“From across the street?”
“He was yelling, young man. Grady Pierce always yelled. The army did that to him, made him deaf, I think, so he was always yelling even when he wasn’t, if you know what I mean.”
Mulder looked at the carpet. “Did you hear what he said?”
She sniffed. “I don’t pay attention to things that don’t concern me. He was yelling, that’s all. I just kept walking.”
Fingers weaving, then abruptly still.
He watched her left heel rise and fall, silently tapping.
“I looked over. Natural curiosity, to see what a drunk was yelling at in an alley.”
He watched her hands clasp, in a grip so tight he thought the bones might snap. He wanted to cover them, calm them, but he didn’t dare move.
“I couldn’t see him, except one leg kind of sticking into the light. I saw the goblin, though.”
“You did.”
The heel stopped; the fingers unwound.
“You don’t have to humor me, Mr. Mulder. I don’t like being humored. The goblin stepped out of the wall, kicked that old man’s leg, and ran up the street.”
“Did you call the police?”
She snorted. “Of course not. I knew what they would say. Don’t need to be locked up again, not at my age. I’m going to die right here in this house, not in any damn cell.”
He gave her that smile again. “But you did call later, didn’t you?”
She leaned farther back, all her face now in shadow. “Yes. Yes, I did. Damn conscience wouldn’t leave me be until I did, even though I knew they wouldn’t do anything about the goblin.”
“Ms. Lang?” It was Scully.
Mulder sat up carefully.
“Ms. Lang, what did the goblin look like?”
“It was black, child,” Elly said.
“You mean—”
“No, not a Negro, that’s not what I mean. I mean just what I said. It was black. All black. It had no color at all.”
They stood on the sidewalk outside the building. A handful of children played noisy baseball in a small park diagonally across the street. The brief rain had stopped, leaving behind the clouds, and the smell of wet tarmac.
Hawks seemed embarrassed. “She drinks,” he said quietly. “Like a fish. That’s all she does when she’s not marking her goblins.” The laugh he uttered was partly embarrassment, partly mirth. “Orange spray paint, if you can believe it. Most of the time she sits over there in the park, watches the kids play ball. That bench there on the grass by the third base line, that’s hers. But every so often she goes off on a tear, I have no idea what triggers it. She starts walking around town, zapping people with orange spray paint. Then she comes to the station and tells me to lock the goblins up.”
He waited until they were in the patrol car before he jammed a toothpick into his mouth and pulled away from the curb. “Just about everyone knows her, see, so we don’t arrest her or anything. We pay for the clothes or whatever she wrecks, and that’s usually the end of it. No real harm done.” He grinned around the toothpick. “What you might call local color.”
“So you don’t think she saw anything?” Mulder asked from the back seat.
“I wish I knew, I really do. We looked, of course, but we didn’t find a thing. Myself, I think she saw shadows, that’s all. It was raining, there was wind… that’s all.”
No one spoke as he headed back to the station. “But what,” Scully asked, “if she did see something?”
The toothpick flipped from one corner of his mouth to the other. “A black goblin, Agent Scully? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Like I said, she was drunk, like always, and it was shadows.”
Maybe, Mulder thought; but wherever there’s a shadow, there’s always something to make it.
Then Scully said, “Is she the only one, Chief?”
Mulder saw him twitch.
“Only one what?”
“Is she the only one who’s seen the goblin?”
They passed another small park where a pickup baseball game had drawn a small crowd.
“No,” he admitted quietly. “No, damnit, there’ve been others.”
TEN
Major Joseph Tonero loved his sister, even if she did have appalling taste in men. With their father gone and their mother an invalid, he had automatically assumed the role of head of the family. He didn’t mind at all. It was not unlike his role in the service, mediating crises between people who were grown up enough to know better, issuing orders carefully couched as strong suggestion, and laying plans for the time when he could trade his uniform for a well-tailored suit that would fit right in on Capital Hill.
So he wasn’t all that concerned with the fit Rosemary Elkhart threw in his office in Walson Hospital. He simply sat back, folded his hands in his lap, and let her rant, pacing the oak-paneled room until she finally dropped into an armchair. Her lab coat fell away when she crossed her legs, and he made no effort not to stare.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen those thighs before.
“So what you’re saying,” he told her mildly, “is that you’re annoyed.”
She glowered, but couldn’t hold it, finally laughing and shaking her head. “You amaze me, Joseph. You absolutely amaze me.”
“Why?”
She sputtered, blinked, slapped in frustration at her bangs. “All that’s at stake, and you, of all people, actually call in the FBI. Leonard’s thinking about running to Brazil.”
The smile he gave her carried no artifice. It wasn’t necessary here; she knew all the tricks of his trade, and had taught him a few new ones herself. “I didn’t exactly call them personally.”
Close enough, her expression told him.
He waved her objection away “I’m not worried about the feds, Rosie, and neither should you be. They come in, they read the reports, they look at a crime scene that’s been cold for a week—”
“And what about Kuyser? She’s a witness.”
“Oh, really?”
Rosemary shrugged a minor concession. “Okay, not much of one, granted.” She toyed with the edge of her coat, just above the knee. “But what about Leonard?”
His expression hardened. “We need him. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, but the Project needs him.” He rose and walked around the desk, stood behind her and stared blindly at the wall while he massaged her shoulders. “Once this little problem—”
She barked a laugh.
“—is settled, once you’re back in the groove, then we’ll see about Dr. Tymons.”
She tilted her head and kissed his hand. “I can do it, you know, Joseph. It’s not hopeless.”
“I have every faith in you, Rosie.”
“A small adjustment, that’s all.”
“As I knew it would be.”
She turned to look up at him. “A week, perhaps two.”
His gaze shifted to her face, that back of his left hand to her cheek, gliding down across her chin. “And… confinement?”
She leaned into the hand, eyes partly closed. If she had been a cat, he thought, she’d be purring.
“None.”
The hand stopped.
“We can’t, Joseph,” she said, easing out of the chair. “We have to trust Leonard’s judgment on this.”
“We already have. Twice.”
“If we confine, we lose.”
He sighed without a sound. He knew that, yet it was so untidy, so uncontrolled. But if the Project was to work, if the Department of Defense was to be convinced, it wouldn’t do to have a psychotic subject. He had little choice. Tymons would continue to be the control until perfection was achieved.