Whirlwind (17 page)

Scully stood by him anyway. "What did?"

Lanaya gestured toward his plate. "Ulcer, I think."

"What? You have an ulcer and you eat this stuff?" She rolled her eyes and took her seat. "You're out of your mind."

"Maybe." He took a roll of antacid tablets from his pocket and popped one into his mouth, "No, definitely. But I keep hoping I'll get used to it before I die."

"Don't worry, you won't," she told him. "Because that stuff will end up killing you."

He laughed, and Mulder managed a polite smile in response.

He was getting damn tired of people lying to his face.

There was someone in the backyard.

She heard movement as she dropped her suit-case into the passenger seat, and swore. With hardly any neighbors to speak of, who the hell would be out there? Unless it was a stray cat, or ... she glared.

Or a goddamn coyote.

She hurried into the house, yanked open a desk drawer, and pulled out a wood-stock .38. She had never given a damn what the cautions were; it was always loaded. A single woman living alone would scarcely have the time to load if someone broke in in the middle of the night.

She hefted it, thumbed off the safety, and marched through the Pullman kitchen to the back door. As far as she could tell, the yard was empty, its grass long since given over to weeds and bare earth.

Still. . .

A low, constant hissing.

Shit, she thought; she had left the outside faucet on. That's what it was—water spilling onto the weeds beneath the damn faucet. She tried to remember when she last was out here, and couldn't. Good God, it could have been as long as a week, maybe more. Her water bill was going to be—

She laughed and shook her head.

Who cared about a stupid water bill? She

wasn't going to be around to pay it anyway. Nevertheless, a twinge of guilt at all that waste made her open the door and step outside, swinging immediately to the right and crouch-ing under the kitchen window. She already had her hand on the faucet when she realized it was dry.

No water.

"What the hell?"

The noise grew louder, and now she heard what she thought was whispering.

She rose and turned in the same move.

Too terrified to scream, she managed to fire twice before she was struck and spun away from the house, her arms flailing, her clothes shredded, strips of flesh taken and flung against the wall, her eyes blinded, her lips gone.

When it was over, she remained on her feet for as long as it took for a breeze to touch her.

When she fell, no one heard her.

Lanaya folded his napkin beside his empty plate. "If ifs all right with you, I'll pick you up in the morning.

The sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave."

Mulder reached for a glass of water. "You don't sound very proud of your home."

"It's for your own good, Agent Mulder. And there's not much to see." He pushed his chair back, but neither Mulder nor Scully moved. "I have to admit, I'm still not convinced you're look-ing in the right place. Coincidence, that's all it is."

"Maybe. Probably, if you like. But as I already said to someone, we have no choice."

"Sure, no problem. I understand."

Mulder turned around, looking for a waiter to signal so he could get the check. Who he saw was Sheriff Sparrow coming through the front door. By his attitude, the way he snapped a question at the clerk, who had walked over to greet him, it was business. Bad business.

"Scully," he said quietly, and excused himself to hurry into the lobby.

Sparrow brushed the clerk aside with a brusque nod and stared over Mulder's shoulder. "News," he said.

"What?"

"Lanaya been with you all this time?"

Mulder nodded. "What's happened?"

"You already eat?"

"Sheriff, would you mind telling me what’s going on?"

Sparrow stared, shook himself without moving a muscle, and blew out a sigh. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap like that. But I guess you're in luck, Agent Mulder. There's been another one”

Mulder beckoned to Scully automatically as he said, "Who?"

"Donna Falkner."

Shots, two, maybe three, the sheriff told them as he sped out of the parking lot. A neighbor went over to complain, couldn't get an answer at the front door and wandered around to the back. As soon as he saw the body, he called the sheriff's office. As soon as the first deputy saw the body, he called the sheriff, knowing the FBI was in on this case.

Several patrol cars were already on the scene when they arrived, and an ambulance backed into the driveway. Yellow crime scene ribbon fluttered around the property. A handful of people stood in the lot across the street.

"How well did you know her?" Mulder asked as Sparrow led them around the garage to the back.

"She was a pain in the ass." A sharp wave. "She was okay, though."

"Did you know she was going on vacation?"

Sparrow stopped and turned at the corner. "Are you crazy? She never went on vacation. Working herself to death is what she was. Wanted to be a goddamn millionaire before she was thirty-five."

Mulder stepped around him and walked slowly through the shin-high weeds. A sheet had been placed over the body. He didn't bother to ask if the ME had been called; this report wouldn't be any different from the others.

Scully brushed by him and knelt beside the sheet. He stood behind her, holding his breath as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves, pinched a corner, and pulled it back.

Mulder looked away.

Scully braced herself on the ground with one hand, and whispered something he couldn't catch. He saw a shudder work its way down her back before she asked if someone had a camera. A deputy appeared at her side, and she directed the lens as she pulled the sheet farther back.

The mutilation here wasn't as complete as the others. There were areas where the skin was raw but still intact, and areas where a gleam of white showed through liquid red. Her face, however, was completely gone, as was most of her hair.

This had not been a swift dying.

While the sheriff barked and grumbled at his men, Mulder began a slow walk around the yard,, until he realized that the color near and on the ground was actually bits of flesh. So were the splotches on the wall near an outside spigot. At the foundation just below it, he found the gun, took a pen from his pocket and picked it up through the trigger guard. Two shots, maybe three, the neighbor had said.

At what?

"Sculy."

She looked up, a little pale but recovered.

He jerked his head to tell her he would be inside when she was finished, then opened the kitchen door and went in.

It was still hot, no moving air, and no sign that she intended to return from wherever it was she'd been heading. The drawers in the tiny bedroom dresser were empty; there were a few cartons in the spare room, which looked like those he'd seen in the Cherokee outside. Nothing in the medicine cabinet.

Papers and some ledgers in the desk; bills paid and unpaid, but no letters.

He didn't realize how much sunlight had slipped away until someone snapped on an over-head light.

It didn't make the place look any better.

When he took another turn around the room, he saw a briefcase against the wall beside the desk. He knelt, lifted it up, and raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. It was heavier than it looked.

When he opened it, he knew why.

"What do you know?" he said softly, closed it again, and snapped the locks. He kept it in his hand as he went through the house again, finding nothing more than tangles of dust in the corners.

Eventually he found himself by the window, staring at Nick Lanaya, who stood by a pickup parked across the street. Funny reaction, he thought as he headed for the door. The man's partner is murdered, and he just stands there.

He moved onto the stoop and waved, but Lanaya didn't see him. He was too busy talking to Leon Ciola.

"Mulder."

He lifted a hand to his shoulder, bringing Scully out of the house and cautioning her at the same time. He pointed when she stood beside him. "Wel, wel."

The two men were close together, sideways to the house, every so often glancing down into the truck's bed. Not once did they show any interest in the deputies bustling around the area, or in the police when they arrived, lights spinning. Mulder couldn't tell if they were arguing or not, but they certainly weren't simply passing the time.

He could see Ciola's shark smile; he couldn't read Lanaya's face at all.

Then Ciola jabbed Lanaya's chest with a stiff finger, once, twice, and leaned so close their noses almost touched.

"Do you think we should join them?" Scully asked.

"What, and disturb their grief?" He sidestepped back into the living room. "Look at this, Scully." He set the briefcase on the desk and opened it to show her the packets of money he had found, as many as could be crammed in without bursting the seams.

"A bank is safer." She picked up a packet, another, but there was no sense trying to fix the amount now. Some were in equal amounts, oth-ers were mixed. That there was thousands, how-ever, was beyond question. She pulled back her hand and closed the briefcase with a slap. "The same as the others, Mulder." Her gloves had already been stripped off, but she scrubbed her hands anyway. "Not as complete, but the same." She looked at him, almost angry. "I'm going to do this autopsy myself. And this time the report will be right."

"What will it say, Agent Scully?" Nick Lanaya asked from the doorway.

She turned to him. "It will say, once the remains have been confirmed, that Donna Falkner was murdered by person or persons unknown, for one thing. For another, it will say that it appears to be in the same manner of death as the others you've

had in this area." She turned away. "You'll have to wait for the rest,"

Lanaya sagged against the door frame, head bowed. "I looked in the Cherokee."

Mulder kept the case as he walked over to Lanaya. "She was your partner. Where was she going with all that?"

Lanaya didn't look up. "I would say she was stealing it. According to the markings, they should have been sold months ago." Suddenly he kicked back at the screen door, slamming it against the house.

"Goddamnit, Mulder, what the hell was she doing? All the years we worked together—" He kicked the door again and stared blindly into the room.

This time Mulder saw the pain. And something else. Maybe betrayal.

He nudged Lanaya until he went outside, and they walked away from the house, Mulder draw-ing closer until the man had no conscious choice but to take him to the truck.

The bed was empty, except for a length of tarp folded near the cab.

"I didn't know you knew Leon," Mulder said, careful to keep accusation from his voice.

"There isn't an adult Konochine alive who doesn't know all the others, Agent Mulder. You can hardly avoid it the way we live."

"It seemed a bit more than just casual, from what I saw."

"Personal, okay? It was personal." Lanaya's expression couldn't decide whether to be angry or insulted. "I was with you, remember?" A one-sided, humorless smile flashed on, flashed off. "Just in case you were wondering."

"I wasn't. I have a pretty good short-term mem-ory. Do you happen to know where Mr. Ciola was?"

"Don't know, don't give a shit." Lanaya reached into the bed and picked up a twig with long needles on it. He twirled it between his fin-gers before flicking it away. "Stupid woman. My God, what...

what..." He gave up.

"You were lovers?"

The Indian shrugged, one shoulder. "For a while. A couple of years back. Turned out we wanted to be business partners more, so we stopped."