Mulder is missing the X-Files, and it doesn’t help that his current case is tangled up with the CIA. Second season.
11/94
Disclaimer: The X-Files belong to Chris Carter and Ten-Thirteen Productions. No infringement is intended.
* * *
“The lungs are normal. No water present. No signs of asphyxia,” Dana Scully said, leaning over the gaping cavity of the swollen corpse’s chest.
Fox Mulder sat on a stool across the autopsy table from Scully, staring at the floor, only half-listening. It was nearly five months now since the X-Files had been shut down. Mulder had finally been allowed to leave wiretap detail a few weeks ago, but he still chafed at being forced to apply his talents to the FBI’s most mundane and ordinary cases.
“Mulder?”
He looked up. “Yeah, Scully.”
“He didn’t drown. He was already dead when he went into the ocean.”
“Oh. How long was he in the water?”
She pressed the mottled flesh of the dead man’s arm. “A couple of days.”
Mulder nodded. There were incredible things happening out there—alien abductions and genetic mutations and paranormal phenomena of all kinds, and he desperately wanted to be investigating them. Instead, here he sat looking at a waterlogged John Doe whose only mystery was why the sharks hadn’t eaten him before he’d washed up on the beach. The only thing that made it worth his time was that it gave him the chance to consult with his former partner Scully on the autopsy. He missed her as much as he missed the X-Files.
“Mulder. You’re about as lively as this corpse.”
He looked up, startled, then grinned. “Just keep that scalpel away from me.” His expression turned serious. “Sorry, Scully. I was just thinking. I hardly ever see you without a dead body between us anymore. The smell of formaldehyde is starting to remind me of you.”
“As long as it’s not the smell of dead, rotting flesh….”
“No, that reminds me of Skinner.”
Scully suppressed a smile, gestured with a motion of her head towards the overhead microphone that was recording her observations of the autopsy—and their conversation.
“Just kidding,” Mulder said to the ceiling.
* * *
Later, as they left the postmortem lab and, presumably, the listening devices behind, Mulder rejoined his catalog of complaints. “Honestly, Scully, I don’t know why they’ve got me on this case. Dead bodies wash up on Miami beaches every day. And it’s not like there aren’t enough FBI agents in Miami to handle it.” Mulder was back in Violent Crimes these days, profiling serial killers and mass murderers. One washed-up corpse didn’t seem to require the handling of the FBI, much less the services of a psych specialist. Of course, that’s what they’d thought about the last case, too, until they’d found a mutant fluke in the dead man’s liver. Could this be another of Assistant Director Skinner’s surreptitious X-Files cases?
“Did Skinner say why you were being assigned?”
“No. Well, he said I’d been specially requested. Wouldn’t say by whom.”
“Maybe it was your ‘friend in the FBI.’ ” Mulder had been getting anonymous phone calls from this “friend” ever since the fluke case. All the man would ever say was that Mulder had a friend in the FBI. And hinted that the X-Files might be reopened.
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about that. What if it’s all a con? A carrot on a stick they are dangling in front of me, to make me toe the line?”
“Mulder, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were getting paranoid.” She smiled, a twinkle in her eye.
He returned the smile reluctantly, then sighed. “I know. I’m just getting tired of not knowing what’s going on. Now I have a body with no cause of death, no ID—so far there’s no case.”
“We’ve already sent the fingerprints in to the index. And we’ll have the toxicology reports soon.”
“Do you think he was poisoned?”
Scully took a deep breath, looked a little annoyed. Of course, if he’d been listening, he’d already know all this. He shrugged apologetically. Scully shook her head and repeated, “There were no obvious signs of poisoning. Two days in the Atlantic might have obliterated them. We’ll just have to wait for toxicology.”
They’d reached Mulder’s car. He stood with his hand on the door handle, looking at her thoughtfully.
“Dinner tonight?” she asked.
“No…sorry. I have to get back to Washington.” He smiled, suddenly cheerful. “Bye, Scully. See you next time somebody dies.”
She watched with a rueful smile as he got into his car and drove away.
* * *
The telephone rang shrilly. Mulder fought his way out from under the twisted blanket and fumbled for the phone on the coffee table. The clock on the VCR read 4:12 A.M. This is just great, Mulder thought. One of the rare nights I’m actually asleep at four A.M., and some jerk wakes me up.
“Mulder,” he muttered into the receiver.
“Mulder. It’s Mickey. I’ve got to see you. Meet me at the Vietnam Memorial.” The man spoke in a rapid-fire monotone.
“Mickey who? And…now?”
“Yeah, now. You think I called you at four in the fucking morning to make an appointment for next Tuesday? And how many Mickeys do you know?”
Oh. That Mickey. “The Vietnam Memorial?”
“Come on, Mulder. I don’t know that many places in Washington.”
“Why can’t you just come here?” On the other hand, did he want Mickey Gutierrez in his apartment?
“I can’t. I’m not supposed to be talking to you. Are you going to come or not?”
Well, he was already awake. And his curiosity was aroused. Certainly, his current case wasn’t providing him with any thrills. “All right. Give me about a half an hour.”
“I’ll be there.” The phone went dead.
* * *
Mickey Gutierrez was CIA. Mulder had run into him on a case in Miami three years ago. You couldn’t really say they had worked together; Gutierrez had been more of a hindrance than a help. Still, Mulder had gotten to like the fast-talking, fast-thinking agent—with reservations, of course, the main one being that you couldn’t trust him as far as you could throw him. He’d worked in covert ops for half his life, lying was as natural to him as breathing. Mulder thought that sometimes he did it just for the practice. And he couldn’t imagine what Mickey Gutierrez wanted from him now.
* * *
Gutierrez stood in front of the smooth black wall of names, staring at the carved granite. He turned thoughtfully to Mulder as the FBI agent walked up beside him. “This guy’s my cousin,” he said, pointing at a name in one of the columns about a foot above his head.
Mulder strained to read the name in the dark. But before he could comment, Gutierrez had plunged into a rapid-fire speech. “You know about all this weird shit, Mulder. You know about voodoo, don’t you? How would you know if someone was trying to kill you with voodoo? And how would you stop them?”
“Voodoo? You think someone’s trying to kill you with voodoo?”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t know. How would you know?” Gutierrez paced back and forth in short, sudden bursts, two step in each direction.
“Have you had any unusual physical symptoms? Headaches, stomachaches, pains in your arms or legs?”
“I always have a headache.”
“Mickey, you are a headache. Anything out of the ordinary?”
“No. I don’t know. Hell, how should I know?”
“Well, what makes you think someone’s using voodoo on you?” Mulder said patiently. But he was thinking, You’d better get to the point fast, Mickey, or I’m out of here….
Gutierrez stood still for a moment, chewing his lip. He had a narrow, plain face, all forehead and mouth, with a grimness that was relieved only by the liquid brownness of big, puppydog eyes. Just now, there were dark circles under those big brown eyes. “I just got back from Haiti. The Ton-Tons Macoutes’ not dead, you know.”
“Mickey, make sense. Did someone threaten you?” As far as Mulder knew, the Ton-Tons Macoutes had been disbanded years ago. That didn’t mean that remnants of the voodoo militia didn’t still exist.
“Not directly.”
Mulder sighed. “I’m not sure what you want me to do.”
“They say voodoo doesn’t work unless you believe in it.” Gutierrez resumed his pacing.
“And you don’t believe in it.”
“No.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“But just in case. What should I do?” He stopped again, turned his brown eyes on Mulder.
Mulder wasn’t impressed. “Go and see a voodoo priest. Buy yourself some protection. Miami must be full of them, I don’t know why you thought you had to come to me.” Especially at 4:00 in the morning.
“You’re supposed to be the big heebee-jeebee expert.”
Not exactly an endearing entreaty. Still, he didn’t like to flat-out refuse to help anyone. He sighed. “Mickey, it’s late. It doesn’t look like you’re in any immediate danger. Why don’t you call me tomorrow?” Mulder turned to go.
“I know who your John Doe is.”
Mulder stopped in his tracks. He turned back to Gutierrez. “What do you know about that?”
“Will you help me?”
“Damn it, Gutierrez, tell me what you know!”
Gutierrez frowned. “You didn’t hear this from me. His name is Max Caen. He was in Haiti. He disappeared six days ago.”
“Max Caen was with the Agency?”
Gutierrez shrugged. “You would have found out soon enough anyway.”
“Well, if they knew who he was, why didn’t they tell us? Instead of leaving us to figure it out by ourselves?” Great, Mulder thought. Now I’ve got a dead CIA agent for a case.
“How the hell should I know? I’m just a field agent, like you. Nobody ever tells us anything.”
Mulder resolutely closed his mouth on his next retort. He was not going to get a straight answer out of Mickey Gutierrez. “Are you suggesting that Max Caen was killed by voodoo?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Mulder. We were in Haiti. He disappeared. He turned up dead in Miami. For all I know, he took a raft home and got mistaken for a German tourist.”
Mulder rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried, unsuccessfully, not to yawn. “Okay, look.” It was definitely too early in the morning to be dealing with an evasive Company man. “You help me find out what happened to Caen, and I’ll help you find out if anyone is really after you.”
Gutierrez frowned. “No one can know I’m talking to you.”
“Except my partner, of course.”
“What partner? I thought you were reassigned.”
“I sure hope some of this vast excess knowledge is going to help me.”
“You help me, I’ll help you.”
“That’s the deal.”
“Okay.” Gutierrez suddenly grinned. It was not a pretty sight. “That’s great, Mulder. We’ll kick their butts.”
“Okay, Mickey. Can I go home and get some sleep now?”
“Sure.” Gutierrez looked at his watch. “Shit, I’ve got to get back to Langley. Let’s meet back here tonight. How about eight?”
“Much better than four in the morning. I’ll bring my partner.”
Gutierrez stared at him for a moment. “I’ll bring mine too.”
“You don’t have a partner.”
“Neither do you right now.”
“Well, all right, she’s not really my partner at the moment. I’m still going to bring her.”
Gutierrez grinned. “So am I, Mulder.” And with that elliptical comment, he was gone.
* * *
“So, Scully, do you think he could have been killed by voodoo?” Mulder leaned against the wall of Scully’s office, sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup. He’d known there was no use trying to get any more sleep that night, so he’d just showered and dressed and driven straight to Quantico. Scully had been appropriately startled to see him there so early in the morning.
“Voodoo?” She shifted some papers off a chair to give Mulder a place to sit. Her new office might not be in the basement, but it was barely bigger than a closet and threatening to become as messy as Mulder’s own. “I don’t know how you would tell. What makes you think it was voodoo?” She’d heard things like this often enough from him that she no was no longer shocked. He even thought she’d begun to pride herself on taking his outrageous ideas casually.
“I don’t, necessarily. But the CIA does.”
She stopped, papers in hand, mouth open. “The CIA.”
“Max Caen was a Company man. That’s his name, by the way. He disappeared in Haiti six days ago. Rumor has it that he had enemies in the Ton-Tons Macoutes.” He grinned, enjoying her reaction.
“Do you mind telling me how you know all this?”
Mulder looked around her cramped office. It probably wasn’t bugged, but with everything that had been going on since the X-Files had been shut down, he didn’t think he was being completely paranoid to consider the possibility. And he had promised Gutierrez to keep his name out of it. He gestured toward the door. “Let’s get some fresh air. I still can’t wake up.”
Scully raised an eyebrow, but followed him outside. They didn’t speak until they’d reached the grassy yard that surrounded the building.
“All right, Mulder. What’s this all about? You getting radio waves from the Reticulans?”
“No, just the Company.”
“I didn’t know you played with Company boys.”
“I try not to. But I have one in particular I can’t seem to get rid of. Did I ever tell you about Mickey Gutierrez?”
She frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think so.”
“Not surprising. He’s not one of my favorite memories. Couple of years ago, I heard about a Cuban refugee who had appeared in Miami one day raving about mind control and programmed assassins. No one knew how he’d gotten there. Turned out he was some sort of government official, and the CIA thought he was a defector. But before anyone could get the guy under wraps, he disappeared. I spent three very frustrating weeks butting heads with Mickey Gutierrez while we were both trying to track him down. I hadn’t seen Gutierrez since then, until he called me at four this morning, wanting me to meet him at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He asked me how to protect himself against voodoo. And dropped the info about Caen as inducement.”
Scully took a few moments to digest this information. Then, “From the way you describe it, it doesn’t sound like you’d be a likely one for him to go to for help.”
“Well, he’s not a bad guy. He can drive you crazy, but he’s smart and determined and he kind of grows on you after a while.”
Scully smiled. “Sounds like somebody I know.”
“I don’t know who you could be talking about,” Mulder said loftily.
Scully turned serious. “But do you trust him?”
“Of course not. I don’t plan on taking a word he tells me at face value. But he can give us some valuable leads. And I’d just as soon not see him wind up on your slab.”
“So are you going to help him?”
“I help him, he helps me. That was the deal.”
Scully stopped. Mulder watched her silently. Her brow creased thoughtfully. “Do you think it could have been the Agency who requested you for this case?”
Mulder shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. But…if it were, why would they refuse to let Gutierrez talk to me?”
“They didn’t want him to talk to you?”
“That’s what he said. Not that I believe him, necessarily. But even Mickey Gutierrez wouldn’t insist on a four A.M. meeting just to be obnoxious.”
“Why did he think that voodoo was being used on him?”
“Besides having been in Haiti, I’m not really sure.”
“Didn’t you ask him?”
“Well, of course I did…sort of. It was four in the morning, Scully. I wasn’t exactly hitting on all eight cylinders….”
She smiled. “I thought you were used to being up at four in the morning.”
“Being up at four in the morning is one thing. Hanging around public memorials talking to hyper Company men is something else. But I’m meeting him again tonight, I’ll tie him down and torture some straight answers out of him then.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Good. Come with me.”
Scully stopped, and turned to him. “Mulder, this isn’t my case. I did your autopsy, and I’ll help with whatever forensics turn up, but….”
“It’s unofficial. Gutierrez made me promise to keep his name out of it. And it’s after hours. Come on, Scully, don’t make me meet him alone.” He produced his best innocent smile, full lower lip pouty and eyes wide.
Scully laughed. “Do you need me to protect you from the big, bad CIA agent?”
“Actually, I’m hoping he’ll pick on you and leave me alone.”
“Well, when you make it sound so appealing….”
“Good. Eight o’clock at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Come early and I’ll take you out to dinner first.”
She smiled. “All right. How about 6:30?”
He nodded. “I’d better get back to Washington. Call me if you get anything from toxicology.”
“All right. See you tonight.”
* * *
Mulder’s day did not go well. To begin with, he was exhausted. Then, immediately upon his arrival at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Asst. Director Skinner called him into his office to remind him that People Were Watching how well he did with this case, and showing up late for work wasn’t going to help. Mulder had to explain that he’d gone to Quantico to check on the autopsy results before coming into the office; he felt like a child caught skipping school without a pass from his mother. He was tempted to wonder whether someone had heard his bad joke on the autopsy tape and told Skinner about it. He told himself he was being paranoid.
As for the case itself, very little progress was made. The fingerprint index had produced a match, confirming that the body was Max Caen’s. Various FBI databases yielded Caen’s vital statistics. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, he’d joined the army right out of high school, his two-year stint including participation in the Grenada invasion. Then he’d attended Ohio State University and earned a degree in Political Science in 1988. He had never married. Caen had gone to work for the CIA soon after receiving his degree. DMV records produced a Virginia drivers license with the address of a residential hotel in McLean. Mulder drove all the way there, to discover that the manager knew nothing about Caen, beyond that he paid his rent on time. A search of Caen’s room turned up a couple of Willie Nelson tapes and some bad taste in neckties, but not much else.
Back in Washington, he fortified himself with lunch before braving the Interagency Relations department—the black hole where all requests for information from one agency to another disappeared in a haze of red tape, bureaucracy, and obfuscation. He’d pestered the Agency liaison officer for a good forty minutes, with numerous hints about the urgency of the case and its importance to the Agency’s highest echelons, before the harried man had promised he’d do what he could to expedite Mulder’s request for information. The liaison officer, himself, reluctantly confirmed that Caen’s last assignment had been in Haiti, but insisted that all other information must go through channels.
Later, a call from Scully told him that, aside from evidence of some recreational use of cocaine—no doubt related to his Haitian cover—toxicology had turned up nothing.
“That’s great, Scully. I’m batting a thousand today. I’ve found out that I’ve got a dead Company man named Max Caen with no cause of death. Nothing that I didn’t already know by five this morning. I should have just gone back to bed.”
“At least you’ve got confirmation. This morning you only had hearsay.”
“Yeah, but it would have been nice to make some progress. Besides finding out that Caen’s taste in music was no better than his taste in ties.”
“Did you check the tapes to make sure that’s what they really were?”
Mulder sighed. “Of course. Listened to them in the car all the way back to Washington. Gave me a splitting headache. I’ve given them to the lab, but I don’t think they’ll turn up anything. And I doubt I’ll get anything more from the Agency. I’m telling you, Scully, I’d better not ever get another case involving the CIA. I’m sure the Agency liaison officer will never speak to me again.”
Scully chuckled. “You’ve probably given him a complex, forcing him to actually tell you something without half a dozen forms signed in triplicate.”
“I just hope I can get some more information tonight.”
“Okay, I’ll see you then.”
“Oh, by the way, I think I’m going to have to back out on that offer for dinner. I’m exhausted, I’m going to try to take a nap before I deal with Roger Rabbit again. Can you just meet me at the Vietnam Memorial at eight?”
There was a moment’s silence on the phone. “All right. I’ll see you at eight, then.”
* * *
Mulder was the first to arrive at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that evening. Despite his best efforts, he’d been unable to enjoy even a brief nap after arriving home. Well, he should have known better—he couldn’t sleep at four in the morning, why did he think he’d be able to sleep at six Finally, he’d gotten up off the couch, splashed some cold water on his face, and headed for his meeting—forty-five minutes early.
He wandered quietly among the visitors clustered along the wall. This early in the evening, there were still quite a few people at the Memorial. It wasn’t exactly ideal for a clandestine meeting. He wondered at Gutierrez’ insistence on holding the meeting there. Mulder himself had missed the war by nearly six years. He remembered wondering at twelve what he would do if the war were still going on when he reached eighteen.
He stopped, facing the smooth black wall, and ran his fingers lightly down the rows of names. So many dead, he thought.
“Someone you know?” he heard a woman’s low voice at his side. He turned to see an athletic woman with a mop of dark blond hair and a lazy smile, dressed in jeans and sweat shirt.
“No, I’m just…waiting for a friend. How about you?”
She turned to gaze at the wall. “Yeah, I know some people here.” Her voice had a syrupy southern twang.
“Tennessee?” Mulder guessed.
“That’s right.” She grinned at him. “Little town called Bull’s Gap. You’ve got a good ear for accents.” Her voice had suddenly become flat and unaccented.
“But you haven’t been back in a long time.”
“Show-off.”
“You’re not close to your family?”
“Close enough.” She shrugged. “I was closest to my big brother Jimmy. I used to follow him around like a puppy. Amazing thing was, he let me. You couldn’t pry us apart with a crowbar, when we were kids.” Her voice trailed off; there was a faraway look in her eyes.
“What happened?”
“You don’t know?” She grinned, teasingly. Then the smile disappeared. She dug in the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a silver chain with an engraved tag, and dropped it into Mulder’s hand. It was an MIA bracelet. Cpl. James Lee Cameron, the tag read. Missing in action 12/09/72. A year longer than his own little sister Samantha had been missing.
“I’m sorry.” The memory of Samantha welled up inside him.
“He’s dead,” she replied casually, as she retrieved the bracelet and pushed it back into her pocket. “His bones are moldering in some Vietnamese swamp somewhere, nobody’ll ever find them. I know that.”
“How long was it before you accepted that?” He’d never given up hope of seeing his sister again. Sometimes he wished he could.
“Never,” she laughed.
He smiled sadly with her. “I know what you mean…. By the way, I’m Fox Mulder. Call me Mulder.”
“Lily Cameron. Call me Cam.” They shook hands.
“Do you live in Washington?”
“No. Just meeting someone here, like you.”
That was an evasive answer, worthy of Mickey Gutierrez himself…. Suddenly, Mulder took a closer look at Lily Cameron. No, she couldn’t possibly be Gutierrez’ partner…. But why had she come up to talk to him? “It wouldn’t happen to be a Company man you’re meeting here, would it?”
She grinned. “Wondered how long it was going to take for you to catch on.”
He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “So it wasn’t just my magnetic charm that made you want to talk to me?”
“Well, it sure didn’t hurt. Mickey said you were…interesting.”
“I’ll bet.” He couldn’t imagine how Gutierrez would describe him. “He told me you were his partner.”
“Well, he wouldn’t want to get all sentimental and call me his ‘friend’ or anything like that. We’ve worked together once or twice. But we go way back.”
“Funny he never mentioned you.”
“Oh, he doesn’t talk about me much. He kind of likes to spring me on people.”
“I don’t always like the things he springs on me, but in your case….”
“Cam. Mulder.” Mickey Gutierrez stood behind them, scowling. “I see you two are getting cozy already.”
“Hi, Mickey.” Mulder bit his lip, trying not to smile. “I like your partner.”
“Yeah, I can see that. So where’s yours?”
Mulder checked his watch. “Looks like she’s the only one of us on time. We’re all early.”
“A good agent is always early. Gives him a chance to check out the scene before the meet goes down.”
“So how come you’re the second-to-last one here?” Cam asked cheerfully.
“I was leaving the recon up to you, Cam. You got Mulder all thoroughly checked out now?”
“Naw, I can think of a dozen things that would bear closer inspection.”
“Am I late? I thought the meeting was at eight.” It was Scully, looking flushed and windblown. Mulder gave an inward sigh of relief; he was beginning to feel outnumbered.
“You’re not late. I couldn’t sleep, and these two are reconnoitering. Dana Scully, Mickey Gutierrez, Lily Cameron,” Mulder made the introductions. Gutierrez nodded brusquely. Lily Cameron thrust out her hand to shake, and, while gripping Scully’s right hand, leaned down and whispered, “If you tell him the earth moved, does he check under the bed for aliens?”
Scully laughed in spite of herself. Mulder and Gutierrez stared. While Scully sputtered and shook her head, Cameron waved her hand dismissively and said, “Just girl talk.”
The situation was quickly getting out of hand. One Mickey Gutierrez was bad enough; the addition of a female version was more trouble than Mulder wanted to deal with. Time to get down to business.
“Mickey. Tell me everything you know about Max Caen.”
Gutierrez glanced at his partner. She shrugged. He shrugged. “I don’t really know much about him. I never worked with him myself. He just happened to be in Haiti when I went there. I think he was…uh….” Gutierrez shifted uncomfortably. “He was working with FRAPH. He’d been there about six months. We had a couple of meetings when I got there, to coordinate. Make sure I didn’t step in anything. I don’t know what he was into.”
That might or might not be true. But it was plainly all Gutierrez was willing to tell him. The man was obviously nervous about saying even that much. Mulder sighed. This was not going to get him very far.
“Did he mention anything about voodoo to you? Or being threatened by anyone?” Scully asked. “Did he have any enemies?”
Gutierrez shook his head. “Everybody’s got enemies.”
“Who? FRAPH? The attaches? The Ton-Tons Macoutes?” Mulder pressed for specifics.
Gutierrez just shrugged. “Try all of the above.”
Then Cameron spoke. “This voodoo thing doesn’t make sense. I mean, why should they waste their energy? They could have just shot him in the head and left him in the street. And how the hell did he end up in Miami?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Well, I don’t think he was killed in Haiti. There’s just no possible reason for anybody to smuggle the body into Miami to dump it,” Cameron stated flatly.
“Maybe he came back to Miami to try to get away from them,” Gutierrez suggested. “Does voodoo work long distance?”
“Possibly,” Mulder said. “But then who dumped him in the ocean?”
“UFOs, probably,” Cameron said casually. Then she backhanded Gutierrez on the arm. “Hey, Mickey, did you tell Mulder about that UFO we saw?”
“We didn’t see any damned UFO.”
“You saw a UFO?” Mulder asked.
“Sure we did. In Mexico, remember?”
“We didn’t see any damned UFO!”
“Hey, it was an object, it was flying, and we couldn’t identify it. What else would you call it?”
“Well, we didn’t see any damned flying saucer or little green men or anything like that. It was just a…a meteor or some kind of spy plane or….”
“Swamp gas? A weather balloon?” Cameron suggested cheerfully.
“What did you see?” Mulder directed the question toward Cameron.
She put her hands on her hips and drawled, “Well, it looked like a big old pie plate on a string….”
“Don’t you mean a hub cap?” Mulder asked, smiling.
“Oh, yeah, right. A hub cap. And there was this tall skinny woman in black….”
“And a big bald wrestler?”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Gutierrez exploded.
“Plan Nine from Outer Space, of course. Jeez, Mickey don’t you have any culture?” Cameron said.
Gutierrez glared at her. Then he glared at Mulder. And threw in a glare for Scully, who looked as if she had been hoping to stay completely out of this exchange. “You’re all nuts.”
Mulder and Cameron exchanged a conspiratorial smile. “Seriously, what did you see?” Mulder asked again.
“Mostly, it was a big flash of orange light, sort of vaguely bullet-shaped. It was close enough that we could feel the rush of wind as it passed. And it was making a high-pitched metallic buzz. Sort of like an Apache helicopter rotor whine.”
“No,” Gutierrez disagreed. “More like a Blackhawk.”
Cameron cocked her head, considering. “The Blackhawk frequency but the Apache buzz.”
Gutierrez gave it some thought, nodded.
“And this was in Mexico?” Finally, some information, Mulder thought. It’s not about the case, but….
“Southern region, up in the hills. We were driving down from a meet with some guerrillas out in the middle of nowhere. We heard it before we saw anything. Thought it might be a chopper or something. I pulled the jeep over under some trees and we sat there and waited. Then, whoosh! Before you could say ‘What the hell was that?’ it was gone.”
“When did this happen?”
“Year and a half ago, wasn’t it? Late March. I could check my files for the exact date.”
“One more question.” Mulder smiled. “How much tequila had you been drinking?”
Cameron laughed. “There were no substances consumed.”
“Mickey, is that how you remember it?”
Gutierrez frowned. “It wasn’t any damned UFO. Now, can we get back to the subject at hand?”
Mulder nodded. “I need more information about Caen. Anything you can tell me.”
“We’ll see what we can find out,” Cameron offered. Mulder wondered that she seemed so much more cooperative than Gutierrez. After all, he was the one who thought someone was out to kill him. But he nodded his approval of Cameron’s offer.
“Cam can find things out. That’s what she’s good at.”
“All right, then, I guess that’s all we can do for tonight….”
But Scully had one more question. “Do you think someone in the CIA asked for Mulder to be assigned to this case?”
“Maybe. Hell, why not? We got guys talking to the KGB, they might as well be talking to the FBI too,” Gutierrez answered her.
Cameron nodded. “If they’re really taking this voodoo stuff seriously, they might think Mulder’d be the one to handle it.”
“Then why don’t they want you talking to Mulder?”
“Oh, they’re just protecting their secrets.” Cameron didn’t seem to think that any of this was unusual.
Scully shook her head. “But how do they expect Mulder to solve the case if they won’t let anyone talk to him?”
Cameron just shrugged. “Solving the case is secondary.”
Then Gutierrez suddenly jumped in. “What’s the difference anyway? Whoever did it, there’s bound to be fuck-all we can do about it. Nobody’s going to be arresting any voodoo hitmen. The only reason there’s an investigation at all is that Caen wound up in Miami. If he’d have washed up dead in Port-au-Prince instead, they’d have just black-bordered his file and given his notes to the next guy, and that would be that.”
Scully opened her mouth and closed it several times. There was a long silence. Finally, Mulder said, “Mickey, you never really told me why you thought someone was trying to kill you.”
“They did Caen.” That was all he would say.
“Has anything happened since you came back from Haiti?”
Gutierrez shrugged. “I’m alive.”
“Well, stay that way,” Mulder ordered.
That elicited half a smile from the grim CIA agent. “Yeah, right.”
“If anything happens, or you think of something you want to tell me, you know my number.”
“Right, Mulder. Scully, nice to meet you. We’ll be in touch.” Gutierrez gestured to Cameron and turned to walk away. Scully hesitated a moment, then hurried to catch up with him. Gutierrez and Scully stopped about twenty feet away and began talking earnestly.
“Must be love,” Cameron said, grinning.
“What about you?” Mulder asked. “Are you and Gutierrez…?”
“Doing the horizontal bop? No. Well, every once in a while. When no one else will have us,” she said, with a casual wave of her hand.
That wasn’t exactly what Mulder had been intending to ask. He took a deep breath and started again. “Would you like to go and get some coffee or something?”
“Sure…but not tonight. If somebody really is trying to whack Mickey—’course, if they are using voodoo, I don’t know what I’m going to do about it—but I kind of feel like I ought to stick close to him.”
Mulder nodded. “I understand.”
“Unless he’s making a date with Scully over there.”
Mulder laughed. He couldn’t hear what the other two were saying, but it was clear that the conversation was not friendly. Gutierrez’ back was stiff; Scully’s face was stubborn and serious. Mulder recognized that look. It meant I am not happy with the way you are behaving. “Does he really think someone’s trying to kill him?”
“Well…he’s sure freaked all to hell about something.”
“Do you know what it is?”
She shrugged. “If you want to know what’s going on with Mickey, you’ll have to ask him.”
“I have. You know how he is.”
A flash of a smile. “The key to this thing is finding out what happened to Caen. I’ll see what I can dig up on him.”
It seemed he was going to have to be satisfied with that. And, if he couldn’t get any help from the Agency through normal channels, her information might well be all he had.
Gutierrez broke away from Scully and strode away. With a quick nod to Mulder, Cameron took off after him. Scully took a deep breath, smiled ruefully across the grass to Mulder, and began to walk towards him.
“That…man,” Scully sputtered, as soon as she reached Mulder. Then she smiled sheepishly. “I apologize, Mulder. I’ll never compare you to Mickey Gutierrez again.”
“I’m glad to know there is someone out there who is more infuriating than I am.”
“He takes infuriating to new heights. I’ve never heard so much double-talk in my life.”
“So, not planning to defect to the Company?”
She laughed. “No, thanks.” They began to walk together towards the Constitution Garden lake.
“What were you talking to him about?” Mulder asked.
Scully colored slightly. “You’re probably not going to like this, but…I just told him I wouldn’t be happy if it turned out he was jerking you around.”
Mulder looked amused. “Well, I did say I was bringing you along for protection.”
She seemed relieved by his reaction. Still, she was quick to change the subject. “So, did you get a date?”
Now it was Mulder’s turn to redden. “That’s what we were wondering about you.”
“Oh, please.”
“She’s pretty worried about him. She said she was going to stick close to him.”
“Do you think we can believe anything they tell us?”
“They haven’t really told us anything, yet.” Mulder stopped, yawning. “I’m tired. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He turned to go.
“Mulder…?” He turned back, waited. She watched him silently for a moment. Then, “Take care of yourself, Mulder. Good night.”
He smiled sleepily. “Good night.”
* * *
He slept badly. Dead Company agents and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. None of this had anything to do with his beloved X-Files. But if he ever wanted the X-Files to be reopened, he had to solve this case. He had to prove himself to be the agent who could solve the unsolvable, who could find the answers when no one else could. He’d never had any doubts about his ability to get to the bottom of a case before. But this was different. This was no X-File. This was the damned CIA.
* * *
The next day, Mulder was hard at work again. He ran Lily Cameron’s name through the databases, just to see what sort of person he was dealing with. She, too, was listed as a CIA operative, assignment classified. But personal information was available. Lily Mae Cameron was indeed born in Bull’s Gap, Tennessee, the fifth of six children, all the others boys. The fourth boy, James, was listed as MIA in Vietnam. Mulder breathed a sigh of relief when he read that. He’d been afraid that she had just made up that story, knowing about his sister Samantha, to gain his sympathy. But, as far as he could determine, everything she’d told him about herself was the truth. That was encouraging. Of course, she wouldn’t be foolish enough to lie about anything that was so easily verified.
Next he consulted his files on UFO sightings. There had been a sighting—a glowing orange craft—reported over Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador on March 21, 1993. So that was true, as well. Mulder smiled at the thought of Mickey Gutierrez seeing a UFO.And all this was very interesting, but got him no further in his investigation into the death of Max Caen. He pored over his files on Haitian voodoo, hoping that something would give him an idea.
At 12:30 his phone rang. As soon as he lifted the receiver, he heard a woman’s voice. “I think I’ve got something for you. Meet me in half an hour, at the usual place.” Then she hung up.
Cameron, it had to be. He checked his watch. Half an hour to get to the Vietnam Memorial in lunch-hour traffic. He sighed. She’d better really have something. He grabbed his suit coat and headed out the door.
And ran right into Scully.
“Scully. What’s up?”
She stood in the hall outside his office, biting her lip. “I was in the neighborhood, I thought you might want to have lunch. I see you’re on your way somewhere.”
“I have to meet Lily Cameron.”
“So you did get a date.”
He grinned. “She says she has some information for me. I sure hope so, I’m running up against a brick wall here. Why don’t you come with me?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
They stood and looked at each other for a few moments. Scully sighed. “We don’t seem to be having much luck at getting together lately.”
“No.” Mulder shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, it’s just that this case….”
“Mulder, you don’t have to explain it to me. I understand. I just….” She offered a tentative smile.
“I know,” he replied softly. “We’ll get together soon, I promise.”
She nodded, and turned to go back up the stairs. Mulder swore to himself. This was what happened every time he tried to have a non-working relationship with a woman. Eventually they got tired of taking a poor second to his work and drifted away. He’d promised himself it wouldn’t happen with Scully. But now that they each had their own caseload, it was getting harder and harder to find time to spend with her. Damn it, he wanted her back as his partner! If only he could get the X-Files reopened….
* * *
Midday, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was quite crowded. And he felt he’d seen enough of it over the past few days. He suggested lunch; Cameron agreed. She tuned his car radio to a country music station while he drove them to a favorite Italian restaurant.
There was a slight skirmish over possession of the chair facing the door. Mulder attempted to lure her into the opposite chair by holding it for her; she grinned and slipped past him, leaving him to sit with his back to the door. Obviously, politeness was not the tactic to use with Company men. They exchanged small talk while they ordered. Mulder watched curiously as Cameron shook salt into the palm of her hand and licked it. “That can’t be good for you.”
She shrugged and smiled. “I like salt.”
“Shouldn’t there be a shot of tequila along with that?”
“Would that make it better for me?”
“No, but it would make it less weird.”
“Well, that’s the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?” She poured more salt into her hand.
“Okay, eating salt out of the shaker is not weird.”
“Oh, it’s weird, all right.” She grinned at him. “Nothing wrong with being weird.”
Mulder settled back in his chair and returned her smile. Well, one good thing about the Company—the spooks were as spooky as he was.
* * *
Neither of them mentioned Max Caen until after they’d finished eating. Then, without preamble, Cameron launched into her story. “I got hold of Caen’s records. Before he went to Haiti, he was working in El Salvador. He was there last year when Mickey and I were in Mexico. He was about 300 miles southwest of us. More or less the direction that UFO was heading.”
Mulder nodded. Interesting, maybe, but hardly worth missing lunch with Scully. Cameron continued, “I managed to find the man who was Caen’s controller while he was in El Salvador. Caen was on a twenty-four hour call-in schedule. The night the UFO went over, Caen missed his call-in. And for three more nights after that. Caen’s control said he was just about to black-border Caen, when he suddenly called in again. At first, Caen denied that he’d missed his call-in for four days. Then he said he’d had trouble with his radio. Control said he never did get a satisfactory explanation for what Caen had been doing during the time he was out of contact.”
Suddenly, Mulder’s mind was racing. Could it be possible? Not voodoo at all, but a UFO abduction? “Do you think Caen was abducted?”
She shrugged. “That’s your department. As Mickey says, you’re the heebee-jeebee expert. But,” she leaned forward, “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Did Mickey say anything about any UFO sightings in Haiti?”
“No. But then he wouldn’t, would he?”
“If there was a UFO, someone would have seen it.”
“Maybe. But the way things are in Haiti right now, you could land a UFO right in the middle of downtown Port-au-Prince and nobody’d look twice.”
“I need to talk to Mickey again. Can you get him to meet me tonight? Alone this time. No offense, but I think it might be easier to get him to talk to me if we’re alone.”
“I think he’ll be safe with you,” she said, grinning wickedly. “The usual place?”
“What is it with you two and that place? Can’t you meet anywhere else?”
“Where would you like? The Holocaust Museum?”
“How about the west end of the Reflecting Pool? Eight o’clock? He can go visit the Vietnam Memorial afterwards, if he wants.”
She laughed. “Fine by me. If Mickey has any objections, I’m sure he’ll let you know.”
“I’m sure he will.”
* * *
Mulder telephoned Scully from a phone booth outside the restaurant. “Does Max Caen’s body have any unusual surgical scars or dental work? Any strange markings, anything at all unusual?”
“Mulder, are you asking what I think you’re asking?”
“I think Caen might have been abducted.”
A pause. “Is that what your lunch meeting was about?”
“I’m told that Caen was in El Salvador in March of last year. He was out of touch with his controllers for four days coinciding with a UFO sighting in that area.”
“And you think this is connected to his death?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Scully, I’m grasping at straws. I don’t have anything else to go on. Just tell me about Caen’s body.”
“He’d had one kidney removed. He was missing three molars. He had an assortment of scars, most of them looked more like wounds than surgeries. There were three small pieces of shrapnel in his forehead, abdomen, and right leg….”
“Shrapnel? What kind of shrapnel? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“It was all in the autopsy report, Mulder,” Scully explained patiently. “If you’d been listening at the time, you’d know this already.”
Mulder remembered his self-indulgent mood on the day of the autopsy, and felt his face grow hot. “Well, I’m listening now. Tell me about the shrapnel.”
“It was just some small pieces of metal. Nothing unusual. He was in Grenada, remember. A lot of veterans have shrapnel in their bodies.”
“Did you have them analyzed?”
“It didn’t seem necessary at the time. I’ll send them to forensics now.”
“Good. Thanks, Scully. I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“How about tonight?”
Damn, he was going to have to turn her down again. “Sorry, I can’t tonight. I’m meeting our friend from last night. As soon as I can, I promise….”
“That’s all right, Mulder.” She sounded mildly amused. “I’ll talk to you later.”
* * *
One good thing about clandestine meetings with Company agents, Mulder thought, is that you don’t have to sit around and wait for them. Gutierrez was already at the Reflecting Pool, circling one of the benches as though he were coming in for a landing.
“Mulder. You don’t believe all this UFO crap, do you?”
“Hi, Mickey. Nice to see you too.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re looking beautiful tonight. What’s all this junk that Cam has been feeding you about Caen?”
“Mickey…Mickey, will you light somewhere? You’re making me dizzy.”
Gutierrez scowled, then plopped down on the end of the bench, arms crossed. “This whole thing is getting entirely out of hand, Mulder. I mean, voodoo was bad enough. Now it’s UFOs. What next? You going to start saying Elvis did it?”
“You’re the one who said it was voodoo.” Mulder sat down beside Gutierrez. “But you’ve never really told me why you thought so.”
“I can’t talk about it. Hell, I don’t know why I ever came to you in the first place. There’s nothing you can do. Caen’s dead. And, whoever they are, if they want me dead, too, I’ll be dead.”
“Mickey, you asked me to help you. I still want to, if I can. But I can’t do anything if you don’t tell me what happened.”
Gutierrez looked away, then stared out across the twilit pool. “I don’t know what I can tell you.” He looked Mulder in the eye. “You have your own agenda. What are you going to do with this?”
“I’m going to try to help you. You came to me in the middle of the night and asked me to save your life. Why did you do that if you didn’t trust me?”
Gutierrez glared at Mulder. “I don’t trust anybody.”
“Then how am I supposed to help you?”
“Look, you do what you want. Help me or not, I don’t care.” Gutierrez got up, and started to walk away.
Mulder had realized that trust was likely to be a sensitive subject to a Company field operative, but he hadn’t quite expected Gutierrez to bolt. He went after him, and took him by the arm. “Michael….”
Gutierrez pulled his arm free, bit back a retort, then muttered, “It’s Miguel.”
“What?”
“Miguel. Not Michael.”
Mulder shook his head. “I’ve seen your file. Michael Joseph Gutierrez.”
“That’s just what I tell the suits.” A pause, as he gave Mulder an appraising look. “But if you’re trying to be my mother, it’s Miguel Jose de la Cruz Domingo Gutierrez.”
Mulder smiled. “Why did you anglicize it?” He understood that Gutierrez was trying to change the subject. He also understood that, in offering Mulder his real name, Gutierrez was telling Mulder that he trusted him, in his own oblique way.
“You think I want to hear any station chiefs reeling off that mouthful?”
“So, you infuriate your station chiefs, too.”
Gutierrez shrugged. Mulder gestured toward the bench and resumed his seat; after a few moments, Gutierrez sat, too.
“All right, Miguel Jose de la Cruz….”
“Yeah, Fox,” Gutierrez interrupted.
Mulder grinned. “All right, Mickey, truce.” He paused a moment before continuing. “I realize that ‘trust’ is not a word in the spook-speak dictionary, so let me put it another way. If you want my help, there’s a price. That price is the truth.”
Gutierrez sat and stared out over the water for long minutes. Finally, he spoke, in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “Caen came to me in Port-au-Prince and told me we were going to a meeting with some FRAPH people on a yacht offshore. It was a forty-foot Chriscraft, really nice. There were six of us altogether, four Haitians and Caen and me. We left in the middle of the afternoon, cruised until night. Caen said we were going to spend the night on the boat, and we’d go back to Port-au-Prince in the morning.”
He paused, ran his hands over his short-cropped hair. He hadn’t looked at Mulder since he’d started telling his story. “Caen and I shared a cabin below. I don’t know what time it was when I woke up. Caen wasn’t there. I heard a sound, I thought it was a helicopter.”
“Halfway between an Apache and a Blackhawk?” Mulder asked softly.
Gutierrez laughed a short, humorless laugh. “Maybe. I thought I should go up on deck, see what was going on, but somehow…I couldn’t. Then….” He clenched and unclenched his fists as he spoke. “I could see a bright light through the porthole. There was a low, vibrating sound, and an intense pressure. It got stronger, and I couldn’t move at all, and it was hard to breathe, and my ears hurt…. I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen. I thought I was going to die. Then, nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“I don’t know, I must have passed out or something. I don’t remember anything else until morning. We were back in Port-au-Prince. Two of the FRAPH men came to get me and took me off the boat. They were acting nervous, scared. Caen still wasn’t there. When I asked them about him, they said he’d already gotten off. I never saw him after that.”
“Anything else?”
Gutierrez touched his left ear. “My ear was bleeding. It bled for three days. It’s okay now. But…I couldn’t stay in Haiti after that. As soon as I could, I got out.”
“And you thought it was voodoo?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. What the hell was I supposed to think? I hear a weird noise, I don’t automatically assume it’s aliens.”
“Caen was probably abducted last year in El Salvador. Sometimes they come back and take the same people again. He had several small pieces of metal in his body. It’s thought that these are used as tracking devices.”
Gutierrez ventured a tentative glance at Mulder. “Am I in danger?”
“No. It was Caen they were after. They didn’t take you then, they won’t come back for you later.” Mulder wasn’t absolutely sure of that, but he didn’t see any reason to frighten Gutierrez further. He gripped Gutierrez’ shoulder briefly. “So quit worrying.”
Gutierrez managed to smile. “Did they kill him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not intentionally. They do experiments on some of the abductees. Some of them don’t survive.”
“So they dumped him in Miami harbor.”
“They couldn’t take him back where they found him. The boat was gone. Maybe they thought…they were taking him home.”
Gutierrez shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking to you about this like it was real or something. I’m as crazy as you are.”
“You were willing to believe it was voodoo.”
“Yeah, but, at least that’s human. It makes a certain limited sort of sense. —I don’t really believe in that either.”
Mulder sighed. The man was worse that Scully. She demanded hard evidence for everything; Mickey looked evidence in the face and still refused to believe it. Mulder asked the question he’d asked Scully so many times. “Why is it so hard for you to believe?”
“Mulder, I’ve got a hard enough time dealing with all the shit I do believe in. I don’t need any damned outer space aliens to complicate things.”
“Your partner doesn’t seem to have any trouble believing in extreme possibilities.”
“Yeah, well, Cam has her way of dealing with things, and I have mine.” Suddenly, he offered a friendly, even shy, smile that made his plain face almost attractive. “You know, you remind me of her.”
“I don’t eat salt out of the shaker.”
Gutierrez chuckled. “If salt-eating is only the strangest thing you’ve found out about her so far, you haven’t even scratched the surface.”
“She’s been worried about you.”
“Yeah, well…she can stop worrying now, I guess. So what are you going to do? You can’t use anything I’ve told you.”
“There’ll be other evidence. At least now I know what to look for.”
Gutierrez stood. “Well. Thanks, Mulder. Guess I’ll get out of your hair now.”
“Okay, Mickey. Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah, you too. Watch out for those little green men.”
* * *
Mulder went straight to Asst. Director Skinner’s office first thing in the morning. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he was eager to get moving on the case. “I need to go to Haiti,” he announced, as soon as he’d burst in to stand towering over Skinner at his desk.
“Agent Mulder, sit down,” Skinner said calmly.
Mulder levered himself into the chair impatiently, then repeated, “I need to go to Haiti. I’ve confirmed that Caen was there just before he died, but I can’t get any other information on him. The Agency is stonewalling me. I have to go to the scene if I’m going to get anywhere on this case.”
“Agent Mulder, this case is closed.”
“I know I haven’t got any solid information yet, but I’ve got several leads I’d like to follow up on in Haiti….”
“Agent Mulder, you don’t understand. This case is closed. Word just came down. The investigation is over.”
Mulder blinked. “Closed? How can they close the case? Who closed it?”
“I’m told it’s a matter of national security.” Skinner’s expression remained calm, but there was a slight undercurrent of sarcasm in the man’s voice. “Write up what you’ve got, then take the rest of the day off. You’ll get your new assignment in the morning.”
Mulder struggled for words; found none. He stood, sat down again, started to speak; then closed his mouth firmly and nodded. Without another word, he left.
* * *
Mulder returned to his office and began to write up his notes on the case. There wasn’t really much to report, especially after leaving out the conversations with Gutierrez and Cameron. Abruptly, he threw the papers across the room. They’d shut him down again! First the X-Files, and now they wouldn’t even let him finish an ordinary homicide investigation! He slammed out of his office and was halfway up the stairs when he stopped, took a deep breath, and forced himself to go back. Carefully, he began to pick up his scattered notes. No more tantrums in Skinner’s office. That wouldn’t help the situation. He hadn’t wanted the damned case in the first place. CIA agents and Mickey Gutierrez’ double talk and a Tennessee sweet-talker’s tall tales about UFOs…. He should be glad to be out of it.
He finished writing up his report and dropped it off at Skinner’s office, then took the offered afternoon off and headed straight for the gym. Maybe a couple of hours of pounding the sweet, cold metal would calm him down.
* * *
He heaved the barbell, ten pounds heavier than he usually used, into the air with a furious groan, then let it crash a little more forcefully than he should to the floor.
“Hey, what’d that barbell ever do to you?” a syrupy southern voice taunted.
He whirled to find Lily Cameron, dressed in workout clothes and shiny with sweat, grinning at him.
“It’s not a barbell. It’s the CIA.”
“Ouch! Do I need a bodyguard?”
“Depends. Did you have anything to do with getting my case pulled out from under me?”
She frowned sympathetically. “I heard about that. That’s why I came to see you. You got a rough deal, I can’t really do anything about it, but I thought I’d tell you what I know. But first—” she grinned again—”can you give me a spot over here?”
He was happy enough to put thinking about the case aside and watch the bar while she performed a set of bench presses. “Not bad for a girl,” he teased, when she was finished.
“Yeah, right. And what do you bench?”
“Oh, about five hundred,” he replied airily.
She laughed. “Is that pounds or kilos?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, then, let me see it.” She started to pull a 50-kilo plate off the rack.
“Uh, I already did my bench presses today. How about some rows?”
* * *
They finished their workout together, talking only about weights and reps and exercises. Then, when they’d showered and dressed, they met again in front of the gym and walked up the street to a coffeeshop. Without the weights to hold his attention, Mulder found his fury at having the case so cavalierly dumped in his lap and then snatched away again returning full force.
“I don’t understand any of this,” he complained, as he stirred his coffee. “I didn’t have anything. Why did they close the case?”
“You had everything you were going to get. And it was more than you were supposed to. That’s my fault, I guess. You’d never have known about the UFO if I hadn’t put you onto it.” Cam didn’t, as Mulder had suspected she might, put salt in her coffee. Just large amounts of cream.
“But I couldn’t prove anything! It was all just rumors and coincidence.”
“You weren’t supposed to be able to prove anything. They just wanted an investigation on record so they could close the books and forget about it.”
“But look, if they knew it was UFOs all along, and they didn’t want anyone to find out about it, why put me of all people on the case in the first place?”
“They thought you’d go for the voodoo angle. But if anyone did make the UFO connection, they wanted it to be you.”
“But why…?” He stopped, light dawning, incredulity giving way to doubled fury. “They knew no one would believe me. There’s no evidence.”
“Of course,” she replied matter-of-factly. “If anyone else had said, ‘Wait a minute, this could be a UFO abduction,’ people might have thought there was something to it. But if ‘Spooky’ Mulder says it’s UFOs….”
“They just chalk it up to my crazy obsession,” Mulder finished bitterly. “I’m finished. I’ll never get the X-Files back now.”
“Take it easy. It’s not that bad.”
“No? You don’t know how badly some of my own people want me to fail.”
“Mulder, you didn’t fail. You’re an FBI agent who got screwed over by the CIA. And the agencies always close ranks around one of their own. There’s no love lost between Company and Bureau. I don’t think you’re going to come off too badly from this.”
He sighed. “I hope you’re right. How do you know all this, anyway?”
She shrugged, swirling the coffee in her cup. “I hear things. I poke around. I put two and two together and get eight. I like to know what’s going on with the people in charge.”
“You investigate your own superiors?”
“Mulder, ever since ‘plausible deniability’ became the Company’s watchword, those of us in the field all know that any time things get iffy, we get hung out to dry. It behooves us to know as much as we can about what’s going on upstairs.”
Mulder shook his head. “How can you stand it, Cam? How can you live in a world where you can’t trust anyone?”
She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “I trust Mickey.”
“Just one person. Is that enough?”
She sat back and folded her arms. “Mulder, most people go through their whole lives thinking they can trust people, but they don’t really know. It’s never put to the test. I know I can trust Mickey. I’m here today, alive and more or less sane, because of Mickey.” She leaned forward on her elbow. “You can say what you want about him, there’ve been days when he’s the only reason I’d get up in the morning. You have somebody like that in your
life, you don’t need anything else.”
Mulder nodded slowly.
* * *
It was still early when Mulder arrived home. He threw his suit coat and tie down on a chair and went into the kitchen for a beer. Well, things could have turned out worse. As it was, the past few days had only been a complete waste of time. He felt like pulling a blanket over himself on the couch and staying there for a week.
But first, he had something important to do. Cam’s parting words continued to play themselves over in his head…. <em>When you’ve got somebody like that in your life, you don’t need anything else….</em>
He punched out the number on his speed dial, waited impatiently for the answer.
“Scully. Want to have dinner with me tonight?”
end.
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