Mack’d: A Law & Order: Criminal Intent/X-Files Mystery

AUTHOR: Martin Ross
CATEGORY: Crossover/ casefile
RATING: R for language, gruesome images.
DISCLAIMER: The story you are about to read is fictional, and the characters were
created with criminal intent by Chris Carter and Dick Wolf.
SUMMARY: Broadway’s hit of the season becomes the “hit” of the season for the
NYPD’s Major Case Squad and the agents of the X-Files. Has the Curse of Macbeth
struck in the heart of the Big Apple?

“In New York City’s war on crime, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Major Case Squad. These are their stories…”

Home of Clifton and Yvonne DeBow

Crown Point, N.Y.

Sunday, December 31

“Once upon a time, two brave knights named Macbeth and Banquo were out on a mission for the king. It was a dark, stormy night, and Macbeth and Banquo stopped to talk to three witches who were making a potion in a big pot. ‘Double, double, toil and trouble,’ they sang as they stirred the magic potion.”

The children cackled at Lisette’s Margaret Hamilton-style interpretation of the Weird Sisters. The Great Bard would roll over in whatever old British boneyard they’d planted him in if he could hear her mangle the tale of Macbeth. She should’ve picked Dr. Suess or one of the other old classics piled beside the guest room beds, but Lisette was home seldom enough, and she wanted to share something more personal with her nieces.

“The witches could see the future, and they told Macbeth he would be very famous and powerful (the title Thane of Cawdor would mean little to Eliza or Shera), and said Banquo’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren would be kings. Well, soon, the witch’s prediction about Macbeth came true, and everybody in the kingdom knew who he was. But what the witches had said about his friend Banquo bothered him, because he wanted to be king. And Mrs. Macbeth wanted him to be king, too…”

A soft purr interrupted Lisette’s narrative. She looked down; her angelic nieces had already slipped away.

That’s OK, babies, Lisette smiled. Has the same effect on everyone else in the family.

“You’d’ve made a wonderful mother, Lisey,” Yvonne whispered as her daughter eased the door shut.

“Subtle, Mama,” Lisette smirked, heading for the stairs and the New Years celebration downstairs.

“Oh, c’mon, baby, don’t be so touchy. Your father and I told you how proud we are about the show. He’s already gone on-line to see about tickets.” Yvonne stopped at the landing. “I just hope—”

Lisette turned. “Now what?”

“Well, last night, I saw a show about that man, that Big Noisy man’s going to be in the play.”

“Elliott. And they call him Big Noyz. What about him?”

“He sounds like bad news. Guns and drugs and that whole gang thing.”

Lisey shook her head and leaned on the banister. “Mama, that man scarcely even acknowledges the rest of us – he’s too impressed with his own media coverage. Even if he did, he ain’t exactly my type, which you ought to know.”

“Don’t have a stroke, now,” Yvonne sighed. “Let’s just forget I said anything. Your father and I just worry about you in that city.”

“Mama, I know what I’m doing.”

At least I think I do, Lisey mused as she headed toward the joyful noise below.

The Shiban Theater

Manhattan, New York

Wednesday, April 15

“On today’s Entertainment Spotlight, we visit a rap legend who hopes to bring the Noyz and the funk back to Broadway this season,” Jacqui Moussard sang as the cable news anchor seated beside her waited with a flash-frozen smile to get out of camera range. “One of the biggest surprises on the Great White Way this season is Mack’d, a musical saga of gangsta life and death starring Elliott Forester, better known to international audiences as rapper Big Noyz. Last night, in Times Square, we caught up with the hip-hop king, who hopes to add a Tony to his shelf-full of awards.”

Darrell Ives leaned forward on his dressing room couch as his co-star – co-star! – materialized on a red carpet outside the city’s hottest new clubs, in a matching, gold-braided tux and his trademark fez with the hand-stitched Mets logo. Youthful screams and a dozen flashes erupted as Forester gave the camera the one-handed “peace-love” gesture with a gloved hand.

“Critics be saying Noyz ain’t ready for Broadway,” Forester sneered as the scene shifted to the floor of whatever club he’d graced the night before. “Well, Broadway best be ready for the Noyz. Forget Beauty and the Beast – I’m both in one fine package. Les Miz gonna be in for some misery. Rent, y’all’s lease is up.”

Moussard, who was spilling out of the top of her strapless black gown, laughed delightedly. “You’ve conquered the world of rap and become one of Hollywood’s newest box office draws. Why the stage? Why Broadway?”

“All my life, people been saying I’m nothing, jus’ some gangsta street punk. Well, all y’all old school, Julliard-trained, Evian-suckin’ haters, you been served. There’s a new king in town, an’ his name is Big Noyz.”

“Jesus,” Darrell spat. This fool was going to scare away the patrons, the out-of-towners. Stanford would probably love it — he’d told the Times Magazine Forester was “a blast of cool urban permafrost.” What did that make Darrell, the rest of them who’d put the aging playwright back on Broadway?

Moussard reappeared in the newsroom, her breasts tucked back into a silk blouse and blazer. “Mack’d is created and produced by Stanford Grant, the controversial black playwright acclaimed for his powerful visions of African-American life in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Noyz joined the production last month after a successful off-Broadway run. The rapper, who captured headlines two years ago following his arrest on gun charges–”

Darrell fired his remote and the screen went black. He leaned back and sipped his Evian (the actor realized with a curse). He’d also graduated cum laude from Julliard, the son of Hudson University’s first black studies department head and a mother who’d been on first-name terms with Maya Angelou. The man who’d replaced Darrell as the hip-hop Macbeth (Stanford had adapted and scored Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, as if that brain-dead cable entertainment bunny could grasp the distinction) might just as well have been calling his predecessor out on the street.

The young thespian heard laughter in the hall. “Lisette?”

The laughter stopped, and a heart-shaped, heart-stopping face appeared in his doorway. “Hey,” Lisette deBow murmured. “What’s up?”

“Watching our diva on ZNN. You know when he plans to grace us with his presence?”

“He had some kind of interview for VH1 or something. Stanford said to just hang loose, we could work on some of the second act blocking.”

Darrell studied the show’s streetwise Lady Macbeth. Her tone had been artificially casual, diffident, with an undertone of defensiveness. “What’re you up to tonight? Heard about a new Thai place down in the Village.”

“Darrell…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Nothing involved, Lis — just dinner. What do you say? Be a nice change.”

The actress glanced uneasily down the corridor. “I got a family thing tonight. Sister’s in town. Maybe some other time.”

And that was when Darrell knew.

West Avon, Connecticut

Wednesday, April 15

Connie finally located his father in the basement, poring as usual through his clips, the effusive local reviews of his performances. The local rags had never been anything but effusive: The community theater bought several dozen column inches of ad space a year, and the would-be thespians who trod upon its boards – mostly area merchants, community leaders, and their idle spouses – were good for a few hundred more each.

But for 40-plus years, Errol had bought wholesale into his own press, and as his body and mind began to lapse and the parts became more infrequent and miniscule, the retired jeweler spent more time here in his paneled cellar rec room, dirtying his fingers with old newsprint and clearing his mind of unpleasant reality.

Errol glanced up at his burly son, and grinned. “Conrad, do you remember

Oliver? That was your first performance – our first performance together.”

Connie took a breath. His father and his late mother – who’d been equally enamored of hayseed theatrics – had dragged him to auditions and dress rehearsals instead of Little League games, and by adolescence, he rejected the stage with a vengeance (fortunately, Errol was as influential with local law enforcement as he was with the press). When Errol had decided to leave the family business to his now-diligent and rather stodgy son 15 years previous, Connie had felt a shadow fall away from his life.

Until the craziness. Or at least Connie’s discovery of it.

“Pop,” Conrad now interrupted. “You’ve been at it again, haven’t you? You even left the soldering equipment plugged in. You’re gonna burn us to the ground some day.”

Errol set his scrapbook aside, eyes refusing to meet his son’s stern eyes. “I have no idea—”

“We talked about this. After that Baldwin thing, you promised to knock it off. Someday, this is going to boomerang on all of us. Somebody’ll sue, the cops’ll be around, and there’ll go the shop. You want that?”

The old man struggled out of his recliner. “There’s nothing illegal about what I’m doing. It’s—”

“Yeah, I know, Pop. The family legacy. Great-grandpa, grandpa, you. Well, the crazy train stops here. This is 2007. How many this time? Tell me they haven’t gone out.”

“I still own the shop,” Errol quavered. “On paper.”

For the first time, Connie grinned, but utterly without filial warmth. “Not if I have to get power of attorney. You think if I tell a court what kind of loony horseshit you’ve been up to down here, I couldn’t get you shipped off to Shady Acres somewhere?”

Errol’s eyes filled with fear, and his square jaw quivered. Then he snatched up his scrapbook and dived back into the yellowed clips, dismissively.

Connie stood for a moment, contemplating another threat. Then, wearily, he started back up the stairs. Errol already was smiling again, secretive, immersed in his memories.

The Shiban Theater

Manhattan, New York

Wednesday, April 15

“I don’t know,” Simon Yates rumbled, adjusting his designer glasses and tapping the latest set of proofs. “‘Elliott Forester’…Who knows Elliott Forester is Big Noyz? Shit, I didn’t even know who Big Noyz was ‘til my kid busted my stones for some SNL tickets to see him strut around and grab himself on stage. ”

Stanford Grant waited patiently. Yates was one of the production’s major backers, and the most hands-on. He was a real estate whiz, a few significant notches down the ladder from Trump but with cultural pretensions and an ego that made The Donald seem like St. Francis of Assisi. Simon Yates constantly dropped names — African-American literati and laureates and playwrights with whom he’d shared brief chats at fundraisers and with whom Stanford had shared years of cultural struggle and social evolution.

But Stanford’s socialistic fervor had faded over the decades as his Pulitzer gathered dust and the capital of poseurs like Yates become increasingly crucial to realizing his vision. He nodded and smiled sagely when they’d show up unannounced, offering an occasional anecdote or literary reflection for his patrons to lap thirstily up.

“Now, Cindra and I used to catch Ailey’s company from time to time. There was an artist…”

“Muthahfuck—?”

Stanford’s bifocals dropped into his lap as his eyes were drawn to the stage and the source of the outraged cry. He’d called a brief break after the reading had started to go stale, and the actors and crew had reformed into murmuring cliques and couples. Now, the Shiban auditorium had gone silent save a few echoing scuffles and angry upraised voices, and the assembled players were a single knot upstage left.

“Excuse me, Simon,” Stanford rumbled, shoving out of his seat and sprinting up the proscenium stairs. The throng parted for the legendary playwright/director, who stopped dead as he stared at the two men on the stage floor.

Eliott Forester, in the hockey jersey and doo-rag from Act 2, had Darrell Ives pinned to the floor with one muscular forearm. Ives’s fists flailed at the rapper, and the veins stood out on his broad forehead.

“What is this shit?” Stanford roared, and the entire company backed away as one. Except for Forester.

“Listen,” “Big Noyz” growled, almost inaudibly. “Ain’t no ballet class here, biatch. You best back up off my tip.”

“Elliott!” Grant shouted. Elliott looked up blandly, his arm still in place across Ives’ trachea.

“’Sup, Chief?”

“Let him up,” Grant ordered. “I mean right now, son.”

Elliott’s eyes turned to obsidian. Then he smiled and released the young actor and climbed to his feet with a grin. “Sho, Pops. Need to blow this fag stand anyway.” Grant’s Mac B. launched into a James Mason dialect. “However, you might talk to this mizark about some simple civility, what, old bean? Later.”

Elliott strolled casually from the stage and up the aisle. As the auditorium door echoed shut, Grant turned to Darrell, who was massaging his Adam’s apple.

“All I said—”

“No,” Grant boomed, his voice subarctic. “I do not want to know.”

“Hey,” Darrell protested. “This wasn’t my—”

The playwright glanced at Yates, who was craning to understand the encounter he’d witnessed from the bleachers. “Why don’t you just step outside, take a walk around the block?” he suggested calmly. “When you come back, son, take a look at the marquee. See whose name that is up above the title.”

Grant stalked off, and Darrell staggered to his feet. He caught Lisette’s eye, and she disappeared into the shadows.

Residence of Elliot Forester

Manhattan, New York

Wednesday, April 15

Ian Pryce sighed in exasperation at the gaping loft door. He was used to dealing with prima donnas – he’d handled hotel-trashing rockers in the ‘70s, Prozac-munching grungers in the ‘80s, and hair-triggered divas for most of the ‘90s. Hip-hop was no different. But the transplanted New Yorker was getting older (“The Royal Mutha,” Forester had homophobically dubbed him after watching a Biography segment on Prince Charles), and at times, Forester challenged even his managerial skill.

Pryce had agreed at Forester’s agitated summons to drop the script off at his “crib.” Same old rubbish – lots of guns and by-the-numbers martial arts. When he heard about Stanford Grant’s hip-hop comeback attempt, Pryce had steered Simon Yates and the others toward “Big Noyz” in an effort to broaden the rapper’s portfolio, open some new doors, but old habits, as they say.

“Elliott?” Pryce inquired. He could hear a baseball game on Forester’s 60-inch plasma – the Mitts, or whatever their names were. He waited for a response and then, fuming, nudged the heavy steel-reinforced door further open. The odor hit him first – acrid, smoky, and organic. Pryce tensed. Forester did some coke – who didn’t, right? – as well as that nauseating “syrup” he mixed up, but he hadn’t started freebasing, had he? After what happened to Rich Pryor? Jesus, this wasn’t what meth smelled like, was it?

Formulating a stern lecture on the evils of drugs – at least, low-rent, flammable drugs – the manager squared his shoulders and marched into the loft.

“Oh, my–” Pryce gagged, his stomach seizing. He fired a stream of cherry Riesling duck and fennel onto the hardwood floor and fell to his knees, unable to tear his eyes from the grisly tableau before him.

As Pryce tried to work up a serviceable scream, Forester’s corpse seemed to be grinning over his plight…

**

“I heard this was the hottest show on Broadway,” Det. Alexandra Eames breathed as she took in the corpse. “Looks like the critics really hit the mark for once.”

A momentary twitch of the lip was the only indication of Robert Goren’s appreciation for his diminutive partner’s dark quip. He moved swiftly past the uniforms and techs who now crowded Elliot Forester’s loft and kneeled before the late actor. Even crouching, the hulking detective was able to stare directly into Forester’s eyes – at least, the charred holes where they had been. He frowned, then surveyed the victim’s unburnt left hand, dangling over the side of the thick leather recliner and sporting a huge gold ring encrusted with a diamond monogram.

“‘BN,’ ” Eames observed.

“Big Noyz,” Goren supplied. “Forester was a rapper, East Coast. Won a couple Grammies, made the cover of Time five years ago. For a while, he was up there with Snoop, Diddy, Flava Flav…”

Eames smirked, again astonished by the breadth of Goren’s eclectic and esoteric knowledge. “You’re into rap?”

He looked up, a boyish smile momentarily brightening his intense features. “I’m fascinated by hip-hop language – the economy, the punch. The outgrowth of a subculture plagued by poverty and violence – volumes of expression and emotion condensed into a single word or phrase, in-your-face onomatopoeia.” Goren’s hands were now flailing and chopping at the air. “And constant evolution. Forester was a casualty of an industry in perpetual flux – while a new generation of gangstas was coming on, he was still kickin’ it old school.”

“Well, he’s not kicking any more,” Eames reflected soberly. She glanced around Forester’s loft, decadently furnished and stocked with a pair of pool tables, a Jacuzzi, three pinball machines, and a bank of retro arcade games. “Doesn’t look like he was on hard times.”

“He had his own reality show on VH-1, and he’s been in a couple of films. Street Noyz got some pretty good box office last year, and he landed a role in a new hip-hop version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Mack’d.”

“That oughtta pack in the visiting Illinoisans,” his partner mused.

“Look at the chair,” Goren murmured, cocking his head as his attention returned to the crime scene. “Hardly any damage. The charring is confined almost exclusively to the body.” He leaned back, gazed into the corpse’s face. “I’ve seen something like this before – well, at least photos of it.”

“What?”

Goren turned. “Ever heard of spontaneous human combustion?”

“Sure,” Eames nodded, non-commitally. “I’ve read several accounts, waiting at the supermarket checkout. Along with alien abductions and Brad and Angelina’s latest adoption.”

Goren didn’t hear her jibe – he now was displaying a small, dark brown object between his gloved thumb and forefinger. Eames’ nose wrinkled.

“It was under his chair. Looks like a chocolate-covered almond. Dark chocolate.” He turned to a tech dusting the doorknob. “You wanna bag this? Looks like a partial.” Goren grunted as he climbed to his feet, then bent over the end table next to the corpse. He waved the tech back. “Looks like a drink ring, but it’s too, uh, too viscous. Tacky – hasn’t fully dried. Test it, too.”

He turned back to Eames. “You like dark or light chocolate?”

“White.”

“Most people like one or another,” Goren explained, scanning the room. He stepped around a tech analyzing a ball of fuzz on the hardwood floor and reached into a bowl on a fully stocked mahogany bar. “M&Ms.” He popped a blue candy into his mouth. “Pure milk chocolate.”

Eames shrugged at the crouching tech as her partner disappeared into the kitchen beyond. She found Goren leaning into a vault-sized, brushed steel fridge. He emerged hefting a parcel wrapped in butcher paper. “Burger wrappers, takeout ‘que in the garbage; cabinets are full of sugar and empty calories. Bag of Snickers, bag of Kit Kats – more milk chocolate.” He extended the package toward Eames. “This was the only ‘fresh’ food in the refrigerator. Salmon.”

“So he died of what? Poor nutrition? Mercury poisoning?”

Goren’s lip again twitched in appreciation. He crossed back though the main room and into Forester’s bedroom.

Eames blinked at the threshold. “Who was he expecting? The entire Laker Girls squad?”

“I saw it on Cribs a few years back,” Goren murmured, stepping around the huge canopied bed. He entered a walk-in closet the size of a Fortune 50 corporate conference room, glancing at a staggering array of streetwear, a rack of European suits no doubt reserved for premieres and awards shows, a tall jewelry armoire loaded with Forester’s bling, and a collection of footwear worthy of the late Imelda Marcos. “See that area over there?” Goren indicated. “Most of the racks are packed tight, but you can see the clothes are spaced out evenly on this one.”

“Somebody moved out, and recently,” Eames observed. “And tried to cover it up. A woman would probably have had all her clothes in one section. There’d either be one single gap, or Forester would’ve spread out his other stuff, filled it in.”

“If she’d moved out under ordinary circumstances, why would she try to conceal that she’d even been here?” Goren asked. “Presumably, nobody would even come in here except Forester.”

“Except us,” Eames concluded, grimly. Her head jerked toward the main room. “You think Forester’s squeeze did that? I’ve heard of a woman scorned, but this…” She paused, crossing her arms and leaning against the closet doorjamb. “Were you serious about that spontaneous combustion thing?”

Goren stared at Forester’s wardrobe as if it suddenly would provide illumination. “I don’t know. That’s why I think I’ll call in a second opinion.”

Major Case Squad

New York Police Department

Thursday, April 16

Capt. Danny Ross had taken over the squad only a few months before, after Jim Deakins put in his papers under circumstances that weren’t widely discussed in the department. But after a three-year stint with the Joint Task Force on International Money Laundering, Ross was able to read “feds” on this pair the minute they’d stepped into the squadroom. He sighed and moved to intercept.

“Captain Ross, Major Case. Help you folks?” he smiled tightly.

The man, a fortysomething male in a standard-issue black suit, returned the greeting with a warm, if wary, grin. “Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI.” He nodded toward his much shorter female partner, who was not grinning. “This is Special Agent Dana Scully.”

“Ah,” Ross commented, imparting volumes with a single syllable. Mulder’s smile faltered.

“Uh, is Bobby Goren around?”

“Ah,” Ross repeated, still smiling but with an entirely different tone.

**

“There are some unusual dimensions to this case,” Goren explained.

“So I heard,” Ross said neutrally. Eames stood beside the captain’s file cabinet, silent but supportive.

“The fire that killed Forester caused nearly no damage to the crime scene,” the detective continued. “His left hand also was undamaged. That’s consistent with cases of what’s called spontaneous human combustion.”

Ross looked to the two FBI agents for some sign of the bureaucratic incredulity that normally greeted Goren’s arcane theories. There was none. “Hold up. You mean like when somebody just bursts into flame for no reason?”

“Not necessarily for no reason,” Agent Mulder protested, drawing a strange look from Ross. “Maybe just reasons we haven’t come to fully comprehend. But SHC has been extensively documented by reputable scientists. Medieval literature’s full of references to spontaneous combustion. One of the more prominent modern-day victims was George I. Mott, about 20 years ago. Mott was a fireman who burned to death in his home outside Crown Point, New York. His body was consumed along with the mattress he was lying on, except for a leg, an implausibly shrunken skull, and a piece of rib cage.”

“I remember the case,” Goren nodded. Ross sighed. “The fire investigators suggested his death may have been caused by an electrical arc that shot out of an outlet, or a gas leak.”

“And he wasn’t wearing his medically prescribed oxygen mask,” Mulder added. “Mott was 58 – many reported SHC victims are elderly. Was the ceiling in the victim’s apartment burnt?” Goren nodded. “SHC victims usually are burned more severely than others, and the high, localized heat often burns objects well above the victim. The age bothers me a little – you say Noyz was 32?” Ross’ brow rose at the fed’s use of Forester’s rap moniker. “But if he was a celebrity, heavy drinking is probably a factor, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Eames, who’d inspected Forester’s lavishly stocked bar and wine cooler.

Ross turned to Scully, who’d remained mute. “What about you, Agent? You buy this spontaneous combustion theory?”

“Well,” she drawled, somewhat reluctantly, “the very definition of an accident is the convergence of freak circumstances. Here, we’d need two basic circumstances: Something that precipitated the fire that killed the victim, and an accelerant – a combustible substance that caused the fire to spread. Supporters of SHC suggest a link with what’s called the ‘wick effect” – the combustion and melting of body fat, the way people used to use animal tallow to light or heat their homes. Without arguing what may have precipitated the fire, I’d suggest the human body’s like an insulated furnace – an environment full of potential fuel but not enough oxygen to allow fire to spread beyond the body cavity.”

“There goes today’s prime rib,” Ross grimaced. “OK, it’s a legitimate avenue. But the arson investigator’s office is already on the case, right? No offense, but why do we need the FBI?”

“Fox — Agent Mulder – is an old acquaintance of mine, from some time I spent at Oxford,” Goren said. “He has some specialized areas of expertise that could help our investigation. He’s an expert in folklore and the occult, and the play Macbeth – the basis for Mack’d – is steeped in theatrical lore.”

“Wonderful.”

“Even to this day, classically trained actors consider it bad luck to mention Macbeth by name while inside a theatre, they usually refer to it as The Scottish Play or sometimes, ‘The Scottish King,’” Mulder explained. “Because it was such a familiar work, productions that failed to draw a crowd frequently were replaced with Macbeth. Thus, to say the name of the play inside a theatre was believed to doom the production to failure, or even precipitate injuries or worse to cast members.”

“In 1882, on the closing night of a production, an actor named J. H. Barnes was engaged in a scene with another actor when Barnes accidentally thrust his sword directly into his partner’s chest. In 1926, actress Sybil Thorndike was almost strangled by an actor, and during the first modern-dress production at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1928, a large set fell, injuring some of the cast seriously, and a fire broke out in the theater.”

“In the early ‘30s, grande dame Lillian Boylis died on the day of final dress rehearsal portraying Lady MacBeth,” Goren continued. “Her portrait was hung in the theatre, and when another production of the play was having its opening, the portrait fell from the wall. In 1934, actor Malcolm Keen turned mute onstage, and his replacement, Alistair Sim, had to be hospitalized with a high fever. In 1936, Orson Welles’ so-called ‘voodoo MacBeth’ production, the cast included African drummers and a genuine witch doctor who were displeased after critic Percy Hammond slammed the show. Supposedly, the shaman placed a curse on Hammond, who died within a couple of weeks.”

Mulder nodded enthusiastically. “Don’t forget Olivier. In 1937, Laurence Olivier was rehearsing the play at London’s Old Vic when a falling stage weight missed him by inches. If that wasn’t enough, the director and the actress playing Lady Macduff were involved in a car accident on the way to the theatre, and the theater manager died of a heart attack during dress rehearsal.”

“Hey, and remember Alec Baldwin?”

“And now for ‘Best Actress in a Musical,’ ” Capt. Ross intervened. “This little Broadway moment have any significance to the case at hand? Shakespeare’s been on the Top 40 for what, nearly 400 years or so? That’s about, oh, a good 350 years on ‘Hello, Dolly’? Stands to reason there’d be a few more pratfalls in the wings over the years. I know I’ve about fallen out of my seat a few times myself ‘enjoying’ the Bard. This ‘curse’ is probably just the odds playing out.”

“But it’s a powerful, enduring piece of theater lore,” Goren said. “It could be a colorful media cover for a seemingly supernatural death. The Post had a sidebar on the Macbeth curse just this morning. The killer’s got a built-in smokescreen.”

“If there was a killer,” Mulder suggested. “Throughout the Middle Ages into the 1800s, its been suggested that spontaneous human combustion was a punishment for sinful or evil acts. From what I’ve seen on E! and MTV, Big Noyz knew how to part-ay reasonably hearty.”

Ross exchanged looks with Eames, who looked to Scully. Scully shrugged.

“Just spitballing,” Mulder smiled.

Ross reached for the knob. “Exit, stage left.”

**

Dr. Elizabeth Rodgers regarded the charred corpse on the steel table with one last dispassionate shake of the head, wiping her palms on her morgue scrubs. “Lenny Briscoe took me to a production of Macbeth one time, back when he was at the Two-Seven. Trying to impress me, I guess, and he did, ‘til he started snoring during the second act.”

“What did the lungs look like?” Scully gently prodded her fellow pathologist. She’d resisted Mulder’s suggestion to mix-and-match partners: Scully had run afoul of Goren about a year ago on a case with personal implications, and she’d picked up on his suspicion she’d been holding back. Which she had been. But Scully was determined not to allow this brutishly brilliant cop control the entire case.

The middle-aged M.E. looked to Goren, who nodded toward Scully with a bemused smile. “Soot and scorching in the throat, lungs, and stomach – what’s left of them, that is. He was alive, God save him. Really freaky – the esophageal and digestive tract appear to be the point of origin. Was he with the circus?” the lean redhead mused.

“Not in the conventional sense,” Goren said. “You think he was forced to swallow the accelerant?”

Rodgers leaned against the counter, shrugged. “Tissue and organ damage was so extensive – most of the evidence probably went up in flames. But I don’t see any sign of restraint – no ligature marks, cuts, or defensive wounds. If he were drugged or drunk, maybe…”

Goren glanced at the now-covered remains of Elliott Forester. “Alcoholism’s a pretty common factor in SHC cases, isn’t it?”

The pathologist arched an eyebrow, and Scully felt a spark of triumph. “Spontaneous human combustion? I don’t know.” Scully’s spark extinguished. “I talked to one of the guys investigated the Mott case a few years ago – you know, the Crown Point fireman went up in his bed? I guess there are some similarities, like Forester’s hand — except it was a leg in Mott’s case. Mott was a smoker and a drinker, I remember tight. Guess I’ve seen stranger things. You might want to be careful broadcasting that theory, though, Bobby, especially with the feds involved.”

“Oh, I’ve heard pretty much everything,” Scully breathed. “You have the victim’s personal effects?”

Rodgers nodded and retrieved an evidence bag from a table near the body. Goren examined its contents. “A little pocket money, cell phone – we’ll want to check the call log – and Forester’s keys.” The cop frowned. “What’s this?”

Scully peered at the small object in the corner of the suspended bag. An eagle’s head floated above an armored helmet, which topped a shield. A black, scalloped ‘X” or diagonal cross was emblazoned on the shield. “It looks like a family crest or something.”

“What’s the legend say?” Goren squinted. “‘Regardez mon droit.’ It’s, ah, French. Respect my right.”

“Heraldry and rappers?” Scully pondered.

“It’s a strongly hierarchical subculture – grandiose, almost regal titles; heavy use of symbolic devices; an emphasis on respect and a sort of internal honor. You can order your family genealogy and coat of arms from any number of websites. Strange…”

“A little.”

“No, I mean, it’s hand-crafted. Metal setting, ceramic inlays. Cheap-looking materials, but some obvious skill went into making it.” Goren turned the evidence bag. “And look — you see any pin, any eyelet for a necklace or bracelet? What’s its function? A lucky charm?”

Rodgers nodded toward Forester’s ravaged remains. “Then he should get a refund.”

Apartment of Stanford Grant

Central Park West, New York

Thursday, April 16

“Wow, an Edmund Dulac.”

Stanford Grant turned, greeting Mulder’s boyish enthusiasm with a sudden smile. He regarded the poster that had attracted the agent – a chilling depiction of a redheaded warrior watching stoically as three witches watched over their roiling cauldron.

“Reproduction, of course. Bought it in London years ago. It’s from a 1911production at His Majesty’s Theater. It’s my favorite – the most expressive rendering I’ve ever seen.” Grant set Mulder and Eames’ steaming mugs on a long African teak table flanked by three leather club chairs. “You a fan of Shakespeare or of Victorian graphic arts?”

Mulder settled into his chair, glancing out the penthouse window at Central Park. “Just all things mordant and macabre. I did see the Scottish play once when I was at Oxford. I think maybe Ian McKellen was the lead.”

“Oxford? Edmund Dulac?” The producer lowered himself into the thick leather. “I hope this doesn’t offend, but you surprise me.”

Mulder grinned, sipping his Kenya AA. “Well, I’ve always had a fascination with MacBeth. At least, the folklore surrounding it. By the way, love the new title. ‘I love the ladies and they love me back. Now who’s the Mack?’” He turned to Eames. “Ice T.”

The detective smiled tolerantly. The ride over had been enough of a trip.

“My, you are eclectic,” Grant chuckled. “It was a fortunate accident of linguistics. As you noted, in hip-hop argot, a ‘mack’ is a ladies man. It also refers to an uzi, and to get your mack on, well, Agent Mulder, I’m going to guess you can surmise that one. Sex and violence and power – the gangsta life encapsulated. And if that wasn’t enough, to put your mack on means to dance, to get your groove on. Perfect for Broadway’s next hit musical, eh?”

“Plus, it’s a nifty way to get around the Macbeth curse,” Mulder suggested.

“The curse?” Grant stroked his gray brush mustache with amusement. “Surely you don’t subscribe to that old superstition, do you, Agent?”

“The play does contain very strong occult themes, and its history is riddled with controversy,” Mulder suggested before Eames could divert the conversation to matters less ethereal. “Every major playwright or author strikes a few nerves. I’m sure you flared a few tempers writing about American race relations, poverty, Vietnam in the ‘70s. In Shakespeare’s day, the Catholic Church was still pretty worked up over Jacobean witchcraft. In the late 16th Century, Scotland’s King James accused a group of Scottish witches of trying to kill him by raising storms at sea and casting spells with wax images. He even wrote a tract called Daemonologie to wake the public up about the evils of witchcraft. The play already was loaded with controversy: Shakespeare’s inspiration for Macbeth was the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Catholic conspirators tried to blow up King James and his entire Parliament.”

“So what, the Catholic church put a whammy on Old Bill?” the producer chuckled. “Or maybe just a pissed-off witch or two? I’m guessing you’ve read the speculation Shakespeare used real incantations in the text of the play, and that that didn’t sit too well with some of the more serious black arts practitioners of the day.” Grant’s smile disappeared. “Actually, Macbeth’s been my life’s blessing — I’d likely have never seen my 18th birthday if some liberal actor hadn’t decided to bring Shakespeare to Chicago’s inner city schools. Where I caught the bug, so to speak. I owe The Bard a debt I can never repay. That aside, as much as I’m enjoying dissecting the Scottish Play with you, I have to assume you’re seeking a more earthly culprit for that poor man’s murder.”

“We do understand there were some tensions among your cast,” Eames ventured.

Grant laughed. “That’s like saying there’s an air of competition at a Knicks game. Tension – interpersonal antipathy, thespian rivalry, even sexual tension — makes for good theater. Sometimes, you throw a grenade into the mix, and you get something truly phenomenal.”

“Forester was the grenade?”

“Poor turn of phrase, sorry. But, yes, I suppose he was. When we brought the show to Broadway, the feeling was that a recognized member of the hip-hop community would bring a raw veracity to the lead.” Grant spotted something on Mulder’s face. “And, yes, we realized his, ah, notoriety couldn’t hurt sales – could maybe even bring a new audience to Broadway. Look at the box office popularity of Queen Latifah, Sean Combs’ success in the 2004 revival of Raisin in the Sun. Of course, Elliot’s professional and personal style sometimes clashed with the rest of the cast. He was somewhat more autonomous than formally trained actors.”

“I heard he got fairly autonomous on Darrell Ives’ ass the day he was killed,” Mulder suggested.

Grant was silent for a moment. “Well, I know it was difficult for Darryl when the decision was made to cast Elliot in the lead. I mean, Darryl was the primary force behind taking the production to Broadway. Plus, Elliot wasn’t accustomed to the team dynamic of the theater. He had the moves down – lot of choreography in his concert routines – and he could do the lines. But he wasn’t used to taking direction and working with classically trained performers. There was a fairly deep cultural rift, absolutely. But nothing that would lead to what…happened to Elliot. If anything,…”

“What, Mr. Grant?” Eames coaxed.

The playwright sighed. “Well, I just can’t see anyone in our production being capable of this kind of violence. If anything, and I hate to contemplate this, but if anything, I wonder if Elliot’s world didn’t catch up to him. Drugs, his old gang ties. I don’t know. ‘Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.’”

“‘Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in,’” Mulder responded in a bad Pacino.

“Or as they used to say in my old ‘hood, ‘What goes around comes around,’” Grant murmured.

Tri-B Studios

Brooklyn. New York

Thursday, April 16

“Bobby G!” The lanky young man leapt from his seat at the mixing board and pulled Goren into a bear hug.

“Sorry about your cousin,” the cop murmured, returning the embrace. Tyrese Forester pulled back with a somber expression, acknowledging his sympathies with a curt nod.

“You gonna get the man did this?” Tyrese turned to Scully. “Man here saved my skinny ass, sholda than show. My brother and me was with a crew outta the Bronx – shit, I was, what, 13? — and Bobby started gettin’ all up in my face.”

“I was working Narcotics then,” Goren smiled, as if they were swapping family reminiscences.

“Yeah, this Frankenstein-lookin’ cracker come around, on our turf, pumpin’ all this mad shit to my boys how he’s gonna shut us down, put us up north? Well, he finds out the feds, they gonna crash our shit, and rousts me right on the street ‘side my mama’s house. I was ready to bust a cap in his cracker ass, but one of our boys been bangin’ this bitch ran with one of the southside crews, and they beat the Dee-Eee-Ay boys by a couple hours. Execution style, straight up – El hadn’t drove Mama to my aunt’s funeral that day, been me haulin’ his coffin. Didn’t have much of a crew after that, and Bobby here gets me on cleanin’ up the studio. They taught me how to work the board, got me a union card, and now I don’t have to worry ‘bout getting’ my ass capped.”

“You think that’s what happened to your cousin?” Scully inquired.

“Naw, El been outta that shit for years, ever since he went platinum,” Tyrese responded. He was a player – gettin’ crunk, flamboastin’ like Snoop. Truth, he loved the gangsta life but never had the heart for the rough shit. Party, that was El.”

Goren glanced into the booth, where a burly man was arguing animatedly with an older man who’d adopted a patient ref pose, hands on hips. “Tyrese, I listened to some of your cousin’s tracks last night. He was fond of screwing mixes, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, I guess,” the younger Forester answered softly, with a slightly defensive tone. “You askin’ was he sippin’?”

“Was he?” the detective prodded, eyes locked on Tyrese’s. The young man sighed and nodded. “Screwing means to play a record slow – makes the bass come out better, and it’s easier to mix with ballads. It’s especially popular with people who ‘sip syrup’ – blend promethazine or other codeine-based cough suppressants with Sprite, 7-Up, other drinks, to get a psychedelic feel when they listen to ‘screw mixes.’ There was a fairly new ring on the table next to the chair where Elliott…died. The lab reported it was promethazine mixed with codeine. But we couldn’t find any syrup anywhere in the apartment.”

“So El wasn’t no Mutha Teresa. What’s that got to do with this shit?”

“It may have to do with how he died. I think maybe the killer took the bottle away. Tyrese, he have anything going on? I mean, a woman?”

“Like I said, El was a player. Girl was a bobblehead, you know?” Forester offered an illustrative gesture, ducking his head repeatedly. Then he glanced at Scully. “Sorry. She was like Baskin-Robbins – always after the flava of the month, and El was Deluxe Rocky Road. But it got El sprung, idea of getting’ his mack on with some debutante Meryl Streep wannabe. He was a player, and he was gonna hit that long as he could.”

“Ah, the romance of the theater,” Scully rhapsodized.

Langston Hughes High School

Harlem, New York

Thursday, April 16

“Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen, who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands took off her life; this, and what needful else that calls upon us, by the grace of Grace. We will perform in measure, time and place: So, thanks to all at once and to each one, whom we invite to see us crown’d at Scone.”

Darrell Ives bowed with a flourish, and the quintet of students that comprised Langston Hughes’ Drama Club burst into a brief smattering of applause. As he jumped from the cafetorium “stage” with a stiff smile, the club’s faculty sponsor offered an effusive expression of gratitude as the club’s members nodded perfunctorily. He offered the usual platitudes about hard work and focus and persistence, and bid a hasty adieu.

Halfway across the scuffed linoleum, Ives slowed. In the doorway were the cops who’d come around asking about Forester that morning, the quiet redhead and the devious giant. The giant beamed welcomingly, and Ives’ guard went up.

“Nice,” Goren observed as the actor approached, warily eyeing the pair. “I mean, giving back to the community that way.”

Ives smiled tightly, trying to figure out whether this was a dig at his Long Island upbringing. “Stanford says it’s my responsibility as an artist – to bring my art to the people, to the streets.” He glanced back at a couple of snickering teens. “Personally, I’m not so sure I stimulated any young minds today – can’t imagine Jacobean theater’s really relevant to them — but it’s important to Stanford.”

“Good to see you don’t bear any ill will toward him,” Goren interjected. “Grant, that is. I mean, him replacing you with Forester and all…”

“Forester had marketing value,” Ives sighed, as if he’d memorized the line. “Stanford made a savvy marketing move. Besides, I don’t expect Forester would’ve been around forever. Lot of the reason guys like him get into the gangs is they’re ADD – attention deficit. He’d have had his fun and moved on to the next CD or action thriller.”

“And then you’d be back in the lead,” Scully suggested. “Congratulations, by the way.”

“Isn’t the way I wanted it. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Goren turned toward the front entrance to the aging school, glancing past the stoic security guard. “Oh, your cab isn’t here yet. We could give you a ride back to the theater, you want.”

“Uh, no. Thanks. It should be here any second,” Ives said longingly.

“Sure it makes things easier for you, though,” Goren contemplated.

“What?”

“Forester being gone. I mean, we heard about the little scuffle between you and Forester on stage the other day.” Goren smiled sympathetically. “Must’ve been pretty humiliating.”

“He only humiliated himself,” Ives snapped without much conviction. “It was stupid, juvenile.”

“Like a schoolyard fight. Probably a woman involved, right?” Goren grinned and looked to Scully, who arched an eyebrow. She was beginning to get used to his antics.

“There it is,” Ives announced, pushing past Goren. “You got any more questions, I gave you my lawyer’s card yesterday. Good luck.”

The actor practically flew down the front steps of the school, past the concrete schoolyard, and into a cab driven by a white-bearded Sikh. Goren and Scully watched the taxi lurch from the curb.

“I don’t know,” the agent murmured. “Burning Forester alive for a part? Or a woman?”

Goren nodded absently. “You saw how uncomfortable he was in there with those kids. He couldn’t wait to escape. But Grant said it was ‘important.’ He worships him, like a son worships a father. A prodigal son.”

“Ives killed Forester because of some kind of Freudian displacement complex?” Scully challenged. “Methinks you doth read too much Shakespeare.”

“The whole killing had a melodramatic, almost staged aspect,” Goren countered. “And if Ives felt Forester were somehow desecrating Grant’s play, he might’ve been subconsciously inclined to imbue the murder with the trappings of the Macbeth curse.”

Scully shook her head. “I bet you and Mulder were a blast at the frat house.”

West Avon, Connecticut

Thursday, April 16

Errol’s cup rattled on its saucer with the impact of Connie’s moist, meaty palm. His son’s face was florid, distraught, dangerous.

“You did it, didn’t you?” Conrad had always approached Errol’s obsession – his family’s obsession – with cold rationality. It was impossible, imponderable. But at the same time, he pondered the possibility, dug into dusty and digital archives, exhaustively researched it. It peeked from beneath the mental door behind which Conrad had securely confined it. It was unbelievable but somehow undeniable.

“Listen to yourself,” Errol sneered, daubing his spilled coffee with his napkin. He was an absurd figure of antiquated gentility. A cloth napkin for breakfast? And who used a saucer any more? “The man’s death is unfortunate. But even if I accept responsibility for what happened, do you honestly believe the police are intelligent enough – open enough – to grasp the significance of my ‘gift’?”

“Jesus, Pop,” Connie whined. “The guy was famous, and the way he was killed. If they can even trace it back to us, there’ll be questions. And if they look back, Jesus.”

“It’s done.” Errol folded his Times to the daily crossword, and not for the first time, Conrad considered choking the life from the old man, throttling the smug delusion from him. His knotted fingers straightened as realization hit home.

“You didn’t send just the one, did you?” he asked, voice tinged with dread.

“I followed the traditional custom,” his father mumbled, scratching at the boxes on the pages.

Conrad dropped into a chair, jaw slack, mind racing, as Errol drifted away…

Residence of Todd Frankel

Brooklyn, New York

Friday, April 17

“Old Dungeons and Dragons partner?” Eames asked, eyeing the array of swords, shields, crests, and medieval figurines lining Todd Frankel’s cramped and cluttered Brooklyn apartment.

Mulder grinned at Eames’ jibe. She had Scully’s sardonic wit, but with a streetwise cynicism she likely had inherited from her cop father and honed during her tour in NYPD Vice. “Todd’s helped me out on a couple of cases — genealogy, Druidic lore, stuff like that. Besides programming games, he’s written four or five books on the Middle Ages and the Carolingian Renaissance. Besides, I was into Tetris and Galaga — Dungeons and Dragons was for geeks. How’s it coming, Todd?”

“Hold your ass, Mulder,” the balding gnomish young man growled in a thick Big Apple patois, rapping keys with one mustard-stained finger while grabbing another bite of Big Mac and washing it down with a supersized Coke. A speck of ground beef fell from Todd Crichton’s lips as they curled into a triumphant smile. “Fuckin’ A — I thought so. C’mere.”

Mulder leaned over Todd’s shoulder, Eames less so.

“Thought I recognized the family legend, that engrailed saltire — the cross thing there — looks like piranhas been workin’ on it. Middleton crest. Whatcha call a habitation name — geographical, like middle town, you know? It’s some pretty ancient Anglo Saxon shit — there’s a lotta Middletons, like Chins in a Chinese phonebook, you know? You know the joke, right?”

Eames uttered an impatient response.

“There’s a couple famous Middletons. Lilly Munster — Yvonne deCarlo, cacked a few months back? — her real name was Middleton. Then there was Tommy Middleton — Thomas Middleton. Wrote plays back in the 17th Century, kinda Shakespeare light.”

“Todd,” Mulder drawled. “Were Shakespeare and Middleton contemporaries?”

“They were homies, kinda — if you consider Shakespeare Tupac and Middleton Kool Moe Dee. Both of ‘em could write both comedy and tragedy, which was kinda unusual back in the day. But you only hear about one of Middleton’s plays today — The Changeling? They did it as a movie a couple of times, I think. Otherwise, nobody much ever hears of him no more. Oh, and Middleton was kinda a Jacobean script doctor, too. Even gave Shakespeare some help one time.”

“What play?” Mulder asked anxiously.

“Macbeth. Most of the Weird Sisters shit — you know, ‘double, double, toil, and trouble’ — was from Middleton’s The Witch. Wasn’t even part of Shakespeare’s original story, but old Will gets all the credit.” Todd retrieved his dripping burger. “I was Middleton, I’d be royally pissed.”

**

“And the purpose of this little academic exercise was….?” Eames inquired.

“To address the anomaly,” Mulder said, eyeing the prodigious double cheese slice the counterboy’d deposited before him. It was early, and Angie’s Little Pizza Heaven was empty save the pair.

Eames gathered her slice and Diet Pepsi and followed him to a corner table near the Simpsons video game. “Glad we cleared that one up.”

Mulder grinned crookedly. “Anomalies clog the investigative process. You have to clear out the puzzle pieces that don’t fit, the odder odds and ends, the divergences from everyday routine and personal psychology. Then, you can see the bigger picture – the true pattern of the crime. Besides,” the agent added, tearing into his slice, “anomalies are bitchin’ cool.”

Eames studied the anomaly across the table. He made Bobby look like the picture of stodgy conventionalism, and with her partner, the weaving, meandering ride inevitably wound up somewhere worthwhile. “I’ll admit, I am curious what Bog Noyz and medieval heraldry have in common.”

“The crest wasn’t a piece of jewelry – it had no hardware. And it wasn’t Forester’s crest. Instead, it belongs to a family with whom Shakespeare was associated. You’ve heard of sampling, right?”

“’It’s a hard knock life…’” Eames sang off-key.

“You go, Sister, though I’m not sure whether what Jay-Z was doing wasn’t more of a remix than sampling,” Mulder laughed. “But you’ve got the idea. You insert a familiar lyric or musical passage into a song as an homage or for ironic effect or just because you’ve hit the creative wall. It wasn’t so entirely different in the bad old days of Wild Bill Shakespeare. There’s already enough speculation about which works Shakespeare actually wrote and what might actually have been penned by Marley or Francis Bacon or some schmuck we’ve never even heard of. Add to that all the copying and ‘borrowing’ and blatant plagiarism that went on during the period. What if Thomas Middleton didn’t voluntarily add the Weird Sisters to Macbeth, or even if he did, if his descendants somehow came to believe Middleton had been cheated out of his fame by the John Grisham of the Jacobean Era.”

Eames’ face was lined with concern. Bobby’s friend was a lunatic. Worse yet, a lunatic with a badge and a gun.

Mulder was oblivious to the detective’s expression. “And what if Middleton’s fiction was based on an actual knowledge of witchcraft? What if his characters were developed from real-life models? What if that crest you found on Forester wasn’t a charm, but something quite the opposite?”

“What the hell?” Eames’ sudden exclamation startled Mulder as well as the boy behind the counter. “What in the hell are you talking about? Curses? Jesus. I know you’re a friend of Bobby’s, but this is just, just insane.”

Mulder leaned forward, his brow knit in grave sincerity. “But what if it isn’t? What if it isn’t?” He burst into laughter, and leaned back. “Look, Det. Eames, I know it sounds unorthodox, but how would you explain Elliott Forester coming into possession of such an unusual object?”

“Ebay? He finds out it’s associated with Shakespeare, with Macbeth, and he figures it’ll bring him luck. The guy loved his bling.”

“OK,” Mulder acknowledged. “That’s a legitimate avenue of investigation, and we should follow it. I’d like to follow an additional avenue.”

“And that avenue starts where?”

“Alec Baldwin.” The indignation drained from Eames’ face, to be replaced with mute astonishment. “C’mon, Detective – you drive. I already adjusted the seat for Scully.”

The Shiban Theater

Manhattan, New York

Friday, April 17

“Don’t know what we’re going to do now,” Lisette deBow sighed, hooking a slender arm over the back of her chair as her reflection in the makeup mirror did the same. In the corner of her makeup table was a photo of a much younger and more carefree Lisey, beaming under the muscular arm of a gray-haired black man in T-shirt and suspenders. “Stanford says the producers aren’t pulling the plug yet, but most of the press, the programs, the advertising — well, Elliott was pretty much the big draw.”

“What’s the old saying?” Goren asked from his perch on the dressing room couch. “‘The show must go on?’”

The young actress grimaced. “Can’t go on without the money.”

“Yeah, but you’ve still got Darrell Ives. I mean, he’s done some stage, a little TV. I think I saw him on HBO a week ago.”

“Yeah,” deBow nodded unenthusiastically. “It was an adaptation of one of Stanford’s early plays — Brother Act. Darrell’s kind of Stanford’s protégé.”

Goren’s brow wrinkled in feigned confusion. “He was Mac B. — Macbeth — in the original production off-Broadway, wasn’t he? Now, he’s what, Banquo, basically, right? That bother him?”

“Darrell’s a trooper,” deBow stated flatly. “He understood.”

“In fact,” Goren continued, building momentum, “one of the crew said you used to date Darrell, right? I mean, during the original production?”

DeBow blinked stonily. “Things happen all the time backstage — all the adrenalin and tension. It just didn’t work out. Probably our artistic egos.”

“Zocor?”

DeBow, rattled by Goren’s line of questioning, glanced quizzically at Scully, who was now behind her, holding a pill bottle taken from her makeup table. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” the agent smiled apologetically, shaking the bottle like a castanet. “I recognized the color and shape. My cousin has a cholesterol problem, and they just switched her from Lipitor to Zocor. Working for you?”

The actress appeared relieved by the sidetrack. “Genetic thing, high LDL. Both my sisters and my mom. Yeah, a little soreness in the joints from time to time. But my count was down some last checkup.”

“Janet says diet’s important, too,” Scully added. “She’s eating a lot of salmon, tuna — the dark-fleshed fish.”

“Omega-3s. Yeah, me, too — I’ve learned to love sushi.”

“Almonds, too — supposed to help lower the bad cholesterol.” DeBow swiveled back to Goren, who was reaching into his jacket pocket. “And dark chocolate — it’s like an antioxidant.” He held up a bag full of chocolate-covered nuts. “You want some?”

Lisette deBow studied the bag warily.

“C’mon, have one. It’s the same brand you like to snack on. You dropped one at Forester’s, and left some salmon in the fridge. Big Noyz didn’t appear to be very health-conscious — salty carbs and milk chocolate and caramel.”

“It wouldn’t have been the first stage romance ever,” Scully murmured sympathetically. “Why the big secret?”

“Big Noyz didn’t live up to your artistic standards?” Goren prodded. “Afraid of what the gang at Elaine’s might say?”

“It wasn’t me,” deBow finally whispered. She looked up, pain in her eyes. “It was him. In retrospect, I guess I was just a resident bootie call for him. He said it was bad for his image for us to be out together. His image.”

“That why you packed so abruptly, on the spur of the moment?”

DeBow’s defiant demeanor suddenly deteriorated into one of despair. “OK. OK. But you have to believe me. I found him like — like…” The actress looked as though she might vomit. “I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t, especially not like–”

“I know,” Goren nodded, touching her forearm sympathetically. “The freight elevator has a security cam. You came up on it to avoid being seen, right? Then the video got you rushing out with two armfuls of clothes. Less than 10 minutes. You couldn’t have done it. So who did? Your old boyfriend? Darrell?”

DeBow’s eyes widened. “He couldn’t have done…that.”

Doubt lingered in her reply.

**

“Stanford?”

Stanford Grant looked up from his script revisions, expression neutral. Darrell had perceived a certain detachment from the playwright since the decision had been made to put Forester on top of the marquee. Now, his mentor sat back, templing his fingers.

“Glad you came by. We want you back.”

Darrell was speechless. He assumed the show would close, or they’d go shopping for another name.

“What about the marquee value?” he finally asked, drily. Stanford sighed.

“Look, Darrell. I know you feel you got a raw deal. But this is your opportunity, and I would seize it. As distasteful as it may be, we’ve gotten a lot of media exposure. You know the show; you’ve mastered the part. We have complete confidence in your ability to carry the production. If you want it, of course.”

“Of course,” Darrell croaked, too quickly. “When we reopening?”

“Two weeks. Think you can get back up on your lines?”

“Yeah. Absolutely.” Darrell fell silent.

“What?”

“It’s just…Those cops were by earlier – they talked to the crew and Lisette. They know about me getting into it with Forester the day he was murdered and, uh, about Lisette and I. I’m pretty sure I’m a prime suspect.”

Stanford studied his protégé. “They can’t believe you’d be capable of that kind of savagery.”

“I’m probably, I don’t know, convenient for them.”

The producer nodded gravely. “Good thing you and I were doing lines the night Elliott died.”

Darrell stared at him, then looked away. Stanford returned abruptly to the script on his desk.

“Good to have you back,” the playwright said simply. It hit Darrell, then — the old man suspected him. He hovered for another few seconds, searching for an appropriate line. Then, like any good actor, he took his cue and made his exit.

New York University Department of Physics

Manhattan, New York

Friday, April 17

“Is that it?” Theodor Koscyk asked boyishly, his gnarled fingers twitching toward the evidence bag dangling from Mulder’s hand. “Gimme.”

Eames stared on frowning as the agent passed the Middleton crest to the septuagenarian physicist. Mulder had dragged her around three boroughs, consulting geekish shop owners, a Hasidic jeweler, and the public library on what had seemed to be some kind of bizarre goose chase.

“It is karmic that Chuck Burks told me of your query,” the old man said. “I’ve been close to a breakthrough in validating kirlian photography over the past 15 years.” Koscyk turned to Eames. “You are familiar with kirlian photography?”

“Ah…”

“In 1939, Semyon Kirlian discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is subjected to a high-voltage electric field, an image is created on the plate. The image resembles a coronal discharge, a halo. The image is said to be a physical manifestation of the spiritual aura or ‘life force’ which allegedly surrounds each living thing.” Koscyk led the investigators through his lab to a device similar to a microwave. He placed the bagged trinket inside, closed a transparent door, and punched shakily at a keypad mounted on the side.

“I maintain the aura is no more than a form of quasi-electromagnetic energy that has yet to be quantified,” Koscyk continued. “This energy can be conveyed by living organisms to inorganic objects or even locales. Just as they are attuned to sounds outside the human auditory range, so can animals sense this energy. Why else are canines repelled or enraged by certain people or places? Of course, I don’t commonly share my theories with the academic community at large. Provincial thinkers, most of them.”

Eames clucked sympathetically, willing an escape from the madman’s lair. Mulder appeared fascinated.

The faux-microwave began to hum, and lights began to flare and flicker under the glass beneath the Middleton crest.

“Do you believe in curses, Doctor?” Mulder asked. Eames stared at him.

“Again, energy,” Koscyk snapped. “It’s all energy. You’re very fetching for a policeman, by the way.”

Eames and Mulder both perked. To Mulder’s relief and Eames’ consternation, the scientist was favoring her with a broad yellow grin.

“Ah, here it is,” Koscyk sighed happily. “Observe.”

Eames peered inside the box despite herself. The trinket inside the plastic bag “glowed” – black, if that were possible.

“Energy,” her admirer murmured at her elbow. “Very strong energy.”

**

“I’ve got dinner plans tonight,” Eames said as they hit the street outside the NYU lab. “Are we planning any more excursions down the rabbithole?”

Mulder merely grinned.

Residence of Lisette deBow

Greenwich Village, New York

Friday, April 17

“Shit,” Lisette muttered. The actress glanced anxiously at Simon Yates, to see how he’d reacted to the curse. The producer been staring into her cleavage as she climbed into his Mercedes coupe, and he looked quickly away.

Lisette wasn’t surprised, and indeed was slightly pleased. She’d felt Yates appraising her ever since the show moved to the Shiban, and if he wanted to put on the pretense of discussing career opportunities, well, then, he’d have to produce an opportunity or two, wouldn’t he? Lisette had long ago lost her taste for takeout rice and pizza.

“What’s wrong?” Simon asked, an impatient smile on his face. He planned to take her to a place here in the Village — a place where he would never take his wife — and then, hopefully, come back to her apartment. He was on a timeline.

“My bag,” Lisette said apologetically. “Just a minute, I swear.”

“I’ve got dinner–” he began, but it was too late — his Lady M. already was ascending the stoop.

**

Lisette knew something was wrong the second she nudged the door open. She’d left the light on over the kitchenette sink, and a shadow flitted into the hall.

Lisette gasped, then disobeyed the New Yorker’s No. 1 Edict, stepping toward the shadow rather than running like hell. “What are you doing here? You come out.”

The air in the apartment was still, and then she heard it. Low, labored, frightened breathing.

Lisette eschewed New Yorker’s Edict 2. “I’m calling the cops, you son of a bitch.”

And, as if completing a spell, she flushed Edict No. 3 and flipped the light switch.

“The hell,” she muttered, looking into the terrified eyes of her intruder. Lisette spotted her purse on the coffee table and started toward it. The room exploded, and she was thrown back against the living room wall.

“Ohfuckohfuckohfuck,” her intruder sobbed, staring at her crumpled body, the blood spreading onto her rug. Lisette looked up imploringly, blood on her lips, and the intruder bolted toward the firescape window that had provided entry moments before.

As the cold overtook her, Lisette deBow listened curiously to the metallic, retreating steps….

Major Case Squad

Saturday, April 18

“My money’s on Ives,” Eames said, setting her coffee on the interview table. “It’s like Shakespeare wrote the script: Forester bumped him from the lead, then knocked Nikes with his leading lady. The killing has revenge all over it.”

“And, unfortunately, very little evidence I can take to Carver,” Capt. Ross noted. He turned to Goren. “What do you think, Detective?”

The burly detective frowned, looking up from his open laptop. “There was a photo in Lisette deBow’s dressing room –Lisette I assume with her dad. He was wearing suspenders and a T-shirt. Odd combo, right?”

“Unless you’re a fireman,” Eames supplied. Goren began to nod vigorously.

“Exactly. Did you know Lisette grew up in Crown Point, N.Y.?”

“Crown Point,” Ross considered. “Why’s that familiar?”

Eames breathed. “George Mott, the alleged spontaneous combustion case. DeBow’s father worked with Mott?”

“Mott turned in his papers before Harold deBow joined the company. But every firefighter over 30 knows the Mott case, chapter and verse.”

“You think she faked the spontaneous combustion element?” the captain inquired. “Fireman’s kid, she could’ve picked up a few tricks. Could’ve known about the cameras on the freight elevator, too.”

Goren held up a hand and pointed to his laptop screen. Eames stepped around the table and spotted a beaming Darrell Ives.

“Village Voice,” Goren explained. “They did a piece on Ives a few months back, before Forester replaced him in the show. Ives apparently has aspirations of writing as well as acting. He’s been trying to round up backers for his own play, Ignition.”

Ross perked.

“Ives’ says it’s ‘an absurdist satire about a young, middle-class African-American man caught between his affluent upbringing and modern cultural pressures, who eventually exploded amid social friction and endemic racism.’”

“Write about what you know,” Eames said, dryly. “Or at least what your ex-squeeze knows. Carver ought to like this.”

“How would he like a two-for-one?” Mulder asked from the doorway. Eames’ jaw tightened; Goren looked up with interest. “I finally got hold of Alec Baldwin’s people, and one of them remembers getting one of those Middleton crests in the mail back in 1998. They threw it away — thought it was some kind of promotional junk mail — but it stuck in his assistant’s mind because it was so unusual.”

“Hold up,” Ross protested, perplexed.

“In 1998, in an off-Broadway production, Baldwin accidentally sliced open the hand of his Macduff with a sword,” Goren related. “Some attributed it to the Macbeth curse.”

“That’s not all,” Mulder reported. “I googled up every professional, community, and Shakespeare production of Macbeth I could find and canvassed a couple of dozen Macbeths and Lady Macbeths all over the country. At least eight of them remembered receiving crests. I think our Shakespearean avenger is using the web as a curse mailing list.”

Capt. Ross stared at the agent. “You gotta be kidding.”

“And I have reason to believe this is some kind of multi-generational tradition. I found an estate catalogues for Ian Galsborough, an actor who died during a production in 1946, and the Middleton crest turned up in one of the odd lots of jewelry. I bet if we dug deeper, we’d find out the Middletons have been sending these ‘gifts’ for decades, maybe even centuries.”

“Call the History Channel,” Ross smirked. “How’s this help us?”

“I checked around the jewelry district to see if anybody could identify the work on the crest you found in deBow’s apartment. A wholesaler remembered a Connecticut jeweler who tried to pitch a line of heraldic jewelry to him back in the early ‘90s. Errol’s Fine Jewelry. Current owner is Errol’s son, Conrad. Conrad Middleton.”

Ross looked to Goren, who nodded. The detective was emotionally erratic, but his intuitive instincts were unerring.

“OK,” the captain sighed. “Time for a little jewelry shopping. Just check in with the locals and proceed with caution – I’m still not sold on this whole curse mishegoss.”

“Uh, I want to float a theory past Rodgers,” Goren said. “I’d like Agent Scully to sit in, too, in a forensic capacity.”

“Look’s like I’m your man,” Mulder chimed.

Neither Ross nor Eames appeared euphoric about the prospect.

**

“It’s possible,” Rodgers murmured skeptically. “I suppose that’s why they call it an accident, though this one would be more freakish than most. And you were right – wasn’t much undamaged tissue to sample, but we did find traces of promethazine and codeine.”

“Alcohol would enhance the sedative effects of the promethazine,” contributed Scully, who’d been briefed on the ride to the lab. “Promethazine’s well-absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract, but the syrup carrier could have temporarily bound the alcohol to the esophageal lining.”

“The wick,” Goren said, grimly. “Or you might say, the fuse. The alcohol was the accelerant.”

Rodgers’ eyes narrowed. “Awful iffy as a murder method. Lot of factors have to come together.”

“Did you find anything on the body?”

Rodger nodded the cop and the agent to a laptop on her lab table. She punched up a graphic photo Goren and Scully recognized as charred skin. “I can’t be sure – again, too much damage – but it looks like it could be a taser mark. About the right distance between prongs. So you think your killer used a stun gun to light the wick?”

“I think it was an accident. I think the murderer was trying to subdue Forester, maybe take him somewhere else to kill him. Maybe stage a gang killing. The ‘spontaneous’ combustion was a lucky accident. It provided a red herring while covering the killer’s tracks.”

“But the hand,” Scully protested, despite herself.

“Forester was a big Mets fan,” Goren explained. “It was his signature – he hung with the players, wore a fez with the Mets logo and wore a game-used batting glove, gift from Carlos Delgado about a year ago. Forester was probably wearing it when he was killed – it insulated his hand from the fire.”

“The murderer pulls off the glove, and you’ve got all the classic earmarks of SHC,” Scully considered.

“So who lit the fuse?” Rodgers posed.

Errol’s Fine Jewelry

West Avon, Connecticut

Saturday, April 18

“Wow,” Mulder laughed helplessly. “All this crap looks pretty much the same to me. Sorry.”

Conrad Middleton smiled perfunctorily. This schlub probably couldn’t tell a bezel facet from a girdle plane unless it was on a Superbowl ring. They’d been at this for 20 minutes.

But the girlfriend, despite her size, looked like a world-class ball-buster, and he’d close on Joe Sixpack before they left for dinner at Sizzler’s. She already seemed pissed at him. No power like the vice-like iron grip of a good woman.

“No problem, sir,” Connie assured him. “That’s what I’m here for. I’ve got something here I think you might like.”

Mulder reached into his windbreaker. “That’s funny. So have I.”

He placed a small Ziploc bag on the display case. The middle-aged jeweler examined it, then looked quickly up at the agent, eyes wide. Then, Conrad recovered. “What is this?”

Eames, who’d been pretending to study sapphires a few yards behind Mulder, perked. They were supposed to be sizing Middleton up. Was Mulder playing free agent?

“Don’t you recognize it?” Mulder continued, beaming amicably. “I mean, your name is Middleton, right? This is your family crest.”

“Ah,” Connie nodded robotically, heading toward the front of the store. “Sorry, not into all that genealogy stuff. You want it set as a ring? We do some very fine custom work, right here on site.”

“So we see,” Mulder murmured, trailing Middleton. “This is yours’, isn’t it?”

“Honey,” Eames began warily.

“You’ve been misinformed,” Connie said coolly, reaching the cash register. “But I can show you a couple of settings that would look great with it.”

Mulder nodded toward the security camera mounted above the front door. “You know Lisette deBow’s building had a setup like that?”

Connie had scanned the building for cameras for making entry. “Bullshit—” His lips clamped shut. Eames stood mute, attempting to comprehend the situation. The jeweler’s eyes darted toward the detective, then to Mulder, and he dived for a drawer under the register. Connie’s trembling arm came up with a .38, and he backed toward the door.

“Put it down!!” Eames bellowed. Connie broke for the door, pursued by Mulder, as she fumbled her weapon from her purse. This was supposed to be a purely exploratory call, and she’d dressed tourist, sans shoulder harness.

Middleton’s shop was in the center of West Avon’s three-block business district, and the jeweler dodged a scattering of screaming, cringing mid-afternoon pedestrians. He started across Main and Welton, skidding to a stop as a pickup nearly sideswiped him. Mulder caught up to him, panting, and grabbed his forearm. Connie leveled his .38 between the agent’s eyes.

“We saw you’d been robbed twice last year,” Mulder said calmly. “You’re an amateur – I was hoping you wouldn’t get rid of the gun. But you’re also an important local businessman, and your old Kiwanis buddy Judge Peary wouldn’t give us a search warrant. Now we don’t need one.”

“Back off!!” Connie yelled. “Just, just, just lemme go, or I swear I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off.”

Suddenly, the merchant heard a click and felt cold metal against his temple.

“Drop it,” Eames growled quietly from his blind spot. “I mean now.”

The revolver clattered to the concrete. Eames muscled the paunchy man to his knees. “Got something in a bracelet you might like, Connie,” she muttered, closing the cuffs on his wrists.

“Thanks,” Mulder murmured. The cop’s eyes snapped up, and he reeled back at what he saw in them.

Residence of Errol Middleton

West Avon, Connecticut

Saturday, April 18

After Conrad Middleton’s performance on Main, Judge Peary was far less reluctant to issue a search warrant for his father’s home. Mulder and Eames were astonished to find the elder Middleton somewhat befuddled by their arrival with two West Avon officers but otherwise garrulously amiable.

“That’s me, third from left,” Errol informed Eames, tapping a framed black-and-white shot of obvious ‘60s vintage. “The Man Who Came to Dinner. My first role. Say, you’ll want to see this…”

As the former jeweler searched for one of the many scrapbooks littered about the rec room, Mulder scanned the crowded bookshelves flanking the old man’s TV. The agent could see the senility in Errol’s unfocused and oblivious demeanor – it was likely what Mulder was seeking would be in plain site.

He found it between an autographed script of Camelot and a buyer’s guide to antique broaches. The thick album was stuffed with clippings dating from the 1920s to the present – newspaper advances, calendars, and reviews and a more recent section of Internet printouts, all featuring productions of the Scottish Play. A Times story on Elliott Forester was glued neatly on the last full page.

Smiling, Mulder tucked the book under his arm. Then he spotted it – a triangular carving in the poured concrete floor, projecting from under the room-length braided rug. He nudged a toe under the edge of the rug and rolled it back to reveal a five-pointed shape similar to a Star of David.

“Mr. Middleton,” Mulder called. Errol looked up from the memories he was sharing with Eames. “You a religious man?”

The actor frowned disapprovingly. “That’s a little personal, don’t you think?”

“I’m asking because of the pentagram, sir. Are you by any chance Wiccan?”

Errol’s jaw tightened, and then he shrugged. “Well, I don’t advertise it. It’s a tight-knit community, and not everybody respects – what do you call it these days? — religious diversity.”

“People don’t understand the Old Religion – the unfamiliar frightens them,” Mulder said. “Like the Wiccan Rede says, ‘An it harm none, do what thou wilt.’ You got a Book of Shadows? I’ve always wanted to see one.”

The old man smiled warmly. “Well, you seem to be a fairly enlightened young man. Let’s go upstairs.”

Major Case Squad

Saturday, April 18

“The boy’s a cretin,” Errol sighed, spreading his hands and subtly checking himself in the interview room’s two-way mirror. The senior Middleton’s attorney was on his left flank, ready to pounce. His son sat on his other side, sullen and childlike despite his bulk.

Goren suppressed a grin – Errol’s every gesture was theatrical, in a cheesy dinner theater sense. When Mulder and Eames called on him, he’d failed to comprehend that he was under arrest along with his offspring. Though for what, precisely, no one was sure. Conrad clearly acted alone in murdering deBow. The Wiccan literature in Errol’s study, the pentagram carved into the basement floor under the old man’s Persian rug appeared to confirm Mulder’s arcane theory, but if it wasn’t laughed out of court, Errol’s lawyer would play the religious freedom card.

“You’re a patron of the arts,” Goren invited. “He doesn’t understand, does he?”

“Thank you,” Errol said precisely, smiling broadly. “He rejected every effort by his mother and I to enrich his cultural experience. He viewed the business I’d crafted over 50 years as some kind of cold cash enterprise. No sense of artistry.”

“He didn’t understand the injustice, the insult. Why it was important to remind the world of Thomas Middleton, his contributions.”

Errol’s eyes shone with madness. “Our birthright was stolen by that…that overrated hack. All I was doing, trying to do, was get back a little of our own.”

Connie snorted. Errol’s eyes narrowed.

“Regardez mon droit ,” the actor/jeweler recited venomously. “Respect my right. It was about respect. The Middleton name. You could never understand that.”

“Everybody’s gonna know the Middleton name now, you crazy old bastard,” Connie mumbled. Ross arched his brows at Goren, and the detective exited.

Eames didn’t look up from her paperwork as he approached her desk. “Hey, you OK?” Goren prodded.

Finally, she sighed, spotting Mulder on the other side of squadroom consulting with Scully. “I’m done with him, Bobby. I’m not doing this. Your friend’s little cowboy play could’ve gotten civilians hurt. If he’d gotten himself killed, IAB would’ve flayed me alive.”

Goren shrugged. “He was right, you know.”

“I’m done with him,” Eames repeated.

O’Faolan’s Pub

Midtown, Manhattan

Saturday, April 18

“Just how well does Det. Goren know Mulder, anyway?”

It was a gambit at rousing Eames from her smoldering funk. Scully had gotten an earful about Mulder’s “stunt” in Connecticut, as Capt. Ross had described it to Skinner. The assistant director had been concerned – her partner’s behavior had become more sporadically erratic over the past few months – but he trusted her to monitor the ongoing situation. Scully had left that job to Goren tonight, begging off dinner with the eccentric detectives to take Eames out for a much-needed and hopefully soul-cleaning drink.

Eames glanced grudgingly up from her second mojito. “Bobby didn’t say much – he never does – except he was at Oxford on a two-month fellowship back in the ‘80s and he and Mulder shared more than a few pints over serial killers and psychopathology. They make a good pair, I guess – the Brothers Grim.”

“He’s an acquired taste,” Scully smiled unconsciously. “I’m guessing you might say the same for Det. Goren…”

Eames sparked momentarily. “Hey, Bobby’s a great cop and a great partner.”

Scully caught the jab. She could hardly fault the detective’s indignation at Mulder – his maverick improvisations had caught her off guard a few times. And Scully could empathize with Eames, the daughter of a venerated NYPD veteran, frequently working in the shadow of an eccentric genius. Goren’s quirky brilliance didn’t seem to bother her, but she had no idea what drove Mulder, what demons lurked at his doorstep.

“I’m sorry about what happened today,” Scully sighed, sipping her Chablis. “That wasn’t typical for Mulder. It’s just, lately, he’s been dealing with a lot of issues, questioning himself, I think. What happened today may have been some kind of overcompensation.”

“That what you call it?” Eames muttered, draining her drink. “I didn’t have time to psychoanalyze him when that crazy jeweler almost blew his brains all over Main Street.”

So much for girls’ night out, Scully thought.

Lupo’s

Brooklyn, New York

Saturday, April 18

Goren obviously was a regular – the maitre de, the server, the roaming manager all were solicitous and deferential; the detective ordered in perfectly pitched Italian without glancing at the menu. And he was obviously a solo diner – the staff reacted to Mulder first with surprise, then with suspicion, then with the polite deference due any friend of “Mr. Goren’s.”

“I sense your partner’s displeasure with my investigative technique,” Mulder began, once everyone had scurried off to do Mr. Goren’s bidding. “I guess I can’t blame her – it was kind of spur of the moment.”

Goren shrugged, sipping his wine. “She’s a cop’s kid, respects procedure, teamwork. Hell, it took her months to get used to me. Look, Fox, your partner told me you’d been through a lot recently. It gets to all of us.” His expression darkened. “I almost walked out a few months ago – I told you Mom’s got lymphoma. I had to move her into a facility in the city, and the disease on top of, well, you know… It gets to you, especially when we do what we do every day. You know?”

Mulder sat back with a resigned smile. “Message received, Bobby. Scully’s been shrink-rapping me for months. I’m OK, really. Fine. Subtle change of subject: We sure Conrad Middleton’s alibied for Forester?”

“Phone records verify the conversation he claimed to have had with that wholesaler out of Florida. No way he could have made it into Manhattan and back in time. He had no motive, anyway. DeBow was an accident, so to speak – Middleton was trying to cover his dad’s tracks. The sins of the father.”

Mulder chuckled as the waiter deposited the linguine ala vongole before him. “Was I wrong, or did the old man seem annoyed at him?”

Goren picked up his fork. “Errol Middleton’s been escaping his mundane life onstage for as long as he can remember, soaking up the adulation of his ‘public.’ He probably resented Connie taking center stage today – a boy who’d rejected the theater, who placed no value on his family’s legacy.”

“Guess everyone sees themselves as the star of their own little drama,” Mulder mused as he speared a mussel and began twirling it in pasta. The fork stopped.

“What?” Goren inquired.

“I think,” the agent drawled, “that we may need to recast the lead.”

Park Southwest Plaza Hotel

Manhattan, New York

Saturday, April 18

As Mulder emerged from the bathroom in his boxers, he was surprised to see Scully fully dressed, perched on the edge of the queen bed.

“That’s just going to make it tougher for me, Scully,” he warned.

“No banter, Mulder, please,” his partner said quietly. “This is already going to be difficult enough.”

Mulder fell silent, a coldness forming in his stomach. “Sure.”

Scully sighed sympathetically, sensing his anxiety. “What happened today, Mulder, frightens me. I’ve become used to your maverick independence, to your impulsive, quixotic little quests for the truth. But lately… I know what you’ve been through, what it’s done to you. But this – it can’t go on, Mulder.

“Do you know how hard it was to trust Krycek, to put your life in his hands? But I knew I couldn’t do it alone, that I had to place my faith in others, in forces beyond my control. You said it yourself: No one gets there alone. I can’t, and neither can you, despite your delusions of immortality.”

Mulder stared mutely at his partner, breathing slowly, his throat twitching. “I know that,” he croaked, almost imperceptibly. “You know, don’t you? That I need you?”

“Do you?” Scully regretted it instantly. She reached for his dangling fingers, squeezed them in hers’. Scully smiled. “This is not an ultimatum, Mulder. I hope – scratch that – I pray it’s a wake-up call.”

Office of Assistant District Attorney Ronald Carver

Manhattan, New York

Monday, April 20

“This is like something from a Shakespearean tragedy,” Assistant District Attorney Ron Carver murmured behind templed fingers, his dark, intelligent eyes troubled.

Carver was one of District Attorney Arthur Branch’s top prosecutors, with a conviction rate second only to the mercurial, Melvillean Sam McCoy. He’d worked with Goren for years, and had learned to trust the intense investigator’s instincts – at least to the point where Goren’s sense of ethics and justice diverged from the interests of the State. ADA Carver was acutely aware Goren and Eames were responsible in large part for his high convict rate, and equally cognizant that Goren’s maverick style – not racial preference or personal allegiance — was a prime reason Sam McCoy likely would succeed Branch.

“We’ve broken the alibi,” Eames pointed out. “He’s open game. He was attacked on the street a few years ago. Stun guns may be illegal in the city, but I’ll bet he was connected enough to get one. Somebody at the theater might know.”

“And we have motive,” Goren added.

“Motive?” Carver mused. “Detective, I’m trying to imagine how a jury will critique this melodramatic tale of yours.”

“That’s why we need a dress rehearsal,” Goren stressed, seizing onto the metaphor.

Carver looked to Mulder and Scully, who’d been silent during Goren’s discourse. “And you two buy into this?”

“It was his idea,” Eames said.

“Ah. I’m feeling better and better about this.” The ADA sighed. “However, Detective, your track record has earned you some benefit of the doubt.”

Goren started to rise.

“Some,” Carver added.

The Shiban Theater

Manhattan, New York

Monday, April 20

“I first met Lisette at a casting call for James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner at the Classical Theatre of Harlem, back in 1998,” Darrell Ives began somberly, holding a glass of Chablis in tribute. “She’d come to the city a year earlier, just like a lot of you made the pilgrimage here to discover your artistic essence, discover yourselves. Lisette failed to land the role of Sister Margaret, and I went home without the part of Luke, but as we waited to audition, scripts in hand, we talked – Lord, we talked, about acting, about the African-American theater, about everything. She had a boundless enthusiasm about her craft, and I knew I’d be seeing her again. Little did I know that someday, Lisette and I would share the stage under the direction of the great Stanford Grant.”

Grant nodded thoughtfully, glancing at Lisette deBow’s portrait on an easel in the center of the Shiban’s stage.

“As they say, the show shall go on, and some other talented young woman will fill the role Lisette assayed as her own. But we’ll all remember that Lisette was Lady M., that she helped bring us here, that whatever immortality this production may enjoy is in no small part due to Lisette’s boundless enthusiasm and artistic essence.” Ives raised his glass toward the walkway. “Lisey, if you’ll allow me the curtain line, bravissima, baby!”

Mack’d’s surviving cast and crew lightly applauded the actor’s eulogy, then adjourned to the catered spread Grant had ordered for the memorial. Darrell turned to catch Grant’s appraising eye, then spotted the huge man and the small woman at the lip of the stage.

Goren stepped forward. “That was a nice tribute, Mr. Ives. I’m sure Ms. deBow would’ve appreciated it.”

“Thanks,” Darrell responded, uncertainly. “And I appreciate your catching Lisette’s killer. What senseless stupidity.”

“All murder’s senseless,” Goren smiled. “Satisfying, profitable? Maybe. But in the end, senseless.”

The actor’s jaw tightened. “Look, why don’t you just cut the bullshit, Detective. You seem to think I killed Forester. For what – to take back the lead?”

“Interesting turn of phrase, ‘take back,’ ” Eames said. “How would you like to come downtown for a screening?”

“What’s going on here?”

Stanford Grant had materialized at Darrell’s elbow, arms crossed.

“Mr. Ives has the lead in a little documentary footage we’ve uncovered,” Goren informed the producer.

“Is he under arrest?” the playwright demanded paternally.

“Well, for right now, we’d just like a few answers.”

Grant turned to his Macbeth. “You got an attorney?”

Darrell blinked. “Ah, Dad’s lawyer, I guess.”

“You call him,” Grant directed. He raised a brow at Goren. “Mind if I tag along?”

“Yeah, sure,” Goren smiled. “Tag away.”

Major Case Squad

Monday, April 20

“Mr. Grant. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

The producer glanced up at Goren, tossing the folded Ledger onto the scarred bench beside him with a sigh. “The production’s at a standstill – I’ve lost my male and female leads, and you’ve rousted my new star. I have little else to do.”

The detective tilted his head to examine the front page of the Arts section. Elliot Forester scowled at him from the page. The deck headline – “Whack’d” – was in 72-point type. Goren grinned at Grant. “What do they say? No such thing as bad publicity? I mean, Mack’d’s probably’ll be the top ticket on Broadway once you get going again.”

Stanford Grant regarded him disdainfully. “What do you need from me?”

“Just a few questions.” Goren jerked his head toward the interview room. “C’mon in.”

Darrell Ives looked up wearily as the producer and the cop entered. Grant nodded to the young actor, then surveyed Eames, Mulder, and Scully with a frown. “They treating you all right?” he asked the actor. “You people can’t possibly believe Darrell is capable of such violence. He’s an artist, not some….” His voice trailed.

“Street thug?” Eames inquired. “Like Forester?”

Grant blinked. His jaw tightened. “I’d expect nothing less from you people. You have no concept of the primal artistry of rap.”

“Actually, there’s a fan in the room,” the policewoman smirked, rolling her eyes toward Goren. Scully glanced impatiently at her watch.

Her partner smiled sheepishly. “She’s been giving me crap all week. Det. Eames doesn’t appreciate the form.”

“Please,” Eames breathed.

“No, really,” Goren persisted. “Mr. Grant knows what I mean, right, sir? Shakespeare and Forester, they had a lot in common — Shakespeare took his view of human frailty and folly to the street, busted his own rhymes in iambic pentameter.”

“Bullshit,” Ives spat. “That man treated everything we did like a contemptible joke — swaggering around the stage half-stoned, firing off homophobic cracks at the male cast and trying to get his ‘game on’ with every actress and female crew member in sight. Forester had no more relation to Shakespeare than some punk gangsta scratching a record has to Stokowski. Visceral poetry, please. He was a freak show.”

Goren nodded. “But an extremely lucrative freak show, though, right? I mean, while you’ve been shlogging away off-Broadway and in experimental theater, scratching to pay your rent and cab fare, Forester’s been on the Billboard charts, scooping up Grammies and the ladies, livin’ large in his Manhattan crib.” The detective tapped Ives’ wrist; the actor yanked his arm away in alarm. “That Timex — it set you back, what, maybe $50-$60? You should’ve seen the Rolly — the Rolodex — Forester was wearing when he got torched. It ate at you, didn’t it? All the acting classes, busting your hump, kickin’ it old school up there on stage? Forester was fresh, raw — he was the future, you a thespian dinosaur. Even your mentor here, Mr. Grant, he realized it. Why else would he kick you to the curb for Forester?”

“That’s not–” Grant started, mocha eyes flitting anxiously, guiltily toward Ives. The former stand-in studied the grain of the interview table. “Darrell, you are an artist of immense, inestimable talent. But you know the business today — the play’s no longer the thing. You need brand recognition to sell a show. It wasn’t me — it was the others…”

“The money people,” Eames clarified. “He did stand up for you, Ives. They pressured him to get Forester, add some sizzle to the marquee. Talent didn’t matter — they wanted to pull in the MTV crowd, Generation X-Box.”

“Spoken like a true WASP princess,” Goren sneered. “My partner thinks the theater died with Rodgers and Hammerstein. She likes that Jurassic Park stuff — Les Miz and singing cats. Don’t apologize for your vision, Mr. Grant. Forester was a brilliant choice — a virtual 21st Century Macbeth.”

Grant’s brow arched. “What?”

“Forester was raised in an urban fiefdom where violence and authority defined power and success. An imposing man who did whatever he had to do to rule his domain. Like Macbeth, ambition was his fatal flaw.” Goren turned to Ives. “But the roles were reversed, weren’t they?”

“All right,” Ives’ attorney announced, tossing his papers into his open case. “I’m bringing the curtain down on this little melodrama before it even starts.”

“This production, it was Forester’s shot at another 15 minutes, a lark, another world to conquer before moving on to the next,” Goren persisted. “To you, it was more, wasn’t it? This was your world, and Forester was merely a pretender to the throne. Your throne.”

“He was a fool,” Ives snapped.

“A fool worshiped as a prince. A jester who put the moves to a princess. Your princess.”

Ives’ eyes blazed, but he remained silent. Goren planted a palm on the table, his face inches from the actor’s.

“Forester wasn’t playing the role of Macbeth, was he? He was Banquo, the true heir. You’d been supplanted on the throne and cuckolded by this ‘fool.’ But the worst part –” the detective laughed bitterly “— was the realization that Forester was the rightful heir. That you were the pretender, the old school fossil.”

The lawyer stood abruptly, turning to ADA Carver. “Ron, I’m astonished you’d stand for these histrionics. At best, your man’s case is circumstantial.”

“Maybe not so circumstantial, Counselor,” Eames interjected. “Night Forester was killed, one of the crew members remembered asking your client for some cab fare, but he said he was strapped. We took a chance and ran his debit and credit cards through every ATM system within a mile of the Shiban. Ives withdrew $100 at a kiosk at 6:35 p.m., nine blocks from the theater and right in the middle of his ‘reading’ with Mr. Grant here. And just about dead center between the Shiban and Forester’s crib. We’ve got video — real cinema verite stuff.”

Ives closed his eyes. Grant looked straight ahead.

“That’s why I asked you to come down, Mr. Grant,” Goren grinned. “How about it? You really want to perjure yourself for Ives? I mean, under the circumstances?”

Grant looked to Ives, seemingly torn between loyalty and the legal consequences. The actor sighed and nodded to his mentor.

“I knew how it would look, with Lisette and everything,” Ives said. “And especially after Forester and I got into it on stage. I knew I’d be top of your list. I asked him to back me up. Sorry, Stanford – I shouldn’t have put you on the spot that way.”

“I’ll make sure the Tony awards committee hears about this performance,” Goren chuckled, turning to Grant. “It’s a shame you weren’t casting Othello – Darrell would have made an ideal Iago. He manipulated you into providing him an alibi. You were his dupe, his cat’s paw. Don’t feel bad, Mr. Grant – he’s a professional actor. Dissembling’s his stock and trade. You can go now.”

Grant twitched, as if awakened from a trance.

“You’re free to go,” Goren repeated, already shuffling folders. “Unless, of course, ADA Carver wants to press charges.”

“I don’t see that that’s necessary,” Carver said softly, avoiding eye contact with the playwright/producer.

“Good, good,” Goren breathed. He glanced up, his heavy brows arching at the immobile man. “What? We don’t need you any more, Mr. Grant. If you want, I can have a uniform drive you back to the theater, your apartment, wherever.”

“That, that won’t be necessary,” Grant mumbled, rising. He stood stiffly, turning uncertainly toward the door.

“How’s that make you feel, Ives?” Goren prodded as Grant crossed the threshold. “Betraying an old man who’s invested so much in your career?”

Grant stopped.

“You know,” the hulking detective continued, “I read Grant’s memoir. He turned to writing after washing out of drama school. You know that? You were the vicarious realization of all his dreams, his heir, in effect. What happened? It come home to you that you’d been disinherited? That Forester was Grant’s true heir, just as Banquo was King Duncan’s?”

All heads turned at the harsh laughter from the corridor.

“Yes?” Goren inquired.

Grant stepped back into the interview room, his lips curled in contempt. “You see yourself as quite the intellect, don’t you? You hit a few shows each season, brag to your cop buddies how you read the Arts Section instead of the sports, and you parrot the rhapsodic ramblings of every critic and self-proclaimed pop culture analyst. I don’t need your condescending defense, Detective. And your clumsy attempts at psychoanalysis are laughable. This…this boy…wouldn’t have had the ambition, much less the stomach, for what you’re talking about.”

Ives’ head snapped up. “You’ve never seen what people are capable of when their world’s crashing in on them,” Goren protested. “Factor in the artistic ego, and–”

“I’ve been in the theater for 50 years,” Grant boomed. “You lecture me on the artistic ego? You know what I’ve had to do to survive, to gain my rightful place, to give whining young prima donnas like this one a shot at their own narcissistic fantasies?”

“All to realize one day that you and your vision had become obsolete. That people wanted a fresh vision…”

“You mean Forester? Macho posturing and mindless verse? His vision extended no further than getting his next hit of coke or piece of ass.”

“Poe had his laudanum, Faulkner his whisky,” the cop disclaimed, glancing with faux anxiety at his colleagues. “And Jimi Hendrix? Surely, you, as an artist, understand that. Even at your age.”

Fire filled the playwright’s eyes. “You dare compare Faulkner and Hendrix to that, that street corner gangster?”

“Eye of the beholder, I guess,” Goren fired back.

Grant staggered back, a foam of spittle on his lower lip. “Eye of the–? When he wasn’t ‘busting a rhyme’ or doing interviews on E, Forester could barely get his lines out. He was so coked up most of the time, we practically had to nail him to his marks.”

“But it was his name on the marquee,” Goren concluded, crossing his arms with smug satisfaction. “Wasn’t it?”

“They had no sense of the theater – its power, its relevance.” Grant’s breathing was now ragged; scarlet infused his expresso features. “They told me no Noyz, no cash. This was my vision, my life’s vision realized. This was Shakespeare. I mean, my God, you should’ve seen the man. So wasted he couldn’t comprehend half of what I was telling him, even what was about to happen to him. He barely tried to defend himself.”

Ives’ attorney gasped. Carver’s eyes dropped to the table.

“Forester?” Goren asked, his tone changing. The Grand Inquisitor disappeared; the father-confessor materialized.

“Big Noyz,” Grant jeered, tears spilling down his cheeks. “He was like a catatonic mental patient.” The dramatist laughed and sobbed. “His breath was sweet, reeked of cough syrup. Like a sick child.”

That was it. The promathezine hadn’t been released to the media.

“My God, Stanford,” Ives whispered.

Goren pressed quietly. “You were going to stun Forester with the tazer, take him somewhere, maybe make his death look like a gang execution. But instead, the tazer spark ignited the alcohol and cough syrup. Then you remembered Ives’ play, the story Lisette told him about George Mott and spontaneous combustion. It was an implausible smokescreen, but it was all you had to work with. Take his batting glove and promathezine away, and, voila, a textbook case of SHC.”

“Staging,” the playwright chuckled, his eyes red and wild. “Always my strength.”

“Stanford,” Carver interrupted solemnly and uncharacteristically. “You need to wait for your attorney.”

Grant nodded, but it was clear he hadn’t heard a word. He began to mumble incoherently. Mulder perked, and stepped around the table.

“Mr. Grant?” the agent prompted, anxiously. “What did you say, Mr. Grant?”

The old man stared up, and Mulder inhaled sharply. Grant whispered harshly, his eyes inflamed. Then, the flame was extinguished, and the playwright blinked at the agent.

“Please,” he requested wearily. “I’d like my lawyer.”

**

“Incredible,” Carver murmured as a pair of uniforms escorted Grant across the squadroom, toward Processing. “A Pulitzer prize, two Tonys, a Grammy. His works have been studied in classrooms and performed around the world. I sat on several boards with Stanford. He was a brilliant, creative man…”

“Apparently, a few demons got in with the muses,” Eames suggested.

Carver nodded absently, then smiled sadly as he plucked the folded Ledger from the bench and stared at Forester’s grim visage. Then he looked pointedly up at Goren as he tucked the paper under his arm. “Nice touch, Detective,” the ADA added coolly.

“Grant was a powerful voice of his generation, his culture,” Goren said as he watched Carver trail Grant. “It’s like the death of a legend.”

“Maybe he can still help Grant,” Mulder suggested quietly.

“Help him?” Scully inquired. “Mulder, how?”

Goren’s face darkened. “Fox? What did he say to you?”

Mulder looked straight into the detective’s eyes. “I honestly have no idea. But I’m not so sure Grant was in full possession of his faculties when he killed Forester. Can I use your computer, Bobby?”

“What?” Eames demanded, but Goren held up a meaty palm. “Don’t, Bobby. You couldn’t make out what he said, but you’re ready to plead him out on diminished capacity?”

“I don’t speak Scottish,” Mulder told her simply. “Bobby?”

Goren waved him toward his desk.

“Perfect,” Eames grunted, fuming. “He burns a man alive, and his lawyer’ll bring in a couple dozen shrinks to get him off. And your buddy there? What’s he going to testify? That Grant was possessed by the ghost of Macbeth?”

“Grant’s identification with the character was nearly complete,” Goren considered. “The play, it was his salvation – it became his life’s obsession. The idea of Forester co-opting the role must have seemed like sacrilege. And then the ‘star’ became bigger than the vision Grant had been shaping his entire adult life. It must have been unbearable.” He watched the elevator doors draw closed on Grant and his escorts. “‘Life is but a walking shadow. A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.’”

“In other words,” Eames summarized dourly, “that’s showbiz.”

*end

Lyons’ Share

(A reference is made in this story to the VS12 episode, Remnant.)

AUTHOR: Windsinger (AKA Sue Esty)
RATING: Nothing for anyone over 1013 to really worry about.
CATEGORY: Casefile, Mulder Angst. Written for Virtual Season 14 – initial posting 3/2/2007
DISCLAIMER: Thank you Chris. Nope, not getting paid for this; never has, never will. Now where’s that second movie? No copyright infringe-ment intended.
ARCHIVE: Two weeks exclu-sive for VS14 and then any-where.
SUMMARY: The near drowning of a woman by an elephant take our intrepid agents to Florida to investigate a series of possible hate crimes.

———-

Prologue

———-

The black nalgene raft spun and twisted as it dived through the surging white water. The pale rock cliffs of the canyon towered above, their edges softened by a riot of vegetation that sprouted from every crack and crevice. A black bird with a startlingly red curved beak sailed out over the white water nearly brushing the heads of the occupants of the raft. Not that any of the eight had time to notice however. Their attention was riveted on the foaming water as they strained to find the deep, deceptively calm holes in the surface that would herald when the raft was about to take a stomach clenching dip.

The raft swept around a corner in a wave of white spray and eyes left the surface. A sheet of water cascaded from the edge of the cliff thirty feet above. The children shrieked as if by the very volume and pitch of their cries they could witch the raft under the falls. In contrast, most of the adults cowered, tightly clenching belongings as if this secular prayer could prevent the raft from that very thing. Too many years of umbrellas and running from rain drops lay on their shoulders to willingly open themselves to getting soaking wet with all one’s clothes on no matter how hot the day. The adult’s silent incantations must have been louder than the begging of their offspring for only small, outstretched hands broke the film of that silvery sheet as the raft spun past.

Almost immediately the cliff to their left fell away. The raft spun for a moment in relative calm though all knew that the river was only gathering itself for another drop and another series of rapids. On the bank an elephant stood, its trunk swinging as if to ward them away from the several hundred pound youngster at her side. An eddy spun the raft nearer. The mother elephant’s trunk raised and seemed to swell and swell. A jet of water ejected from the appendage directly into the boat. Screams of surprise and delight exploded. Just when the animal’s proboscis could not possibly have held any more, the spray expanded so that the water gushed forth with the force of a flood, a virtual firehouse of water. A small woman, a matron of three, could not even gasp, could barely breathe as the deluge seemed to center on her alone.

The screams of surprise and even joy transformed to those of an entirely different sort.

Act 1

Georgetown, Washington D.C.

Tuesday 4pm

The backyards on the narrow Georgetown street were tiny but secluded. Mature, well placed trees and bushes supported the illusion that each yard could have been lifted from the wilderness if their owners only believed strongly enough.

In one particular back yard, that might actually come true one day if believing in the vastly improbable could actually bring about such a miracle.

Dana Scully was doing her best. Just a minute before she had tilted her head back and closed her eyes all the better to feel the mild spring sun on her face and hear the songs of the first hearty South-returning birds. As was true of most city dwellers she had developed selective hearing and the dull white noise of the Friday afternoon traffic on Wisconsin Ave six blocks away rumbled so far under her radar that the hiss might have been no more than the rush of a swiftly flowing river.

But then she became aware of another sound, the scuff of a step on flagstone.

Still as stone, she opened one eye. The head of the lounge chair was situated so that she saw only the back half of the little yard – and upside down at that. Nothing to be seen. Another scuff and a slight rustle. Why so soft, so stealthily?

In one fluid motion she came upright, had reached for the revolver on the patio table and brought it around to the source of the sound.

A tall, dark figure ducked, swearing.

“Jeeezus! Scully. Did you go over your ration of caffeine today?”

“And what were you doing sneaking up on me like that?”

His lean form unwound itself from behind a defensively inadequate patio chair. “I thought you were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you. You almost blew my head off.”

Coolly, she replaced the firearm onto the table next to its cleaning supplies. “It wasn’t loaded, but I am sorry.”

Fox Mulder, her partner in more ways than one, pulled the chair he had taken refuge behind over to sit beside her. “There’s enough jitters going around for both of us. It’s been a rough few months.”

“Rough few years.”

“That too.” His handsome face brightened, the playfulness of the smile on those lips and in those eyes bringing out more boyish appeal than any man of forty-something had the right to possess. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

She had learned not to allow herself to be swept away by his charm, at least not unless she was in the mood and then it was oh so easy. At the moment she was up for going either way. “Is this a good surprise?” she asked suspiciously.

“What other kind is there?”

Her narrowed eyes indicated that in her experience most of the surprises from him could not, in the reality of normal people, be considered, ‘good’.

“Well, this one is.” With a flourish he pulled two airline tickets out of the breast pocket of his suit coat.

Her face lit in anticipation. “Where?” she asked, eagerly snatching at the tickets that just as quickly moved out of range.

“Florida.”

Not Maui but it would do.

“When? Or Christmas next year?”

His face fell. “Ah, tonight, actually.”

Unbelieving, she looked around the garden. The air was mild. Though only early March the yard was protected from the winter winds and got full sun so the leaves had actually begun to sprout. There was even a bit of color, From where she sat she could see the bed of crocuses her mother had planted, a few valiant daffodils, tiny yellow tips of a emerging forsythia, and the early pink buds of cherry blossoms. March had its ups and downs in D.C. but at the moment, it was a perfect time to be here especially after the horrible February the city had just barely survived. In Florida they would already be sweltering in summer-like heat and humidity which Washingtonians would have to face all too soon.

“Tonight…,” she repeated weakly.

“Yes. Nine o’clock so we’ll need to hurry and pack.” Out of habit he had pulled his own weapon from its holster and was using her supplies to give the deadly instrument a quick oiling.

“For what kind of case?” she asked momentarily mesmerized as his nimble fingers effortlessly moved through this activity he had performed so many times. Was he distracting her on purpose? “Give me a hint.”

“Popular tourist spot,” he said as he reached for the tool to clear the barrel. “Too many accidents though no fatalities yet. The last was close though. A woman nearly drowned. Messages have been left scrawled on walls after each one. They think it’s a hate-crime related, hence, the FBI.” A final wipe with the soft cloth and he was done at least enough for daily maintenance.

“But why us? That’s not what we usually do.”

His eyes dropped. Oh, no, not the look. She couldn’t stay mad at him in his old kicked puppy mode. “I pulled some strings, called in some favors. I’ve done a lot of extra profiling for the Behavioral Sciences boys lately.”

‘Which they repay by sending us to melt in Florida when we finally get some good weather in D.C.? Where were they three weeks ago when we were chopping four inches of rock hard frozen slush out of our parking spots?”

Somehow, he could tell Scully was a might miffed. “I messed up again?”

Sighing, she patted his shoulder then bent and gave him a sweet kiss right on the lips. “You try. That’s always better than not trying.” She looked at her watch. “Okay, but I have so little that’s clean right now that we’ll have to leave right away to give me time to pick up a couple of new outfits – and you’ll have to wait while I try them on.”

“Ouch,” he groaned. Then sensing that he was forgiven, he allowed mischief to creep back into his eyes. “What if we agree to place the price of three new outfits on Madame VISA once we get there? Would that give us time… Because you know that we don’t… while we’re working.”

Those eyes. Her insides quivered. All it took was one look from those eyes and she was ready. Gathering weapon and cleaning supplies in one arm, she took his hand and pulled him to his feet.

Mulder saw this as a good sign. “I can be quick,” he offered.

She began tugging him towards the house. “Let’s not be too quick.”

Wild Gardens

Clearwater, FL

Wednesday 11am

Wishing the hat would just do its job, Mulder seated the baseball cap more firmly on his head. His eyes still stung from the sweat that dripped down his face. Central Florida would have to be suffering under an early hot spell. Scully glanced at him from under her own black cap and humidity lank hair. The white ‘FBI’ stitched onto both of their hats must shine like beacons.

“Not exactly subtle,” she murmured removing her own to stare at the lettering.

“They don’t mean anything necessarily. They were selling them to tourists on the street in front of the Bureau. Two for five dollars.”

“And how much were the ones for the CIA?”

“Two for ten,” he answered almost apologetically.

She replaced the cap. “I don’t know whether I should feel happy about that or not. Happy that you didn’t pay any more for these or distressed that merchandise for our friends ‘across the river’ can garner a better price than ours.“ She began to cross her arms in a sulk but it was too hot and put her hands on her hips instead and looked down again into the ‘canyon’.

They were standing on an observation platform on the top of a salmon-colored ‘bluff’. Immediately under the metal platform the land dropped abruptly away. Thirty feet below white water raced around a bend in a swift-flowing, narrow ‘river’. Three black rafts each carrying eight people facing each other in groups of two chased each other down this man-made watercourse like huge, black corks. As they watched, an ‘elephant’ standing in a ‘field’ only a little above the level of the churning water raised its trunk to spray each passing raft with the equivalent of no more than three gallons of water. There was some giggling from the passengers but not much more than that. The big falls were behind them and the next set a hundred yards further on. In comparison this light spraying by the animatronic pachyderm was nothing.

As the echoes of “Ahs” and giggling from a newest boatload of patrons reached them, Mulder mused. “Clearly they don’t know about the woman who almost drowned here four days ago.”

A Wild Gardens’ employee had briefed the agents on the ‘accident’ as he had driven them in the nimble, electric cart through the underground service corridors of the Clearwater-based theme park. Scully thought of that now as she followed Mulder’s gaze and also looked down on the peaceful scene below. “That PR man who drove us here tried to tell me that the woman was not seriously injured.”

“She wasn’t breathing when they got to her. I’d say that was serious.” Mulder indicated another ‘blind’ obscured by bushes down near the ‘elephant’s watering hold. “They patrol this attraction pretty carefully because they do get patrons who try to leave their rafts. A park employee was there and responded promptly. All employees are required to know CPR.”

Scully nodded. “I’m glad to hear it or things would have been far different. We’re still left with what caused the ‘attack’. It must have been a mechanical failure, a power surge or kink in the line for the volume of water to increase like that.”

“You would think so, but they weren’t able to find a cause. What’s surprising is that they were also able to keep it out of the national news. Not that they don’t take the incident seriously. Their maintenance people immediately replaced all the critical control parts and sent them to the Bureau for failure analysis.”

Under her breath Scully muttered, “Just so long as I don’t have to autopsy another damn elephant.”

Mulder didn’t smile at the memory but unconsciously rubbed the souvenir scar under his hairline the result of that earlier case.

“What you haven’t told me yet is why they think these ‘accidents’ are related. Accidents will happen, especially in a place like this. All these people, the roller coasters and other attractions all have a level of risk, not to mention the hazards of handling wild animals.” The theme park’s brochure went on and on about their huge collection of exotics animals, but one only needed to pull in a lungful of air to know they were nearby.

“That’s what puts the ‘wild’ in Wild Gardens,” Mulder mused as he pulled a series of six photographs from the case folder he carried. “This is what ties them all together and why the FBI’s here.”

Scully turned the pictures so that the glare from the hazy one hundred plus heat index day was less. After a few moments, brow creased, she turned the pictures over. “It looks like graffiti.” She looked closely at the broad brownish strokes decorating a variety of surfaces – concrete, white stucco, an expanse of reddish terracotta. “It seems to be the same language but I can’t make it out.”

“No one can,” Mulder assured her, “and they’ve been studied by the best we have. One has been found the morning before every incident’. That hardly sounds like a series of unrelated accidents to me.”

“Warnings?” she asked.

“Or threats? Or ultimatums.”

“Are there any originals left?” she asked handing the pictures back.

“Unfortunately not. They were all in public places around the park so the maintenance staff quickly removed them. At least they took photos first.”

At that he took her hand. It was as sweaty as his own. “Come one. Let’s take a walk and visit the scenes of some of the crimes.”

With help from their driver, they were on the tourist side of the park in less than three minutes. Gone were the huge trash bins, barren ground, and stark white cement block buildings. On the staged side of the ‘world’ all was exotic architecture, souvenir and snack shops, and lush landscaping boarding paths crowded with families in shorts and t-shirts and pushing strollers. Scully consulted the colorful park map their previous driver had given them. “According to this, that was the Congo River Rapids,” she announced.

“Talk about your shrinking world,” her companion remarked.

“And this is the Uganda area.” The highly idealized theme ran to picturesque villages that attempted to look as if it had been transported from half a century before as long as one ignored the log flume attraction that soared above the palms and twisted scrub oaks. “The layout is complicated,” she said extending the map to Mulder. “Do you want to take a look or do you know where you’re going?”

He shrugged it off and strode forward in long-legged strides. “Scully, you know about me and maps. I’m fine. Besides the great explorers didn’t need no stinking maps!”

Within five minutes they were completely lost. They had passed into a land with an architecture that tended to run to grass huts and with far more mature vegetation than the area around the ‘Congo River’ which had to be a newer part of the park despite the au naturale look of the buildings.

They paused only to gaze down into a huge, landscaped ‘canyon’, the home of two magnificent white tigers that were cooling off in the sparkling swimming pool clarity of their ‘river’.

Mulder stared. “The books say that cats hate water.”

Scully took his arm and leaned into her own great cat. “Obviously those two haven’t read the books.”

Leaving what was clearly the focal attraction of the area, he pointed over his shoulder to where ski resort gondolas swung gracefully high overhead. “West should be that way,” he said without much conviction.

Scully tapped him on the shoulder. It was still morning and the hazy sun was at his back. “Why don’t you tell me where you want to go? Maybe I can help you find it,” which in Scully speech meant that, of course, she could find it, no problem.

Once they had found the path that cut around the Nairobi Research Station and Scully had had a chance to ooh and ah over all the babies of nearly extinct species in their incubators, they crossed under an arch of vines and over a small bridge. They had finally found ‘Timbuktu’. They didn’t have to go far to find one particular salmon-colored faux-mud, sun-baked wall. Its smooth surface must have made a fine writing surface but the mysterious alphabet had been cleaned and/or newly painted.

“And what accident did this message portend,” Scully asked as she compared one of the photos to the now blank wall.

Without consulting his notes Mulder replied, “A forty-year-old carpenter – patron, not park personnel – slipped on a patch of ice and broke his ankle.”

Scully felt a bead of sweat trickle down her back. “Is there an ice rink nearby? Either that or a pretty impressive cold spell.”

“No on a path about thirty yards from here at high noon about two week ago.” Patiently, Scully waited for the punch line. “A park employee parked one of those concession carts they sell ice cream from directly over a low spot in a path where a six-year-old from Grand Rapids had poured out the ice from her soda. The drainage plug from the ice cream cart had fallen out. The cart, full of dry ice, moved on, voila, icy spot. Hapless tourist comes jogging along ten seconds later and, voila times two, instant law suit.”

“And that’s an example of what’s been going on? That’s just bad luck,” Scully argued. “Or a coincidence.”

Mulder nodded curtly. “If that had been the only incident. There were more. The weld on the step of an aluminum ladder gave way and a worker fell. Sprained his wrist. A child allergic to nuts had a violent allergic reaction but the parents didn’t buy anything that was found through testing to have nuts of any kind in it. One of the big horses they have here stepped on his groom’s foot. Broke three bones. One of the pigmy hawks from their Bird of Africa show attacked the colorful hat of a patron, thought it looked like lunch. The carrousel braked suddenly, separating two children from their mounts. One day, ten unrelated persons came down with food poisoning but no common denominator could be found.”

Scully shuttered. “With your luck, maybe you’d better not eat here.”

“Or climb, or watch a show, ride the Merry-Go-Round or even walk. That’s what the park owners are worried about.”

“And graffiti was found associated with all of these incidents?”

“Nearly every time somewhere in the vicinity.”

“None of this is life-threatening. They are all nuisance events.”

“Until this last one,” he reminded her, “which is why we are here. Specifically why I’m here. They want a profile. What is this person after and how far will he go if he doesn’t get it?”

“But you have your own agenda,” she reasoned. “How are these things orchestrated?”

A half-dozen laughing teenagers clumped by in their inch high flip-flops eating snow cones and funnel cakes. The scent of a charcoal grill and smoking meats waved past. Mulder patted his stomach.

“Maybe we can brain-storm while we eat. I hear there’s really good smoked brisket nearby.”

“After the food poisoning incident!”

“Ten out of a million or so. I think we’re safe but maybe first…”

They had been walking, the scene changing around them to something nearly tropical. Somewhere close the car of a roller coaster roared by. They had passed more than one during their time in the park. The one before them and on which Mulder’s attention was transfixed, was more impressive than most. Huge and tall, sleek girders carved out spirals and loops in the air. The primary ‘hill’ was high, high above them, a literal mountain. So far away was it that it seemed almost too fragile to stand there all alone especially when the passenger ‘car’ came into view. The car was not a long series of two or four-person units but an ungainly shovel-shape, a shovel filled with people strapped in six rows, eight across. As the agents watched, it finished its laborious crawl to the top of the mountain, — and stopped. The front two rows of screaming bodies were pointed straight down the nearly vertical slope. Beside her Mulder watched, fascinated and horrified. After an agonizing wait the shovel inched forward. Not until its balance shifted at the pinnacle did it drop, transforming within seconds into a locomotive-size meteor streaking through space. It swooped down, passed through the faux ruins of a faux fortress, thundered less than twenty feet above their heads, dipped for a moment like a huge water dragon through a pond sending up a gigantic plume of spray and then was gone to loop and twirl impossibly elsewhere.

“Before eating…?” she asked suspiciously, seeing the dread and delight on his face. “You want to ride that thing? You? I took you to your first theme park remember and you got sick on the merry-go-round.”

“We had known each other how long? Less than a year? It was because I went on after I ate. Actually,” had admitted sheepishly, “I’ve been working up to larger and larger coasters.”

“When? Why?”

He shrugged. “Why do I run, swim, look into the face of everything that terrifies me – so I’ll be ready for the next thing that’s bigger and stronger and faster and more terrifying still.”

In his own way he was serious, of that she had no doubt. He pushed himself, kept himself in shape, not for vanity but for survival. And if the lengths he went to were a little quirky… quirky was one reason she loved him.

She stared upwards as another shovel car came to the brink of the steel mountain and hung. “Ah, would you think me a sissy if I don’t go?”

After seating Scully at an outside table of the Kenya Smokehouse where the coaster’s shovel cars trumpeted across the pond every three minutes, Mulder headed for the loading area for the Great Kazan. Soon he was enveloped in the make-believe hype of danger and adventure. The adrenaline surge kept him moving restlessly on his toes. Was this really the reason he did this? Had he become addicted to the ‘‘high’’ and had their cases been too cerebral of late as this one threatened to be? Time passed. It was a popular ride. Five then six times, the video from the ubiquitous television screens in the waiting area looped through the melodramatic storyline. Some allusion to an African resurrection myth. He entered the final loading area just as the announcer was sonorously ticking off the safety warnings one more time. His eyes sought the special line for those who wanted to sit in the front of the car. For this sort of ride, it was surprisingly short.

The safety harness was as expected for suspended coasters and Mulder was as expectedly freaking out. He had been tied up, handcuffed, locked in tiny rooms too many times to have his freedom restricted even for such a harmless activity. The dreaded shoulder harness came down over his head and across his chest. The seat molded suggestively into his posterior and alarmingly tight up against his family jewels. A padded bar came down across his stomach.

The panic he had to fight down was real. When an attendant, someone tall and thin in khaki shorts, checked that his harness was secure, Mulder barely noticed. He was eternally relieved when the car began to move.

As he had expected, the first few thrilling but half-hearted climbs, dips, swoops and swirls took the worst of the terror of the harness away. He had other things on his mind. Now it was time for the car to climb the mountain. It was preferable not to think of the nearly seven hundred-foot drop on the other side. Better to think about how good the breeze felt on his sweaty skin, of how good the view was from up here as long one didn’t think about how very, very tiny the figures and even the buildings below looked. The <click>, <click> of the safety chain and catch which now pulled the huge shovel car higher but kept it from falling backwards was the only sound as the climb continued. There wasn’t much of the track left to climb. The approach became so steep that it became impossible to turn around to see below except for the parts of the city that were far beyond the park.

At least he was safe; his weight secure against the back of the seat, his bottom firmly in the fiberglass bucket.

They were almost at the top. Most birds did not even fly up this high. Adrenaline pumped. The bump, bump of his heart was threatening to overwhelm the click, click of the chain and catch. Inevitably, the car leveled off. Almost immediately it began to dip in the opposite direction.

Mulder’s center of gravity shifted. In a dizzying blur of blue sky, white cloud and spotted green and brown earth his perspective swung one hundred and eighty degrees.

Straight down.

And it was a long, LONG way down. As expected, the huge car hung in heart pounding stillness, balanced between the ancient energy of gravity before sucking at them all to plunge downward and the incredible mass of the remaining sections of the car holding them back. Being in the front row – how intelligent had THAT been – Mulder was completely exposed. Except for the shoulder harness and the padded bar across his stomach, there was nothing between him and a distressing and messy death among the strollers and snow cones. Between them the ride restraints were now supporting his entire weight. He could be wildly flailing the thin air with unrestricted arms and legs as some of his screaming fellow first-rowers were doing. Mulder choose, however, to maintain a white-knuckled grip on the shoulder harness.

The world spun despite his tightly shut eyes. This was part of the ride; he and Scully had seen it. After a suitable time for terror to build the car would creep forward until gravity overcame mass and then all would come hurtling down…

Time hung in the balance – literally. From below – where he wished he was now – he and Scully had watched the car hang for perhaps five second, no more than ten. Certainly more time had passed than that. Of course, this was one of those Twilight Zone moments when time just ‘streeeetched’ out. He felt a stillness begin to flow slowly into him. He had known those moments – a perp with a weapon, you with a weapon, some innocent bystander in between. Time to move, drop, spin bring your arm up, fire off the shot, save the day. All the time in the world. Sometimes…. Sometimes it went the other way. No time at all. Einstein had been right. Time was relative.

Mulder became aware that peace had not only crept within him, it was around him. The other riders, most of whom had been screaming from the sheer, barbaric joy of the experience, had begun to quiet as each realized what he had begun to. The car wasn’t moving and wasn’t going to.

The quiet that descended over the forty-eight people was surreal. Only the wind could be heard, no mechanical sounds at all.

Finally the bull moose voice of a man maybe two rows back rang out, “Hey! We’re stuck up here!”

In seconds at least twenty voices repeated the call in a kind of ragged unison at first that soon became a riot of shouts. His fellow front-riders did not call out, however, Mulder noted. Theirs was a separate but shared terror that any exertion could upset what now seemed to be an all too delicate web of restraint. The harness and lap bar were all that was keeping them from flying out and down like broken, fallen angels.

Act 2

Wednesday 2pm

“Quiet!” voices began to bark and hiss around him. There was a crackling from a speaker on a tiny platform to his right. That’s right, there would need to be plans for such emergencies. He hoped that the squawking indicated that help was coming but it would be a long climb. An interminable wait.

“Hey, Mister?” asked a tiny, small voice to his right. “Hey, mister…”

Words, language. What a concept where all had been little more than raw emotion for what seemed so long. He also discovered another reason why the front riders were so quiet. Hard to shout when you’ve been holding your breath for nearly two minutes. His came out in the rush and a temporary spike in his panic as the loss of air loosened the harness.

“Mister?”

Intent on his own macho agenda, Mulder hadn’t paid much attention to his fellow passengers. Now, by daring to move no more than his eyes, he was able to look cautiously over and down on the top of her dark-haired head. The soft voice belonged to an equally small girl.

“Are you scared, Mister?”

How could she tell? By the bloodless grip he had on the padded part of the harness that crossed his chest? It bore so much of his weight that he literally felt his heart thumping madly against it.

“Y-You’re not?” he asked, furious at the tremor in his voice.

“Well, yes, but you’re suppose to be.”

Her voice was so far down and the range of his vision so limited that he could barely see the curve of her cheek. No tears he noted.

“Don’t they have a minimum height restriction on this ride?” he murmured in a voice steadier though tight from too little air. “What’s your name?” he asked then, struggling for a normal tone.

“Rita,” came the small, fearless voice.

“Where are your parents?” He tried to swivel his eyes to take in more passengers without moving his head but was not successful.

“Oh, I’ve ridden this lots of times.” Then her brave voice dropped a little. “But it’s never done this before. Do you think it’s broke?”

“Y-Yes,” he had to agree, “I think it’s broke.”

“When do you think they’re going to fix it?”

Before these harnesses stress out and everyone in the first two rows plunge to messy deaths, he prayed, but said, “They’ll fix it soon, I’m sure. You’re very calm.”

“Calm is easy,” she snorted. “Fear is hard.”

Mulder was still trying to work out the logic of that odd phrase when the thin, far sound of a gasping voice from somewhere below the car reached him over the whistle of the wind. Murmurs of strained relief from the other passengers rose like a wave behind them.

“See they’re coming,” he assured her gripping his shoulder harness even harder. Scully would give him hell if he should fall out at the last moment. Footsteps pounded in a staggered rhythm on the metal rungs of the emergency stairway that ran beside much of the track. A voice gasped out assurances. It would have been a long, long climb from the bottom.

There followed much fussing about metal that should have released but hadn’t. Another man arrived who must have been older and in considerably poorer shape. The two murmured together but any words were lost in the rising complaints from angry passengers now that help was supposedly near. It was disappointing to see in those who had valiantly suppressed their panic for so long.

Footsteps trotted to the front of the car even descending a few feet over the crest. Their owner could now look up into the strained faces of Mulder and the girl and their fellow passengers in the first row as they hung from their harnesses.

The face was unfamiliar but Mulder found that he recognized the bony, hairy knees below the shorts. It was the ride attendant who had checked his harness before this whole nightmare began. Good thing that he had. If the harness had failed, this nightmare would have been shorter but with a considerably worse outcome.

In an amazingly calm voice, the gangling teenager with acne scars on the sharp planes of his face announced, “We found a problem. A frozen gear. We can release it.” There were moans of dismay. “I know you want nothing more than to be off but, believe me, taking the ride till the end will be faster, not to mention safer, especially for you front riders, than if you were to try to crawl out and walk down. If it were possible, I’d take that empty seat and ride down myself.” It was a LONG way down which, thankfully, the young man did not emphasize further. “There was no time for any other thought then as the young man with ‘Randy’ on his ID pin, said, “Ready?” and the car dropped.

Mulder had been though horrible experiences in this life but the next two minutes ranked up there in the top ten. It would have been a gut wrenching experience at the best of times. With blood pooled in his legs and torso and circulation restricted, Mulder seriously considered death as an option. There was nothing quite like being turned inside out, upside down, whipped and beaten in a blender. At least he’d be ready for the space program if it ever came to that.

The car finally coasted at about 80 miles per hour into the departure area, breaking with a violent jerk.

The loading area they had left forty-five minutes before was empty but the departure zone was a buzz of activity. There must have been two park employees assigned to assist each passenger and assistance they needed just to walk. Mulder’s two young things gushed about him offering a shoulder to lean on, a free night’s lodging in the park’s premium resort to recover, and a free yearly pass. But Mulder ignored all. As he staggered forward, his spinning eyes sought only the crowd of seventy or so friends and relatives who were anxiously gathered outside a roped barricade. There was Scully. She stood on the edge of the crowd, white-faced, clutching a much-mistreated carryout bag of what must have been the much discussed beef brisket. Rushing forward, she clasped him around the waist, affectively relieving him of his official damage control representatives, and led him and his rubbery legs to the nearest exit.

In the first free patch of grass he collapsed onto his knees and retched out everything he had eaten in approximately the last week.

Mulder stayed seated on the grass for some time, though a good dozen feet from where he had messed the well-manicured lawn. Scully wiped his sweaty face with a damp cool towel that had appeared miraculously from somewhere.

“Another accident?” she asked after ‘Are you sure you are all right’ to which he had not answered.

Mulder merely groaned and let his elbows rest on raised knees, limp hand dangling. The area cleared slowly. Two passengers were escorted away in wheelchairs though neither was seriously hurt.

The spin of the world had become a mild rotation when Randy, the long-legged teenager, emerged. He stopped by several of the riders many of which had lingered to get their ‘land’ legs. “You okay?” he asked Mulder crouching down. “You didn’t look so good up there.”

Mulder raised his head without enthusiasm. “Neither did you.” Then Scully saw a little spark of color rise in his gray face. “Thank you for coming so quickly. Respond to many emergencies around here, do you?”

The wary hesitation in Randy’s expression instantly cleared the last of the cobwebs from Mulder’s brain. “You have, haven’t you?”

When the teenager remained silent but gave every indication of getting ready to bolt, Scully smoothly pulled out her wallet and flashed her ID. Her movements had been rapid but not threatening. “Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI. We’re investigating the series of incidents which have occurred in the park. Your management wants to label them hate crimes. My partner,” she inclined her head towards Mulder who swayed only slightly as he got to his feet, “doesn’t think so. I’m waiting for more evidence one way or the other. You do know about the incidents?”

Seeing who they were, Randy had relaxed. Not what one would expect of a guilty man.

“We’ve all been briefed.”

“And the content of that briefing was….?” Scully asked.

“Brief. That there had been a lot of accidents. To keep our eyes open.”

“That would explain your rapid response. So other than today, how many of these accidents have you witnessed yourself?” Mulder asked.

Randy’s mouth opened mutely for a moment before he stammered, “N-None, while they were actually happening. Afterwards? A few.”

“Counting today, that’s a few plus one. It would be helpful if you could be a little more specific.”

Clearly caught and he knew it, the young man launched into his tale as if he had been rehearsing it in his sleep. By his red eyes, perhaps he had been. “There was grease fire a couple of months ago at the smokehouse while I was taking a dinner break. Just flared up, no reason. They put it out pretty quick but that kind of woke me up. I started payin’ attention to the rumors”

“What rumors specifically?” Mulder asked.

“That the park was cursed.” The fact that the boy shivered rather than display the omnipresent teenage shrug spoke louder than his soft voice of how seriously he took the situation. “After that I started noticing things. A worker fell when the leg of a ladder gave way. A dancer in one of the shows got a bad eye infection from makeup she had used a hundred times. A hyena got out one night while they were cleaning his enclosure. They found him out on the Savannah – you know, where the antelope and giraffes and African cattle hang out? He was well fed so he didn’t cause any trouble but it spooked a lot of people because the keeper swore that he chained the gate behind him and our safety record is really good about stuff like that — until recently.”

“Spooked…” Scully repeated with a tiny smile.

Mulder pointedly ignored his partner. “What about the graffiti? Have you seen it?”

The tension in the boy went up several notches. “A few times. I don’t go looking for it though I know cast members who do.”

“But you don’t,” Scully asked. “Why not?”

The boy stared at the ground. “Makes me feel funny. Guess because a couple of times, right after I see it, things happen.”

After that, they asked the boy to show them some of the places where he had seen the ‘scribbling’ as he called it. He was reluctant. He said it was his lunch break. Another flash of Scully’s badge, however, and the offer of Mulder’s beef brisket, which her partner couldn’t look at much less eat, convinced the boy though his feet dragged.

Nothing remained of the scribblings in any of the places where Randy led them during the next hour. In addition to paint on walls, he had seen signs in rapidly drying water on cement, scratches in the mud in heavy traffic areas that could not have lasted five minutes, suggestive marks in spilled ice cream that would have been rapidly cleaned away.

Mulder crouched at the last site while the boy, feeling more comfortable with them, started in on the beef as only teenage boys can. Even with his senses – normal and paranormal — stretched to their fullest, Mulder felt very little. He exchanged glances with an apprehensive Scully and shook his head. This was not going to be one of ‘those’ cases, at least not for him. But there was something.

Rising, he turned to the boy. “Randy… What is your last name?”

The boy swallowed noticeably. “Lyons,” he admitted sheepishly, ”Randy Lyons. Sounds like a character in a children’s book.”

It did, but Mulder knew better than to agree. “And how long have you worked at Wild Gardens?”

“Three years. Since I was sixteen. Started out in food service, but I hung around for years before that.”

“Well, Mr. Lyons, the management wants to get to the bottom on this and has given us freedom to commandeer whatever assistance we need. So how would you like to be our tour guide for the next couple of days?”

“Do I have a choice?” came the faint-hearted reply.

Wednesday 7pm

Mulder had refused the offering of the resort room as compensation for his ‘ordeal’. Their connecting rooms at the Best Western were better than usual and according to Mulder had a better location as it was situated just across the street from the park’s own nursery that adjoined the park itself. Besides, he told her, the hotel advertised that the park’s birds often roosted in the trees surrounding the hotel’s pool and outdoor café. As promised, as they sat sipping tropical drinks – virgin variety – a pink bird with a long curved beak strutted with brazen indifference by their table on long spindally legs.

“You don’t see those in D.C.,” Mulder remarked spearing a stuffed mushroom.

Scully actually looked relaxed despite the fact that she was still reading the various printouts they had collected throughout the day. “You’re forgiven,” she said without looking up.

“Hmmm?”

“For dragging me here.”

“It’s nice to see that I can occasionally do something right.”

“Well, your timing could be better but the case has merit.”

“So you agree that there’s more than coincidence to all this?”

Scully shrugged. “There’s something though don’t ask me what.” She gazed absently over the palms towards a stunning sunset. “Mr. Lyons seemed oddly reluctant to leave his nine-to-five herding of the tourists for our company.”

“I noticed that,” he said.

“He’s scared.”

Mulder bit a mushroom in half. “I’ve noticed that, too.”

Drinks and mushrooms were gone and the last of the sunset had passed into a deep purple rose before Scully straightened from her reading again. “Interesting,” she said, gesturing with a stack of forms so that the table’s candlelight flickered. “Mr. Lyons is mentioned in these accident reports more than any other employee.”

“As a suspect or a witness?”

“As a first responder. His personnel record is glowing. He has more experience at the park than he led us to believe. As he said, he ‘hung’ around for years before he was eligible to be hired. He had an annual pass. He followed his big brother around, who was employed here, and who eventually recommended him for a job.”

“Big brother literally?”

“Sort of. Ernest Sawyer was a Big Brother in the Big Brother program. Randy’s emergency contacts list only a mother. No father or siblings.”

“Ah, that kind of Big Brother,” Mulder said. “And why do I think that there’s more.”

“Ernest Sawyer disappeared two weeks after Randy Lyons started working at Wild Gardens.”

Mulder’s eyebrows lifted then sunk back. “I don’t see this kid as a murderer if that is what you’re inferring.”

“Don’t worry about that. He has an alibi. He was out of town. But you were right to ask; you know that you can’t always tell.” She eyed him over the report she held. “At least normal people can’t. Still nothing?”

“Nada. As I indicated earlier, my Spidey sense isn’t tingling. Just ol’ Spooky.”

Scully smiled. She had first fallen in love with ‘Spooky’ Mulder while passing a root beer during a stakeout. It had just taken her too many years to realize it.

“Coming to bed?” she asked but her implied invitation failed to penetrate. Spooky was indeed on the ascendant.

“Later.” He waved absently. “I’m going to take a walk. I want to listen to the wild life a little longer.”

He had a point, she thought, and much as she wondered if she shouldn’t stay with him, she needed her sleep even if he didn’t. It had been a long day. Still, she hesitated even as she headed towards the lobby door. Somewhere near a strange night bird trumpeted, a troop of howler monkeys chattered, exotic cattle lowed, and hyenas sang after antelope forever beyond their reach.

It was a strong, gamey scent that woke Mulder even more that the cold, rock hard surface he lay on. Something snored very low but softly and very nearby and no way was that Scully. The Dolby-deep rumble went with the warm, wet, rancid breath that touched his face.

Suspicious of unexpected surprises, Mulder tentatively opened his eyes and ever so slowly raised his head.

It was dark but an even darker dark was right in front of him. A large mound rose and fell ever so slightly with the low snoring. It was also the source of the gamey scent. The edges of the silhouette were fringed as if Mulder needed more of a hint. Lion. The wet nose of a very big, very male lion was less than ten inches from his face.

Act 3

Thursday 1am

Mulder lay very… very still. Think first, panic later. This was an especially good idea if lions, like other predators, could smell fear. How had he gotten here? This was no idle question because remembering that was probably going to show him the fastest way out.

He had been drawn by the wild night sounds. His FBI ID had gotten him though the sleepy guard at the gate. Once inside, the groundskeepers pruning by lighted helmets, the trash collectors trucking away their tons of napkins and plastic cups, the cleaning and maintenance crews paid him no mind. A city that never sleeps, just a different city than during the day. He might as well have been invisible.

Wide-awake, he was equally unnoticed as he slipped into the shadows. Restful. A barely legible sign pointed to a walking path. Something about a safari. The trees clustered closely to the path here. Occasionally, the path diverted into a cave-like entrance where only a few emergency lights glowed like gold stars. In one exhibit, fish darted behind glass as tiny phosphorescent steaks of crimson and blue only to spiral away to evade the mountainous bulk of a submerged hippo as it glided past. Further down the path within the darkness of another grotto, cat eyes glowed behind another glass wall. It was then that Mulder lost clear track of time.

He had felt suddenly tired, unbearably tired. As if in a dream, he spied a figure flitting among the shadows. A lithe body; long, straight black hair swinging, moving away from him. Not Samantha, as from his old nightmares, but another girl whose name and face came immediately to mind. Rita, the one from the seat beside him on the coaster. What was she doing here?

Though not entirely certain that he had seen her, he sprang forward to follow. He remembered a slope, trees, scrub, and bamboo hitting his face. He could hear her soft, rapid footsteps ahead but not as far ahead as before. “Rita, wait –“ he called just as he vaulted a low wall.

There had been nothing beneath his feet but darkness.

And this is where he had ended up. Could have been worse; he could have landed ON the lion.

But that was then and now was now and the great cat was shifting. It yawned, revealing a cavern protected by four-inch long incisors. Paws as big as dinner plates flexed, claws like a matched set of Swiss army knives scratching the concrete pad before the glass wall.

He didn’t dare turn his head but a movement on the other side of the glass wall, the side he should have been on, caught his attention.

The girl Rita crouched there, barely an outline in the darkness behind the glass but her face was down near Mulder’s. She raised a finger to her lips and then inclining her head began to move along the wall outside.

She clearly wanted him to follow. Covering barely a foot a minute, he began to back away from the sleeping cat, belly to the ground like a lizard. Only when he was ten feet away did he begin to rise to his feet. Half way up his skin began to itch. He froze and then at glacial speed turned his head. Two huge, golden eyes studied him lazily from within their mane of dark fur. Still half in crouch, his own eyes on those golden eyes, heart thundering, Mulder backed away a little faster. His hip hit a wall and a few feet further on found a doorway. The door, heavy metal, might as well have been a lead for all that it budged when his sweating palms pushed down on the cool, lever handle.

Fifteen feet away the lion finally blinked. Stretching incredibly sleek muscles, it began to rise. Still stretching it yawned. A huge tongue flickered over gleaming ivory teeth. Two many pounding heartbeats later, the door vibrated, oh so slightly with a metal on metal sigh behind Mulder’s back. When he pushed down on the handle this time it moved silently on well-oiled hinges. Mulder was out the door, and had thrown his weight behind it to shut it and slid home the bolt before the yawning jaws had even closed.

Limbs trembling, he slid to the ground, his back against the door. Only then did he look for the girl who must have thrown the heavy bolt. Nothing. Somehow he suspected that. Twenty minutes of a stumbling run later he pulled his cold, sweat-slick body beneath the hottest water the hotel shower could be convinced to provide. When he slipped under the sheets next to Scully at least his skin was warm though his muscles still quivered and not from the hasty trip back. Scully. Home. Questions and revelations could wait.

“Have a nice run?” she murmured sleepily.

Greedily, he wrapped his arms around her, his one rock in the universe. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

Thursday, noon

It never occurred to her to doubt his story. They had been involved in far stranger things. While he left at dawn to meet the trace evidence team he had called to look over the area around the lion’s enclosure, Scully pursued her own research. As previously arranged, the three came together at the empty bird show arena at noon.

As Mulder told his story of the night before, he learned one thing – Randy Lyons would last about half a day if he ever seriously decided to take up a life of crime. The thin face flushed scarlet.

“Now let’s hear your version,” he asked.

“Uh, my version?” the boy stammered.

“Clearly none of this is news to you.”

In less than two minutes the young man was telling all. “I just went for a walk. I like to walk around the park at night. Some of the night watchmen slip me a little for making a round or two for them. Hey, most have families and work two or three jobs. They need the sleep. You won’t tell, will you?”

“No, we won’t ‘tell’,” Scully assured him, “but were you doing your friends a favor last night?”

“Uh, no, not last night. I just went for a walk.”

“What led you to take a walk last night?” Mulder asked in as conversational a tone as possible. “More specifically, how did you come to choose your route?”

Lyon’s mouth opened but then he hesitated at the unexpected question. After a long pause he stammered, “I don’t know… I just get these feelings sometimes. Like an itch. Like I gotta move. When I’m at work, sometimes it’s all I can do to stay at my post until my break. During the day, the feeling doesn’t usually last too long. At night I sometimes don’t get back for hours.”

Mulder felt a chill. “Did your stroll last night take you by the Safari Walk?”

Lyon looked scared. “I often do. It’s quiet. Interesting. The animals are usually active.”

“Did you see me?” Mulder snapped. “Follow me?”

The young man shrank away. “See, yes. Follow, no,” he swore his voice gathering speed. “Someone was in with the lion, crouching, backing away, and he wasn’t one of the keepers.” Long fingers clasped and unclasped nervously. “I saw whoever it was try the door but it wouldn’t open so I slid back the bolt then hid in the bushes to make sure whoever it was got out ok.”

“You didn’t know it was me?” Mulder asked.

“It was dark. Not till you stumbled out and slammed the door.”

“Why didn’t you say anything? “

The thin young man cringed. “You were already looking into things and asking questions, I didn’t know how you came to be in there. Certainly not by choice. How would it have looked? You must know that I’ve been around too many times when things happen or just after they happen. Honestly, I didn’t cause any of it. I’m just sort of there like last night. I don’t know why.” The rush of words trailed off.

Scully raised an eyebrow in her partner’s direction. “’Eau de paranormal’?” She asked knowing what he was thinking. His eyes were on the sweating teenager, however, whose acne blemishes were absolutely glowing in the dim cavern of the bird show arena.

“You aren’t by any chance a shapeshifter, are you?” he asked the boy.

Lyons stared. “A what?”

Mulder absently waved a hand. “Never mind. What about the little girl? Where did she go? I thought she was the one who pulled the bolt. You must have seen her.”

The boy shook his head, bewildered by the seemingly random question. “A girl? Around the lion’s viewing window? I didn’t see any little girl.”

Mulder’s voice tightened. “About ten years old? She was sitting next to me on the coaster and was outside the glass last night. I thought maybe she was the child of a park employee.”

“Coaster?” Randy shook his head. “There was that big man on your left, I remember him because he was so red in the face. There was no one on your right. The seat was empty. I thought that odd because front seats are almost never empty.”

Mulder stared. “You must be remembering some other emergency with a stuck coaster.”

“Oh, no. I thought having an empty seat was a good thing. One less to freak out. Besides, children that young aren’t usually tall enough for that ride.”

Mulder was fair-skinned and the light under the arena’s tarp was subdued, but Scully could still tell when all the color left her partner’s face. After forcing him to sit with his head between his knees she threw two twenties in Randy’s direction and sent him for a sweat shirt, hot coffee and food with some protein in it.

“No… no… no… no…” Mulder was moaning under his breath as she sat down and wrapped her arms around him. He was shivering. “Now I’m seeing ghosts… and hearing them and talking to them.” He raised his eyes to her. Those bloodshot orbs cut right through her the way they always did. ”I’m so sorry, Scully.”

“How is this your fault?” she asked gently knowing how much all Mulder had ever wanted since the horror of losing his sister when they were both so young was something approaching a normal life.

“I know how much you worry when I weird out on you.”

Tenderly, she stroked his sweat-matted hair. “We should have suspected this sort of thing might happen,” she told him sympathetically after what Albert told you. Do you remember?”

Two years before when this whole thing with the artifacts and the visions were just beginning, the Navajo wind talker, Albert Hosteen’s ghost had come to him or so Mulder had told her. Scully was eager and willing to believe that the whole episode had really happened if only for the comfort Mulder found in the memory. Still bowed over his knees he rocked and murmured, “That the dead talk to me because I listen.”

She leaned her cheek against his cool one. “Not that much different than the living who will talk to you for the same reason. I’ve watch these poor, suffering people open up to you for twelve years.” She kissed the top of his bent head. “Because you have an open mind… and an open heart.”

He raised his face to hers. She wished she could take the shadows from his eyes. He didn’t like being reminded that in the last few years he come far too close to being what he used to chase. “So you believe me?” he asked incredulously.

“You didn’t say that you saw this girl’s ghost. Randy’s evidence makes that the most logical conclusion, and I can’t believe I just said that.”

They were laughing, actually laughing at the black humor of it all, when Randy returned with a Save the Condor sweatshirt, two hot dogs, and a Styrofoam cup of black coffee.

“And people really can see ghosts?” the fascinated boy asked after Mulder had donned the sweatshirt. The boy’s eyes were wide and completely fearless. As Mulder was forcing down the first hot dog in an attempt to settle his stomach, Scully filled the boy in on what they investigated as part of the X-Files. “And you saw a ghost here? Do you see them all the time like that kid in the Sixth Sense?”

Mulder nearly choked on his current bite. “No. Not like the Sixth Sense. The documented instances of spirit sightings are very rare and in no way do I see them all the time. In fact this is only the second time and I’m not so sure that the first time wasn’t wish fulfillment. Besides, Rita may only be a projection, a memory, an imprint of an event that happened before, not an actual ghost.” He was not going into the actual conversation he’d had with this ‘projection’ and the fact that most people who see ghosts can’t hear them. The fact that he could made him hope profoundly that most of them didn’t have much to say.

“Regardless of what she is, the three of us need to find out why she’s here. I can’t believe that her presence and all that’s been happening is just a coincidence.”

Scully didn’t object — this was Mulder’s area of expertise after all. Neither did she protest as she would have in past years. Instead she slipped a warm and supportive hand in his.

“How can I help?” Randy asked. “I don’t see ghosts.”

“No, but you can let the spirit move you,” Mulder suggested in all sincerity.

Randy’s confusion was palpable.

“Maybe not see them, but you feel something.” Mulder paused seeking the right words. “You told me. You sense where you should go during your wanderings. You see the scribblings. You’ve often been on the spot to lend assistance when there’s an accident. That’s a gift not that much different than seeing ghosts.”

Randy sat in shock while Mulder seemed to have bounced back. Before they could talk again a few tourists sat near them. Several couples had come in under the shade to find seats for the next bird show. A man in ‘jungle’ wear and pith helmet had come out on stage to provide a little pre-show entertainment and help draw a crowd. He carried a bright red and blue macaw. When he raised his arm, it launched itself to sail gloriously above their heads.

“Let’s find a quieter place,” Mulder said rising. “With my luck it will decide to dive bomb my head.”

“I need to talk to you both anyway,” Scully said, her expression oddly expectant. “With all these new developments, I haven’t had time to fill the two of you in on the results of MY efforts this morning.”

Scully started out in the lead but then Randy’s long legs passed her. At the sight of his distracted expression the partners traded meaningful glances and eagerly followed.

Act 4

They skirted the desert-themed Timbuktu area. The sun-drenched orange clay walls sparkled all the more before a backdrop of blue-black clouds gathering on the horizon. “Afternoon thunderstorm,” Scully noted.

They passed the food and souvenir shops near the main gates, as colorful as a Moroccan market. A large auditorium detailed with white carvings and intricate patterns of blue Islamic tiles rose majestically into view. Huge, brightly colored banners advertised a show of Africa tales, larger than life puppets, music and dancing.

“There were several accidents associated with the theater,” Scully remarked nearly running now to keep up with the boy.

“And the alligator pool,” Mulder added as they passed by the fenced pond. “So does that mean we’re getting closer? We haven’t even had time to consider if this thing has an epicenter.”

Beside the pool was yet another entrance to the Safari Walk with its jewel-like fish and sleepy lions. Daylight gave it a peaceful look but Mulder shivered again anyway.

Before his paced slowed the teenager led them to a theme area they had seen only on the park map. This was ancient Egypt. Faux statues of pharaohs paraded down the single, nearly empty street. At the end of the row rising behind pylons worthy of Ramses II, snaked the cerulean blue struts of a twisting iron coaster.

Mulder’s shivers turned to sweat despite the fact that the temperature had dropped as the storm darkening sky not only veiled the sun, but swallowed it. “We seem to have come a pretty long way just to find a quiet place to chat,” Mulder quipped as he came up alongside the boy.

Randy Lyon twitched as if waking from a daydream. “Well i-it is quiet,” he stuttered as if needing to defend even to himself why he had led them here. “There’s not much to do except for the coaster and even that doesn’t draw what it should. It’s really a good suspended coaster.”

“Let’s skip the coaster this time,” Mulder suggested with a slight shudder. “Think about why we came here. What were you feeling? What were you thinking on your way here just now? Did you actually make a decision or did it seem to be made for you?”

Long fingers combed roughly through hair already spiky with sweat. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I know anything anymore,” came the uncertain reply in a voice close to tears.

Scully took pity on the boy and found them seats around a table near the sweeping entrance to the coaster where the more faint of heart could wait for the braver members of their parties. There must be brave groups up today because no one waited except for a footsore woman who watched over a toddler who played in a canvas-shaded sandpit graced by a pair of haughty stone camels.

As though still in a trace, Randy muttered softly, “I do come here a lot, but I always thought it was because it seemed a little lonely. I know that that sounds stupid.”

“Not at all,” Mulder said in his most soothing voice.

“It’s the least visited part of the park. They keep talking about what they can do to change it to help draw in the crowds but nothing ever seems to work.”

Mulder’s lips pursed for a moment in thought. “I really hadn’t meant ‘why here?’ as in this particular place. I didn’t think that there was a particular focus. I was just thinking that something might be leading you – like a leaf in the wind.” As if sensing something himself, like an itching on his skin, Mulder looked over his shoulder first in one direction, then the other. “Now I’m not so sure.”

Randy was completely out of his trance now. “But it is like that, like you said. Like a leaf blown by the wind. And at the end there is often a problem of some kind, an accident. Funny though, I’m drawn here more than anywhere else though there is hardly ever anything going on when I get here.”

Scully leaned forward. “Let me fill you in on what I learned which I haven’t even had time to tell Mulder about yet.” She gave her partner a significant look before turning back to the boy. “You were raised by a single mother, is that right? Irene Lyon?”

“Yes,” admitted the boy looking down at the ground beneath his feet. “She died earlier this year. Cancer. But what does that have to do –”

“I’m sorry for your loss but have patience. Who did she tell you your father was?”

The young man flushed even deeper if that were possible. “A married man. They were in love, she said, but he died before he could get a divorce.” His expression and tone, however, clearly indicated that he hadn’t believed that story for some years. “It’s okay. We did well enough. I had this cool Big Brother from one of those city programs, ya know?”

Scully nodded, “Yes, Ernest Sawyer.”

“Who… disappeared,” Mulder whispered, remembering. A ghost girl and a missing man. The coincidences were piling up.

Scully pulled out an enlarged photocopy of a much smaller picture. “This is a photo of Ernest when he first started working at Wild Gardens. He was about the same age as you are right now, Randy.” It was grainy picture and the subject’s hair was longer and the skin clearer, but other than that, it could have been Randy Lyon. The young man didn’t seem surprised, only very much saddened to be reminded of his missing mentor. “Did anyone ever remark on the resemblance between you two?” Scully asked.

Randy nodded slowly. “Yeah. Just one of those things and maybe that’s why Ernie chose me out of all the other boys to be a Big Brother to. I didn’t ask. I was just happy he did.”

Scully turned her attention to her partner with a look that could only mean, ‘You’re going to love this.’ To the nervous young man before her, she said, “I went digging today, Randy, and I found some things that might disturb you. Do you want me to go on?”

The young man nodded though his hands were balled into fists.

“Your mother couldn’t tell you who your father was because you don’t have a father in the conventional sense. Irene Lyon was single though she badly wanted a child. Unfortunately, she was also infertile. She, therefore, purchased an embryo, an egg already fertilized, and had it implanted.”

Now Randy seemed more confused than anything. “I don’t understand.”

“A couple in Ohio had problems conceiving in the conventional way and went the in vitro fertilization route. A couple of rounds of fertility drugs then they harvested her eggs and fertilized them in a petri dish with her husband’s sperm. There were more than she needed for one pregnancy unless she wanted a really big family all at once, so they froze the extra embryos. According to my research, over a period of eight years this couple gradually sold the extras off.”

Randy’s pale eyes could not have been open wider.

“I had to call in a lot of favors but I eventually confirmed that you and Ernest were both the result of that one round of fertilization.” Randy wasn’t even breathing now. “Therefore we know that you were at least full brothers. Often they allow the eggs to undergo a few divisions before freezing,” Scully went on in the same even but compassionate tone. “It aids in their viability. Therefore, it’s not outside the realm of possibility, especially considering the high degree of resemblance between the two of you, that one or more eggs split entirely.”

Mulder’s eyebrows were arched to his hairline. “Twins, identical twins,” he breathed, “but born five years apart.”

Scully nodded. “Possible, and yet impossible to prove without a DNA sample from Ernest.”

Mulder turned to Randy who was taking in air again but in strangled little sips. “Identical twins, At least possible. Do you know what that means? It begins to explain how you and Ernie found each other, how you were drawn to each other –“

“But he’s dead.”

“No one else seems sure of that but you.”

Randy’s head drooped. “I just know. I knew then. I know now. And he wouldn’t have just gone without saying good- bye.”

Mulder’s undivided attention could sometimes be unnerving and the boy squirmed. “You say that you feel that Ernest is dead, but you’re still here. I would think the Park would hold too many sad memories for you. Have you even considered moving on?”

The young man clutched long fingers into fists between his knees. “Tried to. The Mouse would have taken me, Disney, to you. But I couldn’t stay away. Lasted a week.”

“And you feel as if you are ‘maneuvered’ around this place. Randy,” Mulder said intently, “could Ernest be not quite ‘gone’? Do you know what I mean? In your midnight rambles about the quiet park is it possible that you can still ‘feel’ him?”

Scully’s lips opened in warning but she didn’t speak. Mulder had said enough already.

Before Randy Lyons could answer an explosion – BURST – directly over their heads. All three jumped to their feet, the air crackling about them. The storm had rolled in over the park and they had been so involved in their conversation that none of them had noticed. Now lightning flashed about them in a world gone suddenly dark without it. Thunder cracked and CRACKED again to roll off in BOOOMING echoes. And then the hail came, tiny bouncing pellets, followed closely by the rain that within seconds became a deluge. It came down so strongly that sheets of water ran off the table umbrella under which they huddled. It was as if they stood within a dimly lit cylinder of flowing silver. A fine mist even found its way through the thick canvas fabric.

There was no continuing their conversation over the deafening roar of the storm. Scully gesticulated to the much taller Randy. She seemed concerned about the people that might still be on the coaster.

“Don’t worry!” he screamed above the incredible drumming of the rain. “First sign of lightning, they shut ‘em down!” His last two words were much clearer as the cloudburst backed off from a nearly-impossible-to-shout-over level to just very difficult. At the same time, breaks developed in the sheets of water cascading around them. Then another sound broke through, a series of uneven screams. A figure broke out from a small knot of people clustered around the covered entrance to the Egyptian coaster’s loading area. It was a girl of about twelve, skinny to the point of emaciation especially since her scanty T-shirt and shorts were so wet that a bikini would have been more concealing. Her sodden brown hair looked as if it had been painted on. She screamed as she splashed barefoot through ankle deep puddles. Their plaza seemed to be a collecting point for a significant area.

They finally were able to make out the words that she was hysterically screaming, “Grandmere! Grandmere! Help!” in what was clearly a French accent.

All three, the agents as well as Randy, good park employee as he was, ran out into the still considerable rain to go to the girl’s assistance. It was Mulder’s right foot that twisted on a step hidden by the rising lake of runoff.

He had barely had time to catch his balance after the shot of intense pain before he found Scully at his side.

Speech being still difficult over the rumbling thunder and pouring rain, he waved her away. She gestured to a kind of small, enclosed porch underneath one of the buildings. By the time Mulder had limped under its shelter — a far better refuge than the table umbrella had been — she had returned if only long enough to shout, “The girl’s grandmother can’t catch her breath. Randy and I will stay with her until the EMT’s can get here. It may be a while with the storm.”

“I’m fine,” he assured her but she was already disappearing into the rain and the kind of steamy fog created when rain suddenly pounds sun-baked sidewalks. He was thinking how beautiful his Scully was, even soaking wet, when light and sound exploded together and skies opened up once more. Instinctively, Mulder stumbled back farther under the porch. The downpour was steady now, more regular than the white noise of heavy ocean surf. It wrapped around him like sudden dark as the lowering sky brought on the gloom of twilight when it should have been midday.

He had been standing less than a minute engrossed by the deluge when Mulder felt the familiar ice trickle down his spine. There was something, something so strong that it touched him despite sensation and sound and sight overwhelmed by the sudden cold of the violent storm and the preternatural dark.

“Yer ankle, okay?”

He wasn’t the least surprised to find the slender Hispanic girl beside him. She was perfectly dry and in the gloom seemed almost to glow.

“Yes, hardly hurts at all,” he answered, which was the truth. “Did you do that? And the storm, too?”

She laughed. It was as if the crystal sound came from the bottom of a well. “Who do you think I am? I had to wait for that.” Her expression turned smugly proud, ”But aye, CAN push here and there.”

“I’ll bet you can. So all those ‘accidents’ they were yours? And the writing on the walls.”

“Not the writing, but the rest, yeah. I didn’t hurt anyone.”

“You almost did the last time.”

She gave sulky frown. “Didn’t exactly mean that, but he wouldn’t hear. He wouldn’t pay attention. That’s why I had to start in the first place.”

“Who didn’t pay attention?”

“That big boy you’ve been talking to.”

“Randy?” Mulder asked, not surprised. “And what should he have been paying attention to?”

“The writing.”

“Which you don’t do.”

“His brother does.”

Mulder felt the warmth in his chest of a theory proven. “Is Ernest dead?”

“Ernie? Oh, yeah. He’s with me.”

“Lot’s of ghosts here?” Mulder asked peering into the twilight dark beyond of pelting rain. He was immediately sorry he’d asked because as if in answer he could see them. Little dim flames.

“Parks like this have lots of child ghosts. It’s like heaven, that’s why they come.” He supposed that it would be. “You should see Disneyland. You can hardly move but you’ll trip over one.”

Mulder’s stomach went queasy. On a couple of levels here was a thought he would have been happy to do without. “So you’ve been around for a while. You can actually move around from park to park?”

She shrugged. “Oh, yes. Besides Disney’s not that far. I like it here best because I like the animals. Besides, Ernie can’t move. He was too old when he died, you see.”

“Where is Ernie?” Mulder asked with some hesitation.

“Here.”

He looked around. There were just the faux plaster walls of the porch. “Here?”

“There.” She was gesturing with her head. There was an old announcement on the wall behind him, now faded, advertising some sort of attraction and beside him what he had taken in the gloom to be a cement pillar like the rest of the structure were hastily installed plywood panel painted to blend in. Their colors mellowed with dust, they were clearly blocking an old entrance. Like the words behind him, this ‘wall’ had been in place some time.

Horrible despair filled in. Ghosts of his own Samantha and the years of not knowing. Not a soul knew about this. He ripped at the panels, barely hearing the sound of the destruction over the still-beating rain. Besides, it wasn’t hard. The blockage was intended only as a temporary construction.

After the incident with the lion, he had slipped a pocket flash into his pocket; he pulled it out now and dove into the black hole.

Without the flash there would have been no light at all. The walls were concrete or stucco but painted to look like stone. The tunnel twisted and turned and sloped downward, ever downward. Images began to show up on the walls. Men and women in straight black wigs, males in short kilts and women wrapped in nearly transparent gauze. Scenes of eating and fishing and harvesting grain. Beast-headed gods. Of course, reproductions of ancient Egyptian tomb reliefs. More turns. Sconces lined the walls but the fake torches in them were dark. Finally the tunnel opened into a much larger and very damp space. Below him on the floor of a dank, open space the size of modest-sized auditorium, the pin-point beam of his flash found a large carved box. Passing the light back and forth he finally identified the object as a sarcophagus. Of course, faux tomb; faux burial chamber.

“It was a simulator ride,” the girl said not so much from beside him as inside his head. “See those rooms going off to the sides? That’s where they went in to fill in the seats row by row. The projection equipment was removed even before my time.”

That was where she led him, to one of those rooms where the silent chairs still sat silently bolted to platforms that would buck and tilt and sway in time to the graphics on the huge projection screens. Now they just sat staring at nothing, eerie reminders of what once transported patrons on falcon back across mountains, on Nile barges struggling through a storm, into the magnificent halls of the divine Pharaoh, flying down a rocky slope towards an enemy army as a charioteer.

Wrapped as a mummy and locked in a tomb? Mulder mused.

She led him behind where the projection screen must have stood. They had been doing some work here at one time, digging and demolishing. Intent on trying to make out the pictures on the walls with his little light, Mulder didn’t see the edge of the pit.

The floor simply fell away. Great slabs of poured concrete were just gone, sucked into the black. A step back, the weak ankle turned. He fell and kept falling. Too far. Way too far to survive if he landed on ragged edges of the broken floor.

Act 5

Thursday, 2pm

He fell into water, inky, silent water like being swallowed by a slumbering whale.

He came up sputtering who knew where in water that was only chest high. Of course his flash was gone. Black it was. Cavern black. Rita’s voice drifted across the water like the thin piping of a bird calling to him to swim to her. On the far side of the pool, which was not very far, his hands and feet found a waist high shelf of crumbling dirt and mud that overlay one of the fallen slabs on concrete. He didn’t hurry, but searched slowly, reaching out further and further. He was only a few feet from the water when his questing hands found what he had more or less expected the find. The bodies, or perhaps more rightly the skeletons, for they were mostly bone. Some brittle tendons still held them together, that and a little tattered cloth. The long shinbones of Ernest Sawyer, Randy’s five-year senior ‘twin’ and the much smaller bird-like bones of a child, where intertwined as they lay at the end, wrapped together for warmth or perhaps just for comfort.

Mulder shivered and not only because it was indeed surprisingly cold down here.

“What happened?” he asked, unconcerned that there should rightly have been no one to ask much less respond.

And there was silence for a time, and then a voice began, Rita’s small, matter-of-fact voice.

“I was a throw-away child.” The statement was ever so slightly bitter. “I was fostered at first but Mom died in prison so orphaned after that. I lived in a group home.” The thin words seemed to take on more weight. “They mix the kids around now and again between the homes. You lose the bullies you know but you lose what friends you were able to make, too. The switch was to happen at the park that time. I didn’t like my situation much and didn’t expect the new place to be much better. But I loved the park so I was happy to go.” Her voice lightened. “It’s like being in a fairytale in the park. I didn’t want to leave. I especially didn’t want to leave when I saw who was in my new group. I knew her from before; she was a mean one. So when they weren’t looking I ran away.”

“How did you get all the way down into here?” he asked. As softly as he spoke, his voice was too loud among the dripping echoes.

“Hid. There were no boards up at the entrance then, just some yellow tape, I remember that, but I didn’t know what it was there for and it was easy to just duck under. It wasn’t entirely dark then. There were a few lights up near the top but also lots of shadows. I had talked to the big boy running the coaster before when we waited in line. That was Ernie. Later, he told me that he had just gone on break when he saw me sneak away from the group that by that time was made up of all the kids from all the houses. He saw me run in there. He didn’t want me to get into trouble so he didn’t tell anyone, just came in after me.” Her voice went even thinner and sadder and seemed to echo from wall to ceiling to lake. “It was my fault. I heard him coming after me and I ran and I ran. I ran in here looking for someplace to hide. I started falling, he tried to catch me.” There was a long pause. “There was more water then but still we couldn’t climb out. We tried, we shouted but no one came. No one knew we were here. We waited and we waited. I was very hungry but Ernie kept me warm.”

During the story Mulder had found an almost dry place a few feet away from the sad grouping and now tried to make himself comfortable. Bodies this old didn’t frighten him but he was wet and cold and sitting in black as black as pitch. “So you go above,” he said into nothing his voice echoing with that of dripping water. “You trip up people and try to get people’s attention because you’re good at it and Ernie isn’t. All Ernie can do is squiggle on walls.”

“No, all Ernie can do it make his friend squiggle on walls.”

Mulder’s eyebrows lifted. “Randy’s been doing that?”

“He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t know how hard Ernest has been trying to get him to find us.”

“Randy sensed something. The message just wasn’t clear.”

“Ernie only wants his friend to know and his family to know what happened to us. Then I think he will go away,” said the child ghost almost wistfully.

“Will you be lonely then?”

“A little but I have other friends now. Everywhere. You saw them.”

The little gray veils of mist in the rain. Yes, he had seen them. They had reminded him of Samantha and her friends playing in the meadow that last and final time. Finally safe from harm.

“Besides, maybe you’ll be my friend, when you die.” Her voice seemed to fade away till it was just a tiny, tiny whisper. “Because you’re never going to get out of here either, are you? Maybe I didn’t do such a good thing.”

She didn’t speak again. Maybe she went topside to make more mischief.

After a time, Mulder realized that the dark about him was not quite so absolute unless it was just his starved optic nerves playing tricks. Here and there he thought he could make out the faintest bioluminescent glow. Algae and fungi will do that, some rocks – and decaying bodies. He could almost see the two now, the little girl in the young man’s arms. In time he made out more. A little ways up on a slab of concrete rakishly tilted towards the lip of the pit were scratches. From fingers worn to the bone from the young man’s fruitless attempts, over and over, to climb out and save them both?

Then for just out of the corner of his eye, just for a moment, he thought he could make out an outline as if the finest web of an Egyptian veil covered the long limbs of a tall young man who sat forlornly by the pool. Long arms rested on raised knees. The image’s face radiated an expression of infinite sadness. The young man looked a lot like Randy Lyon.

They sat and it seemed, regarded each other for a long time.

Perhaps half an hour later, not so very long, Mulder seemed to sense the smallest of vibrations though the cold, hard slab of stone under his butt. In reaction his head came up. When he looked back Ernest had gone on his way.

Because of course it was Scully. In less than a minute he heard her beautifully irritated voice and Randy’s tremulous one shouting his name. She had come for him as he knew she would. He had never had the slightest doubt. The beams of the two powerful floodlights, crossing distantly over the vault of the ceiling above the sink hole, provided just enough light to force the glow of the bones back into the black from which they are emerged just for him.

Epilogue

Thursday 7pm

It was early evening before they brought the bodies up. Mulder was actually the last to come out having elected to keep vigil until equipment that could handle the fragile skeletons correctly could be brought in. In the pale warmth of the setting sun he finally shrugged off the blanket, Scully had thrown down to him.

Randy Lyon stood against the wall of the porch, his face nearly unrecognizable in his grief. He had been able to identify Ernest’s remains, from what scraps of clothing remained and a ring.

“He didn’t need to put himself through that,” Scully reported. “Ernest Sawyer’s name tag was still pinned to what was left of his shirt.”

“But he did,” Mulder disagreed knowing a thing or two about closure himself. “What was going on down there? Where did the hole come from?”

“Sinkhole. They’re all over Florida. That’s why the ride was closed down. It is only opened now for a quarterly risk assessment. The girl slipped in during one of those. Ernest must have seen her cross the yellow warning tape and went in after her. The unfortunate part is that he clearly didn’t let anyone know where he was going. They were locked in when the engineers packed up and went home.

“What were you able to find out about our runaway?” Mulder asked tilting his head to the sun as he stretched weary neck muscles.

Scully consulted a small pocket notebook. “Rita is her name, as she said. Rita Hernandez. Orphaned at seven. A young aid named Amanda Cosetti has been taken into custody.”

Mulder whistled. “You work fast. It’s been what, four hours?”

Scully shrugged. “You had the girl’s first name and we knew the exact date when Ernest Sawyer worked his last shift. The Park also keeps good records of its charity work. They routinely sponsor daytrips for group homes. Within two minutes after I pulled out my badge at Theresa’s House and started asking questions this young woman was practically sobbing in my arms. She was that anxious to confess. Two years ago she had been only sixteen and this was her first job. She misplaced one of her charges the very first week. She was terrified. The transfer process was so lax and the paperwork so routinely sloppy that it was just too easy to make her mistake go away. She made it look to the group Rita should have gone with that she had elected to return to Theresa’s. The staff at Theresa’s thought she had transferred. So no one knew.”

“Except for your Amanda.” Mulder sighed. Such a waste. “What will she be charged with?”

“Reckless endangerment. Maybe manslaughter. Nothing more. The charges are the least of her problem. She’s a mess. She needs therapy. It’s a horrible outcome for her, worse than even her worst fears, but at least she can start getting the help she needs.”

At that moment Randy stumbled by, vaguely following in the path of the coroner’s van but with no serious desire to catch up to it.

Mulder reached out and touched his arm as he passed. “Can we help?”

Tears still ran down the scarred face. “I just feel empty. Like I said, I knew something was really wrong, but always felt Ernie was still with me somehow. Not now. Now there’s just this big hole.”

“He was with you,” Mulder assured the young man. “You were his lifeline, literally. His link to the living world through your bond of blood though neither of you were aware of that connection. As I remember, you were out of town the week he went missing.”

“I was training at our sister park in Virginia. I suddenly felt horrible. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get warm. I collapsed. They took me to the hospital. I was there for days but no one could figure out what was wrong.” Randy pounded fist into palm in his anguish. “Why didn’t I know!”

“How could you? How could anyone? If the two of you – twins, probably identical twins – had shared a life together, a womb, a home, and not been separated by distance and years, then you may have been able to interpret what you were feeling.”

“In the end it was all for nothing. Useless.”

“No,” Mulder said gently, “Not useless at all. The writing on the walls? You did that, Rita told me. Ernest working through you, trying to communicate. He just wasn’t very good at it. Rita stepped in to help then. It was a bit of a rough touch at times, but she was only trying to help the only one who had ever tried to help her.”

“But the writing didn’t mean anything. And you found him, I didn’t.”

“But the writing brought us here,” Scully said gently. “A trail of accidents alone wouldn’t have.”

“So if I helped so much why am I so empty?” the young man sulked.

“He’s gone,” Mulder said.

Randy’s eyes were pleading. “Where?”

“To the place where souls go who are at peace,” Scully replied aware of the approval in her partner’s eyes. “You did that.” she told them both.

Randy wandered away, head bowed, looking as lost and forlorn as a person can. They watched with concern. About a hundred feet away just as he ducked under the yellow caution tape keeping the paying patrons away from the site, a family rushed into the area, father, mother and three children ranging in age from roughly ten to fifteen. Their faces were grim. Seeing Randy, they stopped abruptly, their expressions opening in a kind of shock.

“Who…?” Mulder asked though he thought he could guess just by the silhouette of the oldest child, a boy, who had reached out to take Randy by the hand and then to clasp him in a frantic hug.

Scully’s small smile was wistful. “When I was doing my investigating this morning – was it only this morning? –,” I contacted Ernest’s family. Ernest was their eldest. After they saw how well he turned out they purchased the rest of the fertilized eggs from the in vitro procedure that produced Randy and Ernest. They wanted Ernest to have siblings. There were no more identical twins that we know of, but Randy has another full brother and two full sisters now in addition to who knows how many children the original couple had.”

Surrounded by his new family, grief mingling with a shy happiness all around, Randy looked back over his shoulder at the agents and gave them a watery smile. Scully took Mulder’s hand. “And they are good people. They nurtured a son who was not only a Big Brother to his own brother and sisters but to Randy and to other fatherless boys as well.”

“And who gave his life trying to save a lonely little girl.”

“You do good work, Mulder.”

“We do good work,” he corrected and kissed her.

She cringed dramatically at the stagnant pool smell that clung to his damp clothes. “After you shower and change – how about we take in a coaster?”

“Maybe after some food and a little – “ he smiled wickedly “— aperitif?”

She led him off as eager to get to the ‘aperitif’ as he was. She, therefore, didn’t notice when he looked up once more at the blue coaster, it’s evening lights just coming on.

“What’s up?” she asked well aware of her pun. Because he had told her about what he had thought may have been little gray ghosts in the storm, she asked more soberly, “Wondering how many little soul lights you’ll be able see from up there?”

“Actually, no. I was calculating the airtime in that big drop. As far as seeing Rita and her friends, I think I can safely say that that particular door is closed to me and I hope will remain closed.”

“But you saw them and you helped,” she said. Then she asked with some hesitation, “In general, did they seem to be having a good time?”

“Oh, yes,”

“And that’s a good thing?” she asked taking his hand.

“That’s a very good thing.”

The End

Author’s note: As with many of my stories, I base my setting on a real place. Wild Gardens is based, very closely at times, on Busch Gardens in Tampa. It does have an African theme with lots of animals, a Congo River ride, a new coaster that that strange shovel type car, wonderful beef brisket, and an Egyptian area with a blue coaster and, yes, a boarded up attraction that was once a simulator ride. Also, I love theme parks. Years ago I co-wrote a short story about Mulder’s first trip to a theme park which took place in my family’s favorite park, Busch Gardens in Williamsburg.