Elsewhere in the chamber, other technicians stood or sat at various workstations, each with a separate body part already liberated from the ice. Tissue samples were being taken, as were measurements, with the appropriate tags applied. Specimens at the end of this process were being prepared for represervation in blue glycol alcohol.
In a world of lab coats or crisp FBI suits-and-ties, Fox Mulder in his sweater and jeans might have wandered in off a campus, an overage student perhaps or maybe a youthful professor. For all there was to see in this convergence of science and surrealism, Mulder was caught in the twenty-first-century limbo that was a cell phone on the other end of his, refusing to be picked up.
He paced a small area as he told the uncooperative phone, “Answer…answer…”
As he waited, Mulder withdrew from a pocket a small FBI-stamped snapshot of Monica Bannan, and studied it as if missing clues were eluding him there. But the pleasant image of the missing agent told him nothing. He frowned at it. Or…?
He commandeered a forensic magnifying glass from a nearby workstation and took another look.
What was that on her wrist? Was it…a medical ID bracelet?
The phone kept ringing. Soon it would go to voice mail again. Scully was at the hospital, and maybe she was working, or maybe she was ignoring him.
Could she be ignoring him?
Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital
Richmond, Virginia
January 11
At her computer, Dana Scully typed in the words stem cell therapy and, when the countless entries came up, began highlighting those of particular interest. Her cell phone, tossed haphazardly on her desk, was ringing, and she did her best to pay it no heed, though in fact she glanced at it more than once, knowing damn well it was Mulder.
She had a case that was, to her at least, more important than that of a missing FBI agent who was surely dead. That severed head in the ice would soon be identified as Monica Bannan and this effort reclassified a murder investigation, and Mulder’s interest would fade just as the FBI would renew its interest in Father Joe in a way that had little to do with the paranormal.
She hit a key and soon her printer began spewing out copies, and shortly she would have a thick stack of new information on Sandhoff disease to assimilate, opinions pro and con, treatments successful and (mostly) unsuccessful. She glanced guiltily at the insistent, trilling phone, but returned her attention to the computer screen, knowing her work was here.
Monica Bannan could not be saved.
Christian Fearon could.
Finally the phone stopped ringing, but rather than relief, Scully felt a flush of shame, knowing her partner right now was speaking to her, or anyway to her voice mail.
She did not hear him saying: “I keep leaving messages, but…here’s what I want to tell you, Scully—that woman’s head in the ice? It’s not the agent. Not Monica Bannan. We don’t know who it is, or why it’s there, but we’ve pulled eleven discrete human limbs from the ice and we’re not close to finished yet…”
Scully glanced at the phone, and back to her work, and again at the phone. She could not hear Mulder’s words; yet she could hear him. She could hear his passion and his pain, and it hurt her.
But she had a job to do. Trying to save someone who possibly could be saved…
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, D.C.
January 11
Mulder paced as he spoke to Scully’s voice mail: “Every cut is a clean one—a match to that previous amputation you noted. But here’s the thing, Scully—here’s what you need to know…they’ve found more traces of your animal tranquilizer. Acepromazine.”
A figure in a green turtleneck and black slacks was approaching—ASAC Dakota Whitney, her dark hair ponytailed back, her light blue eyes going right to Mulder as he talked and paced.
“I admit I don’t know what the hell it means,” Mulder told Scully’s voice mail, “but I’m hoping you can make some sense out of it.”
Mulder said good-bye and clicked off. He had thought Agent Whitney was headed for him, but now saw her standing with hands on hips, studying the block of ice as if it really were a work of art on display in some museum—a Grand Guignol exhibit, perhaps.
As Mulder moved in next to her, she glanced at him. “Anything?”
He shook his head. “Can’t reach her. She’s in the middle of a crisis where a patient’s concerned. But she’ll come through for us.”
“I know she will.”
He looked at her. “Listen, this is going to make sense. This is a break. I’m feeling it.”
Those blue eyes widened. “You’re feeling it, Father Joe’s feeling it…” She laughed humorlessly. “And all I’m feeling? Is my head spinning.”
“No. This is a break.” He gestured to the looming ice block with its terrible contents. “You’re going to solve a dozen murders here. This is a major serial you’ve uncovered. You should be feeling good right now. Confident.”
But her eyes had narrowed and she was shaking her head. “Yet we’re no closer to finding our agent.”
She was right and Mulder knew it. In his enthusiasm, he’d got ahead of himself. That could happen, when he didn’t have Scully around to temper his tendencies…
Still, he heard himself saying, “We’re going to find her. I know it.”
Whitney’s eyebrows went up and her mouth settled into a smirk. “Well, Monica may have to stand in line.”
“What?”
“I came in here looking for you, Mulder. I want you to hear Father Joe’s latest vision…”
Within minutes they were in the conference room–cum–command center, where Father Joe was already seated at the large table with Whitney’s team of agents around him like the disciples at the Last Supper.
Mulder did not join the disciples. He stood next to the seated priest, hovering over him, Mulder’s face blank with atypical skepticism.
Father Joe looked up at the former agent, something sheepish in his expression. “I see a woman’s face…another woman.”
“Not Monica Bannan.”
“She’s being held. In a…a box, I think. A wooden box.”
The eyes of the agents at the table were not on Father Joe now—they had, after all, already heard the priest describe this latest vision. Their eyes were instead locked upon their consultant on all things psychic, one Fox Mulder…
…who was staring at the priest in dead silence.
Finally Mulder asked, “Where is she being held?”
Father Joe sighed and shook his head in frustration, and the agents around the table were also shaking their heads, but in a different variety of frustration.
Mulder ignored that and asked, “Is she with Monica Bannan?”
Father Joe closed his eyes, apparently straining for a vision. And now the agents at the table returned their gaze to him, disciples once more.
But that didn’t last long, because the priest, lids still shut, said only, “I don’t know.”
Mulder asked, “Is it the same men who took Monica?”
“I think so…yes, the same men.”
Leaning in, Mulder pressed: “Can you see them?” He nodded around at the agents at the table. “Or are you just telling these people what they want to hear?”
Father Joe did not rise to this bait. He just sat there, eyes closed, and seemed to be looking into a vision, or anyway looking for a vision.
Then his eyes came open and he met Mulder’s steady gaze with a simple, “No.”
Mulder frowned. “No, that’s not what you see? You were just pulling that out of your—”
“No, it’s the same men.”
Summoning his coldest stare, Mulder’s eyes drilled into Father Joe with unblinking intensity, waiting to see if the priest would crack.
But Father Joe was impervious.
Mulder straightened. He took in air, let out air, and said, “I need a car, ready.”
From the table, an almost scowling Agent Drummy asked, “To go whe
re?”
Mulder shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
Openly contemptuous, Drummy shook his head, his smile damn near a sneer as he said, “I don’t believe this crap…”
The smile Mulder sent Agent Drummy was barely discernible. “That’s been your problem from the start.”
Drummy replaced the sneer with a scowl; but the agent said nothing, displeasure shimmering off him like heat over asphalt.
Mulder merely turned from him to Whitney and said, “A car?”
“I can get you a car,” Whitney said. “Might be nice to know where it…where this…is going…”
“To tell you that,” Mulder said, “I need a list of missing persons in the greater D.C. area in the last forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”
Those ice-blue eyes of Whitney’s were on him like Scully making a diagnosis. Was the patient insane? Whitney seemed to wondering.
“All right,” she said. “All right.”
At the table, Agent Drummy closed his eyes, but Mulder didn’t figure the guy was trying to summon a vision.
Rural Virginia
January 11
Under an overcast sky, the caravan of black Expeditions was greeted by police cruisers parked along the country lane, their light bars whirling, tinting the nearby white alternately blue and red.
The lead Expedition pulled in, ASAC Whitney exiting from behind the wheel, SA Drummy on the front rider’s side, and consultant Fox Mulder out the back. Other FBI agents in winter gear were climbing out of the several Expeditions pulled in behind them. As Whitney and Drummy approached the troopers, who had obviously been at their work only a short while, Mulder tramped behind the agents in their footsteps on the newly beaten path.
The little Subaru was barely visible under the new accumulation, and the state troopers at work with snow shovels had barely begun to dig it out.
As the two FBI agents conferred with the troopers, Mulder approached the mostly buried car. He was aware that today was even colder than before, everyone’s breath like automotive fumes. Still, the chill hardly registered on him. He was as focused as a sniper on a target.
Whitney’s teeth were chattering as she turned to Mulder to say, “Cheryl Cunningham, thirty-four. Didn’t make it to work last night. No show at home, either.”
Mulder, with a confidence that made the troopers instinctively step aside for him, moved to the car on the driver’s side.
Drummy, arms folded, clearly shaken by the cold, said, “No blood on the air bags. Passenger-side window rolled down. Keys in the ignition.”
Mulder’s eyes probed inside the car.
“This is a survivable crash with a seat belt,” Drummy said with a shrug. “She shakes it off, climbs out, and walks away.”
As if imitating Drummy’s description of Cheryl Cunningham’s probable actions, Mulder moved off from the car. He was looking around, not sure what he was looking for; he was adding things up, not sure what kind of answer he sought.
“Dark out,” Drummy said, his voice louder, as if trying to break through Mulder’s seeming trance, “snowing like hell. She starts off, gets tired, takes a short cut, sits down…and falls asleep. In this damn cold.” The big African American shook his head sorrowfully. “Happens all the time.”
Mulder gave Drummy the benefit of a blank gaze. “Pretty hard right turn for such a long, straight stretch of country road, isn’t it?”
All those within earshot—Drummy, Whitney, troopers, FBI agents—stood there studying the scene for the next few moments, really tracking for the first time the vehicle’s trajectory.
Mulder smiled that small pleasant smile that carried so much irony. “But why settle for my opinion?”
Soon, summoned from one of the Expeditions, came Father Joe, shambling along in his gray jacket and gray slacks and gray hair and beard and demeanor. The priest looked every bit as miserable as these law enforcement officers, stuck out in the cold.
Mulder crooked a finger and Father Joe came to him, at the driver’s side of the partly uncovered car.
“Take her for a spin,” Mulder said.
Everyone knew the car wasn’t going anywhere but the priest seemed to understand.
He bent down and Mulder held the door open and the priest got in behind the wheel, pushing the now-deflated air bag away from him.
Seeing Father Joe was difficult if not impossible, from where they all stood. But all eyes were on the car anyway, as the law enforcers endured the beating wind and blowing snow, arms folded tight, waiting, waiting, and then waiting some more…
Drummy glanced at Mulder. “Has he fallen the hell to sleep in there or what?”
Mulder said, “They each have their own process.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Finally, movement.
Then Father Joe was hoisting his large frame out from behind the wheel.
He shook his shaggy head. “I’m sorry.”
The priest stood there shivering, basking in the frozen silence of the law enforcers. He gestured with open arms. “I’m just not getting anything.”
The priest trudged off, down the road, toward the waiting Expedition where an engine was running and warmth awaited.
“What a surprise,” Drummy said.
Mulder said nothing. His eyes followed the priest, then returned to the car.
Whitney came up to him. “Ideas, Mulder? Thoughts? Impressions?” She seemed sincere, but a faint edge of sarcasm might have been buried in there, like the Subaru in the snow. She was cold, tired; he couldn’t blame her.
Mulder shook his head. He lowered his eyes, feeling helpless, and then something down in the packed snow winked at him.
Whitney let out a sigh in a plume of smoky breath and said, “I think we’re about finished with Father Joe.”
“About finished maybe,” Mulder said, and he knelt. His gloved fingers pried out a shiny object, uncovered by the pressure of Father Joe’s footstep.
Mulder, still kneeling, looked up at Whitney and displayed a dangling piece of what at first appeared to be jewelry.
“But not quite finished,” Mulder said.
Whitney leaned in. “What is that?”
“It’s a medical ID bracelet,” Mulder said, getting to his feet. “I noticed that Monica Bannan wore one, too.”
Drummy moved in. “For what?”
Mulder just looked at Drummy. Now he’s interested?
Whitney gave the agent a withering look of her own, then said, “Do something constructive. Get on the radio.”
Drummy said, “I don’t have a radio.”
Whitney said nothing.
“Right.”
And Drummy took off running down the road, passing Father Joe and calling to the team.
To Mulder, Whitney said, “You’re thinking something.”
Mulder’s nod was barely perceptible.
“What are you thinking?”
He gave her the boyish smile; she’d earned it. “Let’s pop the trunk.”
The trunk of the car was still buried, but the troopers used their shovels and soon the rear of the Subaru was mostly uncovered, and Mulder, positioned on a snowbank, bent down and unlocked the trunk.
The first thing Mulder and Whitney saw was the Home Depot survival kit.
Whitney flashed half a humorless smile. “That’s not going to do her much good.”
Mulder was hauling out another bag—a gym bag, which he unzipped. Right on top was a one-piece Speedo swimsuit, a distinctive shade of purple.
“Or this,” Mulder said.
He brought the suit to his face, and Whitney reacted as if this were an inexplicable action. Then Mulder explained with what he’d learned: “Chlorine. Suit’s frozen stiff.”
“That’s important?”
“It means it was wet when it hit this cold.” Mulder turned to a trooper. “Where’s the nearest public pool?”
Somerset Natatorium
Somerset, Virginia
January 1l
The old brick building
seemed an unlikely place for a small fleet of black Expeditions and police cruisers to focus their sudden attention.
But if the agents in FBI-marked jackets and the state troopers in winter uniform gave the old gentleman behind the counter any cause for concern when he saw them pull up outside the facility’s front window, it surely didn’t show. He was rather tall, with kindly features on a long oval face, with hair as white as the weather and wire-framed glasses that, like his light tan suit, seemed immune to the swimming facility’s inherent mugginess.
Mulder, Whitney, and Drummy were the first through the old double doors, with Whitney moving up to the counter to say quickly, “Hi—we’re hoping you can help us…”
Looming behind the elderly gent was the indoor pool in its poorly lit ancient cavern, populated by a handful of swimmers whose splashes and strokes and words were magnified. Doors at right and left for men and women indicated locker rooms.
With an automatic but no less sincere smile, the old gent drawled, “Would you all like lockers?”
“No,” Whitney said, more slowly. “We’re with the FBI. We’d like to show you a photo, sir, if you don’t mind.”
He seemed mildly offended. “Why would I mind, young lady?”
Whitney had no answer for that, and Drummy produced a photo of Monica Bannan and displayed it.
“Do you know this person?” Drummy asked.
“Let me have a look.” The old boy adjusted his glasses and stared at the photo. Then he shook his head. “Afraid these young people look so much the same…”
Whitney asked, “Do you keep a sign-in register?”
“Surely,” he said, making three syllables out of the word. “What kind of place do you all think we’re running here? I keep a sign-in sheet every day.”
“Is there a chance we could see it?”
He thought about that. Then: “Well, I don’t see why not. You are the law. No call for warrants or any such formalities.”
Whitney smiled in relief. “Good.”
The old boy pushed a clipboard on the counter toward them. “Help yourself.”
“Well,” Whitney said, frowning down at the clipboard, “I’d like to look at yesterday’s sign-in sheet…”
“Oh! Well, I threw yesterday’s away, don’t you know.”
The X-Files: I Want to Believe Page 8