Halloween Special Episode

TITLE:Trick or Treatise

AUTHOR: Martin Ross

EMAIL: fwidsvnt@ilfb.org

RATING: PG

Category:Casefile

SPOILERS:

SUMMARY:Mulder and Scully go trick-or-treating for a serial killer and bag something totally unexpected.

FEEDBACK:Always welcomed.

DISTRIBUTION: Written for Virtual Seaosn 12 with ex-clusive rights for two weeks.

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement intended. Chris owns ’em — I just took them out for the night…

Deputy Dan

Clintondale Station, PA

October 31

7:45 pm

They were traveling along a deserted stretch of two-lane road in the deepening twilight, Mulder at the wheel and Scully playing Mr. Sulu.

“Are you sure the detour sign said to turn left at the crossroads?”

Scully asked as she squinted at a small travel road atlas by the map light above the dash.

“Makes no difference, Scully. There’s a roadblock up ahead. Maybe they’ll send us back to the interstate,” Mulder grinned at her.

Scully looked at him in warning. “Mulder, this time — just stay in the car, OK?”

“What?” he whined in an ego-wounded voice. “Besides, it’s too dark for a walk in the woods.”

“Just keep tellin’ yourself that, Mulder,” she replied as she slid the map back in her briefcase.

Mulder rolled the car up to the Deputy Sheriff and rolled down the driver side window. “Evening Officer,” he said congenially. Both agents pulled out identification and showed them. “We’re with the FBI. What seems to be the problem?”

“FBI? Would you mind pulling over there, please?” the deputy directed them to the side of the road.

Mulder glanced over at Scully and shrugged. “Some days it just doesn’t pay to try and ignore the obvious, Scully,” he said with an elfish grin. He received her standard ‘eye-roll’ as a reply.

“Mulder, please make it clear that we are on the way back from a long case and we really just want to get home.”

“Yes, dear,” he said with the same grin.

“And don’t forget to tell them that any investigation that might include the FBI has to go through proper channels — they need to contact the regional office, probably in Philly, and request the involvement of any agents — ”

“Scully, you _really_ want to get home tonight, don’t you?” he asked, finally breaking through her lecture.

“Mulder, it’s Halloween. Last Halloween you tried to scare the crap out of me by taking me on a ghost hunting picnic, the Halloween before that we were stuck on a stake out and you busted your ass, not just figuratively, I might add, so we ended up with a trip to the ER. I just want to enjoy Halloween for a change. I want to see trick or treaters on the streets and not worry that one of them is a drug dealer or escaped convict — ”

They were out of the car and approaching the deputy again. He called over another man from the other side of the road. The man tipped his hat to Scully and shook each agents’ hand. “Sheriff Tyler,” he said by way of introduction. “Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes.”

“Sheriff, as my partner was just reminding me, we really can’t be involved until you contact the Regional office,” Mulder said with a look of sympathy.

“We got five missing kids, oldest is 12, youngest is 4,” the Sheriff said flatly.

Mulder risked a glance at Scully and knew she’d come to the same conclusion he’d immediately reached, and that she had surrendered to their fate. “What can we do to help out?” he asked for both of them.

“They were trick or treating, left the Wilsons’ house about 5:15,” Tyler explained as they walked to his squad car.

“And you’re already out searching? Couldn’t they just be out getting more candy?” Scully asked. Tyler seemed to ignore her as he reached into the front seat of the car, pulling out a folder and handing it to Mulder.

“They were supposed to pick up Tommy Hendricks at 5:30. The house was three blocks away. When they didn’t show up by 5:45, the Hendricks phoned the Wilsons’. That’s when we got involved. We don’t mess around when it’s little kids,” he added dryly.

Mulder walked to the front of the car, using the headlights for illumination. He handed the pictures one by one to Scully. Five cherub faces, all recent school portraits, stared back at her. Two girls and three little boys. Mulder took the photos from her nearly nerveless fingers, a quick brush of his fingertips telling her he understood.

“They were last sighted going toward Parson’s woods. There’s a path through there that’s a short cut to the Hendricks. We’re putting together a search party for the woods right now.”

“If you think they’re in the woods, why the roadblock, Sheriff?” Scully asked, having regained her professional distance.

Tyler toed the dirt and looked off in the distance. “There was an escape from the local mental hospital yesterday. The patient has yet to be found.”

Mulder nodded slowly. “The diagnosis of the patient?”

Tyler turned toward him and shrugged. “Schizophrenia. Robert Mandel, aged 32. He was picked up on child molestation charges, but a court ordered psychiatrist got him involuntarily committed.”

Mulder sighed and Scully chewed her lip. “Has anyone gone to the mental hospital, looked at his records?” she asked.

“No, we just made the connection. The hospital hadn’t called our office until this evening. They were conducting their own search.”

“Look, I’ll check out the area where the kids were last seen, Agent Scully is a medical doctor and might have better luck at the hospital,” Mulder suggested.

Tyler nodded with relief. “I can take you out to the hospital right now, Agent Scully. Agent Mulder, some of my men are already at the woods, if you don’t mind going in your car. Just follow this road, turn left when it T’s and you’ll see the park about a quarter mile on the right.”

“Call me if you find anything, Scully,” Mulder said as he turned to head back to the car. He casually brushed the sleeve of her coat and she smiled. It was as much of a display of affection as they were likely to get for a while.

Even in the dark of the late autumn night, Mulder was able to find the park and the adjoining woods. Three squad cars, two from the Sheriff’s department and one from the village police were sitting in the small parking area. Mulder got out and went back to the trunk of the rental car, retrieving his flashlight. When he turned around, a deputy was walking toward him.

“Hello,” Mulder said amiably.

“Howdy,” replied the deputy. “Mind if I ask your business here this time of night?”

Mulder smiled at the forced politeness of rural law enforcement officers. He held up a cautious hand and slowly dug in his jacket to pull out his wallet, showing it to the deputy. “I’m Agent Mulder, with the FBI. My partner and I met up with your roadblock.

Sheriff Tyler asked for our help finding the kids.”

The deputy peered intently at the identification and then flashed his light up at Mulder. Satisfied, he stuck out his hand in greeting.

“Deputy Dan Kessman. Nice to meet you, Agent Mulder.”

“Thanks, Deputy Kessman. So, I take it the others are out looking?”

Kessman glanced over at the woods. “They went in about half an hour ago. They won’t find anything. The kids aren’t here,” he said with an odd mixture of frustration and defeatism.

“You sound pretty convinced,” Mulder replied. “You have a theory?”

Kessman drew in a breath. “This isn’t the first time this has happened.”

Mulder absently pulled a handful of seeds out of his pocket, popping one in his mouth. He offered some to Kessman, but the deputy shook his head. “You mean other kids went missing? Tyler didn’t mention — ”

“Tyler doesn’t want to mention it. Tyler doesn’t want to remember,” Kessman ground out angrily.

“Twenty years ago four little girls left their homes to go trick or treating. They were found two days later, drowned at the lake.”

Mulder frowned. “Was anyone caught or even suspected?”

Kessman laughed bitterly. “If you mean ‘brought to trial, no. Caught — oh, yeah. They had a prime suspect. Had him dead to rights. But the bastard had connections all the way up to the Lieutenant Governor. The case was dismissed ‘for lack of evidence’,” he spat out. “No one else was ever brought in.”

“But that was twenty years ago. Is that man even alive now?” Mulder asked. A car racing by drew his attention and he jerked his head toward the road. A car full of teenagers roared down the pavement. Mulder shook his head and turned back to Deputy Kessman, only to find the man had disappeared, apparently called back to the search by one of the other men.

Mulder stood looking at the woods. In the distance, through the trees, he could see the bouncing beams of the flashlights of the deputies. He could join the deputies; try to find the stray scrap of costume or child’s footprint in the soft dirt. Or he could go back to the Sheriff’s office and try to find out about the previous kidnappings and murders. He was in the car pulling out onto the road when he realized he’d already made his decision.

The officer on duty was not exactly thrilled that Mulder wanted to go searching through old files at near 10 pm on the night of a big manhunt, but he was efficient and professional in his manner.

Mulder took the inch thick file into an empty cubicle and sat down to read.

The photos of the four little girls almost stopped Mulder dead in his tracks. None of them older than 9 or 10, one with braces and yet one still waiting for her permanent front teeth. He forced himself to move past the pictures that would probably visit him again on some long night during a bad case. He realized he hadn’t had that many nightmares in the past few years. His personal ‘dreamcatcher’, Scully, was always within arms reach at night. He smiled to himself and went back to reading.

The girls’ names didn’t really matter as much as the suspect. Mulder went straight to the report on the arrest and interrogation of Bailey Tyler. It didn’t escape him that the suspect had the same last name as the current Sheriff and he wondered if that was another reason why the case hadn’t gone forward. Bailey Tyler was a very smart man, had garnered considerable wealth and power in the county and his arrest made headlines in papers all the way to Philadelphia. A woman had seen him near the lake the day before the bodies had been discovered, dumping lawn bags near the dam.

The evidence that connected him to the girls’ murder was a trick or treat bag with one of the girl’s names on it found in the trunk of his car when he was arrested. The bag disappeared from the evidence room of the police department the day of Bailey’s arraignment. Mulder closed his eyes and frowned. It always amazed him how money and power frequently circumvented the law.

Bailey was released, but apparently the case didn’t end there.

Although he was no longer under investigation, the accusation impacted his ability to find investors in his various dealings. He moved to Florida a year after the murders.

Mulder interrupted the nice desk officer one more time for the use of one of the computers. After a check of the FBI database, he found that Bailey Tyler had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared without a trace. No record was found of him in Florida or any other state. No cars were ever registered in his name. One piece of property remained his, and the taxes were paid from a blind trust. That property was a section of lakefront and a cabin not far from where the girls’ bodies were found.

His phone rang and startled him. “Mulder.”

“Mulder, it’s me,” he heard and smiled.

“Hi, me. What’s up?” His smile got bigger when he heard Scully’s exasperated sigh.

“We have the patient cornered. He’s in a warehouse on the far-east side of town. We don’t think he has the kids with him. The Sheriff wants to take him in for questioning, hopefully he’ll tell us where he hid the kids.”

“Scully, I think you’ve got the wrong guy,” Mulder said as he gathered his coat and headed for the door.

“What do you mean? Mulder, there’s only been one escape from the hospital and from the records I saw, he certainly fits the profile.

This man has no connection to reality when he’s in a psychotic state. He draws pictures of dead bodies lying around playgrounds all the time. And he was severely abused as a child. It all adds up.”

“Too neatly, Scully. Look, I have a lead in another direction. If you have this guy, they’ll bring him here to the station, right? So I’ll go check this out and if nothing’s there, I’ll come back here and see what your mental patient says.”

“OK, Mulder, but remember: this is Halloween.”

“And you’re the one at the warehouse,” he said pointedly. “Don’t fall through any rotted trap doors. It’s a pain in the ass, really.”

“I’ll make sure to avoid that and you make sure to be careful,” she replied and disconnected the line.

The parking lot was deserted as Mulder approached his car. The hand on his shoulder caused him to jump. He jerked his head and found Deputy Kessman smiling at him.

“You’re going out there, aren’t you — to the cabin by the lake?” The man’s eagerness grated on Mulder’s nerves.

“Well, it beats playing siege with a psychopath,” Mulder growled.

Kessman grinned happily. “Care for some company?” he asked as he headed for the passenger side of the car.

“Sure, why not make it a party,” Mulder replied sourly. “Besides, I have a feeling you probably know the way.”

About half an hour later, Mulder was happy to have Kessman along. The road was little more than a cow path that skirted the man made lake and had enough twists and turns to cause an accident in broad daylight, much less on a gloomy October evening.

“How much farther?” Mulder complained as he pulled the car around another tight corner.

“Just about half a mile, beyond that stand of pine up there,” Kessman said, pointing to some trees on the lake side of the road.

“You have to watch, the road is overgrown.”

“Give me a little warning before we have to turn,” Mulder requested. He slowed to a crawl, watching the side of the road for any indication of a driveway.

“There,” Kessman said, pointing to a gravel path hidden almost completely by weeds and tall grass.

“Hope this car has decent shocks,” Mulder muttered as he pulled into the drive. The road went straight up for a short distance and then turned abruptly and Mulder thought it vanished entirely before he caught sight of it again. Around another bend and he saw the cabin.

The cabin was an A frame structure and probably quite impressive in its day. Now, it looked like a caricature of how a house might look, if built by termites. The shingles were mostly off, exposing the underlying plywood to the elements. The upper window on the side of the house facing the drive was broken and tattered blinds hung haphazardly from the lower windows next to the door. The interior was totally dark.

“Looks like everyone left for the evening,” Mulder quipped as he pulled the car to a stop.

“Over here,” Kessman called and pointed to a set of tire tracks that appeared recent. “Rained a couple of days ago, grounds been wet this fall. These look fresh.”

“Has there been any activity around this place in the last year or so?” Mulder asked.

“See over across the lake?” Kessman asked, pointing across the water glistening dully in the light of the waning Hunter’s moon.

‘That’s the Knights of Columbus boathouse. They hold picnics all summer long. If there’d been anybody seen around this cabin, they would have reported it to the Sheriff. Bailey owed a lot of people money when he left town.”

Mulder looked at his companion. “That was twenty years ago,” he said.

“Folks have long memories when money’s concerned,” Kessman replied with a wry shrug of his shoulder.

Mulder snorted. Checking his weapon, he nodded to the cabin.

“Shall we see what we can find?”

Kessman waved his arm in a courtly manner. “After you.”

“Somehow I knew you’d say that,” Mulder said, striding toward the overgrown path to the cabin door.

It looked like the place had once had a professional gardener, but the primroses and other flowering shrubs were now not more than brambles that caught on the coats of the two men as they tried to look in the windows.

“I don’t see any disturbance in the dust on the floor,” Mulder told Kessman.

“Try the door,” Kessman suggested.

Mulder grinned at the man. “Are you suggesting ‘breaking and entering’, Deputy?”

“Probable cause, Agent,” he responded quickly.

“OK, you’re local law, and Scully’s always telling me to cooperate with you people,” Mulder said with a put upon sigh. He tried the doorknob and the door swung open easily. “Just what we needed,” he told Kessman over his shoulder.

The house was as deserted on the inside as it had appeared on the outside. They found a rat’s nest in the corner of the kitchen, one mattress standing tiredly against a wall near a fireplace in the living room. Other than that, nothing.

“It’s a bust,” Mulder was telling Kessman when he heard a noise coming from below them. “Did you hear that?”

Kessman nodded, his face grim.

“Let’s stop standing around. We need to find the door to the basement,” Mulder ordered and both men started opening all the doors on the first floor.

“Maybe it’s on the outside,” Kessman offered and they headed out the back door. Mulder’s flashlight immediately landed on a set of wooden doors on the ground next to the house.

“Rotten wooden doors. Scully, why does this always happen to me,” Mulder mumbled under his breath. “OK, we go down, but call for back up,” Mulder told his companion.

“I don’t have my radio,” Kessman replied and Mulder frowned, handing the man his cell phone.

“Hit speed dial one. The woman on the other end is my partner, Dana Scully. Tell her our location and to bring the troops.”

Kessman bit his lip and examined slowly the phone in his hand, but finally nodded.

Mulder turned to the door. It wasn’t locked, but the hinges creaked horribly in the quiet night. Below him, past the darkened concrete steps, he heard crying. Unclipping his holster, he brought his gun up to bear below the barrel of his flashlight. He heard Kessman behind him, pressing buttons on the phone. Mulder slowly moved down the stairs, announcing his presence. “I’m with the FBI.

Come out with your hands raised,” he ordered. Nothing moved, but the crying got louder.

When he reached the bottom step, he swept the room with the beam of the flashlight. In the cornered, huddled together, were the five missing children. One of the older kids, a boy about 10, looked up at Mulder and pointed frantically over the agent’s shoulder. At that same moment, something hard hit him in the back of his head. As his vision filled with stars and then blackness, Mulder remembered that Kessman was just upstairs, getting help.

Scully glanced at her watch and looked around at the assembled crowd. A shot had been fired not long after they had arrived at the warehouse. No one could tell for certain, but it was believed that the patient, Robert Mandel, had at the very least a rifle and maybe a couple of handguns with him in the office of the warehouse.

Snipers were situated around the building, but so far no one had a clear shot. It was already going on midnight and no sign of the kids had been found.

“If you don’t take Mandel alive, it may be hours before we can locate those kids,” Scully said evenly to the Sheriff. She skirted the rumor she’d heard from the deputies. She’d overheard that the warehouse was near an old meat packing plant and any of the several refrigeration units would have been perfect places to hide the children, except for the fact they were airtight. Hours, under those circumstances, could mean lives lost.

“He’s not listening to anyone, Agent Scully,” Tyler replied tersely.

“Care to take a crack at him?” he asked, handing her the bullhorn.

She shook her head and walked away. It had been well over an hour since she’d last talked to Mulder. She tried his cell phone, but got the ‘out of the service area’ message. He’d said he was checking something out; it would be just like him to walk into trouble.

The explosion of gunfire caught her by surprise. She ran back to where the Sheriff was standing, screaming at his men to cease-fire. On the ground near the door to the warehouse lay a man, crumpled and bleeding. Scully shoved through the crowd yelling, “I’m a doctor” and raced to the fallen man.

Robert Mandel wasn’t going to last long, Scully could tell that immediately. “Call for an ambulance!” she shouted as she tore open the man’s shirt trying to staunch the flow of blood. He’d been hit by at least a dozen bullets and the bright red blood was pumping out at a rapid rate. Mandel’s eyes were open and a thin trail of blood dribbled down the side of his face. He was trying to speak, so Scully leaned closer to hear him.

“Wasn’t me . . .” he gasped out and then his eyes glazed over and his head lolled to the side. Scully sought for a pulse on his neck and found nothing. She tried CPR, but by the time the ambulance arrived some ten minutes later, she knew it was futile.

“What did Mandel say to you?” Tyler begged when she stepped back from the body.

“He said it wasn’t him,” she said tiredly, brushing a wisp of hair from her face with a blood stained hand.

“He probably believed that,” Tyler said sadly and looked around the huge warehouse complex. “We need to think this through.

Maybe he hid them over at the meat packing plant.”

“My partner is the one who can get into people’s minds, but he’s checking something else out.”

Tyler looked surprised. “Did he say what?”

“No,” Scully replied, not wanting to reveal Mulder’s theory before she knew all of it. “He was going to meet us back at the station once we brought Mandel in. I tried to call his cell phone but can’t get through.”

“We have really lousy reception around here. My men and I rely mostly on radios. You’re welcome to take a squad car and go on back to the station, Agent Scully. He may be waiting for you.”

Scully nodded. For a second she thought about just going to the packing plant, just a half mile up the road, and helping search for the kids. But her lack of contact with her partner was nagging at her. “I think I’ll take you up on that, Sheriff. Thank you.”

Mulder awoke to the sound of sniffling. It was dark in the cellar and almost impossible to see, but he could feel that his hands were shackled to a cement or cinderblock wall with heavy chains and iron cuffs. He could hear the kids just a few feet away.

“Hey,” he called out softly. “Are you guys all right?”

“mm, yeah,” came a tearful voice just to his left. “He went away.

He said he’d be back soon.”

Mulder bit on his lip. “My friend was just outside. He’s getting help. We’ll get out of here, I promise. You guys just stay calm and it will be all right.” He prayed that Kessman would get Scully and the troops out to them soon. He didn’t want to lie to the kids.

Scully had just pulled into the station parking lot when she saw a deputy running toward her car. She rolled down the window as he waved frantically in her direction.

“Are you Agent Scully?” the man asked, running to the passenger side door and sliding in.

“Yes, I’m Agent Scully. Who are you?”

“Dan Kessman, Deputy Sheriff. I’ve been with your partner. He needs you right away.”

Scully cursed and hit the steering wheel. “I knew it,” she huffed.

“Where is he?”

“Out at the lake. We found the kids,” Kessman replied.

“Are they all right?” Scully demanded.

“They won’t be if we don’t hurry,” Kessman told her flatly. “And you better call for back up and an ambulance.”

“When it’s Mulder, I always do,” Scully growled.

On the way to the cabin, Kessman filled Scully in on what they’d found at the cabin and gave her a description of Bailey Tyler. By the time they turned into the drive, Scully was frantic with worry.

The deputy directed her to pull up next to Mulder’s rental. She killed the engine and got out, checking her weapon.

“You go around that direction,” she pointed to the left side of the house. “I’ll go this way. Wait till I’m there to enter the basement.”

Kessman nodded and took off in the direction Scully had indicated.

She stopped at the rental for only a moment to retrieve her flashlight from the trunk. A glance at her watch told her it was already after 2 in the morning. She’d called the Sheriff before they’d left the parking lot of the station. She hoped it wouldn’t take him too long to get the troops out to the cabin. She listened intently, hoping to hear the sirens but all she heard was the wind and the lapping of the lake water at the shore just yards away.

She found the door to the cellar easily. Looking around, she wondered where Kessman had gone. She waited for a few minutes, holding her breath. When she heard the sirens in the distance, she decided she had to make a move.

Before she could reach for the handle, the cellar doors flew open and a man as tall as Mulder and twice as wide came barreling up the stairs, screaming at the top of his lungs. He glanced over at Scully and raised a gun to aim at her. The distance was short, but his aim was wild and he missed her completely. Scully, on the other hand, aimed carefully and caught him directly in the chest. A look of surprise crossed his face before he slumped to the ground.

She was breathless as she checked the body for a pulse. Then she heard the sounds coming from the cellar. Children — crying. One voice stood out above the sounds of terror. Her partner called up to her. “Scully that better be you.”

She smiled as she hurried down the steps. Mulder was the first person she encountered, shackled to the wall. She ran her light around the room and was relieved when she saw all five children, unharmed. She released the bindings that held the kids’ hands and then tried to release Mulder. It proved a more difficult task than she’d assumed. “We may have to wait for the Sheriff on this,” she told him.

“And a lock pick,” Mulder supplied. Since he was at her mercy, Scully checked him over for injuries. His wrists were raw and would be bruised by morning, he had a knot on the back of his head, but otherwise, he was fine. The kids were shivering, but also without obvious injury.

“Was that Bailey Tyler?” Scully asked.

“Had to be. He fit the description Deputy Kessman gave of him. Where is Dan, by the way? I figured he’d be with you,” Mulder commented.

“He was,” Scully said, looking toward the top of the stairs. “He was going around the other side of the house. I wonder what happened.” She started up the steps and was met by Sheriff Tyler.

“Is everyone OK down here? The ambulance is right behind us,” he told her.

“We’re fine, we just need to get my partner out of these chains,” she explained.

Tyler had one of his men get a toolkit from a squad car and the Sheriff made quick work of the shackles. Mulder was helped up the stairs and was treated by the EMTs, narrowly escaping a trip to the hospital only when Scully vouched for him. In the throng of deputies, neither agent was able to find their friend. When Tyler came by to check on Mulder, Scully took the opportunity to ask him directly.

“Sheriff, we can’t find Deputy Kessman. Did he leave to go back to the station?”

Tyler looked first surprised and then confused. “Where did you hear that name?” Then he turned to Mulder. “You were looking in the old records, weren’t you?” he accused.

It was Mulder’s turn to be confused. “I read the old report from twenty years ago, Sheriff. I’m wondering why you didn’t make the connection with Bailey Tyler to begin with.”

Tyler shook his head. “Bailey was in a sanitarium out west. I’d been assured he’d live out his days there,” he said sadly. “I had no idea he’d been released two months ago. I just got the fax at my office before I got Agent Scully’s call. Believe me, if I’d thought he was within a hundred miles of this place, I would have come here first.”

“Deputy Kessman knew. Why didn’t you listen to him?” Scully asked, crossing her arms.

Tyler looked at her with a perplexed expression. “Agent, I don’t know who you think you’ve been talking to, but I can assure you that it wasn’t Dan Kessman.” He watched Scully shoot a look to Mulder. Tyler shifted his weight and looked each agent in the eye.

“Dan Kessman was a deputy back when I came on the force. He died, 20 years ago this very month. His youngest daughter was one of the girls murdered back then. He had a massive coronary when he discovered her body.”

Scully hissed out a breath and reached over to take Mulder’s hand. Mulder just squeezed her fingers. “Thank you for clearing that up, Sheriff.”

Clintondale Station Cemetery

November 1

12:45 pm

Scully pulled the car up to the curb next to the neat row of tombstones. Mulder got out and waited for her as she leaned into the back of the car and brought out a bouquet of fall flowers. He reached for her hand and together they walked to the center of the lawn.

Daniel Kessman’s grave was next to a more recent grave for his wife. To the left of the joined headstones was a small stone lamb marking the grave of their daughter, Amelia.

“His granddaughter was one of the kids Bailey kidnapped last night,” Mulder commented as Scully placed the flowers against Kessman’s stone.

Scully nodded. “Her name is Amelia. I never made the connection because her last name is Anderson. Her mother is Kessman’s older daughter.”

“Maybe he came back because it was his chance to save the Amelia he lost,” Mulder said pensively.

Scully squeezed his hand and looked up into her partner’s eyes. “I’m just really thankful he helped us, Mulder. And I hope that now he’s at peace.”

the end