X Files - Whirlwind Part 13

It wasn't G.o.dd.a.m.n fair.

All she had to do was get on the G.o.dd.a.m.n plane, and she was out of here. Gone. Lost in another city, where they never heard of Indians except on TV, never bothered with Southwest crafts except in fancy boutiques that overpriced everything from a wallet to a brooch. Gone. New name, new hair, new everything.

Gone.

Now the FBI wanted her, and he wanted her, and there was nothing she could do about it but sit around and wait.

She punched the floor.

She screamed again, cheeks florid, teeth bared.

The sunlight began to dim, and the thorns of the rosebushes began to scratch lightly against the windows.

Suddenly she couldn't breathe, made a dou-ble fist with her hands, and pressed it against her chest.

Harder. Gulping for air. Rocking on her b.u.t.tocks until she thought she would faint. Tears streaming down her cheeks, dripping off her chin, coating her lips with the taste of salt.

When the attack pa.s.sed, she let herself fall backward slowly, seeing nothing but tiny cracks in the plaster ceiling, forming them into images that made her weep again.

The telephone rang.

She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and sat up. She had no intention of answering it. Let it ring. If it was those agents who had come to see her, they could just come over on their own. The h.e.l.l with them. The h.e.l.l with them all.

When she stood, she swayed; when she walked down the short hall toward the bathroom, she staggered. When she reached the bathroom, she looked at her reflection, gagged . . . and giggled.

Touched the tip of her reflection's nose with a fin-ger and told it there was nothing to worry about,nothing she couldn't handle.

What she would do was, if they wouldn't let her fly, then f.u.c.k it, she would drive. By the time they realized she was gone, she would be ... gone.

She giggled again.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Gone, and G.o.dd.a.m.n rich.

Wash up, she ordered; wash up, change your clothes, get the d.a.m.n money, and be ... gone.

What the h.e.l.l are you so worried about?

She didn't know.

Suddenly, she didn't know.

She hurried into the spare room, squinted through the small window, and figured by the sky she had maybe an hour before the storm arrived. If it arrived. They had a bad habit of being all show and no action sometimes. Not that it mattered. Only a fool would tempt clouds like that on an open road.

Another giggle.

Screw 'em.

Now that she wasn't flying, she could load the Cherokee to the gills, take a little inventory to pad the mattress. The not-so-perfect plan, but better than nothing. Nothing would mean sitting around, waiting for things to happen.

She grabbed a carton and headed for the door.

Sand stirred, lifting sluggishly from the ground as if drawn by a weak magnet.

Nearby, a dead leaf quivered.

A twig shifted, rolled an inch, and stopped.

The sand settled a few seconds later.

Nothing moved.

The shower was wonderful.

After crawling around the van and automobile in the sun all that time, Scully was drenched with sweat, caked and streaked with dust, and ready to scream. In spite of the silver chain, in spite of what Mulder had dug from the vehicles' sides, they hadn't accomplished very much.

What frustrated her was a combination of the case itself, which seemed to be going nowhere fast and the certain knowledge that she had already seen the break point and had missed it Something small.

Something so obvious she had overlooked it. The purloined letter in New Mexico.

The storm didn't help.The clouds, frightening black and impossibly huge, were still out there, still in the middle dis-tance. If they moved, she couldn't tell. They sat there, not small enough to be lurking, and too large to even be called looming. There was noth-ing ahead of them but a steady, hot wind.

They were also tired. The mix of alt.i.tude and heat had sapped them without their realizing it. When they reached the motel, it was a mutual decision to clean up and rest for an hour, then meet again to see what they could come up with before their meeting with Nick Lanaya.

So she used the shower to make her comfort-able again, to drain the afternoon's tension from her shoulders and limbs, and to let her mind roam, seeking pathways and the places where they might possibly join into something concrete she could follow, something hopeful.

When it didn't happen immediately, she was mildly annoyed, but she didn't mind. It would come eventually; of that she was confident.

She took her time dressing, sat on the edge of her bed, and gazed at the window, scowling at the tension she could feel building again. She rolled her shoulders, ma.s.saged them one at a time, to get rid of it; it didn't work. She stretched until her joints threatened to pop or separate, deliberately groaning aloud; it didn't work.

Maybe it was just antic.i.p.ation of the storm.

The clouds must have moved closer while she had been in the bathroom. The sunlight held con-siderably less glare, a hint of false twilight filter-ing into the front courtyard. By that part of the bench tree she could see, the wind had died down as well.

It seemed that the outside had decided to do nothing but wait until the storm made up its mind whether to strike or not.

"d.a.m.n," she whispered.

No wonder she was still tense. That was exactly what she was doing. Waiting, not acting. Some son of a b.i.t.c.h had butchered three innocent peo-ple, and all she could do was sit here like a lump and wait for the d.a.m.n rain.

She snapped to her feet, grabbed her shoulder bag, decided the h.e.l.l with the hat, and hurried outside.

No one in the courtyard and, when she couldn't help looking, no one standing at the gate.

The image of Ciola's face so close to her own made her pause and shudder. Those scars, and those dead eyes . . . she shuddered again and knocked hard on Mulder's door, one heel tap-ping impatiently.

When he answered, naked to the waist and drying his hair with a towel, she said, "Get decent, Mulder.

We're going out again."

The sand stirred. The leaf quivered.

"You're the one who made the connections," Scully said as he pulled on a shirt. "So why wait?"

"Scully, we haven't been here twenty-four hours."

"That doesn't answer my question: Why wait?"

He couldn't think of a good answer, and didn't especially want to, not when she practically sparked with energy like this. It was best, always best, to go along for the ride. Besides, she was right. With too many signs pointing to the Konochine, it only made sense to pay an official visit to the reservation. The only problem was, he thought they ought to have a guide, someone who knew who they should talk to, preferably someone who knew the language.

"The sheriff."

"He's in Albuquerque, remember?"

"Falkner."

"They rode her out on a rail."

She tapped a fingernail on the table. "Lanaya would be perfect, but we don't know how to get in touch with him."

They tried the phone book, but no luck; they tried the sheriff's dispatcher, and had the same result. A call to Falkner brought no answer; Scully let the phone ring twenty times before hanging up in disgust.Neither one of them even breathed Leon Ciola's name.

He switched on a lamp without thinking. "We could always go out to the ranch," he suggested, not really too happy with the idea.

Neither was Scully, from her reaction. At the moment, however, there was no place else to turn. And, he added, reaching for his gun and holster to clip on his belt, it didn't especially have to be Annie. In fact, it probably shouldn't be, if what the foreman had told them was true. Quintodo himself would do just as well, a.s.suming he was willing. It wasn't a raid; they were simply looking for information.

Which, he thought glumly, they probably wouldn't get anyway. If the Indians wanted as lit-tle to do as possible with whites in general, repre-sentatives of the government in Washington, especially the law, would no doubt be treated as if they had the plague.

Then he opened the door, took a quick step back, and said, "You have an ark handy?"

The storm had finally reached them.

Scully made a wordless sound of amazement as they watched the rain pound the courtyard in dark and light streaks shot through with silver, pockets of steam rising from the ground in swirling patches that were shredded and whisked away. It was so heavy, they could barely see the wall.

Scully turned on the rest of the lights and rubbed her upper arms. "Close the door, it's cold."

Mulder didn't mind. After walking around in a furnace all day, the sensation was luxurious.

And the rain fascinated him.

"It can't last long," she said, although it sounded like a question.

He had seen downpours before, but this was more than that, this was an outright deluge; it didn't seem possible it could last for more than a few minutes. There couldn't be that much water in the sky.

Ten minutes later he closed the door and shrugged. "I guess we're stuck. Unless you want to try it anyway."

"Out there? In that?"

Looking out the window didn't do any good; the rain smothered it, completely obliterating the outside world.

He wished, however, that the wind would rise. It didn't seem natural, all that rain and no wind to whip it.

Scully moved over to the bed and picked up the receiver. "I'll try Garson again. I'd like to know what he's been doing all day."

He would, too. He had already run through a couple of scenarios, neither of which he liked.

He doubted seriously that the man was upset because of their arrival; they were all supposed to be working the same territory no matter what state that territory was in. He also didn't think Garson was part of what they were look-ing for; it felt wrong. Nothing more; it just felt wrong.

Scully hung up. "Nothing. Sparrow's been there, but there are no results yet."

Rain slapped at the door, a little wind at last.

A constant thudding overhead, like an army marching across the roof.

"Talk to me, Mulder," Scully said then.

He sat at the table, drew invisible patterns on the surface to focus him and, at the same time, to let him think aloud without built-in restrictions.

"It's a cliche," he said slowly, "but maybe it's true here, who knows? What we know for sure is that Paulie and the Constellas had Konochine jewelry. Except for that partial chain you found, it was gone when the bodies were discovered. Destroyed or taken, we don't know yet. But it's gone.

"Maybe this Lanaya brought out the wrong kind. Maybe it has some religious or traditional significance we don't understand yet. Everyone we've talked to has made a big deal of telling us they don't want contact, minimal contact at best. So it's possible that exposing those pieces to the outside could be considered a form of sacrilege.

There might be some on the reservation who would do anything to get it back."

"You're right, it is a cliche." She leaned forward and rested her forearms on her thighs. "And don't forget, Lanaya is one of their own. He wouldn't make a mistake like that. Not even a careless one.""Then maybe it's the very fact that the pieces went out at all."

"He's been doing it for years."

"He's been fighting them for years."

"But he's still been doing it."

Right, he thought; and by now, after all this time, hundreds of people must have Konochine rings and necklaces and who knew what else? Hundreds, at least, but only three had died.

A damp chill filtered into the room.

The light flickered once and settled, startling him into the realization that there was no thunder, no lightning. How could clouds like that, with all that power, not have thunder and lightning?

Scully rose and walked to the bathroom door, walked back and sat again. "I'd still like to know how it was done."

"Scoured. Dr. Rios said scoured."

"How?"

He almost said, "Sentient Brillo," but changed his mind when he saw the don't you dare, Mulder look on her face.

Instead, he answered, "I haven't a clue."