The X-Files: Goblins

FOUR

Mulder freely admitted to anyone who asked that his office, such as it was, seldom complied, strictly or otherwise, with regulations. While he knew where everything was, usually, it wasn’t always where Bureau Section Heads decreed it ought to be. Controlled tornado was how one of his friends had put it; a hell of a mess was how he described it. Usually with a shrug. Always without apology. Nevertheless, despite the fact that it was in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, it served its purpose; and the fact that he still had it after all the waves he had made over previous X-File cases was, to more than a few, a minor miracle.

He sat there now, chair tilted back as he wadded up blank sheets of paper and tossed them toward a metal wastebasket set in front of a pair of brown metal file cabinets. “Toward” was the right word. “Into” would have been nicer, but that rarely happened.

Like visiting with Jefferson, it helped him think.

Today, it also helped him kill time while waiting to be summoned to his appointment with his new immediate superior, Arlen Douglas. The word on the floor was, the man, even though he was only in the slot temporarily, wasn’t pleased with the success rate of his agents, and he was hunting for scalps.

Which was why the floor in front of his filing cabinets looked like a snowfield when Carl Barelli walked in, visitor’s pass clipped to his sports jacket’s breast pocket.

Mulder tossed, missed, swiveled his chair around and said, “Michael Jordan is safe for another season.”

“Jordan retired last year.”

Mulder rolled his eyes. “That’s the trouble with you, Carl. You pay too much attention to details. It’s the big picture you have to consider.”

To his surprise, his old friend didn’t respond. Instead, he wandered around the room, fingers drifting but touching nothing, glancing at without really seeing the charts and Most Wanted sheets, the notes and NASA posters taped and tacked to the wall.

He was a swarthy man with thick black hair and a classic Italian profile dented and scarred just enough to prevent him from being pretty. He was also a former semi-pro footballer who had all the heart and few of the major skills to make it in the NFL or Canada. Luckily, he had recognized the shortcomings before it was too late; now he wrote about the sport for the revitalized New Jersey Chronicle, and once every six weeks or so came down to Washington to check out the Redskins, or to see what Congress was up to with a recent flurry of sports safety legislation. While he was here, he always dropped in, looking for a free meal, or a long night of pub-crawling.

Mulder never asked how his friend always managed to get a pass without calling ahead; he had a feeling he didn’t need to know the answer.

“So,” Barelli said, finally lighting on a chair, kicking aside the paper balls as he stretched out his legs. He glanced through the doorway to the quiet flow of agents outside, then back at the walls.

“So,” Mulder echoed.

“So where’s Scully?”

“She took some time off. She went West someplace, to see friends, I think. She’s too cheap to send me a postcard.” A shrug with his eyebrows. “Today’s Wednesday, the fifth, right? She’ll be back on Monday.”

“Too bad. I could’ve saved her.”

Mulder smiled, but it wasn’t wide, merely polite. Carl had been trying to get Scully out of the Bureau and into his love life, not necessarily in that order, ever since he had met her just over a year ago. Scully, although she claimed to be flattered by the attention, didn’t think this was the guy who would, as she put it, light up her life.

Neither did Mulder.

While he liked Carl a lot, and they had good times together, the man was incorrigible and unrepentant when it came to chasing women. As far as Mulder was concerned, Scully was permanently out of bounds.

Barelli folded his hands over his stomach, pursed his lips, licked them, blew out a silent whistle.

“What?” Mulder was puzzled. No handshake, no raucous invitation to debauchery, no futile attempt to show him exactly how to shoot a basket. The established routine had been abandoned, and he didn’t care for the way the man refused to meet his gaze.

The reporter shook himself elaborately, forced a smile, crossed his legs. “Sorry, pal. To be honest, I’ve had a pretty shitty week, all in all, and it sure ain’t getting any better sitting in this place. When the hell are you going to get a room with a view?”

“I like it here. It’s quiet.”

“It’s like a tomb is what it is.”

Mulder didn’t take the bait. “What’s the problem, Carl?”

The man hesitated before clearing his throat. “You remember Frank Ulman?”

Mulder wadded up another sheet. “No, I don’t think so. Should I?”

“He was at my sister’s a couple of Christmases ago. Skinny kid? Regular Army? He kept hitting on my cousin Angie, she kept shooting him down, and you decided to show him how to do it right.”

Suddenly, as he threw the paper ball, he remembered the night, and the memory brought a smile. The kid, and he wasn’t much more than that, had paraded around the Barellis’ suburban North Jersey house in his dress uniform, desperately trying to find a woman who would be impressed by his bearing and ribbons. He was so eager, he was laughable, and Mulder had finally taken pity on him. Unfortunately, the heart-to-heart they had had in the rec room didn’t take. Barelli’s cousin’s brother had had to be physically restrained from punching the guy into the new year.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Yeah.”

The ball went in.

“Well, a couple, three months ago, he and Angie got together. Kind of serious, actually. I heard they were talking marriage and stuff.”

Mulder’s eyes widened. “Your cousin and that guy? Really? Why didn’t her brother kill him?”

Barelli winced and looked away.

Oh shit, Mulder thought; open mouth, insert foot.

He abandoned his slouch for a posture more attentive. “Tell me.”

“He was killed last weekend.”

“Damn. Hey, I’m sorry, Carl. I didn’t mean—”

Barelli waved him silent. “It’s okay, don’t sweat it, you couldn’t have known.” His smile was bitter. “Not exactly national news, you know?” Then he inhaled slowly. “The thing is, Mulder, he was stationed at Fort Dix, some kind of pissant clerical job, even though he thought he should have been something else. You know, glamorous? Green Berets, something like that. Anyway, he got himself into a fight at a bar in a nearby town, they call it Marville—”

“Over a woman, I’ll bet.”

“Yeah. Something like that. Anyway, he ended up at the base hospital Friday night, busted up some, and was supposed to stay in bed until Sunday. Frankie didn’t want to stay in bed, apparently. He was found on a road just south of the post, on Sunday morning.”

“How?”

Barelli swiped at something invisible on his shirtfront. “Somebody cut his throat.”

Mulder closed his eyes briefly, both in sympathy and at the image. “Have they caught the one who did it?”

“No.”

“Witnesses?”

The man snorted. “Oh yeah, right. In the middle of the night out in the middle of nowhere? Jesus, Mulder, gimme a break.” Then he shrugged. “Yeah. Actually, there was one. A woman.” He leaned forward, bracing his arms on his legs. “But Jesus, Mulder, she was hysterical and drunk and maybe doped up. You know what she said? She said the damn tree grew an arm and killed him.”

Arlen Douglas could have been anywhere from his early forties to early sixties. His perpetually tanned face was finely lined, his hair an aristocratic mix of brown and silver, and his figure one of someone who was in close to perfect shape. He sat behind his desk and took a single swipe at his tie before closing the manila folder that lay before him on the leather-trim blotter.

It hadn’t taken him long to make the office his — framed photographs of his family on the desk, framed photographs of him and three presidents, a handful of movie stars, and a dozen senators on the walls. An American flag in a brass stand to the right. Behind him, a large window whose view of the city was cut off by pale beige blinds.

When his intercom buzzed, he touched a button, said, “Send him in, Miss Cort,” and checked his tie again.

Special Agent Webber opened the door hesitantly, smiled, and stepped across the threshold.

Another hesitation before he closed the door and marched to the desk.

Douglas prayed that the kid wouldn’t salute him.

“You sent for me, sir?”

“Indeed I did, Hank.” He tapped the folder. “A fine job your team did on that Helevito case. A very nice job indeed.”

Webber beamed. “Thank you, sir. But it wasn’t really my team, it was Agent Mulder’s.”

Douglas smiled without showing any teeth. “Of course. But it seems you came up with a vital piece of the puzzle, and exhibited some very fine investigative techniques.”

He waited while the young man did his best to contain his pleasure. This, he thought, was going to be a piece of cake.

“Tell me something, Hank, how did you like working with Fox Mulder?”

“Oh, boy,” Webber said enthusiastically. “It was great. I mean, they teach you all that stuff at Quantico, but it doesn’t really have anything to do wit…” He stopped himself and frowned briefly. “What I mean, sir, isn’t that Quantico doesn’t do its job. Not at all. I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” Douglas said, still smiling, hands now flat on the folder. “It doesn’t come alive, does it, until you actually see it all in action.”

“Yes, sir. Exactly.”

Well, of course, it doesn’t, you idiot, he thought. Someone was going to owe him big time for this. Real big time.

“And you found working with Mulder instructive?”

“Absolutely.”

“By the book, everything in its place, nothing for anyone to be ashamed of?”

He knew the young man would falter, and he did, torn between his liking for Mulder and his loyalty to the Bureau. Douglas was well aware that Mulder used the book when he had to, and his own, rather unique experience when necessary. The problem was, that experience. Half the time, it seemed like nothing but hunches; the other half consisted of such wild speculation that Douglas was amazed the man had any arrest record at all.

He waved a dismissive hand. “Never mind, Hank. It’s not really important.” He slid his hands off the folder. “As I said, this is fine work. Thanks to you, we should have no trouble in court putting Helevito away for most of the rest of his life.” The smile faded to an expression that was both an invitation to the inner circle and a warning against betrayed confidences. “But before you decide to make Mulder your hero, there’s something you should know.”

Webber frowned his puzzlement.

“And something I’d like you to do for me.” The smile returned, this time with teeth. “A personal favor. One, I think, which will not hinder your advancement in the Bureau one iota.”

Mulder wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say next. He had already explained to Barelli as carefully as he could that he couldn’t take on the case without authorization, or without a request from the local law enforcement agency, but the reporter refused to accept it. He kept insisting this was Mulder’s kind of thing, right up his alley.

Weird stuff, Mulder thought sourly; famous throughout the whole damn world for weird stuff.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, making sure Carl heard and saw the regret. “You said yourself the woman had been drinking. And was hysterical. As anyone very well might be who had witnessed something sudden and gruesome like that. Which is why, believe it or not, eyewitnesses aren’t always the best way to pursue a case. Get three people at the scene of a violent crime like this, and I’ll guarantee three different versions of what happened.”

“Look, Fox, I know—”

Mulder held up a palm. “What I’m saying is, Carl, that this woman was obviously severely shaken up. Like I said, anyone would be, and—”

“Speak for yourself,” a dry voice said from the doorway.

Barelli instantly leapt to his feet, a great, wolfish smile cracking his solemnity. “Dana! Darlin’!”

Mulder merely looked to the door. “You’re back early.”

Dana Scully made a face, tossed her purse at him and shrugged out of her light topcoat. “I got back last night. I got tired of looking at interstates. After a few days they’re all the same — boring. And very exhausting.”

She didn’t look exhausted to him. Her light auburn hair was in place, her slightly rounded face clear of any hint of weariness, and her clothes — a ruffled blouse and wine-colored jacket with matching skirt — were impeccable!

As practically always.

“You look perfect,” Barelli said, crossed the room and engulfed her in a hug.

“Hi, Carl.” She accepted the hug for only a few seconds, then slipped out of it so deftly Mulder wanted to applaud.

He nodded toward his friend instead. “Carl has a problem, but I’m afraid we can’t help him.”

“Bullshit.” Barelli laughed heartily. “You just need some convincing, that’s all. And this is just the little lady who can do it.”

Scully avoided another hug by catching the purse Mulder tossed back to her and, at the same time, preempting the other chair.

“So how was the trip?”

She took her time answering. “Nice. Very relaxing.”

“You should have stayed the whole time.”

“What, are you kidding?” Barelli folded his arms and leaned against the jamb. “You don’t know that little lady very well, Mulder. Can’t keep her mind off business for more than two hours at a time.” His smile was seductive, he knew it, and he used it. “Which makes me glad to see you, Dana. Maybe you can talk this guy into giving a friend a hand.”

Scully quickly glared at Mulder, who had already raised his hands to offer mock applause. Instead the right hand shot to scratch at the back of his head, while the left answered the perfectly timed ringing phone beside him.

He listened.

He watched Dana watching him.

He hung up and said, “Carl, I’m sorry, but I have to see the boss.” as he rose and reached for his suit jacket. “Let Dana know where you’re staying and I’ll call you later.”

“Mulder?” Dana frowned.

“No, don’t worry, I’m not in trouble.” He paused at the door. “I don’t think I’m in trouble.” He stepped over the threshold and looked over his shoulder. “How can I be in trouble? We just closed a big case.”