Skin : the X-files (11 page)

Actually, we hardly had any contact with him—other than lifting him into the ambulance and working the 101

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Velcro straps. He didn’t crash until he was in the ER. We didn’t even intubate—the two ER kids took over, and we went back into the field.”

Mulder moved his gaze from Canton to his partner, Emory Ross. Neither one looked the least bit ill. “And you’re feeling all right? No signs of fatigue or fever?” Canton smiled. “I worked out for two hours this morning. Hit two-fifty-five on the bench. What about you, Ross?”

Ross laughed. He seemed much younger than Canton, and it was obvious from his eyes that he looked up to his wide-shouldered partner. “I played pickup basketball for forty minutes before our shift started. Didn’t score very many, but I got a handful of rebounds.” Mulder felt relief, and a tinge of excitement. He wasn’t a doctor, but it sounded as though the two paramedics were not going to be felled by lethargy. Mulder walked with the two men toward the changing rooms located in the corner of the ER, just beyond the admissions desk. “I was told the John Doe was brought in from the scene of a car accident on the FDR Drive?”

“That’s right,” Canton answered. “Found him unconscious but stable in the breakdown lane, maybe twenty feet from the lead car. We already had one of the drivers in our wagon—a woman with a pretty severe impact wound to her chest—but we decided to risk a second scoop. There were other ambulances on the scene, but the accident was as bad as it gets. Many more bodies than wagons.”

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Mulder watched as Canton grabbed a passing nurse by the waist. The young woman laughed, wriggling free.

Mulder could tell that Luke Canton was well liked. “And he remained stable en route to the hospital?”

“Unresponsive,” Canton answered. “But certainly stable. We doubted he was even involved in the accident itself; there were no exterior wounds you would expect from someone thrown from a crash, no bruises or cuts or anything—”

“Except the slight scratch,” Ross chimed in as they reached the curtain that led to the changing room. “A circular little thing on the back of his neck. But it didn’t look like much—I don’t remember if we even bothered to tell the interns when we brought him in.” Canton tossed a glance at his partner, who quickly looked at the floor. Canton looked at Mulder. “It was a crazy night. We had to get right back to the accident for the walking wounded. I’m sure the kids spotted the little scratch on their own. Anyway, I doubt it had anything to do with why the guy died.”

They pushed into the small changing room. There was a row of metal lockers on one side, three parallel wooden benches, a closet full of hangers, and a door that led to a shower room. Canton and his partner moved to their adjacent lockers. As they changed into clean uniforms, Mulder contemplated what Canton had just told him. His thoughts kept coming back to the scene of the accident, where the John Doe had been picked up. If he wasn’t thrown from one of the cars—why was he unconscious in 103

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the breakdown lane, twenty yards away?

When the paramedics had finished changing, Mulder turned to Luke Canton. “I’ve already spoken to the dispatcher, and if it’s all right with you, I’d like to borrow an hour of your time.”

Canton raised his eyebrows. Then he glanced at his partner and shrugged. “If you’ve got the authority, I’ve got the hour.”

Mulder grinned. He liked Luke Canton’s attitude.

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8

X The ambulance seemed to float through the three lanes of New York traffic as Luke Canton navigated between the moving bumpers with an expert’s grace.

Only twice did he have to reach above the dashboard and flick on the colored lights. Mulder watched the chain-link snakes of traffic slither by beneath the high side windows, amazed at how the cars stayed so close together at such high speeds.
Coordinated
chaos.

“It’s not surprising when they crash,” Canton said, reading his mind. “It’s surprising when they don’t. You know how many people die every year in cars?” Mulder had an idea, but said nothing. Canton pointed to a dented pickup truck weaving through the lanes two cars away. “More than fifty thousand. About the same number as die from AIDS. Funny thing. We’re quite will-105

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ing to give up casual sex. But give up casual driving? No way.”

Mulder felt his seatbelt tighten as Canton punched the brake, and the ambulance suddenly veered to the right.

Mulder watched the guardrail grow closer as they rolled to a stop in the breakdown lane. The lane was actually more like a gully, stretching fifty yards along a curved section of rail. It was half the size of a regular lane, a few bare feet wider than the ambulance itself. Mulder saw a glimmer of broken glass a dozen yards ahead and the twisted remains of a rear bumper in the grass just on the other side of the railing. Other than the bumper and the glass, there were no visible signs of the accident.

“Looks like it’s been cleaned up pretty well.”

“Should have seen it right after the accident. The whole Drive was cluttered with metal and glass. All three of these lanes were closed. The cars looked like crumpled socks. You couldn’t even tell the front few apart. Found one woman sitting in the driver seat of the car ahead of her.”

Mulder opened his door and stepped down onto the asphalt. The noise from the cars whizzing by was nearly deafening. A warm breeze pulled at his jacket, and the heavy smell of exhaust filled his nostrils. Canton came around the front of the ambulance and pointed to the area directly ahead of them. “The accident scene started here, with the last car up against the railing just ahead. A few more were piled together in the center of the highway, then the bulk of the accident was about thirty yards 106

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up. The lead car—a BMW roadster—was upside down and crumpled pretty flat, right in the center of the road.” Mulder slowly walked forward, his eyes moving back and forth across the pavement. He knew that natural exposure to the elements, and the sheer passage of time, had probably erased most of the evidence left behind by the thirteen-car accident. But he also knew that investigative work relied heavily on luck. “Was it possible to determine what caused the lead car to spin out?” Canton nodded as they continued forward down the breakdown lane. “According to a witness from five cars back, a white van was careening wildly back and forth between lanes, just ahead of the BMW. The back doors of the van popped open, and the driver of the BMW pan-icked. She bounced off the guardrail, then flipped over.

The next car—a Volvo—hit her head-on at sixty-five miles per hour. Then the others just piled on.” They reached the spot Canton had described as the rough area where the first car had spun out. Mulder turned to the guardrail and saw a huge, jagged tear in the heavy horizontal iron bars. Two dark tire tracks led up to the tear, and Mulder could imagine the driver’s frantic efforts to stop the BMW. Obviously, those efforts had been too late. “Did the lead driver get a good look at the van?”

“Maybe”—Canton sighed, leaning against an unmarred section of the guardrail—“but she was decapi-tated by the front axle of the Volvo. Like I said, the only good witness was five cars back. All the police know 107

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was that the van was white, some sort of American model, and the back doors were open. There’s an APB

out on it now, but there are a lot of vans like that in this city.”

Mulder nodded. He would talk to the police after he returned to the hospital, but he didn’t expect them to have any answers. If the van ran from the scene of the accident, chances are the driver didn’t want to be found.

“And the John Doe?” Mulder asked. “He was unconscious somewhere up here?”

Canton walked a few more paces, then pointed to a spot in the breakdown lane. Mulder stopped at his side.

The spot was only ten yards ahead of where the lead car had gone out of control. Roughly where the van had been weaving back and forth.
With the back doors hanging
open.

Mulder knelt, looking at the pavement. Of course, there was nothing remarkable. It had been a week.

Mulder moved his eyes along the ground, imagining the body sprawled out. “Facedown? Or faceup?”

“Sort of a fetal position,” Canton said. “Lying on his side. His head was away from the road.” Mulder felt the pavement rumble beneath his knees as a heavy Jeep roared by in the closest lane. There was a clattering sound, and Mulder watched a foam cup bounce toward the guardrail. His thoughts solidified as the cup disappeared down the grassy slope on the other side. He rose and walked to the edge of the breakdown lane. He moved slowly along the guardrail—and paused 108

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at a spot a few feet away from where Canton was standing.

There was a small dent in the guardrail, just above knee level. Mulder bent down and peered at the dent.

Then he looked back toward the highway. “Mr. Canton, how fast did you say the lead car was moving?”

“Probably around sixty-five miles per hour. That’s my best estimate, from the damage.”

“And the van was traveling at around the same speed when its back doors popped open?”

“That’s right.”

Mulder nodded. The positioning of the dent seemed about right. If the John Doe’s body had fallen out of the back of the van, hit the pavement, rolled into the guardrail, then bounced back a few yards into the breakdown lane—it would have landed right where Canton was standing. The only problem with the theory was the condition of the John Doe’s body. Both the paramedics and the medical student had corroborated what the interns had written in the chart: The John Doe had shown no signs of external trauma. Mulder could hear the question Scully would ask the minute he told her his theory: How could a man fall out of a van moving at sixty-five miles per hour, dent a guardrail—and receive no external injuries?

Mulder didn’t have an answer—yet. But he wasn’t ready to discard the theory. The John Doe was linked to Perry Stanton, and Perry Stanton had performed amazing, inhuman physical feats. Wasn’t it possible that the 109

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John Doe had been similarly invulnerable?

Mulder reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a sterile plastic evidence bag and a small horsehair brush.

He leaned close to the dent in the railing and began to collect brush samples. He doubted he’d find anything—

but there was always the chance some sort of fiber evidence would show up under analysis.

“What are you doing over there?” Canton asked, watching him. “I said we found the John Doe over here.”

“I don’t think the body started there, Mr. Canton. I think that was just Mr. Doe’s final resting place. It’s the journey between that interests me.” Mulder was about to drop to the ground and get samples from the pavement, when his brush caught on a small groove in the railing.

When he pulled the brush free, he noticed a few tiny strips of white cloth caught in the fine horsehairs. He held the brush close to his eyes and saw flakes of some sort of red powder clinging to the underside of the strips.

The powder had a strong, moldy scent—somewhat like a loaf of bread that had been left in a damp cabinet too long. Mulder wondered whether the powder and cloth were related to the John Doe. It was possible that the groove in the guardrail had protected it from the elements. He took a second bag out of his pocket and put the strips inside. Then he crossed back to Canton. Canton was looking at him strangely.

“Why is the FBI so interested in this John Doe, any-way? Was he some sort of serial killer?”

“As far as we know,” Mulder said, kneeling down to 110

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take more samples from the pavement, “he didn’t do anything but die. Problem was, his skin didn’t die with him.”

Mulder didn’t add the sudden thought that had hit him: Maybe it was his skin that was the killer. Not some microbe carried in his blood—as Scully had proposed—

but his skin itself. Because that was the real common denominator. Not his blood, not a microbe, not a disease.

Skin.

Forty minutes later, Mulder entered the infectious disease ward at New York Hospital. The ward was really just a cordoned-off section of the ICU; two hallways and a half dozen private rooms with a self-contained ventilation system and specially sealed metal doors. The rooms were designed with various degrees of biosafety in mind: from the highest level of security, with inverse vacuums and specialized Racal space suits—to the more manageable, low-level rooms, with glove and mask guidelines, maintained under strict video watch by a staff of infectious disease specialists.

Mulder was directed to a low-level containment room near the rear of the ward. After donning gloves and a mask, he was led into a small private room. Scully was standing by a hospital bed, arguing in a determined voice. Dr. Bernstein, Perry Stanton’s plastic surgeon, was sitting on the edge of the bed in a white hospital smock, a skeptical look on his face. There was an IV running into his right arm, and every few seconds he stared at the 111

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wire with contempt. It was obvious he didn’t want to be there. And it was equally obvious that he wasn’t the slightest bit sick.

“Look,” he was saying, as Mulder came into the room,

“I can assure you, there was no blood-to-blood contact during the transplant. I was masked and gloved. So were my nurses. I’ve done similar procedures on HIV-positive patients. I’ve never had any problems.”

“Dr. Bernstein,” Scully responded, “I didn’t order this quarantine. The infectious disease specialist from the CDC has decided not to take any chances. Your surgical team is the highest-risk group—and this quarantine is just a logical precaution.”

“It’s not logical, it’s pointless. We both know there’s no real cure for lethargica. I can understand restricting my surgical schedule until after the incubation period ends. But why keep me and my staff cooped up in these cells?”

Scully sighed, then nodded toward the IV. “The specialist from the CDC has suggested you remain on acy-clovir, at least through the incubation period. It has been shown to be effective in stopping some of the more common types of encephalitis.”