The X-Files: I Want to Believe

by Max Allan Collins

  The suspect almost got hit by the white van, veering to miss it, and headed into an area where sections were closed off with chain-link fencing, moving through an archway labeled Gate B. Mulder was back a ways, but he saw this and kept steady. He was unaware that Whitney, gun in hand, was bringing up the rear, having just come down the ramp into the excavation area.

  Now the suspect was running along the chain-link fence, nimbly avoiding building rubble strewn everywhere. They seemed to have moved into a sort of makeshift junkyard, set off with red tape, labeled with a danger sign. The suspect paused in an area dominated by scaffolding and got his bearings, Mulder not in sight.

  Then the suspect took off, moving past more hardhats, but Mulder wasn’t far behind, moving past that scaffolding, though he did trip and almost fall on some of the littered construction crap. Shit!

  They were deeper into the building-in-progress now, plastic draped here and there, water dripping, scaffolding everywhere. Mulder saw the suspect duck through a door and he followed, finding himself at the bottom of cement stairs in the parking garage-to-be.

  “Mulder!”

  Whitney’s voice echoed behind him through the concrete chamber. He could hear the suspect’s heavy footsteps above him.

  “He’s climbing!” Mulder yelled, his own voice echoing.

  Up the stairs he went, and when the sound of footsteps ceased, Mulder exited from the stairwell onto the nearest floor, in the high-rise itself now, or what little there was of it, scaffolding here, building materials there, within a skeletal structure, enclosed at least.

  From way down the stairwell came Whitney’s voice: “Mulder! Mulder!”

  He yelled down to her. “I’m up here!”

  Behind draped plastic, a shadow moved, and Mulder ran to it, pushed through the plastic into a dampish, rebar-heavy area. He could hear running footsteps and he ran, too, through the treacherous rubble-and equipment-strewn site. Before long he came to a yellow plastic curtain, and burst through and kept running toward those footsteps.

  Then Mulder saw him, the suspect, running past scaffolding and through the beam of work lights, to jump over a big round duct pipe like an athletic hurdler. Mulder could do nothing so fancy; he hit the duct with a hand and hauled himself over it.

  Then Mulder came into a rubble-strewn area and the bastard was gone! He put on the brakes and listened, and his ears took him to a doorless doorway in which a steel access ladder leaned against a wall.

  Mulder climbed.

  Then he was on the roof, or actually not on the roof, because around him loomed the light-sparkling towers that were finished high-rises, not works-in-progress like this one. This was only temporarily a roof, and would one day soon be a floor, whereas right now it was a nest of rebar waiting for concrete to be poured to make something out of it.

  Construction materials, both equipment and junk, were everywhere. He stopped and listened, hearing nothing but the cold wind. The chill, however, refreshed him. His breath plumed. He felt alive.

  The suspect, who’d been hiding somewhere, suddenly emerged and ran and leaped over something, Mulder couldn’t tell what.

  He took pursuit, and saw the suspect jump into a hole that, when Mulder got there, turned out to be an elevator shaft. His man was down there, landing hard on a wooden platform. Mulder, thinking he had the bastard finally, was just appraising the jump when the suspect leaped again, off the platform, to cling on to the steel structure of a wall of the shaft.

  Screw it, Mulder thought, and jumped, hitting the platform hard, getting caught up in his coat for a moment, then scrambling over to see where the bastard had gone.

  The guy was on another metal access ladder, heading down the shaft.

  From somewhere below came Whitney’s voice: “Mulder!”

  Mulder yelled, “Climbing down!”

  He had no choice: he jumped from the platform to the steel skeletal framework. He paused, catching his breath; then he made his way to the metal access ladder and started down.

  ASAC Dakota Whitney, just beneath the temporary roof, pushed through yellow plastic, moving toward Mulder’s voice. Then a sound caused her to whip around, and her gun tracked the fleeing figure of the suspect, running across the rubble-strewn floor.

  Not having a shot, she lowered her gun and took off after him. She could hear him running, but he seemed to be above her, perhaps on a scaffolding; she entered into an area cluttered with scraps of rebar and other trash, and stood with her gun poised, looking around in this eerie half-constructed shell.

  She moved around a stanchion and saw a doorless opening blocked by yellow tape. What was this? she thought. A crime scene? She leaned in and realized she’d come to the elevator shaft, then drew back a step, turning to face their suspect, who had slipped up behind her and now gave her a solid shove, pushing her into the shaft, through the yellow tape, sending Whitney windmilling.

  And Fox Mulder, on a metal access ladder above, could do nothing about it but watch as she fell to her death with a scream more of surprise than terror.

  Chapter 12

  Medical Arts Office Building

  Richmond, Virginia

  January 11

  While Fox Mulder and ASAC Whitney were pursuing their suspect, the FBI team at the medical building recovered the ice chest abandoned by Janke Dacyshyn on the sidewalk out front.

  SA Drummy put on latex gloves, knelt, and carefully opened the chest. Within was a black garbage bag with something in it, something roundish, roughly the size of a bowling ball but more oblong. The bag had neither a knot nor a twist tie, and was easily gotten into, but Drummy performed this task with due diligence for the evidence it was.

  Like a child looking tentatively into a Christmas gift box that might or might not contain a longed-for present, Drummy drew back the plastic and beheld the bag’s contents. The agent was not easily shaken and had seen just about everything in a fifteen-year career.

  But he had never before seen the severed head of FBI agent Monica Bannan.

  Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital

  Richmond, Virginia

  January 12

  Dana Scully, lab coat over her teal sweater and gray flannel trousers, was heading down the corridor to her office when she saw the familiar figure standing at the other end.

  Mulder was waiting for her, his look of dejection something she knew all too well, his hands in the pockets of his brown topcoat, his expression stricken.

  She wove through the doctors, nurses, patients, and nuns to join him. The couple moved to one side of the corridor and stood facing each other in a way only strangers and lovers can do.

  “I know,” he said, shyly apologetic. “You prefer I stay away.”

  She took his hand. Something softened in his face and he closed his eyes—Mulder, Mulder…He seemed to her exhausted in every way, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

  “It’s okay,” she said in a gentle whisper. “Mulder—it’s okay.”

  His smile was very rumpled for as tiny as it was. “I’m a little tired, I guess. And a lot confused. How it could turn like this…”

  She nodded, lips pursed in a kiss of understanding.

  He went on: “And how fast it turned. You know about Dakota Whitney?”

  “I know. I heard.” Her smile was warmly supportive, though she could not imagine it would help. “I tried to call…”

  “I turned my cell off for a while.” He shook his head. “I almost had him, Scully. This suspect, this Janke character.”

  “They filled me in.” She squeezed his hand. “Don’t put yourself through it again.”

  “How could we lose her?”

  He hung his head. She knew how hard Mulder worked to keep his emotions behind the cool facade, but was well aware that he was suffering, largely because he was beating himself up, for what he surely viewed as failure on his part.

  “Monica Bannan, dead.” He sighed, shook his head again. “I thought we were winning, Scully.”

  For a strange m
oment, she processed that we into Mulder and Whitney, not Mulder and Scully, and she felt an absurd spike of jealousy that made her immediately ashamed.

  “I know you did, Mulder,” she said, and drew her hand away.

  And once they were no longer touching, the reality of their lives returned in a harsh instant.

  Mulder swallowed and held up a hand with rolled-up papers in it. She recognized them as the Xerox copies of the suspects’ photo IDs.

  “I’m here to see Father Joe,” he said. “To ask him about these men.”

  Disappointment flooded through her. “You still want to believe him?”

  He just looked at her, but the look told her she was right. She could only shake her head at the irony. To think that she had had to pull Mulder, kicking and screaming, into this affair…

  She needed to tell him something, and she did, in a crisply businesslike way: “You should know he’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Joseph Crissman has advanced stage bone-marrow cancer.”

  Mulder’s eyes tightened as he processed the information. Then his expression returned to that seeming blankness that told her he remained resolute.

  “I still need to talk to him,” Mulder said. “I just need to be sure.”

  Scully could hardly deny him this final step, though her opinion of the matter was unchanged.

  She said, “You need to be sure he’s not just a creep, but a liar, too?”

  He gave her the blank look.

  “All right,” she said, and held out a hand, indicating the photocopies. “Give me those. Let me ask him, then.”

  “Okay. I’d like to tag along.”

  She nodded, and she marched off with Mulder following.

  In the oncology ward, shared with several other patients and with nurses silently scurrying, Father Joe in his hospital bed appeared frail and much older, as if the seizure Scully had witnessed had squeezed many years from him. He appeared asleep as she and Mulder approached, but when they had positioned themselves at the ex-priest’s bedside, his eyes came open.

  “Father Joe,” Scully said softly.

  But Father Joe’s eyes were on Mulder, pointedly so. “Would you believe I was thinking of you?”

  Mulder nodded agreeably, as if that were the most natural thing in the world for this patient to say.

  “I had a vision that might interest you.” He leaned on an elbow. “Of a man. Speaking a foreign language.”

  Mulder sneaked a glance at Scully, who shot him a dubious one in return.

  Then Scully unfurled one of the rolled-up Xeroxes and showed it to the patient. “Would this be that man?”

  Father Joe’s eyes flared as he studied the rough-hewn features of Janke Dacyshyn. “Yes! That’s the man…”

  Was there no end to his acting?

  The father was saying, “How on earth did you know?”

  She said, “We think this individual abducted Monica Bannan, the FBI agent…as well as Cheryl Cunningham, the second woman you say you saw. Possibly he’s abducted many more. And he was helped by this man…”

  She showed the ex-priest the photo of the owner of Donor Transport Services, Franz Tomczeszyzn.

  Father Joe studied it a long while, with a tight-eyed intensity that might have made Scully laugh if this weren’t so tragic.

  Finally the former priest said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know who that is.”

  Though she felt vindicated by his obvious deception, Scully felt no sense of victory, hating to make this even worse for Mulder, who glanced at her, apparently sensing her impatience.

  Mulder asked the priest, “Are you sure? Not just in your visions—sometime in the past, maybe…?”

  He shook his head. “I’m fairly certain I don’t know this man.”

  Mulder was staring at Father Joe, obviously wishing the ex-priest had given him an honest answer.

  Ready to put an end to this charade, Scully said crisply, “Well, I’m fairly certain that you do.”

  Father Joe turned to Scully, in seeming bewilderment.

  “In fact,” Scully said with a nasty little smile, “you’ve known him since he was a boy. An altar boy?”

  Eyes still on Scully, the ex-priest’s eyes widened and lowered to the Xerox she was still holding up for him.

  “Oh no,” Father Joe said. “Oh no…dear God, no…”

  The ex-priest plucked the photocopy from Scully’s grasp and he stared at it, agape. His eyes were welling, and he trembled under a flood of emotions. “It can’t be true…I don’t believe this is happening…”

  “Neither does anybody else,” Scully said flatly.

  Through his tears, he glared at Scully, but she had no sympathy for him, no time for his lies, his goddamned lies…

  Father Joe spoke, softly, his voice quivering but holding steady: “He must be my connection to the girl…my visions were meant to save her from him…”

  Scully did not try to hide her contempt from the ex-priest, who turned his gaze on Mulder. “You must believe me, my son. This is God’s work. God’s work…”

  Mulder was searching for words, and Scully beat him to a response, saying, “Let me ask you a question, Father. One last, simple question. Is she still alive? This girl you see, the FBI agent, Monica Bannan. Is she alive?”

  The man in the bed swallowed. He seemed to sense the trap she’d set.

  Come on, Father Joe, Scully thought. It’s a fifty-fifty shot…go for it…

  “I feel her,” the ex-priest said. “Yes. She is still alive.”

  Finally the smugness came into her expression as she looked to Mulder, as if to say, What more evidence do you need?

  Mulder merely nodded and wordlessly left the ward.

  Moments later, in the corridor, she tried to catch up with him as he was walking toward the exit. “Mulder!”

  He glanced back at her, but did not stop.

  She worked to fall in alongside him, then asked, “Where are you going? Mulder…”

  He stopped.

  He turned to look at her, and his voice was soft but his tone, his words, adamant: “He may be talking about the second woman, Scully. You know as well as I that a true psychic can be imprecise about these things. That second abductee may still be alive.”

  “Mulder…”

  “Everybody else has given up, but if she’s still alive? I’m going to find her.”

  She nodded. She understood. From his missing sister to the renewed sense of purpose he’d experienced of late, and everything in between, she understood it all.

  He was tilting his head, appraising her, possibly wondering if she were patronizing him.

  She said, “You think I don’t understand, but I do.”

  Now he nodded. He understood, too, seemed to sense the sadness behind her words.

  She said, “It’s why I fell in love with you.”

  “And,” he said, having a little trouble getting it out, “it’s why we can’t be together.”

  She wanted to reach out to him, to profess her unconditional love and tell him she’d changed her mind, but it was too late. Mulder had already turned away, leaving her alone in the busy hospital corridor.

  Alone with her immeasurable sense of loss.

  The Compound

  Rural Virginia

  January 12

  The plastic curtain separating the kennel from the room where the doctors worked was askew enough for Cheryl Cunningham, crouching at a round hole within her wooden cage, to make out at least some of the activity.

  The other captive she’d spied—whether he was a patient of these doctors or some kind of guinea pig, she could not guess—lay on a gurney, all but his head covered by a blanket. The man whose rugged features were softened by light-colored, feminine eyes was obviously a very sick man, his pallor gray, his breathing weak.

  The stringy-haired, scary abductor she thought of as Rasputin, in a T-shirt and black jeans, was raving out, yelling in what she’d come to accept was Russian at the gaunt, older doctor in a medical gown. Wha
t Rasputin was so upset about, she could not be sure; nor could she tell what that room was exactly, where the doctors worked in what to her was a blur of medical equipment and bright lights.

  They seemed to be arguing about the sick man on the gurney, Rasputin gesturing to the patient animatedly, with anger colored by other emotions, though she couldn’t tell what. Concern? Fear? Could Rasputin be afraid of anything?

  The tall, gaunt doctor, despite his normally kind manner, was standing up to Rasputin, giving as good as he got in the heated argument. The other two, the male and female assistants in white, could be glimpsed on the periphery, giving their full rapt attention to this clash.

  That was when Cheryl Cunningham saw something that convinced her she was either mad or in hell.

  Rasputin, as he argued, lifted the blanket from the man on the gurney to gesture at the body beneath, to make a point, but what was revealed did not seem to be a man’s body at all!

  Then the blanket dropped to again cover all but the head of the patient on the gurney, and Cheryl wondered if she’d been drugged and was hallucinating—could that have been, under a gown like the one Cheryl herself wore, a female body attached to a male head?

  As quickly as it had flared up, the conflict was resolved, and Rasputin hurried from the room, past the two assistants and through the plastic curtain, moving out of Cheryl’s view. Then she heard the gaunt doctor give crisp orders to his assistants in Russian and they were getting quickly in motion.

  Coming her way!

  Cheryl recoiled as the man and woman in white strode to her wooden box and swiftly unlocked it and reached in for her.

  She was screaming as they dragged her out.

  Rural Virginia

  January 12

  Like a man walking in his sleep, Fox Mulder trudged across the snowy landscape, his boots buried with each step, as he returned to, what? The scene of the crime? Father Joe had led Mulder and the FBI across this cold white desolation twice before, to dig up body parts both times.

  He was looking for something, though he had no idea what. But he was drawn back to the site where the block of ice had been culled from this frigid vista and hauled away to a forensics lab for the grisly excavation of severed limbs and partial torsos. All that remained now was a chasm in the earth demarcated by surveyor’s stakes and, yes, crime scene tape.