The X-Files: I Want to Believe Page 3

  Mulder and Scully stood there alone.

  Mulder said, “I think he likes you.”

  “I don’t know what his problem is.”

  “Just shy.”

  Scully was glancing at the framed photo of J. Edgar Hoover on one wall, while Mulder noticed a similar portrait of George W. Bush. The last time Mulder had been in this building, the current president had just come into office; now Mulder was back and that president would before long be on his way out. He and Scully no longer belonged here and yet they did, ghosts haunting their own former, well, haunts.

  Drummy’s impassive, vaguely sullen countenance stuck itself out of the doorway.

  Mulder managed not to say, Joe sent me.

  Drummy said, “Come in.”

  Mulder and Scully stepped into the sort of conference room they’d been in countless times before, though not always finding this current state of heavy activity—this was a provisional command post, with a controlled turmoil all too familiar to the couple, as a dozen FBI agents sat around the conference table, working phones, hunkered at lap-tops, taking notes, with others up at wall-mounted bulletin boards with photos and maps tacked on.

  These law enforcement professionals had barely slept for days, existing on coffee and carryout, as the heavy beards on the men and the scant makeup on the women, and the bloodshot eyes all around, indicated. The arrival of two former agents, sent for as part of this endeavor, elicited no greetings, not even smiles, nothing to indicate that Mulder and Scully indeed weren’t ghosts haunting their former workplace.

  Two trimly professional-looking women across the room were locked in conversation, one handsome if severe in a white blouse and black suit, the other a slender, beautiful brunette also in simple, stylish black, her hair ponytailed back. As Mulder and Scully lingered near the entrance, this conversation continued, and a few glances from the severe woman gave Mulder the impression that neither he nor Scully was loved.

  But then the conversation broke off, and the brunette with the ponytail came toward them and offered Scully a businesslike smile and her hand. As the two women shook, the brunette said, “Thanks for making this happen. I’m Assistant Special Agent in Charge Whitney.”

  This was directed to Scully, who nonetheless identified herself: “Dana Scully.”

  Whitney, direct and pleasant, turned to Mulder and extended a hand. “Fox Mulder, I believe.”

  He took her hand, with just a twinge of suspicion. With that woman across the room still casting the occasional seeming look of disapproval, Mulder would not have been surprised if a handcuff were snapped down his wrist.

  “Assistant Special Agent?” Mulder said. “You are in charge of this investigation?”

  “I am,” she said with a crisp nod. The narrow oval of her face held lovely features, in particular striking light blue eyes. “I know this is awkward, Agent Mulder—”

  “Not ‘agent’ anymore. Just Mulder. And Scully.”

  Another crisp nod. “Well, in any event, welcome back to the bureau. My team and I appreciate your trust.” She was reaching for a file on the nearby table. Mulder, guarded though he was, already liked her—she had a disarming manner, and wasted no energy.

  “Trust being what it is,” Mulder said, “what happens if I can’t help? Or your agent turns up dead? I’m not exactly in a position to guarantee my work, Agent Whitney.”

  She shook her head. “The past is the past. We know your work on X-File cases here and believe you may be the best chance Monica Bannan has right now.”

  “Chance of what?”

  “Not to die, Mulder. Not to die.” She handed him the file.

  He opened it and saw a head shot of a woman who was perhaps thirty, nose rather prominent, features sharp but in a not unattractive way.

  Scully asked, “How long has she been missing?”

  “Since Sunday evening,” Whitney said. “Almost three days.”

  Scully and Mulder traded quick dark looks. Then Mulder’s gaze returned to the photo of the missing woman, while Scully said, “Agent Whitney, I know you know this…but there’s slim chance, after seventy-two hours, that she’s still alive.”

  Whitney’s nod was as curt as it was reluctant. “And we have slim reason to believe she is, that’s true. But so far we’ve got no evidence to the contrary, either. And the facts we do have give us hope.”

  The ASAC plucked another file from the table and handed this one to Scully, who opened it and saw several photos, taken in a lab setting, of an arm—a severed or perhaps amputated human arm with a jagged wound near the wrist.

  “Soon after Agent Bannan went missing,” Whitney said, indicating the arm in the photo, “we found that.”

  Mulder looked up from the agent’s photo. “Where?”

  “About ten miles from her home.”

  Scully was frowning. “I don’t understand. That’s a man’s arm…”

  “A man’s arm,” Mulder said softly, matter-of-fact, eyes flicking from Scully to Whitney, “that’s a match for evidence your team found at or near the crime scene. Blood or tissue.”

  Whitney shot a look at the table of agents, some of whom were eavesdropping, including that severely handsome woman in black. It was as if the ASAC had said, See? Told you. He’s good.

  Then Whitney said, “Blood found near Monica Bannan’s carport, and on a gardening tool there, matches that wound.”

  Scully’s eyes flared. “And this is what you’re basing your hopes on?”

  Whitney took that placidly. “Agent Bannan’s service weapon was locked in the trunk of her car; she had another gun, but in the house. That wound, matching that tool, could be evidence that Monica Bannan fought back. She was most certainly trained and able to.”

  Mulder nodded, barely. Referring to the severed arm, he asked, “What did forensics say about it?”

  Shaking her head, Whitney said, “Male, thirty-five to forty. No match in CODIS for prints.”

  By now Mulder had put together why he was here; he imagined Scully had, too. “I take it you were led to that detached arm like…”

  “A needle in a haystack,” Whitney said.

  “I was thinking more, a needle in a stack of needles.” Mulder glanced at Scully, then said to the ASAC: “You were led there by someone claiming psychic powers.”

  Whitney’s nod was slow this time. “Joseph Patrick Crissman.”

  Mulder twitched a smile. “And you think he’s full of shit.”

  Agent Drummy, listening nearby, traded his deadpan for a smirk, and said to Mulder, “What makes you say that?”

  Mulder knew how to turn a deadpan into a smirk, too. “Maybe I’m psychic.”

  “Look,” Drummy said, lumbering over. “This guy, this Father Joe—”

  “Father?” Scully said, head tilted, eyes narrowed. “He’s a priest?”

  Drummy shrugged. “Catholic.”

  Mulder glanced at Scully, and, right on cue, a little light from above winked off the little gold cross around her neck. Fluorescent light from above, anyway.

  Scully said, “He contacted you?”

  Drummy nodded. “He cold-calls us six hours after Agent Bannan’s reported missing. At that point, nothing had been in the media, understand. We were still sitting on it. And here he is claiming he saw a vision of her. Claiming he has a psychic connection.”

  Mulder said, “And Father Joe tells you Monica Bannan is alive.”

  “That’s right,” Drummy said.

  “Claiming a psychic connection. But have you found any other connection?”

  “To Monica Bannan?”

  That was one of those dumb questions that deserved a wisecrack, and Mulder was choosing between several options when ASAC Whitney said, “No. No connection. And that’s why I sent for you.”

  Mulder glanced at Scully; the smile they exchanged was so small, no one but each other would have spotted it. But they both understood Agent Drummy’s attitude now: Mulder was a threat. Drummy was a by-the-book agent, and old Spooky Mulder f
rom the X-Files was getting hauled in to do his stuff and maybe make Drummy look like an unimaginative also-ran.

  Whitney was saying, “I need your expert opinion, Mulder. I need to know we’re not wasting time, going down this route. Because we don’t have time to waste.”

  “Not,” Scully said dryly, “after seventy-two hours.”

  Mulder nodded, weighing the facts…and the past…and the politics. Getting involved here was dangerous. Even being back in this building was crazy. But somewhere a missing FBI agent was in trouble. As he had been, so many times. And Scully.

  Then he said, “We’re talking about a religious man, clearly. Well-educated man. He took the right action, as he saw it, and called you, saying nothing to cast doubt upon himself or his motives. He has no material connection to the crime. You are wasting time, Agent Whitney.”

  That startled her, the blue eyes popping. “What?”

  “Only the time you’re wasting is mine…and all these agents’.” He locked eyes with her. “Go down this route now. It’s all you have and there’s no reason to doubt him.”

  “Look,” Whitney said, “there’s a question of credibility…”

  “If you have no good reason to doubt him, why doubt the man’s visions?”

  Frowning, Drummy broke in: “Listen, Mulder, he didn’t lead us to Monica Bannan, okay? He gave us some guy’s bloody arm in the snow!”

  Mulder’s shoulders came up and then went down. “Hey, it’s not an exact science. If it were me, running this case? I’d be sticking with this guy round the clock. I’d be in bed with him, kissing his holy ass.”

  Scully closed her eyes. The agents at the conference table, who’d been watching with various degrees of skepticism and distrust, seemed openly contemptuous now.

  Whitney said, “Mulder—Father Joe is a convicted pedophile.”

  Scully’s eyes opened. She trained them right on Mulder, as surprised as he was.

  “Maybe,” Mulder said, “I’d stay out of bed with him.”

  Richmond, Virginia

  January 9

  Two black Ford Expeditions drew up to a stop in front of an apartment complex that was distinguished from the surrounding residential neighborhood only by the starkness of its lines and the brightness of its exterior lighting. Pale cement walls cut by the black of metal stairs gave the place an almost prisonlike look. Or was Mulder just reading in, knowing who lived here?

  Mulder and Scully got out of the back of the lead SUV and followed ASAC Whitney and SA Drummy as they made their way down the sidewalk past skimpy, skeletal trees through a flat snowy yard, breaths visible in the chill.

  Scully fell in alongside Whitney, Mulder trailing.

  “What is this place?” Scully asked.

  Whitney, her voice flat, said, “Dorms for habitual sex offenders.”

  “Dorms?”

  “They manage the complex and police themselves. Father Joe lives here voluntarily, with his roommate.”

  Scully looked like she was tasting something foul, and Mulder gave her his best boyish smile. “Might want to avoid the activities room.”

  And they moved into the stark complex.

  Soon they were in a hallway that could have led to a parking ramp but instead brought them to a cold corridor of doors, at one of which they stopped. Drummy knocked as Whitney, Scully, and Mulder looked uncomfortably on. Moments passed while, presumably, someone checked them out via a peephole.

  Mulder said to Scully softly, “Can’t be too careful.”

  Scully didn’t seem to be in the mood for levity.

  The door opened, and a slight, fiftyish man with a long, sorrowful face filled the frame. He wore a corduroy jacket and a striped polo shirt with brown woolen trousers and looked about as threatening as your favorite uncle. But then favorite uncles could be pretty threatening, Mulder knew, if yours was a sexual predator and you were a little boy or girl.

  The slight man spoke, not to them, but to someone behind him: “Joe…”

  The response came from deep in the apartment in a second tenor touched with a Scottish accent that gave it a certain musical quality: “Tell them to come in!”

  The four callers trooped into a modest, somewhat sloppy living area hanging with the stench of heavy cigarette use and the overflowing ashtrays to prove it. The decor was Early Goodwill, magazines and newspapers stacked here and there, a tube TV playing an ancient rerun of The Jeffersons. Probably the start or finish of an episode, Mulder noted, as the theme song—“Movin’ On Up”—was playing, though the tenants of this apartment sure weren’t going anywhere.

  The threadbare couch and a shabby recliner were vacant, the living room itself lit mostly by the glow of the television and a single floor lamp; but through a cracked door onto a bedroom, Mulder could see a man in his sixties in patchwork-print robe, T-shirt, and gray flannel trousers, kneeling on the floor, saying his rosary. The man’s hair was a wild tangle of gray and some black, and his long face was made longer by a goatee.

  Drummy identified the man for Mulder and Scully, by speaking to him at the cracked door: “Father Joe? A word?”

  Even the Lord God was subject to Drummy’s sullen impatience.

  Mulder watched the ex-priest rise, and then the door opened all the way and Joseph Crissman emerged, mumbling, “Excuse the mess…”

  The old boy had been smoking as he prayed and he now stubbed out a mostly gone cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. Then he found the television remote and turned down the antics of the Jefferson family.

  He shrugged, said, “I haven’t been sleeping,” as if to answer a question he hadn’t been asked, and trundled absently past Scully, brushing by her, and began to halfheartedly straighten things on the couch, making room for his guests, though no one made a move to sit down.

  Mulder studied their host, who seemed to be half sleepwalking.

  Drummy, fighting irritation (no surprise), said, “Father Joe, this is Fox Mulder.”

  Crissman glanced Mulder’s way and seemed to look through him. “Okay,” he said.

  No argument. Mulder was Mulder. Next.

  “He’d like to ask you some questions—”

  “Actually,” Scully said, stepping forward, “I want to ask something.”

  Mulder knew that chip-on-her-shoulder tone all too well. Whitney and Drummy turned to her, recognizing strained indignation when they heard it.

  “I just saw you praying,” Scully said, facing him. “What were you praying for, in there…sir?”

  Father Joe, easily over six feet, loomed over the petite Scully, not that she seemed to give a damn. His eyes lost their preoccupation and stared right at her, then fell to the necklace and its gold cross.

  “I was praying,” he said evenly, his eyes returning to her face, “for the salvation of my immortal soul.”

  She nodded appraisingly. “And you believe that God hears your prayers?”

  Crissman almost smiled. Almost. “Do you believe He hears yours?”

  “There are no young screams getting in the way.” Her arms were folded, her head cocked, her voice steady. “You see, I didn’t bugger thirty-seven altar boys.”

  Mulder managed not to chuckle while the two FBI agents had that clubbed-baby-seal look that Scully could inspire in those who didn’t know how outspoken she could be.

  Mulder said to her, conversationally, “Interesting way to put it.”

  “I have another word,” she said, “if you’d like.”

  “No. It’s okay. I follow.”

  But if Father Crissman followed, he showed no sign of it. The old boy hadn’t flinched. And now he merely plopped himself down on the sofa and reached for a pack of cigarettes as he coughed his smoker’s cough. Wasn’t suicide itself a sin? Mulder thought. He’d have to ask Scully later if smoking counted.

  “Young lady,” he said to Scully, as he selected a smoke, “I have to believe He does hear me. Or else why would He be sending me these visions?”

  Scully took a step toward him. “Maybe it
’s not God doing the sending.”

  He turned a hand. “But the first one came during Communion, my dear.”

  Mulder could feel the hatred coming off Scully like heat; and the ex-priest’s arrogance was just as palpable.

  Casually, Mulder said, “You call them visions. You see them, then?”

  Crissman nodded. “In what you might call…my mind’s eye.”

  The Scottish burr was strangely lulling.

  Mulder asked, “What do you see exactly?”

  Crissman was lighting his cigarette. He inhaled deeply, taking his own good time to exhale. Mulder knew this character liked center stage, which was neither a good sign nor a bad one: Plenty of genuine psychics were also unrepentant hams.

  “I see,” Crissman said, as if he were reading off a grocery list, “the poor girl being assaulted. I see her fighting back. I see a bloody arm…”

  Mulder pressed: “Where do you see her?”

  The father shook his head. “I don’t know. I hear dogs barking.”

  From the way Whitney and Drummy exchanged glances, Mulder realized this was a new piece of information. But Scully picked up on that, too, and her glance at Mulder somehow underscored that this latest detail seemed suspiciously random.

  Whitney stepped up. “Where, Father Joe? Where are these barking dogs?”

  A shrug. A shake of the head. “I can’t tell.”

  “But you see her alive?”

  “No.”

  Mulder could see the air go out of Whitney.

  Then the ex-priest said, “But I…feel that she is still with us.”

  Mulder asked, “Can you show us how you do it?”

  Crissman took another deep drag off his cigarette, rested it in the ashtray, then closed his eyes. Scully gave Mulder an oh-brother! look.

  “I don’t know,” Father Joe said, “that I can do it right now.”

  Scully was shaking her head; whatever shreds of patience she had left were clearly falling away. But when she returned her eyes to Crissman’s, his gaze was fixed upon her.

  “Maybe I’d do better,” Crissman said coldly, nodding toward Scully, “if she weren’t here.”