focus6

Out of Focus : Six
By Amanda Finch
[email protected]

Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

6/12

Sheehan Public Library 1:48 PM

"This is pathetic," McGrath informed us. "You have weapons, shiny badges, that whole Quantico training thing, and you're doing case research at a library. Can't you call that Danny guy and just get him to look stuff up for you?"

I lifted my head off the table. "This is why you're the sniper and we're the FBI agents."

Scully put down the microfiche cannisters. "Actually, Mulder can't afford to buy Danny and his fiance' another pair of NBA tickets."

"That too," I said groggily, and rolled one of the containers back to her. "Microfiche. I hate microfiche."

"Too bad. They don't keep back issues of the Sheehan Gazette, Mulder, unless you want the issue they ran the day Kennedy was assasinated and that's five bucks." She rolled it back. "Help me wade through these."

I shook the last microfiche roll at McGrath. "Three of these, three of us...coincidence?"

"Yep, just a coincidence," he agreed snidely. "I'm gonna go look at National Geographics."

I rolled my eyes at Scully. "I told you we should've left him in the car." I dug my glasses out of my jacket pocket and snapped the fiche into the side of the machine. "Were these the three that actually had something to do with Madeline Roark, or is this the entire back archives of the Sheehan Gazette?"

"Just those where Roark's name was mentioned." She pushed a card across the table. "Here's the letter boxes you're looking for."

The glaring white of the boxlight made me feel like my brain was being turned inside out. "1969. What in the hell happened in 1969?" I found the letter box on the card and spun the crank towards it, sick at just the sound of it. "On March twentieth of 1969, Madeline Roark, age three..."

"What, Mulder?"

"Was kidnapped from her home..." I looked around the side of the machine at her. "What do you bet she was returned sometime in 1973 or 74?"

"The one I put in is 1974," Scully replied and I moved around to her side of the table.

Madeline Roark, age nine, returned to her parents with no memory of her six years away, very like the three year old that had been taken from her family's home. Authorities had no idea where she had been prior to Utah Highway Patrol finding her wandering around in the woods wearing a men's shirt and jeans. She remembered her parents on sight, and showed no ill effects of her abduction -- I read the word wryly -- outside of vivid, recurring nightmares and unspecified neurological damage.

"Neurological damage?" Scully asked aloud.

"*Unspecified* neurological damage. That explains why she was on drugs for extensive surgery the first time she was questioned."

"Does she work at NeuroMast or is she treated there?"

That was a damn good question. "Maybe both. But I suspect that neurological damage in this case just alludes to the fact that she's lost a substantial amount of her actual memory."

Scully tapped her fingers on the table. "Whatever the incident was that resulted in her disappearance, it would be extremely easy to use suggestion on someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder."

"I was thinking something a little more extreme."

One corner of her mouth crooked up, as if to say Aren't you usually?

"Brainwashing," I answered. "I mean, she looked right through me, Scully. And when you told her my name, there was *nothing*."

"You're still working under the assumption that she's your sister." I wouldn't meet her searching gaze.

"I think that question was rendered moot by the fact that she was 'returned' at age nine, don't you? This is her."

Scully didn't respond. "The third roll is dated December 1993."

She handed me the 1974 roll and loaded the most recent one. "Local Woman Finds That Illness Gives New Lease on Life" read the headline.

We read the words under our breath, slightly out of sync. Madeline Roark, a successful product of NeuroMast's highly experimental neurological laser surgery was made the doctor-patient liaison after what appears to be the last cranial operation she will ever require.

I took a deep breath and met her eyes, washed pale silver by the harsh light.

"You were right, Mulder."

"She's not only the doctor-patient liaison," I said bitterly. "She's also a client."

"Then why in the hell did she have major surgery again last month?"

I felt a sudden rush to my brain. Late coffee kicking in or my body wringing adrenaline that I simply couldn't afford to burn. I had this vague sensation of dread that wandered up my neck and declared anarchy on the back of my head. Maybe that was what a migraine felt like. I turned away from the monitor and pressed my eyes closed with my fingers. "Because...because she remembered something." My own voice slurred from my mouth. What was the matter with me? "It came back to her and they took it out."

With an enviable economy of movement, she put all of the fiche back in the cannisters, snapping off her monitor and then reaching over to turn off the one I'd been using. "You still have that address she wrote down?"

I reached in one pocket and then another, producing it. "Right here."

"Let's go." She ordered firmly. "I'm driving."

I let her.

Remaining awake required a mental fight. The sound of the car without any radio on was a nearly soothing sound, and the wheels seemed to chant that it was time to sleep, time to close my eyes and --

And I yanked myself out of it again.

McGrath chuckled from the backseat. "Nodding off like a kid in church."

"Not in *my* church," Scully murmured absently. "That would get you a smack on the head with a pointer."

I tried to clear my vision. "You just wanted to stay awake for the wine."

She didn't take her eyes off the road. "Rest, Mulder. Now."

Nope. I sat up. Even she had to realize the futility of those words time and time again. The cycle was vicious and unchanging. Sleep deprivation, then a few hours or a day of being a raw nerve, and then collapse. That was a one week cycle, and I figured I still had two days to go until I reached the raw nerve stage.

I wasn't sure though. Felt like it was setting in awfully quick.

Glibly, I built the words in my throat. "Hi, Mrs. Roark. We're with the FBI. We've come to ask you -- " I checked with her wearily.

"I don't know, Mulder." She was bemused with the traffic. "I don't have a clue. We'll play it like we have the rest of this trip. By ear." She scrutinized the signs as we turned off the main thoroughfare onto a sidestreet notched every hundred feet with coves and lanes. She swung a quick left. "Here we are. We're looking for 918."

I knew which of the houses it was before the numbers affixed to the roadside mailbox confirmed it.

Scully killed the engine and the three of us watched.

An older woman sat on a swing out in the front, oblivious to our observation. There was a younger woman beside her -- maybe the little sister Madeline Roark had spoken of -- swinging in unison as the cold breeze pressed her dark hair into her face. She was laughing, trying to speak around it. My eyes drifted over the white front of the house, the forest green shutteres, the well-tended shrubs in the yard. There was a swingset in the backyard, well-worn, and one of the swings swayed slightly.

The two talked animatedly. An older man came out of the house and handed them each a cup, obviously coffee by the vapor rising up and their fingers cautiously closing around them. A younger man, a son, poked his head out of the door, asking a question we couldn't hear, waited for the answer he wanted and went back inside. The older man sunk into an Adirondack chair across from the swing and they talked.

A family. None of us spoke.

My phone rang, and I answered it quickly, panicked, as if that family would hear me and look over. Stupid. "Mulder."

The voice on the other end was as hysterical as it was hoarse. "Agent Mulder...he's *here*!"

"Who?" It took a moment for me to place the person. "Pam? Who's there?"

"Alex Krycek is *here.* I just saw him outside."

I looked over into the yard, at the Roarks as they sat there, unintentionally pausing.

"Agent Mulder? Are you there?" She prodded. "I just saw him. I don't see him now. But he's HERE. He came out of the treeline, and then I lost him from there."

Try not to act relieved, I thought to myself. "We'll be right there."

"Mulder?" Scully asked as I hit the end button and held it down, afraid Pam would call back and tell us to disregard it. No, just the next door neighbors. No, just a random hunter coming out of the woods. It's deer season after all.

"Pam just saw Krycek." I watched the keys as they hung from the ignition, waiting for her to start the car. "That's top priority. Let's go."

We twisted around the cove, getting back out on the street.

The half-sullen look she passed me as she accelerated onto the main drag was almost offended. I heard her in my head. I'm not dumb, Mulder.

It was as good an excuse as any not to go through with it, I thought. Because I couldn't have told those people to their faces. Not today, not tomorrow. Never.

Pam Wyeth's residence 3:21 PM

"Show me where."

Pam stood in front of the window of what looked like her bedroom, circling a few yards of the treeline with her finger, curtain bunched in one hand. "I was up here. I don't know why I looked out the window. I just did. I had to situate one of the cameras so that it would catch that area, and when I turned around, I couldn't find him." She let the curtain fall back into place and wrapped her arms around herself. "I didn't know there was a blind spot like that. Do you think he knew?"

I shook my head but she was asking Scully. She'd instantly gravitated to Scully, the minute she'd walked in. Women didn't slash throats, not hers anyway.

Pam stood at the window with me. "You can't see it now, but that's NeuroMast, right through there, maybe five or six miles through those trees. That's why we live here. We're on call. They're making me stay here even though they won't let me work, to watch me. As if it's my fault this guy is after me."

"We don't think it's you he's after, Pam," Scully replied. "We don't think you have anything to do with what he's trying to accomplish. In fact," she didn't have to double back with me, but she did anyway. "In fact, we're sure of it."

I watched as McGrath wove in and out of the treeline, duffle bag held down at a familar angle, so that if he had to fire, he just shook the bag loose and out came the gun, nodding.

"Then who?"

l looked over Pam's shoulder at Scully. Were we on the same page? Her expression said yes. "We believe he's after Madeline Roark. He's probably watched her from your house. It explains how she's able to corroborate every aspect of what you told the Captain and his men, and what you told the FBI after that."

Relief crossed her face briefly. Then guilt, before it slipped back into the impassive mask. "Madeline? Really? Does she know it?"

"We told her." I watched as McGrath signalled to Jonson, a casual gesture. No urgency. "We have no reason to believe that you're in any danger."

"But Madeline?" She hadn't loosened her hold on herself yet. "She's in danger?"

"She may be," Scully answered softly.

Pam appeared cornered in the room suddenly, as if she was wedged between us. "I -- I'm going downstairs. Are you going to look for him?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Are you going to look down in the basement again?"

"Before we go," I promised.

She backed out of the room diagonally, as if she couldn't let us slip out of her sight at the same time her back was turned.

Scully waited until the footfalls on the stairs faded. "Did you see this Mulder?"

I turned as she'd folded back one panel of an Oriental triptych. There were eight security monitors there, banked together in one bracket, the kind that an airport or an office building would have in the lobby.

"Told you," I said. "More paranoid than me."

"This isn't paranoia, Mulder." She straightened the panel. "This is obsession."

I shrugged at the window. I watched as Jonson and McGrath seemed to switch places, each covering the terrain just walked by the other. McGrath's number was more familiar, more programmed, and the phone rang in mid-dial.

"Mulder -- "

"I was just about to call you. One of you needs to be watching Sa -- " Well, that wasn't a slip, was it? If Scully noticed it, she said nothing. "Madeline Roark. One of you canvas this area and the other get over there to the Jeep where Jonson set up."

Through the window, McGrath covered the mouthpiece with one hand, said something to Jonson and was suddenly in my ear. "We're switching up. I've got her covered."

"Get over there." I hung up and wasn't steady again until McGrath grimaced up at the window and disappeared from view, Jonson ambling about the grounds with his gun at the same ready position inside the bag.

I turned away from the glass and Scully was right there at my elbow. She looked possibly more tired than I felt. "You couldn't do it, could you?"

"Do what?"

"Tell them." She sat down on the bed and hinted that I was to do the same but I remained standing. "You couldn't have told the Roarks the truth about her, if it is the truth."

"If I had any doubts about the truth, Scully, we wouldn't have driven over there in the first place. For that matter, neither would you." I finally relented and sat down, dropping the phone beside me and mentally shaking myself. "No. No, you're right. I couldn't have done it. I didn't want to."

"It's not like it matters that much." She gave me my space. "All they could've done was confirm what we already knew from the newspaper archives. If they'd denied those things, that would've been even more incrimin -- "

"Don't make excuses for me." I shook my head until it was buried in my hands. "I couldn't do it because I just...couldn't. It wouldn't matter if there were no newspaper archives or records. It wouldn't matter if she had her memory and said she was my sister and asked me where Mom was. I couldn't have done it. Her family could have been out there on the lawn trying to kill each other, and I -- "

I raised my face. "I've worked these cases before Scully. You know that. We've worked some like them together. Addy Sparks? Telling her father we found her in a shallow grave out in the middle of...godforsaken nowhere...that *look* on his face? Imagine we had found her, Scully, alive...or thought we had, and had to come back and tell him that it wasn't her, that we'd been wrong?"

She studied the side of my face. "Like breaking up two families, instead of just one..."

"Mine's not going to be fixed, no matter what happens," I told her vehemently. "It's too late for that. But if anyone breaks up the Roarks, it's going to be *her.* And to do that, she has to remember."

"Then the DNA evidence will give us our answer."

But I had the answer. Knowing she was my sister, knowing this with certainty, only aggravated the situation. "We have to keep Krycek away from her. I don't think she's even vaguely aware of what's going on here."

"Then we'll watch her."

It wasn't that easy. "Until when? Monday? I hire another one of Senator Matheson's men to sit here and follow her around? There's got to me some way to get through to her. To make her listen."

"Mulder -- " She cracked her neck, eyes wide and tired. "She's not going to remember unless she wants to."

I hoped she heard herself say that, and understood the weight of it. For years, I let her delude herself, and those three months missing -- that huge gap in both of our lives -- hadn't seemed to matter to her. She seemed to have wanted to cover it up almost as much as the FBI did, to bury it. There'd been no way to make her listen. There was no way through.

So I was dealing with it again, only on a much grander scale.

I stood up, knees cracking. Damn. How old was I? Not a young man, anymore.

Time was running out.

"Mulder, where are you going?"

"Would you check the basement?" I asked innocently. "I'm just going to go outside and check with McGrath and Jonson, make sure everything's okay."

"They would've called you if it wasn't," she commented, suspicious.

Leave a woman in the lurch once to go kill your archrival and they *never* let you forget it, I thought, smirking. "I just want out of here. This place gives me the creeps."

She watched my face for a few seconds. Don't bite your lip, I ordered myself. Keep the eyebrows down. "Alright. I'll meet you at the car."

I was halfway down the stairs when she called my name. I swear, that was what my conscience sounded like: her voice following me to my doom.

My Nokia was in her hand. "You're going to check with them without this?"

If I wanted it, apparently, I was going to have to walk back up and get it. "Sorry."

"I'm not buying you one more cell phone, Mulder," she teased. "The Bureau put their foot down and so am I. You ever need another one, you're on your own."

"Even for my birthday?"

"Even then." She put it in my hand. "I'll check the basement, and these two back rooms, and I'll talk to Pam before I go, to make sure everything's squared away."

"Thank you." I leaned foward, and before I'd even advised myself against it, I kissed her on the mouth. It threw her off guard enough to keep her from asking me anymore questions as I walked down the stairs into the first level. Of course, I've never been one to advise myself against anything.

I dialed Jonson first. "Anything?"

"We need walkie-talkies," he answered succinctly. "This thing's been screwing up all day."

"That wouldn't call any unwanted attention to us at all." I tried to find him by sight. He must've been behind the tree line. "Why don't we just dress in full camo and carry AK-47s?"

"I have an AK-47," Jonson said matter-of-factly.

"That'll help me sleep at night. I'm calling McGrath." I hung up and called him. "What's up?"

"Nada." He was inside the Jeep, and waved at me across the grass. "I haven't seen her leave. Her car's in the driveway. I walked the perimeter and all I heard was the television set going."

"That's all?" I walked towards the Jeep. "You look in the windows?"

"What kinda guy you think I am?"

I laughed inspite of myself. "That kind. I'm gonna try to go in and talk to her, and if you call Scully and tell her that, I'm going to hurt you."

"Yeah, right." I looked up when I heard the dialtone and he got out of the Jeep, pointing a control at the front yard and throwing it back in the car. "I got your back."

Yeah, if things didn't go well he could always just squeeze off a couple of shots and scare the shit out of her. That was useful. "She probably won't let me in. Just keep an eye out."

I half expected that, like Pam Wyeth, she would answer the door before I'd even had a chance to knock. I could at least negotiate with her face. But I knocked and no one answered. I knocked harder. I would at least make my presence known, even if she didn't respond to it.

Inside the house, the phone rang. I counted the rings.

They weren't stopping.

It was one thing to not answer the door...

Call Bartusiak, I thought to myself. Go ahead. I turned the doorknob.

The door opened. It would've been better if it hadn't.

I drew my gun and walked into the living room. "Madeline? Madeline Roark?"

(Oh god.)

I tried to breathe. Oh, I *knew* that smell. My apartment smelled like this, and even the current tenants would tell me so if I asked.

(NO.)

Even my thoughts seemed short of breath.

She bleeds red, Scully. Oh god.

"What's the matter?" McGrath was behind me. "What's -- ?"