Lonely Nightmare VII: Danger on the Wind
by Justin Glasser
Notes and dedication in section 0
***
“Only get a second chance when danger’s on the wind.”
***
“Mulder,” Scully said, after the door had closed behind Amy Thaller, the last girl on Lisa Nelson’s list.
“I know.” He held up his hands in surrender. “We’ve got nothing. You hungry?”
She nodded.
She was right. He wasn’t simply giving in this time to Scully’s pragmatic nature, or to her desire to wrap up something that could not be wrapped up: they really had nothing. Ten kids were missing, and for all they knew the Chief of Police could have been right and they could have all taken off for the busy anonymous streets of the big city. He and Scully sure didn’t have any proof to the contrary.
Almost all of the kids on the list had been eager to share what they knew about the disappearances, but what they knew amounted to a big pile of not much. Some of the kids said they heard rumors about a madman who lived in the woods. One girl said that she heard it knocking on her windowpanes at night when the wind was bad. One guy said he’d given up taking his girlfriend to make-out in his car because he was afraid they would be next. The only thing they shared was that they were all afraid they would be taken.
And they all called that fear “the beast.”
“It’s like the Bogeyman,” Scully had said, after the third interview in which the “beast” had been mentioned. “These kids are all convinced that something out there is coming to get them.”
“One key difference, Scully,” Mulder had said, picking at his fingernails with the edge of a piece of notebook paper.
“What’s that?”
“The Bogeyman only comes to get you if you’re bad.”
So they had nothing. They’d commandeer Chief Austin’s files tonight, if possible, and start in on the parents of the missing kids tomorrow. Mulder buttoned his coat and pushed open the doors for Scully. Snow swirled around their heads and blew past them into the hallway. It wasn’t even three-thirty yet, school was still in session, but the light already had that blue twilight quality from the clouds. The six streetlights were already on.
The car crept down the unplowed streets like a big cat, snow crunching under the tires. Mulder pulled up in front of the lighted police station and left the engine running.
“You stay here, little girl,” he said to Scully. “I’ll see what I can get.”
“What I wouldn’t do for a penis sometimes,” she said, her breath coming out in a sigh.
Mulder peered in, one hand on the roof, one on the car door. Scully looked at him. Her smile danced around her head, but didn’t actually appear on her face. Finally, still speechless, he slammed the door on her, and heard her laughter. He paused in front of the station door to wipe the smile from his face.
One of the men from that morning sat behind the table, watching t.v. on a little 9 inch set on top of one of the file cabinets.
“Hi,” Mulder said. “Fox Mulder, I don’t believe we were introduced this morning.”
“Umm . . . yeah. Danny. Danny Kowalski.” Danny Kowalski shook the hand that was offered to him.
“Steellllaaaa!” Mulder said, smiling. Danny Kowalski looked at him. “You know? Stella? A Streetcar Named Desire?”
Danny smiled a little. “Yeah, sure,” he said, and Mulder saw that this kid had no idea what he was talking about. “What can I do you for, Agent?”
“Well, Officer Kowalski, I need the files for all the kids who’ve disappeared over the last year.”
“Uh huh. Do you have a search warrant for those?”
Mulder smiled. Easier than taking candy from a baby. “No, Officer. I don’t need one. I just need you to agree to hand them over and we’ll be all set. Search warrants are for suspects.”
“Oh! Oh, right. Sorry!” Danny looked around as if his ass had fallen off suddenly and he was looking to see where it landed. “Um, okay, lemme look.” He went in the back room. Mulder heard the sound of filing cabinets being opened and shut. He looked at the papers on the table. Paper work on traffic stops, a domestic violence thing, an accident report. Nothing useful. Officer Kowalski came back out with two folders in his hand.
“I could only find these ones,” he said. “The rest of them are probably in the basement. I can look for you if you want.”
“That’s fine, Officer.” Mulder held out his hand for the folders. “I’ll come back for the rest, okay?”
Officer Danny Kowalski nodded. “Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Sure,” Mulder turned back from the door.
“Was it hard, you know, um, getting into the FBI?”
Mulder looked at the young officer. He thought of the FBI entrance exam that he’d hardly studied for, the physical fitness qualifications that he’d passed with no problem, the classes that he’d soared through, breaking the curve again and again. He thought of his classmates, both eager to get close to him and resentful of his success. He looked at the young officer in his too-big polyester uniform, standing in the town that he grew up in.
“Yeah,” Mulder said. “Yeah, it was pretty hard.”
Danny nodded again, one hand on the back of his neck. “Yeah, I figured. Have a good night, Agent Mulder.”
Mulder saluted with the folder. “’Night, Officer.”
***
They were the folders for the last two kids that had disappeared: Bobby Oakes and Juliana Marshall. Juliana Marshall smiled up from her file photo, a puppy on her lap and a sunny smile on her face. She wore a majorette’s uniform, and her dark hair was in two pony tails on the sides of her head. She was chubby and pretty. Bobby Oakes couldn’t have been more different. He was thin and sullen-looking, with spiky blond hair, and heavy eye make-up. He had a dog collar on, and a black t-shirt with a band logo on it, and he looked as if a smile would have cracked his face in two. Bobby looked like someone Alan would have known well.
“Look at this, Scully,” he said, handing the photos across the gap between the bed and the cheap pressboard table where she sat with her laptop.
“Hmm,” she said.
“Hmm? Tell me, Scully, do these two kids look like they would run away together? Do you really see Juliana Marshall and Bobby Oakes together?”
“No, Mulder, I don’t. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t.”
“What about the other kids? Do they match this same pattern? Lisa said the first girl was a cheerleader. Juliana’s a majorette. What about the other girls?”
Scully skimmed through the data she’d culled from the newspaper accounts, shaking her head. The phone on the night stand rang. Mulder rolled over onto his side to pick it up.
“Mulder.”
“Agent Mulder, this is Chief Austin. I understand you paid a visit to my office this afternoon.” The police chief’s voice sounded tight with anger. Mulder cupped his hand over the bottom of the phone and mouthed “Austin” to Scully. She smiled, and went back to her computer.
“I did.”
“I also understand that you manipulated one of my officers into provided some of our files to you.”
“No sir. I asked Officer Kowalski for the files and he gave them to me.”
“I want them back, Agent Mulder.”
“Sorry, sir,” he said. He knew that the chief could hear his smirk over the phone but he couldn’t help it. “Until we determine that there’s nothing of use in those files, they are in the possession of the federal government.”
“They’re my files!”
“We can’t return them until we’re guaranteed access to them. Are you prepared to do that, Chief Austin?”
“God damn it, Agent Mulder--“
“And we’ll need access to the files on the other runaways as well, sir. We’ll be by for those tomorrow, if that’s convenient.”
“Agent Mulder, I--“
“Have a good night, sir,” he said, and dropped the phone back in its cradle. “Chief Austin is mad at me, Scully.”
“You’d better hope he doesn’t find Skinner’s number,” she said.
“Gimme whatcha got, baby.”
“That’s the problem, Mulder. We’ve still got nothing. Leroy Williams was on the football team, but the girl that was taken with him apparently didn’t do anything of note: she’s just described as a ‘student.’ Suzie Choy was headed to Madison on an art scholarship and the boy who went with her was a gas station attendant after school. There’s no pattern here, Mulder.”
Mulder tipped backwards onto the pillow. “Damn.”
“Anything in the reports?”
“Nothing. Missing person report, details on the search, termination of the search paperwork. Same old, same old.”
“May I?”
He passed the folders to her, and folded his arms behind his head.
“Mulder, did you see this?”
He looked over at her.
“The reports on the search, did you look at these?”
“I skimmed. What do you have?”
“Mulder, these are exactly the same.”
He scooted over to the edge of the bed and took the reports from her. At the top, the names of the subjects of the search were different, and the names of the participants had been changed, but after that. She was right. Exactly the same. Procedure, area covered, timeline, evidence found (“a folder known to be in the possession of the subject”), all exactly the same.
“Damn, Scully.”
“We need--“
She was interrupted by the pounding on the door. “Agent Mulder! Agent Mulder!” The door rattled in its frame.
“You think Austin’s that mad?” he asked, before he went to answer the door.
But it wasn’t Henry Austin or one of his lackeys. It was Alan Nelson standing out in the dark his sister said he never went out in, in a t-shirt and jeans and black boots and nothing else, the snow melting on his blue-black hair.
“Alan?” Mulder asked.
Alan looked at him, his face even paler than Mulder remembered, his skin wet with sweat and melting snow.
“It wasn’t me the beast was after,” he said. “It wanted Lisa.”
***end 7/13***
I need a reason, I can’t think without one now: