by Kami Garcia
The cop’s jaw twitched and his eyes darted to the camera. “Nobody said anything about a cult. We’re done here.” He moved off camera, and the lens zoomed in on the reporter.
“If the police have any new information, they’re keeping it under wraps for now. But WJLA News will continue to report on any developments in the case.”
Mulder had spent five years waiting for developments in his sister’s case, and waiting for answers he might never get.
In that moment, he made himself a promise.
This time he wouldn’t fail.
He would find this little girl before it was too late.
CHAPTER 7
Mulder Residence
5:51 P.M.
“What took you so long?” Mulder asked when Gimble finally arrived at the apartment. “I called forty-five minutes ago.” And he’d spent every minute since then changing the channel, searching for more news, and wearing a hole in the carpet.
“You’re lucky I still had the phone in my room. The Major usually confiscates it right away to check for alien transmitters.” Gimble pushed past him, with his hands shoved in the pockets of his blue velour warm-up jacket. “And to answer your original question, I had to take the bus. I don’t have a car. And you could’ve offered to pick me up, since you do.”
Mulder changed the channel again. The same commercial was still playing. “I can’t leave. I’m waiting for the six o’clock news to start.” He hadn’t filled Gimble in on the details when he called.
“Since when are you interested in the news?” Gimble asked. “Is NASA holding a press conference or something? Because that’s not an actual emergency. And you said this was an emergency.”
Mulder changed the channel one more time.
Nothing.
Gimble pointed at the TV. “And why do you keep doing that?”
No news about Billy Christian or Sarah Lowe. He refused to think about the possibility that she might be dead, too. He kicked a cardboard box full of crap his dad still hadn’t unpacked.
Then he hit Gimble with the story. “Does a dead kid holding a bird with arrows sticking out of it count as an emergency?”
“Back up.” Gimble flopped down on the sofa behind him. “You mean the kid from the cemetery?”
Mulder took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“I know all about it. The Major was sitting in front of the TV set with a legal pad, taking notes all morning. A news reporter interviewed a man who said something about a dead bird and cults, but they didn’t mention arrows.” Gimble flicked his hair out of his eyes and leaned forward, watching Mulder. “How do you know there were arrows sticking out of … Did you say they were in the kid?”
Mulder clutched at his hair, frustrated. “The bird. They were sticking out of the bird.”
“Hit rewind and start at the beginning,” Gimble said.
“I was jogging past Rock Creek Cemetery this morning, and I saw the body. They were bringing it out of the mausoleum in a body bag, and a detective unzipped it.” Mulder paced. “The kid was lying on top of dead rose petals, and there was a black-and-white bird on his chest with arrows stuck in its body.”
Gimble’s eyes went wide. “No way.”
Mulder switched the channel again.
“It’s on,” Gimble said, jumping to his feet.
A newscaster stood on the sidewalk in front of a police station. “I’m here at the Third District Precinct, in Southwest Washington, DC, where officers are sifting through clues in the case involving the body of an eight-year-old boy that was discovered this morning at Rock Creek Cemetery.”
The reporter noticed a detective with a badge clipped to his belt leaving the precinct, and he rushed over with the microphone. “Detective? Have the police uncovered any clues related to the murder of Billy Christian? According to our sources, the carcass of a bird was found with the body, in what appeared to be a ritualistic killing. Are we dealing with a cult?”
“I don’t care what your sources told you. If you cared about that kid, you’d get out of here and let us do our jobs. The chief already made a statement.” The cop looked straight into the camera. “I’ve got nothing else to say.”
The detective stormed out of the frame, and the camera shifted back to the reporter. “If the metropolitan police department has made any progress in the case, they aren’t sharing it with the public.”
The network logo appeared on the screen, followed by a commercial for dishwashing liquid. Mulder stared at the television, stunned.
“He didn’t say anything about the pajamas,” he said to himself.
“What pajamas?” Gimble asked.
“We need to call Phoebe.” Mulder wandered to the kitchen.
At the mention of a girl’s name, Gimble scrambled after him. “Who’s Phoebe?”
Mulder reached for the black rotary phone on the wall. “My best friend back home.”
“Your best friend is a girl? And you never mentioned her before? Is she pretty?” Gimble’s questions barely registered with Mulder.
“She’ll help,” he said, hoping the person he trusted most in the world could tell him what to do next. Or talk him out of what he was already thinking about doing.
“I should get on the phone in the other room. Since I’m your right-hand man on this,” Gimble suggested. When Mulder didn’t argue, his friend bolted out of the kitchen.
Mulder dialed Phoebe’s number, and the line crackled when Gimble picked up the other extension. “Hello?”
“It’s still ringing.”
Under normal circumstances, Mulder wouldn’t have let Gimble join the call, but he was in his head, as Phoebe called it—his thoughts focused on one thing.
“Hello?” Phoebe picked up on the fourth ring. Her voice usually calmed Mulder, but tonight it only made him anxious to see her.
“I need your help,” he blurted out.
“What’s wrong?” Her tone switched to all business.
“Someone is abducting kids in the DC area. A boy turned up dead, and a little girl is still missing.” Mulder was talking too fast, but he had to get it all out. “The girl is eight years old, Phoebe.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“I know what you’re going to say…,” Mulder barreled ahead.
“Don’t get involved, Fox.”
“But I’m already involved. I saw the boy’s body—”
“You what?” Phoebe flipped out. “Do I even want to know how you managed that?”
“He was jogging by the cemetery when they found the kid,” Gimble said, ignoring the fact that Mulder hadn’t introduced him or mentioned he was on the line. “It’s not like he broke into the morgue or anything weird.”
“What a relief.” Phoebe laid on the sarcasm. “And who are you?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Gimble cleared his throat. “This is Gimble, Mulder’s best friend.”
She snorted. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’m Fox’s best friend.”
“How come she gets to call you Fox?”
“Gimble!” Mulder snapped.
“Are you the guy who plays D and D?” Phoebe asked.
“That’s me.” Gimble could barely contain his excitement. “So Mulder told you about me? Did he tell you that I have sixteen experience points?”
“Gimble!” Mulder yelled.
“Sorry,” Gimble mumbled. “Tell her about the dead bird.”
“Dead birds?” Phoebe’s tone switched from What have you gotten yourself into this time? to What the hell is going on and how do I stop it?
“Bird,” Gimble said. “There was only one.”
“Gimble!” Phoebe and Mulder shouted at the same time.
“I’ll be quiet now.”
Mulder took a deep breath. “It’s a long story, and I swear I’ll fill you in on every detail. But right now I need your advice.”
“Whatever it is, don’t do it,” Phoebe said immediately.
“Are you going to listen or not?” Once Mulder ex
plained that the kidnappings were connected, he knew she would understand.
“Talk.” One word. That was all she gave him.
He had to stay calm or Phoebe would think he was fixating, as she called it. “The girl who disappeared was wearing a pair of white zip-up pajamas with gray elephants on them. When they showed her photo on TV, I noticed a brown stain above the top of the zipper. It was shaped like a hippo.”
“A hippo?” She was losing her patience. “Is this what you guys do together? Run around and solve mysteries?”
“Umm…” Gimble cleared his throat. “I wasn’t actually there. So, technically, Mulder was solving it on his own.”
“Do you want to hear about the pajamas on the dead body or not?” Mulder asked. Phoebe and Gimble stopped talking, and he picked up where he’d left off. “When they unzipped the body bag at the cemetery, the boy they found was wearing the same pajamas.”
Phoebe sighed. “Do you know how many—”
“Not pajamas with the same pattern. I mean the exact same pair of pajamas. The stain was there, right above the zipper.”
“It could be a—” she began.
“Don’t say ‘coincidence,’ because we both know you don’t believe in them, either.”
“She and the Major would get along,” Gimble said, working his way back into the conversation.
“Who—?” Phoebe stopped herself. “I’m not going to ask.”
Why was she making this so hard? She never doubted him when it came to important things. He tried to stay calm, but panic surged through his veins in fits and bursts, like electricity in a downed telephone wire. “Phoebe, listen to me. You know I only need to see something once to remember it perfectly.”
“Words and images, Fox. Not people.”
“Not faces,” Mulder corrected her. “And we’re talking about an article of clothing and a stain.”
“You can’t remember people’s faces?” Gimble asked, confused.
Phoebe sighed. “Of course he can, just not any better than the average person. A photographic memory doesn’t apply to everything across the board. That’s a myth,” she explained. “But he’s right. He’d never forget the details on someone’s clothes.”
“Then you believe me?” Relief washed over Mulder.
“It’s not a matter of believing you.”
He told her the most important part. “Someone dressed the dead boy in the missing girl’s pajamas, which means they were kidnapped by the same person. But the police haven’t figured it out. They don’t realize the cases are connected.”
“Let it go, Fox,” Phoebe said softly. “It won’t bring Samantha back.”
“Bring who back?” Gimble realized he was missing something, but Mulder and Phoebe didn’t fill him in.
“An eight-year-old girl is missing.” Mulder tried to sound normal, like he’d pulled himself together and now he was just stating the facts. Not fixating.
“I know what you’re thinking, Fox.” Now Phoebe was the one who sounded panicked. “Don’t do it.”
“Do what?” Gimble asked.
“The police will think you’re crazy,” she warned.
“But I know something they don’t.” Mulder’s voice rose.
“Just wait until I get there tomorrow night,” she pleaded. “I’ll help you figure this out. I promise.”
He kicked the leg of the kitchen table. “Fine. I won’t go.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Phoebe sounded relieved.
“Okay.”
Gimble made it back to the kitchen before Mulder had time to hang up the phone. “I feel like I joined a quest in the middle of the game, and nobody will tell me what’s going on.”
Mulder headed straight for the front door. He grabbed his car keys off the hook on the way out. “I’ll explain in the car.”
“You told Phoebe you weren’t going wherever the hell you two were talking about.” Gimble followed him to his parking spot.
Mulder unlocked the car door. “I lied. I’ll apologize tomorrow.”
Gimble hopped in fast, clearly worried that his friend might take off without him. Mulder threw the AMC Gremlin into reverse and flipped a U-turn like he was driving a Corvette instead of an orange tin can.
“So where are we going?” Gimble asked.
Dread churned in Mulder’s stomach. He didn’t want to do this, but he couldn’t stop himself. “The police station.”
CHAPTER 8
DC Metropolitan Police Department, Third District Precinct
7:00 P.M.
“So who’s Samantha?” Gimble asked from where he sat slouched in the passenger seat of Mulder’s car.
Mulder’s chest tightened, and he almost unleashed on his friend. But how could he when Gimble was riding to the police station with him, even after hearing Phoebe warn Mulder not to go? They had become friends because of their mutual love of Star Trek and the TV show Wonder Woman, because they both thought Lynda Carter was hot. But Gimble had turned out to be a real friend.
And back then, I didn’t even know he had a thing for Farrah, too.
The only person aside from Samantha who had ever trusted Mulder enough to follow him anywhere was Phoebe. Two years ago, when Wendy Kelly was found at a gas station after being missing for three and a half years, Phoebe had ditched school to drive to a hospital in New Haven with him. He had hoped Wendy Kelly could tell him where to find Samantha. Mulder made it all the way to the girl’s hospital room door before a doctor intercepted him and kicked him out.
By the time Mulder found a way to get out of the house again and drive to the Kellys’ house in New Haven two days later, Wendy and her family were gone. The only thing they left behind was a bag of sunflower seeds spilled on the porch.
If Mulder was dragging Gimble to the police station with him, the least he could do was answer his friend’s question.
“Samantha is my younger sister. She disappeared on November 27, almost five and a half years ago. She was eight when it happened.” A knot formed at the base of his throat.
And she’s out there, somewhere, waiting for me to find her.
Gimble stared at Mulder, stunned. “I don’t know what to say. I mean … I’m sorry, but that doesn’t seem like enough, you know?”
Mulder gave him a small nod.
“When you say she ‘disappeared,’ what does that mean exactly?”
It was the story Mulder had replayed over and over in his mind—the story he still had nightmares about.
“Forget it,” Gimble said quickly. “You probably don’t want to talk about it.”
He didn’t. But whether or not Mulder talked about it, the hollow feeling inside him never went away. “Someone took her.”
Gimble fell back against the seat. “And the cops never found her?”
“No.”
“Did she wander off or something? Or was it like those filmstrips they showed in middle school where creeps offer kids candy and then snatch them?”
Part of Mulder wished it had happened that way. He wished the villain had a face—a police sketch or something to focus on when the rage hit and threatened to consume him. Instead of a sketch, the person responsible stared back at him every morning from the bathroom mirror.
Because I should’ve saved her.
“Someone kidnapped her from our house,” Mulder said before he lost his nerve. “My parents went out, and I was supposed to be watching her. We were in the living room playing Stratego. It was almost nine o’clock, and I was waiting for The Magician to start. Samantha wanted to change the channel, and I…” He hesitated. “I yelled at her. Then the power went out, and I don’t know what happened after that. I must’ve blacked out. But when I came to, my sister was gone, and our front door was open.”
Mulder turned onto 17th Street, and the police precinct came into view. He pulled into the parking lot and turned off the car.
“Thanks for telling me,” Gimble said. “I know it’s hard. You’re the only person I’ve had over since my m
om died and we moved to DC. The Major is a lot to take in.”
“He’s all right,” Mulder offered.
“If by ‘all right,’ you mean not even remotely normal, then yeah, sure.” Gimble looked out the window. “When the cops told us that my mom’s car went off the bridge, they said it looked like she did it on purpose. I left that part out before. But I never believed them, and neither did the Major. Losing her broke him. Sometimes I think that’s why he became obsessed with that book, Stormbringer. My mom loved fantasy novels, and we read them together all the time. She tried to talk my dad into reading Stormbringer with her, but he wasn’t a big fan of fantasy—which is ironic considering all the crazy stuff he believes in now.”
“I get it.” Mulder knew it took a lot for Gimble to open up like that and talk about his mom. It made it easier for Mulder to confess his own sins. “I didn’t do anything to help my sister that night. So if there’s a chance I can help Sarah Lowe, I have to try.”
Gimble nodded. “I couldn’t help my mom, either. But it’s not too late to save that little girl.” He opened the car door and got out like a man on a mission, in a Han Solo T-shirt. “Lord Manhammer says, ‘A quest is only over if you give up.’”
Mulder and Gimble marched through the glass doors and straight into the action. The precinct didn’t have a counter up front separating the entrance from the central room. It was packed with metal desks and file cabinets, mug shots and two-way radios, police officers and criminals.
The precinct wasn’t what Mulder had expected. The place felt like the Wild West. Criminals were handcuffed to the desks, yelling and cussing over one another.
“I’ve never been in a police station before.” Gimble eyed a rough-looking guy with a mustache. The guy turned, and Gimble spotted his shoulder holster. “How are we supposed to tell the cops from the criminals?”
The cop noticed Mulder and Gimble and strode toward them. “You boys need some help?”
“I’d like to talk to one of the detectives investigating Sarah Lowe’s kidnapping,” Mulder said.
The cop raised an eyebrow. “We haven’t confirmed that she was kidnapped.” It sounded like something official they had to say.