Title: Cold File
Author: Martin Ross
Category: Cold Case/ X-Files crossover
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: When the apprehension of a missing ’60s
radical reopens a homicide from 1969, Agents
Mulder and Scully join the Philadelphia P.D.’s
Cold Case Squad to uncover the truth — and
potentially a sinister conspiracy
Spoilers: Cold Case second season; the films
Sixth Sense and Philadelphia; VS11
Disclaimer: As always, Mulder, Scully, and their
comrades are the creation of Chris Carter. Det.
Lilly Rush and her fellow Cold Case cops work for
Jerry Bruckheimer, while Cole Sear (“The Sixth
Sense”) is the brainchild of M. Night Shymalan
and Joe Miller (“Philadelphia”) practices his
profession under the auspices of Jonathan Demme.
July 20, 1969
“There must be some kind of way out of here/Said
the joker to the thief/There’s too much
confusion/I can’t get no relief…”
Hendrix, Billy smiled, knowing suddenly that
despite his reservations, all would be all right.
It was the Age of Aquarius, and he was of a time
and a generation attuned to signs, symbols, and
portents.
He’d grooved on Jimi just a few months ago at the
Spectrum, in South Philly. He and Donna had done
some weed in Rittenhouse Square an hour or so
before the concert and dropped some acid as
Hendrix wailed out “Watchtower.” They’d made
love afterwards, right here in this bed, hanging
one of Billy’s Ts on the knob outside to let the
others know the room was occupado, por favor?
Too much confusion? Right on, Brother Jimi. But
Billy no longer felt confused – the answer had
come through to him like a shaft of purifying
energy, through all the drugs and sex and chaos.
There was a way out of here.
“No reason to get exited/The thief he kindly
spoke/There are many here among us/Who feel that
life is but a joke…”
Billy glanced out the window. The Horseman was at
his old stand on the cracked sidewalk below,
offering Old Testament judgment and hellfire for
anybody who’d listen. The hippies and dopers left
him alone — The Horseman never approached, never
made contact, and anyway, it was his thing, it
was cool, if a little bit of a bummer sometimes.
And even though he was an old dude — 30s at
least — Billy felt a kinship with the man. Out
of the love only St. Lucy in the Sky could
confer, they’d invited him up one night, did some
magic ‘shrooms Max had scored in Tijuana,
listened to The Horseman riff on the old
prophets.
Billy chuckled, alone in the spartan bedroom.
Maybe the old dude had made more of an impression
than he could have imagined. He had seen the
truth, had seen the light. Until this time, all
had been hollow words, about love, peace,
brotherhood. Now Billy was ready to make the
sacrifice expected of him, purge the poison and
the lies…
“Outside in the cold distance/A wild cat did
growl/Two riders were approaching/And the wind
began to howl…”
As Jimi’s strings whined in anguished
accompaniment, Billy’s eyes welled with
happiness, and he reached for the bedside stand,
where the key to his salvation lay. As the man on
the living room TV moved as if through the ocean
along a barren surface of airless rocks and dust,
Billy’s fingers closed on his destiny…
August 13, 1969
Det. Second Gary Schmid grunted as he hauled the
packing box down the bleak hallway. Another dead
hippie, rest in peace, he mused. Schmid was a
father of three, went to Mass regular, coached
Police Benevolence League basketball. He was not
yet inured to the tragedy of youth lost, of souls
damaged and scattered to the ravages of
degradation and death. But Schmid knew everybody
made their choices, made their bed and slept with
whatever fleas or wolves they invited in, however
the saying went. Bullets or needles, all the same
difference, he shrugged, balancing the earthly
remains in his burly arms, and nudging the door
to what he called The Warehouse.
Besides, it wasn’t like Homicide had busted its
hump on this one. There had been plenty of
distractions the last few months in this City of
Brotherly Love (Schmid’s snort reverberated
through the canyons of cardboard, paper, and
memories).
Schmid located the appropriate resting place, set
the box down amid a flurry of dust motes, and
searched for a wax pencil. Crouching slightly, he
neatly inscribed the casefile: “W. McHenry/7-20-
69.” He hefted the remains of the McHenry case
onto a metal rack, alongside those of the others
whose deaths to date had gone unpunished.
“‘Night, kid,” the cop grunted with a hoarse note
that embarrassed him even in the solitude of the
Cold Case archives.
January 2005
Philadelphia
“…Federal authorities may have solved a 35-year
mystery with Tuesday’s arrest of Elijah Fortson,
key lieutenant with the ’60s radical group Fist
of Freedom and suspected mastermind in the summer
1969 bombing of a Philadelphia Marine recruiting
office. Six people perished after a Molotov
cocktail was thrown through the office’s window,
and Fortson, an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam
War, became the object of a massive federal
manhunt.”
The cops of the PPD Cold Case Squad close in on
the small color set, peering at the clean-shaven,
lined face of Elijah Fortson, AKA Samuel Robeson,
framed between U.S. marshals. Det. Lilly Rush
mentally subtracts 35 years from and adds a
Pancho Villa mustache to the financial analyst’s
visage, substitutes a dashiki for his stylishly
conservative Armani and a Panther-approved afro
for his $40 haircut.
“That manhunt ended when an anonymous tip led the
FBI to Robeson, who surrendered to authorities at
the advice of his attorneys but denied his
involvement either in the recruiting office
bombing or the murder of a Philadelphia grad
student three days prior to the bombing. Robeson
and the victim, Billy McHenry, had been friends
and fellow dissidents. McHenry had been stabbed
repeatedly in the apartment he shared with three
other student protestors…”
“Slam-bam,” Det. Scotty Valens states from his
perch on Lilly’s desk. “What am I missing here?
Seems like a no-brainer. Why we reopening this
one?”
Lilly — a paradox of a cop with a blue-collar
hairstyle, mannish off-the-rack suit, and a
seraphic face out of a Victorian oil — merely
smiles and glances toward the metal detectors
that shield the detectives from a dangerous
public. Lt. Stillman, a middle-aged, square-jawed
eagle of a cop, ushers a pleasant-looking younger
man and a somber, diminutive redhead through the
checkpoint.
“Hoo boy,” Nick Vera growls, instantly picking up
the scent every local cop abhors.
“Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, I’d
like you to meet the members of my squad,”
Stillman begins, shooting his underlings a look
of caution. “Lilly Rush; this is Scotty Valens;
Nick Vera; and Will Jeffreys. Agents Mulder and
Scully will be working the McHenry case with
you.”
Scully, the redhead, senses the hostility in the
air. Mulder, who looks as though he’s wearing his
black suit as a joke on his parents, smiles
companionably, neither extending nor expecting a
hand.
“Whoopee,” Vera grunts.
“You, of course, will remain the primaries on the
local homicide,” Scully assures the detectives.
“Agents Mulder and myself have been asked to
provide you any assistance you might need on the
case.”
“What’s the catch?” Valens asks. “Thought you
guys had Robeson pretty solid on the bombing. Or
is that it — case kinda shaky, so you want a
piece of the homicide, too? That the reason
you’re so interested in a 35-year-old hippie
killing?”
“Make sure us idiots don’t futz things up, get
doughnut crumbs all ” Vera murmurs.
“Excuse me, agents,” Stillman interjects, a note
of gloved firmness in his voice. “I’d like to
talk to my detectives for a moment.”
“Got any Krispy Kremes?” Mulder inquires with a
crooked grin, drawing a curious glance from
Lilly. Scully touches his arm, and the pair
withdraws to the squadroom coffee area.
Stillman scans his officers. Valens, the youngest
cop on the squad, appears uncertain and wary.
Vera, a compact forty-something badger, tenses,
irritation and resentment clouding his deepset
eyes. His partner, Jeffreys, a big, graying cop
with a patience that could only have been
cultivated by growing up on — and surviving —
Philly’s meaner streets, looks on impassively.
Lilly is unruffled by the agents’ presence. Her
deceptively porcelain features are calm. Her Mona
Lisa smile invites elaboration.
“I know this is a bitter pill,” Lt. Stillman
acknowledges, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d
work with Agents Mulder and Scully. Their boss,
Walt Skinner, and I go ‘way back. More than 30
years back.”
Understanding dawns in the detectives’ eyes. The
Boss doesn’t talk much about the years before he
took on The Job, and they don’t ask.
“Walt is a valued friend, and he has a deep
interest in this case. Billy McHenry was his
first cousin — his uncle’s kid. The two grew up
together — they were tight. But in the late
’60s, Walt went into the Marines, Billy went his
way.”
“Brother against brother,” Valens muses.
Stillman glances up, nods appreciatively. “That
about sums up the times, Scotty. War in the
jungle and fires burning in the streets and on
the campuses. I dunno, maybe that’s why Walt’s
always been haunted by Billy’s murder. I realize
it’s unorthodox, but I’d consider it a personal
favor if you’d deal Mulder and Scully in on this
one. Fortson’s a federal fugitive, and they have
a jurisdictional claim. But I’m asking you
personally, as a favor to me.”
“Sure, Boss,” Vera mumbles, and wanders out.
Jeffreys, Stillman’s contemporary, smiles with a
curt nod, and Valens joins him.
“Let’s start with the casefile,” Lilly suggests.
**
The dusty cardboard box is a time capsule of
sorts, commemorating Billy McHenry’s untimely
death in yellowing paperwork, fading PPD stills
of the dead hippie and his cheap apartment, and
the sparse belongings of a young man who’d
forsaken the trappings of a materialistic
society. Thousands of such capsules surround the
cluster of detectives, boxes with names and
dates, a virtual mausoleum of paper and effects.
Mulder selects a necklace — a cheap chain
supporting a broken iron cross encircled by
rusting metal. He considers the once-ubiquitous
symbol of an elusive peace. “1969 — The Summer
of Love. Free love, cheap drugs, Jimi Hendrix.
Walter Cronkite, Pol Pot, Neil Armstrong
strolling on the moon. You know, the Apollo
landing was the same day your guy was murdered.”
“July 20. It was a memorable day all around,”
Jeffreys rumbles, his coffee-brown eyes both
searching and troubled. “Middle of a 10-day race
riot, started by a white gang member, ‘sposedly.
Next day, woman named Lillie Belle Allen was
gunned down by a white mob in York, not too far
from here. Twenty-seven-year-old preacher’s
daughter from South Carolina, in to visit some
family. Charlie Robertson was a member of the
York force back then, they brought him up in the
’90s after they made him mayor, said he’d handed
out ammo, told the folks to take out as many
black rioters as possible.” Conscious of the
silence, Jeffreys breaks out of his reverie with
a faint smile. “Lot going on that week — cops
had a lot on their minds. Not surprising Billy
McHenry got short-shrifted.”
“No DNA analysis, forensics must’ve been
prehistoric,” Valens adds, drawing an amused
glance from his older cohorts. “Hey, we still got
the weapon?” The young detective reaches into the
box and pulls out a long and heavy manila
envelope. He gingerly shakes a garden variety
kitchen knife onto the table. Traces of
fingerprint powder cling to the blade and handle.
The wooden handle remains discolored in spots.
“Victim’s blood, AB negative,” Vera reports,
flipping through the lab findings.
“Defense wounds on the vic’s hands, blood on the
blade and the handle,” Valens notes. “Killer
wiped it clean, left it at the scene.”
“Knife was from a secondhand set in McHenry’s
kitchen,” Jeffreys supplies. “Heat of anger?”
“I wonder,” Scully ventures. “Victim’s known
associates?”
Lilly, Homicide’s thin report in hand, picks up
on cue. “Not much there. McHenry shared a second-
floor walkup near downtown with two other men —
Vincent Gillesco, 20, and Ned Squiers, 23. Both
say they were at a peace rally at the federal
building, came home and found McHenry on the
bed.” She displays a faded color crime scene
photo of Billy sprawled on his back on a
threadbare mattress, scarlet spreading like wings
on the sheet around him. Mulder appropriates the
gruesome portrait.
“He was a grad student at the university —
anthropology,” Lilly continues. “His faculty
sponsor was a Frederic Hoesch.”
Mulder’s eyes narrow, then return to the photo.
Suddenly, he displays it to the group. “This void
here, to the side of the body. Yeah, see where
the blood’s flowed around something. What do you
make of that?”
“Looks kinda round,” Vera observes. “Know better
if the blood had flowed all the way around. I
dunno – a bag, a purse, maybe McHenry’s stash. A
bomb?”
“Fortson was strictly a Molotov cocktail man – it
was the weapon of mass destruction of choice for
the fashionable radical back then. But it’s
obvious the killer took whatever it was with
them.”
“Maybe digital imaging?” Scully suggests.
“I’ll send a copy of this to this guy I know back
home,” Mulder tells Lilly. “He may be able to
give us an idea what sitting next to the body.”
“We got computers out here in Hicksville,” Vera
sputters, ending the huddle.
**
“I’m getting an uncomfortable Rodney King vibe
here.” Samuel Robeson/Elijah Fortson’s attorney
scans the quartet loosely clustered about the
prison interview room — Lilly, Jeffreys, Mulder,
and Scully. “This turns into a tag team match,
I’ll shut this down in a second.”
“Relax, Counselor,” Lilly smiles. “Agents Mulder
and Scully are working the recruiting office
bombing. Det. Jeffreys and I are looking into a
local homicide your client may be familiar with.”
For the first time, Fortson regards her with
something resembling real interest. Despite the
prison coveralls, he appears the picture of
middle-aged respectability: Graying temples,
fashionable wire-rims, intelligent mocha eyes
held in abeyance as his lawyer does the talking.
“Homicide?” The attorney’s left eyebrow arches.
“You going to try to pin the Lindbergh kidnapping
on my client, too?”
“You remember Billy McHenry, Elijah?” Lilly
inquires, leaning over the table. Fortson meets
her gaze evenly, his expression neutral.
“Talk to me,” the lawyer snaps. “And we can do
without the use of the familiar, Detective.”
“Sorry. McHenry was murdered only three days
before you blew those people into oblivion. Did
he trip to what you were up to, Mr. Fortson? Or
did he get cold feet before the big day?”
“OK, that’s it–” Fortson raises two fingers to
silence his lawyer. “Sam, you need to…”
“Please, Larry.” The former activist’s voice is
velvet ice. He smiles tightly up at Lilly. “I’ve
already told the federal authorities I had
nothing to do with the deaths of those
unfortunate people.”
“Which is why you fell off the face of the Earth
for 35 years,” Jeffreys suggests.
Fortson glances sideways at the huge cop. “I fled
the jurisdiction for fear of my life, Detective.
The law enforcement community took an acute
interest in my sociopolitical views in those
days, and the memory of what happened to Dr. King
was still fresh in my psyche. Maybe you don’t
remember what it was like in the day,
‘Detective,’ but a young African-American with an
authority problem didn’t get too many invitations
to the policemen’s ball.” A crooked smile forms
on Fortson’s lips, a glint of secrecy sparks in
the eyes. “As for that boy, well, I wasn’t the
only one that fell off the face of the Earth that
summer.”
The room is silent for a second.
“What are you saying, Fortson?” Lilly speaks up.
“Sam,” Larry the Lawyer cautions.
Elijah Fortson leans back, temples his fingers.
“I was Philadelphia Rotarian of the Year back in
2000 — I woke up in a cold sweat for a week for
fear the local newspapers would ask me for a bio.
Got asked to run for City Council a year or so
ago — regrettably, I had to turn them down, you
understand. I have lived for each day of the last
35 years with the decisions I’ve made. But I
don’t intend to live with – or die by — the
transgressions of others.”
“A name, Elijah,” Jeffreys requests, staring
Larry down.
“Old acquaintance of mine, name was Donna when I
knew her. Went underground about the same time I
did, after Billy died. Spotted her on the news a
few years ago, some charity fundraiser, and I
knew it was Donna. You might want to take a
meeting with her.”
“Elijah…”
Fortson smiles beatifically, the radical flashing
through maliciously. “Calls herself Francine.
Francine Topher.”
The room falls silent, and the sounds of felons
and lawmen beyond filter in. Jeffreys looks at
Lilly. Mulder frowns in confusion.
“Hey,” Elijah breaks the silence. “You go talk to
her, tell her I said hi.”
**
Francine Topher acknowledges her frosty martini
with an appreciative nod to the waiter, her
cornflower blue eyes never leaving Det. Nick Vera
and Agent Fox Mulder. “There must be a sound
reason why it was necessary to come to my club.”
It’s framed as a statement of fact rather than an
indictment, but both men detect the tightness in
her already toned face. Francine Topher is
married to Philadelphia’s top neurosurgeon, but
no one refers to her as “Mrs. Topher” or “Dr.
Topher’s wife.” She is one of the city’s most
formidable fundraisers, for mental health, for
lower-income prenatal care, for AIDS research,
and although her tennis ensemble likely cost a
year’s green fees at the adjoining Philadelphia
Country Club course, she is no soft society
matron.
“We called your home, and they said you were
playing a set or two,” Mulder explains, boyish
smile in place. “Detective Vera and I have just a
few routine questions.”
“Regarding?”
“Elijah Fortson.”
Mulder suppresses a wince at Vera’s bluntness.
Topher’s brow rises. “Elijah Fortson. The sixties
radical?”
“That’s the one.”
She smiles in bewilderment. “Perhaps you’d like
to elaborate, Det. Vera?”
“We understand you were in college here in town
when Mr. Fortson disappeared, back in ’69,”
Mulder interjects.
“You understand incorrectly.” Topher sips her
martini with a challenging look that contains a
trace of something else.
“How about Billy McHenry, huh?” Vera asks. “You
remember him?”
Mulder sighs with a smile. The blue eyes above
the glass’s rim lock onto Vera for a second, then
Topher lowers her glass. “No. This is becoming
monotonous, and you’re beginning to become
offensive. Who suggested I have any connection
with these men? Fortson? If so, I suspect you’ve
been duped by a desperate criminal. If it makes
you feel any better, a lot of people were. Now,
if you’ll excuse me…”
Mulder and Vera are silent for a full minute as
Francine Topher weaves her way out of the
clubhouse.
“Well,” Mulder finally comments. Det. Vera shoots
daggers across the tablecloth.
“Hey, I got a rise out of her, didn’t I?” the cop
demands, scowling at the busboy as he removes
Topher’s glass.
“It was masterful. I think you’re right, though.
She knew McHenry. But how to prove it? The lab
found no viable DNA samples for comparison, and
the murder weapon was wiped clean.” Mulder
studies the elegant barroom glumly, then
straightens. “The glass.”
“Huh?”
“Detective, get Topher’s glass, quick, before
they wash it.”
“Why, what–”
“It was the sixties — McHenry was a protester.
Maybe Topher got busted a few times, too. Move,
Detective!”
Vera utters a curse, knocking his chair backwards
and rushing through the dismayed crowd like a
linebacker gone to seed. The cook staff freezes
as he shoulders the kitchen door, glancing wildly
about.
“Police!” he shouts. “Where’s the busboy?’
“Who, me?” Vera follows the disembodied voice
behind a rack of dishes to the rail-thin boy in
the white tunic. The cop’s eyes shift to the pair
of martini glasses in his hands, poised above a
sinkful of steaming dishwater.
“Freeze!” Vera calls frantically. The boy backs
up a step, fumbling one of the glasses. “Don’t
drop it, kid!”
The busboy swoops with an instinctive dexterity
and recaptures the glass. Vera wipes his forehead
with his sleeve and yanks a napkin from a pile
near the stove.
“Gimme,” he pants.
**
“You should pardon the cliche,” Ned Squiers
chortles, “but the Sixties were kind of a blur to
me.”
Presidents Ford and Clinton together couldn’t
forgive all of Squiers’ cliches. Metaphors,
homilies, and nimble twists of phrase are the
currency of the weatherman’s world.
Jeffreys smiles indulgently, as if waiting out a
recalcitrant child. He is the yin to Vera’s hair-
trigger yang. While Squiers assumes his lively
patter about occluded fronts and storm patterns
sparks gales of laughter in 32 percent of metro
Philly homes, he is ill-at-ease with a live
audience.
“Hey, shit, guys, I’m yanking you, you know?”
It’s five minutes after the 5:30 newscast, and
the balding meteorologist is itching to grab some
General Tso’s at the joint around the corner from
the station. He yanks off his crested Channel 3
blazer; sweat rings mar his professionally-
pressed pinpoint oxford. “This’s about Elijah,
right?”
“Elijah?” Jeffreys rumbles. Only his lips move,
but the indulgent smile stays in place.
“Media overfamiliarity, Detective. Yeah, OK, I
knew Fortson slightly back in the day. Probably
made us feel like big men, hanging with a heavy
hitter like that. But that was the Cenozoic Age.
Cops talked to me after Eli-, Fortson blew up
that recruiting office. At the time, I was on a
road trip to Cincinnati with a couple of Deadhead
buddies. Got high on Garcia, then got busted for
a couple of twigs the Ohio troopers found on the
passenger side floor mat. My folks’ lawyer busted
me out, and by the time I got back to town,
Elijah’s — Fortson’s — face was pasted all over
every post office in the country.”
“How about your buddy, Billy McHenry?” Vera
asked. “You found the body, right?”
“Vince and me. We called the cops right away.”
“And your ‘acquaintance’ Elijah? You know where
he was when your friend got gutted like a fish?”
Rather than recoiling at Vera’s blunt query,
Squiers smirks. “Billy was a Boy Scout, always
was. Liked to talk tough about revolution and The
Man and everything, but he practically crapped
himself whenever Elijah was around. Hell, we all
did. Elijah got off on scaring dumb whi–”
He glances anxiously at Jeffreys. The smile has
never left the cop’s face. “Anyway,” Squiers
recovers, “you ask me, the cops should’ve looked
harder at that crazy homeless guy who was always
hanging around the building. Aw shit, uh, The
Horseman. Hell, Billy and Vince even invited him
up once or twice to, ah, to….”
“Keep your powder dry, Weather Man,” Vera sighs.
“We know about your little magical mushroom
tours. We won’t tell the network.”
“The Horseman,” Jeffreys prompted. “You ever
catch his name?”
“Shit, that was 35 years ago. All I know was he
was constantly screaming for everybody to repent,
to give themselves to the Lord. Wasn’t exactly a
seller’s market in those days, but I don’t guess
he cared. He was just part of the whole crazy
scene. I had a hair up my ass, myself. Remember
one time I chained myself to a table at one of
the downtown banks, started hollering about the
moneylenders in the temple or something. Must’ve
caught something from the Jesus freaks.”
July 20, 1969
Here come old flattop, he come grooving up
slowly/He got joo-joo eyeball, he one holy
roller/He got hair down to his knee/Got to be a
joker he just do what he please…
The Beatles tune played in Ned’s head every time
he saw the Horseman at his post in front of the
tenement apartments, spitting sulfur and the
threat of salvation at the working girls, the
potheads, the occasional suit who came slumming
for some acid or to take the edge off.
“And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and
Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very
grievous, I will go down now, and see whether
they have done altogether according to the cry of
it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will
know,” The Horseman called, brandishing the
Gideon Bible he’d no doubt lifted from some no-
tell motel. Ned grinned: Even the freaks had to
get some occasionally. Sex was a constant
preoccupation with Ned, though the coarse,
aromatic young man didn’t do that well even in
this age of free and easy love.
He moved to the opposite side of the cracked
sidewalk from the proselytizing bum, keeping his
eyes rigidly in front of him, aimed at a
miniskirted bottom strutting toward the bus stop.
“Ned, man!”
Swallowing his annoyance, Ned turned. Vince was
breathless as he caught up to him.
“Hey, man, I lost you at the rally.”
No, Ned reflected, I lost you. Vincent had become
a real bummer over the last few months – a true
believer peacenik. “Yeah, I looked for you.
Figured you’d scored some weed or something.
Speaking of which…” Ned patted the pocket of his
army surplus jacket.
Vince’s acne’ed face brightened. “Groovy.”
As they ascended the stairs to the apartment,
passing through the urine fumes of the foyer to
the mock oregano-scented upper hallways, Vince
prattled on about capitalism and communism and
about another dozen isms. Ned stepped up his
pace: The sooner he could get his buddy stoned,
the sooner he’d shut his face.
“Shit, man,” Ned whispered as spotted the sliver
of light leaking from their slightly jarred
apartment door. Security was a relative concept
in this neighborhood, and he debated hauling ass
back downstairs in case some junkie or armed
intruder was still making the scene.
The ever-trusting Vincent pushed past him. “Hey,
Billy! You home?”
“Shut the fuck up!” Ned whined, reluctantly
following him into the shadowy living room. Vince
glanced into the kitchen, then Billy’s room.
“Aw, Christ,” Vince wailed, covering his mouth
with trembling fingers. “Aw, shit!”
“What, man? What?” Ned yanked him out of the
bedroom doorway. “Oh, hell.”
The pigs arrived about a half-hour later. One of
the cops, a real crew-cut storm trooper, ragged
Ned out about ralphing all over the crime scene…
**
Jeffreys’ smile flickers for a moment. “You ever
reminisce about the old scene with your buddy
Vince?”
Squiers laughs nastily. “Ah, no. He and I travel
in different circles these days. That it, guys?
Cause there’s a fortune cookie out there with my
name in it.”
“Thanks for your time,” Jeffreys murmurs,
standing.
“Anything for our men in blue,” Squiers calls,
already heading for the studio door. “Don’t
forget your umbrellas tomorrow, fellas.”
“Yeah, I’ll make book on it, Ace,” Vera grunts.
**
“The problem,” Joe Miller begins, regretfully,
“is your colleague here has pissed all over his
evidentiary chain.” The attorney turns to Lilly,
nods. “Pardon my French, Detective.”
When Joe Miller regrets, everybody regrets. It’s
one of the few things the guys at the Cop Shop
and a majority of the city’s Fortune 500 execs
agree on. Ten years before, few cops even knew
the personal injury lawyer, and Philadelphia’s
legal community had considered him a bottom-
feeding catfish in the shark tank. Then Joe took
down one of the biggest firms in town, sparking a
nationwide flood of AIDS discrimination cases and
upgrading Joe from The Men’s Wear House to Brooks
Brothers (despite his largely underdog clientele,
Joe is fundamentally conservative, reads Thomas
Sowell religiously at the breakfast table, and
believes in buying American suits).
“I don’t see it that way,” Vera growls
defensively, but his regret already is seeping
around the edges. He’s been having some marital
troubles and hanging out with his old pals Bud
Weiser and Jack Daniels. “I had my eyes on that
glass the whole time – I could see the lipstick
on the rim a mile away.”
Joe looks even more regretful as he gathers the
empty Styrofoam cups littering the interview
table, digs a quarter out of his tailored pants.
“Kitchen at the country club’s 23 yards, two
feet, and three inches from the table where you
were sharing afternoon aperitifs with my client.”
The attorney deposits the coin on the
interrogation table, over some gangers’ loving
ode to the law enforcement community, and covers
it with a cup.
“It was ginger ale – I don’t do ‘aperitifs’ on
The Job, ‘Counselor,'” Vera’s voice rises as his
jowls quiver. Lilly, standing behind Miller and a
silent Francine Topher, shoots him a nearly
imperceptible warning glance.
“Air quotes duly noted, Detective,” Miller
murmurs with a pleasant smile. He begins
rearranging the cups, slowly at first. Vera
struggles not to look at this feat of
legerdemain. The cups scrape the scarred wood as
Miller’s deft fingers work them. “There’s 10
tables between the kitchen and the table where
you were enjoying your ginger ale. Four waiters
on shift that day, all in the same white shirt,
black slacks, and red coats, and probably all
named Eric.” Miller is not renowned for his
political correctness at the courthouse bars. The
cups are nearly a blur now. “You are a man of
some not inconsiderable girth, Detective, am I
right?”
“It’s all muscle.” The menace in Vera’s tone is
palpable. His eyes narrow, flitting toward the
flying Styrofoam.
“Have a little trouble keeping the muscle off
myself,” Miller chuckles, patting his own middle-
aged spread. “Detective, tell me like I’m six,
please. How did you manage from across a crowded
dining room, in hot pursuit of a waiter named
Eric, squeezing your muscular frame between the
tables, glasses and plates jostling on Eric’s
tray, through a solid – mind you, solid – kitchen
door, around the pots and pans, to maintain
constant surveillance on my client’s martini
glass?” The cups skid to a stop. “You must be
eating your carrots, Detective.”
Vera’s eyes are now locked on the table. He looks
up; Miller beams, nodding back toward the cups
with a challenge.
“Phew, that’s one effed-up evidence chain,”
Miller concludes, grinning. “It’s a problem – I
don’t think any judge in this man’s town’s gonna
trust Det. Vera’s spidey sense. And I don’t see
any judge putting my client here – an upstanding,
charitable, responsible member of the community –
through this kind of sideshow.”
“Why’s your upstanding client all lawyered up,
then?” Vera snaps, face reddening.
“Mrs. Topher has no outstanding warrants, either
under her own name or as Donna Geistner,” Lilly
interjects smoothly, La Giaconda smile in place.
She moves around the table.
“Who’s Donna Geistner?” Joe queries, mock
puzzlement on his face.
“Counselor, we will ID your client, with or
without your cooperation. And you have to admit,
it does look suspicious, a woman with nothing
more than a few civil disobedience busts 35 years
ago hooking up with one of the city’s top
attorneys.”
“My,” Joe whispers, ducking his head in false
modesty. “Dish it up for me, Det. Rush – I’ll see
if I can get it down my gullet.”
Lilly plants a palm on the table. “Immunity for
anything she was mixed up with with Fortson.
We’ve got a 35-year-old homicide we need to clear
and a case to prosecute against Elijah Fortson.
Your client tells us what she remembers about
Fortson and the day of the murder, and she’s back
sipping Cosmos by afternoon tee time.”
Joe chews on it. “My client and I would like a
little alone time, you don’t mind.” He favors
Vera with a benign smile. “And no, we wouldn’t
like any coffee, Coke, gum, cigarettes, or DNA
swabs, thank you.”
Vera’s chair squeaks back. Lilly lightly touches
his arm, and he stalks out of the interview room.
Joe shrugs regretfully up at Lilly, who reaches
across and snatches a Styrofoam cup from the
table. She leaves Joe staring, impressed, at the
gleaming quarter before him.
**
“Billy and I met at the university about a year
earlier,” Francine/Donna begins. “We had an
evening lit class together, and one night, a
bunch of us went for coffee afterwards. I liked
his shyness, his heart, and, yes, his politics.
Back then, that was an important component of any
socially relevant relationship.”
Lilly smiles, encouragingly. Joe Miller pretends
to check his PDA.
“We started going out, then hitting a few
protests and rallies together. Anti-war, pot
legalization, civil rights. We were a couple of
middle-class white kids who were going to change
the world. Then he and his friends, Ned and
Vincent, started hanging out with Elijah,
practically worshipped him. And that’s when it
started getting real heavy.”
“Heavy?”
“Elijah was into the real revolutionary stuff,
talked about burning ‘The System’ to the ground,
blowing things up. I begged Billy to get away
from him, but he kept getting in deeper and
deeper…”
July 17, 1969
The pair fell silent the minute Elijah spotted
her coming down the aisle toward their booth. As
Billy turned, boyish smile tinged with adolescent
guilt, Fortson took a long draw on his cigarette
and stared impassively, clinically at her. Donna
felt a chill.
“What’s up?” she asked, sliding in beside Billy.
Donna didn’t try to conceal the suspicion in her
voice.
Elijah crushed his butt with disinterest. “Later,
man,” he murmured, sliding out. Donna sat rigidly
until she heard the bell above the diner’s front
door signal his departure.
“I hear hurricanes ablowing/I know the end is
coming soon,” the radio behind the counter
blares. CCR’s lyrics seem an omen, a portent.
“What was that about?” she demanded. “What’s he
trying to talk you into this time?”
“C’mon,” Billy mumbled, burying his nose in his
coffee. “We were just rapping, you know, about
that asshole Nixon.”
“You c’mon. Elijah’s bad news, Baby — he almost
got your head cracked open at that sit-in last
week. That cop could’ve killed you.”
“Look,” Billy snapped, with a heat that was
emerging more and more often these days. “Elijah
really cares about all the shit that’s going
around. He’s willing to do something about it,
make some noise if he has to.”
Donna felt her chest tighten. “What kind of
noise? What’s he trying to get you into? He’s
going to get you killed, Billy.”
Her boyfriend slammed his coffee cup on the
table. The kids in the booths around them craned
to stare at him. Billy glared murderously back at
them, then turned to see Donna’s ashen, open-
mouthed expression. He shook his head slowly and
seized her hand.
“I’m sorry,” Billy whispered. “I’m sorry, Donna.
I’m just, you know…”
Donna squeezed his soft fingers. “We have to get
away from all this, Baby. From Elijah, from
Hoesch, all of it. Maybe San Francisco, New York.
We could…”
“No,” Billy murmured softly but insistently. “I
can’t just leave right now.”
She released his hand. “Why not?”
“Just,” he stammered, grabbing his coat, “just
stay out of it, OK. For your own sake. Look, I
gotta get back to the lab.”
“Billy,” Donna pleaded as his narrow back
retreated toward the street…
**
Francine blinks. “When Billy was killed, I knew
Elijah had something to do with it. I didn’t know
what to do, so I split — left town to visit a
friend. And then, when Elijah killed those people
in that recruiting office, well, I knew I wasn’t
safe. Elijah would think I knew something and
come after me. So I just stayed gone. I knew a
guy who helped kids get away from the draft, get
to Canada. He turned me into Francine Topher.”
Lilly leans back in her chair. “Why’d you come
back to town?”
Francine smiles weakly. “I managed to get a
nursing degree and eventually a job in Boston. I
met Gerald, my husband, at St. Eligius Hospital,
and after about four months, we got married. Then
he got a shot at neurosurgical chief at
Philadelphia Memorial, of all places. What could
I tell him?
“The funny thing is, I actually ‘met’ Elijah a
few years ago, at a children’s hospital
fundraiser. He’d become some kind of financial
whiz, was on the hospital board. Hell, he was
funny, charming. We talked for maybe an hour over
dinner, and I had no idea. That it was the same
man who’d forced me to throw my life away.”
**
“Detective?”
Vera glances up, a glob of cheese sauce plopping
onto the open folder before him. He swipes two
thick fingers through the sauce with irritation
at the uniform hovering over his desk, licks his
fingertips, and places his half-Philly steak to
the side. Then, as he spots the figure behind the
officer’s shoulder, his brow darkens.
“He asked for Det. Rush, but…” the lanky uniform
starts to explain.
“Yeah, fine,” Vera sighs. First Miller, now this.
“Whaddya want, kid?”
Cole Sear gives Vera the creeps, pure and simple.
The kid provided a tip on a case a year or so
ago, led Lilly to a body in a cellar and a 25-
year-old patricide. But Sear’s claim to commune
with the dead, his unnerving, unremitting calm
chill Vera’s blood more than just a few degrees.
But Lilly seems to like the boy, so…
“I saw him,” Cole states simply. “The man on the
TV last night. The one who was stabbed a long
time ago.”
“Hold on a second, kid…” Vera stops. He suddenly
recalls last night’s Action Team Philly update on
the Fortson case, the grainy archived photo of
Fortson’s alleged victim. “You mean Billy
McHenry?”
Cole nods. A goose walks across Vera’s grave.
“You saw him? What do you–?” the detective’s
eyes widen. “C’mon, kid, give me a break
already.”
“He said it wasn’t him.”
“What wasn’t him?” Vera’s irritation returns.
“I don’t know for sure. We didn’t get to talk for
long.”
Vera plants his elbows on the scarred wood of his
desk. “Didn’t get to talk? Look, Cole, right?
Cole, why don’t you give me your number? We need
any help, we’ll-”
“Actually,” a polite voice murmurs behind Vera’s
shoulder, “I’d kind of like to hear what he has
to say now, if you don’t mind, Detective.”
Vera wheels around to face Mulder, pushing to his
feet. “Sure, Agent – you two oughtta have a ton
to talk about.” The cop begins to stalk away,
then returns, reaches across the desktop, and
snags his Philly steak.
**
Even Mulder is slightly disconcerted by Cole’s
perpetual serenity, but the teen’s story holds
him rapt. “You literally, physically saw him.”
Cole pauses, then sees something in the agent’s
face that puts him at ease. “I see them all. They
need things; sometimes they need me to help them
make things right, sometimes to move on to the
next place.”
“The dead?” Mulder might as well have said “the
Lutherans.”
Cole nods. “My mom and I have been looking for a
new apartment — we had a break-in three weeks
ago, and she doesn’t feel safe any more. So we
were out looking at places.”
“Including Billy McHenry’s place.”
Cole’s face grows serious. “I got bored while my
mom was talking to the manager, and I wandered
off. He was in the hallway. He was dressed like,
you know, like a hippie. And the front of his
shirt was covered with blood. He looked sad,
guilty. He said it wasn’t him.”
“What do you mean? He was the victim, not the
killer.”
“I don’t know. He said it wasn’t him, that it
couldn’t have been him. He wanted me to tell
somebody named Donna. Then some people got off
the elevator, and he disappeared.”
“What do you think he meant?”
“I don’t know — we didn’t talk any more. But
then I saw him on the news — they were talking
about that man who was arrested for bombing those
people.”
“Elijah Fortson.”
Cole nods somberly. “They talked about him being
stabbed, and when they showed his picture, I
decided I should tell Lilly.”
“Det. Rush?”
Cole smiles, secretively.
**
“The guy’s a certified whack job,” Vera sputters,
rubbing his five o’clock shadow. “He’s out there
talking to the Teen Psychic Hotline, who claims
to have had a rap session with our vic, McHenry.”
Lt. Stillman temples his fingers as he eyes the
agitated badger. “What do you want me to do,
Nick?”
“I dunno, call your old army buddy, see if he
can’t reel Mulder and Scully back in.”
“Deputy Director Skinner specifically assigned
Agent Mulder to this case. He said Mulder had a
‘special perspective.'”
“Oh, he’s special, all right,” Vera snorts. “I
just don’t want Barnabas Collins blowing this
case and leaving us with brown on our faces.”
**
Cole Sear blinks as he steps back into the sunny
street. He likes Mulder, trusts him to do the
right thing as he would Lilly. The fat
detective’s hostility doesn’t bother him — Cole
can read the unhappiness and despair behind the
policeman’s brusque manner.
Just as Cole can feel the man’s eyes on him as he
turns the corner. More curious than fearful, he
meets the man’s look. He’s a soldier, his dress
uniform soiled and scuffed, his face full of
agony, full of questions.
In a second, Cole knows. He waits for the light
to turn, and the soldier waits, patiently, for
him to cross over.
**
“Of course, 1969 was largely a blur for many of
us,” Frederic Hoesch muses, liver-spotted fingers
riffling through a stack of journals on his
vintage oak desk. “But this little federal
intrusion certainly takes me back. In some ways,
little has changed since the Summer of Love and
the days of J. Edgar Hoover.”
A resigned glance passes between Agents Mulder
and Scully. Det. Valens suppresses a smirk.
“Prof. Hoesch, We’re just assisting the
Philadelphia Police in an unsolved homicide
investigation. We’re simply interested in
anything you can tell us about William Ericksen’s
death and his possible involvement with Elijah
Fortson.”
The anthropologist locates the monograph he’s
seeking, one on Meso-American birthing rites.
“Yes, I saw you people had finally run Fortson to
ground. The right-wing media no doubt’s breaking
out the Dom Perignon. Another echo of dissent
extinguished in the Land of the Free.”
“Echo of dissent?” Valens smiles incredulously.
“Elijah Fortson blew up a military recruiting
office, killed five people. Including a couple of
high-schoolers. That’s some pretty heavy dissent,
isn’t it, professor?”
Hoesch beams back with a calculating glint and
dazzling teeth – despite his advancing years and
counterculture patois, the dashing intellectual
about campus shines through. “I wouldn’t expect
the VH1 generation to understand the Fight. Back
then, we didn’t trust anybody over 30. Today, I
shudder to think one day of leaving this planet
in the hands of anyone under. The children in
that recruiting office were as much victims of
their government’s propagandistic imperialism as
they were of a Molotov cocktail. We were trying
to expose the lies, get to The Truth. And the
truth frequently hurts.”
“I’m feeling the pain right now,” Mulder sighs.
“You can see we didn’t bring our Mace or our
nightsticks today. Your former graduate student
may have been murdered, and Fortson may well have
committed that murder. Can we stick to that truth
and save the revolution for another day,
Professor?”
The professor leans back, templing his fingers
and regarding the trio squeezed into his tiny
third floor office. “I’ll let you know if you get
too close to my constitutional rights. The truth
is, I guess I have been plagued by the suspicion
that Billy was mixed up in some skullduggery with
Fortson and his group.
“If you look into my record, as I’m sure you
will, you’ll see that back then, I was far more,
ah, simpatico, with the students than the
university fathers might have preferred. Things
were freer in those days — we were allowed to
live our lives without administration dictates,
and we didn’t live under the oppressive fear of
legal liability. Now, even at 70, I have to leave
my door open when some sycophantic coed comes by
to wheedle a passing grade.
“I maintained a more casual relationship with
Billy and my other grad assistants. We often saw
each other off-campus, had endless debates about
society, the war, the environment -”
“What else you have ‘off-campus’?” Valens poses
with a mirthless grin.
“Ah, the young Republican,” Hoesch cackles. “Do
you even know who Cesar Chavez was, amigo? No
matter. Sure, we enjoyed some mind-expanding
experiences from time to time. Is this when I
piss in a cup, Officer?”
“Billy McHenry and Elijah Fortson,” Mulder
prompts.
“Yes. Well, I’d suspected something was up for a
few months – Billy had a sometimes provincial
sense of responsibility, but the last few months,
he’d started coming to the lab exhausted,
distracted, a little jumpy. And secretive. I
remember wondering if something bad might be in
the air the day he was killed…”
July 20, 1969
Fred Hoesch tossed his faculty-issue corduroy
jacket at the nearest table, barely missing an
Aztec sexual fetish he’d acquired during his most
recent Mexican excursion. His ears buzzed with
rage – he’d just been admonished again by the
department chief, who’d vetoed the next such
anthropological expedition.
Hoesch preferred to attribute his precarious
relationship with the university establishment to
his maverick views on the war, the Sexual
Revolution, and American capitalism. In fact, the
professor’s exploration of new sexual frontiers
with the student populace was near-legend, and
his taste in European loafers and living
accommodations belied his socialistic
proclamations. The university had clamped down on
Hoesch’s frequent south-of-the-border “junkets,”
as that buttoned-down department lackey had
called it.
He’d sat through the scolding in uncharacteristic
silence – Hoesch couldn’t very well explain the
importance of his research, not at this point,
not to these people. He felt he was near a
breakthrough, but this changed everything.
“Yeah, I know it’s important!” Billy’s angry
voice reverberated through the anthro lab. It was
a tone Hoesch had heard increasingly from the
once cheerful, if somewhat naïve, boy. The
professor edged closer; Billy was on the phone,
back to Hoesch, lost in his terse exchange.
“I can’t leave right now – Fred’s got me
cataloguing shit,” Billy whispered harshly.
Hoesch had taught him early on that use of titles
promoted class hierarchy. “I know today’s the
day, you don’t have to remind me. Can’t somebody
else…?” The grad assistant ran his fingers
through his shaggy hair. “All right, OK. Of
course, it’s important. Hang tight, I’ll be over
as quick as I can.”
Hoesch retreated as his prodigy loudly cradled
the phone, hastily grabbing his jacket. As Billy
finally turned, he re-entered.
“Hey, Fred,” the student mumbled, mustering a
smile. “Uh, you mind if I cut out for a while?”
“A while?” Fred inquired casually. In fact, the
cataloguing of Incan potsherds had been busy work
for the grad student, but Hoesch relished the
opportunity to flex his muscles a bit. Radical
rhetoric or not, the draft was still in force,
these punks lived and (quite possibly) died by
academic whim.
“The rest of the day, OK?” Billy sounded frantic,
and this fed Hoesch’s sadistic inclinations.
“I’ll come in early tomorrow, stay ’til I get it
all done. Please.”
“That’s what you told me yesterday, remember?”
the professor challenged. “What’s up, man?”
“I can’t – it’s a prior commitment,” Billy
blurted. “You really don’t want to know.
Seriously.”
Hoesch smiled – Billy was too important to his
work to lose. “Hey, Billy, my man, talk to me.”
The smile faltered as something dark flashed in
Billy’s eyes. Maybe the boy wasn’t as naïve as he
appeared. For the first time in their
relationship, Hoesch’s assurance began to
crumble.
“Look, do what you gotta do,” Hoesch relented,
trying to sound nonchalant. “We’ll get back on it
tomorrow.”
Billy sighed, smiled, grabbing his books and
headed for the door. “Thanks, man. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Hoesch echoed hollowly.
**
“Except, of course, there was no tomorrow,”
Frederic Hoesch concluded. “I had my suspicions
about Elijah and the rest of the crowd Billy’d
fallen in with, but in those days, we didn’t
exactly trust the fuzz – the cops. As if they
cared about one dead kid.”
“Yeah, as if,” Valens muses.
“Well, thanks for your time, Professor,” Mulder
smiles, standing. He pauses. “By the way, I
really liked your paper on psilocybic mushrooms.”
A thick silence falls over the office, and Hoesch
rushes to break it. “Why, Agent, I’m surprised a
federal functionary like yourself would be
interested in my esoteric research, much less
willing to dust off old academic monographs. Why,
I haven’t done any work in that area for, what,
25 years or so.”
“Actually, closer to 35,” Mulder amends. He
raises his right hand in a dated ‘V’ formation.
“Peace, Doc.”
**
“What was all that crap about mushrooms?” Valens
demands, ducking a student biker racing across
the quad.
“Dr. Hoesch was being uncharacteristically
modest.” Mulder’s wheels are turning now — his
stride is unbroken. “I thought the name was
familiar. See, I have something of an interest in
anthropology myself. Well, some of the more
arcane aspects, anyway.”
Scully chortles. Valens’ sense of falling through
the looking glass deepens.
“In the ’60s, Frederic Hoesch was one of the
world’s foremost experts in Mesoamerican
religious rites. The Mayans, the Aztecs had some
fascinating spiritual alternatives to bingo and
bar mitzvahs — multiple dieties and universes,
human sacrifices. during the four-day dedication
of the Aztec Templo Mayor in 1487, at least
10,000 captives were sacrificed to the gods. Now
that’s volume. And when it was Miller time, our
Aztec friends liked to kick back with peyotl and
teonanácatl, known as the ‘sacred mushroom.’
Valens perks. Finally, something his cop’s
sensibility can wrap around. “Peyotl? Like
peyote?”
“Shrooms, dude. I’m sure that as the Age of
Aquarius dawned, certain aspects of Hoesch’s
curriculum captured the youthful imagination.
Teonanácatl was the magic mushroom of choice for
Aztec, Nahua, Mazatec, Olmec, Mixtecs, Zapotec,
Mayan and other pre-Columbian shamans across
southern Mexico and Central America. They called
it ‘God’s flesh’ — it contains a compound,
psilocybin, that’s been linked to visions or
hallucinations in those who consume it. The
shamans incorporated it into their rites to
invoke gods and spirits, visit higher planes of
existence, even link consciousnesses, according
to some accounts.”
“Getting a little out there, Agent Mulder,”
Valens cautions.
“The phenomenon’s not confined to Mesoamerican
culture, Detective. Scientists and travelers for
centuries have passed on tales of nomadic Russian
reindeer herders who ritually ingested fly agaric
mushrooms to obtain contact with the ‘spiritual’
dimension. Gets lonely out there on the steppes,
I guess. Actually, the word ‘shaman’ itself comes
from the Siberian Tungus ‘saman’ — diviner,
magician, doctor, creator of ecstasy, the
mediator between the human world and the
supernatural.”
Valens blocks Mulder. “I’m beginning to think I
need a mediator between the human world and you.
Look, Mulder — I watched Altered States on HBO a
few years ago. William Hurt eats some bad
mushroom soup and turns into a monkey. This case
is cold enough without dragging in the ancient
Aztecs and the Zappa fans and the Mixalots.
What’s all this got to do with Billy McHenry?”
Mulder smiles. “Most North Americans didn’t even
know about teonanácatl up here until a 1957 Life
magazine article on ethnomycology – the study of
the cultural and historical use of fungi. You
think that wouldn’t have been catnip for an up-
and-coming anthropologist like Fred Hoesch? Back
in ’69, the Lost Generation smoked, ate, snorted,
licked, and injected almost anything that would
blow their collective minds. Even crawdads, if
we’re to put stock in The Beverly Hillbillies.
What better laboratory for a Mesoamerican
anthropologist trying to tap the secrets of the
shamans? A sort of shaman for the 20th Century,
himself, able to influence young minds with his
intellect and the powers of academic life, death,
and military deferment?”
Realization blossoms on Scully’s face. “You don’t
think…”
“Wait a minute, hold on,” Valens murmurs, anger
furrowing his brow. “You think that bastard was
experimenting on McHenry and those other kids?”
He glares up at Hoesch’s office window.
“You heard him — he hasn’t published anything
about psilocybes over the last three decades. You
think a man of Hoesch’s ego wouldn’t have chewed
our ears off about some of his most impressive
academic work?”
“Hoesch would have made frequent trips south of
the border with the university, probably with
federal research money and under the bureaucratic
radar screen,” Scully muses. “It sounds like he
was a mentor, even a hero, to Billy and his other
students. But if this is true, it raises the
question, Mulder: Was Billy McHenry Hoesch’s
innocent lab rat, or was he his assistant in any
experiments? My god, could he have been dosing
his own roommates, even his girlfriend?”
“Not that I’m saying I buy all this,” Valens
drawls, “but what are we gonna do about Hoesch?
Can we prove any of this?”
“First rule of detective work,” Mulder announces
solemnly, surveilling a clutch of passing coeds.
“Talk to the squeeze.”
**
“I never knew who Billy’s dealer was,” Francine
tells Lilly, pouring her another cup of coffee.
“Elijah generally supplied the pot or the LSD for
the group. Billy just turned up with the
mushrooms one night. Said a friend had smuggled
them in from Mexico.”
“We think maybe it was Billy’s professor, Dr.
Hoesch,” Lilly suggests. The team agreed Lilly
and Scully should do the second interview with
the already-wary fugitive, but the agent sips
quietly, giving the detective the lead.
“Hoesch,” Francine breathes, with an intensity
and a venom that sparks a look between her
guests. “I wouldn’t have thought of the great
professor as a drug dealer. I tried never to
think of him at all. He put the moves on me one
time at Billy’s place, when Billy was late
getting home from a rally. I let him know I
wasn’t available. In a very definitive and,
hopefully, painful way.” She and Lilly exchange a
fleeting, sisterly smile. “So he was supplying
Billy with drugs, too. Wonderful.”
“Did you ever take any of the mushrooms, Mrs.
Topher?”
“Absolutely not. Bad enough what the weed and the
acid probably did to our brains back then. I told
Billy he and the guys shouldn’t be messing with
that stuff, but he laughed it off, said I was a
prude.”
“You know how many times the guys took them?”
“At least five, maybe six times. I remember, one
night, when Billy and the boys wanted to show
Elijah how enlightened they were, they invited
this homeless guy up to the apartment and they
all got high together. Some crazy guy, they
called him The Horseman, could’ve freaked out and
killed all of them.” Francine returns to the
present with a defensive expression. “I hope that
didn’t sound racist, but the guys always fell all
over themselves trying to prove to Elijah that
they understood the plight of the ‘brothers,’
that a bunch of suburban white bread teenagers
could identify with decades of oppression and
struggle. Elijah ate it up, even though I think
something might’ve happened, because Billy
avoided the old bum, the homeless guy, after
that.”
“Along with the mushrooms,” Lilly prompts.
Francine nods. “Were you ever there when they
used them?”
Francine shivers, drawing her expensive sweater
about her shoulders. “Just once.”
June 4, 1969
“Shit,” Donna sighed as she juggled Billy’s extra
key and the sack from the market. Milk sloshed
and beans rattled — their so-called “vegetarian”
diet of rice, legumes, and greens was the product
not of ideology but of economics. Billy was too
proud to admit that meat was a luxury on their
meager combined incomes (although he never turned
down the flesh of God’s creatures when it came
with special sauce and an order of fries and
somebody else was buying).
Billy’d been working extra hard and late at the
lab these days — he worshiped that pig Hoesch,
even though if she ever told him how his hero’d
tried to get into her pants… Anyway, she’d wanted
to fix him a special meal — her roommate was
holding down the fort, and maybe Billy might be
back in the mood for love and reconciliation.
But the Stones threw cold water on her hopes for
the evening. Jagger’s voice beyond the flimsy
apartment door taunted her: “You can’t always get
what you want…” The Stones were Vince and Ted’s
favorite mood music for artificial mood
elevation.
Donna considered leaving, but she remained
concerned about the company Billy’d been keeping.
Elijah frightened her — whenever she was around,
he studied her. It wasn’t like Hoesch’s
eyefucking — he seemed to be appraising her, her
intelligence. And what was this heavyweight
militant doing hanging out with children like
Billy and Vince and Ned? Elijah was a scary dude,
but she knew instinctively his wary respect for
her was the key to protecting Billy from getting
in too deep with him.
Donna took a deep breath, sucking in the cannabis
fumes that saturated the hallway, and nudged open
the door. She awaited Billy’s dumb stoned grin of
recognition, Ned and Vince’s lascivious giggles
as they checked her out, Elijah’s reptilian
stare, appraising and challenging. But there was
none of that tonight.
The four men sat in a circle on the threadbare
rag rug in the lotus position, wrists up, fingers
twitching. Their eyes were open, wide open, but
they gazed at nothing, or, Donna thought with a
shudder, something beyond Billy’s shabby
apartment, beyond this world.
“Baby,” she whispered, dropping the bag. A potato
rolled across the floor and ricocheted off
Vince’s right foot. It didn’t register. “Billy!”
Donna gasped, kneeling beside him. He stared
straight ahead, wonder blooming in his
expression.
“BILLY!” she screamed, slapping him hard. She
fell back in terror as four heads snapped. Eight
eyes began to blink, strain against the light of
the hallway.
Donna clambered to her feet, stumbling over a
chair as she backed toward the doorway. Elijah’s
head whipped up, eyes filled with irritation.
Billy’s hand went to his cheek. “Hey, Babe! Hey,
what’s wrong?”
Donna didn’t stop running until she hit the
corner.
**
“Ah, Ned and I travel in different circles these
days,” Father Vincent admits, his battered oak
office chair groaning as he dips back into time.
“I’ve come a million miles from that place,
spiritually as well as physically. I never see
any of them any more — Ned, Donna, Bill-”
The priest’s face fills with pain, and for a
moment, Lilly glimpses the unlined face of the
young man who’d forsaken sex and drugs and rock
and roll for a Roman collar, celibacy, and Latin
homilies. “Sometimes, I forget Billy’s dead,
although I’ll never forget finding him like that,
torn and… You know, beyond the horror of that
moment, I’m haunted by the regret that Billy died
without the rites.” Father Vincent grins
guiltily. “The job, I suppose. It’s just that we
were all so confused, made so many bad choices
back then. But Billy had a certain honor, grace,
I suppose you could say. Love and peace – it
wasn’t all lip service to him. But he was in such
turmoil near the end. I guess I’m haunted by the
idea that he died with his soul still in
turmoil.”
Mulder and Lilly exchange a glance. She breaks
the connection quickly. “What do you think was
behind the turmoil, Father?”
“It was an era of turmoil,” he shrugs, searching
the yellowing ceiling of his office. “He was
under a lot of pressure at school, and, tell you
the truth, Billy never seemed cut out for the
liberated lifestyle of the late ’60s.”
At that moment, Lilly, Mulder, and Scully
simultaneously know the priest is lying. Eyes
down, searching for the truth, eyes up, fishing
for a convenient lie.
“How about Elijah Fortson?” Lilly probes. “Kind
of heavy company for a choirboy.”
The chair creaks as Father Vincent returns to the
present. Again, his eyes betray him, refusing to
meet with the detective’s. “If you think Billy
was involved in any way in that bombing, then you
have no idea how much he revered life, respected
it. To this day, I can’t conceive of any reason
for anyone killing him.”
“There was someone else,” Mulder ventures. “You
remember a man you and Billy used to call The
Horseman?”
Father Vincent chuckles, surprising both of them.
“Sorry. It’s just, well, you’re really barking up
the wrong tree now. Sure, he presented a pretty
scary figure at the time, shouting fire and
brimstone and waving that beat-up Gideon Bible at
the ‘drunkards’ and ‘harlots’ on the street. He
was stoned out of his mind most of the time, full
of his own demons, but he couldn’t have killed
Billy any more than I could have.”
The priest catches Mulder’s small, questioning
smile, and straightens in his chair.
“Homicide questioned him the day of the murder,”
Lilly notes, “But they never got a name. To them,
he was just some crazy homeless guy.”
A smile crosses the clergyman’s lined face. “It’s
astonishing to me the impact God’s humblest
creatures can have. If not for that ‘crazy,
homeless guy,’ I might not be here right now. I
can’t explain how, but somehow, he got to me,
spiritually. You know, it was only a few months
after Billy’s death that I joined the seminary.”
Mulder glances at the Virgin Mary on the wall
behind the priest. “You ever see him after you
moved back to the neighborhood?”
Three decades seem to fall from Father Vincent’s
face as the corner of his mouth twitches. “You
might say so. Follow me.”
**
“The father, he asked the diocese ‘specially to
get assigned to this parish,” Melvin Johnson
explains, polishing the silver candlestick slowly
and lovingly as Mulder and Rush hold down
opposite ends of the front pew. St. Bartholomew’s
sexton surveys his work, a beatific smile of
satisfaction parting his creased, purple lips. He
moves onto a chalice, thumb working the chamois
rag. “By this time, I’d lost my taste for the
Word. Left Alabama in, oh, musta been ’65. I
lived right down the road from where them two
little girls got blowed up – had my own church
then, African Methodist Episcopal, but them girls
dyin’ like that, well, guess it shook me some.
Found I couldn’t climb up in that pulpit no more,
tell the folks about Sweet Jesus’s love and
everlasting light.”
The stooped old man Billy McHenry called The
Horseman stops rubbing, peers at his young
visitors through thick lenses. “Got it into my
head I’d come up north, take the Word to the
street. ‘Cept the body’s weak, amen, and I fell
into some sorry and sinful ways. Spose I was
drinkin’ and druggin’ those children’s deaths out
of my head – I forgot about the love of the Lord
and started passin’ my own prideful judgment on
anybody would look my way.”
He blinks, smils sheepishly. “Got to pardon me –
havin’ one of them senior moments. Anyway, that
poor boy’s murder, it’s like it just stole away
what little scrap was left of my faith. Lost my
taste for the Word, though not for the grape and
the grain and the weed. Didn’t hardly recognize
Father Vincent when he came to see me at one of
the downtown missions, oh my, musta been 30, more
years ago. Offered me some work here in the
church, three squares, and a warm bed where the
junkies couldn’t cut my throat. I told him where
he could put all that, but he kept on comin’ down
and keepin’ at me ’til I came back with him, most
probably just to shut him up.” Johnson cackled,
showing crooked but white teeth.
Lilly leans forward. “And you’ve been here ever
since?”
“The father, he saved my life – have mercy, I
wouldn’ta lasted more’n a few years, way I was
headed.” Johnson replaces the chalice with
reverence, and sat down on the altar step with a
serious expression. “So what do you two want with
Father Vincent? This about that boy’s murder?”
“The homicide report says you didn’t move from
your spot on the street between the time Billy
McHenry entered his apartment and the police
interviewed you about the killing,” Mulder
prompts. “But did you remember seeing anyone else
go in or out of McHenry’s apartment building the
day of the murder?”
Johnson’s eyes flick toward Father Vincent, who
nods encouragement. “Well, I remembered the boy –
he’d always been nice to me, give me a buck or
some supper when he could swing it, even invited
me to come up and visit with his friends once or
twice. And that man, fella on the TV last few
weeks.”
“Elijah Fortson?” Lilly offers.
Johnson’s eyes narrow. “He was the serpent, that
man. Tempted them lost children with drugs and
evil talk about doing violence to others.”
“Did you see Fortson the day of the murder?”
“No, ma’am. Just…”
Mulder cranes forward, eyebrows raised.
“It’s all right, Melvin,” the father smiles.
Johnson nods, relieved. “‘Fraid I wasn’t what you
might’ve called a reliable witness back then. All
I remember was the words of Genesis coming out of
my mouth and the Virgin Mary.”
“The Virgin Mary?” Lilly inquires gently.
Melvin’s face wrinkles with mirth. “Had had me a
taste of the Thunderbird ‘fore I went out to
preach that day. Helped me wind up and give the
folks what-for. Some times, when I’d had me a nip
or two, I’d see the Devil hisself holdin’ up a
lamppost, or maybe a chorus of angels in front of
the liquor store. That day, it was the Virgin
Mary. Mighta been a sign, maybe. Probably the
‘Bird, though.” The Horseman squints lovingly up
at the Virgin Mother, beaming down from the
stained glass at her recovered child, Melvin.
“Praise be.”
“Amen,” Father Vincent echoes.
**
“You got my Liberty Bell shotglass yet?”
Mulder grins, wiping the grit from his eyes.
Scully stirs with a semi-conscious grunt, and he
silently crawls from underneath the covers and
pads to the bathroom.
“It’s two o’clock, you little Neanderthal,”
Mulder yawns into his cell phone.
“Space: Above and Beyond marathon on the Sci-Fi
Network,” Frohike explains. “Now we’ve got some
kinda infomercial for rubber cookware. You want
to know what I found out, or not? I’m probably
missing a Kari Wuhrer flick on Skinemax.”
“Shoot.”
“Disgruntled ex-NSA guy Byers knows says Army
Intelligence was doing some classified field
experiments back in ’71. Real hush-hush, black
ops stuff, but they put it on film, and a couple
years later, he got a matinee showing of a
bootleg copy.
“The movie looked to be shot in Vietnam or
Cambodia, in some little Podunk area. It was a
squad of Special Forces guys on a raid of some
village. Real My Lai stuff, Mulder – some bad
shit. Even Byers’ ex-spook gets nightmares from
it occasionally. These guys wipe out a whole
village – men, women, old folks, even kids.”
“God.”
“Makes you wonder. But what’s creepier, if that
ain’t bad enough, is the way these Special Forces
guys operated. Byers’ buddy says they were
practically like machines, as if they were all
plugged into the same X-Box. Total stealth, no
commands or chatter, but these dozen or so guys
offed everybody in the village, 40 or so people,
in less than 20 minutes, without sustaining so
much as a hangnail…”
Mulder lowers himself onto the toilet lid.
“Mulder? Hey, Mulder?”
“Yeah, sorry,” the agent drawls.
“Here’s the even freakier part. The guy who
showed Byers’ buddy the film, maybe about 20
years ago? He was some kind of researcher our NSA
guy knew from college. Anyway, he said he’d been
involved in the Army thing, but didn’t know until
afterwards about the massacre. Mr. Science wanted
to know if he should take the movie to Mike
Wallace or Geraldo or somebody. Didn’t you say
there was some kind of university geek involved
in your case?”
“I dunno. Sounds like your guy might have had a
rudimentary conscience of some kind. Our guy
makes Rupert Murdoch look like Mary Kate and
Ashley.”
“Actually, my guy’s guy thought breaking the
story on 60 Minutes might be good for a book
deal.”
“That’s our Fred,” Mulder concludes. “I assume
Byers’ guy wised him up, had him bury the movie
under 30 feet of concrete.”
“Obviously. What’s going on out there, Mulder?”
“I think some seriously bad mojo.”
**
“These days, I have trouble enough remembering
when I took my last piss,” Ray Espinshade
chuckles, adjusting his bulk in the sunroom easy
chair to accommodate an ill-concealed colostomy
bag. There is a tinge of green in Vera’s polite
grimace. “But that certainly was one day I’ll
never forget. Just my luck to have stayed late
that afternoon doing the books. Hey, kid, you
wanna hand me that juice?”
The ‘kid,’ Jeffreys, locates a large teal cup,
labeled ‘Property of Liberty Manor Care Center,’
and hands in gently to the elderly ex-jeweler.
Espinshade sucks noisily at his beverage; Vera’s
feels a roll of the stomach.
“I’d finally made everything come out even, and I
was gonna take the late Mrs. Espinshade out for a
steak. That’s when that car came screaming around
the corner like a bat outta hell. When it
screeched to a stop across the street, I thought
maybe it was a heist – I usually kept about a
million in inventory in the office safe. I almost
made in my pants. Back then, it wasn’t as easy as
it is now, eh?” The fleshy old man cackles.
Vera laughs weakly.
“But then I see they’re in front of the
recruiting office.”
“Two of them, right?” Jeffreys clarifies.
“One driving, one with a bottle. It was one of
those Molotov thingies, you know, with the rag
stuffed in the bottle? Well, the passenger with
the bottle, he jumps out, lights the rag, and
flings it through the window of the joint, jumps
back in the car, and they screech off, burning
rubber. I tried to get a peek at the license
plate, but then, whoosh! The front of the
building just blows out, like in a movie, and
there’s fire everywhere. I ran back upstairs and
called the cops. Like I told ’em, though, these
guys had hoods over their heads – I couldn’t see
nothing.” Espinshade places his juice cup on an
end table next to his wheelchair and looks from
Vera to Jeffreys. “Hey, you didn’t catch the
guys, did you?’
“We think we’ve got one,” Jeffreys offers.
“Wow, great, great. Damned hippies, always
blowing up something back then. Burning the draft
cards, burning the bras, while guys like me were
busting our asses working.” Espinshade sighs,
reaches for his cup, withdraws. “Well, I guess it
ain’t any worse than now, with the gang kids and
that hippety-hop crap my grandson listens to. At
least some of the kids had a little respect back
then, a little religion. Like the kid with the
beads.”
“Beads?” Jeffreys inquires, drawing an annoyed
glance from Vera. The clock on Espinshade’s
bedstand indicates it’s Miller Time.
Espinshade suddenly seems distracted. “Beads? Oh,
yeah, the kid with the beads. Yeah, this was
about two weeks after the Army joint went up.
They still hadn’t cleaned up the rubble, and I
was watching for a crew to come around. Well, I’m
working late again – so what else is new? – and I
look out the window and see this hippie kid
standing in front of the burnt-out building. He
like gets down on his knee on the sidewalk where
the door used to be.”
Vera lifts his left buttock from the edge of
Espinshade’s bed. Jeffreys comes to attention, as
well. “Mr. Espinshade, did you tell the police
about seeing this man?” Jeffreys asks, gently.
The old man cackles. “Hell, no. Just some kid
came to pay his respects to the dead. At first, I
thought maybe he was up to something. I yelled
out the window, ‘What are you doing, punk!,’ and
he drops something and runs off. I high-tail it
across the street to see what kind of crap he’s
trying to pull. But all he’d done was leave some
beads in front of the place. You know, like how
they leave that shit where the Twin Towers were?
Wasn’t anything to tell the cops about. Besides.”
Espinshade raises a puffy hand, waves the
detectives closer.
“Besides,” he whispers. “They were a sweet piece
of work, these beads. Antique stuff, Italian, I
made it. So I kept ’em. I’da told those dumbass
cops, they woulda taken ’em for ‘evidence.’ You
know what ‘evidence’ means, right? Some cop buys
his girlfriend a new outfit. Hey, don’t put that
in your article or whatever, OK, guys?”
**
“Antique beads?” Mulder scowled, sipping his
beer.
“Yeah,” Vera chuckles, his goodwill toward the
agent improving with each round. “Tells us flat
out he stole ’em. Sad thing is, he got robbed a
few months later, and they’re long gone.”
A half-dozen similar conversations are drifting
about the pub along with the smoke and the yeasty
smell of hops and malt. It’s a cop bar, and half
the PPD’s first shift is drowning its sorrows
over bad busts, dimwitted perps, liberal judges,
and the new tide of victims the day has washed
in.
Jeffreys plops a bowl of popcorn on the wobbly
laminated table and pulls out a chair. “Thirty-
five years, he’s sitting on a possible lead, all
because he was afraid of a petty theft charge.”
“More likely, Mr. Espinshade didn’t want anyone
to know he’d stolen from a memorial,” Scully
suggests. “You said he saw the hippie at about
the same time the recruiting office had been
bombed two weeks earlier. Don’t you think that’s
an odd coincidence.”
“It was in the papers, on the news,” Lilly notes.
“It could’ve been just what Espinshade suggested
– a simple gesture of respect. But why beads? It
seems like an awfully personal item.”
“Exactly.” Mulder began to tear the label from
his Bud. “Maybe they had some relevance for the
bomber or the victims. In ancient funereal rites,
beads often signified…”
“God, give it a rest,” Vera growls, slapping his
bottle on the phony wood grain.
“Kid psychics who talk to the dead, feds who talk
like some dweeb at a Trekkie convention, freaking
mad scientists. I’m mean, listen to yourself.”
“Nick,” Valens cautions.
Mulder is unperturbed. “In the ’60s and ’70s, the
Soviets conducted extensive experiments with ESP,
with remote viewing, in the hopes of beefing up
military and intelligence capabilities. Why
couldn’t the U.S. military not explore
psychotropic compounds that might enable spies or
soldiers to share their consciousness, their
thoughts? Imagine the implications for ground or
even air combat of those capabilities could be
refined.”
“Aw, Jesus, you’re freaking nuts,” Vera says.
“He’s freaking nuts. I can’t take this crap any
more…”
“Nick, man,” Valens murmurs. “Thought you said
you were gonna take it easy on the stuff, right?”
Vera sinks back into his chair, petulant. “Yeah,
you want me to say a few dozen Hail Marys?”
The silence that ensues is not one of discomfort
or embarrassment. As realization dawns first
Agent Scully’s, then Lilly’s face, Vera blinks.
“What?” he demands.
**
“Was it Elijah’s idea, or yours?” Lilly asks.
When she is greeted by silence, she continues.
“We found out your brother had been shot down
over Cambodia six months before the bombing.
Elijah wanted to make a noise. Did you tell him
where to make it?”
“How did you ever…?”
“I think you were angry and in anguish over your
brother’s death, but I don’t think you’re a
violent person by nature,” Mulder suggests. “I
think this, all of this, was your reaction to
what you did 35 years ago. You were overcome with
grief after killing those people. Fortson
disappeared, but you couldn’t. Your conscience
wouldn’t let you. That’s why you went back, why
you left that rosary at the recruiting office.”
“It was my grandmother’s.” Father Vincent
Gillesco’s tense expression eases. Lilly detects
what appears to be relief on the priest’s face.
“Elijah told me they were responsible for killing
Tony, for killing all those thousands of boys who
went over to fight for God knows what.” He laughs
bitterly at the irony of his comment, and his
fingers stray over his desk blotter. “I shouldn’t
try to dump my responsibility on Elijah – he
simply channeled the hatred that had been boiling
up inside me. Billy’s death had merely added to
my anger, my confusion.
“I had no idea those people were in that office –
it was after hours. We just wanted to make a
statement. I suppose this is my statement, as
well. A hollow one, I suppose, for those people,
their families. I guess taking Melvin in was a
statement, too.”
“Father, we’re going to have to take you in,”
Lilly informs him, rising reluctantly.
The graying priest nods, closing his eyes for
just a moment, then regarding the cross over the
door beyond the cop and the agents.
“Yes,” he finally breathes. “If I could just…”
Because of the Roman collar, the clergyman’s
subdued demeanor, they fail to comprehend what’s
happening until Father Vincent has pulled open
the center drawer and hoisted the blue steel
revolver.
Lilly’s weapon is out in a second and leveled at
the priest. “Drop it, Father!” she yells as
Mulder and Scully draw down.
Father Vincent smiles sadly, his arm crooking and
the barrel dimpling his temple. “It’s a
technicality at best, Det. Rush, but I wouldn’t
want this on your soul.”
“Father,” Scully cautions tersely. “You have to
know that what you’re proposing to do…”
“Is a sin? You know, I took this gun from a young
man, 14 — a member of one of the neighborhood
gangs who’s run drugs since he was nine. He was
going to kill the man who runs the convenience
store around the corner, because he was
disrespectful to his mother. The boy told me this
in confession – wanted me to absolve him in
advance for the senseless act of violence he
intended to commit. Thank God I was able to help
him see, to convince him to give up his gun and
his plan. Now I wonder if this wasn’t part of
some other larger plan…”
“You know that isn’t so,” Scully counters.
“Please, Father. This isn’t part of any plan.”
“Perhaps there isn’t any plan.” The sound of the
hammer cocking fills the room.
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have
called you by name, you are mine…” Melvin
Johnson’s words reverberate throughout the room,
enveloping its four armed inhabitants like
amniotic fluid. Lilly’s aim remains steadfast,
but her eyes dart momentarily toward the
arthritic, nearly blind old man. “When you pass
through the waters, I will be with you; and
through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm
you.”
The hand holding the revolver begins to tremble.
Melvin hobbles past Lilly and the federal agents.
Despite the deadly gravity of the situation,
despite he is smiling, lovingly, paternally down
at the agent of his salvation. “You remember
that, Father? You comin’ down there to read
scripture to some crazy old drunk druggie?
Thought to myself, ‘Who’s this white boy try to
tell me the word of the Lord, try to save me?
Who’s he think he is?’ ‘Member what I told you
you could do with your scripture, Father?” Melvin
cackled, turning to Lilly and the agents.
“Goodness, can’t repeat it in polite company. But
you wouldn’t leave me, even with me cussing and
hollerin’ at you to get your white ass outta my
alleyway. Say, why don’t you all put them guns
down? Man my age could have an infarction. You
too, now, Father.”
Eyes ablaze with uncertainty, Mulder lowers his
weapon. Lilly follows, and Scully relaxes her
aim.
Melvin nods. “That’s better. C’mon, now, Father.
No place for this in the Lord’s house. I ain’t
gonna tell that boy you took his pistol away just
so you could shed your own blood. Got enough
bloodshed out there, without you blaspheming His
house.” The sexton’s voice takes on an edge.
“Father? Son?”
“Forgive me,” Father Vincent whispers, easing the
hammer back and placing the gun on his blotter.
“There, now,” Melvin murmurs, gnarled fingers
reaching out to stroke the priest’s graying hair.
“I will be with you, son.”
**
Her eyes aching, Lilly sets aside the thick
McHenry casefile as the doorbell sounds. One of
the “girls” is draped over her thigh; the
detective gentle disengages her and peers through
the peephole.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Detective,” Agent
Scully murmurs as the door swings open. “But I
had a theory I wanted to bounce off you.”
“Sure.” Lilly, confused, steps aside and ushers
her guest into the living room. “I don’t mind,
but why me? And why not in the morning?”
“Well, I think you and I are in a better position
to evaluate my theory, and– Oh my.”
Lilly suppresses a smile as the “girls” greet
Scully, caressing her thigh with low, pleasured
rumblings. The agent stares down at the one-eyed
feline and her three-legged companion.
“Are they, um, are they rescue animals?” Scully
asks, anxiously.
“You want some tea or some decaf, Agent?”
“Ah, tea, but only if you’re having some.” Lilly
notices for the first time that Scully is
carrying a large shopping bag from one of the
major Philly department stores.
Lilly nods and heads for the kitchenette. “And
what is my special position, Agent?”
“Dana.”
“Lilly.”
Scully settles onto the couch as the girls follow
their owner into the galley. “I got to thinking
about Billy McHenry’s behavior and actions in the
period before the murder. His fatigue, his work
in Hoesch’s lab falling off. His erratic comings
and goings and that phone conversation Hoesch
heard — McHenry’s emphasizing his commitment,
his realization about what was ‘important.’ Our
assumption has been that McHenry was involved in
some kind of activity most like with Elijah
Fortson. But there is another possible
interpretation that explains everything,
including the forensic evidence at the crime
scene.”
Lilly emerges, a cup of steaming liquid in each
hand. “And that is?”
Scully reaches into the bag and withdraws a stack
of videotapes. “I wanted to see if I could get
some kind of confirmation, so I stopped by the
local TV stations and had them dub off some news
footage for roughly a year prior to McHenry’s
death. Do you have a VCR?”
Lilly nods. “I guess there goes C.S.I., huh?”
**
” ‘Donna’ came to Philadelphia in October 1967 —
she and her parents had had a falling out, and
she left Bucks County to come to school here.”
Scully punches the “Play” button, and she and
Lilly are transported to a slightly discolored
era of love and peace and discontent. A solid
blue line of uniforms stand rooted silently
before a mass of young people chanting their
displeasure at the war a world away, at the
corruption of absolute power. Scully hits
“Pause,” and the chanting stops. “See, there’s
Donna, Mrs. Topher. In the white tank top and
bellbottoms and the granny glasses. McHenry’s
right behind her. This is in August 1968.”
Lilly peers at the willowy, unfocused young
woman. “OK…”
Scully stops and pops the tape and shoves another
into the Panasonic, glancing momentarily at the
cyclopean creature rubbing her forearm. “This
tape is from three months later — it’s a sit-in
at the university student union. There’s Donna,
next to the man in the dashiki near the bulletin
board.”
“Plumped up some over the winter,” Lilly murmurs.
“Guess the bra-burning must’ve been a huge
success.”
“Remember that.”
“Huh?”
“OK, let’s fast-forward to February 1969 — Nixon
protest at City Hall. Donna’s once again in
attendance, with McHenry.”
“Where? I don’t see her?”
Scully shakes her head. “No, you just don’t
recognize her. She’s changed her fashion
statement and gained some more weight. Look in
front of the podium — the girl in the poncho and
the flower girl dress.”
“She was getting into the role,” Lilly suggests.
“I don’t think so. That’s a heavy wool poncho,
and according to the U.S. Weather Service, this
was one of Philadelphia’s warmest Februaries on
record.”
Lilly sinks back onto the couch, scrutinizing the
flower child who would become a society matron.
“I don’t see where you’re going, Dana.”
Scully pauses the tape and turns to the cop. “I
searched all the archives of the three major
affiliates in town, and this apparently was
Donna’s last on-camera appearance until May 1969,
at a peace rally downtown. Look at her.” She zips
ahead to Philadelphia in the spring.
“Ah, the braless look returns,” Lilly grins. “She
must have shed a few for the tank top season.”
“I don’t think so,” Scully counters quietly.
“That’s why I wanted your perspective. A woman’s
perspective.”
**
“We lost another one last night,” Janice Grey
sighs, riffling through the hospice pantry for
the Celestial Seasonings. She locates the Red
Zinger, and turns to Lilly and Scully. “Twenty-
six, he was. Astonishing. War was killing them
then, now its AIDS and the gangs. If I wasn’t
such a hard-bitten atheist, I’d almost believe
there was a perverse design at work – a sort of
cosmic bent toward our own extinction. Sugar,
Det. Rush?”
“No, thanks, Doctor.” At a crucial point in her
life, Janice was an outlaw, a criminal, in some
people’s view, a villain. She and Lilly had met a
year or so ago, when the latter was investigating
a ’69 double murder linked to Philadelphia’s
underground abortion parlors.
Dr. Grey lowers a teabag into each of the three
mugs on the breakroom table and then her thin,
arthritic frame into a chair beside the cop and
the agent. “I assume you’re here about my former
practice. No violent death here – at least no
violence within the context of your job. You want
to know about one of my girls?”
“This one would’ve been different,” Lilly
murmurs.
**
“It was 1969,” Lilly begins. “Chaos and confusion
everywhere. A war over there, battle lines being
drawn here. People dropping out, running away,
searching for identity. It was a lot easier back
then to just disappear, to fade into the
background. Wasn’t it?”
Francine Topher stares impassively at the
detective across the interrogation table, as
Mulder, Scully, and Valens hang back. She’s come
in without Joe Miller this time, but she’s not
volunteering anything.
“Donna Geistner vanishes, Francine Topher comes
whol into the world. Even today, shredding one
identity and creating another one’s no easy task.
But back then, kids were being shuttled to Canada
under the radar screen, drug distributors and
dealers were networking before Microsoft even
burned its first piece of software, and
underground clinics were popping up all over the
city to clean up after all the free love going
around.”
Francine’s eyes flicker away for a nanosecond.
Lilly kneels beside her. “Something was upsetting
Billy, occupying him, those last few months
before his death. We thought it was something
criminal, maybe something to do with Elijah
Fortson. We were wrong.”
“McHenry was distracted,” Scully takes the ball.
“He was tired, and his studies and work were
suffering. A phone would ring and he’d leave the
university lab, abruptly, with no explanation.
Dr. Hoesch overheard him talking to someone,
agitated, guilty, defensive. McHenry had some
kind of appointment or obligation he clearly
viewed as a burden.”
Lilly rises to her feet, retrieves a folder from
the head of the table, and opens it for
Francine’s inspection. She leafs through the
photos of the girl who would become Francine
Topher, and looks up, baffled.
“We took these from news footage of events you
participated in from August 1968 to May 1969,”
the detective explains. “During that period, you
went from willowy slimness to buxom
voluptuousness to ponchoed plumpness,
disappearing from the public eye for about two
months before re-emerging, once again a willowy
wisp of a girl. You know where we’re heading,
don’t you, Mrs. Topher?”
Francine’s hands are now clutched on the
tabletop, knuckles as pale and exsanguinated as
her face.
“It’s all there in these photos – a gradual
weight gain, increased breast size, the attempts
to conceal your abdomen the last few months,”
Agent Scully murmurs. “With the braless look that
became so popular in the sixties, I can even see
the symptomatic darkening of the areolae
surrounding your nipples. Billy wasn’t
disappearing from the lab to plot with Elijah and
Vincent. He was babysitting.”
The room is still. Suddenly, with a slow,
tremulous expulsion of air, Francine remembers to
breathe.
“Janice Grey helped you give birth in April
1969,” Lilly continues, softly. “Helped you have
Billy McHenry’s baby. It was Billy’s, wasn’t it?”
Francine nods absently.
“You carried that child to term, and went to an
underground abortion clinic to bring it into the
world. You and Billy were living hand-to-mouth,
and yet you kept the baby, worked your schedule
around it. And Billy’s.
“There was an object on the bed when Billy died.
I think it was the baby. What happened to that
child, Francine? Why did you kill Billy?
July 20, 1969
“Billy!”
Billy turned to find Donna towering above the
bed, eyes alight with horror, crocheted handbag
clutched in her white fingers. He smiled,
clutching the tarnished carving knife absently.
“What are you doing?” the girl whispered,
glancing anxiously at the parcel on the bed.
“It’s all right,” the boy assured her in a voice
all the more frightening for its fatalistic calm.
“It’s going to be all right. It’s what he wants.”
“He?” Donna moves forward, cautiously. “Why would
you do this, Billy? You said you were cool with
it. Please, give me the knife.”
“This is the only way out. The only way to save
us.”
“No, no, it’s not. I’ll split, we’ll split.
You’ll never see us again. I promise. This is not
the way, Billy.”
Billy nodded, then turned. The hand rose and the
knife’s blade glittered in the afternoon sun.
Donna lunged, seizing Billy’s arm. He turned,
grabbed the hand clamped around his, and Donna
yelped as he applied pressure.
The weapon slipped, and a thin line of blood
erupted from Billy’s palm. He didn’t seem to
register the pain, and Donna wondered if he was
high on something serious. He yanked at the knife
as Donna twisted it away from her chest.
Her energy was waning as a sudden cry pierced the
stale air of the tiny bedroom. The infant on the
bedspread began to mewl, and as Donna’s attention
was diverted, Billy tugged the knife free.
It sunk to the hilt beneath his sternum. Donna
screamed, but no sound would come out. Billy
looked down, then, with apparent amazement, up at
the mother of his child. His eyes filled, but his
lips spread in a wide, grateful smile.
“Praise be,” Billy whispered before he crumpled
to the mattress…
**
Francine Topher’s immaculately manicured fingers
worries her empty coffee cop. “I took Lucas –
that was what we’d named him – bundled up in a
poncho so no one would recognize me, and
just…left.”
Lilly looks to Agent Mulder, who’d guessed the
truth behind Melvin Johnson’s “vision” of the
Virgin Mary and child outside Billy’s apartment
building.
“I knew I could never give Lucas a good home as
long as there was a possibility you people would
find me, so I left him at a hospital ER and
disappeared. It was easy, back then. The rest?”
Francine smiled wearily up at Lilly. “Well, the
rest just doesn’t really matter now, does it?”
Lilly leans across the table, her hands resting
only an inch from Donna’s. “It was self-defense,
Francine. You were defending your child. I’m sure
the court will understand. It was a long, long
time ago.”
Francine’s smile was bitter. “The Summer of Love.
It was all about freedom. Billy didn’t want any
commitment, any strings. He would have killed our
child, my child, to win his freedom back.”
Mulder comes off the wall, speaking for the first
time. “I don’t believe Billy intended to murder
your child,” he suggests.
Francine’s dead eyes try to focus on the agent.
“He was standing over my baby with a knife,” she
recites dully. He told me it was the only way
out. What do you believe was his intention?”
“I guess what I should say is, I don’t believe
Billy meant to kill your son as a matter of
convenience. In fact, I don’t think he was
capable of thinking rationally at that moment.
What Billy meant was not that killing the boy was
the only way out of an unbearable burden, but
that it was the only way he could gain
salvation.”
“I don’t…”
“You told us Prof. Hoesch was supplying Billy
with psilocybic mushrooms. Remember the night you
walked in on Billy and the others, their odd
behavior? The way they were acting almost as one?
Well, I think Hoesch was experimenting on them.
There have been reports of Meso-American rituals
where groups that have taken fungal extracts
experience a sort of collective consciousness.
They share thoughts, visions, experiences.
“I think that’s what happened that summer. Billy
and his friends began to share a common
consciousness. But Billy unwittingly invited a
diseased, tortured consciousness into the group.”
Francine’s eyes search Mulder’s, then widen. “The
Horseman,” she murmurs.
Mulder nods. “My guess is Melvin Johnson had a
severe case of survivor’s guilt — you see it a
lot in post-9/11 New Yorkers. In 1963, a KKK bomb
killed four young girls in Alabama, near where
Johnson had lived and preached. Johnson was a man
of deep religious conviction, but those
children’s deaths damaged his faith, twisted it.
He came to Philadelphia to get away, but also to
try to change his world. When he found he
couldn’t, he turned to drugs and alcohol, layered
with Old Testament proselytizing. Retribution and
original sin, the fires of Hell burning eternally
for all souls. And sacrifice.”
Francine’s fingers now have stilled.
“‘After these things God tested Abraham, and said
to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.” He
said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom
you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer
him there as a burnt offering upon one of the
mountains of which I shall tell you.’ Genesis 22:
1-2. According to the story, God spared Isaac at
the last moment, but I think to Melvin Johnson,
those four dead girls represented some kind of
blood sacrifice to a dark god, a message of the
world’s growing depravity and inhumanity. I think
that’s how Johnson had come to see the world, and
I think Billy became infected with that world
view when his consciousness melded with The
Horseman’s.
“Look at the other members of Hoesch’s ‘tribe,’
the impact their experimentation had on them that
Summer of ’69. The allegedly atheistic Elijah
Fortson’s social diatribes were sprinkled with
biblical parables and admonitions. Ned Squiers
created a public scene in a downtown bank,
chastising the ‘moneylenders.’ Vincent Gillesco
entered the priesthood, spurred in part by guilt
over his role in the recruiting office bombing.
They were weak young men, directionless and
confused. I think Johnson’s will was too strong
for any of them, especially for Billy, who was
looking for some fundamental answers.”
“And his answer was to murder our child.”
Francine’s response is nearly inaudible.
“He wasn’t himself. Billy was acting under the
unwitting influence of a madman and a
manipulative opportunist. He was insane. I
thought you ought to know that, that it might
offer you at least some solace.”
Francine Topher looks up, meets Mulder’s eyes
with her own steady, critical gaze, causing him
momentarily to glance away. A smile forms — a
mirthless, possibly pitying thing.
“It was a time of madness,” she informs the
agent. “Injustice and violence transformed that
poor man — what did you say his name was,
Johnson? — into a shell-shocked ghost spouting
God’s vengeance. Vincent’s grief over his brother
allowed him to murder those innocent people in
that recruiting office. The madness of war and
intolerance and disillusionment infected all of
us. And even if it’s as you say, that Billy was
trying to sacrifice our baby to redeem his soul,
what solace should that offer me? I killed my
baby’s father, sacrificed my child so he might
have a chance at some kind of better life. I lost
my innocence and a lot more in that apartment
that day. I want that innocence back. Can you
offer me that, Agent Mulder?”
**
Melvin Johnson lowers himself painfully from the
last step of the bus, feeling the unspoken
impatience of the wives, parents, and survivors
behind him. He holds no animus toward these
pilgrims as he moves slowly toward the visitor’s
gate at the Pennsylvania Federal Men’s
Correctional Facility. Melvin knows the Lord
works in mysterious ways and that these walking
wounded must find their own way out of the
darkness of their misery and anger.
The new priest is a kind and charitable – if
somewhat detached — man who wants to continue
the good works of his predecessor. Melvin has
agreed to stay on as sexton — he has known no
other world for three decades. Father Vincent
remains keenly interested in the doings of the
parish and its souls.
Melvin will never know how his moment of madness
cost one life and irrevocably altered at least
three others. It is his faith in a kinder god
that ties him inextricably to St. Bartholomew’s,
that brings him every Saturday to the state men’s
facility and Father Vincent, arthritis and the
mass transit permitting.
**
Ned Squiers doesn’t see her at first: He’s
focused on his single malt Scotch – the first of
his ritualistic evening drinks following the six
o’clock cast.
“I’m sorry.” The woman on the next stool is too
young, with too much of her freshly-scrubbed
flesh oozing out of a black killer dress. Ned’s
eyes adjust about 11 inches to the north and
shows his capped teeth. “You’re Ned the
Weatherguy, right?”
Meteorologist, you empty-headed little tramp.
“Yep. That would be me.”
“Wow, you are soo funny,” the girl chirps. She
wiggles on the stool, and Ned nearly spills his
Scotch. “Hey, you knew that protestor guy, didn’t
you? The guy on CourtTV?”
“Back in the day,” Ned acknowledges, checking his
look in the bar mirror. What he sees brings him
up straight: A lanky, long-locked young man with
the light of rebellion in his eyes and a world
ahead of him. He blinks, and the stool once again
is occupied by a paunchy 58-year-old weather
forecaster who peddles used cars during the break
between sports and the stock report.
“God, this is like meeting some historical guy or
something,” his new friend gushes. “It’s so hard
to believe you used to be a hippie? That’s so-o-o
cool.”
“You want a fresh-up?” Ned asks, too quickly.
She nonetheless beams. “Well, sure. That’s so
sweet…”
“Groovy,” he quips, sucking at his gut.
**
Deputy Director Walter Skinner closes the thick
manila folder, placing it carefully on his
blotter and looking up at the two agents who have
been waiting so patiently for him to study their
conclusions regarding his cousin’s death.
“It’s hardly the outcome I was hoping for,” the
burly ex-Marine sighs. “But I appreciate all the
hard work you two put in on this.”
Mulder nods, and he and Scully rise. Skinner
clears his throat, and the pair freeze
expectantly. His glance moves from one to the
other, across a mental landscape of rice paddies,
jungles, and waves of angry and hopeful faces,
and waves dismissal.
“Thanks — that’s all,” he murmurs, returning to
his desktop.
**
Ted McElvoy glances at his watch: He’s been
sitting at the curb at the edge of the rolling
lawn now for close to an hour. Shelley had warned
him repeatedly this would be difficult, perhaps
even traumatic, but he’d laughed it off. He was a
35-year-old businessman – he’d faced down the
post-9/11 recession, angry clients, takeover
threats.
Ted had stared down two-ton quarterbacks both in
high school and college, hammered a childhood
learning disability into an MBA, produced two
bright, happy children both with two arms and two
legs. He had suspected this day would arrive, and
when the attorney had called, he had been calm,
clinical, rational. Ted had thanked his parents,
his wife for their concern and assured them it
was misplaced.
Ted bolts upright – he thinks he’s spotted some
movement at the front door of the sprawling Tudor
home. Just a cat, he realizes, sinking back into
the driver’s seat.
It’s not that he holds any grudges or misgivings.
He’s read the news accounts, knows what was
sacrificed on his behalf, recognizes the price
she paid those many years ago to assure his
happiness.
But here, in his Maxima at the curb at the edge
of the lawn maybe 50 yards from her, Ted cannot
will himself to move. It has been 35 years; a few
more days, weeks, months, won’t make any
difference.
Abruptly, he jams the key in the ignition. “I’m
sorry,” Ted whispers, the Tudor house and the
manicured lawn blurring. He rubs his face with
the sleeve of his $300 jacket and cruises away
from the curb, failing to notice Francine Topher,
his mother, emerging from the darkness beyond the
second-floor curtains…
**
“You really expect to gain any kind of respect in
the field with this kind of incoherent rambling?”
Frederic Hoesch smirks, tipping his head at the
essay on the corner of his desk. He doesn’t touch
it, doesn’t dignify the girl’s apathetic effort.
The blonde, athletic, a ring through her navel,
doesn’t even look at the paper bloodied by
Hoesch’s scarlet criticisms. “It’s an elective,
and I’m taking it pass-fail. I’ll take my chances
with the anthropological community. And if you’re
thinking at all about failing me based on this
one grade, let me warn you: I’m a law student,
and my dad’s with one of the biggest firms in
Pittsburgh. I’ve heard about you, and if there’s
even a hint you tried anything, it’ll be you
trying to get back your ‘respect in the field.'”
She retrieves her paper, and slips out the
pebbled glass door. Hoesch, dumbstruck, watches
her silhouette as she is joined by a second
figure. The sound of laughter dopplers down the
hall outside.
In the old days, she’d have begged for mercy,
been brought to tears -maybe even her knees – by
his condemnation. Hoesch reaches for his mug; his
hand freezes as he notices the liver spots for
the first time.
His heart leaps nearly into his throat as the
phone warbles. After scaring away five
secretaries in four years, Hoesch now answers his
own line.
“Yeah, Fred?” Gerard, the department head.
Despite his familiarity, his voice is chilled,
threatening. “You need to come down to my office,
ASAP. The Faculty Ethics Committee wants some
answers to some fairly grave charges the FBI has
raised.”
“FBI? Charges.” That man, Mulder. Hoesch gulps
for oxygen.
“Charges you conducted illegal drug
experimentation with students back in the
sixties. Charges you had a hand in developing
some kind of military weapon without the
university’s knowledge. Charges that you may have
some kind of complicity in the deaths of several
dozen Southeast Asian civilians. You may want to
get in touch with your attorney, Fred. In fact, I
would strongly advise it.”
“This is absurd, Gerard. You must know that.”
“Just get down here ASAP,” Gerard murmurs with a
touch of frost.
The phone remains locked in Hoesch’s fingers even
as the dial tone shrills in his ear, even as a
tingly numbness spreads seemingly from the
handset up his left arm…
**
“You keepin’ your nose clean, boy?” Aunt Mary
inquires with a severity that belies her
diminutive size and the sweet smile that once
healed many a scraped knee and bruised psyche.
Will Jeffreys keeps his own smile inside – to
Aunt Mary, this huge, graying detective is still
13, struggling with angels and demons on the
Philly streets, in darkened project stairwells.
“Yes, ma’am,” he responds, dutifully and
sincerely.
He is rewarded with that healing smile, and
momentarily, the smell of urine and
pharmaceuticals, the greenish cast of the
fluorescents, the omnipresence of Death
disappear. Will is one of the last of Aunt Mary’s
nephews to keep up a weekly visitation schedule,
and even if she never sees her 98th birthday, he
will be here every week until her days here end.
Every week, she asks him the same question, every
week, he respectfully reassures her. Time has
stopped inside the corridors of Liberty Manor
Care Center, just prior to that awful day more
than 30 years ago.
“Talked to your Cousin Helen the other day.”
Helen has been in the ground for 23 years now.
Will smiles encouragingly. “Lillie Belle, you
know, from Carolina on your daddy’s side, is
coming up for a visit. Ain’t seen that girl in an
age.”
Will recalls the preacher’s daughter solely from
an old black-and-white his father had displayed
at the breakfast table that somber morning in the
Summer of ’69, when the world seemed temporarily
to end.
He takes his aunt’s hand, leathery and webbed
with age, and gives it a squeeze, gently.
“That’ll be nice.”
July 20, 1969
The boy turned from the set to which he had been
glued for the last several hours. “Mom!” he
yelled. “Tell her to quit buggin’ me!”
Teena appeared in the kitchen archway, blouse
dusted with Blue Ribbon flour, a pretty smile
brightening her routinely worried features.
“Samantha, are you bothering your brother?”
“I’m tryin’ to watch,” the boy complained. “This
is important!”
Teena suppresses a smile. Everything is important
to seven-year-old Fox, who knows Vulcan
philosophy better than his English homework, who
can name every man in the Apollo space program.
“I wanna play Chutes and Ladders,” his little
sister pouted. “He’s been watching this stupid
show all day, and you said his eyes would go
bad.”
“Show!” Fox mumbled disgustedly.
Teena kneeled before Sam, brushing back a lock of
her long hair. “This is special, Baby. Your
brother’s been anxious to see this. Let’s go in
the kitchen and make some sugar cookies. OK?”
Sam clapped her tiny hands. “Yeah!” She turns to
her big brother, who she normally worships.
“That’s all fake anyway. Linda’s big brother says
they ain’t really on the moon – it’s all a
movie.”
Fox whipped around, a look of sheer malice
passing through his deep, close-set eyes. “Shut
up! Linda’s ree-tard brother got held back twice
in the third grade.”
“Fox!” Teena snapped.
“We went to the moon to build a remote outpost,”
he continued, grinning meanly. “So we can fight
the aliens. You think The Invaders is just a
show?”
“Mom,” Sam whispered, her pretty features growing
pale.
“Fox, stop it this second.”
“They live among us, Sam. They take little kids
like you to do science experiments on. They take
out your eyeballs and – ”
“NOO!!!” Sam shrieked. Her face goes instantly
from white to scarlet, and tears streak her round
face. “MAKE HIM STOP! TELL HIM TO STOP!”
Fox’s face crumpled in alarm. He looked to his
silently reproving mother and his screaming four-
year-old sister in shame. “Hey, Sam, c’mon.”
“NOOO!!”
Suddenly, Walter Cronkite and Buzz Aldrin and
Neil Armstrong were as distant to Fox as the
airless face of the moon. He scrambled to his
feet and seized his sister. Sam fought him, but
soon she surrendered. Fox rocked her, stroking
her hair, tasting his own tears.
“It’s OK, Sam,” he pleaded, suddenly uninterested
in Man taking his first small step on an airless
orb. “It’s not true. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
please. I’ll never let anything hurt you. Never.
Never…”
**
Lilly spots him on the bus bench across from the
station. Watching her, waiting. Smiling, she
crosses, dropping onto the graffiti-scarred wood
beside him. The Beatles emanate tinnily from a
nearby hotdog stand.
“Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly
melting,” Lennon sings, alive again, voice ripe
with renewal and redemption. “Little darling, it
seems like years since it’s been clear… Here
comes the sun…Here comes the sun…And I say, it’s
all right…”
“Cole.”
Cole Sear glances up, the serene smile
illuminating his cherubic face.
“It’s over,” Lilly reports. “We found out who
killed Billy McHenry.”
“That’s good, really great.”
“You were right. Billy wasn’t himself, I don’t
think. You may hear something different on the
news, but I wanted you to know you helped point
us to the right answer.”
Cole nods, not with vindication, but merely with
a calm acceptance. Unlike the others in the squad
who find the boy’s somber, accepting demeanor
unsettling or sad, Lilly feels a connection with
Cole, who is cursed, blessed, endowed, whatever,
with feeling and healing the pain others can’t
see.
Cole pauses, then looks at her shyly. “That lady,
the FBI agent?”
“Agent Scully?”
“Tell her…” he hesitates. “Tell her Bill wants
her to be happy. She’ll know who that is. He
loves her, and he says he’s sorry for not having
enough faith. He said he couldn’t tell me
everything, but he doesn’t want her to give up.
Her or her friend.”
Lilly is silent for a moment, then nods. She will
never know if Cole’s message is inspired by
insight or insanity, but she will pass it on to
Scully, hoping somewhere inside it will bring
light to dark corners. Even as she looks to her
own communion with the dead to shed some
illumination on her life.
The day is warm, and Lilly lingers on the bench.
Across the street, another boy catches her eye –
the solitary still figure in a sea of late
afternoon congestion. His hair is long, his
clothes bright, and around his throat is a broken
cross encircled by metal.
Lilly smiles at Billy McHenry, at least Billy
McHenry as she sees him in his last summer of
love, of innocence, of life. Smiling, Billy
raises a fist, extends two fingers in a familiar
gesture of peace.
A belching Metro bus passes between Lilly and
Billy, and he is gone. She then remembers Cole,
seated beside her, and glances self-consciously
at him.
The boy is staring across the street, at
precisely the spot where Lilly gave mental form
to Billy McHenry. Not wishing to disturb his
communion, Lilly gathers herself and returns
silently to the world of the living.
*end
Virtual Season X 