************
Chapter 15
************

Java Joe's, Aubrey
November 8, 2000
8:45 a.m.

"Think you're pretty damn smart, don't you?"

Mulder grins in response, pausing to sip his coffee and
dodge an accusation that he realizes is more compliment than
antagonistic jibe.

"Smart enough to avoid doing something stupid," he counters,
sending the volley back onto Natalie Warner's side of the
table.

When he made the call this morning, he gave her the option
of either coming down to the police station, or meeting him
at this local hangout.  It came as no surprise that she
chose coffee over cops, despite her paranoia about meeting
in the open and risking observation by other minions of
Aubrey's gossip network.

As for Mulder -- working people, officers, detectives, and
others would amble in and out of the coffee shop all
morning; the public aspect would protect him from any
machinations this woman might have lurking up her sleeve.
There was a time when he'd have no qualms about bleeding a
woman like Natalie Warner for information relating to a
case.  However, stung by her previous knee-jerk rudeness and
lack of basic cooperation, he broached the matter with his
partner before placing the call to Sterling.

The air around him in the shop seems warm and humid compared
to the November cold out in the street, while fragrances of
fresh-roasted, ground coffee and savory breads hot from the
oven caress his senses.  He remembers that Scully was like
this just a few short hours ago -- his own hot, soft, early
morning pastry that he nibbled and picked apart with a
combination of leisurely appetite and primal urgency.

He relishes their lovemaking in the indulgent blue hours
before sunrise.  She's moist and alive, disarmingly open to
suggestion, and so damn sexy he can't think straight.  After
the fireworks subside he likes to lie close and discuss
theory and the advancement of their case; in confidential
whispers he brings her up to speed on his progress while his
hands continue to roam her body's topography.

For him, it adds dimension to their intimacy.  And though
Scully must think it a poor excuse for post-coital pillow
talk, he considers his murmured updates to be both practical
and efficient.  For years propriety dictated how and where
they could discuss details of a case together.  Now those
boundaries have relaxed to the point of disappearing.  He
feels a certain vindication and freedom about talking shop
in bed with his partner-turned-lover.

Just this morning he briefed her on his conversation with
B.J., the Grill snack with Darnell last night, and his new
strategy for the day.  Drowsy-eyed and sated, tousled red
mane feathering both pillows, she agreed with his decision
to convene with her one truly aggravating contact in Aubrey.

"Teeth and claws," she reminded him in a whisper, her hand
disappearing beneath the sheet to stroke his thighs and
squeeze his balls in playful warning.  "Better watch 'em
good."

He remembers Scully's advice when Natalie first joins him at
a table in the far corner.  All nerves and bluster, she
summarily refuses the window seats he's pre-selected.  A
blast of expensive perfume and nicotine stifles other aromas
before dissipating to a level in which he can once more pick
out the distinctive bouquets of coffee, spice, and vanilla
sugar.

"Well at least you decided to wake up and *smell* the
Goddamn coffee," she retorts, scraping the ashtray toward
her side of the table.  "I don't usually bite.  Not too
hard, anyway."

"Glad to hear it."

"Your partner still pissed off at me?"

He eyes her, expression bland, tone succinct.  "You'll have
to ask her that."

Natalie wears the same buttery suede coat, the same pinched
squint of irritation that Scully described to him after her
own confrontation with this woman and which he observed
himself from over the fence.  When she exhales a cloud of
smoke between them he has the urge to cough, but decides
it's not the smartest move considering his ultimate purpose
here.

"Whatever," she says, cigarette bobbing at her lips.  "You
need information bad enough to talk to me, that's obvious.
And I'm the only person who's really in the know around
here."

"That's a pretty broad claim."

"Live in a place all your life and you tend to find out a
thing or two about people, *especially* if you put your mind
to it.  Insider's information.  I have my sources."

"Inquiring minds, and all that?"

She flashes him a knowing grin.  "You got it, Agent Mulder.
Dirt and factoids on the whole town and proud of it.  Just
what do you need to know?"

He sets down his cup, prepared to take Natalie's offer in
careful increments after first testing the waters.  Scaring
her away would defeat his purpose; taking every shred of
gossip from her mouth as gospel would be ludicrous.  He opts
to strike a conversational pose, lace his fingers, and look
into her face.

"I need to pick your brain a little bit," he commences.
"Your daughter's birthday party took place a week ago today,
on November 1, when Benjie Tillman put in an unexpected
appearance.  What happened at the party to set tongues
wagging all over town?"

From supposition and the scraps gleaned from Gwen DiAngelo
at the hospital, he and Scully have already reconstructed a
likely scenario.  It depicts an unpopular and emotionally
needy little pariah, invited on a whim and as a joke, and
who -- out of fear, social ineptness, or even coercion --
blurted out the worst possible thing at the most
inappropriate of times.

Squinting across the table, Natalie sizes up his proposal
before deciding it's safe to reply.

"That 'Little Sister' comment he made *really* took the
cake," she says after a moment's thought, oblivious to the
pun.  "Way over the top, if you ask me, considering his
family history and who he really is.  Totally creeped me
out.  Talk about skeletons in the closet -- that I *don't*
need in my own dining room!  Sheesh..."

"So, after Viola Rains was attacked the very next morning,
you conveniently insinuated that a five year-old child half
her height and a quarter of her weight was responsible --
and the word was out."

She exhales with a plume of impatience, feathers ruffled.
"I put two and two together, cause and effect.  So what?"

"It's absolute bullshit, that's what," he counters, mocking,
"and anyone with half a brain would know that."

"Listen, smart-ass --" Her cigarette butt, still smoldering,
nosedives into the ashtray and her voice hushes.  "It's no
weirder than all the other shit that's happened around here
over the years... starting with that Slash Killer in the
forties and ending up with what came out six years ago.
It's what brought *you* and your little partner here in the
first place.  A pregnant, wacko cop who started killing
people and terrorized the whole Goddamn town.  Now we've got
her kid, the *bad seed*, to deal with."

Her transparency seems vindictive and contemptible;
struggling to keep the scorn he feels from tainting his
voice, he waves away an irritating cloud of smoke and
murmurs, "You've got more than that.  I'd bet good money
that you know something about the two women who were
murdered here in 1994.  Are any of their families still
living in the area?"

Natalie shrugs and takes a sip of coffee.  "I might know
something... considering I had a passing acquaintance with
one of 'em."

"Which, Carlisle or Johnson?"

Mulder doesn't set out to impress her, but he sees he's
accomplished that on a grand scale.  She lights another
cigarette, crosses her legs, and stares back with cool
approval before replying.

"Okay, so give yourself a medal... you do your homework,
too.  You've probably got files out the whazoo on all this
crap at the FBI."

"I'll never tell," he grins.

"Johnson," she pursues, not missing another beat.  "Verna
Johnson was young, and she kept pretty much to herself.
Lived at home and worked for a while over at the Grill to
save for college.  That's where I usually ran into her.  The
parents wanted justice and demanded an investigation into
Lieutenant Tillman's involvement with Detective Morrow after
everything hit the fan.  Creeped out the whole town in the
end, knowing that a member of the force was a psycho
murderer.  And then he had the *nerve* to adopt their kid
and move in right down the Goddamn street from me."

He keeps her moving.  "Kristy Carlisle..."

"No family anywhere around here.  Funeral was elsewhere,
too, maybe Texas.  She was some kind of secretary for an ad
company that went under a few years ago.  Big hair.  Flashy
as the day was long.  *I* always suspected she turned
tricks."

"Boyfriend?"

"Yeah, one in particular, but he left town soon after she
died.  Except, when she was alive a whole crowd of horny
losers hung around her trailer like tomcats on the prowl.
Yessirree..." She chuckles and empties her cup, tongue
chasing the edge.  "Including that pathetic little cop you
fobbed off on me the other day.  *God*, can you believe it?"

Mulder isn't surprised to hear that Joe Darnell is a
lovelorn bachelor with an eye for the local talent.  He
decides to shelve that information for another time and
place.  "More coffee?"

"If you were talking Margaritas I might say yes," she says,
winking from within her comfort zone.  "Why d'you want to
know about them -- the Carlisle and Johnson families?"

He hedges.  "We're pursuing a theory, which I'm not at
liberty to talk about now."

"*We*... as in, you and your partner?"  She takes another
puff, eyes narrowed like a tigress and just as calculating.
"You might as well come clean with me, because I'll get the
lowdown eventually.  I suppose you two are a real pair...
partners in *every* sense of the word, am I right?"

"That's irrelevant and none of your business."

His terse reply draws a smirk.  "So *you* say.  Okay,
fine... I'll play along for now.  No skin off my nose.  But
take it from me, handsome... you won't learn diddly from
what happened here six years ago.  It wasn't the first time
that monster Cokely did his dirty work -- he'd killed here
before *and* left his mark, as old lady Thibodeaux could
show you."

"I don't suppose you read the morning papers yet?"

When she shakes her head, Mulder reaches behind him, snags a
copy of the local Aubrey rag, and shoves it across the
table.  The headline of Viola Rains' murder screams out from
the page in bold font.  Smaller print details the news
concerning Linda Thibodeaux's fight for survival.

The transformation in Natalie catches him unprepared.  She
shivers and closes her eyes, sucking in a lungful of her
cigarette smoke with bellows-like force.  "Shit... not
another one," she whispers.  "Aw, fuck..." Composing
herself, she exhales with a tiny cough, frowns, and then
points at Mulder with a long-nailed red talon.

"What?"

"Okay, sport, *this* is where I definitely bail; don't play
dumb with me.  If I'd known about this shit --" She flicks
an angry hand toward the newspaper, "I woulda thought twice
before coming here this morning.  I've got a reputation to
uphold."

"I don't doubt it."

"*And* a family to protect, Goddamn it."

Mulder hunches forward, forearms on the table in an effort
to forestall.  "Listen, I need to know more than 'diddly.' I
dare you to talk about the victims from 1942... if you even
have a clue about who they are," he taunts.

In his mind he reviews the files, page by page, pausing over
the names of the unfortunate deceased.  1942, the year that
agents Sam Chaney and Tim Ledbetter disappeared after
profiling the infamous Slash Killer.  Three young women were
raped and murdered by the same evil that has resurrected
itself here in the year 2000.  He and Scully have reviewed
the grisly, fifty-eight year-old crime scene photos --
glossy images of mutilated young women wearing dated
hairstyles, clothes dripping blood, the word "Sister" gouged
into their chests...

"Antonia Bradshaw," he says softly, eyes intent, "murdered
in early November of 1942..."

Natalie hand trembles; she puffs and returns his stare,
refusing the bait he dangles so enticingly.

"Kathy Eberhardt.  Laura Van Cleef," he intones with
solemnity, invoking the two remaining names on the ancient
list of Harry Cokely's recorded victims.

Her squint stays icy as the outdoors; he realizes now that
he should have saved his breath when Natalie Warner stubs
out her cigarette with crushing finality and stands.
Nothing comes easy or quickly, he thinks, especially when
your informant has a flair for the dramatic and a look so
piercing it could kill.

***********

Memorial Hospital
November 8, 2000
11:03 a.m.

Pausing at the large, thick-paned window on her journey from
the morgue to ICU, Scully notes that pilgrims have usurped
pumpkins at Aubrey Regional Elementary.

For the first time she's struck by the close proximity of
hospital to school, the kindergarten annex in particular.
Tiny black hats adorned with buckles float in the classroom
windows.  White-collared little men and women jockey for
dominance with the few Indians taped into their midst.  Time
plods on toward the next calendar holiday, one that Scully
doubts she's ready to embrace quite yet.

Thanksgiving Day remains a trial and mockery to her spirit,
arriving too quickly on the heels of her early November
anguish.  For two years running she's put on an obligatory
mask for her mother's table and then, at home and in
private, softens it with angry tears.  Once again Mulder
retains the honor of knowing the truth and diffusing her
pain.

Her fault, she knows, for holding the world -- and her
family -- at arm's length so much of the time.  Her reasons
remain her own.

She dares not try to guess which little pilgrim would be
Emily's, if Emily were alive to cut, paste, and color as do
these children.  Then, she surprises herself by wondering
about Benjie Tillman's prowess with construction paper and
paste.  Kept at home, this activity has been denied him,
another empty hole that primes the boy for ostracism and
rejection.

Life isn't fair for the victim, no matter how strange the
circumstances.

During the autopsy of Viola's corpse she was forced to
distance herself from the gruesomeness of the task at hand.
The blood and deeply sliced flesh didn't faze her, but
rather the inexpiable ferocity of the damage wrought upon a
person she'd spoken with just days before.  The body's
muscular constriction suggested extreme physiological and
emotional response.  From personal experience she could
imagine the terror this woman had endured before her
attacker closed in; the head wound was not massive like
Gwen's, delivered only to disable, not to kill.  Then, when
the razor descended, the indescribable agony --

"Agent Scully?"

She swivels her head toward a sympathetic nurse who has just
emerged from the ICU.  "Yes, what is it?"

"I just thought you'd want to know that there's been no
change in Mrs. Thibodeaux's condition."

"Thank you."

The nurse fades down the hall with purpose, thick soles
squeaking on sanitized linoleum.  Ever since Scully's visit
to the ER with Mulder the other evening, and after extensive
hours spent in the autopsy bay with the coroner, the medical
staff at Memorial seems to welcome her skill and calming
presence.  For that small bonus she's grateful.

She takes another long look through the window, gaze
sweeping the schoolyard, before she turns toward the
intensive care unit where Linda Thibodeaux struggles for a
hold on life.  Other footsteps echo through the hallway and
she notices elderly Alice Marshall approaching in her
volunteer pink.  Tall for an old woman, she bears a vase and
flowers, prickling Scully with alarm at the innocent, though
flagrant breech of policy.

When Alice reaches out to the heavy door, Scully feels
driven to speak out, her concern for the patients and
sterile conditions inside evidenced by the roadblock she's
forced to become here in the hall.  "I'm sorry, Mrs.
Marshall," she says, "but those aren't allowed in intensive
care."

The woman hesitates, then turns to face her with a sheepish
smile.  Looking down at Scully, her neck ripples with loose
skin, shoulders lightly rounded as she hugs the glass vase
and red carnations to her front.

"It's an extra," she whispers, white hair wreathing her
face.  "I was thinking the nurses might enjoy it at their
station.  Their work is so stressful here.  It doesn't hurt
to ask them, does it?"

Small wonder that Alice Marshall funnels much of her time
here toward the sick and hurting and is so appreciated by
all.  However touched Scully might be by this woman's
sensitive generosity, she's still deeply disturbed by her
forgetfulness of a vital and cardinal rule.

"I'm a medical doctor myself and can vouch for their
appreciation," she explains quickly, moving to forestall the
older woman, "but no -- flowers or outside gifts of any sort
aren't permitted in ICU.  I'm sorry."

"Well, that's certainly a pity.  Maybe someone over in
obstetrics will want it.  A mother grieving for her lost
child..."

The words, brutally apropos, blindside Scully with their
zing, but she's become more than adept at feint and
recovery.  Mentally regrouping, she takes this opportunity
to mask her discomfiture by extending her own sympathies.

"It must be hard for you, with the recent death of one of
your volunteers.  Gwen DiAngelo," she prompts, when the
woman looks perplexed.  "I spoke to her a few days ago, here
at Memorial.  She seemed like a lovely, caring person."

"Yes, she was... and they all seem that way, don't they?"

"What do you mean?"

Again Scully feels a peculiar unrest, a sense of uneasy
footing at the off-kilter exchange that unfolds outside of
ICU.  Tempted to blame it on her own emotional fragility and
suspicious nature, she wonders about Alice Marshall's
motivation this morning.  Duplicitous?  Or a simple slip
into forgetfulness, when good sense stumbles under the
weight of old age?

Alice watches her evenly from beneath drooping, wrinkled
lids.  "People here give of themselves, all for very
different reasons, young lady.  Others are helpless, waiting
to receive from those who do the giving.  Give and take...
come and go."  She averts her face with a sigh.  "Some hang
on to life, others... often don't."

"Have you heard about Viola Rains?  She, unfortunately,
didn't."

Scully hopes to strike a compassionate, apologetic chord
after hindering this woman's entrance to the ICU.  Knowing
Viola was a well-known presence in this town, she guesses
that the bus driver might have had contact with the Marshall
children or grandchildren over the years.

"I've heard.  I won't say I'm saddened."

Puzzlement and surprise must reflect on Scully's face,
because Alice shakes her head.  White hair trembling, her
mouth tightens; she tenses and moves to leave.  "Some call
her 'poor Viola', but I can't.  For a person in a place of
authority over young children, she overstepped her bounds
far too often."

"That could be, but --"

"No buts about it."  Alice fastens a blue eye on Scully.
"She deliberately and maliciously frightened my
granddaughter, Kari, and made her cry on that bus."

"I understand that a group of children was also subjecting
little Benjie Tillman to public ridicule during the same
incident.  Surely you don't condone that either."

The elderly woman blinks at Scully, as though attempting to
bring her into focus.  Then, hugging her vase of flowers and
without pursuing further conversation, she leaves the doors
of ICU and turns back the way she came.

************

Aubrey Police Station
November 8, 2000
11:20 a.m.

Not much is happening at midday.  A housewife caught
shoplifting, a trucker with a speeding infraction who
creates a small ruckus.  Phone calls and pre-lunch orders.
Mulder thinks the small-town pace is typical until he
observes a flurry of attentive reaction when Lieutenant
Brian Tillman exits his office to confer with several of his
detectives.

Tall and intense, he commands respect and wants action,
something Mulder remembers from his last visit during B.J's
tenure.  Tillman the hard-ass.  Joe Darnell may be his right-
hand man, but is no substitute for the steady, authoritative
beat the Lieutenant sets for his department.  Now it's
especially crucial, with a murder investigation unsolved and
the body count beginning to escalate.

He assumes that for Tillman to be here, Benjie must be
corralled somewhere in his office, out of sight.

"Coffee, Agent Mulder?"

He smiles back at the woman officer who served him the
previous day and raises a hand in polite refusal.  "Thanks,
but I'm afraid I'm all coffee-ed out right now.  I wouldn't
mind talking to the Lieutenant, though, when he has a moment
free."

Surely Tillman should be able to cough up some detail about
the 1942 victims.  If not, then he's back to square one,
armed and prepared to wheedle more gossip from Natalie
Warner.

The little desk in the side office awaits him, shielded from
internal view, but windowed to the gray outdoors.  This is
where he's been the most productive in terms of theorizing
over the case and the additional evidence available to them.
It's where he's had a brilliant breakthrough in logic
followed by an uncharacteristic breakdown in common sense.

He and Scully continue to iron out the wrinkles from
yesterday afternoon, after Darnell's bumbling faux pas.
He'd hijacked her back to the motel and blown his top at
what he considered questionable judgment on her part, not
the brightest of tactics at any time.  After reacting like a
jealous asshole he feels undeserving of her firm embrace or
whispered reassurances.  Nothing more was said about it
after their return to the station, but she'd leaned closer
to him than necessary several times in the course of their
research, her nearness a caress to his bruised ego.

Then came the second murder...

He's convinced more than ever that the key, the common
thread, snakes an insidious path back to a previous victim.
The image of the train jumping its tracks haunts him; he
broods over what defines the bizarre, what encompasses the
truly improbable.

Scully seemed unimpressed by Jung's theory of synchronicity,
but he wants to bend it to his will, like Hercules arcing
the rod of iron between his hands.  He wants to stretch this
hypothesis so far out of bounds it becomes a synchronous
psychological transference from the original perpetrator and
seed, Harry Cokely, to the relatives or sibling of one of
his victims.

Heeding this maverick desire, he finds himself challenging
the restrictions that delineate bloodline and essential
genetic inheritance.  The original evil, he now believes,
has in some way circumvented natural, universal order and
resurrected itself to continue unchecked.  Voracious, its
only purpose is to kill and consume.

If a sibling of a victim, then a sister?  And if a sister,
then whose sister... and why -- or how?

His cell phone trills, jogging him to attention, and he
welcomes the voice.  "Mulder, it's me.  Where are you?"

"I'm at the station, waiting for an audience with the King,"
he says.  "You done at the hospital?  Need a ride?"

A heavy pause tells him that Scully isn't amused by his
blatant reference to Tillman.  "I'll get a lift with the
coroner soon.  But I wanted you to know that the
veterinarian called the morgue a few minutes ago.  Last
night he found what could be considered evidence in the
dog's mouth during surgery.  Torn pieces of what look like
black plastic held fast behind the molars."

"Sounds like Chief took a real bite out of crime.  My kind
of dog, Scully."

She gives a long exhalation into the phone.  "I went ahead
and checked the ER and admittance records to see whether
anyone has been treated for dog bite within the last twelve
hours.  Unfortunately, no, but they'll keep an eye out...
and the evidence has been sent out to the lab for testing.
How was your interview?"

Glancing downward, he grins.  "I emerged intact, if I'm
catching your drift."

"I had no concerns whatsoever about that, trust me," she
says, voice wry.

"Then we can talk over lunch.  I have several things I want
to run by you, okay?"

Scully is amenable, as befits a partner.  He feels pride
within himself and gratitude toward her.  Unexpectedly, the
pointed insinuation made by Natalie Warner at the coffee
shop springs to mind.

("I suppose you two are a real pair.  Partners in *every*
sense of the word, am I right?")

You better fucking believe it, he affirms, pocketing the
phone when he notices that the door to Tillman's office
stands ajar.  While the Lieutenant remains occupied with a
group of detectives a few cubicles away, Mulder takes this
opportunity to wait on the threshold for his imminent
return.  Then, hearing a noise, he looks within.

Benjie Tillman sits cross-legged on the carpet, a rainbow of
brightly colored blocks peppering the floor around him.
Nearby, other supplies sit ready, designed to keep him
occupied and quiet while his father attends to business --
coloring books and crayons, small cans of PlayDoh, an
assortment of Hot Wheels cars.  The neck of Tillman's desk
lamp crooks toward the floor, illuminating the child and his
playthings in a circle of yellow light.

He looks up without warning and recognizes Mulder, relief
flooding his face.

"Hey, Benjie," Mulder says mildly.  Smiling, he enters the
office with quiet steps.  The boy's head, far below, tilts
up at an uncomfortable angle, so the agent crouches down,
knees splayed wide before the boy.  It occurs to Mulder that
this is the first time in days he's gotten such a close look
at the kid.

"Hi," comes the shy, anxious reply.

The child's cheeks are still reddened, but gone is the
rough, chapped rawness he and Scully first observed last
week.  Her recommendations must have been followed to a 'T'
after Tillman's call to her motel room.  Small hands and
fingers seem closer to healing as the boy looks down and
snaps the last plastic block into an identifiable homemade
structure.

"That's really good," Mulder says, surprised.  "Did you make
this yourself?"

Benjie nods and hands him the miniature house constructed
from white Lego bricks and roofing slabs that snap tight.
It has no windows or point of entry other than the tiny
green door and reminds Mulder of an over-sized Monopoly game
piece.  Assuming the boy is simply allowing him to examine
his creation, he tries to return it and meets refusal.  The
child shakes his brown head, lips tight.

"What, is this for me?"

"No," corrects Benjie, "it's for her."

"You mean Agent Scully?"

When the child nods, Mulder rotates the tiny building in his
fist to get a better look.  "Pretty good work, Benjie.  Did
your Daddy tell you to make this little present for Agent
Scully?"

He shakes his head, eyes furtive and flickering toward the
door to the office.  He says in a husky whisper, "It's not a
present.  It's a house."

"I can see that."

Benjie leans closer.  "It's for her to hide in."

Mulder plays along, prying the tiny door open and peeking
within with one eye.  "You know, Agent Scully's a small
lady, but she'd have a hard time fitting in here, don't you
think?"

The child's aggrieved expression puts Mulder to shame.  He
almost blushes and tries to salvage his dignity by ruffling
the boy's hair with one hand.  Too late he remembers that
little boys hate the patronization of that gesture.

"It's not funny," insists Benjie, who stares first at
Mulder, then at the door.  "It's real."

"You know, you're exactly right.  Sorry I joked about it."
He turns the tiny structure between his hands like a Rubik's
cube, feeling foolish all over again.  "I'll make sure she
gets this."

"Give it to her right away.  Please..."

"Why?"

Something in the boy's tone stops Mulder cold.  It suddenly
occurs to him that this gift he holds goes far beyond
childish foolishness and playtime.  He stares into the boy's
deep eyes and sees that they glitter with emotion as the
child tries to formulate a response.

In a jolt of revelation, Mulder comprehends that he hefts
more than just a simple toy in his palm.  He holds, instead,
a protective talisman.

"Benjie," he whispers, "did you tell Agent Scully that 'it'
hurts the people who are nice to you?"

The boy's eyes widen with fear; he swallows and nods.

"Has *she* been especially nice to you?"

Sniffing, the child wipes his eye with a sleeve and gives
another tentative nod of assent.

"Listen to me, Buddy, I have to know something..." His large
hand settles on the boy's thin arm encouragingly.  "I have
to know if you truly believe that Agent Scully needs this
little house right now -- in order to stay safe?"

The question, worded with such audible forthrightness,
brings the boy to full tears.  Mulder pats the narrow
shaking shoulders with one hand.  Kneeling on the carpet
beside the weeping boy, he feels like a supplicant waiting
for judgment.

It will be infinitely better for both of them if the kid can
pull himself together before Brian Tillman walks back
through the door to his office.

************
End of Chapter 15