Rat and Fox

Mulder and Scully investigate a series of violent incidents in a small town. Case story, Second season.

2/95

Disclaimer: The X-Files belong to Chris Carter and 1013. No infringement intended.

* * *

The boy sat slumped in his chair, hands folded on the table in front of him, staring numbly at nothing. He looked younger than his eighteen years, perhaps because of the way his unruly dark hair fell over his eyes, or the haunted look on a face still red and swollen from crying. He did not look like a killer. But Fox Mulder knew that killers came in all shapes and sizes, and there was no question that this boy had actually committed the crime. The question was why.

Police Chief Dale Winter, a husky, round-faced man who appeared barely older than the boy in the interrogation room, bit his lip and seemed about to cry himself. “When these things started happening a few months ago, we thought it was strange, of course, but we never imagined it could lead to…. Bobby’s got a bit of a temper, but he loves Jean. They’ve been sweethearts since junior high. He’s done nothing but cry and say he doesn’t know why he did it, ever since it happened.”

“Tell me about the earlier incidents.” Mulder noticed that Chief Winter still referred to Jean Palmer in the present tense, as if unable to accept her death. Mulder’s partner, Dana Scully, stood beside him, hands jammed into the pockets of her trench coat, staring thoughtfully at the boy through the window in the interrogation room door.

“Well, I guess the first thing was when Roy Turner and John McCoy got into a fight over at the Red Dog. Although they’re a couple of ornery old cusses and that could have just been a normal fight. Took me and my sergeant and the bartender to get them apart, though, and I’ve never seen anything like the looks on their faces….” The police chief shook his head, took a deep breath, and continued.

“Then a week or so later, Marge Swenson drove her jeep right through the front window of Bottoms’ general store. Said she was mad at Sam Bottoms for raising the price on the tuna fish. Next was when Connie Perkins took after her little brother with a baseball bat. She had him up a tree screaming blue murder when her parents came home and pulled her off.

“Agent Mulder, Agent Scully….” He looked at the two FBI agents. The pleading in his eyes plainly told them that he knew he was out of his depth. “People get mad, they lose their tempers and do foolish things. I know that. And I’ve seen my share in my time here as police chief. But these people… they were all in some kind of fury, a… a black rage that just went way beyond a normal anger. And now, it’s resulted in the death of one of the sweetest girls you’d ever want to know. And ruined the life of a young boy who never hurt anyone before in his life. I don’t understand it. And I want it to stop.”

“So do we, Chief Winter,” Mulder said.

* * *

Bobby Poole stared dully at Agents Mulder and Scully as they entered the interrogation room. They sat down across the table from him. Chief Winter stood at the side of the room, arms crossed.

“Hello, Bobby. I’m Fox Mulder and this is Dana Scully,” Mulder said. “We’re with the FBI. We’re here to find out what’s been causing these violent incidents.”

Bobby shook his head slowly. His lip trembled as he spoke. “I don’t know what caused it. I still can’t believe it… happened.”

“Can you tell us what happened that day? As much as you remember?”

“I remember everything,” Bobby said. “I just can’t believe it. It doesn’t make any sense.” The boy paused, heaved a ragged breath, and continued. “We went to the movies in Sacramento. We had a great time, the movie was really funny. Then I was driving her… Jean… home.” His voice fell to barely above a whisper as he spoke his fiancée’s name. “I just got so mad. I don’t even know why. I said all sorts of things to her, awful things. She was yelling at me, asking me what got into me. I didn’t know, I was just so mad. I’ve never been so mad in my life.”

Bobby put his face in his hands, and continued to speak through his fingers. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I pulled the car over. We were both screaming. Then I was hitting her, telling her to shut up. She tried to get out of the car, but that just made me madder. I pulled her back, and put my hands around her throat.” He stopped, stared at his hands. “Something inside me knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I was so mad I couldn’t stop. I just couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. When she was… when it was over….” Tears streamed from his eyes. “I just pushed her out of the car and drove home. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized…. I wanted to die. I just want to die….”

“Bobby, had you fought with Jean earlier?” Scully asked. Her doctor-trained face was a mask, but Mulder thought he could detect a slight huskiness in her voice.

“No. No, like I said, we had a great time at the movies. It just… happened.”

“What did you eat that day?”

Bobby looked confused. “I don’t know. The usual stuff. Lunch at school, in the cafeteria. Breakfast at home. We had popcorn and sodas at the theater. I didn’t have time for dinner, I had to deliver some stuff up at Ms. Mowbray’s after school.”

“Who is Ms. Mowbray?” Mulder asked.

The police chief answered. “Linda Mowbray. She’s some kind of artist, she’s been renting the old Beaker place up in the woods for the past three months. Kind of a recluse. She hardly ever comes into town.”

“I delivered stuff to her from Mr. Bottoms a couple of times,” Bobby added. “She paints… really weird paintings.”

“You didn’t have anything to eat or drink at Ms. Mowbray’s?” Scully asked.

“No.” Bobby almost shuddered. “No. She’s pretty spooky. I just gave her the box and got out of there. She gave me five bucks, though.”

The corner of Mulder’s mouth twitched at the word “spooky.” He’d been called “Spooky” himself more than once. “Did anything at all unusual happen that day?”

Bobby shook his head. “I’ve thought about it over and over. There just wasn’t anything. I went to school, I went to Ms. Mowbray’s, I picked up Jean and we went to the movies. Oh, I stopped by Bottoms’ to pick up the groceries for Ms. Mowbray. Nothing else. Nothing unusual. There just wasn’t any reason. No reason at all….”

“Bobby, there’s always a reason. We just have to find it.” Sensible Scully, the voice of logic. Mulder smiled slightly. Sometimes the reason was beyond human imagining, but yes, there was always a reason.

* * *

Gold Bug, California, population 3,591, was a small town in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, about thirty miles east of Sacramento. It was farming country; the feed store occupied a prominent place on the town’s main strip, larger than Sam Bottoms’ general store. Mulder and Scully’s shiny Ford Taurus looked out of place among the mud-spattered pickup trucks parked along the street in front of the police station. The FBI agents walked to their car slowly, Mulder studying the map that Chief Winter had marked up for them as he walked.

“It doesn’t look like there’s any pattern to the location of the incidents.” Red dots marked the Red Dog Tavern, Sam Bottoms’ general store, the Perkins residence, and the place along Highway 50 where Jean Palmer’s body had been found. The homes of the persons involved were also marked, in blue. “Or to the times at which they occurred.”

“Do you have any theories?” Scully asked, as they reached the car.

Mulder handed her the map before getting in on the driver’s side. “Some kind of drug or chemical….” Unfortunately, it hadn’t occurred to anyone to have Bobby Poole or any of the other subjects tested for drugs after their rampages. Still, they’d asked for Poole’s blood to be tested, in case something might still be in his system.

“I don’t know of any drugs that have that kind of effect.” Scully entered the car and sat looking at the map.

“Steroids,” Mulder suggested. He started the car and headed north, towards the small farm where Roy Turner lived.

“Only after long-term use. And somehow I can’t see little Connie Perkins taking steroids.”

“Pesticides. LSDM. Remember Franklin, PA.” Several residents of that small town had gone on killing sprees after being exposed to an experimental pesticide—and possibly to some sort of covert mind-control as well.

Scully shook her head thoughtfully. “I thought of that too. But this feels different. Those people in Franklin weren’t enraged. They were frightened. Delusional. These people seem to know exactly what’s going on. They’re just so angry they lose control.”

“So what’s your theory, Scully?”

“Drugs.” She smiled sheepishly. “It’s the most reasonable theory I can think of. But it’s some sort of drug I’ve never heard of before.”

* * *

Roy Turner was happy to tell them all about the evening he and John McCoy had nearly killed each other down at the Red Dog. In fact, Roy Turner seemed eager to talk about any subject at all, and he had an opinion on every one. Mulder and Scully had to steer him back to the night in question a number of times. He had his theories on what had caused the “ruckus”—chemicals in the beer that was trucked up in kegs from Placerville. Of course, that didn’t explain what had caused Connie Perkins to attack her little brother. Turner brushed it off. “All them Perkins women are spitfires,” he said. “Why I remember one time her aunt Claudia—Claudia Perkins that was, who married Ralph Palmer—that’d be poor little Jean Palmer’s cousin—now, this was back before Sam Bottoms took over the general store from his daddy….” If they’d wanted to know three generations’ worth of Gold Bug gossip, they were certainly in the right place.

The most interesting piece of information that they managed to turn up was that Turner and John McCoy had both been out to Linda Mowbray’s place that afternoon. They’d gone to fix her generator, and had stopped at the Red Dog on the way back to quench their thirst. No, Miss Mowbray hadn’t offered them anything to eat or drink. Not even a glass of iced tea, after they’d spent all afternoon fussing with that old beat-up generator. They’d had to drink water out of the faucet on the side of the house. They hadn’t even seen hide nor hair of her until they were ready to go, when she’d come out on the porch to pay them. Paid well, though, she did. Not stingy with a dollar, like old man Beaker, whose place it had been before….

* * *

Marge Swenson, it turned out, had also been up to Linda Mowbray’s house the morning of the day she decided to drive her jeep through the front window of Sam Bottoms’ general store. “Went to pick up a painting she was donating to the charity auction for the school.” Marge Swenson grinned. “Lord, when I saw some of those paintings in her living room, I thought, who’s going to buy one of those awful things! But then the one she gave to me was quite nice. A watercolor of some flowers on a table. Carol McCoy paid a hundred and fifty dollars for it. I always meant to drive out there and thank her for it….” But Swenson, like the others, had not stayed for a social visit. “Likes her privacy, which is fine by me. Not like some of the busybodies in this town, who can’t go two days without watching the mailman put the mail in your box and sniffing at your kitchen. She wants to be left alone, I’ll leave her alone. It was kind of her to do the painting for the school, though. I was so happy when I left her place with it. I’m sure she painted it especially for the auction, it was so different from the others….”

* * *

Mulder could barely contain his excitement as they drove to the Perkins house. It was Saturday, so Connie Perkins would be home from school. He was willing to bet that Connie Perkins, too, had been to Linda Mowbray’s house the day she had chased her little brother up a tree with a baseball bat. Mysterious stranger, in town for only three months—not long before the incidents began—and now, three out of four of those affected had been to her house just hours before being overcome by a violent rage. How or with what she was infecting them, he didn’t know. But she had to be involved. Still, he was careful not to let his enthusiasm run away with him in front of Scully. It could be just a coincidence, she’d say. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Careful, methodical investigative technique—that’s what solves a case, not wild speculation….

He grinned to himself as he drove. I don’t even need you as a partner any more. I already know what you’re going to say…. Of course, Scully meant far more to him than a damper on an overactive imagination.

“So how do you think Mowbray does it?” she asked suddenly.

“What?” Mulder was startled out of his reverie. “What makes you think it’s Mowbray?”

“Come on, Mulder. You’ve already got her in handcuffs. I can see it all over your face. So how do you think she’s doing it?”

He smiled sheepishly. “I don’t know how she’s doing it. Aren’t you going to tell me I’m jumping to conclusions?”

“No.” She grinned back at him. “You seem to be doing a good job of that yourself.”

* * *

But Connie Perkins denied having ever been to Linda Mowbray’s house, on that day or any other. “I’m not allowed to go out there,” the twelve-year-old girl declared, while her mother stood in the kitchen doorway glowering at the two FBI agents. “You people are making far too much of this,” she’d insisted, as she had reluctantly allowed them into the house. “She’s just a little girl.” But Mulder saw the brief glance Connie had directed toward her mother before she answered his question about Linda Mowbray.

“Why don’t you take me out back and show me where the tree is?” Mulder asked Connie, while he glanced at Scully, with a slight gesture of his head towards Mrs. Perkins. Scully gave a brief nod in return and smoothly moved to intercept Mrs. Perkins before she could follow Mulder and her daughter outside, saying,

“Mrs. Perkins, have Connie and her brother gotten into fights before…?”

Mulder smiled inwardly as he led Connie Perkins outside. He and Scully had long ago perfected their technique for separating subjects for private questioning. Once he got Connie alone, he hoped she might admit if she’d gone on an expedition forbidden by her parents.

* * *

“She rode her bike out to Mowbray’s after school,” Mulder told Scully, a self-satisfied grin on his face, as they drove away from the Perkins house. “The woman invited her in to look at her paintings, but Connie thought they were too scary so she left after a few minutes.”

“Did she say why she’d gone out there?” Scully studied Chief Winter’s map, to give Mulder directions to Linda Mowbray’s house.

“On a dare. The other kids said that Mowbray was a witch. You know how kids love a mystery.”

“Do you think she’s a witch?”

Mulder didn’t have to look over at Scully to see the impish look on her face. “It wasn’t witchcraft that caused these incidents.”

“Mulder, I’ve never known you to pass up the chance to consider ‘extreme possibilities.'”

He smiled as he replied, “Witches have a saying, ‘Whatever you do, comes back to you three times.’ You really have to hate someone to be willing to endure three times the pain yourself that you inflict on someone else. Which is why real black magic is very rare.”

If Scully was surprised by Mulder’s casual knowledge of modern witchcraft, she gave no sign. “But you do believe that witchcraft exists.”

“Oh, it exists, all right. But I don’t think it has anything to do with what’s happening here in Gold Bug.”

* * *

They drove up a picturesque little country lane, lined with alder and maple and fir. At the end of the lane was a little white cottage with a front porch and blue-and-white checked curtains in the windows. A cherry tree shaded the front yard and rose bushes lined the walk. The only incongruous note was the shiny red Ferrari Mondial parked in the driveway. It made their Ford Taurus seem much less out of place.

But once inside the little white cottage, all semblance of bucolic country living was completely shattered. Furniture in the front room consisted of a large wooden trunk and a couple of paint-spattered wooden chairs, along with an impressive stack of electronic equipment in the corner topped by a laptop computer.

And then there were the paintings. On the chairs, stacked against the walls, even lying in the floor were a dozen watercolors or more, on large sheets of paper, all in predominantly dark, dripping, venomous reds. There were hints of grimacing faces, twisted bodies, and smoldering volcanic fires shadowed among the otherwise abstract forms. Scary, Mulder thought. Connie Perkins was right.

Linda Mowbray herself was a whip-thin woman with spikey hair and intense blue eyes. She greeted the two FBI agents warily, shook their hands with a fierce, hot grip that Mulder thought was going to leave bruises, and stood silently aside to allow them to enter. She listened without interruption, twisting her shirttail and darting looks between the two FBI agents, while Scully described the incidents, concluding with Jean Palmer’s death. When Scully had finished, Mowbray neither protested her innocence nor offered any explanation. She simply waited.

“Do you have any idea why these people might have committed these violent acts, all within a few hours of visiting you?” Scully asked

Mowbray wiped her hands on her pants and picked up a paintbrush. “No.”

“I’m sure you realize, it’s quite a coincidence.”

“Coincidences happen.”

Mulder had walked over to study one of the paintings that sat perched on a chair, paper curling under at the corners. “It’s an interesting choice of medium.”

“I like the translucence and fluidity of watercolor.” Mowbray walked over and picked the painting off the chair. Abruptly, she tore the painting in half. “It’s also easier to get rid of the ones that don’t work out.”

Mulder could not repress a slight gasp when she tore the painting. Disturbing it might be, but art was art, and Mulder didn’t like to see it destroyed.

“You didn’t actually like it, did you?” Mowbray frowned at him.

“It was very powerful.”

She shrugged. “Take one if you want. I have too many of them anyway. I can’t sell them. I can’t even give them away.”

* * *

Mulder tossed the rolled-up painting into the back seat of the Taurus. Scully shook her head. “What on earth are you going to do with that?”

“I think it would look great in the office, don’t you?”

“Where? In the wastebasket?”

“I was thinking of hanging it over your desk.”

“In your dreams, Mulder.”

“I hope I don’t see this in my dreams.”

* * *

Mulder felt good. He didn’t have all the answers yet, but he knew he was on the right track. Any doubts he might have had about whether Linda Mowbray was involved in Gold Bug’s streak of violence had vanished when he saw her paintings. He was no art critic, but he was a trained psychologist, and he had seen paintings that had been done by mentally disturbed patients and prisoners. Mowbray’s paintings were powerful and assured; more controlled than those done by psychotics. But the rage was there. Her paintings were a visual expression of the violent rage that was striking the residents of Gold Bug.

And the woman herself—unsmiling, twitchy, offering nothing. She was certainly not your typical country painter. Mulder knew that artists were often obsessive and introverted. But presented with the fact that five different people had gone almost directly from her house to commit acts of violence, wouldn’t most people show some surprise? Some curiosity? Something other than flat, unadorned denial?

“We should stop at the police station, fax for information about Linda Mowbray,” Mulder commented.

“You still think she’s involved?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’m still wondering why she would want to drug the town residents into committing acts of violence. She’s isolated herself out here, completely absorbed in her painting. She doesn’t seem interested in the townspeople at all. I don’t think she was even aware of the incidents, until I described them to her. And of course, there’s still the question of how she could have done it.”

Mulder grinned at her. “It’s a mystery.”

Scully smiled back. “At least it’s a nice place for a mystery. No arctic cold….”

“No volcanic heat….”

“No endless rain….”

“Just a nice quiet little town.”

“Where people burst into violent rages for no apparent reason.”

“Well, nobody’s perfect.” They laughed together. Mulder wasn’t sure just what was funny, but he was always happy to share a laugh with Scully.

They drove along in companionable silence for a while, when Scully suddenly started to giggle. Mulder soon joined in.

“What’s so funny?”

“Remember the joke about the little boy who drew all his pictures in black?”

Mulder grinned and continued, “His parents were so worried about him, they took him to a counselor….”

“When the counselor asked him why he didn’t use any other colors, he said he only had a black crayon,” Scully finished the joke, and laughed out loud.

“Maybe someone should buy Linda Mowbray some blue paint.” They both burst into gales of laughter. Tension, Mulder thought. We’ve both been worried since Scully came back to work. Not so long ago, she was lying in a hospital bed in a coma. And her mother was picking out headstones. They’d both been through a lot of stress lately. It was a relief to be able to relax a little.

* * *

They ate dinner at the diner down the street from the police station. The conversation ranged wildly and giddily, and eventually Mulder was entertaining Scully with stories of his life as a student at Oxford.

“…And then Pinky Snetterton-Smythe said….”

“Mulder!” Scully giggled. “You didn’t seriously have a classmate named Pinky Stet… Snet….”

“I most certainly did!” He drew in his upper lip and regaled her with a passable imitation of an upper-class British accent, “And he was evah so propah, Miss Scully.”

“A non-believer, I presume.”

“Well, it was all simply too fantastic, old thing. But if UFOs ever did dare to land at the ancestral home, he said, the family ghosts would chase them off.”

Scully shrieked with laughter, causing heads to turn at several nearby tables. Mulder grinned, and gestured expansively, nearly knocking over his water glass. Scully shrieked again. He picked up the glass and sniffed it, then waggled his finger at his partner. “Scully, are you sure you haven’t been spiking the drinks?”

“Mulder,” Scully sputtered, “we are high as kites.”

He drew himself up in mock offense. “Speak for yourself. I am high as… as a weather balloon.”

“Not a UFO?”

“Not that high, no. But I do feel like I’ve downed two six packs and a couple of shooters.”

They stared at each other across the table. “Linda Mowbray,” Scully said.

“It started right when we left her place.”

“It’s not her violence potion, and I still don’t know how she did it, but….”

Mulder started to push himself away from the table, staggering slightly. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Back to Mowbray’s….”

“Mulder… Mulder, sit down. I can’t talk to you when you’re way up there.” Obediently, he returned to his seat. “Not Mowbray’s. The hospital. We need to have our blood tested.”

He leaned forward and reached for her hand. “Are we getting married?”

She slapped at his hand, giggling again. “Stop it. We need to find out what we’ve taken.”

“To the hospital, then.” He stood up again. “Where’s the hospital?”

“The nearest one’s in Placerville, I think.” She grabbed her purse and started to follow him. They were halfway to the door before they remembered the bill. They both dug for cash, laughing again.

Finally they made their way to the car. Mulder dropped the keys in the floor. Bending over to search for them, he struck his head on the horn. The resulting honk caused them both to jump, then sink down in their seats, dissolved in helpless laughter.

“Mulder, I don’t think you’re in any condition to drive,” Scully said, as she struggled with her seat belt.

“I don’t think you’re in any condition to ride,” he countered, reaching under the dashboard. “Let’s see, I haven’t done this in a while….”

“Mulder, you are not going to hotwire a rental car,” Scully commanded.

He abandoned his efforts. “I can’t find the keys.”

“We’d better call the Chief.”

“Are you going to have him arrest me?”

More giggling. “He can drive us to the hospital.”

“Do you have your cellular?”

She dug in her purse. “What’s his phone number?”

He shrugged. “Nine one one?”

Scully stared blankly at her cellular phone.

“Try zero.”

* * *

About forty-five minutes later, Chief Winter dropped them off at their hotel, promising to have someone bring their car from the diner’s parking lot later. An emergency room nurse at the hospital in Placerville had drawn their blood and asked for urine samples, shaking her head at their continued antics. The samples would be dispatched to Sacramento for study by an FBI forensics team there. They would have preliminary results in the morning.

Mulder pulled off his suit coat and flung it carelessly on a chair in his hotel room. The giddiness had finally begun to wear off, leaving him feeling restless and uncomfortable. He paced around the room, arms crossed, not sure what he was looking for.

Then the rage hit him. Without warning, he was consumed by cold fury. It completely blotted out all other feelings. Unthinking, he stormed out the door and over to Scully’s room, and pounded on the door.

Scully opened the door a few inches. Her own face was twisted in anger. “What do you want?”

Mulder slammed the heel of his hand into the door, knocking Scully back and forcing his way into the room. “You betrayed me. You were working for them all along.” He barely knew what he was saying, but he knew that Scully was the enemy.

“What are you talking about?” she shot back. “You nearly got me killed!”

He grabbed a handful of her blouse and slammed her against the wall. He heard the back of her head crack against the wall, and it gave him horrible pleasure. “You left me,” he hissed. “I thought you were never coming back.” Three months of anguish, not knowing if she were alive or dead….

She kicked her knee hard into his groin. He stepped back, gasping in pain. She shouted, “I was kidnapped. You weren’t there when I needed you.”

He swung wildly, caught her in the shoulder, and sent her flying to the floor. She came up against a chair, struggled to sit up. He took a step toward her.

“Mulder, you fool, it’s the drug!” Scully gasped for breath, her face still a mask of fury. “It’s the drug. We have to fight it.”

He stopped. Some small, rational part of his mind told him that she was right. If he continued, he was likely to do something he would never forgive himself for. Already he knew that he was going to be very, very sorry in the morning. But the urge to smash, to hit, to destroy was so strong, he very nearly didn’t care. “Bobby Poole….” he whispered to himself. Scully stared up at him from the floor, mouth working, fighting her own internal battle.

Slowly, he forced his fists to unclench. Very slowly, he turned away from Scully. Walking out of that room was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, but somehow he put one foot in front of the other and returned to his own room. Once there, Mulder kicked the bed, then threw himself down on it, burying his face in the pillow to muffle his scream of frustration, pounding his fists into the mattress.

The rage did not abate. He stalked around the room, fists clenched, thoughts roiling. Several times he caught himself with his hand on the doorknob, and had to force himself back into his room. He heard the sounds of shoes pounding carpet and objects hitting the wall in the next room, as Scully battled with her own rage. It only made him angrier. He tried to turn his thoughts away from Scully. He thought about those with whom he had a right to be angry—the mysterious smoking man who haunted Asst. Director Skinner’s office, frustrating Mulder’s investigations. Agent Krycek, the partner who’d betrayed him and Scully. Duane Barry, who’d kidnapped Scully and turned her over to their enemies. There were plenty of people toward whom Mulder could legitimately direct his rage. But they were all far away, or dead, and out of reach, and gave no satisfaction to his burning soul.

So he paced and gritted his teeth and told himself over and over that it was just the drug and all he had to do was wait for it to wear off. But it was several painful hours before the rage finally began to subside, and even more hours before he stopped pacing and fell exhausted onto his bed and slept.

* * *

The morning brought all the horror and shame that he’d known would be coming. He’d hit Scully…. His face burned and his gut twisted as he remembered what he had done. Drugged or not, how could he have let himself hurt her? He groaned, and pulled himself out of bed, wincing at the pain in his groin. Scully had gotten her licks in, too. That didn’t make him feel any better. He was the one who’d forced himself into her room, raving about betrayal and abandonment. She was only defending herself. How was he ever going to face her again?

But they had a case to solve. The same drug that had made him fight Scully had caused a young boy to kill his girlfriend, and it had to be stopped from hurting anyone else. So he’d better get ready and get to work. As for Scully, well, there was nothing he could do now but grovel at her feet and beg for forgiveness, hopelessly inadequate as that seemed.

He showered and dressed, then stood for long moments in front of Scully’s door, heart pounding, hand raised to knock. Finally, he tapped softly at her door, and stood back nervously to wait.

Scully opened the door slowly. She stared at the middle of his chest, refusing to lift her eyes to his face. She was drawn and pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“Scully, I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I….”

“It’s all right. It was the drug. I was angry too.” Her voice was a dull monotone.

“I know it was the drug, but still…I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she repeated. Finally she looked up at him, but her troubled eyes only glanced off his face. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s go.”

* * *

They drove to the police station in strained silence. There they met Special Agent Ron LeTourneau, a baby-faced blond in a cream-colored suit, who had come down from Sacramento with the results of Mulder and Scully’s toxicological examinations.

“Your hormones are all over the map,” LeTourneau said, with a slight lisp that did nothing to add to his stature as a forensics expert. Mulder was tempted to wonder if they were recruiting right out of high school these days. Of course, the same had been whispered about him when he’d first joined the Bureau.

Scully tucked her hair behind her ear and pored over the printout with a studious frown. “Testosterone, endorphins, adrenaline… all far out of normal ranges. Well, that explains the mood swings anyway. But what caused the imbalance?”

“Look here,” LeTourneau hung an arm over her shoulder and leaned in, his mane of blond hair brushing her cheek. Scully glanced at him, eyes narrowed, then seemed to dismiss his action as more puppyish than wolfish, and turned her attention to the image of a chemical compound rendered on the page. Enthusiastically, he continued, “This is the really weird thing.”

Mulder leaned over Scully’s other shoulder. “It’s organic…. What is it?”

“Hell if I know,” LeTourneau said cheerfully.

“Is this the drug?” Scully asked. “It looks like… this sequence here is similar to LSDM. And these sites here, and here…. It could be some sort of catalyst, that stimulated the excess production of the other chemicals….”

“That’s what I thought,” LeTourneau agreed. “Anyway, it’s the only compound we could isolate that doesn’t belong there. In any amount. And you know what else? It was in Poole’s blood, too.”

“How could it have been introduced?” Mulder asked.

LeTourneau shrugged. “No way to tell, from this.” He snatched his report out of Scully’s hands. “We’ve got a lot more work to do, of course, but so far, it sure looks like this little bugger is your killer drug.”

Mulder and Scully glanced at each other, then quickly looked away. “Thanks, LeTourneau,” Mulder said briskly. “Keep us informed.”

LeTourneau nodded and opened his briefcase to replace the report. “Oh, and they wanted me to give you this.” He pulled another folder from the case. “It’s the background you wanted on Linda Mowbray.”

Mulder took the report from LeTourneau, who nodded, smiled and, with a gesture that was midway between a wave and a salute, blew out of the room.

Mulder sighed. Several afghan puppy and Miami Vice refugee jokes ran through his mind, but the tension between him and Scully dampened his enthusiasm for ridiculing fellow agents. He leaned back half-sitting on the conference room table and opened the report on Linda Mowbray. Scully stood beside him, facing the opposite direction, staring at the wall.

Chief Winter had been observing quietly during their meeting with Agent LeTourneau. Now he asked, “Are you two all right?”

“Yes. Sure,” Mulder replied quickly.

Scully turned towards the police chief with a hearty pasted-on smile. “Yes, we’re fine.”

“Boy, you two were really flying last night….” his voice trailed off tentatively. Then he cleared his throat and continued. “But it didn’t affect you like it did the others….”

“Bobby mentioned feeling euphoric before the… ah… violent feelings came on,” Scully said. “I always thought it was strange that he thought that movie was so funny.”

“Hey, I thought Pulp Fiction was hilarious,” Mulder protested.

Scully gave him a sidelong look that was only half a smile. “Roy Turner and John McCoy were drinking. That would probably have masked any other effects the drug might have had. Marge Swenson also mentioned being in a very good mood before the incident.”

“So they get euphoric first, then turn violent later?” Chief Winter mused. “But that didn’t happen to you….”

Mulder and Scully both stared at him, stone-faced.

Chief Winter shrugged. “Okay. Anything on Linda Mowbray?”

Mulder turned back to the report in his hand. “This is interesting. Mowbray is ex-DEA.”

“Ex-DEA?” Scully moved closer to Mulder to read along with him. It was a small thaw, but a welcome one.

“She worked for DEA for eight years. Then she resigned suddenly, about four months ago. No explanation.”

“Then she moved to Gold Bug and took up painting.” Mulder shook his head thoughtfully. “There has to be a connection… but it doesn’t make sense. You don’t devote your life to fighting against drugs, then suddenly start slipping drugs to total strangers.”

“I think we’ve got cause for a search warrant,” Scully said, looking to Chief Winter.

Winter nodded. “I’ll get to work on it. Should be able to get it before lunch.”

* * *

Three cars wound their way up the lane leading to Linda Mowbray’s cottage. Chief Winters’ jeep, followed by a County Sheriff’s patrol car, then the FBI agents’ Taurus. Mulder gripped the steering wheel tightly, eyes trained on the taillights of the patrol car ahead of them. Scully seemed intent on the FBI report on Linda Mowbray. A scant half-page, she’d have been able to memorize it by now. Neither had spoken at all during the drive.

The three cars parked side by side in front of Mowbray’s cottage, and the police officers and agents gathered by the front porch to make last-minute preparations for conducting their search. Latex gloves and face masks were passed around, since no one knew the exact method in which the townspeople had been drugged. Mulder’s hands were moist; it was difficult to pull the gloves on.

Chief Winter pulled his mask down to ask if everyone was ready. Receiving nods in the affirmative, he replaced his mask and they all trooped up the steps to Mowbray’s front door.

Linda Mowbray answered the door with a paintbrush in her hand. She was wearing a paint-stained tee shirt and jeans, and her hands were wet with red paint the color of blood. She studied the search warrant that Chief Winter held up before her, making no attempt to take the warrant from him. Then, without a word, she stepped aside to allow the police into her home.

While the officers searched, Mulder observed Linda Mowbray. Silently, she stood at the side of her living room, arms wrapped tightly around herself, still clutching her paint brush. She watched the police toss her paintings aside and dig through her belongings silently, chewing her lower lip and shifting her weight from side to side. When one of the county deputies, kneeling before her trunk, turned suddenly and brushed his forehead against Mowbray’s arm, she started back as if she had been burned, a look of sheer horror on her face. If she had been twitchy the day before, Mulder thought, today she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He moved closer to her.

“Agent Scully and I ingested some sort of catalytic drug yesterday. The effects began shortly after we left here.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “And you think I drugged you.”

“It seems like a logical conclusion.”

Linda Mowbray turned away. Her jaw clenched. Then she spoke softly. “What were the effects?”

“Euphoria, loss of mental acuity, slowed reflexes, followed by intense rage and violent impulses.”

She nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Were toxicological tests performed?”

“An unknown organic compound was isolated that is most likely the cause of the reactions.”

She continued to stare straight ahead. She said nothing.

“You know what it is, don’t you?”

“No,” she said flatly.

“You used to work for the DEA. You’re not a drug dealer. But I know you’re involved. Maybe I can help you.”

Silence. Mulder waited, but Mowbray did not respond. He could detect no crack in her armor. Finally, he sighed and went to join the officers in their search.

* * *

The house was searched with exacting care. Then the search expanded to the area around the house, and to Mowbray’s car. Nothing. No drugs, no chemicals, no drug paraphernalia, no laboratory equipment. Mulder’s frustration increased. It had to be Mowbray. There had to be some kind of evidence, no matter how small. But there was nothing. Finally, they were forced to admit that they’d come up empty, and abandon the search. With the same expressionless silence she’d shown when they arrived, Mowbray stood by the door and watched them leave.

* * *

Mulder watched Scully out of the corner of his eye as he drove back from the fruitless search. She stared out the passenger’s side window, chin propped on the heel of her hand, studiously avoiding looking at him. Finally overcome by the silence, Mulder pulled the car over to the side of the road. Scully sat up suddenly, staring at Mulder, a brief flicker of fear on her face.

Mulder flashed on Bobby Poole—pulling over to the side of the road to beat Jean Palmer to death—and felt like kicking himself. Holding his hands up in surrender, Mulder forced a sickly smile and said, “It’s all right. I’m all right. I just…. Scully, we need to talk.”

Scully pressed her lips together. “About what?”

“You know. About last night.”

“Mulder, there’s nothing to say. We both said and did things we didn’t mean. It was the drug. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“I can’t. Scully….” Mulder struggled for the right words. “You know I would never deliberately hurt you….”

“Mulder, I’m all right. I’ve gotten worse playing football with my brothers. I was angry, too.”

“But I was the one who barged into your room and started pushing you around. I could have really hurt you.”

Scully stared dully into her lap, playing with the strap of her purse. “Another few minutes and I might have been at your door. You just got there first.”

“But Scully… no offense—I know you can take care of yourself—but if we got into a fight, no matter who started it….”

She finally looked into his face, eyes haunted. “Mulder, I have a gun, you know.”

Mulder stared at her, openmouthed. “Well, I do too, but it never occurred to me—” Then he realized. It had occurred to her. That was what was really bothering her—not what he had done to her, but what she had thought of doing to him. He grew very cold inside. “Scully, you were going to shoot me?”

“I don’t know, I thought about it.” She took a deep breath. “Mulder, it’s like you said. In a fight, I’d be no match for you. If I were ever angry enough to really want to hurt you, physically, I’d have to think of some other way….”

“But you didn’t do it.” He clung to that. He had to. The thought of how truly tragic the events of last night might have turned out frightened him to the core. “You only thought about it. I didn’t stop to think about anything. I just got mad and went crashing into your room.”

“It’s probably a good thing you did. Another few minutes, and… I don’t know what I might have done.”

“But even when I started knocking you around, you never went for your gun. You were the one who told me it was the drug and we had to fight it. You were in a lot better control than I was.”

“I don’t know….” She shook her head. A long moment passed. Finally, a fragile smile quirked at the corners of her mouth. “Maybe that’s one advantage of being a woman. We’re more used to dealing with sudden hormonal mood changes.”

Mulder laughed, as much in relief as amusement. “Scully, if that was PMS, we’re lucky there is a man alive on the planet.”

Scully laughed too. “Mulder, if that was PMS, we’re all lucky to be alive.”

They sat for a moment in relieved silence, tension finally broken. “Scully…are we all right?”

She smiled. “Yes. We’re all right.”

* * *

But, as far as the case went, they were right back where they started. Mulder was as sure as ever that Linda Mowbray was the source of Gold Bug’s streak of violence, but there was not a speck of hard evidence to connect her to the drug. Back at the police station, Mulder paced back and forth in front of Winter’s desk and tried to think of another angle from which to attack the case. Meanwhile, Scully commandeered a phone and called the Sacramento office to see if there was any additional information on Mowbray and the drug.

“How much property does Mowbray have along with the cottage?” Mulder asked.

Chief Winter sat forward at his desk and ran a hand through his hair. Dark circles under his eyes showed how the strain had been affecting him. “The old Beaker place is on about five acres, I think. I could look up the exact property boundaries….”

“No, don’t worry about that right now. I just want to know what the land is like. Are there any outbuildings on the property? Could she have a laboratory hidden out in the woods somewhere?”

“I don’t know…there were rumors that old man Beaker ran moonshine out there. But to search that whole property…. That would take a while. We’d probably need dogs. I’d have to get the search warrant extended.”

Mulder continued to pace. “That still leaves the question of how she transmitted the drug to the others. And why.”

“Do you think she’s a user?”

Mulder stopped to regard Gold Bug’s police chief. Small town he might be, but he was no fool. “Why do you say that?”

“Did you see how she stood? Holding onto herself like she was trying not to explode? Looked like she was wound up tight as a drum. Course, she might have just been nervous about having her place searched, but it seemed like more than that to me.”

“I noticed that too. And her paintings certainly express the rage that the drug induces. If she is under the influence of her own drug…. The constant mood swings, giddy euphoria to black fury…. She might have become unbalanced. Perhaps the rage compels her to inflict the drug on other people….” Mulder had resumed pacing, slowly at first, then faster as his mind picked away at the problem.

Scully hung up the phone. Mulder turned to her expectantly.

“LeTourneau isolated enough of the strange chemical to inject into a spider monkey,” she began. “After about an hour of the happiest monkey he’d ever seen, it suddenly tried to tear its cage apart. It spent another hour screeching horribly and flinging itself at the bars of the cage, then collapsed in exhaustion.”

“That would seem to confirm that we’ve found our drug,” Mulder said.

“Yes. And we’ve also got more information about Linda Mowbray. Her last assignment for the DEA was the investigation of a laboratory in L.A. that was producing designer drugs. Apparently they had a chemist who was quite talented….”

“Designer drugs?” Chief Winter asked. “Is that what we’ve got here?”

Scully turned to Winter. “I don’t know. It looks like it might be an analog of LSDM. And designer drugs do occasionally result in these kinds of unusual effects….”

“What happened with the investigation?” Mulder broke in impatiently.

Scully continued, “Nothing happened. She showed up at her field office one day, turned in her notes on the case and resigned on the spot.”

Mulder paced, thinking furiously. The pieces were beginning to come together… but there were still too many missing. Why was she doing it? And how? These were the big questions, and he was no closer to answering them than before.

Scully stood, rubbing the back of her neck, then walked around the desk to stand directly in the path of Mulder’s pacing. “I’m hungry, Mulder. Put your brain on hold and take me to lunch.”

Mulder smiled. “You’re right, we haven’t eaten today. Do you think they’ll let us back in the diner?”

“It’s the hotel I’m worried about, after the maid sees our rooms.”

Chief Winter sat shaking his head as the two agents left.

* * *

They had finished their late lunch—a nice, quiet one this time—when Mulder’s cellular phone rang. He pulled the flip-phone out of his inside coat pocket, spoke briefly, then told Scully, “That was Winter. The county sheriff’s office called to tell him that Deputy Cochrane has gone berserk. Dumped his partner on the freeway and took off. They think he might be on his way back here. To Mowbray’s.”

Bill Cochrane had been one of the county deputies who’d helped conduct the search of Mowbray’s place. Mulder checked his watch. It was over two hours since the search had been concluded. If Mowbray had somehow dosed Cochrane with the drug, he’d be right on time for the rage to hit. But, damn it, how had she done it? They’d all been wearing gloves and masks. And Mowbray had barely moved the whole time they were there….

But there was no time to worry about that now. They had to get out to Mowbray’s before Cochrane got there, or she might become the next victim of her own scheme.

“Let’s go.” Mulder was already standing, digging in his pocket for some bills to throw on the table. Scully gathered up her purse and jacket and hurried after him.

“Has anyone tried to call Mowbray?”

“No answer. Winter thinks she keeps the ringer turned off.”

“How long ago did Cochrane take off?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe more. They were near Shingle Springs, about five miles from here. He could have quite a head start on us.”

Mulder employed his best driving skills in getting down the country lane to Mowbray’s with all possible speed. The Taurus fairly flew over dips and around turns, skidding into gravel and careening perilously close to trees. Barely fifteen minutes later, they slammed to a halt in Linda Mowbray’s front yard.

A county sheriff’s car sat empty by the front porch, driver’s side door hanging open. Mowbray’s Ferrari remained on the side driveway, as before. Mulder and Scully got out of the car, guns in hand, and ran up the porch steps.

The front door was open. There was no sound, no sign of life. Mulder pulled the screen door open, senses alert, heart pounding. One, or possibly both, of the people he was looking for were in the grip of a drug-induced berserker rage. A very dangerous situation.

The front room was empty. Not only of people—the paintings were gone. The trunk sat open, Mowbray’s electronics piled inside. “She’s getting ready to run.”

Scully nodded. “She must have thought we were getting too close.”

“I wish I thought so.”

The kitchen and bedroom were also empty—of furniture and personal belongings, as well as human beings. The back door also stood open. They returned to the front room and stood for a moment in silence, wondering what to do next. Just then, they heard the sound of another car pulling into the yard.

It was Chief Winter with his sergeant. “Wow, you must have really driven like crazy to get out here ahead of us,” Winter told Mulder, as the two agents came out onto the porch. Scully glanced up at Mulder, slight smile quirking at the corner of her mouth.

For once, Mulder was too intent to banter. “They’re not in the house. He must have chased her outside.” Mulder began to circle the house. Small cottage, one story, no cellar, no garage. At the back of the cottage was a small, attached shed. Gun ready, Mulder pulled the shed door open. An old manual lawnmower, several empty paint cans, a rake and hose. No bodies, alive or dead. He continued back around the cottage to the front yard.

“They’re out there somewhere,” he said, waving vaguely towards the woods.

Chief Winter looked right and left and sighed. “That’s a lot of ground to cover. She could have gone anywhere. And Cochrane’s a hunter. He’ll be right behind her. We’ll never find them before he finds her.”

“She must have panicked,” Scully said. “She should have run for the road. We could have had her safe by now.”

Mulder shook his head. “The rage doesn’t last more than two hours at its worst. Cochrane’s been in it for about an hour already. All she has to do is stay ahead of him for another hour or so, and he’ll come out of it. She’s been living out here for four months, she probably knows these woods better than anyone. She knows what she’s doing.”

“So what do we do? Sit here and wait for Cochrane to come down?” Winter asked.

Mulder paced in front of the house. “We have to find them.”

“I’ll have to call for more men to start a search pattern….” Winter went to his car to radio for more backup. Mulder knew they would arrive too late to help. He had to find them soon. But how? Mowbray knew the woods. Cochrane was a hunter. They both had a good head start. How was he going to find them? Mowbray was probably tucked up in some hidey-hole, laughing at them all while she waited for Cochrane to come down.

But what if she wasn’t? Suppose she was just running scared. And Cochrane was still right behind her, running her to ground, ready to pick her off when she faltered. In that case…. Mulder started walking around the house again. Cochrane had come in the front door. Mowbray had gone out the back. A madman with a gun was right behind her; did she have time to plan the best route to a bolt-hole? He stood behind the house and stared at the trees beyond, imagining that itch between the shoulder blades that meant a gun pointing at your back. Now, run. Get to cover; that’s your number one priority. That nearest stand of trees. That was where she went.

Mulder walked across the yard to the trees. The brush was thick on the ground between the trees, mostly fir and alder, spaced several feet to several yards apart. He walked a little way into the trees and knelt, gun in hand, studying the ground carefully. He was no tracker; but Mowbray and Cochrane were both in too much of a hurry to worry about covering their tracks. There; leaves and twigs had been kicked up by running feet. Mulder stood and began to follow the trail.

* * *

Perhaps ten minutes passed as he slowly, intently followed the broken brush and occasional footprints ever deeper into the woods—

Three rapid gunshots split the air. Mulder froze; quickly searched right and left. There was no sign of his quarry. He started in the direction of the shots, making his way about fifteen yards through the trees, straining for any glimpse of either Mowbray or Cochrane.

Another gunshot, and a sharp, stinging pain just above his left knee. As Mulder whirled toward the sound, his knee collapsed under him, and he crashed to the ground. He’d been shot. Moaning and swearing, he pulled himself forward, fumbling for his gun—

And came face to face with Bill Cochrane, maybe seven yards away, pale with fury and holding a revolver pointed straight at him. Mulder froze again, on his hands and one knee, his gun on the ground in front of him. He didn’t dare reach for it, with Cochrane aiming right in his face. Four shots, he’d counted. That was a standard police-issue .38 revolver Cochrane was holding. Two shots left. Unless he’d already used some before Mulder and the rest had arrived. He couldn’t count on that.

“Bill, listen to me.” He spoke slowly, softly. “You’re under the influence of a drug….”

“Yeah, Mr. Big Shot FBI, you don’t look so brilliant now, do you?” Cochrane’s voice dripped with venom. He took two steps closer to Mulder, the barrel of his gun never wavering.

“You’re a cop, Bill. You don’t want to do this.”

“Oh, yes I do. I’ve never wanted to do anything so bad in my life. Smartass little hot shot G-man. You’re dead, Eff Bee Eye.” One more step.

Go for his gun? It was a long shot, but what else could he do? Mulder gathered himself for the final effort—

Linda Mowbray stepped out from behind a tree, off to Mulder’s left, about ten yards from Cochrane. There was blood on her right sleeve and a wild look in her eye.

“County,” she called out, “forget who you were looking for?”

“You!” Cochrane’s face twisted in even deeper hate. “I’ve got two bullets left. One for each of you.”

She took two slightly wavering steps. Mulder took the opportunity to gather up his gun, not taking his eye off the tableau playing out before him.

“Death’s easy,” she said, softly, silkily. Her eyes half-lidded, barely focused, half-smiling, Mulder thought she looked completely insane. “Death doesn’t scare me. You can’t hurt me that way.” She continued to walk mesmerizingly slowly toward Cochrane.

Cochrane threw his gun down and leaped forward, howling with rage. “I’ll show you hurt!” he screamed.

Mulder held up his gun, but he hesitated to shoot Cochrane. Another half hour, and he won’t believe he ever did this….

Mowbray drew herself up, stretched out her arms like an avenging fury, and let out a piercing howl. Pure, animal rage; so forceful that even Cochrane stopped in his tracks, suddenly unsure.

There was a crashing sound in the brush; Chief Winter burst onto the scene, closely followed by Scully and the sergeant. “Mulder!” Scully cried, going down on one knee at his side, gun in both hands, pointed at Cochrane.

“He’s not armed,” Mulder gasped.

Winter and his sergeant responded instantly, leaping through the brush to tackle Cochrane. It took both of them several minutes to subdue him; he still had the energy of the rage coursing through him. But finally, he was handcuffed and under control, still growling and snapping like an angry dog.

Mulder sighed and lowered himself onto his hip, wincing in pain. Scully took his arm and helped him to his feet. “Mulder, are you all right?” Worry etched lines into her face.

“I’m hit.” For the first time, he dared to look down at his injured leg. There was a small, neat hole in his trousers just above the left knee, and blood darkened the fabric. The wound throbbed, but he was able to put his weight, gingerly, on the leg. “I don’t think it’s serious.”

“And what the hell were you doing, going off alone like that?” Scully exploded.

Mulder recoiled from her anger, stepping back to come up, hard, against the tree behind him, all the color that was left draining from his face.

Scully softened at once, holding up a placating hand and putting her gun away. “Take it easy, Mulder. It’s not the drug.”

Mulder laughed weakly. “Looks like we are going to have to be a little bit careful about getting angry with each other for a while.”

She smiled ruefully. “Yes.” Then she spoke firmly. “But you and I will discuss this recent tendency of yours to charge off by yourself and nearly get yourself killed.”

He started to protest, abandoned that in favor of a flip remark, then finally settled for a meek, “Yes, ma’am.”

Scully put her arm around his waist, and pulled his arm around her shoulders to help him walk. Chief Winter and the sergeant hauled the still-struggling Cochrane past them.

And Linda Mowbray stood where she had stopped, slowly lowering her arms and staring around wildly. Mulder stepped away from Scully’s support and limped over to her. She watched him come, tensed as if ready to fly at any moment. He reached out to take her hand, but she flinched and stepped away from him, keeping a careful distance.

“Don’t touch me,” she warned.

Suddenly, he understood. From his photographic memory he pulled an image—Bill Cochrane’s forehead brushing against Mowbray’s arm. Mulder remembered the way she had recoiled from Cochrane’s touch. But yesterday she had shaken his and Scully’s hands without a qualm—before she knew that people in Gold Bug were going into violent rages after leaving her house.

“It’s you!” he said in wonder. “You’re the drug. We all got it from touching you.”

She shifted from side to side, as if trying to decide whether or not to run. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to do it.”

“I know. It’s all right. Come back with us now, you need medical help.” He gestured toward her injured arm.

“I can’t go back. I’ll be all right. Just leave me be, please.” The wild look was gradually fading from her features, to be replaced by a weary sadness.

“I can’t do that, Linda. We need to know what happened. And maybe we can help you. It’s time to come back now.”

She stared at him, blankly. “I can’t.”

“Come on, Linda. Don’t make me have to try to put the cuffs on without touching you.”

A sudden grin, the first he’d seen on her face, gone as soon as it appeared. “All right.” She gazed sadly into the distance. “I’ll come.”

* * *

“I was investigating a man called Aidan Jones in L.A. He was a chemist, one of the best. Half the designer drugs in L.A. came out of his lab.” Linda Mowbray sat at the table in the interrogation room, in the same place that Bobby Poole had sat only two days ago. She had refused to go to the hospital or to let anyone help her bandage her wounded arm, even wearing gloves. She shrank away from anyone who got within three feet of her, darting looks all around and staring up from wild eyes like a cornered animal. Finally, in the interrogation room with only the police chief and the two FBI agents present, and the table between herself and the others, she relaxed enough to tell her story. But she continued to keep a careful eye on the door, wringing her hands as she spoke.

“We’d been after him for years, but he was always one step ahead of us. By the time we’d get one drug identified and added to the controlled substances list, he’d have gone on to the next one. Then, about six months ago, he started working on something new.” She paused, took a sip from a glass of water, then took a deep breath and continued.

“It was something different, this time. It worked with the body’s own chemistry, stimulating the production of endorphins and adrenaline. It was a great high. But there was one nasty side-effect.”

“The rage,” Mulder said.

A short, humorless laugh. “The rage,” Mowbray agreed. “Jones worked on it for months, but he couldn’t get rid of the rage. He was obsessed with perfecting his new drug. He worked on it day and night. He got frustrated. He got careless. I started to build a case. But he found out, and he came after me….” Another sip of water.

“He shot me full of the drug. A hundred times the normal dose. Then dumped me in an alley. He thought it would kill me. But it didn’t.”

“A hundred times…?” Scully said, shocked. “How did it affect you?”

She continued wringing her hands. “I was completely out of it for maybe two weeks. Happy, mad, sad, scared, depressed, furious… out of my mind. I don’t know how I survived, I don’t remember half of it. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t follow through on anything. I’d decide to do something, but before I could do it, I’d get mad or silly or distracted somehow, and then I’d wander off….

“After a while it settled down to where I could mostly control it. At least as long as there weren’t too many people around. Then I went back to the DEA office in L.A. I meant to tell them everything, to go to the hospital, to go back to work. But I walked in there, and all those people started pressing around me, and the rage came over me, and it was all I could do not to start shooting at everything that moved. So I just wrote out my resignation, handed in my notes, and got out of there. Ended up coming up here. I thought I’d just wait it out a while longer, until the drug wore off. Took another month before I figured out it wasn’t going to wear off.”

Scully frowned thoughtfully. “The massive dose of the drug must have triggered some sort of reaction that caused your body to continue to produce the chemical, keeping your hormonal balance perpetually in violent flux. And you secrete it in your perspiration, in sufficient concentration to pass it to others through skin contact.”

Mowbray smiled sardonically. “I’m a walking drug factory. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“But once you figured out that it wasn’t going to go away by itself, why didn’t you try to get help?” Mulder asked.

She shrugged. “I thought about it. But people make me nervous. I’m all right, as long as I’m on my own. The painting helped. When I got mad, it didn’t matter, I’d just run out into the woods and scream and kick the trees. I remember how it was when I tried to go back before.” She tensed visibly, hands curling into fists. “I’d think about it, then I’d change my mind. I’d wait a while longer. I… just didn’t want to go back.”

“Doctors might be able to figure out a way to reverse the chemical reaction.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. If they can’t, I’ll end up in a padded cell. Especially now that they’ll know I’m contagious. So to speak. They’ll never let me go.” Mowbray pounded her fists against each other, increasingly agitated.

“But what kind of life could you have, with the drug permanently in your system?” Mulder asked. “You’d never be able to touch anyone again.”

“What difference does it make?” Mowbray glared at them, lip curling in anger. “You won’t let me go now, anyway, will you?”

Mulder shook his head sadly. “No. I’m sorry. We’ll try to help you. But we can’t let you go.”

She stared off into space, deep in the rage, gripping the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles were white. She was silent.

* * *

Mulder sat staring at the painting Linda Mowbray had given him. He had tacked it to the wall above his desk, over Scully’s objections, and spent hours studying it. He’d done little else in the weeks since they’d returned from Gold Bug.

“Mulder, what do you think that painting is going to tell you?”

He started, so intent on the painting that he hadn’t heard Scully come into their office. “I was just thinking… how much of what we think and feel and desire is just a chemical reaction.”

“The feelings caused by that drug were not normal reactions.”

“The drug was just a catalyst. The feelings were created by our own bodies’ hormones.” He had never quite come to grips with the strength of the anger he had felt towards Scully while under the influence of the rage.

“Mulder, we all have dark places inside,” Scully said softly.

“And Linda Mowbray lived inside hers for four months. I wonder, even if they can reverse the effects of the drug, if she’ll ever completely recover.” The last they’d heard, Mowbray was still confined in a psychiatric hospital while doctors studied her case. She cycled in and out of the rage and often had to be restrained. So far, they had had no success in treating her symptoms.

“She’s tough. I think she’ll be all right.”

“She saved my life.” Mulder remembered crouching on one knee, Bill Cochrane pointing a gun at him, when Mowbray stepped out of the woods and drew Cochrane’s attention to herself. “I never thanked her.”

“She’s a federal agent. She was doing her job. She knows.”

Mulder turned to Scully, who was standing by his desk, friendly concern in her blue eyes. He had never thanked her, either. For forgiving him for what he had done while in the grip of the rage. For being his partner. For being Scully. He smiled gently.

She smiled back. “I’m going to get a donut. Do you want anything?”

“Sure. Whatever you’re having.”

Scully left the office, and Mulder turned back to the painting. Angry slashes of red, dripping luridly. Rage on paper. Dark places inside.

The rage was still in him, somewhere. He reached out to touch the rough surface of the paper. It was just paint. And the drug was just a chemical. The rage was inside him; in Scully; in everyone. Those dark places were hard to look at. But there they were, and had to be faced.

He stared at the painting.

end.