Mulder had no patience for this; he could see where it was going—nowhere—and, since warrants or formalities weren’t called for, he headed toward the door to the women’s locker room.
“Excuse me, sir!” the old boy said. “Sir…”
Mulder was already pushing through the door, though he did hear the gent say, “Doesn’t he know that’s the ladies’ side?”
Like the rest of the facility, the locker room was a relic and a rundown one at that. He paused just inside, aware that the elderly clerk had a point, and called, “Anybody in here? Hello…anybody…?”
No answer.
So he went on in, and began prowling, checking the names on lockers. Many of the labels were old—faded, water-damaged. Could have been pasted on there some time in the middle of the last century. Perhaps this had once been a private club, with assigned lockers, and now was for general use and the names had never been removed.
Still, he continued to go locker to locker. He moved to the next row and, though the cold of outside had been replaced by steamy heat, he froze.
A woman at least as old as the front counter’s Southern gentleman sat on a bench in her bathing suit, apparently about to remove it. She had frozen at the sight of him as he had of her. She stared at him with a blankness that threatened to turn to horror.
Holding up his palms in surrender, expecting a bloodcurdling scream any moment, Mulder instead received a smile from the old gal. A slow, impish, even sexy smile…
She was beginning to undo a strap when he back-pedaled and quickly was out front again.
Uncharacteristically flustered, Mulder asked the old clerk, “Do you have a bolt cutter?”
Their increasingly reluctant host sighed. “So, then, you folks aren’t here for a swim?”
Chapter 9
Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital
Richmond, Virginia
January 11
In the operating room, Dana Scully—in surgical cap and gown—was looking at her patient’s medical charts as Christian Fearon was wheeled in on his gurney.
She moved to her patient—whose shaved head made him seem even more helpless, his frail frame swimming in the hospital gown—and gave him a warm smile. “You’ve got a whole bunch of people taking good care of you this morning, Christian.”
The boy managed his own small smile, though it jumped a little when the gurney was locked into place.
Scully tilted her head. “Now, I don’t want you to be scared.”
The boy’s smile seemed less forced now. “You, either.”
She renewed her smile. “It’s a deal.”
The anesthesiologist stepped in, as Scully scrubbed up. Her face, turned away from the boy, lost its smile, and determination took over.
When she turned from the sink, Scully found her OR team already at work securing Christian’s shaved head into a stereotactic clamp device. Viewing the frightful contraption, which seemed like something out of a Middle Ages torture chamber, she felt her resolve waver. Now, with all the eyes of her team upon her, she could only hope they hadn’t sensed in her the doubt she’d just felt…
The OR nurse was frowning. “Dr. Scully…?”
“We need to antiflex his head, and I need a spinal tray with a four-inch, eighteen-gauge needle. And some lidocaine in a syringe…”
She kept her gaze on her patient and not on those around her, not wanting any of these professionals to see her eyes and perhaps recognize the fear they held.
A syringe was handed to her, which she administered to Christian’s temple, saying, “Bur drill, five-millimeter bit.”
This she was handed, and she placed its nose to the child’s temple.
The OR nurse turned her attention to the nearby 3D monitor, where the sight of the needle entering the boy’s skull could be viewed with clinical accuracy as well as a certain distance.
By the time the procedure was complete, the afternoon had faded into early evening. Scully, her scrubs spattered with her patient’s blood, sat by herself on a bench in the doctor’s locker room, writing in the notebook that Christian had given her, his autographed photo on the inside cover staring up at her.
A familiar voice behind her said, “And people think I went underground.”
She glanced toward the doorway where Mulder, in sweater and jeans, stood with hands on hips. He looked weary but alert, and she smiled automatically, but did not rise.
He came to her and sat beside her, and it was nice to have him there, but the residual tension from yesterday’s melodrama did linger.
“I’m sorry, Mulder,” she said, shutting the notebook. “I’m sure you’ve been worried. But I needed to keep my focus here.”
He took in the bloodied scrubs, then met her eyes and said, “It’s the boy, isn’t it? Scully…?”
She swallowed and nodded.
His frown told her that he could tell the weight she’d been carrying. He said, “I thought there was nothing that could be done for him…”
She sighed. “I’m taking a big chance on something. On a radical…and frankly a painful…new procedure.”
His eyes tightened as he studied her. “Last night you said it wasn’t an option, that kind of procedure.”
“It wasn’t, last night.”
“What changed your mind?”
How could she tell him, without seeming a hypocrite and a fool? How could she say, Mulder, that ex-priest I’ve been calling a fraud, the one I’ve been criticizing you over, that priest? Well, he told me not to give up. So I didn’t. Her only answer was to shrug and shake her head, and look away.
“When will you know if it’s working?”
“There’s a whole series of these procedures. It’s going to take a while.” Now she looked at him again, her expression fully confessional. “And we won’t really know anything until they’re all done.”
Mulder nodded, and this time he was the one to look away. He was wrestling with something, she could tell; something of his own—something major.
She frowned at him in concern. “That’s not what you came to talk about, is it? My patient.”
“No,” he admitted. He was gazing at the lockers. “Scully, there’s another woman missing.”
She cocked her head, as if she couldn’t quite hear him. “What…?”
“Another missing woman, but this one’s given us something to go on.” Again his eyes met hers. “She and the missing agent swam at the same pool, Scully. We found Monica Bannan had a locker there. We think both women were stalked there. And get this—each wore a medical bracelet.”
“Really?”
“Really. And they shared the same rare blood type: AB negative.”
Interested despite herself, Scully said, “Organs—harvested for transplants.”
Mulder nodded. He said nothing, staying out of her way, as she pursued the thread.
“That’s how they were targeted,” she said. “Donors and recipients need matched types. Somebody using that pool knows that…”
“Somebody filling orders. On the black market.”
Scully was nodding. “Using that pool to find physically fit potential donors.”
“Right.”
“They must have access—recipients, hospitals…”
Now he was nodding. “Your world, Scully. Your knowledge of that world will save time in this thing. And, as usual, time’s our enemy.”
“You can start with transporters.”
He was smiling, but there was something a little desperate in it. “I need you on this with me. It’s starting to come together, but I need you keeping me honest…Look. You asked for my help, before. Now I need yours…”
But her excitement had dimmed as he made his pitch. And she shook her head, stopping him before he went any further.
“You don’t need me, Mulder. And they don’t need you, either, not really. You gave them your help, Mulder. Your expertise. You got them this far, broke the case for them. Let the FBI pursue it. Let them take it home.”
�
��But, Scully, we’re so close now…”
“Not we. They. And I’m asking you to leave it to them. I’m asking you to let go of it.”
His smile seemed to curdle as he studied her, at first thinking she might not be serious, then knowing she was—dead serious. For a few moments, he seemed at a loss for words.
Finally he said, “It’s…it’s not that simple, Scully.”
“No, it’s not. It’s complicated.”
His face went slack. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She lifted her eyebrows. Sighed. “It means something that I must’ve known would happen, Mulder, finally has. Something I’ve been afraid to face. And that I haven’t had to face till now.”
Impatience flared in his eyes, and he said, “Just tell me what…”
“I’m a doctor,” she said simply, nonconfrontationally. “Psychic pedophiles, severed heads, abducted women…that isn’t my life now.”
“I know that.”
Did he?
She said, “I’ve made a choice in my life. I made being a doctor secondary when I went into the FBI, but I’m not in the FBI now, Mulder; that part of my life is over. This is the part of my life where I’ve become the doctor I trained to be. To seek the truth, yes, still to seek the truth…but among the living.”
He was reeling inside, she could tell, but all he said was, “I’m not asking you to give it up. I would never—”
“You don’t understand, Mulder. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t look into the darkness with you. I can’t bear what it does to you…or me.”
He stiffened, covering the hurt with defensiveness. “I’m fine with it. Looking in the dark for answers, that’s where a lot of answers are, Scully. I’m actually good with it…”
“And that’s what scares me.”
He frowned, openly frustrated. “Where else would you have me look? If we want to find these women alive, you—”
“I’m asking you to look at yourself, Mulder.”
“Why? I’m not the one who’s changed.”
Like so many arguments, this one had begun fast and degenerated faster. His petulance made Scully blanch.
“We’re not FBI anymore,” she said. “We’re two people who come home at night. Anyway, I come home. And when I do return to a home, our home, I don’t want that darkness waiting.”
Mulder gestured vaguely to the hospital around them. “This is what you do and I respect that. But we’re talking about what I do, Scully—what I did before I even met you. It’s everything I know.”
“Fine. Write it down. You paid your dues, you served your time. Tell the world. Put it in a book.”
Incredulous, he said, “So what are you saying? Give up?”
“You’ve been sitting at a computer, clipping articles from—”
“No, I’m back where I belong. Trying to save somebody from unknown evil. Back where you put me.”
She stared at him, well aware of the ironic truth of what he’d said.
“No,” she said, and looked down at her lap. “You’re right. I can’t tell you to quit.”
The tense moment passed. Mulder seemed to ease up slightly, and she could see him looking for a way to back this up and start over.
But it was too late for that. She held his eyes with hers and said, “Here’s what I can tell you—I won’t be coming home, Mulder. I’ll be staying here.”
From his expression, you might have thought she’d struck him a physical blow, punched him in the belly and knocked the wind right out of him. These were words he’d clearly never expected to hear, just as they were words Scully had never expected to utter.
Without malice, very quietly, she said, “I have my own battles to fight right now.”
“Scully…”
“Please don’t argue with me.”
“Please don’t do this.”
She stared at him for a long time. Her expression was not without love, yet it was hard, and angry, and even wounded. To say more would be to raise, and have to answer, his unspoken question: Not come home tonight? Or not come home ever?
And neither could risk that right now.
So Scully just said, “I don’t know what else to do.”
Nothing was left to be said. She was not about to give any ground, and certainly Mulder wouldn’t. Neither could abandon what they believed; they weren’t made that way.
“Well,” Mulder said, rising. “Good luck, then.”
She nodded. “You, too.”
He left quickly and she knew why: He would not want her to see the emotions that she’d already seen, just as she could not bear for him to see her face, where her hard expression was softened by welling tears.
Somerset General Hospital
Somerset, Virginia
January 11
In the morgue, a recently deceased male was receiving the classic Y incision at the expert, latex-gloved hands of a pathologist. Those hands were quickly inside the stomach cavity, working on the liver with the ease of a cook preparing a Thanksgiving turkey for the oven.
The pathologist, a tall, handsome woman of sixty in green surgical scrubs, gown, and cap, severed the liver from the viscera and withdrew it from the body, holding it in her hands and then gently placing it in a waiting medical ice chest.
The athletic-looking figure in the black-and-gray donor transport coat seemed out of place in this sterile environment, with his craggy features and stringy black hair that recently had made two women he abducted both think of the Russian madman Rasputin.
This Russian, with his own latex-gloved hands, closed the ice chest and handed the pathologist a clipboard with papers for her to sign, which she did. Then the pathologist moved on to her next deceased patient as the Russian, clipboard tucked under his arm, headed out, ice chest handle clutched in one hand. He might have been a worker lugging his lunch box.
He moved quickly down a busy corridor, talking to no one, just another professional in the medical field going about his business. He stopped at an elevator, pressed the down button, and waited.
And as he waited, he noticed several people down the hall: two uniformed police officers and a dark-haired man in suit and tie talking to a young nurse. This was not good, from the Russian’s perspective, because that nurse, an attractive brunette, had helped direct him to the morgue, earlier.
And now she was pointing toward him.
Or anyway in his direction, and the Russian returned his attention to the elevator that refused to come, trying not to show his nervousness, knowing that the two cops and that young professional-looking guy were heading right his way.
And staring right at him…
The elevator doors slid open, and the Russian stepped on. The cops and the suit were maybe ten yards down the hall when the Russian, on an otherwise empty elevator, smiled to himself as he punched 1, feeling he was home free.
Then a hand reached in and prevented the doors from closing, instead automatically reopening to reveal the two cops and the guy in the suit, all looking right at him.
The last had dark curly hair and a young face, but his voice was confident as he said, “Can we talk with you a minute?”
“I am transporting a vital organ,” the Russian said. His accent was thick but his words were precise. He only hoped the anger he felt was staying below the surface. He was unaware that his dark eyes were filled with an imposing intensity that could only work against him.
The guy in the suit smiled. “That’s what I’d like to talk to you about…”
“I do not think you understand.”
One of the cops, whose shoulder was keeping those elevator doors from closing again, said, “Please, sir—step off the elevator. Now.”
The Russian heaved a sigh, unaware of the hostile arrogance in both his face and his swagger, as he finally stepped back out into the corridor.
“My name is Robert Koell,” the young guy in the suit said. “I’m with the District Attorney’s Office in Richmond. May I see your paperwork and license?”
/>
Clipboard still under his arm, the Russian hesitated, then set down the ice chest. “I will reach for my wallet.”
The DA’s man nodded. “Go ahead.”
The eyes of the cops were on the Russian like magnets on metal as the Russian got his wallet out of his back pocket. He glanced both ways down the hall, having no idea he was conveying his interest in making a break for it.
The Russian said, “I have a green card.”
“Good,” Koell said. “What are you transporting?”
“A human liver for transplantation.”
“Your paperwork and license, please.”
“You are wasting my time! You are risking a life!”
“Your paperwork and license.”
The Russian handed over the clipboard and got his driver’s license out of the wallet, and gave it to Koell.
“And where are you delivering this organ?”
“Cedars of Lebanon. They’re expecting it. There is a patient waiting for it.”
The DA’s man appraised the Russian with eyes colder than the contents of the chest. “Have you ever procured or delivered an organ outside of normal or lawful channels?”
“No!”
“Ever been asked to?”
“No.”
Koell gestured with the clipboard. “You’re an employee of this company?”
“Yes.”
“How would your employer answer those questions?”
“My employer, he is sick. He has cancer.”
Koell frowned. “That’s not what I asked you, Mr. Dacyshyn.”
“Am I under some kind of suspicion? I am doing good work and you are wasting my time.”
“Be that as it may,” Koell said, and he pointed to a bank of chairs opposite the elevators, “I’d like you to sit down over here, sir.”
“I don’t want to sit down…”
The cop who’d spoken before spoke again: “Have a seat, sir…”
The Russian thought about it. He could make a stand here, that was true. These were not men who intimidated him, despite their guns. But a hospital was a bad place for it.
So he sat, ice chest on his lap.
Watching with mounting anxiety as the DA’s man got out a cell phone and punched in a number on his speed dial.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe Page 9