Whirlwind

NINE

Mulder couldn't sleep.

After a slow, almost lethargic dinner, he listened as Scully told him about the interview with the girl, which hadn't told her anything new, Patty had seen even less than her statement had implied. Almost as soon as the attack began, the branch club her brother had been holding spiraled out of the dark and struck her on the side of the face. She had fallen, dazed, and in that state thought she might have heard someone whispering, someone else laughing.

But it was all too muddled, and she had passed out shortly afterward. It was her father who had found the body.

"No ghosts, Scully," Mulder had said, walking her back to her room. "We're dealing with people here."

"You sound disappointed."

He hadn't answered then, and he had no answer now as he put on a jacket and left the room, glad now that he had listened to Garson— despite the day's heat, the desert was downright cold at night.

He walked through a short passageway between the rooms and the main building, and paused.

The back was a garden of cacti and now-closed desert flowers set in random circles ringed by stone, as it was in front. Stone paths wound between them and joined at the back to lead to a half-dozen benches that faced the river. Cottonwoods and willows were illuminated by miniature lanterns hanging amid their leaves, leaving patches of lazy shifting light on the ground.

He wasn't sure, but he thought he smelled honeysuckle.

When he was sure he was alone, he sat on one of the benches and watched what little water there was flow past his feet, electric lanterns on metal riverbank poles glowing just enough to turn the dark to gray.

The moon was out.

He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and watched it for a while, thinking of nothing in particular until a slip of a cloud gave the moon a face.

Patty Deven, or her mother, adrift in a darkness they would never be able to escape. Pale, only shadows for expression, only hints of what used to be behind their smiles.

It was an all too easy, and all too painful, jump from there to his sister, gone too many years now. Taken when she was eight, by someone, or something, hiding behind the glare of a light that even now he couldn't think about without shuddering, or squinting to shut it out.

To try to see what was behind it.

That was the foundation of his pursuit of the truths buried somewhere within the X-Files.

He looked away from the moon and wiped a hand over his face, then absently rubbed the back of his neck.

He would find Samantha, there was no question about it; until then, however, the best he could do would be to find the men who had murdered Patty's brother.

Again his hand passed over his face. When it slipped into its jacket pocket, though, a brief smile was left behind.

Tm okay” he said, shifting over to make room for Scully. "Just thinking."

"Out here, that'll get you pneumonia."

"Is that a doctor's truth thing?"

She stretched out her legs, folded her hands on her stomach. "No, it's cold, that's what it is. God, Mulder, why can't you ever have a mood someplace warm?"

They said nothing else for a long time, watching the river, listening to the rustle of the trees, once in a while listening to a dog bark or a car roar past the Inn. For a while the garden filled with diners having after-dinner drinks as they strolled among the garden islands, conversation soft, laughter sometimes loud; for a while the evening breeze stopped, and they couldn't hear a thing but their own breathing.

Then Mulder said, "Scully, has it occurred to you that maybe the people who mutilated those cows weren't the ones who killed Patty's brother and that couple?"

"No," she said at last. She looked over. "Why?"

"The history, Scully, the history. Animal mutilations of this sort aren't usually tied to murder. Particularly not brutal ones like these. The animals are assaulted, not people."

He watched her carefully as she looked away. He'd only been thinking aloud, but once the thought had been voiced, he had to make sure.

"No," she repeated with a slow shake of her head. "Whatever was used, however it was done, the timing's too close, the similarities too great. From what we've been told." She shifted uneasily. "I'll know more when I speak to the ME., but…" She shook her head again. "No." A quick smile.

"Besides, aren't you the one who told me that there are coincidences, and then there are coincidences? One is real, the other only an illusion?"

He returned the smile. "Yep."

"Okay. Well, this is no real coincidence, Mulder. The brutality itself is a strong indication of that. All we need to do is find the connection."

"Right. All we need to do."

"Then think about this, Scully," he said quietly. "Why? What's so damn important out here that both cattle and kids have to die?"

She didn't respond; he hadn't expected her to.

But he had a strong feeling, an unpleasant one, that whatever answer they finally uncovered, it would be one neither of them would like.

In the middle of the desert, they had been dropped into a nightmare.

"I am not crazy!" Mike Ostrand insisted from his hospital bed. He glared at Sheriff Sparrow, who returned the look without expression. "I did not imagine the accident. I did not imagine this goddamn cast on my goddamn arm. I did not imagine my brand-new car flipped over and left me hanging there like a goddamn Peking duck!"

Sparrow was patient.

"Okay." Ostrand shifted uncomfortably, lips pulling away from his teeth in a grimace. "Okay.

So I was a little drunk, I admit it. But that's not why I crashed."

"No, you crashed because some kind of mysterious vehicle, so low you couldn't see it out your window, deliberately forced you off the road."

Ostrand looked at him angrily. "That's right."

"And then it tried to kill you when you were hanging from your seatbelt."

The artist shrugged, winced at the pain that exploded in his shoulder, and sighed capitulation. "Okay, okay, so it was a stupid coyote, okay? So I was so damn scared it scared the hell out of me. It would have scared anybody. But it wasn't a coyote that ran me off the damn road!"

"Good." Sparrow nodded sharply. "Now we're getting somewhere." He glanced down at the small notepad he held in his left hand, chewed on the eraser end of his pencil for a moment, and said, "Now, about that invisible vehicle…"

The Coronado Bar was unoriginal in both name and decor. As Bernalillo inexorably changed from an outpost on the Rio Grande into an Albuquerque bedroom community, the Coronado just as stubbornly refused to change with it. A long bar on the right-hand wall, tables and booths everywhere else, and a jukebox that muttered country-western all day long. The TV on the wall in back never played anything but sports, minor league baseball tonight from Southern California. Smoke and liquor in the air, as many cigarette butts on the bare floor as in the aluminum ashtrays. It catered neither to the tourists nor the newcomers, and didn't much care that business didn't boom. It did well enough, which was well enough for its regulars.

Indian Territory was at the back.

Although there were a handful of exceptions, most of the men who drove in from the pueblos stuck to the two last booths and three last tables. There was nothing belligerent about it; it just happened that way. Even the Spanish stayed away.

Especially when the Konochine came to town.

Leon Ciola nursed a long-neck beer in the last booth. He was alone, seated under a wall lamp whose bulb he had unscrewed as soon as he'd taken his seat. He didn't like the light, didn't like the way the Anglos tried not to stare at the web of scars across his face or the scars on his knuckles.

It was better to sit in shadow.

It was also better to face the entrance, so when the man came in, Ciola would see him first and lift a hand in greeting, before a question could be asked or a voice raised. What he didn't need tonight was talk, debate—What's the matter withyour people, Leon, don't they believe in the twentiethcentury? The time for that was past. The others— Nick Lanaya, Dugan Velador, fools like that — they could do their best to keep the talk alive, to deal with Anglo crooks like that Falkner woman and sell the People down the river without an ounce of guilt. Not him. He had plans.

They thought he was beaten. They thought his time away would change him.

He drank, not sipped.

It had.

It had changed him.

It had made him worse.

Just before eleven the man came in, spotted him right away, and dropped heavily into the booth.

Ciola tugged on the beak on his cap, a greeting and an adjustment. "You're late."

"Shit truck wouldn't start. Wasn't for you, I wouldn't make the effort."

Ciola watched him, hiding his distaste by emptying the bottle and waving it over his head, so the waitress, such as she was, would bring him another.

The other man didn't ask for one, and one wasn't offered.

"So?" Leon said.

The man lifted one shoulder. "So they brought in some FBI, straight from Washington. They came in this morning. One man, one woman."

Ciola coughed a laugh. "You're kidding."

"They're supposed to be experts."

"A woman?"

The man nodded, and offered a lopsided grin. "Gets better. They're Anglos."

The empty bottle was taken away, a full one left in its place. The man grabbed it before Ciola did, took a long swallow, and set it down. His fingers stayed around the neck. "Am I worried?"

"No."

"Good." The man stood and hitched up his pants. "I hate being worried. It always pisses me off."

He left without a word to anyone else.

The bartender turned up the baseball game.

Ciola wiped the bottle's mouth with his palm and drank the rest without coming up for air.

When the waitress returned for the empty, he grabbed her wrist, just strongly enough to keep her bent over the table. "Chica," he said softly, "what are you doing tonight?"

"Getting a life” she answered, yanking her arm free. "Try it sometime."

He laughed. Not a sound, but he tilted his head back and laughed. Wonderful! She was wonderful! He wiped a tear from his eye and shook his head. Since she didn't want him, he would leave her the biggest tip she had ever had in her miserable life.

And to make it better, he wouldn't even kill her.

Scully massaged the back of her neck. It was hard to keep her eyes open, and she didn't bother to hide a yawn.

"The desert night air," Mulder said. "It's almost too peaceful here."

"I know." She dropped her hand into her lap. "The point is, Mulder, we haven't enough data yet to show us why they were killed, much less explain the connections in any reasonable fashion. And I don't think we're going to find them out here. Not tonight, anyway." She smiled wanly. "I think I'm a little too punchy."

"We both are." He stretched one arm at a time over his head, clasped his hands, and pushed his palms toward the sky. "I just wish I could see the connections between a handful of cows, a kid by the river, and a couple in the desert." He brought his arms down, one hand again moving to his nape.

"Mulder, relax, we just got here, remember? Besides, you have to remember that the thinner air out here slows down the intellectual process, the result of less oxygen flowing to the brain."

He grinned and looked at her sideways. "Is that a doctor thing?"

"No, that’s a Scully thing." She grinned and pushed off the bench and held out her hand. When he grabbed it, she pulled him up, turned him around, pushing him lightly toward the motel. "The doctor thing is, get some sleep, like Red said, or you'll be useless in the morning."

He nodded as he waved a weary good night over his shoulder, sidestepping a garden wall just before he tripped over it. Another wave—I'm okay, I know what I'm doing—before he disappeared into the passageway, and she couldn't help wondering what it was like for him — seeing things other people sometimes couldn't; engaging in a pursuit with oftentimes terrifying intensity; looking so young and deceptively guileless that there had been many times when he was severely underestimated.

She wasn't surprised when, passing his room on her way to bed, she saw light slipping around the edges of the drapes.

Exhausted or not, he would be up most of the night, turning over what he knew, and setting up what he didn't know so he would know the right questions to ask, beyond the how and who and why.

She wished him luck.

Right now, she was having difficulty remembering her own name.

She fingered her key out of her pocket, moved on to the next room. and stopped as she inserted the key in the lock.

You're tired, Dana, that's all.

She looked anyway.

The Inn gates were closed, the lanterns out. Only a faint glow from a nearby streetlamp reached over the wall.

A man stood at the gate, arms loose at his sides.

She couldn't see his face or his clothes; just his outline.

Tired, she reminded herself, and pushed into the room, flicked on the wall switch, and, as she closed the door, checked the gate again.

He was still there.

Watching.