XxXxX

Chapter Eleven

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I found Mulder's car at the bottom of an embankment on Gull 
Road, its rear end crushed and its tires to the sky.  The 
driver's side door flapped in the strong wind, giving me a 
full view of the marshmallow air bags pressed into every open 
corner.  Mulder was gone.

I picked my way down through the mud and bramble to the 
wreck.  Crouching low, I found a smear of blood on the inside 
of the door and flattened grass that suggested Mulder been 
dragged free from the car.  There were tracks leading all the 
way back up to the road.

Close inspection of the dents in Mulder's car revealed 
streaks of a darker paint, perhaps black to Mulder's navy.  I 
fingered the cold metal ridges where he'd been hit as I 
worked my way around to the back.  His fender was dislocated, 
hanging low and scraping the sodden grass. The trunk was 
crumpled up like a paper fan.  More black paint striped the 
surface, and I counted least three different points of 
impact.

We had run out of warnings.  No note, no phone call.  Just a 
silent, twisted heap of metal.

The sounds in my head were ghostly in the whistling wind -- 
screeching tires, shattered glass, the grinding of the cars 
as the other driver sent Mulder over the edge -- but none of 
this would help me figure out who took him and why.

Why.  Mulder had said this was the first question to ask.

Why would someone run him off the road?

To stop him from getting wherever he was going.

He was going to me.  With the pictures.

"The pictures," I said, rushing back to the front of the car.  
I bent down by the open door, wrestling the swollen air bag 
with one hand as I felt around on the roof for fallen 
pictures.  I tried both sides but came up empty.  Swallowing 
a curse, I began combing the nearby marsh grasses for 
anything that might have been thrown free in the crash.  The 
ground squished beneath my feet.

"Dammit, Mulder."  His guessing game with the photos was 
costing both of us precious minutes.  I found his left glove 
and a torn street map in a tangle of underbrush, but there 
was no sign of the photographs he had mentioned.  I was about 
to abandon my search when the reeds rang, sending a small 
flock of birds fluttering into the sky.

I fished Mulder's phone out from the mud.  "Hello."

"Agent Scully?"  Detective Kazdin sounded confused.  "Did I 
get the right number?"

"This is Agent Mulder's phone," I explained.  "Someone ran 
his car off of Gull Road, and now he's missing."

"What?  When?"

"About an hour ago, I would guess.  When I last spoke with 
him he was on his way to show me the enlarged photos of Lee-
Lee Centara.  Whoever attacked Mulder must have also taken 
the pictures; I can't find them anywhere."

"Speaking of finding, we've had no luck turning up Jeff 
Purcell.  And no one has seen Andy yet today, either.  He 
didn't show up for work, and he's not answering his home 
phone.  I was just calling to see if you or Agent Mulder had 
heard from him."

"No, I haven't.  But with both brothers missing, it might be 
a good idea to pick up Lee-Lee."

"I'll send someone right over," Kazdin agreed.  "And I think 
I'll also take drive out to Andy's place...see what's up.  
You need a hand down there with the crash?"

Crash.  Just the word made my stomach churn.  I took a deep 
breath and tried not to throw up.

"Someone should search it more carefully, yes.  I'm going to 
see if the photo shop has copies of the pictures they 
enlarged for Mulder.  Maybe then we'll have some idea who the 
other driver was."

And where Mulder is, I added silently.

"Keep in touch, okay?" Kazdin said.  "I'll do the same."

We hung up, and I walked around the skeleton of the car once 
more, noting the teardrops of blood that ran down the side.  
"Hang on, Mulder," I whispered.  "I'm coming."  Then I 
followed Mulder's tire tracks out of brush, ready to walk 
backwards in his footsteps to the place where he met the 
killer.  I prayed I could get there in time.

XxXxX

"What, again?"  At the EZ Photo Shop, the man behind the 
counter scratched the tufts of gray hair on top of his head.  
"First Andy comes to pick up the originals, and then I just 
printed copies for an Agent Mulder from the FBI.  Don't you 
folks ever talk to each other?"

"Chief Purcell picked up the photos?" I asked.  "When?"

"This morning, about ten-thirty.  Agent Mulder came in about 
twenty minutes later asking for the same thing.  Of course I 
still had the scans in the computer, so I printed him out a 
copy."

"I would also like copies, please.  Quickly."

He lifted his eyebrows at me but moved to the computer 
workstation in the rear.  "Blowing up naked photos of a young 
girl like that," he muttered.  "It isn't right, dragging 
everything up again after all these years."

"Three people are dead," I said, hoping to encourage some 
speed.  "And Agent Mulder is missing because of those photos.  
Now I'd like to know what's in them."

The man halted his puttering with the mouse.  "Missing?  He 
was here not two hours ago.  How far could he have gone?"

"The enlargements, please."  Behind him, the red second hand 
was sweeping minutes off on the clock.  The man shrugged, and 
I paced in front of the counter while the printer hummed its 
work.

"Not much to see," he said as he handed me copies of two 
photos.  "Certainly nothing worth killing over."

I scanned the prints and had to agree with his first 
statement.  Any hope I'd had of an instant answer was crushed 
by the photos before me.  The smudge in the corner that 
Mulder had pointed out was not an "A" but a "4."  That was 
it?  That was his big clue?

"Four what?" I asked aloud, annoyed and afraid by my 
inability to decipher the hidden meaning.  Mulder had been 
gone for over two hours now.  The man craned his neck over 
the counter to squint at the photo with me.

"Looks like a letter jacket," he said.  "You know -- the kind 
the high school kids wear."

Just then, my phone rang, and I fumbled with my left hand to 
answer it.  "Scully."

"Agent Scully, it's John Kazdin.  I'm at Andy Purcell's place 
and I think you ought to come out here straight away."

"What is it?"

"I don't think I ought to say on an open line.  How soon can 
you be here?"

I checked my watch.  "Give me ten minutes."

"Fine.  Did you get the pictures?"

"I have them now," I replied, ringing the bell on the door as 
I left.  "Does the number four mean anything to you in terms 
of a letter jacket?"

"No."

"Andy or Jeff didn't play sports in high school?"

His voice crackled as I started the engine.  "Oh, 
yeah...yeah.  Jeff was our star QB for three years.  There 
was talk of him going pro."

"Uh-huh."  I had the car going sixty miles per hour in under 
ten seconds.  "You remember his number?"

"Sure.  He was forty-two."

I pushed the needle up to eighty.

XxXxX

Kazdin was sitting hunched on the hood of his police cruiser, 
waiting for me.  "Any word on Mulder?" he called as I pulled 
to a stop next to him on the muddy driveway.

"Nothing.  What have you got?"

He slid down and dusted his hands on the back of his jeans.  
"Well, I didn't want to say anything last night, not until I 
was sure."

"About?"

"When Andy showed up at the fire at Jeff's place last night, 
he said he'd heard the call go out on the radio.  But I 
checked -- his car radio was broken last week and is in for 
repairs.  I saw the yellow slip myself.  And then I cam out 
here and found this."

I followed him around back to a weather-beaten old shed.  The 
door stuck until Kazdin threw his full weight against it, and 
the scent of rotting wood and gasoline wafted out to us.  
Kazdin threaded his way through the yard tools into the 
darkness.  I followed, but metal clawed rakes caught my hair 
as I tried to find a square foot of space.  "What is it?" I 
asked, squinting to where Kazdin fumbled in the back.

"This," he said, hoisting up an industrial-sized container 
full of clear liquid.  There must have been at least twenty 
gallons.  "And there's two more back here just like it," 
Kazdin added.  

I ducked past a hoe and a weed-whacker to join him behind the 
Ride-a-Mower.  "Accelerant?" I asked, removing the cap as he 
held the jug in place.

"That's my guess," he answered grimly.  "Check out the gadget 
in the corner, there."

I followed his gaze over my shoulder to a large metal object 
that looks like a cross between a blow torch and the 
Supersoaker water guns my nephews loved.  "A flame thrower," 
I guessed, and Kazdin nodded.

"I think it might be him," he murmured after a moment. "God 
damn."

I sniffed the opening of the jar and could detect only a 
faint sweet scent.  "It's essentially odorless, probably an 
adulterated alcohol," I said.  "No wonder it's been hard to 
trace."

"Why?  I just don't get it.  Why would Andy set those fires 
and kill those people?"

"I don't know that yet," I replied.  "But I have one more 
piece of the puzzle.  The photographs that Mulder had 
enlarged show a letterjacket in the room with Lee-Lee.  It 
has the number '4' on the sleeve."

"Jeff," Kazdin said immediately.  "He was the one sleeping 
with her, not Abe."

"That's what I'm guessing," I said.  "But with both brothers 
missing, there is only one way to know for sure.  The same 
person who might know where they are -- Lee-Lee Centara."

Mulder had been right about that, too.  In the end, it all 
came back to Lee-Lee.

"I sent Ken Bailey over to pick her up at the diner," Kazdin 
said.  "I have to stay here until the evidence boys can bag 
this stuff up, but you're welcome to check her out down at 
the station.  I'll meet you back there in a bit, okay?"

"Fine."  I wove my way around the yard tools and back out 
into the wind.  I didn't tell him that I had no plans to 
interrogate Lee-Lee Centara in a stationhouse closet.   She 
had taken the first step in returning to Tiburton, but I was 
prepared to take her all the way.

Back sixteen years, to the scene of the crime, to the night 
someone had become a murderer.

XxXxX

End chapter eleven.  Continued in chapter twelve.