By: Mariatex
mariatex@delphi.com
 

Date: Wed, 6 DEC 95

I have many things to disclaim.  First of all, to get the legal
stuff out of the way, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully belong to Chris
Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions.  I do not presume to profit
from having borrowed--without permission--figments of someone
else's imagination.  But as for the rest of it--I made this.
 
It must also be said that I know nothing about physics or stan-
dard FBI operating procedures (what I learned from _The X-Files_
is probably not standard), and very little about Rupert Sheldrake
(although he's a hero of mine).  And I changed the name of the
town in question from Aurora (there is another fanfic story with
that title) to Dawn.  In addition, the permanent wave machine is
in the Frontier Times Museum in Bandera, Texas, not the Jack
County Historical Museum--if there is such a place--and Tia
Maria's is in Big D, not...well, you get the picture.  I *can*
make one claim to authenticity, however.  I corrected three
drafts of this story while sitting in the cemetery.

Comments would be appreciated but are, of course, purely
voluntary.

                         *    *    *

"The heat of Mulder is his eye-mind coordination."

Laura Jacobs
"It's Raining Men"
_The New Republic_
6 March 95
 

Dawn, Texas
by mariatex@delphi.com
Part One of Three

     When my phone rang at 8:30 in the morning, I assumed that
some family disaster must have taken place.  Nobody calls me that
early; everybody knows I stay up late.  I do my best thinking at
night and, consequently, don't usually crawl out of bed before
mid-morning at the earliest.  As it turned out, my assumption was
half-right.  There had been a disaster all right.  It just hadn't
happened in my family.
     I could barely recognize the voice of Nerline Waddell.  She
was one of the older people to whom I delivered lunch six days a
week as part of the Wise County Meals-on-Wheels program.  I'd
volunteered because I had time on my hands; I was taking a sabba-
tical while attempting to marshal my thoughts for the big PhD
push.  And knowing that I had those mouths to feed was the per-
fect incentive to get me going; otherwise, I might sleep 'til dusk.
     Nerline wasn't on my list for that day.  Her eleven-year-old
granddaughter was visiting from Houston and helping out with
chores.  I could barely make out her saying something about that
child, Rachel.
     "She's not here, Becca."
     "What do you mean, she's not there?"  I couldn't imagine
what Nerline was talking about.
     "When I got up this morning, Rachel wasn't in her bed.  She
wasn't *any*where; I've looked *every*where."  Nerline made a
sound which was both a sob and a cry of fear.
     There weren't that many places for her to look.  Nerline
lived in a double-wide trailer on an isolated ranch about six
miles outside of town.  If she couldn't find Rachel in those
cramped quarters, the child was undoubtedly gone.
     "Will you come help me?" Nerline asked.  "Maybe she went for
a walk or something, and got lost."  She herself couldn't possi-
bly search the surrounding acreage; Nerline was on a walker and
her angina had recently flared up.
     "Sure.  I'll be right there."  I threw on blue jeans and a
T-shirt, slid my feet into moccasins and headed out the door.
     As I sped down Farm-to-Market Road 718, I thought about all
the pictures of Rachel I'd seen, all the stories I'd been told
about Nerline's bright, loving granddaughter.  Rachel was a city
kid who looked forward all year to spending spring break with her
grandmother in Dawn, Texas.  Although I was more realistic about
the charms of Dawn, I could understand Rachel's feelings for the
Waddell place.  Once a working ranch, the livestock had long
since been sold off, and the ancestral home allowed to crumble.
Still it was magical out there.  Last spring I had taken numerous
pictures of the archetypal Texas landscape outside the double-
wide: bluebonnets and Indian blanket and scraggly mesquite trees.
I'd even snapped a few of the trailer itself; it was probably the
only one in Texas to boast multiple windowboxes.
     Nerline had told me that Rachel loved wildflowers, but that
she was most interested in the wildlife which abounded on the
property, in the deer and hawks and armadillos.  During the
drive, I kept repeating to myself that the child must have simply
gone out early to catch a glimpse of the herd of white-tail deer
which often grazed not far from the trailer.  Her grandmother had
probably taught her, as she'd once taught me, that deer were most
active in the early morning.
     But I couldn't find Rachel either.  While Nerline waited,
frantic and fearful, I ran all over the area nearest the trailer,
calling her name.  There was no answer.  Despite my mounting
terror, I refused to believe that anything really bad could have
happened to her.  Rachel had strayed too far to make her way
back, or had fallen and hurt herself in some minor way.  She was
temporarily unconscious or had lost her voice.  Those were the
very worst-case scenarios I would allow myself to conjure up.
Rachel couldn't be badly injured, or dead; she couldn't have been
*taken*.
     When I came back, we contacted the police.  Nerline had
become even less coherent, so I had to make the call.  The dis-
patcher promised to send an officer right away.  We had a fifty-
fifty chance that it would be somebody I liked.  Jimmy Alcorn, a
guy I'd gone to high school with, was a deputy, and I hoped he
would catch the call.  But we got Kenny Harper instead.  Nerline
adored Kenny; only the day before he'd delivered a load of gro-
ceries out to the trailer and done some minor repairs for her.
So I never let on that I thought the dude was a stone jerk.
Kenny hadn't done anything overt to deserve that harsh judgment;
instead it was a primal, subconscious, pre-verbal thing--the guy
just gave me the creeps.
     I wanted Kenny to call the station immediately and get an
organized search underway.  But he insisted on looking around
himself.  After a while, I had to leave in order to make my
Meals-on-Wheels rounds, but I raced back to the Waddell place as
soon as I was through.  Still no Rachel.
     Eventually the whole police force did get into the act, and
the ranch was thoroughly searched.  Nerline had to be evacuated
to a friend's house in town; yellow tape had gone up all around
the double-wide--it officially became a crime scene.  Her daugh-
ter, Rachel's mother, arrived from Houston, but grief cut her off
from Nerline.  By default I became the older woman's confidante,
taking calls from her at all hours, visiting frequently while the
nightmare played itself out.
     There was no sign of the child; no clues; no ransom note; no
whispered phone call; no body.  And so, after forty-eight hours
had passed, the FBI showed up.
     I didn't like the special agents.  Their behavior was a lit-
tle too steroidal for me.  They used cellulars even when there
was a regular phone close at hand, and never merely *talked* into
the receiver, but barked.  I was also annoyed by their permanent
air of self-satisfaction.  The agents were always polite, if
somewhat condescending.  But you could tell that they virtually
defined themselves as differing from the yokels of Dawn, Texas.
Our police methods were hopelessly antiquated; our way of life
laughably unsophisticated; our collective IQ infinitely inferior;
our fashion sense nowhere near as good.  The manifestation of
this attitude which bugged me most was the air of discomfiture
which seemed to come over each agent whenever he or she had to
step inside Nerline's trailer.  It wasn't so much that they felt
out of place in a double-wide--that reaction was utterly predict-
able.  What bothered me was that they appeared to be mentally
congratulating themselves for feeling that way.
     But of course having the FBI on the scene did have its ad-
vantages.  They got the case featured on _America's Most Wanted_
and the grid-by-grid search they mounted of the Dawn countryside,
in which practically the whole town participated, was a marvel of
efficiency and organization.
     I don't know whether I was ever a real suspect in Rachel's
disappearance, but I was interviewed four times, and finger-
printed twice--the FBI didn't trust the PD's results.  But then
even Nerline's interrogation was conducted with a certain hostile
edge.  I thought it was ludicrous for them to doubt her version
of the events.  Not only was it inconceivable that she would have
had a motive for killing her beloved grandchild, there was also
the undeniable fact that the woman was on a walker, for cryin'
out loud.  But the FBI agents had zeroed in on Nerline's conten-
tion that she'd fallen asleep on the couch in the trailer's tiny
living area.  Admittedly, that could be seen as suspicious.  She
herself had told the special agents what everyone in town already
knew: she'd suffered from terrible insomnia ever since the death
of her husband some years before.  They found it strange both
that Nerline could have fallen asleep relatively easily--she
claimed to have been snoring by ten--and that she'd *stayed*
asleep while a kidnapper had passed by that couch at least twice-
-and once with a struggling child in tow.  Yet that was the sin-
gle viable abduction scenario.  The front door--not four feet
from the couch--was the only point of entrance which was found
unlocked; all other windows and doors were still bolted from the
inside.  According to Nerline, she had pushed in the button on
the doorknob lock the night before, but it could have been easily
loided without leaving any traces.
     In the end, Nerline was cleared.  And I too was dropped from
the suspect list.  While the FBI remained publicly intent on
finding a kidnapper, I knew, from eavesdropping on some inter-
agent conversations, that they were beginning to lean toward the
theory that Rachel had run away from home.  Which was almost as
ridiculous as the idea of Nerline killing her and somehow dispos-
ing of the body.

     One day, about a week after Rachel disappeared, I started
hearing the special agents talk about two different people: a
nutcase called Spooky, and a genius named Mulder.  Jimmy Alcorn,
who fed me some inside information every now and then, was the
one who straightened me out, advising me that they were one and
the same person.  "Do you remember the Amber Loudermilk case?" he
asked.  The two of us were sitting in my house; he had come by to
ask me how Nerline was doing, and I'd made a pot of coffee.
     "Sure," I said.  A couple of years before, a high school
senior had vanished from her home in Dawn one night.  The author-
ities had had nothing to go on; it was if the teenager had
dropped off the face of the earth.  After a massive manhunt
yielded no sign of her, the Loudermilk file had been closed, and
Amber pretty much written off as a runaway.
     "This guy, Mulder, was called in on that case," Jimmy said.
"He was certain that Amber had been abducted.  He wrote a whole
profile of the kidnapper and everything, but the FBI wouldn't
release it.  They told us that it was useless.  Which was weird,
because we'd heard that Mulder was the best profiler they had,
that he could think his way inside the mind of any criminal and
then tell you which side he parted his hair on and what size
shoes he wore."  Jimmy paused to take a sip of coffee.  "We got
aholt of the profile anyway."
     "You did?  Did you find out why the FBI didn't want it re-
leased?" I asked.
     "Yeah, because in the profile Mulder said two things they
didn't like.  He said that Amber's kidnapping was the first in a
series of offenses, and that the perpetrator was a respected mem-
ber of the community.  The FBI refused to believe it, and so did
the chief."  Jimmy's boss was Bunker Welles, a notoriously hard-
headed lawman who would have little use for such high-falutin'
techniques as FBI profiles.  I wasn't crazy about Bunker either,
and not just because he was Kenny Harper's father-in-law.  "The
FBI guys said that Mulder had no way of knowing those things, and
that making them public would cause people to panic.  So they
ignored the profile and agreed with Bunker when he decided that
Amber had run away.  Of course, now they're reconsidering.  Ap-
parently, Mulder no longer works for Behavioral Science--he
doesn't write profiles anymore.  But they're calling him in on
this one."

Continued in Part Two

===========================================================================

From: mariatex@delphi.com
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: NEW: "Dawn, Texas" 2/3
Date: Thu, 7 DEC 95 00:50:06 -0500
 

See Part One for disclaimers

Dawn, Texas
by mariatex@delphi.com
Part Two of Three

     I was at the trailer when Mulder arrived; he had specifical-
ly requested my presence as well as Nerline's, and he wanted to
look around the crime scene.  I was pretty nervous about this
meeting; while I'd been cleared by the run-of-the-mill agents,
the hotshot might have me pegged as a likely suspect.
     I had pictured Mulder as resembling the other special
agents, but times two--louder, brusquer, more sure of himself.
He would be a bullish-looking guy in a double-breasted suit and a
power tie who carried some kind of equipment, or at least a
briefcase stuffed with papers.  I thought that he would brake his
car to a squealing stop in front of the trailer, and slam through
Nerline's front door, delivering pronouncements all the way.
     But Mulder just drove up in a Taurus one afternoon and, emp-
ty-handed, knocked very diffidently on the trailer door.  Tall,
pale and slender, he looked like nobody I'd ever seen in my life.
There was something Slavic--maybe even Tartar--about Mulder's
high cheekbones, prominent nose and kind of hooded eyes.  At the
same time, he had a little boy's mouth with a voluptuous lower
lip, and a barely cleft chin.  Maybe because all his features
were gently rounded, these otherwise dissonant elements somehow
conspired together to create a uniquely beautiful composition; I
couldn't take my eyes off him.
     The second thing I noticed about this Mulder was that he
displayed none of the trailer-home unease which I'd observed in
the other agents, although he was wearing an even better (single-
breasted) suit, the sartorial effect of which was somewhat
spoiled by a decidedly non-power tie.  I could tell that he
didn't subscribe to the cliches about mobile homes which made the
other agents uncomfortable--I had a feeling that he didn't sub-
scribe to cliches about anything.  Later on, I discovered that
Mulder's disinclination to make snap judgments, to entertain
preconceived notions, to take things at face value was one of the
qualities which made him such a gifted investigator.  But back
then I was mostly struck by the perception that, even in an
expensive suit, he didn't look out of place in the double-wide.
In fact, I couldn't imagine Mulder looking out of place anywhere.
     The reaction of the special agents to the newcomer interest-
ed me.  He was treated with a strange combination of dismissal
and respect, fear and awe.  Interestingly, Mulder seemed com-
pletely unfazed by their mixed emotions.  Nothing anyone said or
did bothered him; he remained preternaturally composed.  At first
I thought it was because he didn't notice the intermittent
sarcasm, the occasional sidelong look; however, as I was also to
discover, it was unlikely that anything ever escaped Mulder's
highly observant notice.  So this wary attitude must have repre-
sented the usual reception; he didn't respond because he was used
to it.
     The agents soon crowded around him, barking out the latest
developments--all of which were terribly discouraging.  They were
still going strong when Mulder gestured for them to hold off for
a moment.  Then he came over to where Nerline, lost in grief, was
sitting on the couch next to me.  Mulder hunkered down in front
of her.  "Mrs Waddell?" he asked.  She finally focused on him.
"I'm Fox Mulder," he said, reaching out, not to shake, but merely
clasp her hand.  His voice was an elegantly dispassionate mono-
tone, a husky, secretive tenor.  "I was very sorry to hear about
what happened to Rachel.  I want you to know that I'll do every-
thing I can to find her."  Staring at him, almost shocked by his
concern, Nerline patted Mulder's hand.  It was the first personal
gesture she had directed at a member of the FBI.
     The hotshot did shake my hand.  "Becca," he said.  "How are
you doing?"
     Now that I got a close-up look at him, I saw that Fox Mulder
had translucent hazel eyes, and a direct, piercing gaze; I had
the feeling I was being recorded, evaluated, filed away.  After
having looked at me like that, Mulder could undoubtedly have
described me down to the shape of my earlobes--and accurately
predicted what I would do in a hypothetical situation ten times
out of ten.
     "Well, I guess we're doing OK, Agent Mulder," I replied.
     "Just Mulder," he corrected me, rising gracefully.  "That's
good.  We'll talk later."
     I had already lost all my nervousness about being inter-
viewed by this guy.  He would know the truth; he would find
Rachel.
     When Mulder finally turned back to his colleagues, they all
began babbling about the case again.  I winced to think that Ner-
line was going to have to hear that stuff.  Apparently, Mulder
did too.  Beckoning to the crowd, he led them outdoors where the
briefing could continue out of her hearing.
     I could see him out the window, listening with that extraor-
dinary self-possession.  His whole being appeared tightly con-
tained; it was as if Mulder was deliberately repressing himself
so that the readings he was constantly taking of his environment
would be untainted by any traces of his own personality.
     After a few minutes, the agents trooped back into the trail-
er.  Mulder asked if he could speak with me for a moment.
     I expected to be quizzed me while sitting there on the
couch, but instead he suggested, "Why don't we go into Mrs Wad-
dell's room?"  I followed as he made his way unhesitatingly to
Nerline's door.  That puzzled me.  "How did you know where her
bedroom was?" I asked him after the door was closed.  There
weren't that many possibilities, but Mulder had unerringly chosen
the right doorway.
     "Someone sketched the layout of the trailer and included it
in the field reports," he said.  "I read them on the flight to
Dallas."
     I sat down on the edge of Nerline's bed; Mulder sank into a
rocking chair just opposite.  He then regarded me with a look so
keen that it amounted to scrutiny.  For a second there, I experi-
enced a kind of double vision.  I saw myself as Mulder was seeing
me.  Late twenties, tall and thin--in the least glamorous way
imaginable--hopefully intelligent-looking but, like my fellow-
citizens, lacking a certain sophistication.  After watching me
defend a thesis in front of most of the physics faculty at Cal, a
friend of mine had said, "You know, Becca, even while you were
filling up that board with supersymmetry equations, one word kept
going through my brain."
     I steeled myself to be called a nerd, but Bobby surprised
me.  "Hick," he said.
     Since he himself hailed from Alpharetta, Georgia, I got over
Bobby's remark.  But now, for all my positive vibes about Mulder,
I wondered if the same word was echoing in his mind.
     After four sessions with the special agents, I considered
myself something of an expert on FBI interrogation techniques.  I
prepared to start at the beginning with the early-morning phone
call.
     But Mulder surprised me.  "Morphic resonance, huh?" were the
first words out of his mouth.  "I assume you've studied Rupert
Sheldrake?"
     Not one of the other special agents had done more than jot
down the subject for my upcoming dissertation.  "I've studied
*with* Sheldrake," I told Mulder with some pride.  "I just got
back from two years in England."
     "Where?" he asked.
     "Cambridge."
     Mulder smiled and indicated himself.  "Oxford," he said.
     Turned out he was a Rhodes scholar who'd gotten a PhD in
psychology at Magdalen College.  We talked about the expatriate
life for a while, and then discussed Sheldrake's theories.  I
told Mulder that I was looking to develop a mathematical model
for morphic resonance on a quantum level.  "You'll have to send
me a copy," he said.  "My partner would be interested too.  She's
a medical doctor, but she got her undergraduate degree in phys-
ics."
     "If I ever finish it," I laughed ruefully.  "It's going to
be tough."  I explained to him how I was taking the semester off
in order to gather my strength for the academic marathon ahead.
"But I'm already working on it in an informal way," I said.  "And
I've got a couple of other projects going as well."  I used the
Meals-on-Wheels thing, I said, as a way of getting myself up in
the morning after a night of staring at a computer screen.
     "And you and Nerline came to be friends?" he asked.
     "She's a great lady," I told him.  So often while listening
to the special agents speak to her patronizingly, I'd felt the
urge to interrupt and persuade them how special Nerline was.  Now
I finally had the chance.  Although Mulder had treated her with
the utmost deference, he was the one who had to hear my impas-
sioned defense of her.  I told him that Nerline was the last of a
vanishing breed: the staunch Texas ranchwoman.  In her glory
days, she'd killed rattlesnakes inside the house with brooms; she
had branded cattle all day and tatted lace all night.
     "I could tell that she was a woman of real character,"
Mulder said.  I thought about the hazel X-ray and didn't doubt
him a bit.  "What was she like that morning?" he asked.
     I gave Mulder the standard recounting of what had happened,
stopping after the part about calling the police.  That was where
all my previous recitations had ended.
     "What happened next?" Mulder prompted me.
     Nobody had asked me about anything past that point.  Sur-
prised, I said, "That deputy, Ken Harper, showed up."
     "You don't like him," Mulder said instantly.
     I didn't say anything, but just stared at him.  I wouldn't
have thought that there had been any hint in my voice about my
feelings for Kenny, and yet Mulder had correctly deduced that he
was hardly my favorite person in the world.
     "No, I don't," I said.
     "Why not?"
     After thinking it over, I had to shrug helplessly.  "He's
just a jerk."
     "Give me an example," Mulder prompted again.
     I sighed.  "Like when he showed up that morning," I said.
"He went outside to search for Rachel even though I told him I'd
already done that--I wanted him to get on the phone or the radio
and call for help.  And when he came back inside, he *still*
wouldn't call the station!"
     "What did he do instead?"
     "He looked around Rachel's room.  He was in there forever
with the door closed.  I don't what he expected to find--maybe he
thought she was hiding under the bed.  I'd told him that I al-
ready looked in there too."
     "You had?"
     "Yes, but he kept asking questions about it anyway."
     "What kind of questions?"
     I took a moment to marvel at how much more information Mul-
der was getting out of me than all the other special agents com-
bined.  Then I had to concentrate.  "Before Kenny went in there,
he asked Nerline and me whether the window in Rachel's room was
locked."  I had been staring off into space, but now I glanced at
Mulder and spoke apologetically.  "Neither of us had checked it.
I mean, we just weren't thinking in those terms."
     Mulder waved aside my regret.  "Understandable," he said.
"Did he ask you anything else?"
     I thought back again.  "Yeah.  The day before, when Kenny
had brought the groceries over, he'd seen these stuffed animals
up on the window sill in Rachel's room.  Apparently, she had ar-
ranged a few of her toys..."  I choked up.  The thought of poor
little Rachel setting up her playmates on the sill...  Tears be-
gan coursing down my face.  Embarrassed, I wiped them away, and
said, "I'm sorry.  I shouldn't..."
     Mulder interrupted rather forcefully.  "No, you should," he
countered, taking out a handkerchief and passing it to me.  It
was snowy-white linen, and scented with a fragrance which was
half the stinging sweetness of some killer aftershave and half
just the smoky musk of him.  After drying my eyes, I tried to
hand it back, but Mulder wouldn't let me.  "When something like
this happens, Becca, it's the saddest thing in the world,"  he
said, locking on me with the penetrating gaze.  "Don't apologize
for realizing that."  He looked as crisp and professional as
ever, but I was struck by the expression of haunted desolation in
his eyes.  On some level, Mulder was as emotional as me, as emo-
tional as anyone about Rachel.  I began to wonder if that wasn't
another factor which made the inhuman composure necessary.  If
Mulder ever relaxed his control, he might not be able to stop
feeling.  He would feel my pain, Nerline's pain, everyone's pain.
     He let me sit there for a moment, getting myself together.
I tried hard to remember where I'd left off; I knew Mulder would
regret it if he had to resume the interrogation.  "Well, anyway,"
I finally said, "Kenny asked us if we'd noticed whether the toys
were still there."
     "Had you?"
     I shook my head.  "Nerline hadn't noticed either--she said
so."
     At that moment, I became aware of a strange phenomenon.
Mulder had appeared to be focused on what I was saying to the
point of self-hypnosis.  But now, incredibly, his intensity level
actually increased.  I thought back to that morning, determined
to remember everything, to give Mulder as many clues as possible,
to help him all I could.
     "Oh, yeah--this was the last straw--I came back from helping
Nerline to the bathroom one time and found that fool having
himself a snack in her kitchen!"
     Wow.  The intensity ratcheted up yet another notch.  Mulder
didn't even have to ask for details; I rushed to explain.  "The
milk.  In the refrigerator.  He poured himself a glass of it, but
only took a sip.  It was bad, and so he just went ahead and
emptied the bottle down the drain."
     "What did he do with the bottle?"
     I wasn't prepared for that question but, luckily, I knew the
answer.  "Well, that's another thing.  Kenny threw it in the
trash.  When I told him that Nerline recycled, he laughed like
that was some big joke, like only stupid people thought it would
do any good.  That made me mad, so I got up, took the bottle out
of his hand, and put it in the recycling bin.  But afterwards I
found it in the trash again.  He must have stuck the bottle back
in there when I wasn't looking!  What a jerk!"
     I was preoccupied with an aggrieved contemplation of Har-
per's unworthiness, and barely heard Mulder's next query.  "Did
you leave it there?"
     "What, the bottle?" I had to ask.
     "Yes."
     "No, of course not.  As soon as his back was turned, I put
it back in the bin.  The bottle's at my house now.  I emptied all
Nerline's recyclables the other day.  I was over here, checking
up on things, and I decided to add hers to mine and drop both
loads off at the recycling center when I got a chance.  I asked
one of the agents about it, and they said it would be OK."
     I watched, fascinated, as Mulder pondered this information.
I've known some high-caliber thinkers in my day; when your area
of study is theoretical physics, you inevitably get to witness a
lot of first-class mentation.  But I never saw anybody think like
Fox Mulder.  Having input all this data, his wetware was now
going to work, calculating, analyzing, formulating, saving.  I
could almost hear his brain hum.
     "Would you mind waiting a moment?" he asked politely at the
conclusion of that process.  When he got up from the rocker, I
noticed again how graceful he was.  There was nothing showy about
how he moved; it was just that all his actions had a pleasing,
no-wasted-motion efficiency.  His mind worked the same way, I
thought to myself.
     Mulder opened the bedroom door and called out to the living
room.  "Archer, would you come in here, please?"  One of the less
obnoxious agents, a woman, joined us.  She had never been all
that much nicer to me than the others, but I had sometimes gotten
the impression that she was as fed up as I was with their testos-
terone-fueled behavior.
     "Becca, have you met Special Agent Melinda Archer?"
     "Not really," I said.  I had talked to her before, but the
amenities had never been observed.  Archer now shook my hand.
     Mulder aimed all that eye-contact at her.  "I think that
Becca has a piece of evidence back at her house which might turn
out to be very important."  He started to go on, but Archer had
to break in.  "There's evidence?" she asked incredulously.
     "Yes," Mulder said.
     "Do you have a suspect?"
     "Yes," he repeated.
     "Who?" she demanded.  Archer's tone was belligerent; I could
tell that she would quibble with whoever Mulder came up with.
     He refused to give her the satisfaction.  Instead, he simply
said, "Let's just say that I stand behind my profile."
     "You've written a profile already?  I haven't seen it.  If
you've--"
     "The profile I wrote after the first offense by this perpe-
trator."  Mulder's voice was perfectly even, but he was making
his points.
     "The Loudermilk case?  Mulder, that was--"
     He cut in.  "Do you--or any other member of the team--have
an alternate hypothesis?"
     Charitably, Mulder did not force Archer to answer that ques-
tion.  He just said in his mild voice, "Well then, let's proceed
on the off chance I'm right."
     "Who is it?" Archer wouldn't let the question drop.
     "Our best suspect at this time is Kenny Harper."
     Archer's mouth dropped open.  "The deputy?  Come on, Mulder!
What are you basing this on?"
     "The statement I just took from Ms Jones."
     Archer herself had taken a brief statement from me.  But, as
I'd already noted, she hadn't asked me about anything which might
have happened after Kenny had shown up.
     Mulder let Archer off the hook again.  "I think Harper
entered the trailer through Rachel's window that night and--"
     "Mulder!"  Archer kept having to interrupt.  She still
couldn't believe what she was hearing.  "That window was locked
from the inside, and the victim's toys were arranged on the
sill."
     At this point, Mulder must have realized that words were
never going to be enough to convince Archer.  And so, instead of
answering that challenge verbally, he got up and left the room.
After exchanging glances, Archer and I followed.  Without any
hesitation, Mulder walked straight into Rachel's room and up to
the window in question.  Ranged across the sill were the oft-
mentioned stuffed animals.  He lifted up one and showed the
underside to his fellow agent.  Standing behind the two of them,
I could see that it was very dusty.
     Archer didn't understand what Mulder was getting at.  To her
credit, she told him so.
     Nobody would have blamed him if he had become irritated at
this point; Archer's continuing lack of comprehension must have
been terribly frustrating.  But when Mulder went about enlighten-
ing her, I heard in his voice the implacable patience which
brilliant people almost always display in dealing with the less
intelligent.  Whenever I hear some so-called genius complaining
about the slow-wittedness of a mere mortal, I immediately revise
downward my estimate of his IQ score.  Real geniuses never get
exasperated like that; the difference between the way they think
and the mental fumblings of other people is like background
music, like white noise to them.  After about age six, the truly
brainy don't even notice it anymore.
     "Harper had planned to make his entry through the front
door.  But he found Mrs Waddell asleep on the couch.  That
changed everything.  Harper was forced to use the window in Ra-
chel's room instead.  Of course, by entering that way, he scat-
tered the--"
     This time Archer wasn't challenging Mulder, just looking for
confirmation.
     "But how did he get the window open?  There's no evidence
that it was forced."
     "It probably never *was* locked.  Mrs Waddell said, in her
first interview with Miller, that she didn't believe it was."  No
one in the FBI had taken that contention seriously; I'd heard
Miller explain it away by saying that Nerline was getting forget-
ful in her old age.
     Mulder continued.  "After Becca called the police, Harper
came here and rearranged the crime scene.  First he went outside
and obliterated all evidence of his coming and going the night
before.  Then he closed himself off in this room, refastened the
window, wiped the sill, and replaced the toys.  But he didn't
think to clean them off--they were dusty because the sill had
been dusty."
     Archer appeared to be very tense as she thought it over.
"But what if Becca or Mrs Waddell *had* checked it out?"
     Mulder shrugged.  "Harper wouldn't have been much worse off-
-he still could have gotten rid of any incriminating fingerprints
and footprints.  The only real difference is that we would have
wasted less time on the hypothesis that Rachel had left volun-
tarily."  Mulder's use of the first-person plural in that last
sentence was another charitable gesture.  Clearly, he had never
entertained that notion.  "And you have to remember, Kenny had
*two* nasty surprises.  The second one was finding Becca here the
next morning.  If it had been only Mrs Waddell, he could have
finessed the evidence much more easily."
     At this point, Archer capitulated.  And, when she did, her
whole manner changed.  It seemed as if by agreeing with Mulder,
she was resigning from the official FBI team.  It also seemed as
if, for all her previous displays of resistance, she was relieved
to do so.  "OK, Mulder, you're right.  As always, you're right.
What do you want me to do?"
     "I would like to go to Becca's house in order to examine the
evidence I mentioned, but I don't want to leave here with her.  I
think there's a good possibility that we're being watched.  Would
you please accompany her?"
     "Sure."
     "I'll wait a moment," Mulder said,  "and then leave myself.
I should be able to tell if anyone tries to follow you.  I'll
call you in that case."
     Archer nodded.  "Do you need my cellular number?"
     "Has it changed?"
     "No."
     "I have it," he said, before giving his number to her.
     Mulder turned back to me.  "How do you get to your house
from here?" he asked.
     "It's kind of complicated," I said.  "Let me get a piece of
paper, and a pen.  I'll write it--"
     Mulder interrupted.  "Just tell me," he said.
     "But--"
     "I'll remember."
     I started to protest, but there was something quite inargu-
able about that last statement.  So I relayed the instructions
verbally.
     Mulder listened to the lengthy directions, and then nodded
once.  "OK, you two go now, and I'll leave shortly."

Concluded in Part Three

===========================================================================

From: mariatex@delphi.com
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: NEW: "Dawn, Texas" 3/3
Date: Thu, 7 DEC 95 00:52:40 -0500
 

See Part One for disclaimers

Dawn, Texas
by mariatex@delphi.com
Part Three of Three

     As soon as we were underway, Archer gave out with a big
sigh.  Then, in what seemed like an act of rebellion, she wrig-
gled out of her suit jacket, pulled her shirttail out and loos-
ened the little tie-like thing she'd been wearing around her
neck.  "Becca," she said, and there was nothing officious-sound-
ing about her voice now; this was a person-to-person conversa-
tion, not Bureau-speak.  "I have a question to ask you, and I
don't ask it lightly.  Please believe me when I say that I com-
pletely respect your right to decline."
     I couldn't imagine what she was going to request.
     "Would you mind if I smoked?"
     I almost laughed out loud.  "Go ahead," I said.
     Archer fished an exceedingly crumpled pack out of her purse.
After lighting a cigarette and taking a deep drag, she sighed
loudly again and settled back in her seat.
     "OK, Becca, tell me.  What do you have at your house that
got Mulder so excited?"
     "That was excited?" I had to ask.
     "For Mulder, yes."
     "Some recyclable trash I took out of Nerline's trailer."  I
was reluctant to say more; after all, Mulder had not given Archer
that information.
     "Why do they call him Spooky?" I asked, partly to distract
her, partly because I was dying to know.
     Archer hesitated for a long moment before saying, "Because
he *is* spooky.  Mulder just *knows* things.  You notice I didn't
ask him how he could be so sure that those toys would be dusty on
the bottom.  He never has a very good answer for questions like
that."
     Warming to her subject, Archer continued.  "Mulder used to
scare people to death when he was working for Behavioral Science.
He could write a profile that read like a perp's biography.  When
he first started, there were some old diehards who thought of
Mulder as a flake who got lucky a few times.  Not many people
think that anymore.  Now half the Bureau wonders if Mulder isn't
psychic--or at least channeling the ghost of some dead stool
pigeon.  The other half believes that he's just smarter than any
human being has a right to be."
     "Which do *you* think it is?" I asked.
     Archer thought that one over.  "Well, Mulder is definitely
the smartest person I've ever met.  About three years ago, the
two of us were on a stakeout together--night after night sitting
in his Taurus, waiting for a suspect to leave his apartment and
do something, *any*thing.  We talked a lot while we were waiting.
It became a kind of game with me to find some topic that Mulder
didn't know anything about.  I never found one.  After he did
forty minutes on Polynesian sponge-diving traditions, I gave up.
>From then on, I read and Mulder did crossword puzzles.  I'd never
seen a genius do a crossword puzzle before."  Her voice trailed
off in wonderment.
     "Did he do them in ink?" I asked.
     "In his *head*," Archer said.  "After staring at a puzzle
for fifteen minutes, he would take a pen and fill it all in with-
out any hesitation."  She paused for a moment.  "But I can't rule
out the psychic thing either.  The reason we were staking out
that particular location was because of a typical Mulder stunt.
We were looking for a guy who had killed six prostitutes in the
DC area over the previous year.  There had been a potential break
in the case--a john had assaulted this one hooker, but she'd
escaped when a prowl car came around the corner.  We were betting
that it was the killer who'd attacked her.  The woman came in for
a line-up that was a long shot--it had been dark, he'd come at
her from behind.  Sure enough, the victim couldn't identify
anybody.  But *Mulder* could.  He stared at the line-up for a
minute, and then announced that it was number 3.  The DC cops
thought he was nuts, but Mulder's boss, Reggie Pardue, insisted
that we follow up.  The night after the sponge-diving lecture,
Mulder's suspect left the flophouse we were staking out and
headed for Dupont Circle.  The two of us apprehended him just as
he attempted to stab to death his seventh victim."  She kind of
shook herself.  "Spooky."
     Mostly just to fill the silence which followed, I said, "I
hope Mulder makes it to my house."  The directions I'd given him
were very complicated.  Archer told me not to worry.  "On top of
everything else, Mulder has a photographic memory--he can remem-
ber anything.  You know how he didn't need my phone number?  I
gave it to him when we were assigned to that case.  He used it
once back then, and never since, but he's still got it memorized.
I heard that during a disciplinary meeting not long ago, Mulder
quoted two full pages of the FBI Code of Conduct verbatim in
order to prove that he hadn't violated it."
     We turned onto the dirt road that led to my house.  I let us
in and offered Archer some ice tea.  She gratefully accepted, and
while I was pouring two glasses, Mulder drove up.  I met him at
the door.  His first question was, "Where is it?"  His second was
"Can I have some of that tea, please?"
     After handing him a glass, I led Mulder over to the utility
room and pointed to a large brown-paper grocery bag.  "In there,"
I said.
     Mulder took a gulp before pulling a rubber glove out of his
pocket.  "What brand?" he asked while carefully poking through
the trash.  I tried to visualize the label.  "TopMost," I finally
said.
     Mulder found the bottle, lifted it out and sniffed at the
contents.
     "OK, Mulder, are you going to tell me about this now?"
Archer pleaded.
     He repeated for her what I had told him about Kenny and the
spoiled milk.  "He brought groceries for Mrs Waddell the night
before.  He must have known that she had a big glass of milk
right before she went to bed--it was a substitute for drugs to
help her insomnia.  She told Miller about it during her second
interview."
     Mulder peered into the plastic bottle.  "It looks like
there's going to be enough for us to analyze.  I think that, when
we do, we're going to find trace elements of some soporific."
     "But Mrs Waddell didn't *act* drugged, did she?" Archer
asked me.
     Mulder answered.  "It's only going to be a mild dose.  Re-
member, all Harper needed was for her to fall asleep, and fall
asleep in her own bed.  He knew that Mrs Waddell was going to
experience an adrenaline surge when she discovered Rachel gone.
It would counteract any lingering after-effects from the drug."
     Archer wasn't challenging Mulder this time, just asking for
clarification.  "But why didn't he just get rid of the evidence
the night before?" she asked.  "He could have poured it down the
sink then."
     "I'm sure that's what he was planning to do.  But he could-
n't get into the kitchen--not with Mrs Waddell on the couch.  The
way it turned out, he had to sit back and wait until he got the
call."
     Archer accepted that explanation.  "What do we do now?" was
her only further question.
     "I don't want to bring this to the police station.  The
local law is bound to be skeptical--isn't Harper married to Chief
Welles's daughter?"  Mulder looked at me, and I nodded.  "It
would also give him access to the evidence."  Again, to me, "Do
you know anyone on the force personally?"
     I nodded.  "Jimmy Alcorn, the other deputy.  I went to high
school with him."
     "Do you trust him?"
     I was flattered to have my opinion so earnestly solicited.
"Yes, implicitly."
     "Would you call him for me?"
     I nodded.  "Sure."
     "See if he's on duty.  Don't let them get him for you on the
radio--Harper is likely to be listening.  If Alcorn's there, ask
him to stop by your house.  Just say that you have something
funny to show him."
     Mulder pulled out his cellular and dialed a number from
memory.  After handing the phone over to me, he noticed that I
was staring at him.  "It was in the field notes, too," he said,
smiling.  He had read my mind again; I'd been wondering how he
knew the phone number for the Dawn police station.
     When the dispatcher answered, I identified myself and asked
if Jimmy was around.  "Yeah, hang on a second," she said.
     I read through the script Mulder had outlined.  Jimmy
obliged, showing up about fifteen minutes later.  He was under-
standably surprised to find two FBI agents there, and really
shocked when Mulder briefed him on his theory.  "I don't know,"
Jimmy said.  "I don't like the guy, but..."
     "I'm not asking you to believe me," Mulder said with a wry
smile.  "I'm used to people not believing me.  I just need your
permission to try and prove it outside Welles's jurisdiction.
I'm afraid that Harper will try to tamper with the evidence if we
bring it there.  Also, it might tip him off--and I don't want him
to run."
     I doubt if Jimmy really had all that much choice in the
matter.  Since Mulder had come up with this evidence on his own,
he probably could have processed it without the knowledge--much
less the permission--of anyone from the Dawn PD.  But by asking
Jimmy, Mulder was not only deferring politely to the local au-
thorities, he was making an ally on the force.
     When Jimmy assented, Mulder got on the phone, arranging for
a plastic milk bottle to be conveyed to Washington.  He also
pulled yet another phone number out of his memory; Jimmy was to
transmit a copy of Harper's fingerprints to an FBI fax line in
DC.
     Mulder had already come much further than anyone would have
believed possible.  But there was more.  "One other thing," Mul-
der said.  "I'd like to see any records you may have on the two
searches for Rachel."
     I was the one who asked, "Why?"
     Archer spoke up, in effect translating for Mulder.  "The
records may show that Harper searched the same area each time.
If they do, we'll want to take a look there."
     Mulder's oddly handsome face was so expressive that it took
just the slightest flicker of his features for us all to know
that he appreciated Archer's quick grasp of the situation.  "And,
if possible, I'd like to look at what you have on another
search."  He paused and then said, "I want to know where Harper
looked for Amber Loudermilk."

     Jimmy told me what happened after that.  The residue in the
milk bottle was analyzed and confirmed to contain a sedative, lo-
razepam.  Furthermore, as Mulder had assumed, Harper alone had
searched a rugged, brushy quadrant a half-mile south-southeast of
the trailer.  There they found Rachel.  Eventually, they found
Amber too, although most of her bones had long since been scat-
tered by the wind--and by coyotes.  On examining the site, Mulder
found evidence that Harper had made regular visits there over the
intervening years.
     He was on his way to DFW, and a flight to DC, when Jimmy
reached him on the cellular.  He felt that the remaining FBI
agents were bungling the questioning of Kenny, and he wanted
advice.  Mulder turned the car around.  Back at the Dawn police
station, in a makeshift interrogation room, he went one-one-one
with the suspect.  Jimmy said to me later that the resultant con-
frontation was both scary and beautiful.  No matter how much
Kenny ranted and raved, Mulder kept repeating variations on a
single sentiment--that forgiveness was possible, but only if one
repented.  When Jimmy asked him about that tactic later on, Mul-
der said that he felt all serial killers could be divided into
two categories.  Not organized and disorganized, but proud and
ashamed.  Harper, he said, was ashamed.  That theory--like all of
Mulder's theories--was proved right.  Two hours after he joined
the interrogation, Kenny repented. And confessed.

     I saw Mulder at the trial in Dallas.  Predictably, Kenny's
court-appointed lawyer charged that the confession had been co-
erced, and so there was a trial.  I had to testify, of course.  I
was one of the first witnesses, but I stuck around later to
comfort Nerline--and see Mulder.  He was sworn in not long after
me.  The defense made a big deal out of the fact that the FBI
agent had made no notes, had kept no written records of his
investigation.  Mulder just stated calmly that it hadn't been
necessary.  Unfortunately, I could tell that the matter was of
some concern to the jury.  But only until the prosecutor took
over.  "Agent Mulder, do you happen to know the defendant's
social-security number?"  Mulder rattled it off.  "And could you
tell us his address?"  He provided that information as well.  "Do
you know his phone number?"  Mulder asked the lawyer which number
he was referring to.  "He had two--his home phone number was 214-
555-3414, and the mobile was 555-3089."  By the time the witness
had dredged up, with no apparent effort, the VIN for Kenny's
pickup, the jury was no longer worried.
     I tried to get through the crowd to speak to Mulder after he
testified, but there was a pack of reporters after him, and he
left hurriedly.  He must have followed the course of the trial
from Washington though, and therefore was undoubtedly satisfied
with the result.  The jury returned a capital murder conviction
in less than ninety minutes.  They took even less time to decide
the penalty phase.  If the state of Texas ever gets around to it,
Kenny Harper is sentenced to die by lethal injection.

     Back in Dawn, I continued to wrestle with my dissertation
topic and deliver meals to the housebound.  I often found myself
thinking about Mulder, about how his mind worked, cutting right
through everything, disregarding probability in favor of the
truth, synthesizing from tiny details nobody noticed to a theory
nobody could refute.  I was able to retain the memory of the ha-
zel laser, and the easy smoothness with which Mulder moved.  But,
after a while, to my intense disappointment, the handkerchief
ceased to remind me of him.

                           *    *    *

"This site is also well-known because of the legend that a
spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in the
crash, was buried here."

>From the historical marker erected at the Dawn cemetery in 1976
 

     About two months after the trial, I was sitting on a bench
in the cemetery, thinking not about Mulder, but about weak gravi-
tational forces.  I would often head out there when I found my-
self need of inspiration.  It was quiet and peaceful, and always
a few degrees cooler than in town.  The change of scenery usually
did me good--I had experienced several breakthroughs while sit-
ting among the weathered tombstones.
     That particular afternoon, I'd left home after having
reached a sticking point on a project which had been dropped in
my lap the day before.  A friend of mine who was interning at
Livermore had transferred a file to me, nearly maxing out my hard
drive in the process.  A collider experiment recently run there
had yielded some anomalous results, and I'd been asked for my
opinion--a real coup for me.  I had until the next morning at 8
AM California time to come up with an explanation.
     After doing Meals-on-Wheels, I printed the whole thing out
on a massive greenbar and stared at it for an hour.  Nothing.  In
desperation I dragged that enormous pile of paper out to the ce-
metery, along with two oranges and a wine cooler.  I was hoping
that mental lightning would strike and jump-start my brain.
     I was still patiently waiting for inspiration when I heard a
voice behind me.  "Hello, Becca."
     I would have known that throaty murmur anywhere.  Before I'd
even turned all the way around, I was asking, "Mulder?  What are
you doing here?"
     "I came to see the famous Dawn cemetery," he said, walking
over to sit next to me.  "I meant to come by and check it out
when I was here before, but I never got the chance."
     I stared at him.  Instead of the expensive suit, Mulder was
wearing faded jeans and a navy blue T-shirt.  It didn't matter
that his attire was decidedly informal; he still appeared elegant.
The jeans were bleached to just the right color; the T-shirt had
the perfect faded patina.  Of course, with his lanky hips, perfect-
ly flat stomach and wide shoulders, Mulder could have made a
hospital gown look sexy.
     He himself looked different too.  He had more color; unlike
the pale, almost spectral figure I remembered, Mulder was posi-
tively ruddy now.  It made his eyes very green, and they seemed
to glow.  And there was a lightness, a buoyancy to him which
contrasted sharply to his previous demeanor; he wasn't so weighed
down, so serious, so concerned.  This Mulder looked to be on the
verge of a joke, or at least some dry witticism.
     I couldn't really believe that he was sitting there.  Until
the scent of him drifted over, and then I knew for sure that it
was Mulder.  He smelled just like the handkerchief.  I squirmed
at the thought of that sacred relic.  It happened to be at the
bottom of the L L Bean bag I had used to transport all my stuff
out to the cemetery.  I could only hope Mulder didn't get a
glimpse.
     "How do you know about this place?" I asked, but there was
no response.  Mulder had just realized that we were not far from
Rachel's grave.  He walked off to stand over it for a minute, and
then half-knelt in order to get a good look at the simple stone
marker.  When Mulder finally rose with that characteristic grace,
I got the sense that he had come to terms with something.  "I
didn't know Rachel was buried here," he said, sitting back down.
"I would have thought she'd be back in Houston."
     I shrugged.  "Both her parents are from Dawn," I told him.
"That's her grandfather over there--this is the family resting
place."  I indicated the daisies propped up against both head-
stones.  "Nerline brought the flowers--I take her out here once a
week.  It's still hard for her."
     "I can imagine," he said and his voice had an empathic reso-
nance.  "But it could be worse.  At least she knows where Rachel
is now."
     "Thanks to you," I said.
     Mulder made a dismissive gesture.  "Did you come to visit
her today?" he asked.
     "Not specifically," I answered.  "I just come out here to
clear my head sometimes when I'm working."
     Mulder hefted the greenbar and looked at me inquiringly.  I
explained about the collider experiment.  He seemed interested,
flipping through the pages.  "What's this?" he asked, pointing to
a particularly jagged series of hieroglyphics.  "The borons peel-
ing off," I said.  "Cool, huh?"
     He nodded and, without looking up from the page, spoke
again.  "My partner told me who you are."
     I stalled.  "You know who I am."
     Mulder shook his head.  "No, I thought you were Becca Jones
from Dawn, Texas who was fixin' to get her doctorate in physics."
He did a passable, if exaggerated imitation of my accent.  "But
you're..."  And now his voice deepened, and the accent turned
mid-Atlantic.  "...Rebecca Caton Jones of the Cavendish Laborato-
ry, the author of _Force Field: An Inquiry into the Universal
Nature of the Reactive Process_."
     Busted.
     I tried to make the best of it.  "Ms Jones might have writ-
ten a monograph on field theory, but I want you to know, she did
not pick out that title."
     "Scully--my partner--says that ever since she read your pa-
per, she's been trying to prove you wrong."
     "Tell her to let me know if she does.  Some of that stuff
scares me too."
     "I read it myself."  Mulder looked up from the greenbar.  As
always, the force of that gaze was breathtaking.  "I didn't even
*try* to prove you wrong.  I think you're completely validated-
-and not only by the physical evidence.  What I particularly like
about your ideas is that they're also in synch with our intuitive
grasp of things."
     I shrugged.  "That's the point, isn't it?"
     "Why are you hiding out in Dawn?"
     "I am *not* hiding out," I told him with some vehemence.  "I
was born in Dawn.  Like Rachel, I'll probably be buried here.
Where else can you share a graveyard with an extraterrestrial ex-
plorer?"
     Mulder laughed.
     "So you know the story?" I asked.
     "Yes," he said.  "In 1897, a silver ship came flashing out
of the sky, shearing off the top of somebody's windmill in the
process.  After gathering at the crash site, the residents found
a poor, strange creature dead inside the ship.  They carted him
off and gave him a good Christian burial somewhere--nobody knows
quite where--in the Dawn cemetery."
     Looking out at a sea of markers, I said, "Well, that's the
gist of it but there's more to the story than that."
     "Really?"
     "Yeah.   _The Jacksboro Bee_ had a whole article about the
incident at the time.  It's in one of those glass display cases
at the Jack County Historical Museum."
     I almost jumped when Mulder grabbed my hand.  "I'd love to
see that," he said.  "Would you take me there?"
     His hand was warm and strong.  "Sure," I said.
     "Are you hungry?" he asked.  "Maybe we can get a bite to
eat."
     "That sounds great," I managed to say, although I had re-
verted to a condition of stupefied disbelief.  This couldn't be
happening; I must have fallen asleep over the greenbar.  I would
wake up soon back at my house, with the alarm going off and my
forehead lodged against the computer keyboard.
     What the hell, I thought to myself.  Until that happens, I'm
going to go with it.
     "And while we're eating, you can explain to me the relation-
ship between electromagnetism and willpower," Mulder said.  "I
got lost a little bit there."
     He helped me gather up the greenbar, my snacks and papers;
luckily, I don't think he got a look at the handkerchief.  When
we were all ready to go, Mulder surprised me by excusing himself
and going back to stand over Rachel's grave for another moment.
He didn't say anything when he rejoined me, but as we walked to
his car, he took--and held onto--my hand.
     Mulder brought a real sense of wonder to the museum, devot-
ing the same degree of high-quality attention to both the Coman-
che artifacts and the stuffed two-headed calf.  Like me, he found
it hilarious that the *second*, not first, permanent wave machine
ever used in Jack County had been archived there back in 1929.
Unlike me, he had a reason for that aberration.  "Based on what
I've seen of the typical rural Texas hairdo," Mulder deadpanned,
"the first one is probably still in use."  Now if one of those
snobbish FBI agents had made that remark...  Because Mulder did,
I giggled uncontrollably.
     In looking over the exhibit about the nineteenth-century ET,
I noticed that he did no more than glance at the newspaper arti-
cle I'd mentioned.  But later on at Tia Maria's, prompted by me,
Mulder reluctantly recited the entire text.  We also discussed
_Force Field_ over margaritas and chile rellenos.  I described
for him the overblown reaction which had greeted my little paper.
It hadn't yet generated much controversy Stateside, but I'd al-
ready been vilified in some circles in England.  Certain hide-
bound academics, aghast that a Yank, a *girl* had turned their
precious theories inside out, were still sending me hateful
email.  Mulder made me laugh about their attitude; it was the
first time I'd ever been able to do that.
     Although he wanted us to do something tonight, Mulder under-
stood about my deadline.  He's back at the motel now, but will
pick me up tomorrow morning.  We're going to Fort Richardson-
-Mulder got interested in it after reading about the Warren Wagon
Train Raid at the museum.  I promised to show him around that
landmark and tell him all about Ranald McKenzie.  But we'll do
Meals-on-Wheels together first and then have lunch before heading
over to the fort.

     I can't wait.
 

                         The End