Lanaya sagged against the door frame, head bowed. "I looked in the Cherokee."
Mulder kept the case as he walked over to Lanaya. "She was your partner. Where was she going with all that?"
Lanaya didn't look up. "I would say she was stealing it. According to the markings, they should have been sold months ago." Suddenly he kicked back at the screen door, slamming it against the house. "Goddamnit, Mulder, what the hell was she doing? All the years we worked together—" He kicked the door again and stared blindly into the room.
This time Mulder saw the pain. And something else. Maybe betrayal.
He nudged Lanaya until he went outside, and they walked away from the house, Mulder drawing closer until the man had no conscious choice but to take him to the truck.
The bed was empty, except for a length of tarp folded near the cab.
"I didn't know you knew Leon," Mulder said, careful to keep accusation from his voice.
"There isn't an adult Konochine alive who doesn't know all the others, Agent Mulder. You can hardly avoid it the way we live."
"It seemed a bit more than just casual, from what I saw."
"Personal, okay? It was personal." Lanaya's expression couldn't decide whether to be angry or insulted. "I was with you, remember?" A onesided, humorless smile flashed on, flashed off. "Just in case you were wondering."
"I wasn't. I have a pretty good short-term memory. Do you happen to know where Mr. Ciola was?"
"Don't know, don't give a shit." Lanaya reached into the bed and picked up a twig with long needles on it. He twirled it between his fingers before flicking it away. "Stupid woman. My God, what… what…" He gave up.
"You were lovers?"
The Indian shrugged, one shoulder. "For a while. A couple of years back. Turned out we wanted to be business partners more, so we stopped."
"That briefcase is filled with money. Would you have any idea where she got it?"
Radio chatter hung over the street.
A cop and a deputy laughed too loudly.
It should be dark, Mulder thought as he waited for an answer, there's too much light here. It should be dark.
"We haven't been doing too well lately, actually," Lanaya finally admitted. He sniffed, rubbed his nose with the back of a hand, and pushed his hat up off his forehead. "About a year ago, she said the usual stuff wasn't working anymore, that we needed a gimmick, something to distinguish our product from all the other Indian stuff getting produced around here." He laughed bitterly. "I got a bad feeling, Agent Mulder. A bad feeling I've been had." Another laugh, and he slapped the truck's side. "Son of a bitch! When they find out about this, I'll never be able to get them to trust me again."
Scully and Sparrow left the house, talking softly.
Lanaya swept a nervous hand back over his hair several times. "Will I… she has no relatives, I mean. Will I have to, you know, identify her?"
"That won't be necessary."
He looked, one eye nearly closed. "That bad?"
Mulder couldn't face him. "There'll have to be the usual tests."
"Tests?" He moved as if to take a run at the house. "Tests? Then how the hell do you know it's her, Mulder? My God, maybe ifs someone else, a vagrant or something."
The only thing he could say was, "I know, Mr. Lanaya. I don't want to, but you'll have to trust me on this. I know ifs her."
Lanaya made a growling noise in his throat, took a step around the truck, and asked with a look if he was needed. Mulder waved him on, and backed away back when the pickup barreled away, turning the corner without the brake lights flaring.
Mulder watched for a moment, then returned to the front yard, where Scully joined him.
"You all right?" he asked, seeing the expression on her face.
She nodded. "I'm just finding it a little hard to believe, that’s all." She glanced toward the house. "Aside from the method, though, it's strange."
"That’s not strange enough?"
She almost smiled. "Did you get a good look at the yard?"
"I saw the bare patch where she fell, if that’s what you mean."
"Right. But before we leave, take another look. That bare area where the grass and weeds were cut down, that wasn't done by any kind of mower I'm aware of."
"Wait."
She passed a hand over her chin. "What I mean is, where she died isn't where she was first attacked. Whoever killed her… it's as if she was pushed around, and the murderer followed her."
"A force like that, I'm not surprised. When you get into a fight, you hardly ever stick to one place."
"This wasn't like a fistfight, Mulder. She wasn't punched around, falling down and getting up again. From what I can tell, given the. given the positions of the body, and the flesh and bone shards around the yard, she fell only once. When she died."
Mulder swallowed, but said nothing.
"The point is, Mulder — whoever attacked her, with whatever weapon, kept her on her feet."
"But the force it would take to do that much damage…" He gestured toward the house.
"Exactly, Mulder," she said. "Exactly. She should have fallen almost immediately. But she didn't."
That night, after the paperwork was done, interviews completed, and he and Sheriff Sparrow had finished debriefing each other, he returned to the bench in the garden. His room had grown too small, and Scully was transcribing her notes into the computer. Her mind was already on the morning autopsy — a fresh, puzzling corpse to decipher.
Oh God, he thought; you're sick, pal, you're really sick. What you need is a vacation.
He almost laughed.
Right; that’s what got me into this in the first place.
The Rio Grande was higher after the downpour, but only slightly, and the ground and paths were completely dry. There were no strolling guests tonight, either; that didn't surprise him. Word was probably out that the killer had struck again. For a night or two, people would stick close to home, the papers would editorialize about the alarming incidence of psychopathic murders in contemporary society, and someone, somewhere, would manage to reap a large or small political harvest.
Which knowledge got him exactly nowhere.
He reached down between his legs and picked up a pebble. He bounced it on his palm a few times before swatting it toward the water.
He did it a second time, swinging a little harder.
He stood for the third one, and hit it with a fist. It stung a knuckle, but he barely felt it. It was the motion that mattered. When he missed the fourth stone, he considered stopping wasting time and going back to the room. That lasted as long as it took him to find it, and miss again.
Now it was a matter of personal honor, and now he couldn't find the damn thing. Not that any of the others he spotted while on his hands and knees wouldn't have worked, but the one he had missed was the one he wanted.
He was nearly stretched out under the bench, feeling like a jackass, when he heard the rustle of something moving through the brush on the riverbank. At first he thought it might be the evening breeze, but listening for a few seconds told him it was too irregular.
Stop and start.
Just out of reach of the tree lamps and the moonlight, and the lamp poles along the bank.
He used the bench to push himself to his feet, staring upriver as he dusted off his knees. That, too, was a waste of time; the lamps in front of him blocked any chance of seeing what lay beyond.
The rustling stopped.
All right, so what do they have around here at night? Dogs, cats, coyotes? After that, he went blank.
When he heard it again, he took a long step off the path and picked up a small rock, aimed, and threw it as hard as he could. The crash of the missile through the brush and weeds was followed by the dull plop of its landing in shallow water. But there was no yelp, no sudden rush of an animal scurrying to get away.