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10 X 21: SYNTHESIS Humanity's secret is unlocked, and with it, the possible salvation of mankind... |
“‘…but he must’ve been hard of hearing, ‘cause I wound up with a 12-inch
pianist,’” Jack Bales concluded
with a flourish. “Then I go off, you know, on listening, you know, the importance
of listening when you’re closing the sale. Know your customer, blah, blah,
blah, all that happy bullshit. So? What d’you think?”
Barry Tremont’s own listening equipment had shut down right before his colleague’s
punchline, as he discovered a spot of the keynote luncheon’s hollandaise sauce
on the lapel of his cobalt blue Millennium 3 realtor’s blazer. The Southwest
regional manager resisted the urge to scratch at the now-crusty stain, and
laughed absently at the payoff he hadn’t heard.
“Jesus, Jack,” he then chuckled worriedly. “You think, this day and age,
you wanna tell a penis joke, all the ladies in the crowd? Especially with
Marci Glickman getting the Most Valuable Promoter plaque?”
Jack, M3 senior VP for marketing, sucked at his prominent white teeth in
annoyance. “No, see, that’s the beauty. I don’t say penis anywhere in there.
The guy wanted a 12-inch penis, but the leprechaun gave him a pianist instead,
get it? Everybody knows what you said, but nobody can get their
“I don’t know, Jack,” Barry drawled,
glancing around the hotel corridor outside the crowded ballroom. “I don’t
think you can even suggest a penis any more. I think they still call that
harassment.”
“I have never once touched any of these broads, even though if you ever
saw the rack on Marcie—” Barry winced, and Jack stopped dead, a look of pure
disgust on his deeply tanned features. “OK, OK, no dick humor, all right?
Jesus, the pussies have truly come to rule this planet. I got a back-up icebreaker,
anyway, so fuck ‘em.”
The thought of his colleague’s potential icebreaker brought chills to Barry,
and he glanced quickly at his watch. “Hey, man, we’ve only got about 20
minutes, so I better get out there. Don’t forget you have to intro
“Yeah, yeah.” Jack waved as he glanced distractedly at the nearby bar set,
which, of course was tuned to the war. “Just go on in – I gotta practice something
I can tell these pussies that won’t get my ass sued by the ACLU or the feminazis.”
Apartment of Monica Reyes
The doorbell buzzed, and Monica glanced irritably at the time clock to the
lower right of Aaron Brown’s lapel. She lamented the death of “Thirty minutes
or it’s free” on the pyre of public safety and pushed herself from the couch.
“You the large garden, extra cheese, side of sticks?” the pizza guy muttered.
He looked like the comic book store guy on
The Simpsons, without the haughty demeanor or really much of any personality
at all, and a beat-up Corolla rumbled and belched EPA-violative particulates
at the curb.
“Busy night, huh?” Monica inquired, smiling.
“Naw,” the Jenny Craig dropout grunted.
“Keep the change,” the agent informed him, handing him the precise amount
of her order.
“Hey, than--” she heard the delivery man murmur as she shut the door and
threw the bolt. Monica conveyed her pizza one-handed to the living room and
deposited it on her coffee table. She glanced at CNN as she dropped to the
cushions, then froze.
The face inset on the screen above Brown’s bespectacled face was stolid
– strong Latino features framed by a buzz-cut and a Desert Storm collar.
“…Army public information officials reported to be Private First Class Paul
Reyes, who had been assigned to a tank command unit near
The anchor transitioned to Wolf Blitzer with details, but Monica was too
dazed to register them. She fumbled on the couch for the remote, but it had
disappeared. Had she carried it to the kitchen? To the door to collect the
pizza? She banished the ridiculous speculation, bounding over the table to
silence the CNN crew.
Hands shaking, Monica snatched the portable phone from an end table and
hit her second program button. The handset buzzed insistently as Monica cursed
her parents for refusing to succumb to the miracles of call-waiting. She chastised
herself – of course, Antonio and Rina, Paul’s folks, were probably on the
line, seeking consolation and answers and sanity.
Monica dropped back onto the couch, impotent, ineffectual, heart pounding.
Suddenly, she was overtaken by memories of her tall, machismo nephew, the
long
She hit redial, and quickly disconnected. Monica punched the first programmed
number.
“Come on, John,” she begged. To no avail – her partner’s answering machine
kicked in, and she irrationally hung up.
Monica stared at the blank TV screen, and then at the plastic face of her
phone. She sighed, and hit the third button, the one that had been reserved
for the absent Dana Scully for nearly a year until the present – and Monica’s
more pressing needs – had intruded. A cheerfully tinny answering machine voice
popped on, and Monica hiccupped in frustration.
“Jan, it’s me,” she greeted tremulously, struggling for control. “Something
happened. If you can call me, or come over or something. I really need, you
know…”
Monica lapsed into silence, and she jumped as Jan’s machine beeped. She
tossed the handset on the table.
“No,” she murmured. “No, no.” She retrieved the phone, redialed, hung up
onJan’s machine with a curse, and dialed
her parent’s number. The busy signal shrieked at her, and she threw the phone
across the living room.
You’ve got good reason, a dark voice assured her. “No,” Monica said. Anyone
would… “No, no.”
He’s dead, he’s God knows where, the dark voice whispered with an irony
that had haunted Monica Reyes for months.
She stumbled from the couch toward the kitchen…
Ernie’s Cincy-Style Chili
Calvin Welles dumped another handful of onions on his chili 5-way, savoring
the cloves and other spices that differentiated
Calvin surveyed the glaring interior of the out-of-the-way smalltown diner.
They hadn’t refilled his coffee in a half-hour, but that was all right with
him, as everyone in the restaurant – the owner, two waitresses, the cook,
and five customers – had died about 15 minutes before that. Their bodies littered
the filthy linoleum – Health Department violation, for sure, he mused.
Calvin hadn’t killed any of them directly – he didn’t do that any more.
Too hands on, too pedestrian, as the prison shrink would’ve said. Instead,
he had merely introduced the supper crowd to a few of his friends from the
other side, and simply set his gun on the counter near the register. Strange
what people couldn’t take, how easily that thin shell around their sanity
cracked like an M&M when they were exposed to ideas they couldn’t comprehend.
It was a somewhat childish hobby – Calvin recognized the significance of
what he knew, what he could do, what laughably simple truths he had been made
privy to, but he was man enough to admit what he was. Which was a sociopathic,
inhuman killer who enjoyed watching the life leave others. Nothing to be proud
of, certainly, but he had some 85 kills under his belt – 85 after his brief
confinement in that lab in
Before his conversion, Calvin had murdered a few dozen people the old-fashioned
way, but it somehow had been more pleasurable then, when he believed he
was single-handedly erasing each soul, each life. Now, he had the means
to wipe out busfuls of souls in one sitting, but the knowledge that he was
merely transferring energy, rather than obliterating it, left him less-than-satisfied.
Like sitting down to a bowlful of pussy-assed Cincinnati-style chili when
he was used to jalapenos and habaneros.
Something big, he reflected, absently swallowing beans and meat and cheese.
He had a plan, but it hadn’t yet taken full form.
Calvin Welles’ only earthly concern was the gaps – the dark holes of time
into which he occasionally descended. His watch – a Rolex lifted off a Mafioso
who’d been persuaded to shot-gun his entire family over Sunday dinner –
would skip minutes, hours, a day or so sometimes, and he’d wake up someplace,
usually in the universe of his birth, with no idea how his body had hauled
him there.
A bright light suddenly cast sharp shadows throughout the diner. It wasn’t
like the high beams of one of the jacked-up pickups men around here wore
like a surrogate dick. It was more like the cold halogens of a dozen floodlights.
Calvin wondered if someone had been able to get through to the sheriff’s
department before they had perished, if maybe a farm neighbor had heard the
gunshots and called out Andy and Barney to investigate.
He sighed, tossed down his napkin, and slid out of his booth. This ought
to be interesting.
But as Calvin shoved the glass door open with a departing jingle, he saw
no cop cars, no Mounties, no smokies, no pigs of any description. Only that
cold, blinding, consuming light. Then he made out its source, high above
the cornfield which bordered Ernie’s to the west.
“Kee-rist almighty,” Calvin murmured.
John Doggett residence
“Shit!” Doggett yelled as he heard his own voice across the dark living
room. He ran for the phone, barking his shin on a chair before hearing the
tone that informed him his party had declined to leave a message.
He’d just left Monica a few hours before, wasn’t likely her. Besides, she
or Skinner would call his cell if they needed him. Kersh would’ve left a chilly,
ostracizing missive on the machine, convinced John had stepped out to the
grocery just to vex him.
Barbara? Doggett dismissed the thought immediately. After he’d stumbled
onto the solution to their son’s absurdly tragic murder, he and his ex-wife
had parted on quietly final terms. She’d e-mailed him a month ago that she
was marrying some man she’d met at a city council meeting – Barbara had filled
her void with civic responsibility – and Doggett had typed out a quick congratulatory
note and not communicated with her since.
The agent shrugged, and spent the next 10 minutes poring over bills, the
law enforcement journals the former NYPD cop still received, and a letter
from an old Marine buddy he’d known in
Doggett retrieved a Bud Light from the kitchen, and flipped on the TV.
ESPN was his natural instinct, but like most Americans over the last month
– even jaded federal employees privy to detailed military intelligence –
he was drawn to news of the war in
A weary, grim Wolf Blitzer was standing in the center of a stark Middle
Eastern street swarming with tanks and
Doggett’s head whipped toward the set. “Holy shit,” he whispered as he
spied the face hovering above the CNN anchor. “Aw, Jesus, Monica.” He silenced
the set and plucked his phone from its base.
Busy. Of course. Her folks must be in shock. Doggett fought the impulse
to throw on his jacket and run over to Monica’s apartment. No; this was family
time. He turned the set back on to learn all he could about Pvt. First Class
Paul Reyes’ death.
When the phone jangled 15 minutes later, he leapt for it. “Doggett.”
“Yeah, John? I don’t know if you remember me. Jan Roosevelt? I’m a friend
of Monica’s…?”
“Sure,” he acknowledged. Friend. Jan was Monica’s AA sponsor. “I saw the
news about Monica’s nephew. You talked to her yet?”
Jan paused. “I’m not really certain
I should even have called you. I’m, you know, Monica’s…”
“I know,” Doggett interrupted, suddenly anxious. “Is she OK?”
“I don’t know, John. She left a message
on my machine, said she felt like a drink. I ran right over, but nobody’s
answering the door and the TV’s blaring. I thought about calling 911, but
I know she’s FBI, and I didn’t want to get her into any trouble if I was wrong.
More likely if I was right, I guess I mean. So I thought maybe her partner…
She’s told me you know about AA…”
“Ten minutes,” Doggett barked, grabbing his jacket.
**
Doggett had a set of keys: He’d watched Monica’s mail and papers several
times, and as their relationship began to edge toward some interesting new
dimensions, they’d decided he should just keep them. Jan, a petite black woman
in her mid-thirties, waited impatiently behind him, and stayed back a few
paces as he moved into the apartment.
The guy with the glasses, Doggett never could recall his name, was loudly
highlighting the day’s developments in the
She looked up, and beamed at the intruders. “John, Jan. John, Jan, ha.”
“Monica?” Jan ventured, a tone of resignation tinging her concern. Monica’s
eyes were bleary, and she fumbled toward the remote at her knee, making several
unsuccessful passes at retrieving it. A bottle of Smirnoff’s was open and
half-drained on a nearby end table
“Sorry to start without you, Jan,” Monica shrugged, a little too loosely.
“I’m guessing neither one of you wants a drink, huh?”
“Monica, I’m sorry about Paul,” Doggett said simply, sitting beside his
partner and squeezing her hand.
“Oh, well,” she said in a ghostly voice, turning again to the electronic
face on the TV. “Oh, well.”
Jan joined the pair and took the other
hand. “Baby, I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you called. I was, well, I guess
it doesn’t matter. I’m so sorry about your nephew. It’s a terrible thing,
and I know it’s rough on you. I only know what my mother would’ve said. Your
Paul is in…”
Monica yanked her hand from Jan’s grasp, and stared at her incredulously.
“In a better place? Is that what you think? That Paul’s somewhere in the clouds,
at the left hand of Jesus, looking down at us all with a beatific smile?
Or maybe in eternal torment, his flesh searing on his bones for all the
pot he used to smoke, all the girls he’s screwed? What if there is no Higher
Power, Jan? What if it’s all dirt and worms, huh?”
“Monica, honey…”
“No. None of that Twelve-step, holy roller crap tonight. No, no, no.”
Doggett held tight to her fingers, despite Monica’s efforts to retrieve
them. “Monica, she’s just trying…”
“John, it’s OK—” Jan assured him. She’d heard it, hell, done it.
“I know!” Monica shrieked, wrenching free and pushing wobblingly from the
couch. She fell back, breathing raggedly and looking wildly at the photos
of dead soldiers being recycled on CNN.
“A better place,” she finally breathed.
**
“I thought she was doing pretty good,” Doggett murmured as Jan returned
from the bedroom. She’d tucked his partner in and called Monica’s adoptive
parents – she’d never known her real ones – with a story approximating the
truth.
Jan, who Doggett understood was a marketing consultant, dropped into an
armchair. “Yeah, you probably would. Everybody always thought I was doing
pretty good, ‘til I’d drop off the face of the planet for a few days or drop
into a family reunion or staff meeting totally shit-faced. Tal about winning
friends and influencing people. Let me ask you: Has this come up at work?
I mean, has Monica ever come in, you know, under the influence, that you
know of?”
“No,” he responded too emphatically. Doggett grinned sheepishly. “No, I’m
really pretty sure not. But I’ve wondered…”
“What?”
The agent looked her directly in the eye. “Look, how much has Monica told
you about what she does – what we do?”
“Well,” Jan leaned back, and Doggett knew Monica had shared more than he
might have thought. Or maybe just more than Doggett ever shared about the
X-Files. “I know she doesn’t have any idea who her real people – her biological
parents – were. I know about the Satanic shit she investigated in N’awlins
– pretty dark stuff. And she tells me just enough about her current job to
whet my appetite without giving me enough to have her committed. Sorry.”
“Oh, crap, I don’t blame you,” Doggett sighed, resting his head against
the back of the couch. “Sometimes I think I’m going a little batshit myself.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“I’m not trying to upstage you, Jan, but you’d probably reappraise that
statement if you saw what Monica sees on a daily basis.”
Jan arched an eyebrow. It reminded Doggett of Scully, and he wondered fleetingly
where she might be right now. “You mean,” Jan chided gently, “what you both
see on a daily basis.”
“Yeah,” Doggett nodded, and said nothing more. As if to fill the sudden
void, his cell phone twirped urgently…
Mark Rothmann swiped the last morsel of his pork loin through its piquant
cranberry-chipotle sauce, feeling just a twinge of residual guilt. The forbidden
pork would never have passed the lips of Rabbi Marcus Rothmann, the man Mark
had been seemingly light years ago before he’d traded his Talmud for a real
estate license.
But they seldom provided kosher alternatives at these predominantly goyim
gatherings, and Mark had learned early on not to emphasize his religious
and cultural differences around his WASPish Millennium 3 colleagues. He now
surveyed those colleagues, and re-examined the crisis of faith that had led
him down this new path. Despite a six-figure salary and a virtual palace
of a home on
“Everybody? Everybody?” Mark jumped as Gene Thorpe, CEO of Millennium 3,
commandeered the dais mike. “I know dinner’s running a little long, but if
we’re going to kick off the evening’s entertainment on schedule, we need to
get our program on the road.
“I’ve known Jack Bales for 17 years now, ever since he was M3’s top mover
in
Obligatory laughter. Rothmann had met the misogynistic, mildly anti-Semitic
asshole at a closing workshop a year ago, and he wondered if Thorpe had intentionally
injected such a grain of dark truth into his intro.
“Seriously,” Thorpe continued as everyone decided they could stop laughing,
“Jack has consistently been one of Millennium 3’s top producers, whether out
there in the trenches or in the home office. The ‘Homing in on You’ broadcast
campaign won three major awards last year, and our sponsorship of programming
on the Home and Lifestyle Network has given the company unprecedented visibility
with the industry’s most desirable consumer demographic.”
Avaricious thirtysomething vultures looking for refuge from the dregs of
society and their own ethical conscious in gated communities and well-patrolled
suburbs, Rabbi Rothmann retorted silently. Mark was always taken aback when
this voice popped forth from the inner recesses. He glanced about quickly,
irrationally fearful his suppressed contempt for M3’s largely pampered customers
might show in his face.
“…And so it is I introduce with pride and gratitude one of M3’s shining
stars with, hopefully, some illuminating insights for all of us. Friends,
let’s show our appreciation for Jack Bales!”
Mark, of course, joined in the wildly enthusiastic chorus of automatic handslapping
that greeted the sleek, silver-haired game show host that mounted the risers
to the stage, waving as if he were Tom Cruise, George W., and the Pope all
bundled into one blue blazer. Bales pumped the CEO’s hand as if Thorpe were
some young stockbroker the aging realtor was trying to reel in (did Mark see
a momentary grimace of disdain on Thorpe’s face, or was that merely his own
fleeting hope that at least some of these glad-handing barracudas here could
see through Jack’s reptilian charm?), and ascended to the dais, grasping the
edges of the podium as he scanned the crowd Mark knew from experience he
couldn’t see beyond the hot spots of the ballroom.
“I’m glad we could all get together here tonight,” Bales began. “I don’t
know that I’ve ever seen this many realtors assembled in one room, and the
Palm Beach Shore Patrol has informed me they’ve reopened the beaches now that
you’re all safely inside.”
Genuine laughter. They’re actually proud of being viewed as sharks, as predators,
Mark marveled. We’re proud, bubby, we’re proud, Rabbi Rothmann reminded him.
“That reminds me of a story about one of
Oh, boy, rabbis, Mark groaned. Bet Sandersen’s thrilled out of his gourd.
He wondered if there might be any Pakistanis or Indians in the house right
now, equally ready to slink under the tablecloth.
“…and the farmer says, ‘Sorry, fellas, but the local wrecker service don’t
open back up again ‘til morning. You can stay up to the house tonight, but
we only got the two guest bedrooms. One of you’ll have to sleep in the barn.’
So the rabbi asks his companions, ‘You want I should sleep out there?’”
Wonderful – dialect humor with hand gestures. Plus, Mark had sold his share
of farmhouses in his time, and he wondered how many had two spare bedrooms.
“…Nick and the Hindu answer the door, and it’s the rabbi. The rabbi tells
them, ‘I can’t sleep out there – there’s a pig in the barn, and in my religion,
swine are unclean, unkosher.’ So the Hindu says, ‘All right, all right. I
will be most happy to sleep in the barn tonight’…”
This time, Bales lapsed into a bad Apu, the minimart owner from The Simpsons.
Mark hoped there was a Patel or a Rhawalpindi or whatever in the kitchen right
now hearing this and plotting to piss in Jack’s luncheon vichyssoise tomorrow.
It wasn’t a very rabbinical thought, but the image brought the former temple
leader momentarily out of his doldrums.
“…and the Hindu tells them, ‘I am most dreadfully sorry, but there is a
cow in the barn, and in my religion, the cow is a sacred beast with whom I
am unfit to share sleeping quarters.’ So Nick sighs and says, ‘My father was
a farmer, and his father before him. I guess I can take a night in the barn.’
And he marches out across the yard.”
And it’s the pig and the cow, Mark supplied.
“About two minutes later, there’s a knock at the farmhouse door…”
And it’s the pig and the cow.
“…so the rabbi and the Hindu get up and go downstairs…”
And it’s the pig and the cow.
“…and they open the door…”
And…
“…and it’s…”
And…
“…it’s…”
A murmur went up through the crowd as Bales blinked into the glaring spotlights.
His fingers flexed on the rim of the podium, and he licked his lips. Jesus,
was the bastard having a heart attack? Mark wondered. Finally had his fill
of greed and corporate intrigue and rich banquets?
Then Bales straightened, his jaw tightening, his eyes focusing. He surveyed
the crowd with new interest.
“Athelamenathanshethallazorem,” M3’s senior VP announced. At least, that
was what it sounded like to Mark Rothmann, who dropped his fork. Then Bales
launched into a long, droning monologue, as if he were reciting the latest
townhouse listings in Martian.
Except, as Mark gradually realized, it wasn’t Martian. At least, a good
part of Bales’ departure from his script wasn’t. The former Rabbi Rothmann
was very likely the only man in the room who had any idea in hell what Jack
Bales was babbling.
Babbling, the rabbi chuckled. An interesting pun, nu? Mark watched Bales
continue with shocked interest. He had, of course, discoursed many times
on the Old Testament tale of
But Bales, as far as Mark knew, worshipped no other gods than M3, the U.S.
Mint, and the New York Stock Exchange. Was this the real thing? God speaking
through one of the least of his children, a little joke on the WASPs in
the hall?
If so, it was a good one. Because Mark was relatively certain that nowhere
in his limited education or industry dealings would Jack Bales have picked
up a talent for conversational Aramaic…
“Kersh doesn’t know,” Assistant Director Walter Skinner informed Doggett
once they were in the air. “At least not about our coming out here. A friend
of mine, field agent out of
“Mm,” Doggett nodded absently, staring out the passenger window as the small
private plane hurtled out of
“Agent Reyes,” Skinner murmured after a moment. “How’s she holding up?”
The agent regarded his superior quietly. He didn’t know why – God knows,
he trusted Skinner with his very life, and anyone could excuse the need for
some liquid courage after receiving news like Monica had had to absorb – but
he’d covered for his partner’s episode. “’Bout what you’d expect. I guess
she and the boy were pretty close, and to find out he was dead on CNN…”
“Of course,” Skinner nodded. “She get hold of her parents yet?”
“I don’t know,” Doggett mumbled.
“Mm,” the director grunted, and fell silent.
“This is some shit,” Special Agent Bill Kesey informed Skinner and Doggett
in a Midwestern twang after the introductions were made. He sped up the interstate
as trees, still-fallow corn and soybean fields, and fast food and hotel billboards
hurtled past. “EPA and CDC came in about a half-hour after we started investigating
the scene, shut us down completely. Wasn’t a total whitewash – two
“
“Because,” Kesey drawled, “I want you
to see something before I give you the real details on
It was about 25 or so miles more, past the off-ramp minimarts and burger/taco
joints, past two-story farmhouses and grain elevators, before they reached
the restaurant. A plastic Pepsi sign, awash in patriotic
“Agent Kesey, sir?” the trooper rumbled. Doggett smiled to himself: Whether
NYSP or OSP or probably even Timbuktu State Police, they were all punched
out of the same cast-iron mold. “Your partner’s still inside, and the county
pathologist’s here. Story’s leaked, already – a Cincinnati Metro guy and a
couple of TV crews have already been here, and the guy from the Mockridge
weekly. The captain gave them a standup the TV folks could use, just the nuts-and-bolts,
and sent them on their way.”
“Just as well, even though I wouldn’t be surprised CNN or Fox doesn’t get
somebody out here pronto, seven dead and all,” Kesey suggested blandly. Doggett
glanced at Skinner, whose eyes had narrowed.
“What’s really up here, Bill?” the assistant director murmured after the
trooper stalked to his unit. “You tell me you’ve got what looks like an alien
aircraft crash down in Henderson, Kentucky, and then you drag us up here to,
what, a multiple homicide scene?”
Kesey jerked his head toward the diner. “Why I wanted you to bring your
X-Files fella. C’mon; you’ll see.”
**
“Jesus,” Doggett whispered as they entered the restaurant. Even after his
years in the Marines, the NYPD, the FBI, he’d still never grown immune to
this kind of mass destruction, this kind of explosion of violence. A trio
of customers were sprawled on the shoe-streaked linoleum, blood puddling under
each. An elderly couple, oblivious to the State Police techs working around
them, sat silently in a duct-taped naugahyde booth, jaws hanging open, eyes
wide in a perpetual state of horror. No blood on either one.
A waitress – probably just past high school age – was tangled around a counter
stool. Defense wounds criss-crossed her palms. The huge carving knife that
had savaged her lay between her body and that of an ill-shaven, thin man in
a greasy chef’s apron.
“Owner’s in the freezer,” a broad, gray-haired man with a Bobby Knight expression
grunted as he emerged from behind the counter. He inspected Skinner and Doggett.
“Special
“Assistant Director Walt Skinner and
Special Agent Doggett,” Kesey introduced.
Fassbinder nodded, only momentarily distracted. “Owner’s in the freezer.
Self-inflicted to the right temple. My guess is the same .38 did these three.
And come over here by the soda case.”
He edged past, and Skinner shrugged at Doggett. Fassbinder stopped at the
stand-up Pepsi cooler. The plexiglass door was splintered in three spots,
and additional bulletholes flanked the case.
“Two more shot patterns pretty much like this, over by the menu board and
in front of the men’s room door,” Kesey’s partner reported. “What d’you make
of that?”
“Robbery?” Doggett ventured. “Robbers sprayed a few bullets around the room
to scare the locals into submission? Nah. This is overkill, especially for
what the take must’ve been.”
“Cash register ain’t been touched,” Bobby Knight’s doppelganger shook his
head. “And I’m guessing it was the owner’s gun, anyway. So did he go whacko,
start shooting up the place because some customer complained there was too
much turmeric in the chili?” He registered the surprise on his colleagues’
faces. “Food Network. And there is, by the way. The owner goes whacko, shoots
up his customer base, and then hides in the freezer not only with the inside
bolt thrown but a couple cases of burgers shoved in front of the door? Not
likely.
“And the coroner’s gonna have to confirm it, but we seem to have the Encyclopedia
Britannica of Death here. Owner seems to have killed the three farmers here,
cook slashed the waitress, and the two old folks there just seem to have kicked
the bucket.”
“Died of fright, from the looks,” Kesey murmured. “Maybe from the murder
spree going on around them.”
“Won’t fly,” Fassbinder said. “See how they fell back across the back of
the booth? Had one of the techs move ‘em back, and there’s no blood on the
leather or whatever behind them. They were dead before these three got shot,
probably before all hell broke loose.”
Doggett’s brow rose.
“What?” Fassbinder asked.
“Nothing.”
Fassbinder looked curiously at Kesey, who blew out a baffled breath. The
large agent nodded, then went over to converse with a trooper.
“You ever seen anything like this?” Kesey asked his guests.
“Not precisely like this,” Doggett replied, glancing at the slaughter around
them.
“Well, I have,” Kesey said. Skinner and Doggett looked at him simultaneously.
The
“Jesus,” Skinner gasped. He handed the PDA to Doggett, who looked up quickly.
The small screen held a nightmarishly surreal tableau: Three bodies were
scattered across the floor of a strangely clean, smooth room anchored by what
appeared to be an S&M exam table. Fluids leaked from the trio of corpses.
But the corpses were gray, with outsized ovoid heads and long, spindly appendages.
And the fluids leaking from their wounds was a Dayglo green.
“You took this?” Doggett mumbled. “I can’t believe this shit…You’re not
trying to tell me...?”
“The M.O. – if you’d call homicidal chaos an M.O. -- was almost identical,”
Kesey said. “That blood or whatever it is has some kind of chemical agent
in it – overcame those deputies, and we had to go in with respirators. As
incredible as it seems, I’d say these, aw, shit, aliens, died of whatever
killed these people.”
Doggett was now silent, deep in apparently dark thought. “I don’t know,
Bill,” Skinner said. “The coincidence seems astronomical, but it seems like
a longshot.”
Kesey nodded; he’d expected this reaction. “Saved the capper, but I want
to keep my shield, and Fassbinder’s kind of a company man down deep, so let’s
just take a quiet walk outside.”
The temp seemingly had dropped a few degrees while Doggett and Skinner were
inside, and Doggett couldn’t determine whether it was the climate or the scene
in Ernie’s that now traveled up his arms and spine.
“We have seen a scene like that before,” Skinner reminded his agent as they
walked just out of earshot behind Kesey.
“
“Or possibly that were,” Skinner suggested.
Calvin Welles had been on Texas Death Row when a group of scientists seemingly
led by or working in cooperation with Marita Covarubias essentially “bought”
him from a corrupt warden and his equally twisted prison shrink. Welles had
been identified as one of a handful of promising candidates with astonishing
psychic abilities and subjected to some kind of drug that resurrected dormant
genetical material – “junk DNA” – responsible for long-hidden human powers.
Welles, a mass murderer now empowered to new heights, had taken control
of Covarubias’ research facility, somehow influencing the staff members to
kill themselves and each other before Skinner, Doggett, Reyes, and the last
remnants of The Lone Gunmen liberated a group of children kidnapped by the
anti-colonist scientific conspiracy. The FBI agents had driven Welles underground
– or somewhere more fantastic – and Gibson Praise, a psychic prodigy who’d
befriended and protected Mulder, had vanished, as well.
The episode had been a turning point for Doggett, the door to denial slamming
forever behind him. But the thought of Welles holding sway over even Man’s
most formidable enemy shook Doggett.
“Hope you got a good dry cleaner,” Kesey said after they’d crossed the rural
highway and trespassed onto a grain rail loading facility. He reached the
base of a towering, corrugated grain silo, grasped the bottom rung of a ladder,
and hauled himself up. Doggett shrugged at Skinner, and they began their ascent.
“Fassbinder and me came in by chopper,” Kesey yelled. “That field had been
planted, we’da both noticed it, but even with just that no-till crop residue
still on the ground, you oughtta be able to see it we get high enough.” At
about 100 feet, he turned, and Skinner and Doggett stopped.
Fighting off a mild case of jet lag-enhanced vertigo, Doggett looked down,
back across the road. The state cruisers cast red-white-and-blue circles of
light, and he could see Ernie’s estate would have to repair the restaurant’s
roof.
But it was the field adjacent to the diner where Kesey had seen it. The
pattern was clear in the overcast night – a circle cut or more likely blown
or burned into the corn stubble. It looked like something out of that goofy
shit movie Reyes had hauled Doggett to, the one with Mel Gibson and the aliens.
“Christ,” he murmured.
“Yup,” Keyes deadpanned. “They warn folks in these parts not to pick up
hitchhikers. Guess our boys learned the hard way.”
Oglala,
One week later
“So life’s a bitch, and then you die,” Dr. Holmes conceded. “Then what?”
It wasn’t designed as an academic attention-getter: Holmes had no need of
such gimmicks. In the words of Renee Zellweger, he’d had his students at ‘”Hello.”
Holmes was quirky, good-humored, irreverent toward many of things for which
his students held little reverence, and, most importantly, took what could
be a mundane psych course into dark, shrouded new territory. The psychopathology
of the serial killer, the genetic underpinnings of the religious cultist,
the possibility of shared conscious and even UFOs. While his eccentricities
– the pseudoscience, no truly fervent sociopolitical dogma one could pin down
– would have made him an outcast on any major university campus, he was generally
well-liked at this small community college, a refuge for many of his colleagues
who’d survived savage academic back-biting.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Holmes grinned as more than a few eyes rolled toward
the cheap classroom ceiling. “The Prof’s gone holy-roller. Tetched by an angel.
Getting a little too far inside your Gen-XXX comfort zone, Podreski? Relax.
I’m not talking about harps and pitchforks and perpetual barbecue pits where
the soul languishes in torment but the skin never quite gets crispy enough
to serve. I’m talking science – Mr. Wizard meets Father Death. The one so
subperbly portrayed by William Sadler in
Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.”
“You’re talking voodoo bullshit, you mean,” Zach Truesdale amended sleepily.
Truesdale was a computer sciences major who had signed up for Holmes class
as an easy gen ed credit. It had been easy, as promised, but only so because
it was like no other droning class he’d experienced. What had at the beginning
of the semester been indignant sniping at Holmes’ hybrid scientific views
had developed into a stimulating sparring match between student and teacher,
between known and unknown science.
“No, my young liege,” Holmes countered, affecting a lofty tone. “I’m talking
hard, nuts-and-bolts Physics 101. If we concede the concept of a human soul
—” A small, collective groan went up from the desks before him. “If we accept
the notion that the soul exists, what is it? What gives us the spark of life,
the ability to reason, the will to rail against evil, even against John Ritter?
Is it some ethereal gift, some intangible force bestowed on humanity from
the gods, or maybe is it a physical force of this universe.”
“Energy?” Helen Daugherty queried, with a lift of her cynical brow that
made Holmes wish he’d called in sick this morning and stayed in bed with
the mother of his child, the learned and anatomically expert biology prof,
“You’re full of shit.”
“Don’t move ahead so fast – the nature of the human mind is next week. Why
not energy? There are two essential states of being in this universe, at least
the universe we can see and touch. Matter and energy. The Truesdalian skeptic
cannot accept that any other universe might exist and rejects the notion
that we are guided by angels, demons, and pixie-dust fairies. But there it
is: Something beyond the mechanical energy of our bones and muscles and the
electrical impulses of our brains and hearts drives us along this road we
call existence. So why not energy?”
“And energy cannot be created or destroyed,” Jacob Moonrise supplied. Jacob
was a nephew of Holmes’ friend, the county sheriff, and he was possessed of
both the hard-bitten pragmatism of his generation and the supernatural bent
of his Native American forebears. “So if the soul is energy, and the soul
‘dies,’ then it can’t really cease to exist. Like those near-death experiences
people have.”
“Say they have,” Truesdale interjected. “You’re saying when we die, our
soul just flies out into the atmosphere, zipping around until, what, it finds
a new conduit or host?”
“No more John Carpenter for you, young man,” Holmes scolded. “But maybe
you’re on the right track. Nuclear energy can’t just power a microwave unless
it’s used to produce electrical energy. Electrical energy can’t be conducted
through rubber or glass. I know, believe me.”
“Light can become heat, and heat light,” Truesdale argued. “So why can’t
the soul, like there is such a thing, just seep into the environment like
ground lightning, and the rest of what’s left of us just rot away and become
worm food?”
Holmes hopped from the corner of his desk. “Don’t know, and now, you’ve
made me hungry. Oral exam tomorrow, or not, and everyone watch
Caddyshack by Friday. I want to know what Chase meant by ‘being the
ball.’ That’s all, people.”
He was standing a discreet 50 feet beyond the cafeteria entrance, though
discreet was no longer a term that could accurately describe Jeffrey Spender.
Even from a distance, Holmes noted the facial prosthetics that inadequately
disguised the ravages an alien race had visited upon him in collaboration
with his vengeful, cigarette-smoking father. Spender likely could have undergone
extensive cosmetic surgery with the resources available to him through the
shadowy cooperative into which he’d recruited Holmes and his companion, but
to date he retained the scars of his scientifically abuse.
Holmes suspected this was a matter of choice, that Jeffrey Spender embraced
his scars to keep his hatred, his fervor, his sense of mission alive. That
mission was the salvation of mankind, and a disfigured, fanatical madman was
at the helm, flanked by occasionally homicidal knights.
Fortunately, the sunglasses and seed cap Spender had adopted for this campus
visit sufficed – a tide of self-absorbed, heavily-pierced, generationally
insular students swarmed obliviously past and around the former FBI agent.
“Hey,” Holmes greeted as he approached Spender, a faint flutter in his gut.
“The little woman was wondering when you might pop on up for some hamloaf
and a fast-paced night of euchre.”
Spender had never been one for irony, even before he’d been mutilated and
emotionally deconstructed. “We need to talk.”
Sherman Holmes, AKA Fox Mulder, nodded. “Yeah, I believe we do.”
**
Even with their meager combined academic incomes and the escalating costs
of feeding and raising William, Scully had managed to do minor miracles with
the third-floor walkup she shared with Mulder and their 1 ½-year-old son,
courtesy of cable do-it-yourself programs and the Home Depot down the road.
Sunny, with bright primary splashes and tastefully elemental accessories,
the apartment was both a perfect sanctuary – and a perfect disguise – for
the pair.
Spender noticed none of this. Mulder plopped into his favorite thrift store
armchair, while Spender stood before him, the need for comfort irrelevant.
“I don’t know if it happened to make the wire services up here, but did
you happen to hear about an incident at a recent realtors’ conference in
“Glossalalia,” Mulder responded. “Saw it on the Internet. Middle-aged capitalist
type gets up to make a speech, starts Babeling in Aramaic…”
“And Anasazi and Babylonian and an ancient Tibetan dialect. As well as some
language we haven’t yet been able to identify.”
The fed-turned-teacher looked up. “There are generally two categories of
glossalalia, or ‘speaking in tongues’ – cases where the subject begins to
speak fluently in foreign, unfamiliar tongues, and those in which the subject
is believed to be speaking in God’s own language.”
Spender shook his head impatiently. “Our linguist insists it’s human language
– the syntax and structure parallels the basic structure of every language
known to man.”
“Whoa, back up. Linguist? How’d you happen to get what this realtor said?
I can’t imagine the Ten O’Clock News would’ve found that interesting footage.”
“A writer from an area business publication attended the dinner presentation,
and got it all on cassette, except for tape changes, of course. It seems this
reporter is an evangelical Baptist, and he recognized what was happening.
Or thought he did.”
Mulder caught Spender’s add-on comment,
but bypassed it for the moment. “How did you get this tape, Jeffrey?”
“It doesn’t--”
Mulder leaned forward, gentle but insistent. “How did you come to possess
this tape? Is our fundamentalist journalist still among the living?”
Spender stared down at his former FBI colleague for a moment. “I told you
before, what happened to that farmer and his wife was a tragic error. We would
have had no need for violence. We simply bought the tape, told the reporter
we represented a university research project on glossalalia.”
“So you’ve got the new
Realtors Gone Wild tape,” Mulder said. “You playing God’s word backwards,
seeing if Carson Daly comes out?”
“It’s not God’s word,” Spender answered abruptly. His faith apparently had
evaporated with the torture he’d endured. “It’s something else. If I were
religious, I might even say it’s a miracle. What we need from you--”
“Hold on, Jeffrey,” Mulder said softly. “I want to talk to you about something
else first. We want off this bus.”
“What?” Spender’s damaged mouth was
a reasonably straight line.
“Scully and I. And William. I think we’re through.”
“You can’t…”
“It’s been building, Jeffrey. We have a child, now, and although we don’t
know what the future might bring at this point, we want to raise him as a
child, not as a fugitive or a target. We both appreciate what you’ve done
to protect William, to give us a new life, but we don’t have anything left.
We want you to let us out.”
“You know the financing, the protection, would stop,” Spender said, stating
fact rather than attempting to coerce Mulder.
“I know. But we’re making enough at the college to get by, and I think we’d
just like to see how normal people live on this planet, at least as long as
this world continues to exist. Can you understand that, Jeffrey?”
Spender didn’t move. He gazed out the front window, at the pizza place and
the park across the street. Finally, he looked back down at Mulder with what
might have been a trick of Spender’s facial disfigurement or a half-smile.
“How would you like,” he asked, “to have a world for William to grow up
in?”
**
“I don’t like this,” Scully said, her face lined with intense anxiety. “I
don’t like this man in our lives, in William’s life.” She stroked William’s
thick hair as he recklessly spooned baked beans and hotdog pieces into his
anxious mouth.
“I know,” Mulder murmured, staring across the table at his son. William
grinned shyly, working his jaws fiercely. “But if what Spender says is right,
then we have to try.”
“There are others,” Scully stated.
“None with our unique blend of scientific acumen and voodoo bullshit. Look,
Scully, this Jack Bales – a man of almost no religious conviction or advanced
education – is the repository of a staggering database. A database encoded
into a variety of ancient human languages. Among other things, Bales’ meanderings
included a detailed procedure for synthesizing magnetite.”
Scully’s head came up, and she glanced at William. “Magnetite. Spender injected
William with—”
Mulder nodded. “The Anasazi village where our cigarette-smoking pal set
up housekeeping was built on a magnetite deposit. They knew, Scully – don’t
ask me how, but they knew the aliens’ Achilles heel. If Spender’s translations
are correct, this Bales is a living library of information on how to seriously
fu--, sorry, Mom, seriously mess up the extraterrestrial population. A recipe
for alien kryptonite, the genetic structure of a new strain of black oil,
who knows what else by the time Spender’s guy translates it.”
“Mulder,” Scully said slowly, “what are you suggesting? That this information
was somehow implanted in this man. By whom? And why? Why hide secrets like
this, particularly in someone as unlikely as Bales?”
Mulder smiled, leaning over to wipe a dribble of bean sauce from William’s
chin. Then he reached over to gently lift the cross hanging about Scully’s
throat, an impish grin playing at his lips.
“Maybe whoever did this works in mysterious ways, Scully.”
St. Damon’s Catholic Church
“Monica?” It was the call every fallen Catholic knew and dreaded. Monica
turned on the church steps to face Father Moreno, with what she hoped appeared
to be a sincere smile for her family’s friend and spiritual leader.
“Father,” she murmured, surrending to the burly old man’s hug. “The service
was beautiful. Thanks.”
Monica swallowed hard. Father Moreno was a kind, benevolent man who’d always
attended to the seemingly most trivial needs of his parishioners. She harbored
no animus toward the priest, but she would not allow herself to lose emotional
control in front of him. If Monica heard one more reflection about God’s will,
his plan…
Monica’s break with The Church had come gradually following her graduation
from
When she returned to her faith, it was to a Protestant church, less steeped
in ancient ritual and superstition. Less obviously, at least.
“It was good to see you again, Father,” she waved, struggling not to escape
down the stone steps.
“Monica,”
She sighed, still smiling. “Gee, I’ve got a ton to do here, and I’ve got
a big case on hold back home. I’ll see, OK.”
Father Moreno nodded, knowingly. “I hope time will allow.” He turned back
into his church.
Louisa Reyes was waiting at the base of the steps, jet black hair and jet
black dress neat as a pin, disapproval lining her strong
“Yes?” Monica demanded. “Don’t start, Mom.”
“Father Moreno christened you – he’s known you since God brought you to
us,” Louisa scolded. “You may no longer belong to the church, but I thought
your father and I taught you how to act with an old family friend.”
“Sorry. I just don’t need to be brought back into the fold just now.”
“I think you’re a bit defensive, chica,” Monica’s adoptive mother suggested,
a smile finally shaping her deep red lips. Louisa was a respected local businesswoman,
but around her family, she reverted to a Mexican-American yenta.
Monica tried to dig in her heels, but in the end, she relented, placing
an arm about Louisa’s shoulder and steering her toward the Reyes’
“Can’t talk about it, Mom, you know that.” It wasn’t precisely true, but
Monica knew her mother was disturbed by her current assignment. She’d always
feared Monica would be sucked in by some dark cult force or sacrificed by
some coven of crazed teenaged Satanists. The move to the X-Files had done
little to assuage Louisa, and her adopted daughter soon began to plead the
Fifth when asked about her casework.
“Bullshit,” Louisa muttered dryly. Monica broke into a giggle – it was always
a shock to hear such phrases uttered by her churchgoing, patrician mother.
“Come along, chica – it’s going to be a very long evening. By the way, how
is our John? You two any closer to making any plans?”
“A very long evening,” Monica echoed.
**
As with almost every funereal culture on the planet, the wine and liquor
flowed as Paul Reyes’ survivors celebrated the fallen soldier. Monica thus
wound up on Uncle Antonio’s back porch, nursing her Coke and resurrected memories
of the true Paul Reyes.
Her nephew had been a deeply troubled boy – the booze, the drugs, the girls,
the brush with the gangs. Only Louisa’s intervention had kept him from juvie
hall his senior year, and at that, he dropped out a month prior to graduation.
He’d alienated nearly his entire family before coming to some to-date inexplicable
epiphany that launched him on a quest for his G.E.D. and military enlistment.
It was as much the revisionist deification of Paul Reyes that had led to
Monica’s defection to the porch. He had been a deeply flawed, deeply disturbed
boy whose salvation ultimately had been his downfall. In her current spiritual
state, Paul’s epitaph offered little, if any, solace.
“There you are,” Tomas Reyes’ smooth bass voice suddenly rumbled behind
her. The paunchy but still muscular electrician grunted as he lowered himself
onto the step beside her. “I was afraid maybe those space people your friends
are so fond of had taken you away.”
Monica didn’t bristle at the reference to her unorthodox life’s work. Her
adoptive father was too good-hearted and gentle to taunt anyone – his humor
was the bedrock of the Reyes clan, and if Louisa often was the glue that held
it together, he was its foundation. Monica leaned on his shoulder, and he
squeezed her hand.
“Tough in there for you, eh?” he ventured after a few moments of moonlit
silence. Monica’s father was the only family member in whom she had confided
her problem. Her father was the only family member who understood her problem
firsthand. He still popped a Dos Equis or a Bud at lodge or family gatherings,
but he’d never mended the crack in the living room mantle that reminded him
of how he’d once lost himself to booze.
“Most of the time, I keep it together pretty well,” Monica informed him.
“It’s times like this, when things don’t make sense, when I begin to question
what all this is about.”
“Yeah,” Tomas replied simply. “That was Paul’s problem, I think – if he
couldn’t think it away, he’d drink it away. Probably my problem, too.”
“How do you keep it under control, Dad?” Monica asked, feeling the warmth
of his arm. “I just see the stuff these days, and I’m crawling out of my skin.”
The arm shrugged under her cheek. “Guess I’m too old for that 12-step bullshit
– I don’t mean it’s bullshit, Baby, I’m just too old for it. Spose I just
picture myself bellowing at your mama and catching you hiding behind my chair,
that look of horror in your eyes.”
Monica squeezed his calloused paw. “Stop.”
“No, you need to hold onto that, remember your old man’s not perfect. Not
you, either. It’s probably in our blood.”
“I’m adopted,” Monica recited, smiling, for the thousandth time.
“Oh, shit; I keep forgetting,” Tomas supplied in mock surprise, also for
the thousandth time.
Verdant Cove Condominiums
“So you really think I got a case here, ah, Holmes?” Jack Bales rattled
the ice in his highball glass as he re-examined the pleasant-looking, goateed
young man across his patio table. A pair of jet skis roared past off the adjoining
beach, but the former M3 marketing man took no notice.
“Well, I don’t want to imply it’s a slam-dunk,” Mulder began slowly. Didn’t
want to overplay – Mulder had given his approach to the realtor considerable
thought. Honesty was out: A guy like Bales would’ve had condo security toss
him out on his ass. Although his company had eighty-sixed him after his onstage
display of glossalalia – subtly, of course, part of M3’s downsizing and repositioning,
complete with a sweet severance parachute – Bales would be scouting for something
else in the industry, so he wouldn’t want to talk to a “reporter.”
The lawsuit scam had just the right smell of money to it, and indeed, Bales
had leapt at a meeting like a frat boy at a pile of nachos.
“But we are living in a PC age,” Mulder continued. “So much as whisper sexual
harassment in the workplace…”
“Yeah,” Bales growled. “
“Ee-yeah. Anyway. And it’s not just gender or race. That security guard
up in
Bales frowned. “Expressed my faith? Hell, I had no fucking idea what I was
saying up there that night. It was all Greek to me.”
“Aramaic, actually, I understand,” Mulder amended. “And that’s irrelevant
to our case. Glossalia – speaking in tongues – is a recognized manifestation
of spiritual faith. Whether you were consciously or unconsciously expressing
that faith – hell, whether you even believe in what you were saying – doesn’t
matter. You exercised your freedom of religion, your bosses abridged that
freedom. Case closed. Nolo contendre, ipso facto.”
“I dunno,” Bales stewed, crunching on a piece of ice. “Kinda makes me sound
like some kinda holy roller fruitcake. Nobody wants to hire some Bible thumper
to sell their ranch house or office building.”
Mulder leaned forward. “Mr. Bales, I daresay that if we win this case, you’d
never have to sell another beachfront property or write another catchy slogan
again. And I think we have an excellent chance of winning this one. What do
you think?”
Bales leaned back in his lounger, brows furrowed. Then he grinned broadly.
“Praise the Lord, let’s do it to ‘em.”
“Praise be,” Mulder nodded, reaching for his attaché case. “I have just
a few things for you to sign so I can get the ball rolling. And there is
just one small formality.” Bales’ eyes followed Mulder’s hand into the case
and back up to the table, where the “attorney” placed a small, clear plastic
cup with a snap-on lid.
“What the crap?” the former realtor muttered.
“You’re close,” Mulder chuckled. “Sorry. It’s just M3’s attorneys are going
to go after your physical and mental soundness, argue your glossalalia was
some form of organic imbalance, maybe even temporary insanity.”
“I thought temporary insanity was good.”
“Only in murder cases. We want to know
what we’re up against, check to make sure your chemicals are properly mixed.
You’re a golfer, right? Just shoot for the cup.”
Bales picked up the cup, shrugged, and stood up. He reached for his zipper.
“I don’t have to witness this,” Mulder assured him hastily. “You can do
it inside. I’ll just wait here.”
Bales nodded somberly, and disappeared inside his condo.
“Putz,” Mulder muttered, staring out at the