X Files - Whirlwind Part 12

"Probably." The sheriff leaned over him, squint-ing at the panel. "So?"

"So I guess Mr. Constella wasn't much of a driver."

He didn't have to rub. When the area was clear, he rose and took a step back, waiting for Sparrow to comment. He was also waiting to hear why the man hadn't noticed it days ago. Or, if he had, why he hadn't said anything.

From the window to the bottom of the frame, the paint had been sc.r.a.ped off, right down to bare metal.

The dust had been thick, the van having sat here for more than a week in the sheriff's cus-tody. A glint of that bare metal was what had caught Scully's attention.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned." Sparrow hitched his belt. "Run up against a stone wall, boulder, some-thing like that, looks like."

"I don't think so." Mulder ran a finger lightly over the surface. "No appreciable indentation, so there was no real collision."

Scully stepped in front of them and peered at it closely, s.h.i.+fted and sighted along the side to the rear b.u.mper. "If there was, it wouldn't be in just this one place." When she straightened, she leaned close to the window. Touched it with a forefinger. Took the handkerchief and wiped the gla.s.s clean. "Sc.r.a.pes here, too."

"Road dirt," Sparrow said. "You get it all the time out here, dust and all, going the speeds you do."

She ignored him for the moment, using the fin-ger to trace the damage's outline, right to the strip above the window. "Whatever it was, it was big. Man-high, at least."

"Like I said, a boulder."

"Come on, Sheriff," Mulder said, having had enough of his forced ignorance. "Scully's right. A collision would have produced damage wider than this, and by the force of it, at the least this window would have been cracked, if not smashed."

He scratched under his jaw, and leaned close again.

"Agent Mulder, this is-"

"Do you have a magnifying gla.s.s?"He heard the man snort his disgust, but the expected argument didn't happen. Sparrow trudged away, muttering about how the d.a.m.n feds think they know everything, just loudly enough.

Scully unlocked the pa.s.senger door and stood back to let the heat out. Then she climbed in and through the two front seats to the back. Mulder couldn't see her until she rapped on the window and beckoned.

He knelt on the pa.s.senger seat and leaned over the top. The two rows of bench seats had been taken out, leaving the holding rails behind. The floor and walls were covered with alternat-ing swatches of vivid purple and dull brown carpeting.

"This is a love nest?" he said, wincing at the garish combination.

"Love is blind, Mulder." She was on her knees, poking at a loose section of carpet with her pen.

"In here it would have to be."

"Got it."

She rocked back on her heels and held up the pen. Dangling from it was a length of silver chain. She followed when Mulder backed out, and dropped the chain into his palm. "That's not a store chain. It's handmade." She prodded it with the pen, s.h.i.+fting it as he watched. "I'll bet it's not silver-plated, either."

He brought the palm closer to his eyes.

The links were longer than he would have expected, and not as delicately thin as they first appeared.

Neither were they the same length.

She took the chain back, grasping each end between thumb and forefinger. Tugged once.

"Strong. You couldn't yank this off someone's neck without sawing halfway through it."

"Konochine."

She gave him a maybe tilt of her head, and headed back to the car to fetch a plastic evidence bag from her purse.

"Bring a couple," he called after her, and glanced at his watch.

Sparrow still hadn't returned; Mulder finally lost the rest of his patience. He marched over to the trailer, yanked open the door, and stepped in. The sheriff was seated behind one of three desks in the room, his feet up, his hat off, a flask at his lips.

He looked startled when he saw Mulder, but he didn't move until he had finished his drink. "It's hot out there," he said.

It's going to get hotter," Mulder told him, not bothering to suppress his anger. "Give me the gla.s.s, then get one of your people ready to take some evidence to Garson's technicians. I'll call him myself to tell him what to look for."

Sparrow glared as he set the flask onto the desk. "I don't believe I heard the magic word, Agent Mulder."

Mulder just looked at him, and "FBI" was all he said.

nearlyHe couldn't see Scully when he returned to the lot, slapping the mag-nifying gla.s.s hard against his leg.

He was angry and disappointed, not much at the sheriff as at himself. Losing control like that, pulling rank, wasn't his style. Working with local law was something he had learned to do years ago, knowing that their a.s.sistance was just as vital to investigations as his own federal agents. What he had just done was a violation not only of policy, but his own code. "Scully?" It was dumb. "Hey, Scully!"

It was stupid, "Over here, Mulder."

But boy, did it feel good.

He found her standing next to what used to be a sleek Jaguar. Now most of its windows were shattered, the winds.h.i.+eld web-cracked, the racing-green paint pocked and scored from front to back, and the roof crushed as though someone had dropped a flatcar on it.

"Our drunk driver?" he asked.

"I don't know I think so. Look at this."

He went around to the side, and saw the same pattern of scouring she had uncovered on the van, only this time it was wider.

"Invisible car," he said.

She lifted a questioning hand. "I give up, Mulder. What's going on?" A closer look at his face. "Never mind. I think I'd rather know what happened in there."

There was no chance to answer. The trailer door slammed gunshot loud, and Sparrow stomped toward them. The way his hand chopped the air, Mulder figured he was having one h.e.l.l of an argument with himself. By the time he reached them, the argument was over.

He stood with one hand resting on the handle of his holstered gun, while the other folded a stick of gum into his mouth. Then he pulled off his sungla.s.ses by pinching them at the bridge and sliding.

"I'll take the evidence in myself." It wasn't an order, it wasn't a demand. It was an offer of truce.

"That's fine with me, sir," Mulder said, accept-ing the offer.

"Chuck." The sheriff chewed rapidly.

Mulder grinned. "I don't think so."

"Me neither. My mother hated it. She always said it wasn't the name of anything but chopped meat"

He pushed the sungla.s.ses back on. "So, FBI, what's so important you got to rush it into the city?"

While Scully explained about the partial neck-lace chain, Mulder went back to the van and, with the magnifying gla.s.s and the tip of a blade on his Swiss army knife, pried loose samples of debris caught in the deep gouges on the door. He did the same to the car, sealed his findings in the bags, and handed them over.

Uneasy, but more at ease, they walked back to the office, grateful for the cool respite. Scully tagged and numbered the bags. Mulder called Garson's office, told them what to expect and what he wanted done.

"That shouldn't take very long," the secretary said confidently."Have you found Agent Garson yet?"

"No sir, I sure haven't."

He gave her his number and instructed her to have Garson call as soon as he came in. When he asked whether Donna Falkner had been inter-cepted, he was told that she had been, by one of the other agents. Apparently she hadn't been very happy, certainly not when she was brought back to the Silver Avenue office, where she currently was giving a statement.

"A statement? About what?"

"I wouldn't know, sir. I'm only the secretary. They only tell me what I need to know."

Sure, he thought; and all the rest is magic.

He perched on the edge of the nearest empty desk and wiped his brow with a sleeve.

Sparrow was back in his chair. "You reckon it's the Konochine somehow? I figured that, what with you talking to Donna and all."

"I don't see how it can't be, now. There are too many connections."

"A lead, anyway" Scully added.

"Oh boy." The sheriff reached for his flask, changed his mind, and propped his feet up instead.

'Trouble is, there's a couple hundred of them. It can't be all-" Suddenly he snapped upright, boots stamping the floor. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

Mulder looked first to Scully before saying, "Leon Ciola."

The sheriff's jaw sagged. "d.a.m.n, Mulder, you're good." He drummed his fingers against his cheek thoughtfully, then reached for his phone. 'There's somebody you should meet.

He'll be able to tell you what you want know about who you need to know about. Lanaya. I already told you about him. Believe it or not, he still lives on the res."

"What about Ciola?"

Sparrow held up a finger as the connection was made, winced as he made arrangements with the dealer to meet at the Inn after dinner that evening, winced again and rubbed his ear as he hung up. "Storm coming," he explained. "Static'll deafen you sometimes."

Thank G.o.d, Mulder thought; at least it'll get cooler.

"Ciola," he reminded Sparrow.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Pure and simple b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Got sent up for murder, got a lawyer who found a hole and squeezed the son of a b.i.t.c.h through it. There's not much I can do but keep an eye out, and hope he doesn't lose his temper again."

It didn't take special intuition to figure out the man not only hated Ciola, he was afraid of him.

"You thinking he's involved with this?"

"You have to admit, he's a likely candidate."

"Nope, don't think so."

Mulder was surprised, and let the sheriff know it.

"Not his style," Sparrow explained. "He's all intimidation and reputation. The man he killed, it was over quick and dirty. These people . . . that took patience."

"But not much time. Sheriff," Scully said. "The Deven boy, remember?"

He granted her that reluctantly, but insisted it couldn't have been Ciola. "There's a reason for those people, Agent Scully. We just ain't found it yet. With Leon, there doesn't have to be one."

"Heat of the moment," Mulder suggested.

"Got it in one."

Scully seemed doubtful, but didn't argue.

The sheriff accepted her silence without com-ment, looked around the station, then carefully locked the plastic bags into an attache case he pulled from a bottom drawer. "Better get going. I want to get back before the storm." He walked to the back and radioed one of his men, telling him where he'd be and for how long; he called a central dispatcher with the same infor-mation, for intercepting any calls; he spat his gum into a wastebasket, opened a wardrobe on the far wall, and took down a clean, blocked hat.

When he saw Mulder staring, he pointed to the hat on the desk. "That's my comfort hat, had it for years." He flicked the brim on the one he had on. "This is my showing-up-in-the-city hat. Pretty dumb, ain't it."Scully laughed, and Mulder could only nod as Sparrow walked with them to their car.

"Check it out, folks," he said, pointing over the trailer. "Be inside when it happens."

Mulder looked, and couldn't believe that clouds that ma.s.sive, and that high, could a.s.sem-ble so quickly. Shaped like anvils, boiling at the edges, they had already buried most of the west-ern blue.

"My G.o.d, Scully, we're going to drown."

He drove back to the motel as fast as he dared, which still wasn't fast enough for the others on the road. They pa.s.sed him on the left, on the right, and would have driven over him if the car had been low enough.

"Calm down," Scully said when the engine died. "We've still got some work to do while we wait for Lanaya."

The bone pile stirred as the wind brushed over it, dust in tan clouds pa.s.sing through ribs and eye sockets, through a gaping hole in one of the skulls.

A scorpion scuttled across the curled horn of a ram.

In the center, using the pelvic bone of a stallion for a temporary stool, a man stirred the loose earth with the point of a knife. Designs were fash-ioned, and erased; words were written, and van-ished. He glanced up only once, to check the storm's approach, returning to his work only when he saw the lightning, and didn't hear the thunder.

It would move fast. He would move faster.

Donna Falkner slammed into her house, slammed the door shut behind her, flung a suitcase across the living room, and began to scream her outrage. She kicked at the nearest wall, picked up the desk chair and hurled it down the hall; she grabbed the couch cus.h.i.+ons and tried to rip them open with her nails, tossed them aside, and dropped to the floor, sobbing.

It wasn't fair.