Whirlwind

SIXTEEN

Mulder stepped outside and inhaled deeply several times. Too many scents mingled for him to identify, but they were sweet, and he was pleased. He had caught Scully's determination, and with the dust washed away, even the prospects of success seemed more bright.

You're pushing it, he told himself, and didn't much care. It felt pretty good, and he took that where he could get it.

Scully followed, checking to be sure the door locked behind her. A detour to the front desk assured them that the clerk had Mulder's portable phone number and would relay calls or messages as soon as they were received.

Just as they were about to turn away from the desk, Scully gave a nod toward the side entrance. "I think we have company"

A tall man in denim and a ponytail walked toward them, taking off his hat as he approached. "Agent Mulder? Agent Scully?"

Mulder nodded warily.

The man held out his hand. "Nick Lanaya. We were supposed to meet later." He cocked a lean hip as he shifted his weight. "Sorry I'm early, but I took a chance catching you. I was going to stop at a friend's first, but the storm…"

"Actually," Scully said, "your timing is perfect. We were about to drive out to the Mesa."

His eyes widened. "Alone?"

"No. We were hoping someone from the Double-H would go along. But," she added with a smile, "now you're here, which is exactly what we need."

"Damn right about that," he said, matching her with a smile of his own. "Today's Thursday You go there today, they'll probably shoot you."

"What?" Mulder said.

"Well, not really shoot you, Agent Mulder, but you wouldn't have gotten in. It’s a… call it a holy day. Kind of like Sunday, only a little more intense." He used the hat to gesture toward the restaurant, "So what do you say we have something to eat? Chuck said you had a few questions, and I answer better on a full stomach”

Not long after they were at a table, this time near the entrance. Other diners had already begun to arrive, and the room was more lively, more cheerful than last time. The contrast was startling, and it took Mulder a few minutes before he was able to concentrate on what Lanaya told him.

Anecdotes at first, as their meal arrived and they ate, trying to give them a feel for his people. They were conservative, hard-working, and surprisingly, they didn't feel at all oppressed.

"They've been at Sangre Viento since their Time began. No one has ever defeated them in war badly enough to drive them out, although the Apache gave them a hard time for a while, a hundred years or so back, and the white man hasn't seen any need to do anything but leave them pretty much alone." He seemed slightly embarrassed. "To tell you the truth, it makes them kind of smug."

Scully brushed the corner of her mouth with a napkin. "I understand you're an important person there."

Lanaya closed his eyes as he laughed, shook his head and waved his fork. "Lord, no. Important?" He laughed again. "Not the way you mean, no. Some sort of authority figure, a position of power, something like that?"

"Something like that, yes."

"Nope. Sorry. I'm important only in that I keep their contacts with the outside healthy, that's all. They're not stupid, Agent Scully. They don't live primitively; not by their standards, anyway. They just pick and choose what they want from the white man's world, that's all. Some have TV, everybody has a radio. Schooling is important. I'm not the only one who went to college."

"But you went back."

"Yes. Yes, I went back. Often there are ties too strong to be broken." His left hand moved to his chest and away, but not before Mulder spotted a bulge there.

A medicine bag, he thought; he carries his power with him.

"Anyway, what is it, exactly, that you want to know?"

Mulder watched Scully's smile, and hid one of his own. The man was taken with her, and whether he knew it or not, Scully had already gotten more from him than he probably wanted them to know.

They.

He said they instead of we.

Scully's next question was predictable, and Mulder couldn't help feeling a faint disappointment at the answer.

"No, there's no significance to any of the things I bring out for Donna to sell. Traditional designs, that’s all." He chuckled. "Once in a while, the designs are. borrowed, shall we say? The artisans get bored doing the same thing all the time."

"You mean they fake it? Pass their work off as someone else's?"

"I mean they get bored, Agent Scully. What they use, they make their own."

They again.

Mulder began to wonder.

Suddenly the man grunted and clutched at his stomach. Scully was on her feet immediately, but he waved her away, "It's okay," he said, gasping a little, his eyes watering, "Took me by surprise, is all."

Scully stood by him anyway. "What did?"

Lanaya gestured toward his plate. "Ulcer, I think."

"What? You have an ulcer and you eat this stuff?" She rolled her eyes and took her seat. "You're out of your mind."

"Maybe." He took a roll of antacid tablets from his pocket and popped one into his mouth, "No, definitely. But I keep hoping I'll get used to it before I die."

"Don't worry, you won't," she told him. "Because that stuff will end up killing you."

He laughed, and Mulder managed a polite smile in response.

He was getting damn tired of people lying to his face.

There was someone in the backyard.

She heard movement as she dropped her suitcase into the passenger seat, and swore. With hardly any neighbors to speak of, who the hell would be out there? Unless it was a stray cat, or… she glared. Or a goddamn coyote.

She hurried into the house, yanked open a desk drawer, and pulled out a wood-stock.38. She had never given a damn what the cautions were; it was always loaded. A single woman living alone would scarcely have the time to load if someone broke in in the middle of the night.

She hefted it, thumbed off the safety, and marched through the Pullman kitchen to the back door. As far as she could tell, the yard was empty, its grass long since given over to weeds and bare earth.

Still…

A low, constant hissing.

Shit, she thought; she had left the outside faucet on. That's what it was — water spilling onto the weeds beneath the damn faucet. She tried to remember when she last was out here, and couldn't. Good God, it could have been as long as a week, maybe more. Her water bill was going to be—

She laughed and shook her head.

Who cared about a stupid water bill? She wasn't going to be around to pay it anyway. Nevertheless, a twinge of guilt at all that waste made her open the door and step outside, swinging immediately to the right and crouching under the kitchen window. She already had her hand on the faucet when she realized it was dry.

No water.

"What the hell?"

The noise grew louder, and now she heard what she thought was whispering.

She rose and turned in the same move.

Too terrified to scream, she managed to fire twice before she was struck and spun away from the house, her arms flailing, her clothes shredded, strips of flesh taken and flung against the wall, her eyes blinded, her lips gone.

When it was over, she remained on her feet for as long as it took for a breeze to touch her.

When she fell, no one heard her.

Lanaya folded his napkin beside his empty plate. "If ifs all right with you, I'll pick you up in the morning. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave."

Mulder reached for a glass of water. "You don't sound very proud of your home."

"It's for your own good, Agent Mulder. And there's not much to see." He pushed his chair back, but neither Mulder nor Scully moved. "I have to admit, I'm still not convinced you're looking in the right place. Coincidence, that's all it is."

"Maybe. Probably, if you like. But as I already said to someone, we have no choice."

"Sure, no problem. I understand."

Mulder turned around, looking for a waiter to signal so he could get the check. Who he saw was Sheriff Sparrow coming through the front door. By his attitude, the way he snapped a question at the clerk, who had walked over to greet him, it was business. Bad business.

"Scully," he said quietly, and excused himself to hurry into the lobby.

Sparrow brushed the clerk aside with a brusque nod and stared over Mulder's shoulder. "News," he said.

"What?"

"Lanaya been with you all this time?"

Mulder nodded. "What's happened?"

"You already eat?"

"Sheriff, would you mind telling me what’s going on?"

Sparrow stared, shook himself without moving a muscle, and blew out a sigh. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap like that. But I guess you're in luck, Agent Mulder. There's been another one”

Mulder beckoned to Scully automatically as he said, "Who?"

"Donna Falkner."

Shots, two, maybe three, the sheriff told them as he sped out of the parking lot. A neighbor went over to complain, couldn't get an answer at the front door and wandered around to the back. As soon as he saw the body, he called the sheriff's office. As soon as the first deputy saw the body, he called the sheriff, knowing the FBI was in on this case.

Several patrol cars were already on the scene when they arrived, and an ambulance backed into the driveway. Yellow crime scene ribbon fluttered around the property. A handful of people stood in the lot across the street.

"How well did you know her?" Mulder asked as Sparrow led them around the garage to the back.

"She was a pain in the ass." A sharp wave. "She was okay, though."

"Did you know she was going on vacation?"

Sparrow stopped and turned at the corner. "Are you crazy? She never went on vacation. Working herself to death is what she was. Wanted to be a goddamn millionaire before she was thirty-five."

Mulder stepped around him and walked slowly through the shin-high weeds. A sheet had been placed over the body. He didn't bother to ask if the ME had been called; this report wouldn't be any different from the others.

Scully brushed by him and knelt beside the sheet. He stood behind her, holding his breath as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves, pinched a corner, and pulled it back.

Mulder looked away.

Scully braced herself on the ground with one hand, and whispered something he couldn't catch. He saw a shudder work its way down her back before she asked if someone had a camera. A deputy appeared at her side, and she directed the lens as she pulled the sheet farther back.

The mutilation here wasn't as complete as the others. There were areas where the skin was raw but still intact, and areas where a gleam of white showed through liquid red. Her face, however, was completely gone, as was most of her hair.

This had not been a swift dying.

While the sheriff barked and grumbled at his men, Mulder began a slow walk around the yard, until he realized that the color near and on the ground was actually bits of flesh. So were the splotches on the wall near an outside spigot. At the foundation just below it, he found the gun, took a pen from his pocket and picked it up through the trigger guard. Two shots, maybe three, the neighbor had said.

At what?

"Scully."

She looked up, a little pale but recovered.

He jerked his head to tell her he would be inside when she was finished, then opened the kitchen door and went in.

It was still hot, no moving air, and no sign that she intended to return from wherever it was she'd been heading. The drawers in the tiny bedroom dresser were empty; there were a few cartons in the spare room, which looked like those he'd seen in the Cherokee outside. Nothing in the medicine cabinet. Papers and some ledgers in the desk; bills paid and unpaid, but no letters.

He didn't realize how much sunlight had slipped away until someone snapped on an overhead light.

It didn't make the place look any better.

When he took another turn around the room, he saw a briefcase against the wall beside the desk. He knelt, lifted it up, and raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. It was heavier than it looked.

When he opened it, he knew why.

"What do you know?" he said softly, closed it again, and snapped the locks. He kept it in his hand as he went through the house again, finding nothing more than tangles of dust in the corners.

Eventually he found himself by the window, staring at Nick Lanaya, who stood by a pickup parked across the street. Funny reaction, he thought as he headed for the door. The man's partner is murdered, and he just stands there.

He moved onto the stoop and waved, but Lanaya didn't see him. He was too busy talking to Leon Ciola.