X Files - Whirlwind Part 11

"Ex-con. They didn't tell you that?"

No, Mulder thought; there's a lot they haven't told us.

Then he spotted a faint racial resemblance to Nando Quintodo. "You're from the Mesa?"

Ciola's smile didn't falter. "Very good, amigo. Most people think I look Apache." Fingers flut-tered across his face. "The scars. They make me look mean."

"Are you?"

The smile vanished. "I'm a son of a b.i.t.c.h, Agent Mulder. A good thing to know."

He's not bragging, Mulder thought; he's not warning, either.

Ciola glanced up and down the street, then placed a hand on the window well. "Sheriff Sparrow will tell you that I have killed a man. It's true. Maybe more, who knows? He'll tell you, when he gets around to it, that I probably killed those stupid tourists. I didn't, Agent Mulder. I have more important things to do."He tipped his cap to Scully and backed away, interview over.

Mulder nodded to him, straightened, and pulled slowly away from the curb. The man chilled him.

What chilled him more, however, was the fact that Sparrow hadn't said a word about him. An obvious suspect, a self-confessed killer ex-con, and the sheriff had, conveniently or otherwise, kept Ciola's name to himself.

"Scully, do you get the feeling we've dropped down the rabbit hole?"

She didn't answer.

A glance at her profile showed him lips so taut they were bloodless.

He didn't question her. Something about the man, something he hadn't caught, struck a nerve. Sooner or later, she would tell him what it was. As it was, he had to deal with street signs he could barely read because they were too small, and the vehicles impatiently lining up behind him because he was driving slow enough to try to read the d.a.m.n signs.

The sun didn't help.

It flared off everything, and bleached that which wasn't already bleached.

Everywhere there were signs of a town strug-gling to find the right way to grow-obviously new shops, shops that had gone out of business, houses and buildings in varying stages of con-struction or repair. It was either very exciting to live here now, or very frightening.

"There," Scully said.

He turned left, toward the river, and found himself on a street where lots were large and vacant, spotted only once in a while by small, one-story houses in either brick or fake adobe. A drab place, made more so by the gardens and large bushes flowering violent colors. No toys in the driveways. The few cars at the curbs seemed abandoned.

He parked in front of a ranch house whose front window was buried by a tangled screen of roses. A Cherokee parked in the pitted drive faced the street. As they got out, he saw a suitcase by the driver's door.

"Somebody's going on vacation."

"I don't think so," she said, nodding toward the two other suitcases sitting on the stoop. "Not unless she's planning to stay away for six months."

He knocked on the screen door.

No one answered.

He knocked again, and the inner door was opened by a young woman with a briefcase in one hand.

"I don't want any" she said.

Scully held up her ID. "Special Agent Scully, Special Agent Mulder, FBI. Are you Donna Falkner?"

It didn't take any special instinct to realize the woman was afraid. Mulder opened the screen door carefully and said, "We'd just like to talk to you, Ms. Falkner. It won't take a minute, and then you can take your trip."

"How did you know that?" Donna demanded, her voice pitched high enough to crack. Then she followed Mulder's gesture toward the suitcases, "Oh."

"Just a few minutes" Scully a.s.sured her.

The woman's shoulders slumped. "Oh, what the h.e.l.l, why not. How much worse can it get?"The air conditioning had been shut off. The room was stifling. The woman hasn't left yet, Mulder thought, and already the house feels deserted. Donna grabbed a ladder-back chair from in front of a small desk and turned it around. When she sat, shoulders still slumped, she held the briefcase in her lap, looking as if she wanted to hold it against her chest. Scully took a seat on a two-cushion couch, pen and notebook in hand; Mulder remained standing, leaning a shoulder against the wall just inside the room's entry.

It kept him in partial shadow; it kept the woman in full light.

"So," she said resignedly. "What do you want to know?"

"The Konochine" Mulder told her, and saw her gaze dart in his direction.

"What about them?"

"You sell their jewelry," Scully said, shifting the woman's attention back the other way. "We were told they didn't like the outside world very much."

"Hardly at all" Donna answered. Her shoul-ders rose a little. "I got chased off the res once, back before I knew what I was doing." She shifted the briefcase to the floor beside her. "See, they're not the only Indians I deal with, but they give me the most trouble. Or did, anyway. There's this man-"

"Nick Lanaya?" Mulder said.

"Yeah. He's one of the out-and-backers. You know, got out, came back? Well, we met at a party once, got to talking-he's very easy to talk to, kind of like a priest, if you know what I mean. Anyway, he knew his people needed money, and after he asked around, he knew I'd be able to get them a fair price for the work."

Scully moved a hand to draw her attention again. "How mad are the ones who don't want outside contact?"

Donna frowned, the understanding of what Scully meant slow in arriving. "Oh. Oh! Hey, not that mad. G.o.d, no. You think they killed those poor people?" She dismissed the notion with a wave. "Jesus, no. They talk a lot, yell a lot, but Nick just yells right back. He's-" She stopped, frozen, as though something had just occurred to her. "Tell you, though, the guy you should be talking to is Leon Ciola."

"We've met" Mulder said dryly.

"You're kidding." Her right hand drifted down to brush at the case. "You know he was in the state pen, up by Santa Fe? Killed a man in a bar fight." Her left hand draw a line across her throat.

Slowly. "Nearly cut his head off. I don't know how he got out. A good lawyer, I guess."

"Where are you going?" Scully asked.

"Vacation," Donna replied instantly.

"You take more clothes than Scully," Mulder said with a laugh.

"I'll be away for a while."

"Who takes care of the business? Nick?"

She shrugged. "Mostly, yeah."

Scully closed her notebook. "You have no con-trol over what you receive from the Mesa? Or who buys them retail?"

"Nope. Nick chooses the pieces, I choose the shops. After that, it's the guy who has the most money."

Mulder pushed away from the wall. "What ifsomebody who didn't know any better just drove onto the reservation?"

"Nothing." Donna retrieved her case. "No one would talk to them, probably. Sooner or later, they'd get the hint and leave."

"And if they didn't?"

"You mean like me?" She laughed; it was false. "I'm pushy, Agent Mulder. I pushed too far. Chasing is all that would happen, believe me." She stood and looked none too subtly at the door. "I still say you should check Ciola. He has a knife and ..." She shuddered for effect.

Scully rose as well. "Thank you, Ms. Falkner. We appreciate the time."

"No problem." She led them to the stoop. "If you don't mind, though, I have a plane to catch, okay?"

Mulder thanked her again, asked her to call Agent Garson if there was anything else she thought of before she left, and got behind the wheel, cursing himself soundly for forgetting to leave the windows down.

The sun out there, and an oven in here. He set the air conditioning to high and hurry up about it and drove off, taking his time, while Scully watched Donna Falkner in the outside mirror. When they turned the corner, Scully said, "She relaxed very quickly,"

"Yeah. Because we didn't ask her about what she thought we would."

"Which was?"

"Scully, if I knew that, I would have asked her."

She grunted disbelief; he knew what she was thinking. There were times when asking ques-tions got you answers, but not necessarily when you wanted them. There were times when it was better to spin a web and see who tried to break free.

Donna was breaking free.

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

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

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

"Garson?" she said.

"Material witness to an active investigation."

"But she isn't, Mulder."

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

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

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

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

"Why do you want to see it?"

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

Sometimes they made her too much like him.

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

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

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

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

"Your tax dollars at work."

Sparrow waved them over to a padlocked gate in the fence. "Looking for anything in particular?" he asked as the gate swung free and they walked in."You never know," Mulder told him.

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

"What for?"

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

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

"Mulder?"

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

"So?"

She pointed to the side.

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

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

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

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

"What the h.e.l.l you looking for?" Sparrow said, tossing the keys to Scully.

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

"Yep. So?"

"New, then, right?"