They would talk while they ate.
Whatever they said, he would know less than an hour after they were done.
It was so perfect, he crossed his fingers to ward off the feeling that it just might be too perfect.
But he wasn’t going to run from it, either. Hell, he got a free room, a free woman, and a chance to sneak up on Dana again. What the hell more could he ask for?
The killer, he answered as he pulled slowly around the side of the building; I want the killer, that’s what I want.
He had another feeling, and he leaned forward, looked up, and saw her standing at her bedroom window. He gave her the smile, and the wave, and when she waved back he blew her a kiss before speeding out onto the road.
What a day this was going to be. Lunch with a uniformed toad who thinks his cousin is a jerk, a little investigative work around town, dinner in Atlantic City, a roll in the hay in a bed so big he could build a house on it.
Life, he decided, just doesn’t get any better.
Leonard stood at the end of the basement corridor, listening.
He didn’t know what he expected to hear. There was never any noise save for the faint grumble of the machines that gave the building its power.
Nevertheless he listened, and wished there were more lights.
A single bulb over the entrance, one down at the far end. Nothing more. No need for more. He and Rosemary were the only ones who used it; Major Tonero was the only one who visited.
Still, he couldn’t help thinking there should be some sound other than the rasp of his breathing.
You’re making yourself jumpy, he scolded as he started toward the Project office. Not that he shouldn’t be. So much had gone right, and so much had gone wrong, that half the time he didn’t know whether he should shout or cry. Rosemary didn’t help either, nagging at him constantly, pushing him, reminding him unnecessarily that this had to be the right one or all support would vanish as if it had never been.
And, he feared, him with it.
Ten yards down he reached the first of three doors on the right — there were none on the left at all.
The first was his private office. No markings, just dull steel. The second door was the same, the Project center within. He glanced through the wire-mesh window and saw that it was empty. Rosemary must still be at lunch.
The third door was closed.
He glanced at it nervously, checked back toward the exit, and decided he had to know.
With one hand in his pocket to stop his keys from jangling, he hurried to it and looked through the reinforced glass judas window.
No one sat in the armchair, or at the desk now stripped of everything but the pen and legal pad. He couldn’t see the bed.
He flipped a switch by the jamb and rapped lightly on the window with a knuckle, and jumped back with a stifled cry when a face suddenly grinned at him from the other side.
“Jesus,” he said, eyes closing briefly. “You scared me to death.”
Above the door was a microphone embedded in the concrete, a speaker grille beside it.
“Sorry.” The voice was distorted, asexual. “I’m on break. I thought I’d drop in. Sorry.”
It wasn’t sorry at all.
“How do you feel?” He approached the door again, warily, as if the face belonged to a superhuman monster that could, at the slightest provocation, smash through the steel. The stupid thing was, the door wasn’t locked. He could walk right in if he wanted to. If he had the nerve.
“How do you think I feel?”
Tymons refused the bait, the invitation to guilt. That sort of emotion had died the first time he had skinned a subject capuchin alive. He hadn’t liked it, of course, but there had been no other way.
Guilt, for the Project, was too damn expensive.
“When do I get to see the results?” It wasn’t a plea, it was barely a question.
“Later,” he promised. Below the level of the window, he crossed his fingers. Just in case.
“I feel pretty good.”
“You’re looking good.”
He returned the smile.
“I’ve almost got it, too.”
Tymons nodded. He heard that every week, every month. “You’d better. They’re …” He couldn’t help a grin. “They’re a little annoyed.”
“It wasn’t my fault. You’re the doctor.”
He had heard that one, too. Every week. Every month.
“But I’ll take care of it.”
Tymons glared and pointed. “You’ll do no such thing, you understand? You let me handle everything.”
The face didn’t change expression, but Tymons looked away from the contempt.
“I’d like my books back, please.”
He shook his head. “That didn’t work, and you know it. The books, the music, the TV. Too many distractions. You need to concentrate on your concentration.” He chuckled. “As it were.”
“I can concentrate, damnit. I concentrate so much my brain is falling out.”
Tymons nodded sympathetically. “I know, I know, and I’ll talk to you about it later. Right now I have work to do.”
Even through the distortion, the sarcasm was clear: “Another little adjustment?”
Tymons didn’t answer. He switched off the communication unit, waved vaguely, and hurried to his office. Once inside, he locked the door behind him and dropped behind his desk, switched on his computer, leaned back and closed his eyes.
This was wrong.
Things weren’t getting better, and no goddamn adjustments were ever going to work.
He sighed and checked his watch — he had almost two hours before Rosemary arrived. Plenty of time to complete copying his files. Plenty of time to take the Army-issue.45 Tonero had given him and go back next door. And use it.
Plenty of time to vanish.
After all, he thought with a hollow laugh, he was the expert at things like that.
Then he glanced through The Blue Boy, and started.
The room was empty.
“Damn.” He flicked a switch beneath the shelf, activating the lights embedded in the room’s ceiling. All color vanished, all shadows.
Still empty.
The bastard had already left.
Like a ghost, he thought, glancing nervously at the door; the damn thing moves like a ghost.
After all this time, he couldn’t bring himself to think of it as human.
ELEVEN
The overcast thickened, splotches of shifting cloud from grey to black bulging and spreading, using the wind to warn that the rain that had fallen before would be nothing like the rain to come.
Dana stood uneasily in the middle of a narrow paved road, not at all caring for the way the woodland pressed around her, not liking the faint hint of ozone that promised lightning when the storm broke again.
They had eaten in the diner as planned, but neither she nor Mulder had been either surprised or pleased with what they had heard: Webber and Andrews had learned nothing that hadn’t been recorded or implied in the reports already. No one had seen anything, no one had heard anything; many of the shopkeepers knew Grady, most of them not kindly; a couple recognized Ulman’s picture, but there was nothing more than that. He was from the post. Big deal.
No miracles.
No one had mentioned goblins, either.
Hawks had explained that, over the past couple of months, some kids and a couple of adults had reported seeing… something drifting around the town. They called it a goblin because everyone knew of Elly Lang’s obsession.
“But it doesn’t mean anything,” he had insisted calmly. “A story like that, it kind of feeds on itself.”
By two, the afternoon light had worsened, shifting closer to false twilight. Mulder decided to check the site of the corporal’s murder before the storm broke. Andrews, on a hunch, volunteered to return to the motel to interview the owner; it was possible, she said, Ulman had used the out-of-the-way place for weekend escapes. Maybe he had provoked the wrath of someone’s husband. Chief Hawks quickly volunteered to drive and introduce her.