Scully didn't answer him for a long time. She sipped her coffee, stared out the window, glanced around the otherwise empty room. She was about to reply when a woman appeared in the archway entrance. Short, stocky, in a severe summer-weight suit; her graying black hair pulled back into a bun. Her left hand held a purse tight to her side.
Mulder watched her hesitate, then march across the room toward them, no nonsense, all business. When she reached the table, she nodded a greeting.
"You are the agents from Washington?"
"Yes," Mulder answered. "And you are…?"
"Dr. Rios. Helen Rios. I performed the autopsies on those poor people."
He stood immediately and offered her a chair while introducing her to Scully. When they were all seated again, he told her he was pleased to see her. Garson wouldn't have to make the appointment after all
"He wouldn't have made it," the woman said.
"I… what?"
"You read my report?" she asked Scully.
"I did. To be honest, there weren't a lot of—"
"It’s wrong."
Scully looked at the table, then back to Dr. Rios. "Excuse me?"
The woman opened her purse and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. "This is what I wrote first. What you read before is what I was told to write."
Mulder couldn't believe it.
Nor could he believe it when Scully opened the paper, skimmed it, and said, "Oh my God."
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."