La Llorona (6/12)
by phantagrae

Rating: PG (mild language)
Category: Casefile
Spoilers: Not really, but assumes everything through at least 
Amor Fati. 

Summary: Mulder and Scully investigate a series of deaths in
Albuquerque, NM. 

Feedback: Yes, please.  phantagrae@earthlink.net
Archive: Not to Gossamer.  I'll submit directly there.  Yes to
anywhere else.  Just let me know, please.


Mulder left his car in the parking lot at San Gabriel Park, where the
first victim's car had been found.  He followed the bike path north
from the park the way Manny Garcia must have done.  He passed
beneath the Interstate 40 Bridge, with its constant thunder of traffic,
and then he left the trail, picking his way down to the water's edge. 
Garcia had been found face down in the shallow water among the
reeds.

Mulder stopped at the spot where Garcia's body had lain.  Even
after several days, the reeds were still flattened down.  This place
wasn't nearly as quiet as the area where Laura Mesker had been
found, though it was only a couple of miles south.  Here the river
channel was deeper and the current more turbulent as it
approached the pilings of the I-40 Bridge.

He squatted down among the cattails and looked at the area
closely.  There wasn't much to see.  The photos he had examined
earlier showed Garcia's prone position, his footprints along the
bank, and not much else.

Mulder looked up and down the bank, unable to imagine what had
drawn this man here in the middle of a stormy night.  There was
nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing remarkable about this stretch
of the river-except that a man had died here.

With a sigh, Mulder stood and made his way back to the trail,
walking through the broken glass and other trash beneath the bridge
as he headed back toward the park.  The Central Avenue Bridge
stretched over the river a little further south of the park and
something made him pause at the sight of it.

A bicyclist in a neon green jersey emerged from beneath the bridge
and sped along the trail, nodding a greeting at Mulder as he passed
by.

When Mulder turned back toward the south, the feeling was gone.
Whatever had caught his attention had slipped away.

Probably just the sound of the bike, he thought, shrugging to himself
as he went up to the parking lot.

 

Nathaniel Kinsey lay naked on the steel autopsy table, his head
propped on a block, his youthful college-boy clothes stripped away
to be examined for trace evidence.

Scully stood still beside the table.  Whatever Mulder thought was
going on here, in the end it hardly mattered.

What mattered was that someone was dead.  This boy was dead.

This boy—who had no gray hair, whose face was as yet unlined, 
who had lived scarcely a third of his natural life span—this boy was 
dead.

Scully ran one gloved finger across his smooth cold brow.  She
wondered when she had begun to feel so old.  She would allow
Mulder his theories without protest for the time being.  Soon she
would confront him with the cold hard facts of this young man's
death.  It wasn't that she wanted to be adversarial, but she couldn't
willingly embrace "explanations" that defied scientific fact.  Of
course, since she had begun her association with Mulder she had
seen many things that she would have never dreamed possible. 
Still, she maintained that flukemen, liver-eating mutants, and some
of the other strange things they had encountered, as bizarre and
supernatural as they might appear, were in the end just examples of
nature, or human nature, somehow gone wrong.

But a ghost-woman running along the river killing people was
ridiculous.  She and Mulder had confronted the "killer ghost" theory
before.  She hadn't believed it then, despite Mulder's earnest
insistence, and she didn't believe it now.

At last she felt the familiar wall of detachment slide down over her
heart and she stepped away to get the camera.

She photographed the angry red wound over his breastbone.  As
she had read in the autopsy report of the previous victims, it
seemed to be some sort of burn or scorch mark.  The skin was
slightly blistered, the hair on his chest singed.

Given the weather conditions last night and the lack of evidence of
another person on the riverbank, Scully's first impression was that
Nathaniel Kinsey had been struck by lightning.  There were other
physiological signs she would look for in his tissues to confirm her
initial diagnosis, but it seemed the obvious conclusion.

 

Mulder looked out over the water as he sped along with the
westbound traffic over the Monta¤o Road Bridge.  The third victim,
Vera Tafoya, was the only one found on the western bank of the
river and she had been found just north of this bridge.

As he reached the western side he turned to the right as soon as he
could.  There was a small shopping center nearby and he pulled
into its parking lot.  He found his way down toward the water but
had to stop when he came to a ditch.  According to the report it
was a drainage and flood control canal.

Vera Tafoya would have to have somehow crossed this ditch in
order to get down to the river's edge where her body had been
found.  She would have either picked her way over the slim
maintenance crossing several yards from the bridge or simply
waded through the deep, weed-tangled water.  Either option
seemed incredible for an older woman to have done in the dark,
during a heavy downpour.

Mulder crossed the narrow planks of the maintenance bridge and
pushed through the bosque of tangled bushes, cottonwood and
Russian olive trees.  There were no houses in this area, and the
shopping center was rather far above the bank.  There was nothing
of civilization here but its trash.

She had been found in the water, her gown caught in a low-hanging
tree branch, but like Manny Garcia and Laura Mesker she had had
no water in her lungs.  So why had Vera Tafoya come down
through this wilderness of trees and underbrush in her nightgown
and slippers?

Whatever had driven her, whatever had drawn her, had been
strong enough to make her force her way to this difficult place, with
no foresight or preparation, in inappropriate clothing, on an
inhospitable night.

His stomach rumbled suddenly, breaking his concentration and
reminding him that he hadn't finished his breakfast this morning.  He
sighed at the sun-burnished water, eyed the clouds that were
already bulking upward into the too-blue sky.  He glanced at his
watch then started back the way he had come.  He was having
trouble putting the pieces together to his satisfaction and he
wondered if Scully had found anything helpful in the autopsy.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and pressed her
speed-dial number.

"Scully."  There was a hint of a sigh in her voice as she answered.

*"Buenas tardes, Señorita Scully,"* he began.  "You up for some
lunch?"

"You buying?" she answered, trying not to giggle at his fledgling
Spanish.

"Yup."  He started the car and headed back over the river.  "Did
you find anything?"

"Um, yes and no," Scully replied.  She didn't want to admit that her
theory wasn't exactly panning out.

"Oh?"

"We can talk about it after lunch, Zorro."


 

66 Diner
1:15pm


Mulder pulled into the small parking lot beside a low white building
accented in turquoise and pink neon.  Inside, the 1950's d‚cor
extended to the waitress's uniforms, red leatherette booths, and
chrome-trimmed stools at a long counter.  The hostess led them
across the black-and-white checkerboard floor to a booth by a
window looking out over the city's downtown district to the west.

Mulder took advantage of the coat hook mounted on the side of
the booth to hang up his jacket, rolling up his shirtsleeves as they
sat down to order lunch.

They made small talk about the diner and the view as they waited
for their food and then began to eat.  At last they were finishing up,
Mulder decided to take the plunge.

"So what did you find, Scully?" Mulder asked as he wiped the last
residue of his green-chile cheeseburger from his lips.  "What killed
Nathaniel Kinsey?"

She looked out the window at the heavy clouds and the curtain of
rain moving closer to the diner.  At last she turned back to him.

"Well, he died of heart failure..." she hedged.

"Caused by..." he pressed.  The rain began to pound down on the
cars and the parking lot, its damp perfume coming in through the
air-conditioning.

"The, um, mechanism of death is not clear," she finally continued.

Mulder studied her face.  Her pretty blue eyes were boldly holding
his gaze, but he could tell she was not as sure of her conclusions as
she wanted to be.

"That burn," he began, "could it have been some kind of
electrocution?"

"I considered that," she said, looking down at the table for a
moment.  "The wound was superficial and there was no tissue
damage indicating electrocution."  She fiddled with her napkin.

"Were there any other findings?" he prompted, sensing that she was
holding something back.

"Yes," she replied.  She sat up straight and looked him in the eye
again.  "There were heightened levels of adrenaline in his system,
very high levels, indicating a violent encounter or attack."

Mulder nodded with confidence.  "Couldn't that mean that he died
of fright?"

"Mulder, if you believe he died of fright," Scully answered, leaning
forward to make her point, "wouldn't that mean that he was
frightened by *someone?*"

"Some*thing.*"

"Some*one.*"

Scully took a moment to change her tone.

"Mulder, I'm just afraid that in your eagerness to blame this on this
ghost woman you might be overlooking the real killer.  Maybe you
should try working on a legitimate profile, assume we're dealing
with a real person."

"Scully," Mulder protested, trying to keep the anger out of his
voice, "I've already thought this through.  I've already eliminated
any real person."

"But did you really try working up a profile, or did you begin with
the assumption that it was your ghost-woman?  Did you let that
assumption color your perception?"

He had to hold his tongue because he knew that at least part of
what she said was true.

"Mulder, tell me something," she said, pinning him with her eyes. 
"Did the APD go through the Albuquerque Field Office to call you
in on this case, or did you call them?"

Mulder set his mouth in a tight line and stared back at her, finally
turning to stare out the window toward the downtown skyline.

"I thought so."  There was little he could hide from her.

"Paul faxed me a newspaper article that appeared after the first
death," he began at last, his voice quiet, though he was able to look
her in the eye again.  "The reporter had interviewed some people
who lived near where the body was found and they mentioned the
legend of La Llorona."  He had indeed been eager to investigate the
possibility of her existence.  So, had he really tried to come up with
a "legitimate" profile, as Scully put it?  Maybe, maybe not.

"Please, Mulder," she said.  "Would you try again?  You want to be
sure, don't you?  If you're going to stand by your claims in our
report, if you're going to present this theory to the APD, but most
importantly, for the sake of the victims and their families, you have
to be absolutely sure you haven't overlooked their killer."

Scully saw the faint flush that colored Mulder's cheeks as he turned
again to look out the window.  She hadn't meant to hurt his feelings
or make him feel foolish.  She finally laid her hand gently over his.

"Hey," she began softly.  "Why don't we go back and go over the
case file together?"

He turned his hand beneath hers and caught hold of her hand.  He
squeezed her fingers then released them to signal the waitress for
their check.


Continued in Part Seven