She kissed him softly, quickly, and used all her remaining control to stop herself from slapping him.
“You have the orders?”
He leaned around her and yanked open the center drawer, pulled out a folder and handed it to her. “Signed and sealed, Rosie.”
“Good.” She pressed the folder against her chest. “Now we can either forget about downstairs altogether, because no one will see it for weeks, maybe even months. Or we can get Captain Whatshisname from Battalion to clean it up.” She smiled. “After all, what are soldiers for?”
“I say we just leave it.” The flush had receded from his cheeks and brow. He puffed a little, slipping back into his role. “And I say we don’t wait for tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I can get us a flight tonight.”
She considered it, and nodded. “Not too late, though. I want to get there in time to get a decent night’s sleep.”
His expression made her shudder. “Who says we’ll get any sleep?”
“I do, you dope.” She slapped his shoulder playfully and slipped around him, heading for the door. “We sleep, we see the right people, you take that leave, and then… who knows?”
Tonero laughed. “Okay, Rosie, okay.” Then he frowned. “But what about—”
“All taken care of, darling.” She picked up her coat from the chair. “All it takes is one phone call.”
She waved, showed him a little chest movement, and left before he could think of anything else. There was no doubt he would make all the proper arrangements; she trusted him that much. As for the actual flight itself… she never had minded traveling alone.
In Elly Lang’s apartment, the telephone rang.
Mulder knew that Scully was about to tug on the reins, haul him in before his excitement got the best of him. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help the way his hands moved, darting from the notes on the place mat to his uneaten sandwich to tracing diagrams in the air only he could see.
“Civilian, first.” He made sure they were listening with a look and a gesture. “Dr. Elkhart has no influence over military personnel without Major Tonero. And Tonero isn’t about to use the military for project experiments. If it blew up, he’d lose his ticket to whatever election he’s hoping to win when he retires.”
Hank gaped, astonished. “How—”
“Us, second.” He touched Scully’s shoulder to keep her attention, and looked at Andrews. “It wasn’t magic that told the goblin where we were yesterday. It wasn’t magic that told the goblin where Carl would be last night.” He scratched through his hair, then slapped it impatiently back into place. “Somebody knows us. Somebody who knows where we are most, if not all, of the time.”
“Damn,” Hank said. “Somebody who even knows what the hell we had for breakfast!”
It was all Mulder could do to keep the young man from jumping out of his seat.
“Right,” Scully said, her eyes slowly widening. “And she was supposed to have a date with him last night. It was in his notes.” She slipped out of the booth and grabbed her shoulder bag. “We talk to her now. Before—”
“Absolutely,” Mulder agreed. “But not for the reason you think.”
“But it has to be,” Andrews protested. “God, it all fits. She’s alone, so she comes and goes whenever she wants and nobody to question her, she has that equipment to keep in shape—” She grabbed Webber’s arm, to pull him from the booth. Her voice began to rise. “She—”
Scully silenced her with a harsh wave and stared at Mulder. “Well?”
He moved more slowly, wincing when his side stabbed him again, dragging his coat along behind him. “She’s not going anywhere, Scully.” He tilted his head toward the window. “It’s still too light.”
He urged the others ahead with a nod, then tugged on Scully’s coat to keep her back.
“It’s not her,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“How can you know that?”
He shook his head—tell you later—and gestured to Webber to cover the back, Andrews to stay outside.
“I don’t know,” Scully said, following him into the office.
“Three against one?” He banged the counter bell. “Come on, that’s a bit much, don’t you think?”
“She’s psychotic,” she reminded him when he hit the bell again. “And she’s strong, Mulder.” Her hand slipped into her purse, and didn’t come out.
Mulder struck the bell once more, then rounded the counter and pushed through the beaded curtain. “Mrs. Radnor?” A staircase immediately to his left was dark. From the room at the back he heard muffled music, and hurried down the short hall.
“Mrs. Radnor!”
He stepped into the room, where the motel owner pumped furiously on a stationary bike, headphones on, listening to music from a cassette player lashed to the handlebars. She started when she saw him, her eyes wide and mouth open when she saw Scully, and the drawn gun.
“What the hell?” She held up one hand while the other very slowly pulled the headphones off and switched off the player. “Mr. Mulder, what’s going on?”
“You don’t seem terribly broken up about Carl Barelli,” Scully said, keeping the gun at her side.
Mrs. Radnor tried to speak and couldn’t; she could only look at Mulder for help, and an explanation.
He grabbed the handlebars and leaned toward her. “Mrs. Radnor, I haven’t got time to explain, but I need to know something.”
“Hey, I run a clean place here,” she said. “You can’t—”
“Frankie Ulman.”
“I—what about him?”
“You told Agent Andrews you saw the corporal bring a date here every so often.”
The woman nodded, her hands shifting to grip the towel draped around her neck.
“You told her you didn’t know who the woman was.”
“Well… yes.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t have time, for one thing.” She forced a laugh. “She was in such a hurry, I don’t think we talked more than five or ten minutes.”
Mulder frowned, but shook it off. “You lied, Mrs. Radnor,” he said carefully, and shook the bike slightly when she started to protest. “You knew who it was. You know just about everyone around here, and you knew who it was.”
She mopped her face, a stalling tactic, until Scully cleared her throat and made sure she remembered the gun. “I don’t want to get people in trouble, you know? It’s bad for business. Word gets around and—”
“Mrs. Radnor,” he snapped, “we don’t have time for this, okay? I’m only going to ask you once: Who was that woman?”
When she told him, he whirled. “Scully, get the car and Webber.” He turned back as Scully charged from the room. “Mrs. Radnor, I have a favor to ask.”
“What?” She couldn’t believe it.
He smiled, and she softened almost immediately. “I need to borrow your car.”
“What?” This time she almost yelled.
Jesus, woman, he thought, would you please stop—
“Commandeer,” he said quickly. “I must commandeer your car.”
Her face brightened. “Wow. You mean, like in the movies.”
“Exactly.” He took her arm and pulled her gently from the bike. “Just like the movies.”
“But you had two—”
“The other one was shot up. But you know that already, right?”
Excited, flustered, she fumbled in her purse, held out the keys, and snapped them back. “Is this one going to get shot up?”
“I sincerely hope not,” he said truthfully, took the keys from her hand before she could change her mind, and ran.
“But what if it is?” she yelled after him.
“The President will buy you a new one!” he yelled back, slammed through the front door, and grabbed the edge to swing him back inside.
“Pink,” Mrs. Radnor called. “It’s the pink Caddy in back.”
Pink, he thought as he ran out again; terri
fic.
And thought terrific again when the storm finally broke, and broke hard.
TWENTY-TWO
“Vincent?” Scully gripped the dashboard as Mulder squealed out of the parking lot. The Caddy took a second to grip the slick tarmac and soon lost the Royal Baron in a swirling, twisting mist. “Officer Maddy Vincent?”
Webber and Andrews followed behind, their car nothing more than a smear of headlights.
Despite the storm, Mulder didn’t bother to check his speed. Either what traffic there was got out of his way, or it didn’t, it was their choice. He had a difficult enough time seeing through the rain.
“It’s why Carl wanted to talk to her,” he explained. “He wanted what he thought she knew about who was what, where, at the time of the killings.” He grunted as the car threatened to fishtail. “Who else knows where all the cops will be, Scully? Who else knew where we would be yesterday?”
“Mulder, that’s not enough.”
He knew that. “Watch your back.”
“Huh?”
“The goblin said ‘Watch your back’ to me, out there in the woods. Just before I was clobbered. This morning, on the way back from Tonero’s, Vincent told Spike to watch his back.” He glanced at her. “The same voice, Scully. It was the same voice.”
He plowed through a lane-wide puddle, sending a wave soaring over the shoulder onto someone’s front lawn.
Ahead, a pickup doused the windshield with backspray, and he cursed as he set the wipers to their highest speed.
It was almost enough.
At the corner of his vision he saw her shift so she could watch him and the road at the same time. “The makeup,” she said, recognition hitting home. “The calamine lotion. It’s—”
He listened to her mumble to herself, then catch her breath as he pressed on the horn and rocketed past the truck.
She had caught it now; she had caught the scent.
“It’s breaking down.” She was thinking aloud. “Whatever treatment they were giving her is breaking down. If… if it works correctly, she ought to be able to revert to normal color with no residual effects. It isn’t happening. Mulder, it isn’t happening, and she has to hide it somehow.”
He had no argument.
The Project had failed; he guessed it wasn’t the first time. He also suspected that Elkhart and Tymons had come closer than they ever had before, which was why the doctor and the major were packing to leave.
They were going to try again.
And he still couldn’t shake the image of shadow armies, sliding through the night.
Another car ahead, its taillights flaring red as the driver pumped his brakes. Mulder grunted and swerved quickly into the other lane without reducing speed, and frantically spun the wheel right when the blinding bright headlights of an oncoming van blurred across the windshield.
It was too late to slow down.
He swung around the leading car on its right, fighting the wheels’ stubborn inclination to take them straight into the woods, ignoring the frightened, angry blare of the other car’s horn. His side began to burn. The Caddy jounced through a pothole, and he was on the road again.
“Mulder,” Scully said calmly, “we can’t help anyone if we’re dead.”
He stared at her in near panic. “Jesus!” He slapped the wheel with a palm. “Elly! If she’s cleaning up… Elly!”
“But how?”
“Vincent’s the dispatcher. All she has to do is call—who cares with what excuse?—and Spike is gone on some fool’s errand. And Elly is alone.”
He swung to the shoulder and braked, was out with the engine still running, instantly drenched and waving his arms. The car he had just passed swept by and honked loud and long as it emptied a puddle onto his legs. But Webber saw him and pulled up, Andrews rolling down her window before the car had fully stopped.
Mulder grabbed the door and leaned in. “Get to the station Hank. Find out where Vincent is, go there, and wait.”
“Vincent?” Webber said incredulously. “You’re kidding. Vincent?”
“Just do it, Hank,” he ordered. He turned, and turned back. “And be careful. If Scully’s right and she’s gone off because something’s gone wrong, she definitely won’t hesitate to cut a couple of FBI throats.”
There was no time for details. He jumped back into the Caddy and pushed the accelerator all the way down. The rear wheels spun, kicking pebbles and mud before they found traction and leap onto the blacktop again.
Webber’s car had already vanished into the rain.
Elly Lang jumped when a gust of wind rattled the bay window. But she wouldn’t panic. She had her spray can, she had the cane with the large ivory knob Officer Silber had found in her bedroom closet, and she had his promise he would be back in less than ten minutes.
Still, she was frightened.
The storm had come so suddenly, after so long a wait, and the light had dimmed so fast, that it was hard to believe it was only a few minutes past noon.
It wasn’t, she told herself; not really.
It was midnight.
Time for the goblins to make their rounds.
Shadows snaked down the wall behind her, over her, while the rush of water in the eaves sounded too much like thunder.
She had been told to leave the lamp on, but soon after Silver left, she had turned it off. It was better this way. She could see outside better, and she hoped it would be harder for someone to see in.
The window rattled again.
The rain fell harder, and pellets of hail shot-gunned against the panes.
I’m ready, she thought; I’m ready.
And then she wondered if she had locked the back door.
Rosemary Elkhart stood in the middle of her living room and decided it was hopeless. She hadn’t been here five minutes, had barely taken off her coat, when Joseph had called, demanding reassurance that he wouldn’t be burned, that his reputation would be intact, that no one would find Tymons’ body in the woods. She had done her best, but second thoughts changed her mind after his third call.
He was hopeless.
After all this time, after all the bases and posts and installations they had been on, working through the kinks and dead ends of Leonard’s discovery, Major Tonero had become, virtually on the night of their success, hopeless.
And a hell of a pain in the ass.
Worse; she had been around him long enough to know what that meant—cut your losses, cover your ass, offer the sacrifice, and start again somewhere else.
With someone else.
She looked with regret at the suitcases waiting near the door. To give him his due, he had bought her a lot of nice things, jewelry and clothes, some of which she had begun to convert to cash as soon as it became apparent that this phase of the project, while not perfect, was nearing its end.
A girl, she thought, can’t be too careful.
Cover your ass.
Cut your losses.
And something else:
Travel light.
She picked up the bag at her feet, made sure Leonard’s disks were inside, then zipped it closed and reached for her coat. A cab to Philly would be expensive, but she considered it an investment. God knows there were plenty of private businesses out there, not necessarily in this country, who would be more than willing to learn what she knew.
She checked the bag again, recognizing her nervousness, and reminded herself that somehow, between here and the airport, she’d have to lose the gun.
“Okay,” she said, and smiled at the room. “Okay.”
At the moment she didn’t give a damn for Madeline Vincent. The woman would have to learn to fend for herself. For what little time she had left.
She hadn’t taken two steps when someone knocked on the door.
Mulder swore and slapped the steering wheel angrily when storm-slowed traffic finally forced his speed down.
Dana didn’t scold. She had been infected by his urgency as well, to the extent that she lowered her window a
nd tried to see if there was a way he could pass again on the right. Parked cars lined the curbs, however, for as far as she could see, and she didn’t see suggesting he use the sidewalk as a lane.
If she did, he’d do it.
“Two blocks,” she told him. “Just two blocks.”
Equally frustrating was the lack of communication between here and the others. If she had a radio, she could have called ahead to Hawks and double-checked on Webber, and on Silber’s being at the apartment.
She sighed and opened her bag, to be sure her weapon was loaded and ready.
Her hand touched something else.
Oh God, she thought, and debated for nearly a full minute before making up her mind.
The drum of rain on the roof forced her to raise her voice: “Mulder—”
“I wish I could fly,” he said, glaring at the windshield as if that would give his vision a better chance. As it was, the rain was so hard, with the wind blowing now, that it seemed as if the street had been invaded by drifting fog.
“Mulder, listen.”
He nodded. “Okay. Sorry.”
“The shooter.”
“What? Now?” He shook his head, and raised his hand to use the horn, changed his mind and throttled the steering wheel instead.
“Yes. Now.” She tossed a sprig of pine onto the dashboard, and waited for him to see it. When he looked, she said, “It was caught under the car. Hank’s car. I found it when we were at Elly’s.”
He was bewildered and lifted a shoulder. “So?”
“So Mrs. Radnor only spoke with Licia for five or ten minutes. So Licia has been fighting you every inch of this investigation. So Hank and I are the only ones who have used that car, and I know damn well I didn’t hit or run over any tree.” She stopped. Looked outside. “Hawks said they found the spot where the shooter had backed off the road into the woods. It wasn’t a clear area.” Her hands danced an apology over her lap. “I didn’t read her notes, Mulder. She said she had them, I even watched her put them in her briefcase… but I didn’t read them. And she didn’t bring them to your room.”
“Scully—”
“I screwed up.” Her hands again. “Damnit, I screwed up.”
[X-Files 01] - Goblins Page 17