Disclaimers, etc. with first section.

3/12

Northeast Precinct 9:23 A.M.

"You know that penknife I have?"

"What?" It was like I was seeing Scully for the first time all day. Maybe I was. My head cleared. "Penknife. Yeah."

"If you don't quit fidgeting, I'm going to bury it in your leg."

I steadied my knee with one hand and the section of connected "courtesy" chairs were silent. I glowered at the clock. "Obviously 9 A.M. means whenever Bartrusiak is damn good and ready."

"Bartusiak," she corrected.

"That's what I said."

"You said Bartusiak, with an extra R." She motioned to the plaque on his door and stared me in the eye. "You look like hell, Mulder."

As if I could smooth out the fatigue, I ran my fingers over my face. I *felt* like hell. "You should've seen me before I shaved."

"I did. And you still look like hell."

Shrugging, I drained the last of the equally inadequate courtesy coffee out of my styrofoam cup. It left a bitter taste on my tongue. "I think I see what's happening here, Scully. I say we're FBI, and we're handed over to some PR ambassador who's going to feed us some feel-good bullshit and send us on our way." I crushed the cup between my hands. "I might as well have said we were lawyers for the defense, or reporters."

"Oh, I'm sure they'd hand the file right over to a reporter," she said dryly.

"For the right price, yeah." I compressed the cup into a ball and dug my thumbnails in. "If he comes in here with his golf clubs thrown over his shoulder, I'm going to take a 9-iron and shove it up his --"

Scully very firmly took my wrist, confiscated the wad of styrofoam and brought us both to our feet in one deft move. "Captain Bartus --"

A man who looked like part of Stonehenge had broken formation and put on a police uniform stood there, looked us both in the eye and said to the secretary who sat in the lobby. "Oh bloody hell...them?"

"Sir," I called, badge at the ready. "We're --"

"I know who you are." He brushed by and we moved aside, as if we had some choice in the matter. "Before you say *one* word, you're coming into my office. Now."

It wasn't as if being in trouble was anything new with either one of us, but being reprimanded for no reason was something else altogether. I followed behind Scully, who obviously doubted the chivalry of the gesture as I opened the door for her. Bartusiak sat there, ominously rolling a big glass paperweight in his hands as we took our seats. "I've done all I'm going to do for you people. I want you to turn around and go back to Omaha and tell them that I won't stand for the manipulation or the veiled threats -- "

I was now officially lost. Scully's expression concurred. I almost had to laugh. Someone had threatened this man? And lived?

"Sir," I leaned forward earnestly. "We are not affiliated in any way with any current FBI investigation."

In other words, I thought, we have no idea what you're talking about.

The paperweight was still in his hands. He was listening. "Yeah?"

I deferred to Scully, and would probably pay dearly for it later.

"We were called from D.C. to do a follow up on a case involving a Pamela Wyeth.," Scully told him, pretending to read from our "file", which only contained what Skinner had given us and some blank forms. "You requested the FBI's assistance in finding a composite match."

He narrowed his eyes. "Then you *are* with them. And as of yesterday morning, that case was closed. If you guys bothered to communicate with each other -- if you could find your own asses with a fucking map -- you might've saved yourself the trip."

Scully raised her eyes in my direction. My turn. I feigned anger at in the direction of our file, but I was really trying to scrape my thoughts together. "Captain Bartusiak...the closing of the case is *why* we're here...to investigate the investigation."

Damn, I was good.

Scully ran with it. "We have reason to believe this case was mishandled by the Omaha field office."

I had to physically refrain from applauding.

I hid a sigh of relief with a forced yawn. "You mentioned threats?"

"Internal Affairs." Bartusiak looked genuinely floored and, in lieu of an apology, stopped brandishing the paperweight. "I...didn't meant to snap at you. These past two months have been complete and utter hell. They came in here, took over my office, took over my squadroom. When I called them on it, they *lectured* me in front of my men. Getting them to tell us what was going on with the case was nearly impossible."

But that meant...that meant the FBI had assisted on more than a composite match. That meant they'd commandeered the entire investigation. Why? "Can I see your copy of the file, Captain?"

"I'll do you one better than that." He thumbed through a small stack of files and pulled out the thickest one. "You can *have* the damn thing." He pushed it across the desk. "They told me to shred it anyway."

Shred it? I felt Scully's eyes pointedly burning through me. Our mysterious investigation had just become a cover-up.

It was a plain police file, or had started out as one. The takeover was made physical by the FBI insignia stamped on the side and the stiff red and white cover inside the folder that listed its federal number and filing order. I lifted the cover, and read the most recent addition to the case, a memo requesting dismissal with CLOSED stamped on it in smeared red ink. It was a hastily manufactured letter, only enclosed halfway in the brad at the top and dated two days before we arrived. I had asked myself what the FBI's jurisdiction in the Pamela Wyeth case was when a word snagged the corner of my eye on her personal info form. NeuroMast.

Jostling Scully's elbow in the middle of what she was saying, I underlined the word with my index finger.

If it meant anything to her, she didn't show it and turned her gaze back to Bartusiak. "Sir? The threats you mentioned?"

"Right," Bartusiak replied gravely. "Like I said, we weren't very well informed of the case's progress. There was some question of whether or not Pam's claim was...valid. The FBI came in because of where she worked and had a huge problem with us treating her claim with any seriousness. Their concern was that she might have a nervous breakdown and jeopardize security."

Scully glanced down and I underlined the name again. NeuroMast.

Bartusiak continued. "We went behind the FBI's back. We sent Pam to Lincoln to meet with a police artist, and came back with a sketch. We gave it to the local press, a couple of the news stations." He shook his head. "They got wind of it late in the evening and pulled it out of circulation, saying it was a waste of their time and manhours, that they were just here to make sure Pam didn't spill. They told us if it went to D.C. and they couldn't get a match, they were closing the case."

"So this picture," Scully edged hopefully, holding up the composite. "It was never in the paper?"

"They didn't get a chance." Bartusiak actually registered pain for a moment. "We gave it to the paper last Friday. If they had run it Saturday, the feds wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. But...sales are higher on Sundays. More people would've seen it."

I handed the file to Scully, fearing they could walk in at any moment and rip it out of our hands. "So you don't doubt the validity of Pam Wyeth's claim?"

"I have some doubt," he said carefully. "It's all there in the file. She's been stalked before. Not quite two years ago, one of her co-workers went on a couple of casual dinner dates with her. He wanted it to be more and she wasn't interested. He watched her every move for eight months. One night when she worked late, he attacked her out in the parking lot. He cut her throat. She used to sing in the church choir, and now she can barely talk. She's made a lot of claims since then that she's being followed. Her next door neighbor...other co-workers." Sighing noisily, he looked down at his hands on the desk, uncomfortable. "I've known her since she was a baby. She's a good kid, but she's scared. I'll admit she's cried wolf and overreacted, but this time...I believed her."

Scully was looking at a more extensive claim than Skinner's rudimentary copy. "It says here that a woman named Madeline Roark corroborated Pam's story about the man in the picture."

Bartusiak chuckled. "Yeah, and she was mostly out of town on the nights in question. When we talked to her, we could barely get a coherent answer, much less a complete sentence. Besides, she's Pam's friend. Pam could say Clint Eastwood was stalking her and Madeline would probably agree."

Scully held the original composite under her hands. It was under a clear, protective film. I'd unfolded and refolded our copy so many times that it was starting to fall apart at the creases.

Even when I turned away from it, an afterimage of Krycek's face hung in my mind like a Dali nightmare, stretched on spikes and propped-up on crutches, eyeless and smiling.

It was Scully's turn to jostle me now, as she traced her fingers under a nearly unreadable scrawl. Pam Wyeth had reported in late December that her stalker was a man in his late twenties, early thirties, about five-ten or -eleven with green eyes and dark hair.

And only one arm.

"I knew it," I said once we were outside, my breath showing in the chilly air. "This only proves it."

"Then what in the hell is NeuroMast?"

I tossed the keys to our rented Saturn from hand to hand. "I don't leave those copies of the Lone Gunmen lying around so you can set your drink on them."

"That's all they're good for." She snatched the keys in mid-toss and opened the passenger door, flipping the power-locks. "So what's NeuroMast?"

"NeuroMast, Incorporated." I got comfortable behind the steering wheel, putting the key in the ignition but not starting it. "A federally-funded medical research facility. Byers started investigating them last fall when it turned out they were researching technology more than they were medicine."

"For instance?"

"According to the data Byers collected, surveillance research. Micro- surveillance for government contractors. There's a classified project called Montag Eyenets...doorbells that read your thumbprints, rooms that understand your voice --"

"And retinal scanners?" She rolled her eyes. "I saw Mission: Impossible, too, Mulder."

"Whether or not we agree on what the nature of the research is," I said dismissively, "Pam Wyeth works there. I don't think Krycek is after her specifically, but he might be after something she knows. Access."

"Krycek is well-connected, Mulder. I'm sure he has more technological access than a woman who works at one of the dozens of medical research facilities."

I tapped the steering wheel. "Maybe he lost that access. Maybe she's got the hook-up."

"Mulder --" She gave up, exasperated. "Okay, inarguably, this is Krycek in this composite. Obviously, Pam Wyeth has seen him closely enough to and-or often enough to describe him in exacting detail. That implies he is or was in close proximity to her, even if it doesn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he's stalking her."

I started the car and leaned over to get the map out of the glovebox. "Let's go to NeuroMast and talk to her."

"That's what I was talking about with Captain Bartusiak when you elbowed me. Pam Wyeth has been on hiatus from work since early January." She turned on the heat in the car. "I got the distinct impression from the way Bartusiak worded it that it wasn't her choice to take the time off. They are legitimately concerned about her being a security risk."

I frowned. "What use can she be to Krycek if she's been discouraged or maybe even forbidden from coming to work?"

"Exactly," Scully said softly. "So what's going on here?"

Square One was my least favorite place to be.

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