Wed Jan 29 1997

Open Hearts
An X-Files Thing
By Vickie Moseley (vmoseley@fgi.net)
In Tandem with Summer

Part Six

Dana Scully's Personal Log

Wednesday, November 17

I could tie him to a chair
I could tie him by the hair
I could suspend him in the air
I could growl at him like a bear
But I can't keep him anywhere

Haven't written poetry since Spanish class in undergrad. Only Fox
Mulder could upset me enough to force me to write poetry--basically
my poetry sucks.

I called him this morning but he wasn't home. It was after seven,
too late for him to be out for his run. He wasn't at the office.
I called the guard desk, nobody's seen him--and _everybody_
remembers when 'Spooky' passes by. His cell was 'out of service
area'--he turned it off AGAIN. On a whim, I called my answering
machine, just in case.

The bastard knows exactly when I leave for work in the morning
and when's the best time to call my apartment and juuuuust miss
me. Fucking son of a bitch memory!

He left a message. I have to give him some points for that. And
he's come a long way since his little road trip to Alaska. He didn't
give me some theoretical bullshit about drawing lines and that
protective malarky he dreams up. He told me exactly where he was
going. Though he didn't have to tell me. I knew exactly where
he went. He went back out to play with Roche. I envisioned the
two of them in a nice rousing game of one-on-one or twenty-one.
Probably let Roche go first.

Well, I knew about the where. I was just a little off on the why.

"I had another dream," he said on the machine.

I'm really beginning to hate that fucking phrase.

"He took Sam, Scully."

I listened to it three times, just to make sure I wasn't having a
nightmare myself.

Mulder's letting this bastard rip his guts out and make him eat them
and now he's going out there to *talk* to him? When I said Roche
had Mulder's number, I had no idea how true that really was. He's
got him right where he wants him and Roche doesn't really have to
do another goddamn thing. Mulder will torture himself from this
point on.

"Pinky, if I could reach you, I would hurt you", the Brain said last
Sunday morning. I know exactly how he felt.

Since it's a good 45 minutes out there, and he had a head start,
I did some calling--mostly to keep from speeding. I checked a lot
of things. For shits and grins I checked on Roche's activities for
the last couple of days. I mean, gee, it might be nice to know if
we're his only _best friends_ in the world, right?

Nobody else has been calling. Gosh, I would have thought a big
time serial killer would have a fan club or something. Maybe they
only meet monthly.

Nevertheless, he's managed to keep himself occupied. In a wave of
educational fury, the federal prison system has installed computers
resplendent with internet access in all prison libraries. So that all
those prisoners can get their law degrees and really become crooks
when they get out. And we musn't forget all the bank robbers
getting a second degree in metallurgy, now can we? Makes it so
much easier to blow up the safes when you know the alloy's tensile
strength.

Yeah, we're a really enlightened society, aren't we?

So, Roche has been surfing the net. And since it doesn't take a
rocket scientist to find all kinds of useless information that way, I'm
sure he managed to find some useful stuff, too. Useful to him.

If there's one thing the late Max Fenig taught me, it was how much
totally useless and very revealing information can be obtained with
a good laptop and a 14.4 modem. Our travel records. Our hotel
reservations. The number of guns, cell phones and flashlights
we've managed to lose in the course of our work. All available to
every taxpayer (and tax cheat) through the Freedom of Information
Act.

Mulder's birthplace? His family history? The fact that his sister
was kidnapped--it made all the Boston papers for weeks. Yeah,
that would be there, too, I'm sure.

Mulder can be so quintessentially blind sometimes. I can't believe
the way he gives me the jaundiced eye when I give him the most
reliable proven data I can find, and then smiles and nods and
practically licks the boots of any fucking psycho bastard who throws
him a bone of pure imagination.

And today was just another example of how easy it is for someone
like Roche to manipulate Mulder.

I know that's what he's doing. I could see it yesterday. And so I
figured, fine. All I have to do is keep Mulder away from Roche and
all will be well. There's that fantasy world, trying to creep into
my conscious life again.

But at the least, I could make damned sure that I'm with Mulder
when he goes to see Roche.

Where did I put that toddler leash I used on Bill Jr.'s youngest, the
last time they were home for a visit? No, better yet--I'm going to
the pet store and getting one of those choke chains. I almost got
one for poor little Queequeg, but I decided it was too cruel to use on
a dog. Should be just right to use on a partner.

When I got to the prison, Mulder was in the interrogation room
with Roche. The guard was more than happy to let me sit in the
observation room, but he didn't think it would be wise to let me in
the interrogation room itself. Apparently, Agent Mulder requested
to see Roche _alone_.

He is the agent of record. He is the one who caught the bastard.
He is an FBI agent, tried and true and supposedly sane.

If only they knew him like it do.

Roche is now claiming that he killed Samantha.

I love observations rooms. This one had a speaker, and it wasn't
scratchy and muffled like a lot of them are. I could hear every
word Roche said. He told Mulder that his father bought a vacuum
cleaner from him in '73. He claims that he was on the Vineyard
during November of that year. Right in the timeframe.

All I could see was Mulder's back, but I knew what those eyes
were saying. I could hear his breathing get faster and faster, and I
knew, I just knew that something was going to break. I couldn't
help but think of the book 'Rikki Tikki Tavi' by Rudyard Kipling.
I loved that book. The little mongoose that nobody really wanted
coming in and saving the child from the evil King Cobra. God, that
was a great book. I always wanted to be Rikki and I guess that
would make Mulder the boy. What was his name?

And while I was working through this whole analogy, the 'boy'
landed a really good right hook on the King Cobra's face and
knocked him flying against the back wall of the room.

Let's get one thing straight. What Mulder did was positively
inexcusable. He hit a handcuffed man. Regardless of the fact that
the man doesn't deserve to be alive in the first place, we are officers
of the court and that puts us squarely under its authority. Mulder
wasn't just out of line, he was off the field. There is no way I can
defend his actions. There was no way _he_ could defend his
actions, when the guard opened the door and Mulder realized I'd
been watching.

I can't condone him.

But I'm having a really hard time blaming him.

I knew he hurt his hand, but I was just a little beyond being the
caring partner at that moment. He knows how to apply an ice
pack.

My partner is NOT a violent man. He fears that in himself more
than anything else, I think. All those years in the ISU, getting
comfortable with psyches that would revolt any other sane person;
he fears becoming one of them. I saw the look on his face when
they took Bill Patterson away. It was one of his worst nightmares,
playing itself out before him in glorious technicolor.

I know that even he views hitting Roche as a totally irrational act.
I know how much that scares him to the bone.

And I wanted to smack him a good one for putting himself in the
situation to begin with.

This is what it's come to. Mulder keeps putting himself into
situations that sane people would never dare. 'Fools walk in where
Angels fear to tread'--Grandma Scully was always good with those
old cliches.

Well, Grandma, if that's really the case, Fox Mulder is the biggest
fool I know.

As soon as I got him out of that room, I told him that Roche is
playing him.

He seemed a little shocked that I had done the digging to find out
about the Internet. Still, something was going on, and it wasn't just
Mulder's revulsion toward a serial killer. I could see that this was
hitting him harder than most other cases, and almost all of our cases
hit Mulder hard.

I made the mistake once of telling Mulder that I thought he was
transferring his feelings to a suspect. That he looked at Lucy
Householder, but what he saw was Samantha. I was out of line
that day. I should have paid more attention. I wasn't listening;
I was too busy telling him to shut the fuck up.

And I really screwed up. Because I didn't realize that the day
would come when it really *did* come down to that. This one
really is, literally, about Samantha now.

He asked me the question.

He's never asked me directly before. He always seemed to know,
or maybe not want to know.

Did I _ever_ think Samantha was abducted by aliens?

I don't know. I've thought about it. I agree that _someone_ took
that little girl out of her home, in front of her older brother. I've
seen the medical history, and I know that Mulder went into
hysterical shock following the incident and was pretty fragile, health
wise, for several months afterward. I've been told, by men more
vile than any I thought walked the earth, that Bill Mulder himself
handed his child over to be taken--possibly experimented on. At the
very least, not allowed to return to her family.

But do I believe it was aliens from outer space that actually took
Mulder's sister?

I didn't answer. It seemed pointless. What I thought didn't matter
at that moment. I know Mulder was disappointed when I said
nothing. I'm sure he's filled in that blank and now thinks that
I've never believed him. Truth be told, I still just don't know.

But what scared me far more today was the look on his face when I
asked him what HE believed.

"I don't know anymore."

On some level, I suppose that was some kind of psychological
breakthrough. The psychotic acknowledging that his warped view
of the universe might just be wrong. But it gave me no comfort
and it sure as hell didn't look like Mulder was 'healing' by this
revelation.

Mr. Sparks was wrong.

But even if he's right, I know one thing above all else.

John Lee Roche did not kill Samantha Mulder.

But he might succeed in destroying her brother.

I went back to the office and did a little checking. The ElectroVac
Company, now a subsidiary of whoever bought out Black and
Decker or something like that, did have records. "Oh, my, yes,
Ms. Special Agent of the FBI, we HAVE to keep records. Internal
Revenue Service statutes require that we keep detailed records of
all product shipments back at least 7 years. We have them going
farther back, of course. Ours go back ten years."

Yeah, well, I was sort of wondering about 23 years ago...

I hope the woman didn't actually snort her diet coke through her
nose, but it sure as hell sounded like she did. She made it sound
like I was trying to track down the name of the caveperson who
invented fire.

She did have personnel records. She could tell me that John Lee
Roche was indeed an employee with the company for almost 20
years. "Of course, that was back in the days when we still sold
door to door."

Yeah, lady. I know.

She told me that any information from that far back was archived
and it would take her a while to find it. I guess B & D hasn't
upgraded to WIN95 yet. She said I would just have to wait a day
or two. I pulled my "Lady, I'm with the *F*B*I*, and you don't
want to mess with me" line, and she promised to get me the
information in the morning.

When I finally got off the phone with her, I was ready to throw up.
The ride home didn't help. Traffic was a bitch. Some dumbass in a
semi decided to jack-knife and tie up traffic for 5 or 6 miles. I
missed the helicopter traffic report on the radio, I was thinking
about Mulder.

Even if it turns I find out he wasn't lying about that, I still don't
think it means anything. So what if John Roche was on Martha's
Vineyard during October of 1973? So was Rose Kennedy, and Mulder
doesn't consider _her_ a suspect.

OK, Roche is probably a more likely suspect than Rose. I mean,
even then, she was pretty frail. But the fact that he was on the
island--a relatively BIG island, from what I've seen of it--does not
mean anything.

Yet.

It does mean that we need to investigate this case a little further.
Ordinarily, I would say we should just go out and talk to Roche
again. Simple. The bastard takes great pride in his work, he can
show us by telling who those last two little girls were and were he
buried them. The sadistic bastard can jack off for a week thinking
about those families when we show up at the door--I'm sure the
thought of poor Mr. Sparks must have floated his boat for a night
or two at least. I don't give a damn. I just want to find them,
I just want this over.

But then I consider Mulder in the mix.

He went to his mother's today. Poor woman, he probably scared
her to death. I saw her once before she left the hospital. Her
recovery is nothing short of a miracle, but not difficult to
explain. I told Mulder there was every chance she would come
out of it pretty much none the worse for wear. She's not able to
remember a lot of things, but she's more than capable of taking care
of herself. And her neighbor is a dear woman and is looking out for
her, too. But I'm sure the last thing she needed was to have her
sleep-deprived, half-crazed son come busting in and go digging through
her basement. If he really wanted to _do_ something, the two of us
should go up there sometime and clean the basement out for the
woman!

Mulder called me when he got back. He found the vacuum. An
ElectroVac Princess. His mom had kept it all these years, in
a box in the basement.

Mom wanted one of those really bad. Ahab had wanted to get it for
her, too, as I remember, but, as always, money was too tight. In
the end, she got a Hoover upright that they sold at the PX and she
never said another word about it. God, I'm glad she never bought
one of those fucking Princesses.

Mulder was nothing short of a basketcase on the phone. I could tell
he was exhausted. He wanted someone to understand. Not to talk,
just to understand. I told him I was putting coffee on. He knows I
don't drink coffee in the evening unless he's somewhere in the
room. I think he broke the land speed record getting over here.
Probably caused another semi to jack-knife when he zipped past it.

We talked for a long time. I still can't get over how he's letting
Roche do this complete mind game on him. The man who sat there
and called Luther Lee Boggs a fake to his face, who didn't blink an
eye when he tricked Luther into 'channeling' from a piece of
Mulder's only-washed-once-in-recorded-history Knicks shirt, the
same man who all but screamed at me for believing in Boggs, who
begged me with what little strength he had left in ICU not to
believe Boggs--this man is buying anything Roche says, hook, line
and sinker.

Don't get me wrong. Luther Lee Boggs was a psychopath and a
sociopath of the worst order. He deserved to die in that gas
chamber. But in his last days, in some small manner, Boggs
tried to redeem himself.

I will never forget his warning to me. I will never forget that we
got to that abandoned brewery just in time to save Jim Sommers' life.
Five seconds later . . .

So, in that respect, at least, Boggs and Roche are on different
planes. If there are levels in hell, I'm hoping Roche gets assigned
to the REALLY shitty section.

I tried to get Mulder to think about what he was saying. All we've
seen. I've heard him say that phrase to me so often, especially in
our first year together, that I can even do it in _his_ voice. "After
all we've seen, Scully." Well, I pulled it out, dusted it off and used
it on him tonight.

The mountain full of files. What does this mean in relation to all
that? Were all those files, my file, Samantha's file, Mulder's label
on Sam's file, was all that just make believe? Did some really bored
government agency just decide to put a whole lot of file folders in
that mountain just to piss us off??

He yelled tonight. And it broke my heart. Not that he yelled, but
what it meant. Mulder would rather believe that Roche is to blame
for Samantha's disappearance than to accept the fact that his father
might have had anything to do with it.

I can't buy that. I've seen too much. Aliens or Axis, it doesn't
matter to me. Men experimented on people. Men experimented on
ME, goddamnit. Roche had nothing to do with that--he was already
in jail. We don't know for certain what happened, but we've been
told that someone took Samantha to keep Mulder's father quiet
about those experiments. And we KNOW that those experiments
exist. We've both seen the proof.

Mulder hasn't yelled at me very often. He gets exasperated and he
rolls his hazel eyes at me _all the time_, sure, but a real
I'm-at-the-end-of-my-rope-and-you-just-pulled-it yell? I can count
the times. The Householder case. When I took his gun after his
father died and he thought I was the enemy. He yelled those times
and I knew it.

I know why he yelled tonight. I love my father. He was my Ahab,
and I adored him with the same heartfelt emotion that every little
girl reserves for her daddy. And even though I could never see it,
knowing what I know about the man--Mulder loved his father, too.

At some point in time, Bill Mulder was 'Daddy' to my partner. No
matter what else happened, no matter how much pain there may
have been, that relationship would always be there first. It would
sometimes cloud and sometimes clarify everything else they did to
each other.

So, while I can't believe what Mulder seems to want to believe
now--that we'll find Samantha's eight-year-old body, still in her
nightgown, buried in a shallow grave in a park somewhere on the
eastern seaboard--I can't blame him for wanting to believe it.

He started crying at one point and I almost drove him to the doctor.
For Mulder to break down like that is a perfect example of just how
far he is at the end of that rope. He needs sleep--about 72 hours
of it, by my count. I wanted him to stay here tonight, in the spare
room. I would have been here if any more of those little dreams
popped up again. But I knew he couldn't take the hovering. There
are times I can hover and times I can't. So he told me another of
his classically horrid jokes and I let him go. He did remember to
call me when he got to his apartment.

I wished him sweet dreams. I hope it worked.

end of part six

From summer@interlabs.bradley.edu Wed Jan 29 12:01:55 1997

Open Heart
An X-Files Thing
by Summer (summer@camelot.bradley.edu)
In Tandem with Vickie Moseley

Part Seven

The Journals of Fox Mulder

Thursday 18 November

It isn't... it wasn't her.

But he knows everything. Everything.

I gave Roche the two hearts. I wouldn't let him
touch them, but he stroked the plastic while he recited
every detail of that night in 1973.

Everything.

And then it was the longest trip of my life to the
Forks of Cacapon. West Virginia. Roche always buried them
in another state. He liked to drive... with the body in the
trunk of the car... he always tried to tag the next victim
before he buried the last one.

That came out in the profile before we caught him.
One of the nuances I can't really trace back to anything
in the case files-- it was pure speculation. Back in the
early days of interviews and profiles, Brewster and Johnson
logged a lot of hours talking with Ed Van Kemper. California's
Co-Ed killer. Kemper would dismember his victims and drive around
with various parts in the trunk of his car. It turned him on to
navigate through traffic, pull into a parking lot, visit his
parole officer-- all the time with parts of his victims in
the trunk.

There's no particular similarity between Kemper
and Roche. I just referred to Kemper's precedent in my profile
to justify an otherwise unfounded theory. The idea wasn't based
on forensic evidence, a compilation of clues, or behavioral
indicators. I still don't know where I got it.

Roche's breathing got shallow when we asked him about
visiting houses, doing business... with the body in the trunk.
He admitted to that. And to calling the homes of the bereaved
families. He'd dial their number on their little girl's birthday.
Or on the anniversary of her disappearance. Sometimes he'd get
a fire in his gut and just call one of the families, hoping to hit
them on a bad night. It got him off to hear the catch in their
voices, the fear, the quickly muffled sobs.

I think that's what I couldn't face before. I could
deal with Roche's delusions, his garish fantasy world. I could
understand that these were crimes of manipulation and power.

I couldn't stand to see the perverse joy he took in
the grief of those families. It was too much then... it's
too much now.

It was never really the victims he was trying to
dominate. It was the families. He kept track of all the
searches for the missing girls. I remember that from our
conversation back in '90. I remember that like nails on
a chalkboard.

It wasn't her. It wasn't Sam.

We got calls. Hangups, mostly. Dad changed the number
again and again, but somehow the calls kept coming. I wasn't
supposed to let Mom answer the phone. Not ever. It wasn't always
hangups. All those hissed accusations from anonymous voices
on the line. Some days there was no way to choose... stay home
and chance getting one of those calls. Or leave and maybe Mom
or Dad would hear it. That was worse. I read the complete works
of Shakespeare in eighth grade, trapped in my room, waiting
for the phone to ring.

The thrill he got from the suffering of those families,
from their turmoil and their pain. In the haze of awakened
memories, fresh scars, back in '90-- I couldn't let myself
see it. And if I could blind myself to that... it's possible
that I kept myself from seeing that it was him...

But how, how could I study this man's crimes, how could
I imagine myself in his place, how could I interview him for
three hours without the slightest suspicion, the faintest hint
of the memory that he took my sister from me?

He knows every detail. He knows _every_ detail-- "You
wanted to watch a television show. The one with Bill Bixby.
What the heck was the name of that thing?"-- he couldn't know
unless he'd been there.

"Pick her out. Pick out the one that's your sister
and I'll tell you where she is. Hey, it's a fifty-fifty chance.
Either way, I'm giving you a victim."

Those two hearts. I've looked at them so long, tried
so hard to remember every one of Samantha's flannel nightgowns...
it's all a smudge of pastel bows and flowers. I can't recall
either of the fabrics, but I can't pretend to know for certain
that neither of those hearts belonged to Sam.

I picked the one on the right.

"Are you sure you want that one?" Roche played at
concern, his voice softly solicitous. I could almost hear
him continuing: 'Because we do have a nice model very similar
to that one with added features for just a few dollars more...'

Then the directions to that fifteenth shallow grave. "I
wrote a name on a stone there. It was early... in a way, I kind
of wanted someone to find her. But--" He stared at me and
measured out the words. "No one ever did."

It wasn't Sam. My fingers scraped across those tiny
fragile bones when we found her, and I thought-- I thought, no.
This isn't my sister. In the examining room, even when I
checked the slender yoke of the collarbone... it couldn't
be her.

Denial? Maybe. But it wasn't Sam.

The day she fell off the rope swing-- I remember how
she shimmied up trees, and once up the downspout on the side of
the house. Sam was fearless about heights. Spiders terrified
her, but heights... something that really could hurt her...
she wasn't afraid.

She made it all the way up to the branch, grabbed
for the knot of the rope, called down to me. I turned around
just in time to see the neighbor's dog grab the bottom of
the rope and shake it, and Sam lost her balance, almost in
slow motion. The awful sound when she hit the ground, like
the thump of an overripe melon.

I was supposed to be watching her that day, too.

We'll have to go back again. Face Roche again. Find out
who this lost little girl was. She's been in the ground so long.
Even Scully couldn't get enough to make a quick ID. There's only
the remains and a tattered shroud that used to be a flannel
nightgown.

Scully drove to West Virginia. Just under two hours.
Once we hit the highway the speedometer never wavered below
eighty. She turned on a classical music station to fill the
silence, and her hand was on my sleeve most of the way there.
I looked at her once or twice-- her eyes straight ahead on the
road, expression set and braced. Steeling herself. Waiting to
catch me if I fall.

When I fall. I always fall.

I agreed to Scully's spare room tonight. Once we got here,
though, I couldn't even go inside without thinking of the night
Dad died. Scully saw me hesitate in the doorway, went in and
bundled up the blankets and put them on the sofa. It was good
for a couple hours of sleep, but the foam cushions are like
quicksand.

Sam used to love her Mouse Trap game. Little plastic
boots, plastic chicken, plastic eggs. Not to mention, plastic
mice. The object of the game was to create the most ingenious,
complicated trap. Once, we took every single polyurethane piece
and constructed a tremendous Goldberg device that ended up
including Legos and most of my Erector set. Took up half
of our room. We'd set it off, and about ten minutes later,
it would finally run through all the stages and kick the
door shut.

We spent almost the whole Christmas break making that thing.

Roche has had six years.

Scully told me, "Even if he was on the Vineyard around
that time... it still doesn't mean he had anything to do with
what happened to your sister."

A fifty-fifty chance, he said. Pick out your sister,
and I'll tell you where she is. Either way, I'm giving you a
victim.

One heart left.

Tomorrow we'll confront him again. He'll stonewall.
He'll string me along. He'll drag this out for as long as I
keep coming back. This is his compulsion. This is his thrill.

I can't keep from coming back.

There's got to be an answer. There's got to be a way
out of Roche's trap.

If I can drown myself in this swamp of a sofa again...
maybe the answer will come the way this all began. In dreams.

Friday 19 November

I received no convenient revelations in my sleep
last night. But as I reviewed my previous journal entry
this afternoon, the last lines sparked a thought. An idea
that coalesces from a dozen hitches, fragments, pauses...
nuances.

Roche has offered to show me everything. To reveal
precisely what happened the night of November 27th, 1973.

Mephistopheles as a vacuum cleaner salesman. He
wants to leave prison long enough to give me a guided tour
of my nightmares. And, as he said, "It's more than that;
I can't wait to see your face."

And if, like Faust, I strike this dark bargain--
he'll demonstrate his familiarity with the events of that
night, stopping only short of proving it. He'll never let
me know for sure...

I can see each delicately placed hinge and valve
of the trap I'm in. It's an elegant piece of work. Clockwork.
But what wound the clock? What sprung the trap?

Dreams. My dreams. They led me to Addie Sparks. They
let me find the cloth hearts. In dreams, I saw Roche take my
sister.

Dreams that felt strange from the start-- foreign.
Like I was tuned into a different frequency. Like someone
else was in control.

Roche's crimes had two aspects... the pedophilic
delusions of himself as each child's liberator. And the
sadistic glee he took from the despair of the families
who were left behind. Two sides of the same coin. After
picking his victim, he'd invent reasons why she had to
be "rescued".

When we questioned him about the thirteen deaths
he confessed to in '90, he let details slip. Sharon's
mother, he claimed, was jealous of her daughter, and treated
her badly. Kelli wasn't appreciated; her family was trying
to squelch her imaginative mind. Yvonne's father shut her
up in her room for the least infraction.

He justified his actions, not by blaming his victims,
as killers commonly do, but by blaming their families. They
deserved to lose their daughters, their... sisters.

Push through it, just get past it, think, dammit.

He punished the families by taking the girls. By
hiding the bodies so they never knew for sure what had
happened. The primary release came from the deaths of
his victims, and he kept the trophies to relive the
thrill. The secondary kick came from the suffering
he savored in those families.

For six years, he's known that the first little
girl he killed was-- if he took Samantha, and he's known
all along she was my sister, why wait until _now_ to use
that knowledge? Why wait six years?

If his pattern held true, Roche would have begun
these games with me in '90. He'd be playing them still.

Roche knows every detail of what happened that
night. IF that's how it happened. I recovered vague memories
of my sister's abduction, which have since evolved into
complete accounts of that night. Sometimes we're in
our room, and all I see are lights; I can't move my head,
but I hear her calling my name. Sometimes I'm going up
the stairs, and I think Samantha's following, but when
I turn around, she's gone.

Sometimes... most often, over the past few years...
Watergate is on TV while we play Stratego. We argue, the
room goes dark, the windows flare with colored light, I
knock Dad's gun off the cabinet, look up and watch as the
door opens on an elongated grey figure; I hear Samantha
call for me and turn to see her suspended in midair.

Sometimes that's how I remember it. Usually
that's how I remember it. But not always. And the other
versions are no less vivid than the Stratego memory.

The window. Roche said he was listening at the
window. Across the room from where we sat in front of
the television. He heard us talking over the sound of
the TV, from across the room, through the window, and
remembered an argument from twenty-three years ago that
I'm not sure ever even happened.

I dreamed this version of Sam's abduction again
just a few days before the dreams began that led me to
Addie Sparks. That was the night we came back from Montana;
the dream-paralysis was so strong that I woke up choking.
I'd stopped breathing in my sleep.

Roche didn't look surprised to see me, after we found
Addie Sparks. After all this time, it was as though he
expected me. And when I returned the next day-- bright and
early, the images of Roche coming into the house in Chilmark
still burning in my mind-- he strolled out, nodding pleasantly.
As though he expected me.

Maybe he did.

Maybe Roche steered me toward Addie-- showed me how
to find her. So I'd come back. Maybe he led me to those hearts
because he had a plan to use the last two for this, to make me
pay for bringing him in. Or maybe just because he enjoys it.

Maybe Roche has been leading me in my dreams.

And maybe that's just what I want to believe.

There's only one way to find out. Skinner would
never approve it. He called us in yesterday morning and
he didn't even want to let me talk to Roche again. He told
Scully make sure I keep to the straight and narrow path.
She said we couldn't give Roche his way on this, or he'd
string us along forever-- an echo of my own thoughts. But
if we DON'T give him his way on this, he'll STILL string us
along forever. And I need to know.

Scully said, "There has to be some other way to
come to the truth."

I notice she wasn't quick to follow up with any
suggestions.

Instead she tried to park me at her place again--
insisted I still need to sleep, and when I balked at the
thought of either the sofa or the spare room she closed
her eyes and said, "Fine. Take my room, then."

"I can't do that... look, I just want to sprawl
out on my own couch and turn on the Sci-Fi Channel and
try to get out from under this for a while."

"Will you take something?"

"Do you really think I need to?"

"Medically... no. Personally... yes."

So she came up, and I dug out the prescription
I got when Mom was in the hospital, after the stroke.
Scully knows I hate this stuff; she watched like a
hawk while I took out the pills and swallowed two.

Before I could even decide whether I wanted
to try to escape Dr. Scully's all-seeing eyes, she
got a phone call. Came into the living room agitated
and exhausted. "Will you be okay?"

Nodded, thinking, must be fate...

She checked the prescription four times-- I
counted-- heaved a shaky sigh, slid into the easy
chair and stared at the television, looked at her
watch every eight seconds.

"Take off, Scully. I'll be fine." I've learned
that I usually can't fake being asleep; she knows. But
I can pull off sounding drowsy. That usually works.

Scully gave me her favorite doubtful expression.

"Go ahead. You hate this part anyway. I'm just
gonna stare off into space and wallow for a while. I'd
kind of like to be alone."

She swept her stuff together and prattled about
being back in three hours, call her if anything happens,
et cetera. I think she told me where she was going, but
I was trying so hard to seem like I was falling asleep
that I almost did.

So what happens if I carry out the idea I've
got in mind, and Scully suspects that I never refilled
that prescription? Maybe she'll realize those pills
were shaped an awful lot like generic aspirin tablets.

Sorry, Scully.

I wanted to think it through. And I have. Scully
said there had to be another way.

There is another way.

It's now almost four-thirty pm on a Friday. Judge
Rehnquist will be wrapping things up in her office right
now. She heard the case against Virgil Incanto; she spoke
to me afterward, remarking on the strangeness of the man
and his crimes. She presided over the routine hearings
after Scully and I apprehended, and I had to shoot, Bill
Patterson. Rehnquist approved the search warrant on Robert
Modell's apartment.

She's as open-minded a federal judge as I've
ever dealt with. And it's late on a Friday; she'll hear
me out, and she'll make her decision right away so that
she can go home for the weekend.

A removal order for a prisoner in federal custody
is no small matter. I'll need to fax her my file on John
Lee Roche, and the report we logged on the discovery of
Addie Sparks a few days ago. A lifetime ago.

And then...

And then I'm ending this.

I'm taking John Roche to the Vineyard.

I'm taking him home.

end part seven

From summer@interlabs.bradley.edu Wed Jan 29 12:02:15 1997

Open Hearts
An X-Files Thing
By Vickie Moseley (vmoseley@fgi.net)
In Tandem with Summer

Part Eight

Dana Scully's Personal Log

Thursday, Nov. 18th

I could use fewer days like this one.

Yeah, like maybe--no more, ever!

I got to the office early. Mulder had been there for a while.
He's still dragging, but at least he got a couple of hours of sleep.
I know now that nothing short of temazepam will put him out. He's
obsessing. It's always bad when we get to the part of the case
where he starts identifying with everyone--the victim, the victim's
family, the killer. So take that and multiply it a few times since this
time Mulder believes he IS the victim's family--no wonder he's
hanging on by his fingernails.

But it doesn't have to be like this!

The nice lady from ElectroVac returned my calls (six in the span of
30 minutes) and told me that she'd tracked down Roche's travel
records. They keep them for IRS purposes. Non-reimbursable
business expenses. "Of course, working for the government, I'm
sure you don't have to worry about those," she said in this really
catty little jealous voice. Yeah, lady, well, look at my _shoe_ repair
bill! Or drycleaning. Ever tried to get banana cream pie filling off
silk? Not to mention blood, since Mulder can't bleed on his _own_
shirt--only mine, for some bizarre reason.

Roche was on the Vineyard, all right. During October and
November of 1973. By December he was off again--into Rhodes
Island and New York. South for the winter, I suppose.

Shit.

I wanted to tell Mulder when we were alone. Well, I should have
known we'd never be that lucky.

Mulder and I had agreed that we needed to go see Roche again. But
especially after what happened yesterday, there was no way I was
going to let him go out there alone. For once, and to my total
amazement, he agreed with me.

I was on the phone with the the ElectroVac lady when he made the
phone call to make arrangements. I wasn't listening real closely to
his conversation, but it's hard not to notice a slammed phone and a
pencil soaring through the air. He was out of the room in a shot.
I finished up with the soon-to-be-audited Personnel Manager and
followed him up to Skinner's office.

Got there just in time for Mulder to flash me a 'how could you'
look before Skinner informed us both that he knew all about the
incident at the prison--it was on tape. I was pissed as hell that
Mulder thought I would rat on him. Haven't I taken the heat
enough times for him to know I don't do that? Forget for a minute
that I SHOULD have done that--I should have told Skinner the
whole episode, and maybe added that I thought Mulder should take
a couple of days off--a cooling down period, like the book says.
Forget for a minute that I'm always tap-dancing around procedure
for him, like the Tooms stakeout or that fucking DAT tape or any
of a thousand other times when I've put our partnership before
everything else, even my own job. Forget all that. He should have
known I wouldn't do it.

Skinner cut off Mulder's access to Roche. Any other time, I think I
might have laid a kiss on that old shiny head of his for thinking of
that! I wish I could have thought of that about four days ago and
all of this would have been over. But that was before I knew about
Roche and the Vineyard.

Right now cutting Mulder off from Roche is like feeding him cherry
bombs and handing him a lighted match. He's gonna blow; the only
variable is how close you are when it happens. I knew right then
that until we saw Roche again, and I convinced my partner that he's
_making this up_, Mulder would continue to obsess over this and
eventually . . .

I refuse to flush four years of my life down a toilet on something
so stupid. And I will not go back to teaching. And I will not let
Mulder do that to himself.

I was joking the other day when I mentioned that I should get paid
for watching Mulder. Apparently, it's not a joke anymore. Skinner
made it official. I'm to watch him like a hawk, keep him in line.

To be perfectly honest, it's a dirty job, but who's going to do it?
Not Skinner himself. He can't exactly assign someone else. I guess
I'm the most likely candidate. And, at times, Mulder has listened to
me.

Yeah, right.

BUT, at least Skinner agreed to let us see Roche one more time.

In retrospect, I know it was a bad idea. Even though it did come to
some good. We found another body because of this little visit and
chat. Mulder almost sacrificed his mind on an altar of guilt because
of it, but we put another little girl to rest. Another family can
grieve and go on, without the questions, without the false hope.

That family was not my partner's.

I've seen evil. I've had evil touch me and call me 'Girly girl' and
ask me if my hair is dry or normal. I've seen it covered in slime
and crawling through and around the escalator of a shopping mall,
waiting to attack and kill and eat. I've seen it many many times and
I was totally repulsed by it. Today, I was almost fascinated by it.

Mulder took the last two hearts. Little tiny pieces of fabric. If
those little girls had lived, had grown up, I wonder what would
have happened to those little snatches of fabric. Mom took a bunch
of the flannel pajamas we'd all outgrown, the ones with worn out
knees that weren't fit for any other kids to use as hand-me-downs,
and made a quilt from them. We all fought over it. I was in high
school, and Bill was in the service and Missy was about to go out
to California and even Charlie wanted that quilt. It was warm and
soft and felt so good to sleep under.

Mom wouldn't let any of us have it. She called it her 'hope quilt'.
She informed us that one day, when our kids were over to stay at
Grandma and Grandpa's house, they could sleep under that quilt. It
was for the next generation. The little ones to come.

Bill and Karen's kids sleep under it every time they come visit.

Roche wanted to take those hearts out of the plastic bags. I almost
cheered when Mulder wouldn't let him. The bastard will just have
to imagine the thrill. I'm glad we didn't give it to him.

We handed him other thrills, though. We walked right into a setup.
A perfect little mind game that could only come from someone
with that much evil in him.

Roche recited the night of Samantha's abduction. It sounded almost
as though he had heard the tapes of Mulder's hypnosis. He knew it
all. He taunted Mulder, glaring at him with his cold eyes. And
Mulder sat there, paralyzed. Caught in the cobra's gaze.

"Pick one."

I remember doing that. I even had a flash, just for a second of
saying 'Eeny, meany, miney moe, catch a tiger by the toe'.

He was making Mulder pick which heart belonged to Samantha.

Had that night not held so much terror for him, I have no doubt that
Mulder would have picked the right heart. Or politely told Roche
to go fuck himself sideways, because neither heart belonged to
anything Samantha owned. Mulder remembers blouses I wore
during the first few months we worked together. He comments
occasionally when I borrow something from Mom's wardrobe.
Hell, he can keep his own huge closet straight.

But I could tell that he didn't recognize either heart. And worse
than that, he wasn't sure that he _didn't_ recognize either of them.
He just didn't know. It wasn't in his head. That thought was
killing him and Roche was grinning like the fool he is while Mulder
was slicing himself to ribbons choosing between two little cloth
hearts.

I'm skipping Valentine's Day next year. Maybe the year after, too.

Mulder chose.

I've never been to the Forks of Cacapon, West Virginia. It's a nice
park. Campgrounds were well cared for. It was a little muddy, but
the covering of leaves helped out there.

When we found the rock, with the words 'MAD HAT' scratched
into it, I almost chickened out. I thought about hitting Mulder in
the back of the head, just enough to knock him out, and dragging
him back to the car.

I didn't want to be wrong. I didn't want to find the body and then
have to identify it and have to tell Mulder that we'd found
Samantha.

I didn't want to deal with it when he heard the news.

Thank God, it didn't come to that.

Instead, it took hours of me holding my breath, Mulder holding his
breath, while the forensics team finished the work that Mulder
and I started. Well, Mulder started it. I just followed blindly along,
like I always do. One day, it might even be off a cliff. Procedure?
What procedure? Mulder started clawing through the dirt with his
fingernails and I happily joined him. We work in the basement, we
don't need no stinking pro-CE-dure!

I made him sit in the break room while I ran the computer match.
There wasn't enough left of the nightgown to identify from the
descriptions of all the missing children from 1973 on. So many
children. Some taken by their 'estranged' parents, some runaways
now hookers on the streets. Some still out there. In other shallow
graves. Waiting for us or somebody like us to find them and bring
them home.

I checked Samantha's description first. I have it memorized by
now. Samantha was taller at the time of her disappearance. And
she'd had a cavity filled in her lower right bicuspid.

This little girl was not Samantha.

I went to the break room and wasn't too surprised to find he wasn't
there. He was in the autopsy room. The way he was standing,
hunched over that skeleton. I don't know what I wanted. I could
understand why he might wish it was all over. Just over. Not for
good, God knows it'll never be over for good, but just over. So she
could rest. So he could rest.

But when he started talking, I knew that wasn't what he wanted
now.

"It's not her. Am I right? Samantha broke her collarbone. We
had a rope swing in the back..."

We had one, too.

I was relieved that he had figured it out on his own. That way, he
truly believed it. He had his proof. He'd touched it, with his own
hands. For a moment, I could tell he was truly relieved, too.

And then the curtain dropped again.

"It's not her. But it's somebody."

And my heart went out to some unknown family, still wondering where
she is. And then my heart went out to _him_... still wondering where
she is...

I got him back to the apartment. This time I didn't ask if he wanted
to stay the night. I just drove him there and he didn't argue. I
would have liked him to stretch out on the bed, but there's still no
TV in my spare room. Budget constraints. So when he balked at
the thought of going in there, I gathered up enough blankets and he
curled up on the sofa. Good thing he was hunched up in a little
ball, or his feet would have been propped up on the arm. I really
need to get a longer sofa.

I just checked him a minute ago. The TV is on. He heard my
footsteps and slammed his eyes shut, tried that 'possum' trick
where he slows his breathing. He thinks he's got me fooled. I
decided this time not to call him on it. Maybe, if he tries hard
enough to fool me, he'll fall asleep on his own.

Friday, November 20

I cannot believe this whole day.

I cannot believe that I'm in the Assistant Director's car, going just
over the speed limit at 70 mph, typing on my damned laptop to keep
from engaging in a conversation that would in all likelihood range
from my own suspension for dereliction of duty to my partner's
subsequent dismissal for gross and reckless misconduct.

I was asleep for a while, but that was another lousy idea.

I cannot believe what a rat bastard he was.

I'm talking about Roche, now. I'll deal with the other 'rat bastard'
in my life in a minute.

We had to go out to the prison again.

It was the only way to find out who that little girl was. I knew
Roche would tell us. For one thing, he would want to prove that he
knew who it was, and for another, he'd want to rub it in that
Mulder had picked the wrong heart.

I was right, on both counts.

He's so fucking cool about it all. No remorse, no regret. The
prison system is supposedly 'rehabilitating' this man. Regardless
of the fact that he will never be let back into society--

At least, that was the plan.

He played Mulder like a goddamned violin. But we found out the
little girl's name. Karen Ann Phileponte. I remembered the name
from the data search--there were a total of 17 possibilities for a
child that size and description, gone missing around that time on the
Eastern seaboard. Karen will be taken off that list now. Only 16
more to go.

After Roche's little show yesterday, I should have been prepared
for anything. I mean, if the guy can come up with a recount of
Mulder's own repressed memories, well, this is a guy who shoots
for the moon, right? I'm still wondering how he did that. It
would be a gross violation of patient confidentiality for Mulder's
hypnotherapist to leak that information to anyone. Mulder has
always trusted the man explicitly. But how else could Roche have
known?

All that aside, the bastard must think we are the dumbest things
walking because he told Mulder he would tell him everything.
"That's all that will satisfy you, right?" Provided, of course,
that we let him out for a day.

"I'm realistic," he said. "Besides, I can't wait to see the look on
your face."

That clinched it. Capital punishment is too good for that man. I
want him to starve to death in that fucking prison cell. They
can throw his remains out with the other environmental hazards.
There was no way anyone with any intelligence would ever let that
man out of that cell.

I wasn't counting on how monumentally stupid my partner can be.
It's one thing to endure ruthless manipulation. It's another
thing to succumb when you KNOW you're being played.

When we left Roche, I knew Mulder was not 'all right'. I could see
it in his eyes, his stance, his facial expression. Even his hair looked
like he was about to fall apart. Or do something really stupid.

I'm not blind. But damn it all, I'm his partner! I'm not his fucking
nursemaid, no matter what Skinner thinks.

I did everything I could reasonably have been expected to do. I
wanted to take him back to my apartment, but he nixed that idea
right out of the gate. He wanted to be on his own lumpy couch.
Fine. I knew better than to let him go there and then turn my back.
I drove him over. And made him get out the prescription sleeping
pills the doctor gave him when his mom was in the hospital.
They're nice and strong and would last the night, at least they had
when he'd taken them before.

He hates them. I know he feels out of control when he's drugged.
I guess that's a good sign, because as obsessive as he is, Mulder
would be a prime candidate for drug addiction if that weren't the
case. I'm sure he sees that in himself and that's why he fights it so
much. But sometimes, he just needs to let go. He was not going to
go to sleep tonight without some chemical assistance. Better those
pills than a bottle of something else.

I watched him take them. I watched very closely because I've seen
him palming pain pills at the ER and I know how he does it. He thinks
it's cute, I want to strangle him. But this time, he put them in his
mouth and swallowed. God, I felt like a fucking pediatrician,
treating a four year old.

Thinking back, temazepam is smaller than the pills he swallowed.

The bastard changed the fucking pills.

I'll kill him! The fucking choke chain will have spikes on the
INSIDE of the collar! He is TOAST!

And that drowsy act. All a big put-on. He sort of slumped on the
couch. . . I bet he thanked his lucky stars when my phone rang. I
wonder if he managed to arrange _that_, too?

Nah, Ellen hates him. He'd never get her to go along with it. It
was just sheer dumb Mulder luck again. The kind that's going to
help him right into an early grave.

Shit, I have got to stop thinking of that stupid dream. My dream,
this time, not his.

So, I haven't heard from Ellen for months. Last time we talked,
and I feel guilty as hell about this, she was telling me that David
was gone all the time and she was really beginning to hate all the
business trips that his new job required. I was superficially
sympathetic. I mean, my God, the man makes in the middle six
figures and she's bitching because he's not home three nights a
week. I couldn't help thinking that Ellen needs to get out of that
little 'Longenberger'-basket-display kitchen of hers and do a little
charity work or find a job. So what if they don't need the
money--she needs a life.

Well, now she needs the money. She left David. He's been
sleeping with his secretary. His male secretary. And about half the
rest of the office for good measure.

Ten years is a long time to be in a 'cover' marriage.

She was scared shitless, kept crying about how could she get hold
of an AIDS test--this woman used to be intelligent. But with her
crying in my ear, and Mulder looking suitably drugged on his couch,
I did what I thought was the best thing at the time.

I went over to talk to Ellen. And left Mulder, whom I firmly
believed was sawing logs, by himself.

Big mistake of the evening number one.

I got Ellen calmed down. She's going to her doctor for the test.
I told her that there's a good chance she'll be fine. I can
understand her concern. She thought she was safe, in a
monogamous relationship. I expressly avoided telling her that these
days, nobody's that safe. I really didn't think it would do anything
but add to the fear she was already displaying.

Three hours later, I begged off to go check on my other little charge.
The one who's going to be First Degree Murder when I get hold of
him.

Mulder's car was gone. I couldn't remember where it had been
parked when we got back to his apartment, but I knew it had been
on the street somewhere. It wasn't on the street when I was there
the second time tonight.

I went upstairs, hand on my gun, praying that he'd be snoring on
the couch with the TV blaring, like I left him.

He was gone. The rat bastard was gone. He'd even turned the
fucking TV off.

That gave me an idea. Mulder only turns the TV off when he's on
the phone. Especially when the phone call is important.

I hit redial on his cordless and got really lucky.

I like Judge Rehnquist. She's no relation to the Supreme Court
Justice and I've heard she gets a lot of ribbing for the name, but
she's always been there when we needed her. She's there for us
basically because when we call her, we have a really good reason.
Whatever it's for--a warrant, some order, an injunction, even a
release--before this, it's always been for a good reason.

I don't think I'll be able to look the woman in the face again after
tonight. She immediately wondered why I was calling. I mean, she
had assumed that I would be with my partner, escorting a federal
prisoner to Martha's Vineyard to find an unmarked grave.

"Oh, _that's_ where he went." I can't believe I actually said that to
the woman. She must think I'm completely nuts now.

But that hardly mattered. I then had to answer my cellphone--and
got the call to report IMMEDIETELY to A.D. Skinner.

I knew he'd be angry. Skinner gets this little vein on his neck
that stands out when he's really pissed, and it was out there so far
I was sure the man was going to have a stroke.

Suddenly, it was MY fault. *I* was supposed to make sure
something like this didn't happen. I guess I was supposed to keep
Mulder occupied this evening so he didn't go out and do something
stupid. Strip poker, maybe. Yeah, that'd go over REAL well.

Well fuck the both of them, Skinner and Mulder. Skinner can kiss
my ass if he couldn't see earlier that Mulder needed to be tied to
the office, put in restraints, drugged into a coma, pick one, any one.
I don't know when I became my partner's official keeper, but I
better get paid accordingly. I wonder what a 24-hour psychiatrist
goes for these days?

And Mulder, oooooh, Mulder. Skinner decided that we'd wasted
enough of the good taxpayers' money already, letting Roche out of
jail, so we are driving to the Vineyard. I guess it was just my
body's way of shutting everything out. I fell asleep in the car.

And dreamed. I dreamed we got to the motel where I'd tracked
Mulder down. Stupid shit used his company AMEX; I certainly hope
he wasn't trying to hide from me, because if he was, he's getting
really rusty at it.

In the dream, my dream, we pull up to the motel. Skinner gets
out first and bangs on the door. Not all that surprisingly, there is
no answer, so he kicks the son of a bitch in. And stops. And turns
around and the look on his face is pure horror. I run forward and
try to get in, but he grabs me and tries to stop me. I get out of his
grip and go through the door.

I can't even describe how many ways Roche used to kill Mulder in
my dream. All I can remember, the part that woke me up with a
jolt, was Mulder's eyes. Staring at me. Lifeless.

If this fucking car can't go any faster, why the hell didn't we take
the damned plane?

We'll be there in another half hour. I just hope Mulder's still alive,
so I can kill him when I get there.

end of part eight.

From summer@interlabs.bradley.edu Wed Jan 29 12:04:13 1997

Open Hearts
An X-Files Thing
by Summer (summer@camelot.bradley.edu)
In Tandem with Vickie Moseley

Part Nine

The Journals of Fox Mulder

Saturday 20 November

Finally. I thought John would never fall asleep.

It worked. I can't believe it fucking worked. If
he'd just admit, just break down and SAY that he's lying,
then I know I could kill the last, gasping vestige of doubt
that's still tucked just inside my jacket, poking a long
fingernail into my side and wheezing, "But what if he DID
do it?"

But no. I don't think so. Not any more. Scully was
right. He's been playing me all along.

Scully... Scully... Scully's going to kill me for
ditching her again. I'm gambling that she'll understand--
she won't like it, but she knows that when it comes down
to it, I didn't really have a choice.

After all, if I'd run this past her, she never would've
let me do it. But it worked. Against all odds, my god, it
actually worked. I feel like I've just run a marathon.

I thought no trip could ever last as long as the car
ride to the Forks of Cacapon, but I was wrong. The plane trip
to the Vineyard today... that was longer. Not merely because
I was on the edge of my seat wondering whether Roche was being
honest, not merely agonizing over whether this plan was going
to work... Travelling with John Lee Roche gives a whole new
meaning to the term "motion sickness".

For one thing, he would not shut up. I guess the other
prisoners don't care to engage in conversation with a child
molester and serial murderer. Or maybe it was just his old
salesman's instincts kicking in-- if he could keep me talking,
I wouldn't think about his story and find any inconsistencies
that might mar his carefully constructed illusion.

For another, I was escorting around a handcuffed man
while trying desperately to conceal the fact that I, the
Lone Federal Agent, was transporting a prisoner without the
team of officers who customarily accompany an expedition like
this. I managed to badge my way around the metal detectors so
that I didn't have to uncuff him there, and with my overcoat
hanging over his hands, Roche looked normal most of the time.

_I_ was the one people were giving suspicious looks--
one hand constantly on my hip and the other on Roche's arm, sweat
pouring down my face, anxiety tripping my words up and making
my hands shake. I saw some teenager look at me and Roche and
then flip his wrist at his buddy, so apparently I must've
looked like a gay man... fresh from a diagnosis of HIV-positive,
clinging to the guy who passed it to him in the first place.

No, kid, see, I'm really an FBI agent, absconding to
my childhood home with an erstwhile child molester and killer
in an attempt to find out once and for all if he murdered my
little sister.

Never mind.

Not to mention debating over whether to call Scully's
answering machine and leave a message. Again. Third time's
a charm, right? But there was a slim chance she'd gone home
after she left my apartment, so I passed on that one.

Maybe I should call her right now. Sure, it's one in
the morning, but if I go ahead and call now, she'll be awake
in plenty of time to watch Saturday morning cartoons.

Nah. She's probably already in trouble for not reporting
me when I slugged Roche. If I tell her what I've done now, she'll
have to report me for this. And the hell of it is-- she might not.
She might jet out here to help me bring him in without incident,
then write one of her razzle-dazzle reports where she somehow
makes every crazy-ass thing we do on a case sound utterly sane
and sensible.

But with the way Skinner was raving yesterday morning--
no, I guess that was two days ago-- whatever. He looked ready
to take a chunk out of anyone unlucky enough to get close to his
teeth. Not even one of Scully's reports would be enough to pacify
him if I dragged her into this.

No. I started this, I'll finish it myself and take the
fall. I'll unceremoniously dump Roche back at the prison this
morning, turn myself in to Scully and let her haul me in to get
cited for misconduct. That won't look too bad. It'll appear that
Scully's doing her job, keeping me in line and going to Skinner
when I stick my neck out. Skinner can tear me up all he wants;
I'll survive. Hell, I made it through this week. One of the A.D.'s
reaming sessions'll seem like tender loving care after the shit
I've dealt with from Roche.

Forewarned was not forarmed, in this case. I knew exactly
what he was doing and why he was doing it-- primarily to have a
little fun, secondarily to distract me from thinking too closely
about his tales of 1973. All the way from the prison, through the
airport, onto the plane-- he kept at me. I knew what he was doing.

It didn't help.

"The investigation was really pretty sloppy," he told
me mildly, like he was talking about the Redskins game. "I read
about it in the papers, and there were a lot of ways they could
have caught me, if they'd just kept at it. Even now, you could've
traced it to me, if you were really diligent."

"How?" I demanded.

He just said airily, "Plenty of ways. Tons. I wasn't
even wearing gloves."

"Then you didn't touch anything, because they never found
anyone's prints..."

"I didn't need to touch anything else."

On a fucking airplane, in the middle of coach, while the
stewardess was passing out those goddamned bags of honey-roasted
peanuts-- and my fingers ached, I wanted to hurt him so bad.

Finally I realized he wouldn't quit unless I played ball
with him, so I tried to catch him in contradictions, or get him
to venture knowledge that he'd get wrong. "You said you sold this
vacuum cleaner to my father. What was he like, then?"

"I don't remember," Roche said, then a sly glance. "I wasn't
really paying attention to _him_."

And I meant to be objective, but I just couldn't. "My sister
didn't fit your pattern. She doesn't look like Alice, John."

"Samantha was the first... I wasn't sure what I wanted,
then. She had such clear blue eyes. When I came to your house,
her hair was pulled back with blue ribbons, and she was laughing.
The whole time I was there, she was laughing."

"She still didn't look like Alice."

"Have you ever seen a picture of the real little girl
the reverend wrote those books for? Alice Liddell?" he asked
dreamily. "Blue eyes... and such lovely dark hair."

I set my jaw. And wanted to vomit. "Where was _I_?"

"Baseball practice, I think." Roche smiled abstractly.
"Your dad pointed out the pictures on the wall of you and your
sister." He focussed on me, eyes sharpening. "You know, I thought
I recognized you... when you and those other men asked me
questions. Your eyes are the same as they were then. But I
thought, no, it's too much of a coincidence. Then I found out
that yeah, you're Fox. I remembered your name from when I talked
to your father. It's a memorable name." --Lies. It was all lies.

But I didn't know that, then. "Why would he mention us
to you? You were just selling him a vacuum cleaner. He wouldn't
give you the story of his life."

"I always asked, of course." That husk of a smile. "And it's
suspicious, only asking about... Samantha... so I asked about
you, too. It was okay. I didn't have to listen to much about you.
He went on and on about her, though... which was what I wanted,
after all."

And I had to suppress a shiver, because that did sound like
Dad; the potholder Samantha crocheted was always infinitely more
interesting than the score of my last basketball game. The doubts
kept gathering, worse and worse. And still Roche wore that
vacant salesman's smile.

"But all this can wait," he said, all empty geniality. "We
can't start until we get there."

"Fine." I tried to ignore him. Ran through some trial
apologies for Scully. At times like this, it's good to have
plenty of grovelling worked out ahead of time.

Then Roche started in again, proclaiming, "The time has
come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things."

"Yeah, and a very merry un-birthday to you too, John. Now
shut up. You'll get your chance to talk."

He made an exagerrated `hrumph'ing sound. "If that's how
you're going to be, maybe I won't say anything after all."

I stared him down. At least I can say that much for myself.
On one small point, I stared him down. "You need to tell me as much
as I need to know."

"And how many states can I send you and your pretty partner
running to? How many times can you stand to dig for your sister's
shallow grave?"

I could hear the other passengers chatting, hear someone's
hands takking on the keys of a laptop computer. The rustling of
cellophane packages, munching of teeth on gummy peanuts. I tried to
imagine the plane soaring over the Atlantic, tried to visualise how
it would look to someone on the ground... a tiny silver dot in
the sky, a thread of white smoke among the clouds. So small and
inconsequential.

It hurts to hate this much. I'm exhausted with the effort
it takes to despise him.

No, what's wearing me down is the effort it takes to keep
from putting a pillow over his face right now. He's snoring,
the bastard, five feet from where I'm sitting. I cuffed him to
the bed. He said, "Kinky." And then, in plying tones, "This
isn't how I'd choose to spend my last few hours of freedom..."

"Good."

When we took his testimony... god, it was yesterday, it
was less than twenty-four hours ago... when we got him to tell
us who the fifteenth little girl was, I saw the look on Scully's
face.

She hates him, and it was glorious to see. It's not a
muddled, frustrated feeling that ties her up and tires her
out. It's almost biblical, the hate she harbors for him-- pure
and cold and monumental. She has no compulsion to decipher his
behavior; she's not interested in what made him this way. He's
a predator to be studied, caged and classified, and then forgotten.

I want that. Oh how I want that.

"She lived in Green Ranch, New York," Roche told her. "Mint
grew outside her window; I stood outside her window atop sprigs of
mint. Smelled wonderful." He drifted off for a moment. Gave Scully
a date-- July 1974-- nine months after Sam went missing.

But he didn't take Sam.

"Her name was Karen Ann Phileponte," he said, freeing that
fifteenth cloth heart at last. And then, in an absolutely textbook
sociopathic display, he burst out, "I had her mother on the hook
for an ElectroVac Argasy-- but at the last minute, she said Thanks
but no thanks--" He fairly sizzled with indignation. Then he lapsed
into his dissociative state again, murmuring, "Oh well."

I remember. I remember the patterns of his speech,
the currents of his delusions. Too well.

"Why'd you do it, John?" Reggie Pardue's low voice; I
remember how he always sounded so sure, so ordered and composed.
That was the last case we worked on together, six years ago,
and now he's gone.

"They deserved better," Roche answered distantly.

"Better than what?" Bill Patterson demanded, pushing his
glasses up his nose-- whenever he was stymied, he'd always start
messing with his glasses.

"Than this," Roche replied.

"So you took them away," Bill interpreted.

Reggie-- and it's one of the reasons I miss him-- couldn't
contain his disgust. "How?" he asked. "How could you do that
to those little girls? Didn't they ask for their mommies, didn't
they cry and beg to go home? Weren't they fighting when you
held them down?"

John Lee Roche squirmed. For the first time in the session
he lost that far-off look and cast his eyes around the room like
reality mattered. He blurted, "And if he left off dreaming about
you, where do you suppose you'd be? You'd be nowhere. Why, you're
only a sort of thing in his dream! If he was to wake, you'd go
out-- bang!-- just like a candle!"

I put myself into his line of sight and asked, "If those
girls were only a sort of thing in a dream, then what are you,
John?"

"A dreamer," he whispered. Then, with a wry twist to his
smile, "A daydream believer."

I was glad he didn't quote from Lennon's "Imagine": "You
may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one..." John Roche's
fixation on the works of Lewis Carroll already ruined the Alice
books for me. Charles Manson's fascination with "Helter Skelter"
put me off the Beatles and his endorsement of Heinlein's _Stranger
in a Strange Land_ made me move my copy to a back shelf. The Aum
Supreme Truth cult in Japan touts Asimov's Foundation series as
the basis for their apocalyptic beliefs, so I took those books
right off the bottom of the coffee table, where I keep all my
insomnia reading material. With all of these killers laying
claim to so many icons of popular culture, I'm running out of
things I can safely enjoy.

At least my video collection remains unprofaned.

"Why those girls, John?" Bill asked, as always scouting
for indicators. "What about them made you decide they deserved
better than this? You must have seen a lot of children, travelling
like you did. Why them?"

"The dream-child, moving through a land of wonders wild
and new..." Roche quoted at him; his posture arched. Playing,
now. He made me think of a kid with a magnifying glass and a
few trapped ants.

I lost my patience. "And something, something, something
else, and half believe it true," I tossed back at him.

Bill actually laughed at my mangled citing of Carroll's
poetry. "That's pretty good, John," he confided in Roche,
"stumping Mulder, here. That's better than any of us have
managed with him." He sat next to Roche at the table, trying
to encourage identification. Bill Patterson never saw victims; he
saw convictions and killers. It served him well until it dragged
him down. He was always so eager to find a kinship with the
killer, to "look at the art" and know the artist through and
through.

Roche focussed on me. "The question is," he said, "which
is to be master... that's all."

I'd never be able to read those books again. "Impenetrability,
that's what I say."

"By impenetrablity, you mean we've had enough of this
subject," Roche grinned. "For now."

"Tell us where they are, John."

He looked to Reggie and to Bill, hoping for an opportunity
to manipulate his way into another line of questioning. But they
both backed me up. "Tell us where they are."

And he did.

Terrible as it seems, I have to say-- that was a good
interrogation. Bill and Reggie and I managed to act as a trinity
that day; each of us took on the burden of sympathy for one of
the three points of view. Perpetrator, victim, and survivor.

Christ... that's how we ended up in the end... Reggie,
murdered. Bill, a murderer. And me. So far. Survivor.

So far. If I can just make it through this night. It's
2:54. Plane leaves at six. A few more hours. I can make it a
few more hours.

I'll... practice what to say to Scully. I never
got the chance to come up with anything much on the way
here.

Hell of an awkward production, keeping close tabs
on Roche. I cuffed him to the seat and went to the restroom,
and when I came back he'd already talked to the elderly lady
behind him long enough to borrow a pack of playing cards from
her. He asked if I was up for a game of poker, shuffling the
cards slowly. I took the deck away.

"I could make this pretty difficult for you," he said.
"I'm being very cooperative, you have to admit. It'd be a
real hassle if I rattled these cuffs in the stewardess's
face. Started shouting at all these nice people. Might even
cause a panic."

...I let him keep the cards.

Eventually he gave them back to the owner and told
me he needed to use the men's room-- I always forget to
figure biology into my otherwise so perfectly orchestrated
plans. Decided to leave him cuffed and if things got
messy for him, well, fine. Of course, the minute I let
him up, the flight attendant barricaded the aisle with
the drink cart. Roche headed down the rows with my jacket
slung over his hands, and I had to watch as he crouched and
spoke to a mother and her little girl.

Finally the attendant let me through and I grabbed
his arm and urged him down the aisle. "Three minutes," I
told him as I shoved him in. "After three minutes, I'm
pulling you out and bringing you back to your seat no
matter how I find you."

"You only encourage bad behavior by expecting the
worst, Mulder," he told me serenely. "My therapist is
confident that's one of the root causes for my condition."

And then he ducked into the restroom. Lucky for
me, because I didn't have a glib reply to that one. Just
rage.

Later, he wanted to know if I thought Lewis Carroll--
or rather, Charles Dodgson, the clergyman and mathemetician
who wrote as Carroll-- was a pedophile.

"I mean, you've done the reading," he said cloyingly,
"you're an educated man, a psychologist... do you see that in
his work?"

"I didn't until we started tracking you." It's the
biggest reason that I can't recapture my former affection
for Carroll's books-- and "The Jabberwocky" was one of the
first poems I ever knew by heart. I loved those books. But
when I was profiling Roche and getting ready to interview
him, some elements of Dodgson's biography took on a sinister
cast. Never married-- big deal, he was a clergyman. Tutored
children in math and told them stories which would later
become the events of the Alice books. So far, pretty innocent.
Dodgson was one of England's first photographers... and
his favorite subjects were little girls. When possible,
nude.

Gets worse from there. The Annotated Alice had a
Freudian reading of Carroll's works, and while I'm not much
for Freud, the dissection of the semiotics of Alice's
adventures seemed sound enough... the concentration on and
confusion about body size, the way Alice grows and shrinks
in imitation of tumescence... and a selection of Dodgson's
diary entries seems to indicate a fixation on very young
girls. It's a compulsion expressed, it seems, only in the
most oblique way in his writings-- but a sexual compulsion
nonetheless.

Really ruins the books.

"If Dodgson did have pedophilic urges," I told Roche,
"it seems as though he probably sublimated them in his
fiction." I suppose it shouldn't matter whether Dodgson
was a pedophile or not. Dante Alighieri was known to be
smitten with a prepubescent girl, and we still read his
_Inferno_. Then again, we don't read _Inferno_ to our
kids.

Roche said, "If I were Reverend Dodgson, I'd
be insulted."

"If you were Dodgson, Alice Liddel would've
been strangled to death and dumped in a ditch."

He chuckled, "You have a point." And finally,
after that, he was quiet.

Until we got to the house. The house in West
Tisbury.

I thought it would be easy. I've lived through that
night so many times. I'd stretch out and do the deep breathing
exercises Dad taught me and go over everything that happened
up until the blank place.

And I'd remember: Mom got Samantha into her nightgown
and told me to be sure she got to bed by nine. Dad put his hand
on my shoulder and said, "You're in charge while we're next
door, Fox. It's your responsibility if anything happens, so
keep an eye on your sister." I tell myself that he only meant
that if Sam broke something, I'd get in trouble too. That's
what I tell myself. Then he thumped my arm and said, "We'll
be back around ten."

"We're right next door if you need us," Mom added
anxiously, fussing with Sam's hair while Sam fidgeted and
made a face at me. "There's some deli salads in the fridge
if you want anything, but stay out of the cold cuts, I'm
making sandwiches with those for the Ladies' Auxiliary
tomorrow."

"We'll call and check on you at eight," Dad said.

"Listen to Fox, now, Samantha," Mom told her.

"I will," she chirped, in the voice she only used
when she wanted me to know that she was lying.

"G'night, sweetie," and they gave Sam her good-night
kisses, because the world would end if Samantha had to go
to bed without getting kissed goodnight by everyone on the
planet.

The door was hardly shut when Sam ran to me, whapped
my hand and said, "Tag, you're it, no tagbacks, count to ten--"
and ran for the stairs.

"Aren't you a little old for hide-and-seek?"

"No!"

"Well, I am." I turned on the television.

"Pleeeeeeease?" Sam looked down from the bannister,
leaning out too far over it as usual. Her feet lifted off
the stairs and she dipped forward.

"Showoff. I used to do that all the time. It's not
really scary."

"You're too tall now," she said, and stuck out her
tongue.

"And I'm too old for hide-and-seek."

Sam stomped down the stairs and pushed her lower
lip out. Scully has accused me of picturesque pouting on
occasion-- well, I learned from the master. Samantha could
pout anyone down for the count. "All right," she sighed,
"let's play an _old people_ game."

We played checkers and chess, but she got sick
of both of those in a hurry. Then she wanted to watch
_Rhoda_, so we quit for a while. I did my geometry homework
while she watched TV.

"Can't you just come find me _once_?" she said,
when her show was over. "You don't even have to count to
ten. You can just count to five. I won't even hide very
good."

"I'm not playing hide-and-seek, Sam."

That pout again. "You never play with me anymore."

"I'll play any of this other stuff..." I remember
being angry and embarrassed; hide-and-seek was really just
Sam's excuse to have me chase her screaming all around the
house. But I was twelve, and suddenly about six inches
taller than I had been the day before, and things kept
tipping over and spilling and breaking every time I turned
around.

She said, "Stratego. Sometimes I win at that."

We set it up in front of the television. The news
came on. Something about Watergate-- again, and I was really
sick of hearing about it by then. "You can go first," I told
her.

And for twenty years, that was where it ended. Time
stopped. It began again a few days later; slow awareness of
white, the smell of alcohol, my father's voice growling in
the periphery, Mom putting her hand on my arm and calling,
"Bill, he's waking up."

Then, late in '89, the hypnoregression sessions.
And regardless of what anyone thinks, I didn't just blindly
accept the memories of a mysterious light, a voice in my
head, my sister calling my name as she was taken from me.
When Dr. Verber and I recovered those memories, I checked
them against the missing persons reports and the investigations.
I examined those memories, played them over and over, trying
to learn more about what happened. I've revisited that night
so many times, waking, sleeping... in a way, that night never
ended.

I thought it would be easy to listen to John Lee
Roche tell me how he parked down the street... watched
the house... saw Mom and Dad go to the neighbors'. Came
to the window and saw us inside, listened to us talking.

It wasn't. It... it wasn't easy.

"You were playing a board game," Roche said. Yes.
He gestured to the window. "I was listening..." He pointed
to the television. "You were right there," he said.

The door was unlocked, he recalled. Yes. "I came
in and-- you went for your father's gun. I give you credit
for that. But then you sort of... froze..." Yes.

"Then I took your sister away from all this."

No.

"Wrong house."

I saw panic in his eyes. "Huh?"

"Wrong house." Sweeter words were never spoken.
"This house is in West Tisbury. The house Samantha was
taken from was in Chilmark."

He argued. "Geography, this is geography, it was
twenty years ago." He insinuated. "I hear you go after
aliens from space. Like your world would be okay if you
could just believe in flying saucers." He insisted. "I
took your sister."

He lied.

He was lying. But this was the only way to be
sure. And to learn the extent of the details he gleaned,
I think, from my own dreams.

I know. It's a long way to go to prove a point.
I'll be suspended for this. The way Skinner was ranting
the other day, it might be weeks. Enough to show up on
my jacket. The FBI version of the "permanent record"
that haunted us through school.

It was worth it. Now I know. And if this last
fucking doubt isn't dead yet, well, I can live with
doubt. I've got lots of practice.

It was the certainty I couldn't face.

...Can't face.

Maybe I'm fooling myself-- seeing what I want
to see. What I _have_ to see. It can't be true, therefore
it is not true. Even though he gave me every detail and
how the hell could Roche see into my dreams? I don't even
have the faintest scintilla of science to back it up, no
theories. He HAS TO have seen my dreams because otherwise,
he's telling the truth and he CAN'T be telling the truth
because Sam can't be dead, so damn science, to hell with
the facts, John Lee Roche got into my dreams and saw my
memories of Sam's abduction.

He started laughing in the car on the way from
my father's house in West Tisbury to this hotel. Roche
chuckled at first, then doubled over, howling.

"What's so funny?"

Finally he gasped and heaved and managed to
say, "I got into your dreams-- I just realized where
you got that, Mulder-- it's the plot from _Nightmare
on Elm Street_--"

Had to brake hard at the next stoplight. And
you know, with the handcuffs and all, John had a hard
time keeping his balance. Hope the dash didn't hurt his
forehead too much.

God know I'm in enough trouble already, let
alone if he goes back to the prison with a bruise.
Might interfere with his basketball games.

He was lying... he was. He didn't take Samantha.

3:39. Almost dawn. Well, another hour and a half.
That's not too long. Just a few more hours.

Just a few more hours. And it'll all be over.

end part nine.