Whirlwind

TWELVE

After signing for the meal, Mulder moved them immediately to his room, a precaution against eyes and ears he couldn't control. The women sat at a small round table set by the window, covered now by dark green drapes. Mulder sat on the edge of the king-size bed.

There were four lights in the room; every one of them was on.

Dr. Rios wasted no words, or time. "New Mexico," she said, "has been trying to upgrade its image for years; decades. People still ask if you need a passport to come here. Easterners still look for cowboys and Indians battling it out in the foothills. What the politicians and businessmen do not want most of all are the hints, the stories, the urban legend-style fables that mark the state as a place where UFOs and weird cults are not only welcome, they're encouraged. Leave that kind of nonsense," Rios said, "to Arizona, and good riddance."

Then a case like this falls into their laps.

She tapped the paper she'd taken back from Scully. "Agent Mulder, it’s bad enough that these poor people died the way they did. I could tell right away how it really happened, any first-year intern could have figured it out. But for the sake of appearances, because my superiors knew it was bound to hit the papers, I was asked to file a second report. The one the public would know."

It was cool in the room, but she took a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at her forehead.

Mulder understood the chance she had taken, and the pressure she felt. He, of all people, was no stranger to either.

"I did. For the basest of reasons — I want to keep my job." She smiled grimly across the table at Scully. "I am a woman, a Hispanic woman, in a state where the Anglos and outsiders call the tunes. 1 am not proud of what I've done, but I make no apologies for it."

Scully kept her expression neutral, and the doctor wiped her brow again. "The official version, Agent Mulder, is that those people were flayed. They weren't."

Mulder lifted an eyebrow. "Skinned?"

"Scoured."

He choked back a laugh of disbelief. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand."

The woman checked her watch. "I have no time. Particles of dirt, pebbles, other debris were found deeply embedded not only in the muscle tissue, but also in their mouths and the back of their throats. Other indications, such as circular striation of the exposed muscles and bone and the cauterization of most of the blood vessels, point to only one conclusion."

"Scoured."

She nodded, and stood. "Like being held up against a high-speed spinning drum covered with coarse sandpaper, Agent Mulder. Or inside a cylinder lined with the same. The only thing I can't explain is the dirt." Another grim smile, another glance at her watch. "Thank you for listening. Please don't tell anyone I have seen you. If you come to my office, if Agent Garson insists we meet all you will hear is what you've already read in the official report." She tucked the purse under her arm. "By the way, Agent Garson knows the truth, too."

Mulder rose as she left without looking back, and stayed on his feet.

A high-speed drum covered with coarse sandpaper.

"Scully—"

"Don't say it."

"But you saw—"

"I saw the pictures, yes. I read the report, yes. But given the time frame we're working with, unless Paulie's father and sister are incredibly off-base with their sense of timing, there's no way it could happen like that."

He looked down at her, pale under the table light. "It happened, Scully. It happened."

She leaned toward him, arms resting on the table. "Then explain it to me. Explain how someone could assemble an apparatus of that size, bring it down to the river without being seen, put the boy in it, kill him, take him out, and get away Again, without anybody seeing a thing."

"The girl—"

"Saw nothing we can substantiate. Ghosts, Mulder. She said she saw ghosts."

"And whispers," he reminded her. "She also said she heard whispers."

Scully slumped back and shook her head. "What does it mean? I don't get it."

"I don't either." He yanked open the drapes, turned off the lights, and dropped into the chair opposite her. "But so far, everyone who's talked to us has—" He stopped, dosed his eyes briefly, then moved to the bed and stared for a moment at the telephone on the night table.

"Mulder?"

"Konochine," he said, and picked up the receiver "Why do we keep bumping into the Konochine?"

"While you're at it," she said. "Give Garson a call and find out why he's so reluctant to tell us the truth."

Donna looked helplessly at the two dozen cartons stacked in her spare room. They were all ready for shipping, or for hand delivery to area shops. A permanent cold seemed to have attached itself to her spine, to her stomach. She couldn't stop shaking. She had denied cheating anyone, of course, and had even shown him the ledger to prove it. But it had been close. There had been no apology, only a lingering warning look before he left, slamming the door as he went.

She had to get out.

All the potential money in this room wasn't going to do her any good if she wasn't around to spend it.

She looked at her watch. If she hurried, she could clean out out the bank account, be packed, and be out of this godforsaken state before midnight. Leave everything behind. It didn't matter. The house, her clothes. none of it mattered. Just take the money and get out.

But first she would have to make a phone call. She couldn't leave without saying goodbye.

Garson wasn't in his office, and no one there knew where he could be found. The secretary thought he might be at the ME's office.

The second call was to information.

When the third was finished, Mulder replaced the receiver and began to wonder.

"What?" Scully asked.

"According to his sister, Paulie picked up a piece of jewelry from one of the local shops. A silver pendant of some kind." Mulder looked up. "She thinks it was Konochine."

"And?"

"And I don't remember seeing it as being with his effects."

"Such as they were," she reminded him.

"Whatever. It wasn't there." He rose, and paced until Scully's warning groan put him back in his chair. "That woman, the one who handles the crafts."

She flipped open a notebook, paged through it, and said, "Falkner."

"You want to take a ride?"

"Mulder—"

"The connection, Scully. You can't deny we have a connection."

The rental car had been delivered, and the clerk at the front desk gave him a map and directions to the address he had found in the telephone book. The parking lot was on the north side of the Inn, through a gated entry in the side wall. As he slipped behind the wheel, Mulder noted that the car seemed to have every gadget known to Detroit, except perhaps an orbital trajectory tracking system.

It took him a few seconds to get oriented, and a few seconds more before he convinced himself that he wasn't charging headlong into foolishness. The how of the murders was still beyond him, in spite of Dr. Rios's description. Concentrate on the who and the why, however, and the how would come wagging its tail behind them.

He hoped.

As he pulled out onto the street and headed north, Scully inhaled quickly.

"What?"

They passed a series of four small stores in a common one-story building. A man stood in front of one of them, not bothering to conceal his interest in the car.

"Last night," she said. "I didn't see him clearly, but there was a man at the gate, watching me."

He checked the rearview mirror.

The man, face hidden by the bill of his cap, still watched.

There was no flip of a mental coin. Mulder swung the wheel around, made a U-turn, made another to pull alongside the stores.

The man hadn't moved.

Scully lowered her window. "Do you want something?" she asked calmly.

Leon Ciola swaggered over and leaned down. "You the feds?"

With one hand still on the wheel, Mulder leaned over, curious about the fine scars that swept across the man's face. "Special Agent Mulder, Special Agent Scully. Who are you?"

"Leon Ciola."

"You've been watching us. Why?"

Ciola spread his arms wide in a mocking bow, smiling impudently. "Always like to know who's in town, amigos, that’s all. It’s very dull around here, you know? Not much to do. The sun's too hot. Not much work for a man like me."

"What is a man like you?" Scully said.

"Ex-con. They didn't tell you that?"

No, Mulder thought; there's a lot they haven't told us.

Then he spotted a faint racial resemblance to Nando Quintodo. "You're from the Mesa?"

Ciola's smile didn't falter. "Very good, amigo. Most people think I look Apache." Fingers fluttered across his face. "The scars. They make me look mean."

"Are you?"

The smile vanished. "I'm a son of a bitch, Agent Mulder. A good thing to know."

He's not bragging, Mulder thought; he's not warning, either.

Ciola glanced up and down the street, then placed a hand on the window well. "Sheriff Sparrow will tell you that I have killed a man. It's true. Maybe more, who knows? He'll tell you, when he gets around to it, that I probably killed those stupid tourists. I didn't, Agent Mulder. I have more important things to do."

He tipped his cap to Scully and backed away, interview over.

Mulder nodded to him, straightened, and pulled slowly away from the curb. The man chilled him. What chilled him more, however, was the fact that Sparrow hadn't said a word about him. An obvious suspect, a self-confessed killer ex-con, and the sheriff had, conveniently or otherwise, kept Ciola's name to himself.

"Scully, do you get the feeling we've dropped down the rabbit hole?"

She didn't answer.

A glance at her profile showed him lips so taut they were bloodless.

He didn't question her. Something about the man, something he hadn't caught, struck a nerve. Sooner or later, she would tell him what it was. As it was, he had to deal with street signs he could barely read because they were too small, and the vehicles impatiently lining up behind him because he was driving slow enough to try to read the damn signs.

The sun didn't help.

It flared off everything, and bleached that which wasn't already bleached.

Everywhere there were signs of a town struggling to find the right way to grow — obviously new shops, shops that had gone out of business, houses and buildings in varying stages of construction or repair. It was either very exciting to live here now, or very frightening.

"There," Scully said.

He turned left, toward the river, and found himself on a street where lots were large and vacant, spotted only once in a while by small, one-story houses in either brick or fake adobe. A drab place, made more so by the gardens and large bushes flowering violent colors. No toys in the driveways. The few cars at the curbs seemed abandoned.

He parked in front of a ranch house whose front window was buried by a tangled screen of roses. A Cherokee parked in the pitted drive faced the street. As they got out, he saw a suitcase by the driver's door.

"Somebody's going on vacation."

"I don't think so," she said, nodding toward the two other suitcases sitting on the stoop. "Not unless she's planning to stay away for six months."

He knocked on the screen door.

No one answered.

He knocked again, and the inner door was opened by a young woman with a briefcase in one hand.

"I don't want any” she said.

Scully held up her ID. "Special Agent Scully, Special Agent Mulder, FBI. Are you Donna Falkner?"

It didn't take any special instinct to realize the woman was afraid. Mulder opened the screen door carefully and said, "We'd just like to talk to you, Ms. Falkner. It won't take a minute, and then you can take your trip."

"How did you know that?" Donna demanded, her voice pitched high enough to crack. Then she followed Mulder's gesture toward the suitcases, "Oh."

"Just a few minutes” Scully assured her.

The woman's shoulders slumped. "Oh, what the hell, why not. How much worse can it get?"