XxXxX Chapter Twelve XxXxX Lee-Lee sighed. "I really don't think this will solve anything. I've already told you everything I remember." I glanced at her, slumped in her seat and pressed against the car door, and realized I'd been wrong in my thinking. I wasn't pulling her back; I was trying to join her in a place she had never really left. Thirty-one years old, and her body language, her thinking, and her speech all belonged to a teenage girl. She traced invisible lines on the window pane as I extracted the photo enlargements from my pocket. I tossed them on the dashboard in front of her. "What's this?" she asked, sitting up. "You tell me," I said. "They were in your home the night Abe was murdered. That's his studio, isn't it?" She nodded almost imperceptibly. "I didn't think anyone would ever see these," she whispered, curling them in her hands. "Except you and Jeff." "Yes. We swore never to tell anyone." "But..." She bit her lip. "Abe found out. We borrowed his studio one afternoon to take the pictures -- just for fun, you know? -- but then we forgot to take the negatives with us. Abe sent Jeff the photos and said we'd better stop seeing each other, cause we were family." She looked sharply at me. "But we're not really. We're not related by blood." "Go on," I said as I pulled the car into the driveway of the old Purcell home. We were inches from the place where Abe had died. Lee-Lee shuddered. "I...it's too horrible." "What happened that night? Did Abe come over to confront you?" "No no no." She covered her eyes with her hands, moaning softly. "Mama called him over after Jeff showed her the pictures. He had this plan to blame Abe and told her it was Abe who was messing around with me. Abe tried to explain to her, you know, tell her it was Jeff all along. But she wasn't listening. They...they were screaming so much the house was shaking." "And after that?" "I don't know. It's like I said before, I don't remember anything until after he was dead. Oh, God. She killed him because of me." I almost stopped right there. The story was disgusting and sad and just twisted enough to be true, but I heard Mulder's voice inside my head, arguing his role in absentia. *There's got to be more, Scully. As horrible as her story is, there's something even more terrible in those missing minutes. What happened in between the fighting and the gunshot?* "Get out," I said, opening my car door. She looked over at me through her tears. "Wh--what?" "I want you to take me through that night, step by step. I need to know exactly what happened." "Shouldn't you be looking for your partner?" she asked as she stood up on wobbly legs. Her hands still clenched the photos. "Shouldn't we be looking for Andy and Jeff?" "My partner is missing because of what's in those photos," I said, "and because of what he knew about your uncle's murder. Whatever that is, I think you know it, too." "No. No, I told you--" "Andy is the one who has been setting the fires." "What?" She opened and closed her mouth three times in rapid succession. "No, no that can't be. Andy wouldn't do such a thing." "Detective Kazdin and I found odorless accelerant and a flame thrower at his house," I said. "You're lying. Andy's a good person. He...he looks out for this town, he took care of me when I was sick. He would *never* have set those fires, never! Someone must have planted that stuff at Andy's place." "Who?" I asked gently. "I don't know," she said, sticking out her chin. "I just know you're wrong about Andy. He's been nothing but good to me all those years in the hospital, and watching over me when I got out. Besides, what motive could he have for setting the fires?" "I don't know. That's what we're here to try to find out. When we figure out why, maybe we can figure out where he went." "You think he's with your partner, is that it?" she asked as we climbed the shallow stone stairs. "You think he might have been the one to run him off the road?" Visions of Mulder's mangled car flashed through my head, crushed metal and blood streaks. "I think he might have been, yes." I pulled out my lock pick and went to work on the Purcell's heavy wooden door. The lengthening shadows made it difficult to see, and anxiety played hell with my timing. It took me three tries, but at last the lock clicked free. "No, I can't," Lee-Lee said when I swung the door open. She hung back on the porch, her hands balled into fists at her side. "I won't go back in there." I pulled out my flashlight and cast its beam into the dust- covered hallway. The real estate records had indicated no one had been inside since the month Abe had died, sixteen years earlier. Incest and murder did not make for a winning sales campaign. I turned back to Lee-Lee. "You said no one wanted the murderer caught more than you. This is your chance to make that happen." She gave me a ferocious glare. "It's not Andy!" "Then you don't have anything to worry about, do you?" I held the door open wide. After another moment of hesitation, she stepped over the threshold. I followed her into the narrow hallway, and the wind slammed the door shut behind us, causing the walls to shudder from floor to ceiling. "It's so cold," Lee-Lee whispered. "I don't remember it being this cold." "It hasn't been heated in years," I reminded her, but she wasn't listening. She melded into the darkness ahead of me. The air smelled stale, a mixture of dust, tarnished wood, and mildewed draperies. Mice scuttled away from my ray of light as we moved deeper into house. "What is the last thing you can remember from that night?" I asked. Her voice floated back to me. "I was in my room." "Where is that?" "Upstairs," she said, squinting as I pinned her with the flashlight beam. "Then let's start there." The house was full of twists and turns, low arches and narrow passages. Stray pieces of furniture remained scattered throughout the rooms, ready to snag a sleeve or trip a foot in the dark. I cast the light in front of Lee-Lee as we felt our way to the back stairs. "These would have led to the servants' quarters in old times," she whispered. "I wasn't surprised that Carson stuck me in the maid's room." The railing had the smooth feel of wood worn down by human touch, and I kept one hand on it as I followed her up the steep, winding stairs. They creaked under our weight, a rippling protest that gave the illusion of another person behind us, but my light turned up only cobwebs. Lee-Lee balked at the door to her old room until I pushed past her over the threshold. She inched her way to the center and froze, while I explored the perimeter. Stripped nearly bare, it contained only a battered pink chair and some ragged posters that had fluttered to the ground years before. Sean Cassidy's perfect smile was coated in grime, and the garish faces of KISS curled up at the ends. The daisy dropped wallpaper was peeling from one corner. "What is the last thing you remember from this room?" I asked, as I peered out the window into the shadowed yard below. "I...I was playing records," she said, "and trying not to hear then fighting downstairs." "And did you hear them?" She nodded, her gaze on the floor. "Mom was telling Abe she didn't ever want him coming around here again." "Then what?" "Then all of a sudden they stopped. I was glad it was over." Tears had begun rolling down her face, and she swiped them away wither her fingers. "I was lying on my bed, wondering if maybe I should tell Mom the truth -- that Abe hadn't taken those pictures -- when I heard the gun go off." "And?" "That's it," she sniffed, drawing in a shaky breath. "That's all I remember until I was outside." "Try harder. You heard the gunshot and went outside. How did you get there?" She looked over at me, startled. "I...I don't know. The same way we came up, I suppose. The back staircase." "All right, then let's go that way." We crept down the dark stairs, which again creaked around us like ghostly footsteps. "Invisible footsteps," I whispered, and Lee-Lee came to a halt in front of me. She pulled her hand from the banister as if burned, staring at it in the sharp, angled light. "What is it?" I asked. "I got a splinter," she said. "That night, I was running so fast I tripped. I caught the railing on my way down and got a splinter." "What about the footsteps?" I asked. She shook her head, seeming confused. "I don't know, I don't know. They were supposed to be but weren't. I can't explain it." "Okay, just keep going." I was frustrated now. I was ninty- nine percent sure that Andy had Mulder -- maybe Jeff, too -- and digging around in the past was not getting me any closer to finding them. Outside, the wind jerked tree branches around like puppets on a string. Lee-Lee staggered through the swirling leaves toward the driveway, barely aware of me any more. I kept my flashlight trained on her back like a bullseye so as not to lose her in the night. "I...I came out here, and Abe was lying on the ground with blood coming from his head. I walked over to him..." She took a few steps closer to the pavement. "I saw...I saw a gun!" "Where was the gun?" "Next to Abe. And..." She stopped, shook her head. "No, no, it's not right." "What isn't right?" "Jeff is here. He's standing by that tree. Now Mom, now Andy...Oh, God." She broke off with a low moan. "No, no. God, please no." I reached her just as she sank to the ground, rocking back and forth with her head in heads. "What is it? What did you see?" "Jeff," she said brokenly. "Jeff was here, but there were no footsteps. Oh, God." I wasn't following. "Footsteps on the driveway?" "No, in the house. His room was in the attic. I would have heard him on the stairs, after the shot. He would have been coming down right with me." "Unless he was already here," I finished for her. "Ohgodohgod," she said, still rocking. "He killed him, didn't he? All those years I thought it was Mom. Oh, God. Jeff, why?" I didn't have a concrete answer to that, but I suspected it had something to do with Abe's laying down the law about Jeff and Lee-Lee's affair. The Harvard-bound favorite son may not have wanted his future tarnished by threats of exposure. "Listen," I said, grabbing Lee-Lee by the arm to get her attention, "what about Andy? Could he have known that Jeff killed Abe?" She sniffled. "I don't think so. I didn't even know it -- not really, anyway -- until now. Andy's always been real protective of the family, you know? Especially me. Jeff and I were extra careful to make sure he didn't find out about us." I thought of the pictures that Andy had picked up this morning that revealed the true identity of Lee-Lee's lover. "What if he did find out?" I asked. "What then?" "I'd kill him." We jumped and turned. Andy Purcell loomed over us in silhouette, a gun in hand. Lee-Lee frowned. "Andy, what...?" "Stand up," he ordered. "And shut your lying face." "Andy, please," she said as we stood. "Don't do this." "Shut up!" He aimed the gun at her chest. "You were fucking him the whole time! I did everything for you, and you were screwing him behind my back." "No, Andy, I swear it was over a long time ago..." "SHUT UP!" he roared, the gun trembling with the force of his rage. "Shut up or I will you kill you right here!" The clouds parted a bit and the moonlight caught the edge of his face, sweaty with matted hair and crazed eyes. There was blood on his hand -- his or Mulder's? I licked my lips, keeping one eye on the gun barrel as I tried to talk him down. "Andy, listen to me. No one needs to get hurt. Put the gun down and..." I felt the pain crush my cheek before I even registered his movement. The gun barrel caught me directly under the left eye, bruising the socket and splitting the skin. Blood trickled warm and wet down my cheek as I struggled to regain my balance. "Andy, stop this!" Lee-Lee shrieked. "What are you doing?" He ignored her, his weapon trained on me. "Lose the SIG," he ordered. "Two fingers with your left hand, and take it real slow." I did as he ordered. "Now drop it on the ground and kick it away. Good." He disappeared into blackness again as the clouds reconvened. "Let's all go inside, shall we?" "Is that where you have Mulder?" I asked as we walked through the tall grass. "You FBI folk ask too many damn questions. Mulder will get what's coming to him, and so will you." "Andy, this is crazy," Lee-Lee said tearfully as she tripped on the back steps. Purcell jerked her up by her hair. "I've got cause to be crazy!" he snarled. "I waited sixteen years for you, only to find out that you're my brother's whore!" He gave her a rough shove into the back hall, then pushed me in after her. It was cramped and dark in the narrow corridor as we stumbled blindly toward the front of the house. Lee- Lee choked on her tears. "She was right, wasn't she?" she said to him. "You were the one setting all those fires. God, Andy, you're a murderer!" "That didn't seem to put you off Jeff," he said, and I felt the gun barrel graze my ribs. I squeezed Lee-Lee's arm in an effort to shut her up, but she pulled away. "I didn't know he killed Abe. I thought it was Mom." "Well, we both know better now, don't we? Get in there." He pushed us into the remnants of the parlor. Mulder was nowhere to be seen. Lee-Lee seemed to make the same realization, only in another direction. "Andy, where's Jeff? What did you do to him?" "'Where's Jeff?'" he mimicked in a sing-song. "'Where could Jeffy-boy be?'" He withdrew a length of rope from his jacket. "He's keeping Agent Mulder company in another room. 'Course, I doubt very much he's holding up his end of the conversation." "Jeff's dead?" she whispered. He held up his weapon. "Did him just like he did Abe, the sonofabitch. One shot to the back of the head." My heart pounded painfully against my ribs, and for a moment I thought I might pass out. Purcell had no to reason to keep Mulder alive, especially if he had been a witness to the shooting. "Agent Mulder..." "...was in no condition to stop me," Purcell finished with a sneer. "I dragged him from that wreck just to buy me some time. Figured he could bleed to death here just as good as anywhere else." Think, I told myself. Do not let his words distract you. Mulder is still alive. As he approached Lee-Lee with the rope, I looked around the room for anything I might use as a weapon. But there was only a dingy mirror on the wall and a few stubby candles on the mantel. He pinched Lee-Lee's chin, turning her face to his. "Such a pretty face," he murmured as he traced her cheek with the gun barrel. "Please," she whispered. "I tried to please you," he replied, his grip tightening until she squirmed. "I tried everything to show you I was the one you needed. The fires burned, and you came running to me, just like I thought you would." "I never wanted those people to die, Andy." "And I never wanted you to whore yourself to my brother." He shrugged. "But it's too late now." He pushed her down on the hardwood floor, so hard I heard her chin crack. Again, I cased the dim room for anything I could use to overpower him -- loose boards, heavy objects of any sort. There was nothing. With a few quick motions, Purcell had Lee-Lee's wrists and ankles tied. She whimpered. "Please don't kill us, Andy. I'll do anything you want, anything..." He ignored her and withdrew another length of rope. It was a move I didn't understand. Why tie us up just to shoot us? "Down on the floor," he said, gun to my head. I had no choice but to comply. The rope was coarse and biting around my wrists, and the sharp fibers scratched against my ankles as he pulled the last knot tight. When he lifted away from me, I smelled it. It had been underneath the stale, dusty odor the whole time, but I had not noticed until my face was pressed low to the ground. Faint and sweet. Like the colorless liquid we had found in his shed. Oh God. He stood over me, grinning, and I could tell he knew what I was thinking. He pulled out a silver rectangle and waved it at me. "Want a light?" he asked. Lee-Lee gasped. I struggled against my bonds. If he dropped that lighter, the whole house would be engulfed in a matter of seconds. He left me and walked over to Lee-Lee. For a moment, I thought he might kick her in the ribs. Instead, he crouched down low and stroked her hair. "You'll burn longer than I could ever manage," he whispered. He turned and left, his heavy footsteps echoing through the house. They faded into the distance. Wide-eyed and still, Lee-Lee and I watched each other from across the floor. Silence stretched out the seconds until I could barely breathe. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. A click. A whoosh. Boom. XxXxX End chapter twelve. Continued in chapter thirteen.