
The detective and the examiner leave us to it. Colton turns to Scully. "You comin'?"
This is her big chance to save her career.
"Tom, I wanna thank you for letting me put in some time with the VCS, but I am officially assigned to the X-files."
"I'll see what I can do about that."
"Tom, I can look out for myself."
"You said Mulder was out there... that guy's insane." Colton stomps out.
She said I was out there? We walk out of the room together and head down the hall to the stairs.
"You knew they wouldn't believe you, why did you push it?"
A good question. I guess I just enjoy it. "Maybe I thought you caught the right guy." But she deserves the whole answer. "And maybe I run into so many people, who are hostile, just because they can't open their minds to the possibilties, that sometimes the need to mess with their heads, outweighs the millstone of humiliation."
We stop at the stairs. "It seems like you were acting very territorial-" she looks down suddenly. "I don't know, forget it." She tries to turn away.
On impulse, I reach out and touch the necklace she's wearing. Some kind of saint's medal or somesuch. Sometimes it's the most unexpected people. "Of course I was. In our investigations, you may not always agree with me but at least you respect the journey. And if you wanna continue working with them, I won't hold it against you."
And then I climb the stairs and leave her there to make her own choice, and I'm not at all unhappy to hear her shoes clomping along behind me.
"Er, I don't know, you must have something more than your polygraph interpretation to backup this bizarre theory and I have to see what it is."
And so I take her to the fingerprint lab and pull up the prints from today. "These are Eugene Tooms' prints." I isolate the left middle finger. "This is the fingerprint they took from Usher's office," I pull up that print, "it matches the old ones from the X-files. Obviously no match, but what if, somehow..." I do the stretching thing I did earlier.
Match 100.
"How could that be?"
How the hell should I know? It's weird. "Only thing I know for certain is, they let him go."
That night, a businessman is murdered just outside the city limits with his liver removed. Since we're off the case, I have to wait to hear it on the morning news with the rest of Baltimore, which is why Colton and his goons have us beat long before we can get there. As we approach the door, I can hear Colton ordering a check on liver transplants.
Liver transplants.
"C'mon," a saner head replies, "it was ripped outta there."
"Look at this point, I'm willing to give any theory a shot." And that's when we walk in the door. "Any sane theory," he amends. "I'm sorry Dana, but I only want qualified members of the investigating team at the crime scene."
Asshole. "What's the matter Colton, you worried I'm gonna solve your case?" I try to walk farther inside, but he gets in my way. Jerk.
"Tom," Scully intervenes, "We have authorized access to this crime scene. A report of you obstructing another officer's investigation might stick out on your personnel file."
And then Colton moves out of my way. Wow, she's really got him figured out huh?
"Look, Dana, whose side are you on?"
"The victim's."
Score one for Dana Scully.
They found a Tooms Special Print on the mantel. He must have come in the chimney. And just above that... four little dots in the dust on the mantel.
The victim needed a maid as much as I do. Also, the killer took a trophy.
Scully has the preliminary report from somewhere already. "The victim is a Thomas Werner, single, white..."
What does it matter? Won't make him any less dead. And I know who killed him. "It's Tooms." I point to the print. And then I point to the little indentations. "And he took something."
Next step? Look up Eugene Victor Tooms. Which means back to the microfiche and back on the Dramamine. Two hours later, I've found him on a census. In 1903. Doesn't list his age.
Scully wanders in about then. "Baltimore PD checked out Tooms' apartment, it was a cover. No one has ever lived there and he hasn't shown up for work since he was arrested."
But his address in the census is the same as the 1933 murders. 66 Exeter Street, Baltimore, Apartment 103.
"I found him. How do we learn about the present, we look to the past. I think this is where it all began in 1903 on Exeter Street." I point out the address. "Now look at the address of that first murder in 1903."
She shifts some papers. "Apartment 203. He killed the guy above him."
Liver anyone? "Maybe, his neighbor played the victrola too loud."
"Well, this must be Tooms' great grandfather."
Yeah. "What about the prints?"
"Genetics might explain the patterns, it also might explain the sociopathic attitudes and behaviors. It begins with one family member, who raises an offspring, who raises the next child."
That's a stretch. The prints are a perfect match. "So what is this, the Anti-Waltons?"
"Well, what do you think?"
"I think what we have to do is track Eugene Tooms, there's four down and one to go this year. If we don't get him right now, the next chance is in uhh..." Mental math is escaping me.
"2023."
Precisely. "And you're gonna be head of the bureau by then. So I think you have to go through the census, I'm gonna plow through this century's marriage, birth, death certificates, and..." Why not swallow my pride - "You have any Dramamine on you by any chance 'cause these things make me seasick."
This whole search, however, is evil. We can't find his birth, his marriage, or a death. For hours. After the fifteenth spool of film, I turn to Scully. "Anything?"
"Nope, he disappeared off the face of the earth. You?"
Even worse. "Never was born, never married, never died." Kinda queasy.
"At least in Baltimore County. No, I did find one thing though, it's the current address of the investigating officer at the Palhatton Mill murders in 1933."
Not a smoking gun, but maybe it's something. "Where is he?"
"The Lynne Acres retirement home. I think it's across town, judging by the address.
Scully's map reading skills are inferior to mine, however, and we are forced to detour several miles out of our way to reach the nursing home. The place smells of whatever that nasty cleaner is they use in hospitals, and something else – probably something intended to "improve" the smell designed by someone with no nose. A show of ID and a request at the desk gets us to the room of one Frank Briggs. He's got to be about eighty, confined to a wheelchair, and I hope more coherent than the guy muttering 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' to himself in the hallway.
Nursing homes suck.
A nurse walks us to his room. "Frank?" she calls, "you have some visitors."
"Come in!" he replies, which gives me hope.
"These are some FBI agents that came to visit you. Isn't that nice?" she asks. Bitch.
"Yes, yes, very nice," he agrees, nodding. She smiles a perfunctory little smile and leaves us alone. Frank gestures to the single bed. "Sit down."
We sit.
"I've waited twenty-five years for you." The jovial old man is gone.
Scully is taken aback. "Sir?"
"I called it quits in 1968 after, forty-five years as a cop. And those killings at Palhatton Mill. I was a sheriff then and, I'd seen my share of murders, bloody ones. But I could go home and, pitch a few baseballs to my kid and never give it a second thought, you gotta be able to do that. You'd go crazy, right?" Something about that hits me. I don't go home and pitch baseballs to my kid. I don't have a kid. Or a family. Or anything of the kind. I'm thinking maybe I'll get a fishtank. I nod, not because I know what Frank's talking about, but because I'm living the other side of the coin. I'm probably halfway to insanity without even knowing it. "But those murders in Palhatton Mill, when I walked into that room, my heart, went cold, my hands, numbed. I could feel... IT."
IT? Like from A Wrinkle in Time? "Feel what, Frank?"
"When I first heard about the death camps in 1945, I remembered Palhatton Mill. When I see the Kurds and the Bosnians, that room is there, I tell ya. It's like all the horrible acts that humans are capable of, somehow, gave birth to some kind of, human... monster. That's why I say I've been waiting for you." He gestures to a behind him. "There's a box in the trunk here, get it for me, would you please."
It's not hard to find. A cardboard box and some blankets are the only things in there.
"Now this, is all the evidence I've collected, officially and unofficially."
"Unofficially?" Scully adds, skeptically.
"I knew the murders in 63 were by the same... person as in 33. But by then, they had me on a desk, pushing papers and they wouldn't let me anywhere near the case."
Scully peeks in the box and pulls out a jar of something gross. "A piece of the removed liver?"
"Yes, but you know, that's not the only trophy he took with him. Family members reported small personal affects missing in each case. A hairbrush in the Walters murder, a coffee mug in the Taylor murder."
He takes trophies. "Have you ever heard the name, Eugene Victor Tooms?"
"Humh, when they wouldn't bring me aboard in 63 I - I did some of my own work. I took these surveillance pictures. This... is Tooms." That's our guy. Looks exactly the same. "'Course, that was him thirty years ago." Oh, Frank, you don't know what you've stumbled into here. "And this, is the apartment where he lived. It was located at..."
I bet I know. "66 Exeter Street?"
"Right. That's it, right there." He even took a picture of the building and put it in the file. Good man.
66 Exeter Street has seen better days. Compared to the old man's picture, it's a dilapidated old dump.
We have probable cause as far as I'm concerned, and it's condemned, so walking in is no problem, but there's something about that moment, when I open that door and we shine our flashlights in – like that instant will be with us for a long, long time. I don't know what to make of it.
Apartment 103 is an empty room with a kitchen and bathroom attached. It looks like my apartment, only lacking furniture. Except for an old mattress leaning against the wall and the feeling of... evil.
"The old man was right, you can feel it," I tell Scully, but she ignores me. We walk into the room and look around. It smells like decay.
"There's nothing here."
Except a moldy mattress. With... hey, is that a hole back there? "Check this out." I push the mattress down. Yep, hole. "What's down here?" I ask Scully, as if she could possibly know.
"I don't know." She crawls inside. "Let's find out."
We climb down a ladder and find what looks like some kind of cave. "Just an old coal cellar," says Scully, and I have to agree. We wander through until my flashlight comes across a table full of objects of some kind – old and new.
"Somebody having a garage sale," I tell Scully, and that's when I notice something. I pick up one of the objects to check my theory. "This is the shape from Werner's mantel."
"Frank said he collected trophies."
There's some kind of damage to the wall up ahead. This is just gross. "Does he live in here?" Only it's not damage, I notice. It was built onto the wall.
"It looks like the wall's deteriorating."
"No, somebody made it," I tell her, and we head for the... whatever it is. It reminds me of a beaver dam, or maybe the tunnels those ants in Africa build. "This is a nest, look, it's made out of rags and newspapers." I can see some of the writing.
Scully points to the gap at the same time I really notice it. "This looks like the opening, think there's anything inside?"
I reach for the opening and something slimy gets on my hand. Ew.
"Oh my God, Mulder, it's smells like, I think it's bile."
Oh, gross.
"Is there any way I can get it off my fingers quickly without betraying my cool exterior?" I ask her, trying not to panic as I flick my fingers.
Ew ew ew.
"No one could live in this."
This is just gross. "I don't think it's where he lives, I think it's where he hibernates." In grossness.
"Hibernates?" If I had to classify her tone of voice it would be fearful, or maybe doubtful, as in doubtful of my sanity.
First rule of hibernation? You build a den. A gross den. "Just listen, what if some genetic mutation could allow a man to awaken every thirty years."
"Mulder."
No. He got bile on me, and it's gross. So I'm talking now. "And what if the five livers could provide him sustenance for that period. What if Tooms is some kind of, twentieth century, genetic mutant." This has to be my lamest theory ever, and also one of my most badly stated, but you try coming up with something that makes more sense given the evidence.
"In any case, he's not here now and he's gotta come back."
A good point. "Well we're gonna need a surveillance team." Prepped for ew.
"Yeah, that'll take some finagling."
"Well you go downtown and see what you can finagle, I'll keep watch." Look but don't touch, Mulder.
On the way out, Scully suddenly gasps. "Oh, wait, I'm snagged on something, oh, it's okay, I got it."
We climb the ladder the hell out of there and Scully goes back by car to get someone to come watch the building. The whole time I'm waiting, there's no sign of Tooms.
Scully calls me after fifteen minutes to tell me that I should expect two agents named Kramer and Kennedy to come relieve me, and then she and I will be back on duty in eight hours.
The agents show up half an hour later to take over. "It's about time."
"So, who're we looking for again?" One of them asks.
"Eugene Tooms, he's unarmed but consider him dangerous. Scully and I'll be back to relieve you in eight hours if he doesn't show, right here." Wait for it, wait for it...
"You got it, Spooky." They both chuckle.
I go home for a shower and then run out for some food before returning to Baltimore. Quick drive, luckily. When I get there, no one's in the car. No Scully. No Kramer and Kennedy. No Colton, thank God, but I know he's responsible. Or irresponsible, as the case may be. "Where is everyone?" I ask. "Scully?" But I already know.
I run inside and into 103. Down the stairs and behind the mattress and down the ladder and into the coal cellar and there's the table with the trophies and there's a new one. Scully's saint's medal – Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes. And law enforcement. "Dammit."
And then I run up, and out of the building, and back to my car. And I wish I had a siren.
I try to call her all the way, but there's no answer no matter how much I scream at the ringing phone. None at all. I make the drive in thirty minutes, praying that I won't find her dead with her liver removed in her own home. Some things are too horrible for words – including that sight that I'm not able to face seeing. I pull up outside and run in. Please be alive Please be alive Pleasebealivepleasepleaseplease...
I break down the door and run in. "SCULLY!"
There's a sound in the bathroom. I run in just in time to point the gun at Tooms before he can jump out the window. He grabs Scully and tries to choke her, but I get a cuff on one wrist and he elbows me. Hard. Scully jumps in while I'm down, and manages to handcuff him to the tub. Of course I doubt that will hold him for long, but I grab my gun again and point it at him. We're both out of reach now, and if he moves, I'll shoot.
"You alright?" I ask Scully.
She nods.
"He's not gonna get his quota this year," I tell her.
She nods again. I hand over my phone. "Call the police," I tell her, "your phone's not working."
She gulps and dials. "Yes, this is Special Agent Dana Scully, I need someone to come quickly..." she makes the standard request for backup from the local P.D. and then calls Colton.
"Tom, hi, it's Dana, look, Eugene Tooms just broke into my apartment -"
Indistinct angry yelling can be heard from the phone.
"No, he tried to attack me, it certainly looked like he wanted to rip out my liver, but since I'm still alive I can't be sure..."
More yelling.
"Yes, Mulder caught him but you should – Tom? Tom?"
Dial tone.
They end up taking him in for evaluation, which guarantees that they won't be giving him a trial anytime soon. Upon entry, he was given a physical, and they faxed me the results.
Very interesting results.
When Scully gets to the hospital, I'm observing Tooms from the corridor. He's doing something that involves licking newspaper. My guess is building another nest. "Look at him, he's building another nest," I point out.
"You'll be interested to know that I've ordered some genetic tests. The preliminary medical exam revealed multiple physiological abnormalities."
Yeah, so the report said. "All these people putting bars on their windows, spending good money on hi-tech security systems, trying to feel safe. I look at this guy and I think, why bother?"
She doesn't answer me, and we both leave the building. Halfway down the front walk, though, she finally pipes up.
"We bother because we want to fix it, Mulder. That's why I became a doctor."
I suppose that's why she's still in the basement.