#i was still in my dnr uniform as well so i got thanked by the people in the cars im glad they were chill

[hyah-through-hyrule]

Found two male tortoises fighting in the middle of the road, I moved them to the other side of the tortoise fence and discovered why they were fighting; a female was chilling on the other side! Friendly reminder to go the speed limits and remain attentive when you are near nature reserves and state parks, one of these guys nearly got hit by a speeding truck.

[slippinmickeys]

The Dreaming Tree (2/4)

...A broom is drearily sweeping

Up the broken pieces of yesterday's life

Somewhere a queen is weeping

Somewhere a king has no wife

And the wind, it cries Mary...

Harbor Springs, Michigan

July 1, 1999

9:02am

A local DNR conservation officer had agreed to meet her at the site first thing the next morning, but had not yet arrived when Scully parked the rental sedan under the Coming Soon! development sign. She had dropped off Mulder at the local library before pulling out a pair of hiking boots from the backseat and swapping them out with her heels. Thus outfitted, she had driven north.

Despite dressing more sensibly for her venture, she still stepped carefully over the rutted, muddy two track that led into the woods, the pungent smell of humus a welcome assault on her nose. She decided to look around on her own, heading for the area where the various Dreamers had lunched the week prior.

The sun was midway through the morning sky, and the poplar leaves twisted in a cool breeze; the underside of them lighter than the tops, like the belly of a sunfish. Construction work had shut down for a couple of hours to accommodate her investigation.

The forest was teeming, fecund, half-choked with chlorophyll, the air filled with the high whine of katydids screaming at her from the canopy. She felt like she had stepped into another epoch; prehistoric and riotous with life.

The big equipment had churned a lot of the forest floor into a chunky, muddy mess, and her hope of finding evidence -- if there was any to be found -- seemed about as likely as her mother converting to Buddhism. It probably wasn’t worth setting up a grid.

Her thoughts drifted to Mulder as she stepped over trout lily and larch. What would he find that she might miss? His intuition was otherworldly, and even after seven years -- especially after seven years -- he could make connections she hadn’t ever considered. And he’d never once looked down on her for it. He’d never once treated her as anything less than an equal. If anything, he put her on a pedestal she didn’t feel she deserved. He was erudite and occasionally conscientious. He loved her with a fierceness she didn’t dare contemplate.

Staring at the weathered heart and initials carved into it, she decided to start at the pine tree and work her way out, hoping the conservation officer would arrive soon and perhaps let her know what she was looking for. Scully reached out a hand and touched the bark of the tree -- it was warm, though the trunk had been in the shade. It gave off a pleasant, earthy scent, and she pulled her hand back, tapping her fingers together, sticky with sap.

She heard something behind her and turned, seeing a tall brunette in a greyish green uniform making her way toward Scully through the bracken. Her hair was pulled up tightly into a low bun, giving her a severe look, but she wore a smile and had a pleasant mien. The woman raised a friendly hand.

“You Special Agent Scully?” she called out.

“I am,” Scully called back, returning the smile and stepping forward.

“I’m Polaski,” the officer said, shaking Scully’s hand as she stepped over a fallen branch. “I have to say it’s refreshing to find you’re a woman.”

“Likewise,” Scully said. The woman took a moment to look around the forest and construction site.

“Geez,” Polaski said, “I like the woods better when they stay woods.” She straightened. “So how did you need my assistance? My sergeant only told me that the FBI was working a case and needed a local flora/fauna expert. He said he didn’t know what the case was.”

Scully wasn’t sure she did either.

“We’ve got some victims experiencing… something akin to hallucinations. The only thing the victims have in common is their presence at this site. The only time all the victims were in the same place was when they all shared a meal in this general area. I was hoping you might assist me in identifying any possible naturally occurring hallucinogens or flora containing psychotropic elements. Are there any you’re aware of that grow locally?”

Polaski nodded, the leather of her utility belt creaking as she leaned back contemplatively.

“Off the top of my head… there’s a couple of mushrooms: fly agaric, big laughing gym. Then there’s unripe red mulberries, though it doesn’t affect everyone the same. And I’ve known some old timers who’ve used sassafras.”

“In what way?” Scully asked.

“Safrole,” Polaski answered, “the oil from the sassafras root can be used to make... whatcha call it, MDA.”

“Methylenedioxyamphetamine?”

Polaski nodded. “Makes better root beer, you ask me.”

“Would you be able to survey the area with me, let me know if you see any of the flora you mentioned?”

“Let’s get to it,” Polaski suggested.

They made their way in concentric circles, the conservation officer occasionally pointing out this or that, none of which were what they were looking for. By the time they’d gotten to the area around the entrance of the site, the sun was at midday high and they hadn’t found a thing.

“Can you explain to me the nature of the hallucinations?” Polanski finally asked.

Scully felt Mulder’s own words form within the confines of her mouth and smiled at the intrusion. What could she tell this woman without sounding crazy?

“The victims appear to be, at the very least, sharing dreams. With physical ramifications.”

“Such as?” Polaski asked, though her tone was of open curiosity rather than the doubtful disdain Scully had been half expecting. With only a momentary pause, Scully opened up to her, giving her some of the stranger details of the case.

“Well, shit,” Polaski said, and Scully wasn’t sure if there had yet been a more succinct reaction to the case.

“Pretty much.”

Polaski leaned against a yellow articulated dump truck that was parked just within the tree line off the highway.

“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help, Agent Scully,” she said.

“On the contrary, you were a tremendous help, Officer Polaski, I thank you.”

“This case,” Polaski hedged, “sounds pretty odd. You want me to take a look at state-wide records, see if I can pull anything with similar overtones?”

“If you’re offering, I’ll accept, but are you sure you’ve got the time?”

“Beats getting mosquito bites while busting anglers without a license. Let me take the afternoon, see what I can find.”

With that, Polaski pushed off the Caterpillar and nodded once at Scully, who followed her back to their respective vehicles and pointed her internal compass toward Mulder.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Best Western Motel

Petoskey, Michigan

11:23am

From the dozen or so phone calls that he’d made, it seemed the school had been run by nuns from the Holy Childhood sect, which had been a part of the Diocese of Gaylord, a town forty minutes southeast. However, when Mulder called the Diocese of Gaylord, which had been established in 1971, he was redirected to the Diocese of Grand Rapids, a further three hours downstate because it had been overseeing Holy Childhood before ‘71. School records seemed to be scattered to the four winds, though an older secretary in Gaylord told Mulder in confidence that she remembered the Mother Superior had been close with the priest at the St. Francis Xavier church the next town over -- otherwise, school records would be “forthcoming,” whatever that meant.

Mulder brought a hand to his temple as he relayed this information to Scully.

“Any luck in the woods?” he asked.

“No,” Scully said, “though the conservation officer I worked with offered to look through state cases for anything similar. Otherwise, we got bupkis.”

“Not quite bupkis,” Mulder said, handing her a sheet of paper. “I went through old newspaper articles and was able to track down some old pictures of students from the school. Those from the last thirty years had some names included on the captions and I was able to cross reference the names with records from the local Secretary of State office. This is a list of former students I was able to track down that are still local.”

Scully looked over the list.

“There’s not many,” she said, looking up at him. There were only three.

It was indeed a pitifully small number for the hours of work he’d put in. If he never sat in front of another microfiche machine, he might die happy.

“There’s not. But it’s a place to start.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I figure we can interview some former students and maybe get more insight into the area. Up until two months ago, the only thing up there was the school. Maybe we’ll find a connection.”

“It’s as good a plan as any,” she said.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Bay View Inn,

Harbor Springs, Michigan

1:34pm

They found Argyle Petoskey at his job, waiting tables at an upscale inn and restaurant that had been converted from a Victorian mansion in one of the chautauquas of Harbor Springs. The day was turning hot; Mulder had left his jacket in the car, and even Scully had opted to wear only a blouse on top, changing from her hiking gear back into her pencil skirt and heels in the library bathroom.

Argyle’s manager pointed them out back, where they found him leaning against the wall of the loading dock smoking a cigarette, dressed in a restaurant uniform version of a tuxedo, the pre-tied bowtie hanging loose around his unbuttoned collar. When they introduced themselves, he flicked the cigarette off into a puddle and jumped down to greet them, leaking smoke from his mouth.

“What’s this about?”

“We’re looking into the Holy Childhood school,” Mulder said, assessing the man before him. He had short, dark hair and intense brown eyes and what Mulder supposed passed for a mustache. Argyle’s eyebrows rose at this.

“You mean the federal government is actually looking into the shit that happened at Indian schools?”

Mulder, interest piqued, made a mental note to further investigate and simply said, “Can you tell us about your experiences there?”

Argyle took a breath and blew it out, then fished a foil-wrapped stick of wintergreen gum from his pocket and shoved it in his mouth.

“The school was actually pretty good for me,” he shrugged, “I didn’t come from the most stable home. I got my diploma, kept my nose clean. And I, uh, wasn’t on the receiving end of some of the bad shit that went down.”

“Abuse?” Scully finally spoke up.

Argyle gave her a once-over, his eyes lingering at her cross necklace.

“Like I said, not to me. But I did know some people it probably happened to.”

Mulder nodded. “What was it like when you were there? How many kids?”

“Not many when I was there. I graduated in ‘82 right before they shut it down. After ‘78, a lot of Native families stopped sending their kids. But it was okay. Taught me how to play sports, kept me out of trouble.” He hunched up a shoulder. “Kept me away from my dad’s belt. I made a lot of friends.”

“I didn’t see any playing fields up there, where did you guys practice your sports?” Mulder asked.

“Oh, we’d play lacrosse on the front lawn in front of the school until the nuns yelled, but otherwise the local high school let us use their gym and fields and stuff.”

Argyle looked over his shoulder at the door.

“What about out past the school? Looks like the school owned a lot of the land up there. Anyone ever experience anything strange out in the forest?” Scully asked.

“Like love by the dashboard light?” Argyle chuckled. “No, we didn’t go out in those woods. All the kids said it was haunted. We stayed away.”

“Haunted?” Mulder asked, “by whom?”

“A dead student? Some hunter? An old tribal chief? Your guess is as good as mine. I heard ‘em all. Probably an urban legend. I bet every boarding school has one. Listen, are we almost done here? My shift is about to start.”

“Sure,” Mulder said, handing him a business card, “you mind giving us a list of some of your friends from the school? You don’t need to do it right now.”

“And get blamed for sending the Feds to their door? Fat chance. Listen,” he said, jumping back up onto the loading dock, and tucking the card into a back pocket,  “I’ll put the word out. You staying locally?”

Mulder nodded. “The Best Western on US-31.”

Argyle nodded back, waved. “Good luck.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Petoskey, Michigan

4:56pm

The second student on their list -- Stan Skippergosh -- told them roughly the same thing that Argyle Petoskey had, only in a far less succinct way. It was nearing 5:00pm by the time they headed toward the house of the last student on their list.

The road that led out of town turned country at a stop light: to the west toward the lake were businesses and doctors’ offices, churches and schools, but past the stop light it was all pasture. The road dipped with the countryside, and then climbed up steeply, the banks on either side covered in field grass and Queen Anne’s Lace, the air thick with the buzz of insects and the rich tang of grass blades leeching oxygen. It was mostly farmland with the occasional suburban house, small yards carved out of fields and dotted with swingsets and boxes of geraniums.

Leonard Naganashe lived past the fields and farmland, past where the forest began, and Scully’s Mapquest printout was not quite cutting it -- they had to double back twice and ended up finding his road on their own. The driveway wound like a river through the trees, fresh gravel popping under their tires, and Mulder only noticed the tops of the trees when Scully pointed them out.

“Mulder,” Scully said, leaning forward and squinting through the windshield, “look at the canopy.”

At first it was only one or two trees, the tops of which had been blown off and charred, but as they approached the house it seemed as though nearly all the tall trees surrounding the house were similarly affected, a few with the tops blown off, but many, more of them affected than not, with long perpendicular lines scarring their trunks. Hemlock or birch, beech or maple, none were spared.

The house, in a small clearing at the end of the drive, was a quaint one-story ranch that had simple metal finials attached to all four corners. Lightning rods. Mulder flashed on Darin Peter Oswald and gave Scully a significant look over the console.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Mulder said, throwing the sedan into park and cutting the engine.

The heat hit them like a force when they stepped out of the air conditioned confines of the car, the humidity as thick as bisque. Mulder pulled uncomfortably at his tie as they stepped up onto the landing and pushed the doorbell. When no sound came from inside the house, Scully gave the door two sharp raps. A moment later, a woman appeared, her face wearing a look of wary apprehension. She spoke through the screen door, but did not open it.

“What do you want?” she inquired.

“Is this the residence of Leonard Naganashe?” Scully ventured.

“Who’s asking?”

Mulder and Scully both pulled out their badges, holding them up briefly at face-level.

“What’s he done?” the woman asked.

“Nothing,” Mulder said, repocketing his badge. “Leonard attended the Holy Childhood Boarding School in Harbor Springs. We’re trying to get some background. He’s one of the few former students that still lives in the area.”

The woman snorted. “Nothing good ever came from that school. Leonard included,” she replied. “I should know.”

“Did you attend the school as well, ma’am?” Scully queried from beside Mulder’s elbow.

The woman didn’t answer at first, and Mulder could see her face cloud over.

“I graduated in ‘82,” she finally said.

“What’s your name?” Mulder asked.

“Mary.”

“Can we talk to you about the school?” he requested.

“No,” Mary said curtly. “Leonard took off about a month ago. You find him, you tell him I got papers for him to sign.”

With that, the door closed in their faces.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Best Western Motel

Petoskey, Michigan

7:23pm

They were north of the 45th Parallel -- closer to the north pole than the equator and the summer days seem to last forever -- it was light before 5:00, it was dark after 10:00. The sun shone on and on.

Their hotel was neither the worst nor the best they’d ever stayed in -- just off the highway, but tucked back into the trees of a cedar swamp, each room opened out onto the small parking lot with suburban woods beyond it. Their respective rooms were on either end of the long row, and they’d set up camp in Scully’s, at the far end away from the motel office. Mulder closed the door on the damp cedar brine and kicked off his shoes.

The A/C unit rattled in the window but was cooling the room admirably. It was late and Scully was on her second piece of pizza after realizing that she’d had nothing all day but a stale mini bagel from the motel’s ‘continental’ spread and a hot slug of bad coffee she’d made from the little pot on the small vanity outside her bathroom.

“Are you still thinking this is some kind of mass hallucination?” Mulder asked her around a mouthful of sausage and pepper.

She could tell he was feeling her out, gauging her hostility toward his more outlandish theories.

“I don’t know what to think, Mulder,” she said. “The details of this case, so far as we have uncovered them, leave a lot more questions than answers.”

“I will give you that.” He sighed, wiped his mouth, crumpled up the napkin and threw it in a perfect arc into the trash can. She gave him the ghost of an impressed smile.

“You think it’s a haunting of some sort?” she walked her own napkin, and the flimsy paper plate the pizzeria had given them, over to the trash can and deposited them sensibly.

He gave a mock shiver. “Don’t get me too excited Scully, we’re in the same motel room after hours.”

She wondered briefly what he would do if she walked over to the chair he was sitting in and straddled his lap. If she wrapped his tie twice around her fist and pulled his generous mouth to hers. Would his eyes be startled? Would they glaze over in lust?

Her indecorous fantasy was interrupted by the ringing of her phone. She answered it.

“Agent Scully, this is Officer Polaski,” said the voice on the other end, “I’m sorry to call so late, but I think I may have something for you.” Scully waved Mulder over and he sat next to her, the mattress dipping below his weight and pushing her into his side. She tilted the phone so they could both hear. “It’s a pretty old case -- from the 50s -- and some of the details of the case notes have been lost over time, but I found a record of an arrest in the woods where you and I were today.”

“Definitely not too late,” Scully reassured her. “What was the charge?”  

“Murder,” Polaski said, and Scully tilted her head slightly to find Mulder’s eyes. “You want me to fax it over?” Polaski went on.

Mulder rose and hurried over to the dresser where a pad of motel stationery sat, the phone and fax numbers at the bottom.

“Please,” Scully said, and then rattled off the number as Mulder held it up for her.

“It’s on its way,” Polaski told her, and Mulder was already slipping on his shoes.

“Be right back,” he said after Scully had thanked her and disconnected, and he trotted out the door toward the motel office.

He was back a few minutes later, shuffling through a few leaves of paper that wafted the smell of hot toner in her direction. “Polaski was right,” he said, handing her a couple, “this is pretty thin.”

They both sat on her bed and traded sheets of paper, reading through the case file.

Franklin Henry Donaughy had been arrested while camping in the woods not far from the Holy Childhood Indian School on the night of November 14, 1952, by two Emmet County Sheriff deputies. His wife, Denise Donaughy, aged 37, had been found dead -- from a gunshot wound to the chest -- in their home in Harrison Township, Michigan (a town located three hours to the south, Scully discovered after a quick map consult and a brief mental calculation). Franklin had claimed to have been hunting and camping up north for the four days beforehand and had no part in her killing, or so he said to the sheriff deputies. There were several pages missing from the file, it appeared, particularly those of Franklin Donaughy’s statements to police.

Mulder handed Scully the coroner’s report, which she looked over.

“This is odd,” she noted, after a moment, and handed the paper back to Mulder. “It says here that the body was discovered sitting up in a lounge chair in their living room under a blanket, next to a switched on radio. There was no blood spray discovered at the scene, but the body had both an entry and exit wound, so they assumed she’d been killed at a different location and then placed in the living room.” She leaned closer to him, pointed to the page. “But, Mulder, the recorded amount of blood that seeped into the chair was almost four liters. That’s nearly all the blood a body has--”

“--So she couldn’t have been killed at a different location and then moved,” Mulder concluded.

“Exactly, it makes no sense.”

“What else does it say?” he asked.

“Not much,” she said, frustrated, “it’s incomplete.”

Mulder blew out a raspberry and shoved his palm tiredly into his eye socket.

“I’ll call the Sheriff’s office tomorrow and see if they have a more complete record. Barring that I can always swim again with the microfiche, see what the local papers said in ‘52.”

“I’ll help,” she smiled at him and then shoved him lightly in the shoulder. “Let’s get some sleep for now, huh?”

He leaned his arm onto hers for a moment and she saw a glimmer of something brewing in his chlorite eyes. A moment later he turned away and then stood from the bed.

“We should,” he agreed, and made his way to the door, throwing her one last glance before closing it softly behind him.

She felt as though she had barely closed her eyes when there was a pounding on the same door. She looked at the glow of the alarm clock next to the bed. It was nearly 1:30 a.m.

She threw open the door to find Mulder threading the tie he’d worn earlier in the day back through the collar of a dress shirt.

“Hank Poquette just called me,” he said. “He found Moira in their bed, unresponsive.”

“Did he call 911?” Scully asked on a hop of adrenaline.

“Paramedics are on their way,” Mulder said, already moving back in the direction of his own room, “I’ll meet you at the car in five.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Cross Village, Michigan

2:40am

The forest around the Poquette property was awash in blue and red light as Mulder and Scully drove up the winding driveway, the house itself lit up with the headlights and search beams of several police cruisers. Mulder pulled in behind one and killed the engine.

“This doesn’t look good,” he said to Scully, who remained quiet, her face grim.

The Poquette’s black dog was whining from its chained position beside the tree, its eyes never once leaving the house as they walked past. EMTs exited the house pushing a stretcher just as Mulder and Scully got to the bottom of the porch steps -- a person laid out beneath a sheet that was pulled over their face.

The agents backed away to let the paramedics pass and shared a look. When they got to the front door, they were met by a confused young sheriff’s deputy who blanched at their IDs. He called over his superior who appeared to be the Sheriff himself, with whom Mulder shook hands. Scully stood back slightly, her hands crossed in front of her.

Hank Poquette sat at the counter in his kitchen, staring blankly ahead, head in his hands.

After Mulder explained -- with as few details as possible -- what they were doing in the area and at the Poquette house, the Sheriff agreed to let them have a few minutes with Hank before they took him into the station to get his statement.

The deputies migrated to the far end of the living room by the door before Mulder spoke quietly to Hank, Scully keeping close at Mulder’s elbow.

“What happened tonight?” Mulder coaxed, as kindly as he could.

Hank didn’t look at either of them; his eyes glassy.

“I had a dream,” he said blankly. “When I woke up… I found her like that. Next to me.”

“What happened in your dream, Hank?” Mulder asked.

Hank finally looked up, a deep groove etched between his eyebrows. He took a shallow breath.

“She died.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Best Western Motel

Petoskey, Michigan

July 2, 1999

7:30am

Scully was dressed and had just unwrapped the towel from her freshly shampooed hair when she heard Mulder at her door. They had left a nearly catatonic Hank Poquette at the local police station at 4:30 a.m., and Scully, bleary-eyed with barely any sleep, had stumbled into the shower thirty minutes earlier.

Hank had said very little when deputies questioned him, simply laying out the timeline of he and Moira’s evening (dinner at a local bar with friends and a 10:00 p.m. bedtime) and had told them that he’d woken to find Moira in bed next to him, unresponsive. It wasn’t until he was in the small interrogation room alone with Mulder and Scully and had a hot cup of coffee in front of him that he’d told them both his dream: she’d fallen from a tall building while he was running to catch her.

“I always have dark dreams,” he’d said cryptically to Scully before they left, his eyes haunted. The Sheriff had mentioned that they didn’t have enough evidence to hold him and that he would be released later in the day.

Mulder moved into her room and tossed a newspaper onto Scully’s unmade bed.

“Interesting entertainment article got picked up by the local paper,” he said, nodding to the periodical. “Page four.”

Scully set down the hairbrush she’d been using on her wet hair and picked up the paper.

July 1, 1999

by Megan McCullough, AP

TOM CRUISE’S DISAPPEARING ACT

An impressive PR stunt was successfully pulled off last night at the premiere of the new Warner Bros. tentpole ‘The Magician.’

Star Tom Cruise was walking the red carpet in front of the Bruin Theater in Westwood when he vanished, ostensibly into thin air. The stunt was captured on film by the press and fans alike, who said Cruise was glad-handing and giving autographs to the fans along the velvet rope when he disappeared.

“He was standing in front of me one second and gone the next,” said fan and witness Amy Michelson, “I couldn’t believe it. We were all kind of freaked out and scared for Tom but then he came back about twenty minutes later.” Witnesses say the star reappeared at the exact spot he had disappeared from about a half an hour later, startling studio and security personnel who had surrounded the area. “He looked totally shell shocked when he reappeared,” Michelson went on, “and he had smears of lipstick all over his mouth. I’m not sure where he went, but I wish it had been with me!”

Sources close to Cruise say that the star was surprised and upset by what they refer to as an ‘uncontracted and unsafe stunt’ and has been looking into lawsuits aimed at Warner Bros. as well as ‘The Magician’s’ executive producer David Copperfield.

When initially asked for comment minutes after the incident, the studio was close-lipped. Press inquiries as to why police were called to the scene in Westwood immediately following the disappearance were chalked up to “miscommunication.”

As of this morning, the studio seems to have changed its tune and released the following statement:

“We at Warner Bros. are always happy to work with Mr. Cruise, and are very proud of ‘The Magician.’ We hope audiences will go to theaters to see it before it, too, disappears!”

Scully looked up at Mulder.

“You don’t think…”

“Lindsey Conrad is a Dreamer, and you saw the posters in her kitchen.”

“Jesus, Mulder.”

“We need to stop this thing Scully. What if one of these people dreams of the President dying? What if some foreign government figures out what’s going on up here and starts using these people for assassinations or -- hell, what if our government does?”

His hair was sticking up in places as though he’d been running his hands through it. Scully looked up at him. “What is ‘this thing,’ Mulder? What the hell are we dealing with here?”

“Something is pulling people into the dreams of others, Scully. Whether you believe it or not. And whatever the mechanism is -- we need to find out what it is, how it works, and how to stop it.”

The explanation Mulder was pushing could not possibly be true. Could it? She stayed mute and could see the color rise in his cheeks.

“People’s lives are at stake Scully,” he said darkly.

She felt anger building inside as well but pushed it back down.

“Maybe we’ll find something in Moira’s autopsy,” she finally said.

Mulder nodded, suddenly looking as tired as she felt.

“I’m going to head back to the library while you’re slicing and dicing -- see what I can turn up on this hunter case Polaski sent us.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Emmet County Morgue

Northern Michigan Regional Hospital

Petoskey, Michigan

9:34am

The county medical examiner was as near to retirement as any she’d ever met. He’d reached the stage of male aging where the hair on his forehead receded, only to grow wildly out of his ears. His fingernails had yellowed and ridged and his eyebrows seemed to crawl across his forehead like hairy grey caterpillars. Nevertheless, he was friendly and polite, if a bit hard of hearing.

“Edward Farrugia,” he said, extending a hand over the body of Moira Poquette. Scully shook it firmly, and found the skin of his palm warm and dry. She’d shaken a lot of ME’s hands in the subterranean dark of various morgues, and found many to be roughly the same texture and temperature as their charges.

“Dana Scully,” she said. “Did you receive the police report from the Sheriff’s office?”

“I did,” Dr. Farrugia informed her, “though I didn’t look at it -- I was just about to. I like to do my initial exam without knowing any of the details. Start from scratch. No preconceived notions to bring into it.”

Scully nodded. She liked that.

“So you’ve already looked at the body?” she asked. The EMTs had left with Moira’s body before she got a chance to see it herself.

“Just an initial visual exam. I’d be happy to share my thoughts,” he said.

“Let me scrub up and we can go over it together?”

He smiled at her and nodded, then headed back into his office while she found the small locker room nearby to scrub in and change. There was a hot pot of coffee on a sideboard table in the locker room itself and she threw back several large, hasty sips.

When she walked back in ten minutes later, she found the Medical Examiner in his office staring at his desk, his face darkly set. He had the police report in his hand. She cleared her throat and he looked up.

“Are you ready to get started?” she asked politely.

“I am,” he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “But Dr. Scully… Nothing here adds up.”

“How so?” Scully asked.

Dr. Farrugia glanced toward the examination room where Moira Poquette’s body rested under a sheet. He held up the copy of the police report.  

“From what it says here, this woman went out to dinner last night with her husband and some friends, went home, went to bed and her husband found her unresponsive around midnight. There were multiple witnesses at the bar placing her there not more than two hours before her death. So she eats, goes home, gets in bed. That timetable indicates her death was likely caused by heart attack, stroke, aneurysm -- I’m sure I don’t need to list them all for you,” he went on, “you’re an expert.”

She nodded.

“Agent Scully, this woman died from a fall,” he said. “A pretty big one.”

She walked into the exam room and moved to the table before he’d even finished talking, peeling back the sheet covering Moira Poquette’s body. She heard Dr. Farrugia shuffle in behind her as she stared down in disbelief.

There was no blood, except for a small trickle from a clearly fractured skull. On her torso, her skin had split to the length of about ten or fifteen centimeters right above the hip bone, and a quantity of her small intestine was hanging out from the laceration. They were textbook injuries sustained from a fall of eighty to a hundred feet.

“This is…” she started to say, her tone one of disbelief.

“Yes,” Dr. Farrugia agreed. Their eyes met over the body and he moved to join her on the opposite side.

“Shall we see what we find on the inside?” she asked him after several moments.

“Let’s.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

The Carnegie Library

Petoskey, Michigan

3:30pm

Scully found Mulder beyond the stacks. The Carnegie Library was old, stately, a sturdy box-like structure with stone pillars in front, built with money endowed from Andrew Carnegie himself. Scully had to go to the back of the building and down a set of stairs to the basement, where she found Mulder sitting at a tabletop surrounded by rolls of microfiche, glasses perched on his nose, a screen flickering rapidly in front of him.

“Martha?” he said, as he heard her steps approach, “Let’s go another month or two ahead, see if we can find some articles from the trial.”

He turned when she touched his shoulder, his face blossoming into pleased surprise when he saw it was her.

“Hey,” he said, smiling, whatever slight animosity he’d been feeling towards her earlier in the morning dissipating into the air. “Sorry, I thought you were the librarian who’s been helping me out.”

At this, said librarian came around a corner, a small basket filled with boxes of microfiche rolls slung over her elbow. She was likely around seventy, with bright white hair cut into a fluffy bob, symmetrically cut bangs framing her forehead. She looked at Scully expectantly.

“Can I help you?” she asked Scully.

“Martha, this is the woman I told you about: my partner, Agent Scully,” Mulder said.

She gave Scully a quick up and down.

“Well,” she said, “it’s nice to meet you, Agent Scully. I must say, when pressed, Agent Mulder conceded that you were quite lovely, but I now see why he turned so coy. My dear, you’re a vision.”

Scully felt her cheeks color.

“Martha is a shameless flirt,” Mulder said, his eyes on the tabletop.

“And a matchmaker,” Martha said to Scully, winking.

Mulder pointedly changed the subject, “Do you have late February and early March?”

“Right here,” Martha said, unslinging the basket from her elbow and passing it over to Mulder. She grabbed a nearby chair and pushed it in next to Mulder’s own. “Have a seat, love.”

Scully took the proffered chair and sat, giving Mulder a look as the woman left them on a whirl of white hair, leaving the faintest trace of Chanel No. 5 in her wake.  

“You made a friend,” Scully said, teasing.

“Yeah, well, I spent a week here yesterday morning,” he replied. “How was the autopsy?”

“Illuminating.”

“Yeah?” he said, turning to her in full, “Tell me.”

She sighed. “Three guesses.”

“She died from a fall,” Mulder said, a little reverence in his voice.

Scully nodded. “That’s what the body says.”

Mulder let out a long, low whistle. “Do you believe me now?” he asked, running his thumb along his jaw bone. It took her a moment to look away.

“I’m closer to believing,” she acknowledged.

“I guess I’ll take it,” he said after a moment.

“Have you talked to Hank?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Sheriff drove him home this morning. I’ll head out there when we’re done here and check on him.”

“Hopefully he’ll get some sleep,” Scully said.

“Hopefully he won’t,” Mulder said significantly.

Scully sank into the chair Martha had pulled out for her.

“Have you found anything?” she asked.

Mulder shook his head and passed her a couple of rolls of microfiche.

“Local paper,” he said. “They had a blurb on the arrest of Franklin Donaughy, but nothing else. Probably not that surprising since the ‘murder’ was downstate. Now I’m searching through for articles about the trial to see if there’s anything there.” He nodded toward a second viewing machine further down the table. “Care to join me?”

She pulled the basket of rolls toward her.

“You take February ‘53, I’ll take March?”

XxXxXxXxXxX

They searched for two hours before Scully left to bring them back dinner and Dramamine. Mulder was just wadding up the butcher paper from his ham on rye when Scully got his attention, waving her salad fork in front of his face.

“I think I’ve got it,” she said.

He let out a soft, satisfied belch and then scooted his chair closer to hers.  

It was a front page story:

March 2, 1953

by VJ Hramic

Not Guilty: Hunter Proclaims Innocence

Mulder skimmed the article until he found what he was looking for.

“There,” he said, pointing to the screen, “his alibi -- he’d been hunting and camping in the woods near the school for four days during the time of his wife’s murder. State’s evidence is all circumstantial except for the gun. Same caliber and ammunition as his hunting rifle.”

“Hmm,” said Scully, still not convinced.

They scrolled on for another week and a half until finally:

Guilty!

There was a picture of a haunted looking Franklin Donaughy being led from the county courthouse in handcuffs, surrounded by fedora-wearing reporters and the large drums of fifty-year-old camera flashes.

“Jesus,” Scully said and Mulder leaned forward when she pointed to small print at the end of the article on page 4, below the fold.

“Mr. Donaughy repeatedly shouted the phrase ‘But it was only in my dreams! She only died in my dreams!’ to reporters as he was led away to the Gladwin County Jail. He has been since evaluated and sent to the Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City to receive treatment for what doctors are calling a psychotic break.”

The wooden chair creaked when he leaned back in it.

They were both silent for almost a full minute, the hum of the microfiche machines the only sound other than their breathing.

Finally, Mulder rose and spoke.

“I’m going to drive out to the Poquette residence to check on Hank,” he said formally. “Would you, ah, make a call for me?” She nodded up at him from the chair. “I’ve been playing phone tag with the priest at St. Francis Xavier. See if you can get in touch with him and set up a meeting tomorrow -- I want to see what he can tell us about the headmistress of Holy Childhood.”

Mulder walked out to the sedan with a headache. He rolled the windows all the way down as he drove down the sunset road.