By Martin
fwidsvnt@ilfb.org
Rating: PG
Type of Fic: Humor/Casefile
Spoiler Warning: Arcadia
Summary: Mulder and Scully boot-scoot to Nashville, where a
possibly supernatural serial killer is stealing musical
inspiration.
Disclaimer: The X-Files, Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, and all
other X-Files related characters do not belong to me, but
belong to Chris Carter, 20th Century Fox, and 1013
Productions.
Feedback: Send feedback to fwidsvnt@ilfb.org
Clarksville, Tennessee
1:05 a.m.
Travis Keeler walked across the webworked asphalt of the
Cheatin’ Hearth Grill and Tavern, though ‘walking’ was
hardly the appropriate term for what Keeler was doing in
the ill-lit, hazy Tennessee night. His directional
perception was as flooded with beer and Jack Daniels as his
Chevy pickup’s antiquated engine so frequently was with
standard unleaded.
The walk led him on a twisted boot-scoot, as if he were
negotiating one of those mazes they used to print on the
placemats at Bob Evans to keep the rugrats quiet. He
pinballed between Chevys and Fords and bright red sports
cars that were as children to many of the Cheatin’ Hearth’s
nocturnal denizens. Travis’ “child” the only one he’d
acquired during a 13-year marriage was a gleaming teal
Silverado which received the care and nurture he withheld
from wife and home.
Travis Keeler at this moment would not have been able to
pass any Tennessee State Police field sobriety test, and a
pint of his blood likely could have ignited a Weber grill.
But his presence of mind instinctively returned when it
came to issues regarding the Silverado, and his fingers
guided the key precisely into the doorlock, carefully
avoiding the paint surrounding it.
The task of navigating the Cheatin’ Hearth lot had winded
Travis, and he slumped back in the driver’s seat for a
refreshing gasp of oxygen prior to the journey home. Don
the bartender had started crapping on him about somebody
driving him home had even offered himself, when his shift
ended. Travis told him what box to put that suggestion in;
old Don was starting to take that bullshit beer company
designated driver crap just a mite too seriously. Beer
company didn’t give a fuck about Travis Keeler, except that
he periodically piss out enough product to make room for
more, he reflected, cackling at the wit of his observation.
The crunching of gravel doppled closer to the Silverado.
Travis raised his head enough to glance in the side mirror,
but all he saw was a fleeting shadow in the parking lot’s
flickering vapor light. Likely Cal from the plumbing
supply, testing the shocks on his company van with some
not-so-sweet, not-so-young thang.
Wrong again, he thought as the driver’s door swung open
and he was propelled from the cab.
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, D.C.
Five months later
8:54 a.m.
As Scully exited the elevator, she heard an unnatural
sound.
A whining, plaintive sound, rising and falling with
crescendos of anguished anger and low, painful murmurings.
To her trained ears, the tones rang of incredible sorrow
and loss, albeit with an underpinning of rhythmic plucking
and twanging.
Country music. And it was coming from the office she
shared with Mulder. Mulder’s tastes in music didn’t
generally run toward the hills, but toward dark caverns of
alternative eccentricity. Scully grasped the door handle
with no small sense of apprehension.
“Wa-all, howdy,” Mulder called from behind his desk,
turning off the CD. “It ain’t Dana Sue Scully, purdiest Fed
this side a’ Janet Reno.”
The man in the chair opposite him craned around, an
impatient smirk on his face. He was a middle-aged Asian-
American with longish sideburns and a gray goatee, finished
out in a fawn, Western-style suit.
“He always talk to you this way?” the visitor inquired.
“The wit flows around here today, apparently, like
redeye gravy,” Scully said drily as she dropped her satchel
atop a file cabinet. “Hello, Mr….?”
“Waylon Cheng, ma’am.” He leapt to his feet as if
remembering the southern manners he’d cultivated along with
a country-fried accent.
“Lt. Waylon Cheng, Nashville Police Department,” Mulder
clarified as Cheng firmly shook his partner’s hand. “I
moseyed on in this mornin’, an’ look who was a’ waitin’ on
the front porch stoop looking to jack-jaw for a spell.”
Cheng sighed. “You think you maybe could show a little
more respect for my native culture?”
“You’ll pardon me, Lieutenant,” Scully said, snagging a
wood chair. “But, um, Waylon?”
“Folks ran a Chinese restaurant near the old Ryman
Auditorium downtown when I was growing up, and we had our
share of the Nashville royalty come in after the Opry. Hank
Williams the dad, of course once told my pop he made
the ‘mouth-tinglingest’ low mein in the South. My given
name was Wey Lun Pop was first-generation from Canton --
but I grew up on country, and when the boys started calling
me Waylon, I was as pleased ”
“As the prize-winnin’ Hamphire at the Tennessee State
Fair,” Mulder completed.
“As I could be, I was going to say,” Cheng said with
extreme patience. “Anyway, I met Fox here on a case maybe
10 years ago. Serial killer was goin’ after street
musicians downtown. Fox and I worked out he was pissed at
the way they were mangling the old classics. So when I came
up on a real stumper here, I decided to pay my good buddy a
call and maybe tap his behavioral skills a bit.”
“This ‘stumper’ does it have to do with that music?”
Scully asked, nodding toward the CD player.
Cheng shrugged, as if slightly embarrassed. “I don’t
really know. One of the guys at the department loaned this
to me about a week ago it’s the new Sunnie Rae Blessing
album. She was CMA New Female Vocalist back in ’98, got
beat out by Faith Faith Hill -- for Top Female last year.
But anyway, I got to listenin’ to a couple of tracks, and I
got the strangest feeling I’d heard ‘em before. I’m
Homicide, and I looked up a few files, and what I saw
creeped me out a little. That’s why I brought it out here.”
“Thinkin’ maybe we oughtta listen to it backwards, see if
Earl gets his truck, his wife, and his dog back,” Mulder
suggested.
“If my partner can can the cornpone for a few minutes,”
Scully said with emphasis, “I’d like to hear your
concerns.”
**
I lived a mite high,
And I sunk a mite low;
I met the wrong fella
Said folks called him Joe.
His soul was on fire,
Heat lightnin’ did fly;
And now in the Ocoee
My body does lie.
You can swim in the deep end,
But mind you take care;
There’s dark things a-movin’
In the shadows out there;
Your head's above water,
Or so you may think,
But you soon may discover
How low you can sink…
Cheng flicked off the CD player.
“You can dance to it,” Mulder murmured, “and it’s got a
nice message for the kids.”
“Had a floater some seven months ago,” the Nashville cop
informed the agents. “Couple fishermen found her in a
stream on the south side of town. Ocoee in the song is a
river some miles east of town. ID’ing her wasn’t much of a
chore: We had a Missings Persons flyer out on some young
gal had disappeared on her way back from the Opry Mills
Mall a week or so earlier. Courtney Tolliver, 18, had quite
a juvenile sheet on her couple drug beefs, drunk and
disorderly, public disturbances. She was outta high school,
flipping burgers at the Hardees when she showed up, still
living with the folks. Nice people, the folks, but they’d
been just about at the end of their string after lawyers,
the damage she and her little friends caused around town.
Boyfriend had an airtight story.”
“Rape?” Scully asked with a physician’s bluntness.
“Uh uh, clothes were fine, no injuries like that,” Cheng
responded. “'Just' drowned, apparently. Fish’d gotten to
her, but the coroner didn’t see any unusual bruises,
ligature marks, trauma. Car’d been found in the mall lot at
the time of the initial report. We figured at first
somebody’d picked her up, they had an argument, maybe about
her willingness to have physical relations, and drowned
her.”
“Girl gone bad, meets Mr. Goodbar, winds up taking a nap
with the catfish,” Mulder reviewed. “Heard that song
before.”
The cop shrugged, reaching for the CD controls. “Yeah, I
know. Let’s go on to the next one. CMT number two video
last week, number one on the Billboard charts three weeks
running.”
My baby girl, she’s cryin’ again,
All night and into the day;
I’m holding real tight to the end a’ my rope,
And the rope, she’s beginnin' to fray.
Life is hard, and it hardens you up,
And my hard hand is ready to fall.
Cause the cryin’ I hear from the room next door,
Is an echo I can't ignore…
Jet planes roarin’ over, they’re flyin’ again,
All day and into the night;
But I ain’t goin’ nowhere, nohow, no way,
No end for this hard life in sight.
Life is a dead end, a one-way ticket,
And I’m still payin’ the freight.
I just wish I could climb on that big silver bird,
Cause I don’t wanna cause my baby more hurt.
“Wanda Burholdt, 26, three kids, deadbeat disappearing
dad, found in her bed six weeks ago after her mom had taken
the kids to the Nashville Zoo for the day,” Cheng supplied
from memory. “Burholdt was a nurse at one of the local
hospitals, taking extra shifts to feed her and the little
ones. Dad just took off one day, God knows where. Here’s
the clincher: Kids were a mite accident-prone. A dislocated
shoulder here, a broken leg there. Never took ‘em to her
own hospital, always somewhere else. Child Services looked
into it, and about the time Burholdt turned up dead, they
were about to take things to court.”
“Suicide?” Scully ventured.
“Asphyxiation,” Cheng stated. “Found fibers matched her
pillow in her mouth and nostrils. Pillow was at the foot of
the bed, kinda inconvenient even if she’d chosen that
roundabout a way out.”
Mulder shook his head. “I’m not trying to make your brown
eyes blue, Waylon, but once again, although Sunnie Rae may
have a way with a lyric, it’s not exactly a unique story.”
Cheng leaned back for effect. “Wanna guess where Wanda
Burholdt lived?”
The Stockyard
Nashville, Tennessee
4:23 p.m.
Patsy (named for Ms. Patsy Cline, as she’d brightly
confirmed for Agent Scully), set a Kansas City Strip before
Mulder that literally would have choked a carnivorous
horse.
“I heard clogging was popular here in the hill country,”
the agent commented, staring at the mutilated cattle. “But
I had no idea you were talking about major arteries.”
“Eat up, Fox,” Lt. Cheng prompted, tearing into his
ribeye. “This is the best beef in Nashville, and on cop
pay, I never get to eat here ‘less somebody gets married,
promoted, or retired. How’s your shrimp, ma’am?”
“Large,” Scully observed, poking the alpha shrimp.
“Lieutenant Cheng, I will admit there are striking
circumstantial parallels between Ms. Blessing’s lyrics and
several of your uncleared cases. But stranger coincidences
have been known to happen. You said Tolliver had had a
history of substance abuse. I assume decomposition was too
advanced to get a blood alcohol reading?”
“Mmm,” he affirmed through a mouthful of beef.
“All right. What about Burholdt? Her family and friends
must have had some idea she might be abusing her children.
You said the mother had an alibi Burholdt’s children;
were there any siblings who might have felt the children
needed to be rescued? Could the ex-husband have found out
somehow and killed her to protect them?
“And this Keeler case you read about. Everyone in this,
um, honky-tonk, testifies Keeler was seriously inebriated,
that he could barely stand up. His motor and mechanical
skills had to be impaired. I don’t find it so incredible
that Mr. Keeler in this drunken state might have set the
shift precariously between neutral and reverse, went to
check something in the bed of the vehicle, and jostled the
truck enough to shift it into reverse, crushing him.”
“That must have been one magic pickup truck,” Mulder
drawled in his best Kevin Costner/”JFK” impersonation as he
liberally coated his baked potato in butter. “The gear
shift knob had been wiped clean of prints. And, Scully,
what about Burholdt’s living out by the airport, with ‘jet
planes roarin’ over.’?”
Scully patiently chewed a bite of shrimp and swallowed.
“Music, particularly country music, is rich in metaphor and
simile. Flight is a common musical metaphor for escape or
freedom Mama Cass’ ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane,’ or
‘Freebird,’ for example. That Blessing may have picked
planes flying overhead to symbolize freedom seemingly out
of the protagonist’s reach is not that astonishing.”
“You really know how to make a song come alive, Scully,”
Mulder said.
“My point is that there are, in music as well as fiction,
only a limited number of plotlines, with nearly infinite
variations. And we are talking, no offense to your native
culture, Lieutenant, about a musical format that often
derives mood and narrative from the pain of human
experience.”
Mulder mulled. “Waylon, you got Blessing’s other CDs?”
Cheng nodded as he rapped the base of a bottle of steak
sauce. “Bought the other two after I got suspicious. I’m
still checking for connections between any of the songs and
older cases, but of course, I got an active caseload to
investigate at the same time. I had to explain this to my
captain, he’d about shit bricks.”
“You got the files available, Scully and I can look for
correlations.”
Cheng hacked off a large section of ribeye. “Tomorrow.
Tonight, thought I’d take you to a show.”
**
The Daniels Boys, Charlie and Jack,
Are keepin’ me comp’ny, watchin’ my back.
It’s a men’s only club, unless she shows me a sign.
One more night of crossing the line…
It was the Travis Keeler song, as Mulder had come to think
of it a tale more compassionately pathetic than
contemptuous of a man’s fall from grace as a husband,
provider, and human being. Cheng had used his cop
connections to snag a trio of frontrow tickets and
backstage passes at the Ryman, where the Tennessee Country
Network was taping Nashville Now before a live audience.
Sunnie Rae Blessing, curly black locks and short gown
swirling as she belted out a set of her favorites, was the
week’s headline act. Blessing was cheerful and personable
with the audience, but Mulder noted that while her up-tempo
tunes, mostly about being free and single and independent
and ‘country’ (whatever that comprised), sparked an
enthusiastic enough response and considerable rhythmic
clapping from the crowd, it was what Mulder termed her
‘Drano-drinkin’” tunes the downbeat studies of sad,
desperate characters -- that really seemed to connect.
When she concluded with an anthem about angels finally
watching over a seemingly virulent old woman who’d never
had “a nice word in her pocket to spend,” hundreds of men
and women in pearl buttoned shirts and dress Levis rose in
waves, slapping their hands wildly together. As he climbed
to his feet, Mulder ticked off the song’s parallels to the
recent death by overmedication of Verna Teegarden, in a
Nashville nursing home.
Backstage after the taping, Cheng and the agents waited
patiently while Sunnie Rae beamed and squeezed arms and
accepted kisses on the cheek from a group of senior out-of-
towners and conducted some hasty concluding business with
the show’s producers.
“Now, y’all are FBI, right?” the singer inquired. “Now,
you, Mr. Cheng, I know. Been to your daddy’s restaurant
couple of times now, and my personal assistant, Oz
Halbertson, used to work with you.”
“Oz?” Cheng asked, his brows rising.
“We’re in town on a case, and when Waylon invited us to
the show, Dana here practically begged him to see if he
could finagle us a couple of passes.”
Scully’s glare turned abruptly into a radiant smile as
Sunnie Rae wheeled around to her. “Yes, I really enjoy your
music, especially your use of metaphors. Kind of like Ms.
Twain, um, Shania.”
“Well, ain’t that sweet?” Sunnie Rae cooed, with only a
hint of confusion. “Why don’t you come in and visit for a
few? I think Oz was ‘sposed to round up some wine coolers.”
The guest dressing room was spacious and was equipped with
a pair of soft leather couches and a bar and refrigerator.
“Great show out there,” Mulder offered, sipping his
cooler. “I’m amazed at the diversity of songs in your act.
Where do you get your ideas?”
Was it his imagination, or did Mulder see Sunnie Rae’s
eyes go momentarily hard? “Well, a’course, I certainly
don’t write every song myself I buy one from time to
time, and the guys in the band have come up with a few good
ones, too.”
“I particularly liked the one about the teen-aged girl
‘How Low You Can Sink’? Is that one of yours?”
“Yes, thank you. That one’s done real good for me.”
“You a Tennessee girl?”
“Why, yeah,” Sunnie Rae smiled broadly. For the change in
subject or for the hometown pride, she didn’t know. “Grew
up in Lebanon, but my people came from the Smoky Mountain
area, over past Pigeon Forge. My daddy’s a dentist, and
Mama teaches eighth grade.”
“Wow, that’s impressive,” Mulder said. “The way you sing
about people, I’d have thought you’d grown up in a much
more, um, deprived environment.”
“No, but I thank you,” Sunnie Rae said, sincerely. “I try
to be as true to my music as I can, and I consider that a
real compliment. Fact is, my mama did come from some poor
mountain stock. My great-grandma Flora she’s still alive,
God bless her still lives out in the Smokies. Poor as a
churchmouse, but she won’t let me move her out here.”
A burly man with a handlebar mustache and close-cropped
blonde hair peeked in the door. “Sunnie, Jack wants to see
you about those promos Well, shit, Waylon Cheng. How you
doin’, man?”
Waylon rose from the supple leather and pumped the man’s
hand. “Oswald Halbertson, this’s Special Agents Fox Mulder
and Dana Scully with the FBI. Brought ‘em around to see Ms.
Blessing while they’re in town. Last I heard, you’d started
your own security firm.”
“Old news, old son,” Halbertson said. “I was detective
first under Waylon here for, aw, say six years before I
struck out on my own. And call me Oz, folks. Oswald, shit.
Naw, Waylon, I took this gig with Sunnie about two years
ago, after she started finding out what a pain in the ass
fans could be and started making enough moola to do
something about it.”
“Oz,” Sunnie Rae mock-scolded. “Just so happens Dana
here’s a fan, and she’s as sweet as Derby pie.”
Scully smiled. Halbertson gave her an amused shrug.
“Glad to see you’re doing good for yourself, Oz,” Cheng
rose. “C’mon, guys. Let’s let Ms. Blessing rest a spell,
OK?”
Mulder and Scully nodded their farewells, Scully
scrabbling for something in her purse she could have Sunnie
Rae sign. As they left the studio lot, she wondered if the
bean counters in the Bureau controller’s office would have
any idea whose name was scratched on the back of her hotel
credit receipt.
Clarksville, Tennessee
10:21 a.m.
“He was a world-class piece of donkey shit, is what he
was,” the Widow Keeler eulogized as they sat around the
trailer’s vintage aluminum dinette. “Every day, ’less he
could come up with some piss-poor excuse, he’d put in his
eight hours down to the plant, come by the trailer and grab
a quick meal and whatever else he could when he was
physically able to, you know what I mean, and then light
out for the Cheatin’ Hearth to see how much grain alcohol
he could pump into his bloodstream. ’Bout maybe a year
past, wound up takin’ him to the emergency room for alcohol
tos-, toxit-, aw shit, for alcohol poisoning. Had to start
his heart back up for him, they did. Well, guess where he
went lickety split the minute the doctors let him go?”
“The Cheatin’ Hearth, to celebrate,” guessed Mulder the
profiler.
“You oughtta go on that millionaire show,” Cissy Keeler
said, pointing her tumbler of Diet Coke at him in
admiration. "I don’t know how much in medical bills the
company insurance wouldn’t handle, and he’s buyin’ round
after round of drinks for the house. In the place that
almost killed him. Did kill him, eventually, truth be
told.”
“Did the police explanation of your husband’s death
satisfy you?” Scully asked.
Cissy considered as she sucked at her soda. “Well,
actually, not altogether. That goddamned truck meant the
world to Travis, and I just can’t believe however shit-
faced he mighta got that he’d be that careless around that
Silverado. But God knows he was slippin’ further and
further into that bottle everyday, and the company life
insurance did let me pay off the trailer and get me that
Escort out there. Didn’t even have to pay to bury him his
people insisted. Guess that’s the only way they was willin’
to take him back from me.”
**
“Poor old Travis.” Don Miller shook his head vigorously
even as he swiped circles on the dusty morning bartop. The
simultaneous movements made Scully slightly nauseous; Cheng
had insisted on taking her and her partner for “the best
sawmill gravy this side of the Appalachians,” accompanied
by country ham, home fries, and biscuits. “He wan’t a bad
sorta fella, really he just reached too high and fell too
short. Hol’ on a second.”
Scully glanced quizzically at Cheng and Mulder as Miller,
a huge man with an incongruous pompadour hairstyle
disappeared under the counter. He came up with a grunt and
a legal pad. “Reached…too..high…and…fell…too…short,” he
slowly dictated to himself. “That’s a keeper awright, long
as I can come up with some other words to wrap around it.”
“You a songwriter, Mr. Miller?” Scully queried.
“You call me Don, Miss. Tryin’ to be, anyway just got a
letter back from Kenny Chesney on some stuff I sent him a
month or so ago. Anyhow, Travis worked at the RV plant
outside a’town, but he was always tryin’ to find some get-
rich-quick scheme to get hisself out. Sold satellite dishes
for a while after work, but he got a bad truckload of
signal converters and had t’liquidate. That’s just a for
instance. I was kinda wonderin’ if he’d gotten hisself into
some other fool deal guy was askin’ all kinda questions
‘bout him a week or so before the mur--, accident.”
Cheng rubbed his beard. “This fella look like?”
Don looked to the stained acoustic tiles not far above his
head. “Tell the truth, looked like a crook but smelled like
a cop. You know what I mean?” he added hastily. Cheng
shrugged it off with a grin. “He was wantin’ to know what
kinda fella Travis was, ‘bout his job an’ his wife. I
started askin’ questions back, an’ he jus’ give me a shit-
eatin’ grin an’ said he and Travis was thinkin’ ‘bout doin’
some business and he jus’ liked to know what was inside a
man.”
“He put it that way, exactly?” Mulder perked.
“Well, gee, now, that was a week ago, but yeah, I guess
so.”
“How’d he look like a crook?”
“Dark shades in a dark bar, black cap no writin’ on it,
one of them shiny jackets, you know, like Hollywood folk
wear. You think this jasper rigged up Travis’ truck?”
“Dark shades in a dark bar,” Mulder said.
“’Scuse me?”
“Dark shades in a dark bar,” Mulder repeated, this time
with rhythm as the TV at the end of the bar caught his
attention. Don showed a mouthful of gold-festooned
bridgework and scribbled on his pad.
“Dark…shades…,” the barkeep murmured.
Cheng consulted his watch. “After noon already. Want to
grab some lunch?”
“Oh, God,” Scully moaned.
“Um, I was thinking of a sandwich,” Mulder said absently
as he watched the Dixie Chicks dancing on the barroom
screen.
“Someplace with a children’s menu,” Scully suggested as
she yanked him away.
Nashville Groves Residential Care Home
Nashville, Tennessee
2:03 p.m.
“Oh, The Queen,” Matt Fraley snorted as he rolled a cart
of linens down the nursing home’s East Wing corridor.
“Thought she ran this depressin’ little corner of Hell, our
Verna. Terrorized the other residents everybody ran,
rolled, or walkered for the hills when the old bitch came
around the activities room.”
The bored-looking orderly suddenly lit up with a warm,
high-voltage smile. “How you doin’, Mrs. Dahlgren?”
A tiny, crinkled woman stepped gingerly from her open door
and grasped Fraley’s muscular forearm. “Mr. Robeson, I so
enjoyed the show last night your voice was perfectly in
tune. I just wish you’d quit talking to Miss Davis that
way. You know it isn’t right in God’s eyes.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Fraley smiled and nodded. “Studio
makes me do that, you know.”
“Well, DeMille’s a degenerate. You just tell him you won’t
do that sort of thing, no matter what kind of money he
offers you.”
“Yeah, you bet, Mrs. Dahlgren,” Fraley said, patting her
arm and nudging her gently back into her room. “Paul
Robeson, old-time black actor,” he told Mulder, Scully, and
Cheng. “Sweet old lady, but she’s in like a time warp, you
know -- thinks this is some kind of old Hollywood studio or
something. Gotta check out the Classics rack at the video
store to keep up with her been a real course in African-
American pride. So anyway, I wasn’t on the night Verna
cashed in thank God, cause the night shift caught some
heavy shit, and the family’s still talking lawsuit. Never
stopped to see the old witch while she was alive and
kicking everybody in sight, but the minute somebody screws
up and puts one pill too many in her evening cocktail, we
got lawyers swarmin’ around here like well-dressed gnats.”
“But the coroner ruled it an accidental death?” Scully
asked.
“Look around, ma’am,” the orderly said drily, gesturing
around the worn and cracked tile of the hallway. “You think
anybody gonna be inheriting Dollywood from anybody at this
waterbug hotel? Verna was just pure undistilled mean even
caused us trouble after she was dead.”
Mulder looked up. “How so?”
“Well, we were ready to ship her over to the funeral home
had all the paperwork and shit done -- when the family
calls and tells us to change her flight.”
“They changed funeral homes?”
“Yeah, weird, right? Woulda thought they’d been happy
wrappin’ her in aluminum foil and interring her in the
basement, much as they seemed to care.”
“Could you get me the name of the funeral home they sent
Mrs. Dahlgren to?” Mulder asked.
“Get me off bedpan duty for a few minutes, bet your ass.”
Nashville Police Department
4:12 p.m.
“Gresham Funeral Home,” Mulder read, flipping the Keeler
investigation file onto Cheng’s desk. He opened the
Burholdt file. “Gresham Funeral Home, just like Dahlgren,
Tolliver, and Keeler.”
Cheng frowned. “And while you were checking funeral
arrangements, I compared some old unsolveds and suspicious
deaths with Blessing’s first two CDs. One track on the
first CD matched the circumstances of a suspected suicide
on the west side of town, another a gang beating victim we
found in an alley downtown. But both were pretty clearcut
cases got the guy in the gang case, and the suicide
victim, a druggie, had been on anti-depressives for months
after his family’d thrown him out. That song, by the way,
was Blessing’s first number one hit, I remember right.”
“The second CD. Any hits?”
“Three possibles.”
“So the number of songs with correlations to area deaths
is increasing with each new album. And we’re assuming we’ve
caught all the possible connections. Did you find out where
the bodies went?”
“Gresham,” Cheng supplied.
Scully, who had been sipping squadroom coffee in quiet
contemplation, put her Styrofoam cup down. “Mulder,
Lieutenant, do you hear how this all sounds? What reason
would a major celebrity have to kill these poor, pathetic
souls?”
Mulder pushed the casefiles aside. “You said it just now,
Scully. Each of the victims was a pathetic soul, trapped by
their own weaknesses in a mire of misery. Each one
potential fodder for some tears-in-your-beer country
ballad. Somehow, I think Sunnie Rae Blessing is tapping
into their dark souls to keep her creative juices flowing.”
“Mire of misery?” Scully’s eyebrow arched.
“Lyrical license,” Mulder informed her. “Look, we have
three basic patterns here. One: The suspicious deaths of
several individuals who could be said to be poor
representatives of the human condition, but whose condition
offers some reason to empathize with their misery. A mother
deserted by her husband, a dreamer who drinks to forget his
failures, a teen-aged girl who brought nothing but grief
and embarrassment to her parents but who clearly was headed
for disaster. Misery and empathy virtually the
cornerstones of country music.
“Two: Each of these individuals appears to be the model
for a song by Sunnie Rae Blessing. With each album, the
number of deaths associated with a song increases.”
“All right, I will admit we’re looking at some very odd
circumstances,” Scully frowned. “But that doesn’t preclude
a rational, logical explanation. If misery and tragedy are
the country balladeer’s stock and trade, perhaps Blessing
gets her inspiration from press and media accounts.”
“Finally,” Mulder continued, undeterred, “we find that
each and every one of these individuals was shipped off to
the Great By-and-By by way of Gresham Funeral Home. Ten
bodies, most within a fairly large metro region, another
from a nearby town, all wind up at the same funeral home?
Waylon, how many mortuaries in the greater Nashville area?”
Waylon’s cheeks puffed. “Whoo, gotta look that one up.”
“Okay,” Scully said slowly. “Maybe someone at the funeral
home was tipping off Blessing or her people each time a
likely wretch was admitted for services. Certainly morbid,
questionably ethical or respectful, and probably not very
nice, but definitely possible. Will you concede that,
Mulder?”
“Maybe,” he squinted, as if the concession caused him
physical pain. “But I’d like to explore a few alternatives,
too. Waylon, can you check to see if Blessing has any kin
at this Gresham Funeral Home?”
Scully looked at her partner. “Kin?”
Mulder shook himself. “Regional osmosis. Maybe we better
take a break.”
“Great idea,” Waylon smiled. “I’ll take you guys for the
best barbecued ribs in Nashville.”
The entire squadroom turned at Scully’s agonized half-
scream.
Gresham Funeral Home
7:10 p.m.
“Well, Mr. Petrie,” Bramley Gresham assured in a soothing
Southern baritone he’d honed over years in the death and
consolation trade, “you’ve come to the right place. Pre-
planning is one of our specialties.”
“Well, that’s just excellent, right, Juju Bean?” Mulder
oozed, squeezing Scully’s shoulder.
“Absolutely, Milk Dud,” Scully said through her teeth,
subtly digging a sharp elbow into Mulder’s intercostals
ribs. “Rob realizes death can come at any given minute,
suddenly, without warning.”
Gresham, a blocky man with heavily-gelled evangelist’s
hair, nodded with enthusiastic approval as he steered them
. “He’s very wise, uh, Laura, right?”
“Mm hmm. Rob’s dad always talks about having an old-
fashioned wake you know, celebrate the life rather than
mourn the death. Can you accommodate something like that?”
Gresham peeked into an ornate maroon-and-cream parlor
where a large crowd was mulling quietly. He snagged a
skeletonous man hovering by the arched doorway. “Theodore,
pump up the Muzak; we’re losing them. Uh, wake, eh, Laura?
Irish or Southern?”
“Irish?” Mulder ventured.
“Well, Rob, if I may call you that, we have an excellent
catering service on retainer. Anything the decedent
desires, with a full bar.”
“Caterer, huh?” ‘Rob’ frowned. “Not meatballs in gravy and
little barbecued weenies?”
Gresham looked alarmed. “Rob, I assure you Volunteer
Catering is the finest in Nashville. They do a lot of the
alumni functions at the university, and they put on a
wonderful spread when the American Association of
Bereavement Specialists came to town. I guarantee your
mourners will go home with both closure and a full
stomach.”
“Wonderful,” Scully grimaced. “By the way, I hope you’ll
forgive me, but someone told me you were, mm, kin to Sunnie
Rae Blessing. Is that true?”
The mortician grinned widely, sensing a deal closer.
“That’s sure enough true. Sunnie’s my first cousin on my
momma’s side. We’re all real proud of her. You fans?”
“Just the biggest,” Mulder enthused. Scully looked at him.
“Hey, Bramley, I really think we can do some business here.
Tell you what we’re shopping it around, but you’re
definitely on the short list. Let me talk to Pop, and we’ll
get back to you.”
Gresham’s smile flickered, then came back full blast.
“Well, you tell your daddy we’ll give him a wake he’d be
darned proud of.” He moved off to greet an elderly couple
at the guest book.
“Par-tay,” Mulder said.
“What precisely was the purpose of that little charade?”
Scully demanded.
“OK,” her partner admitted. “So I actually adore little
barbecued weenies."
"Mulder…"
"Let's get away from Beauregard Munster here," he
murmured, pulling her into a side alcove. He pulled out his
cell phone, called information, and then punched out
another number.
"Volunteer Catering? Yes, I know it's after business
hours, but this is Rob Petrie at Gresham Funeral Home, and
our tax guy is here. We need to verify some dates here.
Could you check and see over the past year when you might
have brought some food over? I know, I know -- the IRS, you
know. Hey, thanks."
Mulder hung up a few minutes later with convincing
Southern congeniality. A tentatively triumphant light in
his eyes, he turned to Scully. "Let's go to your place,
'Laura.'"
Opryland Hotel
Nashville, Tennessee
8:23 p.m.
As Scully activated her laptop modem, Mulder completed his
calls and pulled a second guest chair over to the hotel
work table.
"Waylon wanted to check out a few leads of his own,
without a couple of feds along," he informed Scully. "I
updated him, and he thought there might be a link
somewhere. Said something about dropping in on his 'showbiz
pal.' Now, pull up one of the search engines. What we
probably want is a fan page, something with a lot of photos
of Sunnie Rae Blessing before, during, and after the period
she was putting together her newest CD."
In a few minutes, Mulder and Scully were surveying the
Sunnie Rae Blessing photo archives of a New Jersey
housewife who characterized Sunnie Rae as "the dulcet-toned
voice of everything true about working Americans." Each
photo had a gushing, dated cutline.
"Looks like producing an album generates a man-sized
hunger," Mulder said, tapping a scan of a somewhat pudgier-
than-usual Sunnie Rae with her arm around the N.J.
housewife's shoulder. Badly-lit, redeyed concert photos
helped confirm Mulder's suspicion. "See, Scully: Sunnie Rae
is lithe and Shania-trim in the pictures taken a few months
before she began recording her album, then she porks out
during the production period. Now, she's back to her Levied
finest."
"Can we dispense with the gratuitous adjectives?" Scully
rolled her eyes. "I don't know what you're getting at,
Mulder, but doesn't it make sense that spending long hours
in the studio, consuming presumably voluminous quantities
of fast food into the wee hours, might have caused her to
temporarily put on a few extra pounds?"
"But when you add Gresham's relationship to Blessing and
the fact that Volunteer Catering delivered large meals to
the Gresham Funeral Home days after each of Waylon's
suspicious deaths, then I believe my theory bears some
consideration."
"And that theory is?" Scully asked pointedly.
But Mulder dropped onto her bed, a stricken look on his
face. "Wait a minute…Showbiz pal… Get your shoes back on,
Scully. I think Waylon's one step ahead of us and one step
away from serious trouble."
"You're even talking like one of them, now," Scully
grumbled, prying on her heels.
Opryville Motor Lodge
Nashville, Tennessee
10 p.m.
Oswald Halbertson, ensconced in his ’03 Viper in the tree-
in-the-forest thicket of a closed used car dealership, kept
one eye glued to the scarred security door of Room 15,
where Webb Frye and one of Nashville’s corps of country-
fried working girls presumably were engaged in what
Halbertson hoped was joyless and tortured intercourse. The
other eye scanned the urbanized landscape, which likely
teemed with less cunning but potentially more primal
predators.
Frye, a siding dealer with an unfortunate addiction to
commercial sex, offered some interesting angles for Sunnie
Rae to explore, but Halbertson had decided on the whore.
Folks, particularly country fans, weren’t likely to
empathize with a woman singing about a man who objectified
broads for money, but a peek inside the dark, dank soul of
a streetwalker that was video gold alone.
The door to 15 edged open with an unavoidable creak, and a
disheveled Frye peered out to ensure none of the other
church deacons were gathered in the parking lot. The ex-cop
laughed harshly, slid out of the car, and considered
whether to arm the alarm. Not in this ‘hood, he decided
reluctantly.
The prostitute was dressed and filing her night’s pay when
Halbertson reached the motel door. She came up in alarm and
some measure of irritation, seemingly uncertain whether she
was looking at a psycho or a perv looking for a cheap lay.
Halbertson had already decided on the M.O., and snapped
the pullstring from the cheap dancing cowboys curtains.
Strangulation, at Frye’s hand, the clerk hopefully would
testify, and then theft of her wages. Perfect fall guy, no
alibi -- something Halbertson had not been lucky enough to
have in the other cases. The woman was frozen on the bed as
Oswald approached with the garotte pulled tight.
“Oz,” a familiar voice cautioned as the door swung open.
Halbertson closed his eyes and looked behind him. Waylon
Cheng looked weary and disappointed. The police special in
his fist looked deadly.
“Hey, Loot,” Oz said, loading his voice with
embarrassment. “Guess you caught me. Even ex-cop cowpokes
get lonely, you know.”
“That right, Miss?” Cheng asked.
“Get this creep away from me,” she yelled.
“Oz,” Cheng prompted, not knowing Halbertson’s gears
already were turning. Sunnie Rae had contracted with Warner
Bros. to help score one of those asshole cop buddy flicks,
and she could probably snag the title track if she could
tap this middle-aged cop’s cynicism and disillusionment.
Drop the gun on the dead hooker, he thought.
Halbertson always wore his speed loader on his little
“research” trips, and he was up with his .38 within an
eye’s blink. As the prostitute shrieked, the bullet plunked
into Waylon’s right shoulder, sending the detective reeling
against the motel doorjam, and Halbertson took bead for the
kill.
And the universe closed down for good on Oswald
Halbertson’s gig as he saw the geeky fed friend of Cheng’s
level his gun, heard a blast, and then saw or heard nothing
again.
“Goddamit, Mulder,” Cheng yelled in anger as Scully
confirmed that the big man was dead and saw to the woman’s
immediate emotional state. “Sorry, Fox; don’t mean that.
But I was hopin’ we’d take this bastard alive so he could
roll over on Sunnie Rae.”
Mulder punched 911 into his cell phone. “I don’t know that
there’s anyone to roll over on, Waylon.”
Nashville Police Department
9:11 a.m.
“Sin eating?” Conway Ginetti said, glancing first at
Scully and then Cheng for some semblance of sanity.
“Sin eating, according to anthropologists, was a practice
that originated in England, Scotland, and Wales,” Mulder
explained to the attorney and his Grammy-winning client.
“The sin eater was a special designated member of the
village who was employed to take the sins of the newly
deceased upon himself. Supposedly, food and drink were
passed across the corpse to the sin eater my theory is
that maybe it was some kind of distortion of the Catholic
Eucharist. No one was permitted to look upon the face of
the sin eater, else they would risk transferring the evil
of the deceased to himself.”
“Waylon,” Ginetti said calmly, “does this fella represent
your views?”
Cheng, his arm in a sling, stood silently by the interview
room door.
“Sin eating purportedly was carried to America in the
1800s by Welsh and British immigrants in the Appalachians,
not far from here, as a matter of fact,” Mulder said. “I
think what you practice is some sort of refinement of the
ritual. Kind of low-impact sin-eating all the misery and
pain, none of the damnation. A few extra pounds on the hips
in exchange for absolute insight into the wretched darkness
of the human soul.”
“Conway, we gotta listen to any more a’this shit?” Sunnie
Rae Blessing demanded. “Lieutenant, I told you I had no
idea Oz was goin’ around killin’ folks. Wasn’t like we was
connected by the hip or nothin’.”
“I honestly don’t think you knew anything about the
murders -- otherwise, I doubt you would have tipped us off
by having the protagonist in your song live out by the
airport, like her real-life counterpart, Wanda Burholdt,”
Mulder responded. “I believe Halbertson used his police
skills to scout out likely candidates pathetic, weak, but
tortured. The ideal fodder for traditional country music.
Maybe with the first CD, your cousin, Gresham, merely
supplied you with a few subjects from his ‘stock.’ Then you
told Oz about your sin eating, and he began to create some
inspiration for you. Then you’d go to the victim’s family,
with no knowledge of Oz’ actions, and talk them into
letting you pay for the funeral, on the condition they use
the Gresham Funeral Home. Probably wasn’t tough: The
victims created nothing but problems and pain for their
families, and they likely were delighted to have a
celebrity benefactor take the responsibility and cost off
their hands.”
“This is pure unprocessed hogshit,” Sunnie Rae blasted,
knocking her chair over. “An’, Cheng, your folks’ eggrolls
are just plain greasy.”
“Uh, I have to concur, Waylon, about the case, that is,”
Ginetti said, gathering up his briefcase. “Y’all aren’t
gonna take this to the prosecutor, are you? ‘Cause I gotta
tell you, Waylon, they gonna give you a quilted room at the
state home, and I'd surely hate to have to come get a pass
to take you fishin'.”
The pair left. Waylon inhaled deeply, turned, and followed
them into the hall.
Mulder looked to Scully, who smiled weakly but hopefully.
“Gee,” he sighed. “I was kinda hoping Waylon was going to
take us for the best cheeseburger in Nashville.”
Keller's Cove, Tennessee
Two days later
5:40 p.m.
"Right here, the gravel road near the 'T,'" Scully said
urgently, causing Mulder to wrench the wheel and crunch
disturbingly onto the dim, pine and chestnut-crowded local
roadway. Over the past five hours, the pair had progressed
from interstate to state highways, then to county roads and
now, nearly forgotten byways heavy machinery likely had
never touched. Along the last stretch of their journey,
Mulder had dodged a number of pedestrian mammals the agents
had never seen on Animal Planet or The Discovery Channel.
"You know," Scully continued, "Genealogical records
routinely are far from precise."
"But in this case, there's comprehensive documentation,"
countered Mulder, who'd spent the past day immersed in a
variety of Internet genealogy sites, assembling the
Blessing family tree, or at least one particular branch of
it. "Sunnie Rae didn't stop to realize some cousin long ago
had submitted a complete family map, back to the 1820s, to
the Tennessee Historical Society. Family's a big thing
here, and it stood to reason the information would be
there, somewhere.
"Sunnie Rae Blessing's 'great-grandmas' on both paternal
and maternal sides are all dead. There's only been one
documented Flora in the family, who lived in the Tennessee
foothills. And who, coincidentally, came to America from
South Wales."
"In 1862, Mulder," Scully stressed for the fifth time
since he'd told her to pack her hiking shoes. "You're
talking about a woman who today would be 143 years old."
"It's not unknown," Mulder said, braking briefly to allow
passage of a dusty tortoise. "Many of the more remote
regions of the world -- Northern China, the Ural Mountains
of the former Soviet Union -- boast individuals of
astounding longetivity. Natural foods, hard work, little
emotional stress created by inneroffice politics or
technology -- there are a number of possible factors. But
Flora, if this is the original Flora, is our closest
connection to any Old World hocus-pocus. Okay, left at the
mailbox, then 10 miles, right?"
**
Flora Griffyn's cabin was planted deep within the
primevally continuous canopy of the backwoods cove. Mulder
and Scully were forced to abandon the rent-a-car on the
dirt road nearly a mile's walk from the actual residence,
which was flanked by a large, diverse vegetable garden, a
chicken house, and a pen full of large black hogs.
Mulder hummed the theme from Deliverance as he rapped on a
thick oak door. It opened almost immediately, startling the
FBI agents, and a small, gnomelike woman peered out
expectantly. The oddly out-of-place sound of the ESPN theme
blared inside the dark living room.
"You would be Fox and Dana," the finely wrinkled Flora
Griffyn said crisply, with a shade of a British accent.
"Please do come in."
Scully arched an eyebrow at Mulder, who shrugged and moved
carefully inside the cabin. "Ms. Griffyn, how did you know
we were coming? You don't appear to have any phone
listing."
Griffyn, wearing a faded Tennessee Volunteers sweatshirt,
lowered herself into an obviously homemade rocker and waved
a calloused hand. "Hardly need a phone out here. Little too
old to have friends to chat the hours away with, and few
pop by as you did."
"Then…?"
"E-mail," Griffyn said, indicating a PC in the corner.
Mulder stared at it as if it were some device transported
back from a distant future. "Rebecca -- that's Sunnie Rae's
true Christian name -- wrote me you might be coming. Old
days, hill folk didn't take too kindly to a visit from the
federal government. 'Revenooers' and the like, you know?
Nowadays, not even those Census pests will brave the
woods."
"I guess Sunnie -- I mean, Rebecca -- has told you about
the events of the past few days, and what we suspect?"
Scully inquired.
Griffyn unconsciously began to rock, the Nikes on her feet
folding and unfolding with each movement. "Grasping child,
always was. Knew what she wanted from day one, but never
had either the patience or the perserverance to get it."
"Ms. Griffyn," Mulder asked cautiously, "did you 'help'
your great-great-great-granddaughter with her musical
career?"
The old woman leaned back, smiling regretfully. "Whenever
I'd come to the city for holidays, I used to tell the girl
stories of what it was like out here, what it was like back
in the land of my birth. You know, the Welsh, the Scots,
the English, we brought the coal from the ground and the
food from the hardest of soils here in the Cove. We brought
over the notes and the ancient melodies that led to all
this 'country' music you hear on cable and FM today, and we
brought our religion, both what the church sanctioned and
what it didn't like to speak of.
"Damn the girl's memory. As she grew, we all knew she had
the voice of a mountain songbird. But she didn't give a
bloody shit about people, their feelings." Mulder looked up
at her declaration. "Pardon my Anglo-Saxonism. Rebecca was
one of those people apparently born with no sense of
empathy or compassion. But, like every boy and girl child
in this neck of the world, she wanted to be on stage.
Unfortunately, all good common music, from the spirituals
of the slaves to the working songs of the Welsh miners to
this Garth Brooks' ballads, require emotional investment,
of which she was bankrupt.
"So, a few years back, who do I find at my doorstep but
our Rebecca, all grown and with the proverbial glint in her
eye. She'd recalled my reckless bragging about the old days
and ways, and suspicioned I might be able to help her build
her investment, so to speak. I told her she didn't want to
fool with the old religious customs, but try to dissuade
the young from their chosen path. She was a bullheaded
little bitch. So finally I taught her a few tricks, you
might say."
"Sin eating?" Mulder ventured.
Griffyn leaned forward. "Sin eating is a religious rite,
very serious business, playing with Hell and damnation. But
over the years, my kind have learned how to, let's say,
extract the juice without swallowing the seeds. She learned
quickly, the greedy ones will, and of course, I never heard
from her again, except on this thing," Griffyn nodded at
the muted TV set. "Never had any idea her murderous cohort
would begin harvesting souls for her table."
Scully considered the ancient woman for a long, silent
moment. "Ms. Griffyn, why are you telling us all this? You
know it will incriminate your great-great-grea -- um,
Rebecca."
Flora Griffyn regarded her with a light in her eyes that
was so primal, so netherwordly that the skin of Scully's
arms puckered with momentary bumps. "Shit happens, dearie,
am I right?"
Mulder blinked.
"Oh, my, my manners," Griffyn suddenly exclaimed. "We've
been so busy chatting about the eating of sin and all that
solemn business that I forgot how hungry you must be after
your long ride. I killed a chicken just shortly before you
arrived."
"Thanks, no," Scully said hastily.
"Spotted a Burger King about 40 miles back," Mulder
informed her.
"Then I suppose our visit has come to an end. Mind you be
careful on the way to your automobile. It's growing dark,
and hunters have been known to disappear in these woods --
all kinds of hunters."
"Good advice," Mulder smiled lamely.
Outside, Scully grasped her partner's forearm. "Mulder,
take a look at the cabin."
Mulder scanned the rough wood beams, the wide front porch.
"What am I looking for?"
"No," Scully said, intensely. "Do you see any power lines,
any sign of a cable connection or a satellite dish?"
Mulder unsnapped his shoulder holster, for whatever that
might be worth. He later would tell Waylon that the next
half-hour's hike through the trees had seemed the longest
of his unorthodox life.
Gresham Funeral Home
11:57 p.m.
The paramedics finally pumped enough sedatives into Sunnie
Rae Blessing, and the newly white-haired, drooling woman
stopped shrieking and submitted unseeingly to being
strapped onto a gurney and removed from the mortuary
basement/prep room.
"That's why Flora Griffyn was so forthcoming about what
she'd taught Sunnie Rae," Mulder murmured as he stood with
Scully and Lt. Cheng before the huge table set out with
meats and cheeses and fruits and a human corpse. "She
suspected, or intuited, or just knew, somehow, that Sunnie
Rae would feel compelled to help herself to this one more
plate of misery, and that something like this would be the
ultimate result."
Cheng tried to stop staring at Oswald Halbertson's dead
shell among the platters. "I'd a'thought about it, I'd have
checked to see where they were taking Oz. I didn't tell
you, but we always had some doubts about Oz at the
department. There were a few repeat offenders, informers,
even witnesses who vanished when he was on a case, nothing
we could prove. I wonder maybe his work for Sunnie Rae was
just a chance to do what he liked for money. If there's any
truth to this fairy tale you've told me, maybe Oz' soul was
a bit too much for her to handle. I'm goin' to Pop's and
having a few too many Tsingtaos. You two want to shed a few
tears in your imported beers?"
"Flying back tomorrow morning," Scully said. "There's no
case here, at least, not any more."
"Love to be a fly on the wall when you submit this
paperwork," Cheng chuckled sympathetically, and was gone.
Mulder looked at Halbertson for a moment longer. "It may
sound morbid, but that's one song I think I would have
liked to have heard. Scully, you think maybe Flora had a
hand in this --?"
Scully fingered the cross about her throat. "I think,
Mulder, that sometimes we just bite off a little more than
we can chew."