Whirlwind (14 page)

Donna was breaking free.

Once she got on that plane, New Mexico would never see her again.

Scully looked over. "How are you going to stop her?"

He gestured toward the backseat, asking her to grab his denim jacket. When she did, his portable phone fell out of the inside pocket.

"Garson?" she said.

"Material witness to an active investigation."

"But she isn't, Mulder."

"No, maybe not. But he can delay her long enough to miss her flight. Maybe discourage her enough to wait until tomorrow."

She called, discovered Garson couldn't be reached, and demanded to speak to an agent on duty.

After convincing him they weren't kidding about Falkner, she asked where the Constella van was being held.

"Right here," she said when she hung up. "A lot behind a sheriff's substation."

"Why do you want to see it?"

"You wanted to see Ann Hatch, and look what it got us. I want to see that van."

Sometimes they made her too much like him.

"And what do you mean, I take too many clothes when I go on a trip?"

The substation was little more than a double-wide on cinder blocks, only a sign on the door announcing its function. The parking area in front was only big enough for four vehicles, and the tree that cast a weak shade over the building looked about ready to collapse at any second. Beyond the tree was another lot, fenced in with chain-link and topped with concertina wire. Within were a handful of cars, a pickup, and a van.

Sheriff Sparrow was outside waiting when Mulder pulled in off the street.

"Garson works fast," Scully said when they stopped.

"Your tax dollars at work."

Sparrow waved them over to a padlocked gate in the fence. "Looking for anything in particular?" he asked as the gate swung free and they walked in.

"You never know," Mulder told him.

The van was at the back, dusty enough to ward off the sun. Mulder shaded his eyes and looked through the side and front windows, then asked Sparrow for the key.

"What for?"

'To get inside." He rapped a knuckle against the sliding side door. "You never know."

Sparrow grumbled, complained that he'd left the keys inside, and headed back to the trailer.

"Mulder?"

She was on the passenger side, and he took his time joining her. The heat was brutal, worse than the day before, and he understood now why life was so deliberate in this part of the world. Anything faster than a crawl on a day like today meant sure heatstroke, and a tub packed in ice.

"So?"

She pointed to the side.

He looked and saw the dust; then he saw what lay under the dust.

He used a palm to wipe the metal clean, and yelped when the heat scorched him. "Damn!" He shook his hand, blew on it and pulled a handker-chief from his pocket.

"Be careful," she said. "It’s hot." When he gave her a look, she only shrugged and added, "Your tax dollars at work."

There were two large tinted windows, one in the sliding door, the other at the back. He shook the handkerchief out, then folded it in quarters to form a makeshift dusting pad. Hunkering down, balancing on his toes, he swiped at the dust and dirt first, to knock off what he could before he started rubbing.

"What the hell you looking for?" Sparrow said, tossing the keys to Scully.

"This was a rental," Mulder said without look-ing up.

"Yep. So?"

"New, then, right?"

"Probably." The sheriff leaned over him, squint-ing at the panel. "So?"

"So I guess Mr. Constella wasn't much of a driver."

He didn't have to rub. When the area was clear, he rose and took a step back, waiting for Sparrow to comment. He was also waiting to hear why the man hadn't noticed it days ago. Or, if he had, why he hadn't said anything.

From the window to the bottom of the frame, the paint had been scraped off, right down to bare metal.

The dust had been thick, the van having sat here for more than a week in the sheriff's cus-tody. A glint of that bare metal was what had caught Scully's attention.

"Well, I'll be damned." Sparrow hitched his belt. "Run up against a stone wall, boulder, some-thing like that, looks like."

"I don't think so." Mulder ran a finger lightly over the surface. "No appreciable indentation, so there was no real collision."

Scully stepped in front of them and peered at it closely, shifted and sighted along the side to the rear bumper. "If there was, it wouldn't be in just this one place." When she straightened, she leaned close to the window. Touched it with a forefinger. Took the handkerchief and wiped the glass clean. "Scrapes here, too."

"Road dirt," Sparrow said. "You get it all the time out here, dust and all, going the speeds you do."

She ignored him for the moment, using the fin-ger to trace the damage's outline, right to the strip above the window. "Whatever it was, it was big. Man-high, at least."

"Like I said, a boulder."

"Come on, Sheriff," Mulder said, having had enough of his forced ignorance. "Scully's right. A collision would have produced damage wider than this, and by the force of it, at the least this window would have been cracked, if not smashed."

He scratched under his jaw, and leaned close again.

"Agent Mulder, this is—"

"Do you have a magnifying glass?"

He heard the man snort his disgust, but the expected argument didn't happen. Sparrow trudged away, muttering about how the damn feds think they know everything, just loudly enough.

Scully unlocked the passenger door and stood

back to let the heat out. Then she climbed in and through the two front seats to the back. Mulder couldn't see her until she rapped on the window and beckoned.

He knelt on the passenger seat and leaned over the top. The two rows of bench seats had been taken out, leaving the holding rails behind. The floor and walls were covered with alternat-ing swatches of vivid purple and dull brown carpeting.

"This is a love nest?" he said, wincing at the garish combination.

"Love is blind, Mulder." She was on her knees, poking at a loose section of carpet with her pen.

"In here it would have to be."

"Got it."

She rocked back on her heels and held up the pen. Dangling from it was a length of silver chain. She followed when Mulder backed out, and dropped the chain into his palm. "That’s not a store chain. It’s handmade." She prodded it with the pen, shifting it as he watched. "I'll bet it's not silver-plated, either."

He brought the palm closer to his eyes.

The links were longer than he would have expected, and not as delicately thin as they first appeared.

Neither were they the same length.

She took the chain back, grasping each end between thumb and forefinger. Tugged once.

"Strong. You couldn't yank this off someone's neck without sawing halfway through it."

"Konochine."

She gave him a
maybe
tilt of her head, and headed back to the car to fetch a plastic evidence bag from her purse.

"Bring a couple," he called after her, and glanced at his watch.

Sparrow still hadn't returned; Mulder finally lost the rest of his patience. He marched over to the trailer, yanked open the door, and stepped in. The sheriff was seated behind one of three desks in the room, his feet up, his hat off, a flask at his lips.

He looked startled when he saw Mulder, but he didn't move until he had finished his drink. "It’s hot out there," he said.

"It's going to get hotter," Mulder told him, not bothering to suppress his anger. "Give me the glass, then get one of your people ready to take some evidence to Garson's technicians. I'll call him myself to tell him what to look for."

Sparrow glared as he set the flask onto the desk. "I don't believe I heard the magic word, Agent Mulder."

Mulder just looked at him, and "FBI" was all he said.

nearly

He couldn't see Scully when he returned to the lot, slapping the mag-nifying glass hard against his leg.

He was angry and disappointed, not much at the sheriff as at himself. Losing control like that, pulling rank, wasn't his style. Working with local law was something he had learned to do years ago, knowing that their assistance was just as vital to investigations as his own federal agents. What he had just done was a violation not only of policy, but his own code. "Sculy?" It was dumb. "Hey, Sculy!"

It was stupid,

"Over here, Mulder."

But boy, did it feel good.

He found her standing next to what used to be a sleek Jaguar. Now most of its windows were shattered, the windshield web-cracked, the racing-green paint pocked and scored from front to back, and the roof crushed as though someone had dropped a flatcar on it.

"Our drunk driver?" he asked.

"I don't know I think so. Look at this."

He went around to the side, and saw the same pattern of scouring she had uncovered on the van, only this time it was wider.

"Invisible car," he said.

She lifted a questioning hand. "I give up, Mulder. What’s going on?" A closer look at his face. "Never mind. I think I'd rather know what happened in there."

There was no chance to answer. The trailer door slammed gunshot loud, and Sparrow stomped toward them. The way his hand chopped the air, Mulder figured he was having one hell of an argument with himself. By the time he reached them, the argument was over.

He stood with one hand resting on the handle of his holstered gun, while the other folded a stick of gum into his mouth. Then he pulled off his sunglasses by pinching them at the bridge and sliding.

"I'll take the evidence in myself." It wasn't an order, it wasn't a demand. It was an offer of truce.

"That's fine with me, sir," Mulder said, accept-ing the offer.

"Chuck." The sheriff chewed rapidly.

Mulder grinned. "I don't think so."

"Me neither. My mother hated it. She always said it wasn't the name of anything but chopped meat”

He pushed the sunglasses back on. "So, FBI, what's so important you got to rush it into the city?"

While Scully explained about the partial neck-lace chain, Mulder went back to the van and, with the magnifying glass and the tip of a blade on his Swiss army knife, pried loose samples of debris caught in the deep gouges on the door. He did the same to the car, sealed his findings in the bags, and handed them over.

Uneasy, but more at ease, they walked back to the office, grateful for the cool respite. Scully tagged and numbered the bags. Mulder called Garson's office, told them what to expect and what he wanted done.

"That shouldn't take very long," the secretary said confidently.

"Have you found Agent Garson yet?"

"No sir, I sure haven't."

He gave her his number and instructed her to have Garson call as soon as he came in. When he asked whether Donna Falkner had been inter-cepted, he was told that she had been, by one of the other agents. Apparently she hadn't been very happy, certainly not when she was brought back to the Silver Avenue office, where she currently was giving a statement.

"A statement? About what?"

"I
wouldn't know, sir. I'm only the secretary. They only tell me what I need to know."

Sure, he thought; and all the rest is magic.

He perched on the edge of the nearest empty desk and wiped his brow with a sleeve.

Sparrow was back in his chair. "You reckon it's the Konochine somehow? I figured that, what with you talking to Donna and all."

"I don't see how it can't be, now. There are too many connections."

"A lead, anyway” Scully added.

"Oh boy." The sheriff reached for his flask, changed his mind, and propped his feet up instead.

'Trouble is, there's a couple hundred of them. It can't be all—" Suddenly he snapped upright, boots stamping the floor. "Son of a bitch!"