The minivan handled like a pig on skis, but Mulder enjoyed the
drive anyway. The twists and turns of the old road, designed
more for Duesenbergs than Dodges, kept his speed sedate, and
that allowed him to puzzle over the case and the uncomfortable
ending to his conversation with Scully. The surroundings
weren't exactly head-turning. Apart from a couple of restored
Victorian mansions, the hills here were populated by
undistinguished houses in varying states of repair. Quite a
difference from The Falls at Arcadia. Or Big Balls of
Doo-doodia as he'd taken to calling it. Almost got the full-on
Scully giggle for that one.

He'd gone a bit overboard, he decided, rubbing it in to Scully
how poorly suited they were to a place like The Falls, in a
life like that. Despite the banality of the case at first
glance, he'd been relieved and happy to be working with her
again, so much so he was afraid he'd acted like a giddy idiot.
Now he wondered if he had succeeded only in convincing her
that while she might fit into a place like that, he never
would. He couldn't get the damned question out of his mind.
"Don't you ever want to stop, Mulder? Get out of the damned
car?"

At the time, his response had been automatic. What was wrong
with staying in the car? What was wrong with pursuing cases
weirder and wilder than anyone else with a suit and a badge
ever got close to doing?

Even if the price paid was getting cancer or gut-shot? The
taunting little voice in the back of his mind caused his own
midsection to tighten in remembered terror. He pushed the
thought down, down into the dark place where his demons lived.
It could sit there, simmering, along with the guilt and anger
that bubbled just below the surface whenever their
conversation threatened to turn toward the current state of
their partnership. The roiling result in the pit of his
stomach served as a reminder that the past six months his life
had been like a roller coaster, careening from personal high
to professional low. If it was all the same to whoever was
running the carnival, he was going to demand a refund and get
off the ride.

The freeway ended and he began to wend his way through
Pasadena, toward an older section of town. He stopped briefly
at a gas station to use the restroom, clean the cuts on his
hands, and wipe some of the soot and dirt from his clothes.
The suit was a write-off, he decided with a scowl. He climbed
back into the minivan and made a mental note to backdate the
claim to the San Diego case, since whatever they were doing
now, it sure as hell wasn't official.

As he turned onto Mrs. Bahnsen's street, he found a
neighborhood that was the antithesis of The Falls, though no
less neat. Craftsman-style bungalows from the turn of the
century were interspersed with stately Mediterraneans, all of
them sporting large shade trees and lush gardens. He slowed
his speed on the winding road in order to peer at the street
numbers painted on the curbs.

Distracted by the sound of water running, and he looked up,
then shuddered at the sight of a pot-bellied man in Bermuda
shorts and a Lakers jersey standing in a circular driveway,
whistling as he hosed down a Volvo. He might want to get off
the carnival ride, but he sure as hell didn't want to step
into a life like that. No, what he wanted was his own version
of a normal life, the one he'd shared with Scully before the
X-Files had gone up in smoke and their careers had turned to
ashes. Before he and Scully had gotten so far apart on what
was true that they might as well have been communicating
across a continent using two Dixie cups and a piece of string.

He recoiled from the fact that she might have a valid reason
to be angry, considering the events leading up to the
conflagration at El Rico. If she still thought he'd chosen
Diana over her, he would lose the battle to get them back into
a comfortable partnership. But he had a right to be irritated
too, he reminded himself. It was time for her to admit that he
had gone to search Diana's apartment only because of Scully's
accusations against her, and he had done so as soon as he'd
left the Lone Gunmen's offices. It would be a big step for
Scully if she would show the same sort of faith in him. In
fact, it would be a big step for her to show him some concrete
evidence of how she felt about him, the sort of evidence she
demanded from him all the time.

But she did do that. The taunting little voice was back,
reminding him that when he became disillusioned with the
scutwork, it was Scully who had pulled him back from the edge.
She was the one who'd dug up the evidence on the smoking man,
she was the one who protected him from Kersh. She was the one
who had prevented them from getting to El Rico in time for the
barbecue.

And now they were working together again, on real X-files.
Before their argument, Scully's voice over the phone at the
warehouse had been eager, there was no other word for it. As
she'd discussed her battle with the coroner and the challenge
of the case, it was easy to tell she loved this stuff. She was
glad to be doing it again. With him. Wasn't she?

He found Mrs. Bahnsen's address, pulled into the driveway, and
turned off the car. The ticking of the minivan's cooling
engine was an intermittent counterpoint to his thoughts.

He'd decided long ago that the one question he would never be
able to answer with any certainty was "What do women want?"
Sometimes, he thought with no small amount of confidence, they
wanted him. He wasn't a complete loser, after all. If you
didn't count recent history. He used to have them lined up.
Yeah, it was a short line, but it was a line nonetheless. But
now he was the one toeing the line, the line drawn in the
shifting sand of their relationship by one small redhead who
was tough as nails and twice as sharp. His ego had the
puncture marks to prove it.

There might be someone out there to whom he was better suited,
he supposed. His mind conjured up a picture of Diana, then
skittered away from the vision like the rat at the warehouse.
Scully was it for him. It wasn't that he couldn't do any
better, he thought, it was that he simply didn't want to.

Oh hell, who was he kidding? He flat out loved her. She was
everything he wanted and he needed her, professionally and
personally.

So it was time to narrow the scope of the question. What did
Scully want? And would she eventually decide to leave him to
get it?

* * *

Residence of Dorothy Bahnsen
178 Arroyo Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
4:50 pm

"Why did you leave?"

The question came out harsher and much more pointed than
Mulder planned. He and Mrs. Bahnsen -- Dorothy, as she
insisted he call her -- were sitting in her quiet back garden,
sipping lemonade.

"Where?" Dorothy asked. "Do you mean the Bureau?" Her sweet,
softly lined face took on a distressed look.

"I meant.... Yeah," Mulder covered smoothly. "D.C. The
Bureau."

"Well, Agent Mulder, it's not as if I had a career," she
smiled. "Not like women do these days. I was just a file
clerk, and I could do that anywhere. Why not here?"

She gestured to the garden, and Mulder admitted she had a
point. Mrs. Bahnsen seemed to have done very well for herself.
The redwood fence surrounding the green lawn was draped in a
scarlet fall of bougainvillea. Just below the raised brick
patio, he could see gold flashes of koi swimming in a small
pond. Over their heads, the branches of a magnolia tree bent
under the weight of waxy white flowers, and stray petals
scattered over the glass-topped table at which they sat. The
smaller trees near the fence were miniature citrus, she’d
informed him -- orange, lemon, and grapefruit. Scully should
be here, he thought. Scully would like this.

"Agent Mulder?"

"Sorry." He turned back to her with a smile. "I was just
thinking of my partner. She would enjoy your garden."

"Your partner is a woman?" Dorothy's smile grew eager. "That's
wonderful. There were no women agents when I was at the
Bureau. That was so long ago, though."

"Yes, it was, but Mr. Dales thought that you might help us to
fill in some details on this case.  He said your recall
ability was remarkable."

"He did?  That was sweet of him.  But after all these years?
Fancy Arthur thinking I might know something." Dorothy smiled,
an indulgent smile. "Oh, I remember the strange burn pattern
you mentioned." She waved him off as he leaned forward to
speak. "But we certainly never figured it out."

He settled back in his chair and studied her placid
expression. "I thought you were just a clerk."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "Well officially, of course
that's all I was. But I assume Arthur told you I sometimes
assisted him on cases. In a very small way," she added
hastily. "Pulling pertinent files and so forth. When you type
and copy things, you often remember the contents, whether you
want to or not. And some of those files were quite
interesting."

"Dales told me you named them."

"Did he? You two seem to have had a lot to talk about.
Frankly, Agent Mulder, the old days at the Bureau were never
that interesting. And as for naming the X-Files...." She
wrinkled her nose. "I suppose it sounds rather exotic and
mysterious, when you don't know the real story. I was just
being pragmatic. A dull choice, really."

"Well, as I mentioned, Dales also seemed worried about you
when he heard about this recent fire. He didn't tell me why."

She laughed. "Arthur always did have a flair for the dramatic.
I'm sure that hasn't changed."

"But--"

"I would be quite interested in meeting your partner," she
mused. "I'm curious as to whether things have changed between
male and female partners at the Bureau."

So did you consider yourselves partners or not? Mulder puzzled
over her choice of words, while sending her a noncommittal
smile.

She seemed to misunderstand his hesitation, and reached a hand
across the table to reassure him. "If it wouldn't embarrass
you, of course. Would you bring her to dinner? I'd love to
meet her."

"We, uh--" He looked at his watch.

"Not tonight," she assured him. "I realize it's late notice.
But tomorrow?"

"I'll check with her and let you know. But we may leave
tomorrow, depending on what she finds out about the case. In
fact, I should be getting back to pick her up," Mulder said,
getting to his feet.

"Now are you sure you're hands aren't too sore to drive?"
Dorothy laid a solicitous hand on his arm. "I'm so sorry you
had such a bad fall in the warehouse."

He wasn't sure why he had concealed the truth from her
earlier. Dale's worried description of her as someone to be
protected had been reinforced by being met at the door by a
disconcerted greeting and the tentative grasp of her soft,
beautifully manicured hand. When describing his search of
sweatshop, he had left out his run in with the gunman, worried
that she might become distressed if he told her the whole
story. "I'll be fine," he assured her.

"Well, it was lovely meeting you, Agent Mulder," Dorothy said.
"Oh thank you, aren't you polite? But just leave those.
Takashi will clean up." She gestured to the figure peering at
them from a window overlooking the patio, the young man she'd
introduced to Mulder as 'someone who helps me around the house
and garden.' It was another of the many differences between
California and the East Coast, he'd thought as he'd shaken
Takashi's hand. He'd tried to imagine his mother introducing
the hired help to her guests, and had been forced to cover his
snort with a cough as Dorothy led him into the garden.

Now he put down the empty glasses and followed her back into
the house. The Craftsman exterior gave no hint of the Oriental
flair that dominated the interior. Dark hardwood floors were
covered with woven mats, and the main room was furnished with
a low couch and chairs. The walls made a colorful backdrop,
covered as they were with full book cases, and the scattered
small tables held porcelain vases of flowers and curios in
brass and jade. A glass case on the wall caught Mulder's eye,
and he peered at the birds and beasts fashioned from brightly
colored paper -- an origami menagerie.

"Did you make those?"

"No, a friend," Dorothy smiled. "Takashi's grandmother,
actually. She's a biochemistry professor at Cal Tech. Her
family was Nisei, one of the original group who settled this
area, as were the people who owned this house before me. I
just adopted the style that most suited the layout when I
moved in. I like it. It's quite peaceful, don't you think?"

He nodded his assent.

"Here's my number." She handed him a card from a small silver
box on the delicate table next to the front door. Embossed
ivory card stock displayed her name and a telephone number.

"Don't be put off if the machine picks up," she said. "I
usually screen my calls. One can never be too careful these
days, especially a woman alone."

"It was interesting meeting you, Mrs. Bahnsen." Mulder offered
his hand. "I'm glad Dales told me where I could find you."

A shadow crossed her face. "I hope you'll tell him he has no
reason to worry." She took his hand. "And I do hope you'll let
your partner have some time free so she can come to dinner. I
would so like to meet her."

He choked back a laugh at the idea of demanding that Scully
clear her free time with him. "I think she'd feel the same,"
he said, keeping his voice cordial. He sauntered down the
sloping walk, conscious of the fact that Dorothy stood in the
doorway watching him as he climbed into the minivan and drove
away.

* * *

FBI Headquarters December 3, 1953 8:45 pm

"This had better be good, Arthur." Dorothy's heels clicked on
the linoleum as she untied her headscarf and slipped off her
coat. "What was so important that you couldn't tell me on the
phone, that I had to come back to the office right away?"

"You mean my dazzling personal charm wasn't enough of a draw?"
Out of habit, Dales stood up as she entered the room, then
settled back down to his files as she breezed over to the
table.

"At nine o'clock at night? Unless that dazzling personal charm
is attached to a dazzling bank account, you better come up
with something better quick."

"Ah, I always knew you were only after my money."

"Sure, that's just what I was saying to my Aunt Fran the other
day. Forget those doctors and lawyers, I said. Government
employees, that's where the real money is." She placed a
thermos on the table and pulled two mugs and a box of sugar
cubes from his desk drawer, rummaging through his belongings
with a familiarity that gave him pause. After thinking about
it for a moment, he decided he kind of liked it.

"How is your lovely aunt? You did tell her I was still
available, didn't you?"

"Yes, and we agreed that was a mystery indeed." Dorothy's
mock-serious look dissolved into a smile. "Forget it, Arthur.
All her baking these days is headed straight for the Christmas
bazaar at the church. Unless you can get a search warrant for
her freezer, you're out of luck. And speaking of search
warrants, what's going on?"

"Break my heart, why don’t you? It's all your fault for
bringing that pie in."

"Arthur, I hardly--" She paused and looked him over carefully.
"You're stalling, Arthur, and you look like you've seen a
ghost. What happened? Why am I here?"

He was stalling, of course, and knew it. His mind was still
buzzing from what he'd seen earlier. "You should have told me
if I was interrupting something." The words came out sharper
than the tease he'd intended, but she waved him off.

"Forget it," she said, taking a seat in her customary chair
across the work table. "I was just sitting at home, waiting
for someone to call, who never did. What's going on?"

Someone? Huh. He gave his head a quick shake to re-order his
thoughts. Start at the beginning. "For the last week or so,
they've had me keeping an eye on Negro subversives down in the
southeast part of the city."

"So that's where you've been."

"Yeah, I think they're trying to keep me out of the way as
much as possible."

"Why? No, stop, don't start that again." She held one hand up
like a traffic cop. "Back to the beginning. Were they
subversive?"

"Not in the way Hoover thinks. They're not Commies. I don't
know exactly what they're up to, but it doesn't look like
espionage or sabotage. I'm watching a family. They've got this
lawyer staying with them, name of Thurgood Marshall. He's back
in town to re-argue a big case in front of the Supreme Court."

"Are you supposed to disprove his case?"

"No, no, nothing like that. The Bureau thinks he might be a
security risk, but I don't know how they get from school
segregation to treason. I think it's just what it looks like
-- he needs a place to stay and no decent hotel is going to
rent a room to a Negro. What kind of name is Thurgood, anyway?
No self-respecting Commie would have a name like that."

The look in her eyes warned him to get to the point. He took a
deep breath and patted his pockets in search of cigarettes,
until she nudged forward the pack he'd laid on the table.
"Thanks. Anyway, he's got to know he's being watched. So I was
out there tonight, and it was boring as hell-- heck. Sorry.
Sometimes I forget who I'm talking to."

"Don't worry about it, Arthur. I'm used to it by now," she
said. "Go on."

He pulled a cigarette out, running the white cylinder back and
forth between his fingers. "Well, I was bored, so when a city
patrolman came by on his rounds, I was happy to get out of the
car and stretch my legs." He decided she didn't need to know
about the pint they'd passed back and forth. "We were standing
near his car, shooting the breeze, when he got a radio call to
report to a suspicious fire at a warehouse on 19th Street and
I followed him down there."

"He didn't mind someone from another agency coming along?" She
jerked her chin to his left to point out the matches tucked
under some files.

He reached for the matches and lit the cigarette, blowing
smoke at the ceiling as he shook the match out. "No, he
suggested it. We both figured it was nothing, and it was
better than sitting on that street all night. Nothing was
going to happen with Marshall."

Dorothy picked up a pen and held it perpendicular to the
table, letting her fingers slide from the top to the bottom
before flipping the other end to touch the table and sliding
down again. Another flip, and again. "Fine. And I'm here now
because...?"

"As I parked, I saw a guy in Army fatigues rounding the
warehouse."

"That doesn't explain--" Her fingers paused and her chin
lifted. He could see the wheels in her brain start to engage.
"What would the Army be doing there?"

"Exactly. But I didn't see any others, and when I got inside,
it was just cops, everywhere." He winced, not wanting to
describe the rest, especially not to a woman, but he could
still recall the venom in her voice the last time he'd edited
a story for her benefit. She was right, he supposed; he might
leave out something she'd know was in a file somewhere. He
continued, "And the coroner was there. Three people had
burned."

"Oh!" She put her other hand to her mouth, paler now in a way
that made him feel a little vindicated.

"Yeah, I know. I didn't see two of them, they'd already
removed the bodies, but I saw one, and the smell was
unbelievable. It was so strange. Like the fire had started...
I don't know, in-- inside them. Like the hottest part of the
fire..." He bit his lip and crushed his cigarette out in the
ashtray. "The darkest, most burned part of the floor was...
there were three shapes. You could see how their bodies had
curled up.... I'm sorry, this isn't a very nice thing for a
woman to hear." He paused, unwilling to admit how much the
scene had sickened him. It seemed unprofessional and...
unmanly.

"Not a nice thing for a woman...." Dorothy threw her pen on
the table. "I hate it when you do this." She pushed back from
the center of the long table, stalked to the far end, and
picked up the thermos.

"Dorothy--"

"Arthur, has it occurred to you that I'm here after hours,
that I've been here after hours with you for the past year and
a half, because I want to know what's in these files, too?"
She poured coffee into a mug and flung some sugar into it,
letting the spoon bang against the ceramic as she stirred. "I
thought we had an agreement."

His hand came down on the scarred table with a smack that
echoed through the deserted bullpen. "Dorothy, this has
nothing to do with you and me. Three people are dead. You have
no idea what it was like to stand there and see the smoke in
the air and feel it choking, sort of... slippery in your
throat." He swallowed the lump that came with the memory.

Her chin dropped to her chest. She stared at the table for a
moment before reaching for a napkin to mop up the coffee that
had spilled over the edge of her mug. "How can I help you if I
don't know all the facts? We agreed, Arthur," she said softly.

"I know." He rubbed his face with his hands and spoke between
his fingers because it was easier than looking at her. "I'm
sorry, Dorothy. It shook me up a little. For all my years in
the Bureau, I haven't seen that many dead bodies."

She sighed. "Coffee?"

He nodded. What he really wanted was a drink, but coffee would
do for now. He was just grateful she was going to let it drop.

"Why did they let you in?" She poured the coffee, a little
gentler with the sugar this time, and walked around the table
to hand him the cup, then leaned on the table near his chair.

Dales paused a moment to appreciate the graceful curve of her
hips under the sleek, straight black skirt she wore. "Someone
must have thought I was a policeman, because they didn't stop
me from looking around. I even got a sample of the burned
material on the floor." He took a small glassine envelope out
of his coat pocket and, after a brief hesitation, slid it
across the table as she walked back to her chair. "I also
found a letter in an empty office in the back."

She held the envelope up to the light. "So? Wouldn't you
expect to find letters in an office?"

"Not letters. Letter. There wasn't another scrap of paper in
the whole place."

"That is strange."

"I found it wedged in the back of a file cabinet. I couldn't
make much out. Something about how sorry the writer was, and
something about the State Department. That's as far as I got
when I heard someone coming. I didn't think twice, I just put
it in my pocket. I mean, I'm supposed to be on a stakeout, I
didn't have any kind of jurisdiction there. Good thing, too,
because two guys with guns came in--"

"Guns?" Shocked, she stretched her hand across the table. "Are
you okay?"

Nodding and waving a hand, he said, "Yeah, yeah. Just let me
finish."

"I'm sorry." She sat back in her chair, hands clasped and
still on her lap.

"They ordered me out of the room, but as I was leaving, I saw
one of them head for the filing cabinets. I wasn't about to
volunteer information at that point, I just wanted to get the
hell--" He stopped, caught her smile, and continued, "out of
there. None of the cops seemed to be paying attention, and to
tell the truth, there's no reason they would. The two men
looked like me or anyone else there -- suit, hat, trenchcoat,
you know, the usual."

"You got out okay?"

"Yes, but on my way back to my car, I saw someone else." He
bounced up out of the chair and started to pace, anticipating
the battle ahead. He had faith in his instincts but he also
knew that wouldn't be enough for her.

"Who?" she asked.

"Cohn. He was sitting in the backseat of a car across the
street."

"Roy Cohn? The lawyer who works for Senator McCarthy?"

"This is why I called you down here. He was right there,
lurking in a place he shouldn't have been. There's more to
this than a simple fire." He kicked the chair away from the
table at an angle and flopped back down on it. "I told you
Skur wasn't the end of it. I swear, Dorothy, for the first
time in over a year, I think we're on to something."

"We? I'm not the one who's convinced that a secret government
is duping the public into believing there are Communists
everywhere in order to cover up their own crimes."

"Haven't you been listening?" Dales felt the familiar
frustration growing, threatening to overwhelm him. He knew in
his gut that Cohn and Hoover, maybe even President Eisenhower
himself, were hiding something, something that had nothing to
do with the official story about just who was infiltrating the
government. "Dorothy, that letter mentions the State
Department. I'm telling you, the Skur case wasn't the first
time Hoover and Cohn were up to something and it certainly
wasn't the last." He lit another cigarette and put the pack
down near the ashtray. "Cohn may be the attack dog, but I'd
bet real money that he's the one who has Hoover on a leash."

She threw up her hands in exasperation at this old argument.
"Be serious, Arthur. You're so paranoid."

"Then what was he doing at that warehouse?" Dammit, he
couldn't manage to convince anyone, not one person, that he
wasn't a nut case when it came to this conspiracy. His last
best hope for that, she who believed in all the creepy, crawly
B-movie monsters she'd read about in the X-Files, sat across
the table, arms folded across her chest, her posture ramrod
straight.

"This is J. Edgar Hoover we're talking about, Arthur. I agree,
something strange happened with Skur, but it's been over a
year with no sign of him. Have you considered that maybe Mr.
Hoover is right? There are real traitors in this country.
Alger Hiss? Morton Sobell? And the Rosenbergs would hardly
have been executed if they were innocent."

"Good God, now who's believing everything they're told?" He
didn't mean to sound so snide, and felt like an ass watching
her retreat from the argument, staring into her coffee cup
like it held all the secrets to the universe.

He sighed, crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. He'd never
been able to bring himself to tell her the details of how Skur
had come to have a creature living inside him, and without
details, he had no chance of convincing her. But how could you
tell someone that her government was capable of anything? That
innocence was exactly what he'd gone to war to protect.

It was the war itself that had taught him first-hand what the
government was capable of. He'd seen what could happen, how
officers ignored orders and lied about it later, how deserters
or prisoners of war would be mysteriously hit by enemy shells
before they could be transported to prison. Hell, they'd all
done what needed to be done. The cause was just, dammit. But
now? Even if the Soviets had the H-bomb, a Cold War just
wasn't the same thing as a real war. Was it?

Hoover thought so, and had said as much during the Skur case:
"If we are to defeat the enemy, we must use their tools. We
must go further. We must do those things which even our
enemies would be ashamed to do. It is only through strength
that we can make our enemies fear us, and thereby ensure our
own survival." Dales had thought he was doing the right thing,
changing his report as asked. Now, more than a year later, he
wasn't so sure.

He softened his tone and tried again. "Dorothy, you believe
Skur killed my partner."

She lifted her head and nodded at him, pushing a strand of
auburn hair behind her ear.

"And you know for a fact that all of the information in that
file has been blacked out."

She nodded again.

He couldn't do it. He could see the apprehension in the wide,
intelligent eyes watching him from across the table. Shifting
his gaze, he noticed that her nodding had liberated her hair
from behind her ear again, and the long glossy strand curled
around her face to rest on her shoulder, glinting red against
her immaculate white blouse. His fingers twitched, wanting
nothing more than to curl the soft hair back around her ear.
He gave up.

"Dorothy, if Cohn and his men aren't up to something, then I'm
Nixon's dog Checkers." He had a sudden image of himself
chasing after sticks thrown by the Vice President's children.

Dorothy didn't say "woof" but it hovered in the air around her
smile. Then her statement shifted from amusement to concern.
"Did Cohn see you? Arthur, you could get fired!"

"I'm not sure. I don't think so. I drove away as fast as I
could. I don't think anyone knows what I found."

"Well, we don't know what you found either." She tapped the
envelope lying on the table.

"True. And this." He handed the letter over. "Maybe you'll
have better luck deciphering it." Dorothy squinted as she
smoothed out the wrinkled paper, then lifted her hands and
gasped. "Arthur! What about fingerprints? I may have just
ruined them. Why didn't you remind me?"

He sat back, startled at her vehement tone. She was really
taking these investigations of theirs seriously -- more than
he, at times. "It's okay," he soothed. "It's almost impossible
to lift fingerprints from paper and I probably already messed
them up myself when I yanked it from the file drawer."

She gave him a dubious look, then turned back to the paper. It
was crosshatched in pale blue, like graphing paper, and torn
from a bound notebook, judging by the ragged left edge. "This
handwriting is impossible, Arthur. Sister Marie Andrew would
never let us get away with penmanship like this. Let's see, it
says... apologizing... didn't mean to hurt them... There are
names here," she said, looking up. "Did you see this?"

"I figured, but I couldn't read the writing."

"I can see why. Who would have guessed that typing up agents'
reports would teach me to read just about any kind of
chickenscratch." She turned back to the letter. "Gladys
Jones-- no, Johnson. Um... Martha Brown, Lucy... Weston?
Washington, Lucy Washington...." She looked up, distraught.
"Women, Arthur? What if these women are the ones who died?
Were they women, the victims? Did anyone tell you?"

He shrugged and motioned to her to keep reading, hoping to
head off potential tears or, equally unwelcome, an angry
outburst. Those incidents had become more frequent in the last
six months, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out
why. She seemed frustrated, although he wasn't sure with what.
Or whom. This Someone, maybe, who hadn't called her? Dales
didn't know much about her personal life, just that she lived
alone and had an aunt in the city. He hoped the source of
whatever was bothering her wasn't himself. He didn't think so;
they'd been working well together, hadn't they? He tried to
think back, and nothing peculiar leaped out.

Her moods made him nervous. He needed her, especially on this
case. Besides her ability to get into the files unseen, she
knew almost everyone in the building and could charm anything
out of anyone, if she wanted to. More importantly, he'd come
to value her insights into the odd cases they pursued. It more
than made up for the fact that she wasn't an agent and wasn't
trained to stay detached. But still he sometimes wished he
could read her mind. Studying her bent head as she puzzled
over the scrap of paper, he reflected that the more time he
spent with her, the more he was convinced that everything he'd
heard about redheads was true.

* * *
End Chapter 4
* * *
Chapter 5