�Thank you,� she said at length. Her phone rang and she pulled it out of her shoulder bag and answered it with a slightly clipped, �Scully.� The other person spoke for a minute and then she sighed softly. �You�re sure? How long ago? Okay, do you have the chief medical examiner�s office number handy? Good. I�ll give him a call and make the arrangements. I don�t want this to turn into some local-federal turf war, especially since you haven�t had any written complains against you sent in to Skinner in at least two months. If you keep up this good behavior we might actually get heat in the office in time for winter this year. I�m taking the car so you�ll have to find a cab if you need to leave the base, okay? Good. And try to stay away from Bill. Bye, Mulder,� Scully said, a smile on her lips. I recognized that smile. I wear it every time Harm says something cute. Scully turned to me. �I have to go. Our serial rapist just escalated to murder.�
I nodded and pulled out a card from the clip in the back of my notepad. �Harm and I are probably going to be in town for a while. The extension for the office is on the back. We should all go get dinner one night� if there�s time, I mean.�
�I�d like that,� Scully said, tucking the card into her day planner. �Um� you wouldn�t happen to know if Harm�s mother still lives in the area, would you?� she asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. �I�d like to see her. It�s been a long time.�
�Trish and Frank moved to La Jolla a few years after they got married,� I replied. I gave her the address and phone number of both the house and the gallery from memory, averting my eyes from her questioning gaze as she wrote the information down. �But if you could wait until the morning to call her, that�d be great. Harm�s gonna be in enough trouble when Trish finds out that he�s been here for as long as we have without calling her.�
Scully nodded and offered up a half-smile before taking her leave. I stayed where I was, watching the familiar rush and protocol that comes with life on a base, for another half an hour before getting up and heading to the Public Affairs office to see if the files had arrived. They had, and I lugged the two document boxes across the base and down to our loaner office, hoping that Bill would be gone by the time I got there.
Harm was just coming out of the office when I got there and he took one of the boxes from me without a word. We put them down in the office and I closed the door and looked at Harm. �So, where�d you hide the body?� I asked. �Let me guess. In an empty tube attached to the missile rails on an F-14.�
�Cute,� Harm said. I smiled in return. �So, where�d you go?� he asked.
�I watched flight ops for a while,� I said. �Wasn�t the same without your commentary, but at least I didn�t have to worry about you being the one wearing a F-14 like a pair of pantyhose.�
Smiling, Harm opened one of the boxes. It was full of files. I hadn�t expected anything else, but it was something else altogether to actually see the stack that was part one of two.
TBC...