by Kami Garcia
“The boy has a photographic memory. Chances are, he’s right.”
“He tried to tell the detectives in charge of the case, but it didn’t go well. He’s planning to try again.”
“So Fox Mulder is intelligent and persistent? Two qualities I value.” A flicker of what X almost considered a smile pulled at the corner of the smoking man’s mouth. “Let him follow this particular rabbit down the rabbit hole. Give him a little help if he needs it. I’m talking about a nudge, X. Not a push. I want to see how smart the boy really is.”
“Understood.”
“Good.” The boss opened a pack of cigarettes and slid one out. He handed it to X. “You’ve never smoked before, have you?”
“I never had the urge.”
The boss tucked the cigarette in X’s shirt pocket. “Every man should try a Morley once in his life. Consider it a gift.” As he stepped out of the car, he paused and turned to X. “And do try to stay awake. The work we’re doing will change the world, and you have a front-row seat. If you aren’t more careful, you’ll miss it.”
A chill ran up X’s spine. The smoking man shut the car door and strolled off into the darkness, leaving X in a cloud of smoke.
The only trace his boss ever left behind.
CHAPTER 12
Winchester Residence
10:55 P.M.
Mulder and Phoebe sat in the Gremlin under a streetlight in front of Gimble’s house, waiting for him to put the Major to bed so they could leave for the precinct. Once the three of them had hatched their plan, Mulder couldn’t wait to get going. But Gimble wasn’t the holdup.
Phoebe had called the precinct earlier to find out if the Laurel and Hardy detectives were on duty, and their shift didn’t end until ten. Mulder couldn’t afford another run-in with them.
“What’s taking him so long?” He tapped his thumb against the steering wheel.
“No idea,” Phoebe said, changing the radio stations. She bypassed the Bee Gees and Toto and settled on Styx’s “Renegade.”
“You really are the perfect woman.” Mulder smiled at her.
“I know.”
Gimble’s front door flew open and he ran down the sidewalk and stopped next to the car. The Major appeared in the doorway a second later, holding a mop across his chest like a firearm. “Get back in the house, Gary. This is a stage two lockdown.”
Gimble cursed under his breath, then turned around and shouted, “I’m just warning Mulder.”
The Major zeroed in on Mulder. “You need to get back to base, airman. They’re coming. Soon they’ll have all the bones they need.”
Mulder stuck his hand out the window and gave the Major a thumbs-up. “Okay, sir.”
“Who’s coming?” Phoebe looked around.
“The aliens.” Gimble sounded exasperated.
“His dad is a conspiracy theorist,” Mulder explained.
“I picked up on that. Thanks.” She craned her neck to get a better look at the Major.
“He’s more agitated than usual,” Gimble explained. “The cops found the body of a slumlord in Southwest DC. It’s all over the news. The Major is calling him victim number five, and he wants me to find out if the man was missing any bones, even though the news is reporting that he hanged himself with a telephone cord.”
“Why would your dad want to know if the man was missing bones?” Phoebe asked.
“He tracks crime and other weird stuff,” Gimble said. “A couple months back, he read an article about a woman who had been pimping out girls our age. The cops found the woman’s body in a dumpster, and her hand was missing. The Major was convinced it meant something. Then a psychiatrist committed suicide, and the Major found out the guy was missing a bone in his foot. And that’s how conspiracy theories are born.”
“What’s the theory?” Phoebe couldn’t stop herself from asking. She had a little conspiracy theorist running through her blood, too.
“Do you really want to know? Because I feel stupid saying it out aloud.” Gimble flicked his hair out of his eyes to avoid looking at her.
“Yes.” She offered Gimble a sympathetic smile. “And you shouldn’t feel stupid.”
“Say that again in a minute.” He sighed. “The Major thinks aliens are building a cyborg from a human skeleton.”
Phoebe didn’t bat an eye. “Do you think he knows the truth about Elvis?”
“Very funny.” Gimble tried to sound annoyed, but his growing crush on Phoebe won out and he couldn’t pull it off.
“She’s not kidding,” Mulder said. “She thinks Elvis is alive, hanging out in a small town somewhere, flipping burgers.”
“Hardly. The King doesn’t flip burgers. He’s in a diner making peanut butter and banana sandwiches during the day and giving kids guitar lessons on the weekends.” She waved at the Major, who responded by standing straighter. “I’d love to hear your dad’s take.”
“Gary William Winchester! Report to your senior officer immediately!” the Major roared.
“I’ll be there in a minute!” Gimble screamed so loud that someone flipped on a light in the house next door. Then he turned back to his friends. “I can’t go to the police station with you. The Major will be up all night adding junk to his stupid map and manning the telescope in case of an alien invasion.”
“It’s okay. You have to take care of your dad, and I have Phoebe to help me.” Mulder felt sorry for his friend. The Major seemed like a lot of responsibility.
“Come by if you find out anything. I won’t get any sleep tonight.” Gimble tapped on the roof of the orange car. “Good luck.”
Mulder pulled away from the curb. “We’re going to need a lot more than luck.”
* * *
Phoebe stopped Mulder outside the precinct door. “Forget diversion. We both go in there and say that we think we saw something the night Billy disappeared. Hopefully, one of us will get a chance to look at the case file or some notes.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Mulder said as they walked in. There was a reason he always went along with Phoebe’s ideas. If she took one of those career tests that told you what kind of job you would be good at, Phoebe would get criminal mastermind.
Inside, the precinct was less intimidating than it had been the night before. Fewer people were cuffed to the desks, and nobody was standing on top of them, breaking their wrists to get out of handcuffs. Most of the cops were dressed in street clothes, with their badges hanging around their necks or clipped to their belts.
“This is way more real than I expected,” Phoebe whispered.
“Are you chickening out?”
She punched him in the arm. “No. Are you?”
A cop in uniform with gray sideburns approached them. “You need some help?”
Phoebe stepped forward without hesitating. “We’re here about Billy Christian, the boy whose body was found at Rock Creek Cemetery. We were both in the neighborhood the night he disappeared.”
“Did you see something?” The cop glanced back and forth between them.
Mulder took over. “We think so.”
“The detectives in charge of the case are off duty. Let me see who else is here.” The cop looked around and spotted a young guy with brown feathered hair, wearing jeans and a Battlestar Galactica T-shirt. “Racca, I need you to take a statement,” the cop called out to him. “These two might have information related to the Christian case.”
“I’m on my way out.” Racca sounded annoyed.
“This will just take a minute,” the older police officer said, waving him over.
“He doesn’t look old enough to be a cop,” Phoebe whispered.
Mulder was thinking the same thing.
Then Phoebe noticed the guy’s T-shirt and gritted her teeth. “Traitor.”
Mulder tried not to laugh. “Some people like both Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.”
“It’s an either-or situation,” she said.
Officer Racca approached the other cop and gestured toward the door. “Wish I cou
ld help. But, like I said, I was just leaving.”
“No, Derek. You were leaving.” The older cop handed Racca a pencil. “And now you’re staying. See how that works?”
Ouch.
Mulder felt bad for the guy.
Satisfied that he’d made his point, the older cop walked away, leaving Mulder and Phoebe with the awkward task of deciding whether they should make small talk.
“Come on back,” Officer Racca said before Mulder thought of anything to say. He led them toward a cluster of desks on the opposite side of the room. He grabbed a stray chair and dragged it over to a desk piled high with crooked stacks of files. He flipped the chair around and slid it next to another one in front of the desk, and gestured at the empty chairs. “Sit.”
Phoebe sat down next to Mulder, toying with the hair sticking out of her buns.
Officer Racca took a seat behind his desk, and the plastic hula dancer next to his phone jiggled. Pushing aside the mountain of manila folders, he reached for a white notepad and flipped to a new page. “So what have you got to tell me?”
“We saw a man hanging around in Blue Hill the night Billy Christian was kidnapped,” Phoebe explained.
“Do you two live over there?”
“Yes, sir,” Mulder said, watching him scribble something on the pad.
“What time?” the cop asked.
“About eight thirty.” Phoebe didn’t sound the least bit nervous.
He wrote down the information. “Let me get your names.”
“Ellen Presley and Will Kirk,” she said, without even a twitch of a smile. It was probably her only shot at sharing Elvis’s last name.
But Will Kirk? Phoebe was putting a lot of faith in her either-or theory about Star Trek versus Battlestar Galactica. Mulder hoped Officer Racca wasn’t a Trekkie.
“The man you saw … Can you describe him?” The cop didn’t look up from the pad.
Mulder scanned the room. He noticed a hallway on the left side. Maybe the cops kept files and evidence down there?
Phoebe followed his gaze. “Actually, I got a better look at the man,” she said. “He was your height, or a little taller.”
“Excuse me, Officer Racca, but can I use the restroom?” Mulder asked.
Racca pointed with the end of his pencil. “Straight down that hallway. You can’t miss it.”
As Mulder walked away, Phoebe picked up where she left off. “Like I was saying, the man was about your height.…”
Mulder passed two cops hunched over a car magazine on one of their desks. He stared straight ahead, his heart pounding. It felt like everyone in the precinct knew he was up to something.
In the hallway, the fluorescent ceiling lights made him feel more exposed. He caught a glimpse of someone coming toward him—a tall man with an Afro and a bushy mustache, wearing black pants and a gray sharkskin button-down shirt. He couldn’t see the man’s badge, but he had a cool undercover-cop vibe.
“Looking for the bathroom?” he asked Mulder. “Fourth door on the right.”
“Thanks.” All the rooms Mulder passed were unmarked, and none of them had windows cut into the doors, so he couldn’t tell if they were empty. The last thing he wanted to do was open the wrong door and walk in on a bunch of cops. The bathroom was a good place to plan his next move. He followed the curve of the hallway to the fourth door on the right, which was unmarked like the others.
The moment Mulder opened the door, he realized he wasn’t in the restroom. He was standing in what looked like a war room—the place where Solano and Walker had laid out the clues and evidence related to the Billy Christian case. Photos of Billy, his parents, the family home, and the living room—the last place the boy was seen alive—were tacked on the wall along with files and handwritten notes.
One of the crime scene photos caught his eye. A shot of the body—Billy wearing Sarah’s pajamas; the black-and-white bird, a magpie according to the label next to it, with eight arrows protruding from its body. A close-up revealed something Mulder hadn’t seen before. An iridescent black stone rested inside the child’s cupped hands, labeled NUUMMITE: METAMORPHIC ROCK.
Everything on the walls pointed to the occult.
And a serial killer.
The sound of footsteps in the hallway startled him. He couldn’t stay in there long. He scanned the detectives’ notes and the photocopied files on the wall, knowing he would remember them later. Words and phrases jumped out at him: magpie, ritualistic, toxicology findings, arrows were carved from human bones.
Mulder stared at the last phrase as if it were typed in a foreign language.
Human bones.
* * *
The at-scene investigation included the following personnel:
The victim is a male, 8 years of age, identified as Billy Barlow Christian, who was reported missing on March 22nd. According to Christian’s mother, the child disappeared from his home in Northeast Washington, DC. Mother reported leaving her son alone in the living room while she answered the phone. When she returned, her son was gone, and the front door was open (Case #22-915).
Victim’s body was discovered on March 31, 1979, at 9:09 a.m., in Rock Creek Cemetery, inside a mausoleum (plot #1861). The victim was dressed in a pair of footed pajamas (mother noted they did not belong to the victim), and the body was arranged on a bed of dead rose petals (white), in a ritualistic manner. Child’s hands were cupped, and he was holding a black stone (identified as nuummite, mineral native to Greenland). A small black-and-white bird was lying on the child’s chest. Coroner identified the bird as a magpie. Bird’s body was pierced with eight arrows, arranged in a radial symmetrical pattern.
Evidence collected at the scene includes the following:
1. 1 pair of size 8 footed pajamas, white with gray elephant pattern and 1 pair size 6 boys underwear
2. 3 bags of dead rose petals
3. 1 black iridescent stone identified as the mineral nuummite, roughly the size of a golf ball
4. 1 dead magpie
5. 8 hand-carved arrows
INVESTIGATOR: Edward Kurz DATE: March 31, 1979
* * *
WHITE - File YELLOW - Toxicology PINK - Investigations
* * *
* * *
Anatomical Summary:
I. Stains on the inner forearms, with visible brushstroke pattern
II. Ligature marks on both wrists
III. High levels of alkaloids in the liver
IV. Distended bladder consistent with toxicity
Estimated time of death is between 12:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. on March 30, 1979. Upon initial examination at the scene, the body was stiff, indicating rigor mortis. No visible cuts, bruising, or other evidence of injury, but faint ligature marks were observed on both wrists.
Preliminary Toxicology Findings:
Victim absorbed a lethal dose of the alkaloids aconite and aconitine, through the dermis. Aconite and aconitine are naturally occurring toxins in the plant Aconitum napellus (monkshood), native to North America. Stains and stain pattern on the victim’s forearms indicate a paste made from monkshood leaves was painted directly onto the victim’s skin. The sedative Rivotril was also present in samples.
Forensic Notes:
Bird Carcass:
A bird carcass was found with the victim’s body. Species was identified as a male Holarctic magpie, weighing 1 lb., 2 oz., with black-and-white feathers. The bird carcass was pierced with eight arrows, approximately .25 inches in diameter, arranged in a radial pattern.
The arrows were carved from human bones, belonging to adults.
OPINION:
Billy Barlow Christian, an 8-year-old white male, died of cardiac arrest, caused by ACUTE ACONITE POISONING.
* * *
CHAPTER 13
Dupont Circle
April 2, 12:21 A.M.
“What happened in there, Fox? You’re scaring me,” Phoebe said from behind the wheel of the Gremlin.
Mulder had managed to signal
her from the hallway before he raced out of the precinct. After what he’d seen, there was no way he could’ve held up his end of the performance for Officer Racca.
Phoebe slammed her palm against the steering wheel. “Talk to me. Why are you so freaked out?” She looked around at the unfamiliar streets. “And where am I taking us?”
“I’m not sure. Just drive.” His voice sounded shaky. “I opened a door thinking it was the restroom, and the evidence was tacked on the wall. Crime scene photos of Billy, with the dead bird on his chest. A label said it was a magpie.”
Phoebe followed Dupont Circle and exited on Massachusetts Avenue. “I’m sorry you had to see those pictures.”
“The close-ups were the worst. In the cemetery, I didn’t have that much time to look at him.” Mulder rubbed his eyes, wishing he could unsee some of the pictures. “There was other stuff, too. Notes, photos of Billy’s living room, and an autopsy report. He was poisoned.”
“Is that what has you so spooked?” Phoebe watched him in her peripheral vision. She knew Mulder too well for him to hide anything from her, and he didn’t want to anyway. But he was having a hard time saying it out loud. The idea that he was investigating a serial killer was one thing. Knowing how sick that person actually was took the situation to another level.
“The arrows sticking out of the bird weren’t made of wood.” He hesitated.
“Okay? Are you going to tell me what they were made of?”
He gestured at the curb. “Pull over.”
Phoebe found an empty space and parked. “Is this really necessary? I’m cool under pressure.”
“Bones,” he blurted out.
“What?”
“The arrows were made of human bones.”
Phoebe stared at him, wide-eyed. “They weren’t Billy’s—?” She clapped her hand over her mouth.