Los Angeles County Coroner's Office
Lincoln Heights
1104 N. Mission Rd.
February 28, 1999 5:45 pm

"Excuse me, Agent Scully?"

Rather than Dr. Browning's querulous tenor, the voice was that
of a younger man. Scully, her focus riveted on the notes she
was making following the tissue sampling, replied absently,
"Yes."

A hand was thrust between her and the notepad. "Elias
Hernandez, L.A.P.D."

She gave the hand an annoyed look, then glanced up into a pair
of warm brown eyes.

"I'm with the Criminal Conspiracy Unit," Hernandez continued,
still holding out his hand. "We're in charge of the sweatshop
investigation. Kumar told me you were here. Thought I'd better
introduce myself, now that the Feds have finally arrived."

Scully slowly pulled off the gloves she had neglected to
remove before jotting down her observations, wanting to make a
record while her memory was fresh. She took in the smiling
mouth and wavy brown hair gone gray at the temples --
prematurely, to judge by Hernandez's youthful-looking face.
How am I going to bluff my way out of this? she thought.

She hesitated, then returned Hernandez's smile in full
measure, and said, "How do you do?"

Hernandez took a slight step back, then grasped her proffered
hand.

"Sorry," she murmured, as he looked down and carefully wiped
away glove powder.

"So," he cleared his throat. "I've never met a Fed who
actually got his-- uh, her hands dirty in an investigation
before. No offense."

"None taken," she answered smoothly. "I'm a pathologist as
well as an agent, so I often... get my hands dirty."

He folded his arms across his chest and leaned a hip against
the desk. "That so? You dig up anything here I should know
about?" He reached down to pull her notes toward him, then
lifted his hands in mock surrender as she snatched them away.

"Nothing conclusive," she said firmly. "We won't really know
anything till we get some test results back. These are just my
observations of one of the bodies."

"Kumar let you look at the bodies?" Hernandez let out a low
whistle. "You must be pretty persuasive, Agent Scully. He's a
little, shall we say, territorial?"

"I'm familiar with the type," she said. "I managed."

"Uh huh. So," he crossed his arms again and smirked, "did you
find anything Kumar missed?"

"Not at all." She gazed at him, composed.

Scully let the silence stretch between them. As she intended,
he was goaded into continuing. "I've been here pretty much
every day since we pulled them out of the shop," he said. "Me
and O'Connell, the arson investigator from L.A.F.D. Neither of
us have ever seen anything like this before, and you can bet
between us we've seen a lot of stuff."

She waited.

He shifted against the desk, then blurted, "On the other hand,
Kumar said you have seen something like this before."

"Did he?" She clasped her hands in her lap and crossed her
legs, foot swinging gently. The effect was somewhat blunted by
the blue paper bootie that covered her shoe, but Hernandez's
eye was drawn to the motion anyway.

His eyes traveled slowly back to her face and he grinned.
"You're not going to tell me a damn thing, are you?"

"I would if I had anything to tell," she said. "But I was
mistaken. Once I saw the bodies, I realized I've never seen
anything quite like this before, either. Even though," she
dropped her voice to a confiding whisper, unable to resist,
"I've seen a lot of stuff too."

"I'll bet you have." His admiring gaze stayed on her as she
glanced at her watch and stood to pull off the booties. "Here,
let me help you." He reached behind her as she fumbled with
the tie at the back of her protective gown.

"Scully?"

She looked up, feeling Hernandez's hands brush under her hair
just as Mulder stepped into the room.

"Mulder." She froze, then forced herself not to brush off
Hernandez's hands. "This is-- I'm sorry, I don't know your
title. Detective?"

"Detective," Hernandez affirmed, smiling down at her. He
pulled the back of the gown apart and would have helped her
off with it, but she stepped away and pulled it off herself.

"Detective Hernandez, with the L.A.P.D.," she said, bundling
up the gown. "This is my partner, Agent Mulder." She began to
gather her notes as the two men shook hands. "Are you ready
to-- Mulder..." Her voice dropped as she saw him grimace upon
releasing Hernandez's hand. "You told me nothing happened."
She took in the dull streaks of soot on his shirt, and the
black smudges just visible on the gray cloth covering his
knees and elbows. As she stepped toward him, her attention
shifted back to his hands, which were curled protectively at
his sides.

Mulder stood passively as she took one hand and turned it palm
up to probe one of the angry red welts criss-crossing the
skin. "No real damage, Scully," he murmured to her bent head.
"Mrs. Bahnsen gave me some first aid."

He raised his voice to a normal speaking tone. "I think we'd
better get going."

She dropped his hands and turned to find Hernandez watching
them with keen interest. "Excuse us, Detective..." she began.

Hernandez's gaze dropped to Mulder's hands, and he was
obviously just as good at reading evidence as Scully was.
"Rough day, Agent Mulder?"

Scully stepped protectively in front of her partner, and
schooled her features to their accustomed neutral mask. "Let's
go, Mulder."

"Yeah, it's past my suppertime." He ignored Hernandez, and
rested his hand on the small of her back, keeping it there as
she moved through the door.

"So," Hernandez said, trailing them down the hall. "What
exactly is the Bureau's take on this investigation?"

Scully tensed, trying to convey a silent message to Mulder
through the set of her shoulders: If you say spontaneous human
combustion, Mulder, I will strangle you.

"We have no comment at this time," Mulder said.

"But you will keep the LAPD informed, of course," Sarcasm was
evident in Hernandez's tone.

"Of course."

"What's the P.D.'s take on the investigation?" Scully asked,
genuinely curious.

"When the Arson Unit gets the chemical analyses back, we'll
let you know. Right now our take is that this was one damned
weird fire. But please, don’t think that’s going to stop us.
We’re going to solve this case locally, no matter how many
other agencies think they need to get involved. Just a
friendly warning."

The smile Hernandez directed at Mulder as he pushed open the
glass exit door was far from friendly, Scully thought. "Oh,"
she said, as the cool evening air hit her face, "I forgot my
jacket."

"I'll get it for you," Hernandez offered, affability restored.

"No thanks." She glanced up at him. He was somewhat shorter
than Mulder, and she didn't have to tip her head back as far
to look him in the eye. "I know just where I left it." Hoping
he wouldn't start asking Mulder questions about their official
involvement in the case, or lack thereof, she hurried to the
borrowed office and grabbed her suit jacket from the locker in
the corner. She pulled up the jacket lining to make sure the
engagement and wedding rings she had safety-pinned inside for
safe-keeping were still there, then raced back down the hall.

At the exit she gave the door a nudge and propped it open with
her hip while she struggled with a twisted sleeve.

Neither man appeared to have heard her. Hernandez was saying
something to Mulder, who, as far as Scully could tell, was
taking an intensive inventory of the parking lot from behind
his sunglasses. Since the sun had just sunk behind the freeway
overpass looming to the west, she indulged in a moment's
amusement at the affectation.

"--a special agent and a pathologist?" Hernandez was saying.
"It's been a long time since I've met an FBI agent that
smart."

Mulder continued to study the parking lot.

"Or that gorgeous. You gotta love redheads."

Scully saw Mulder's back stiffen, though she doubted Hernandez
noticed. A crack from a hapless sunflower seed was Mulder's
only response.

Then she thought perhaps the detective was more perceptive
than she gave him credit for, as his voice took on a laughing,
needling tone. "I don't have a chance, do I?"

"No."

Hernandez rubbed his chin and quirked a smile up at Mulder.
"Do you?"

Before the conversation could go any further, she shoved open
the door, pushing down the handle with a bang. "Ready," she
said, too loudly.

Both men turned toward her, Hernandez with a smile, Mulder
impassive.

"Agent Scully." Hernandez insinuated himself between her and
Mulder and began to walk toward the parking lot, subtly
herding her along beside him. Mulder trailed behind,
ostentatiously fishing for his keys.

"It was good meeting you," Hernandez continued. "We'll have to
keep each other posted on this case. What's your schedule for
tomorrow?"

"More of the same," Scully replied, looking back over her
shoulder to see Mulder strolling behind them. "The results of
the chemical analyses are vital if we want to understand what
happened here." She pointedly refrained from asking him the
same question.

"I'm meeting with a detective from the White Collar Unit," he
volunteered. "We're trying to piece together who really owned
that place. We're holding a couple guys from Sew-Quick down at
County -- that's the men's central jail. The district attorney
wants to make as much political hay out of this as possible,
as I'm sure you can imagine. It didn't help them that we found
them shredding tax and INS documents when we went to question
them at their offices in Koreatown. But O'Connell and I are
pretty sure they're just middle-men. This is me." He paused by
a silver, late model BMW convertible, and blinked in confusion
as Scully stopped by the adjacent minivan. "Is that yours?"

Mulder came up behind them and unlocked the passenger side
door. "No, it belongs to my parents. They let me borrow it
sometimes."

He rounded the van to climb into the driver's side. Scully
felt his eyes on her as Hernandez helped her negotiate the
high step up into the van.

"Thank you." She directed a tight smile at Hernandez.

"Have a good evening, Agent Scully, Mulder," he said, looking
only at Scully. "I'll see y--"

The rest of his sentence was drowned out as Mulder gunned the
engine. Hernandez shook hands with Scully, gave Mulder a
casual, mocking salute, then slammed the passenger side door.
She watched him take a quick step backward as Mulder threw the
van in reverse, then wheeled it toward the exit.

"That hungry, Mulder?"

From behind the G-man shades, he sent her a look that made her
want to shiver and laugh at the same time. "Starved."

* * *

Westbound Santa Monica Freeway
6:15 pm

"Stay in the left lane," Scully said, breaking the silence.

"I see it."

Once they left the coroner's office, she'd offered to drive to
spare Mulder any more damage to his hands, but he had brushed
her off. Surrounding them was the sort of traffic that
demanded the most from their usual system, the one in which he
drove and she navigated. Rush hour in D.C. was bad enough, she
decided, watching cars cross eight lanes from one side of the
road to the other within inches of their fellow commuters, but
this, this was professional traffic.

She relaxed a bit as the heavy downtown flow sped up and swept
them onto the broad freeway that would carry them toward the
beach. As they traveled through the central section of the
city, away from Boyle Heights, she saw plenty of hotels that
were just shabby enough to suit Mulder, and she was surprised
they weren't staying downtown. But Mulder pointed the minivan
toward the sea and muttered something about finding a place
down there. Studying the map, she realized they would not only
be closer to the airport, but near enough to the FBI Regional
Office on Wilshire to make returning the van easier. And the
rings, she reminded herself with a start.

She pulled open her jacket and unpinned the plain gold band
and the diamond-studded engagement ring, studying them for a
moment in the deepening twilight.

"You going to put those back on, Mrs. Petrie? You’re
theoretically holding two months worth of my hard-earned
salary right there in your hand, you know."

"Pee-tree," she corrected him. "And if two months of your
salary could buy something like this, Mulder, then I'd have a
good case for the E.E.O.C."

"Well, if it's a rich husband you want, looks like the
L.A.P.D. pays their detectives pretty well. Or maybe they have
access to sources of income honest FBI agents don't."

She gave him a considering look and slid the rings on her
finger.

"Mrs. Petrie, I'm touched. I promise to make you happy."

"Mulder, if you call me that one more time, you're going to
find it difficult to make anyone happy."

She watched his shoulders relax as he turned to flash her a
grin, then had to grip the seat as he stepped on the gas and
roared into the fast lane. "So, got any ideas about this case,
Scully?"

"Some. But you first, Mulder. What happened to you at the
warehouse?"

He bit his lip. "You saw the photos of the scene, right?" At
her nod, he added, "That was on the second floor. There was a
third floor that was used for storage, and there's an office
or something up there, behind a locked door. Someone was
trying to get in the hard way. I left the bullet in the door
for the police to find. Probably should've told Hernandez, but
I wanted to discuss with you how official we're going to make
this case before I talked to the locals."

It's progress, she told herself, watching the traffic weave
around them. He wants to discuss how we will proceed,
together. She still felt guilty for snapping at him earlier.
For some reason, she tended to alternate these days between
not wanting to be anywhere near him and being overprotective.
Without conscious thought, that overprotective urge manifested
itself in speech.

"Mulder... Why didn't you call for back up when you heard the
shot?"

He sent her a puzzled look. "I thought someone might have been
hurt."

"Someone almost was."

A brief silence greeted her remark. Finally, with his focus
fixed on the traffic, Mulder said, "I'm fine, Scully."

She supposed she deserved that. She turned from him to look
out the window, just in time to see the Hollywood sign, high
up on a distant hill and barely visible through the thickening
evening haze. "Maybe while we're here we should look into
hiring you a stunt double."

"Fine by me. But you will keep me around for the close-up
work, right?"

Her first thought was 'If you pass the audition,' but this
time she was able to control her wayward tongue. Then she had
to make an effort to control her equally wayward thoughts as
they drifted toward Mulder's last bid for close-up work, in
the hallway outside his apartment.

He interrupted her reverie by clearing his throat. "So,
Scully," he said. "Your turn. What else did you find out at
the coroner's?"

She reached into her bag for her scribbled notes, grateful to
apply her attention to something besides her tangled-up
feelings. "Twenty eight victims," she read out loud. "Though
that number is subject to change, since we don't have complete
skeletons. For some of the victims, the heavier parts of the
pelvic bones were all that was left. All women we presume,
though the bodies at the center of the fire were burned almost
to completion. So much damage that gender ID will remain
tentative until we get the DNA work back. Ages, approximately
fifteen--" she paused at Mulder's muffled expletive, "to
fifty. And Mulder, I suppose I'm going to regret this, but
right now, it looks like the most plausible source of ignition
was somewhere within the bodies themselves."

"Spon--"

"No."

She crossed her arms over her chest, and got the feeling that
if Mulder didn't need to keep his hands on the wheel, he would
do the same.

"Scully, have you ever read anything about spontaneous human
combustion? The evidence from the reported cases is exactly as
you describe."

"You mean the Conway case in England, the Mott case in Canada,
and the Uribe case in France? Yes, Mulder, I have read about
those cases."

He slid his sunglasses down his nose and stared at her.
"Scully, you tease."

"All of them were debunked. Every one of those people was
unconscious when the fire started, and there was a small
amount of accelerant soaked into the clothing of each. Usually
alcohol, but even perfume can do the trick. The wicking of
accelerant into the clothes acts as the initial fuel for a
slow, extremely hot fire. The fat from the victim's bodies
supplies the rest. That's why the fires burn almost to
completion, with very little of the victim left but ash. And
that's why it looks like the fire started internally."

"Okay, I've heard that hypothesis, but you said yourself,
that's not what appeared to have happened here. For one thing,
that kind of burning can only occur when there's a single
victim, alone in a room. This was a large group, not one of
whom was able to help themselves or anyone else."

"Are we sure there were no survivors? If they were illegal,
they might not have wanted to stick around when the fire
department showed up."

The sun was just beneath the horizon, casting a faint orange
glow over the straight ribbon of cars stretched out before
them. Mulder paused to throw his sunglasses onto the
dashboard. "But there are other things about this case that
don't fit your theory of how human combustion actually
happens, Scully."

Before she could protest his assignment of the theory to her
personally, he continued, "For one thing, is there any
evidence that these victims were unconscious when the fires
started?"

She grimaced. "To the contrary."

"And in the other reported cases, according to your theory,
the fires were very slow. This fire had to have happened
incredibly quickly."

"Why?"

"The whole building was fitted with sprinklers, and it was
obvious the ones on the third floor were working. On the
second floor, the center of the work area was charcoal, but
the walls were intact. Yet by the time the firemen got there,
the bodies were almost completely destroyed. That argues for a
quick fire, centering on the bodies."

"Are you sure the sprinklers were functional?"

"No, but we can probably find out. The inspection records have
got to be on file somewhere."

"Maybe the accelerant involved was so volatile--"

"An accelerant in the normal sense of the word still implies
burning from the outside, Scully." Mulder was on a tear. "If
the ignition source is on the outside, why did these victims
clearly burn from the inside out?"

Tapping her fingers on her notepad produced a pleasing rhythm,
but no answers. "I don't know, Mulder. Maybe the accelerant
was ingested, like I told you before."

"Then why was the brain as badly burned as the midsection?"
When she turned to speak, he continued, "See, I do listen to
you, Scully."

"But do you hear?" she muttered, then gathered herself.
"Mulder, spontaneous human combustion is a catchy phrase, but
it's an observation, not a mechanism. We need to understand
why these people appeared to burn in a spontaneous fashion.
These things happen for a reason. And besides," she glanced
down at his grimy suit, "if this happened spontaneously, what
was the person who attacked you doing at the warehouse?
There's obviously more than just a weird natural phenomenon
happening here."

Surprisingly, she got the last word. Mulder lapsed into
silence. They slowed to a crawl as they approached the
overpass for the San Diego freeway, the same one that had
brought them to Los Angeles that morning. Circles, always
going in circles, Scully thought.

"Westwood." Mulder gestured with his chin to the cluster of
tall buildings to their right. "That's where the regional
office is."

The questions that bubbled up in response got trapped at the
tip of her tongue. His familiarity with the landscape came at
what cost? What happened on that case, the one he worked alone
while she was... lost? His shoulders and face were still
relaxed, and he drove with an air of casual confidence,
maneuvering the clumsy van through the still-heavy traffic. No
sign of remembered tension or regret, no sign of 'the saddest
eyes' the old coroner had ever seen.

She turned to him, and once again stumbled over the question.
"Mulder, what did.... What was Mrs. Bahnsen like? Did she have
anything to say about the case?"

"Not much." Mulder steered the van into the fast lane once
again. "She seemed smart but.... From the way Dales described
her, I expected someone interested in unusual cases. Instead,
she didn't appear to want to talk about any of it, either our
case or old ones from the past."

"Why?"

"I don't know. And she didn't want to talk about Dales at all.
She couldn't understand why he was being so protective of her.
Made it sound like he was loony."

Remembering her one encounter with Arthur Dales, Scully was
inclined to agree. "Well, it was a long time ago. Maybe she
really doesn't remember anything important. She was just a
file clerk, after a--"

"She wasn't," Mulder interrupted. "She and Dales had something
going. They worked cases together, I think."

"How could she do that? The first female agents weren't hired
until the early seventies."

"It was strictly unofficial, at least the work part of it."

That sparked a small smile from her. "Not that we'd know
anything about that."

He grinned. "I always knew you were a rebel at heart."

Only half aware she was doing it, Scully used her thumb to
spin the ring on her finger. "Maybe there was more to their
relationship and it ended badly. It's entirely possible that
she doesn't want to be reminded of those days."

She wondered what Mulder was reading into her statement when
he didn’t reply. From the window she could see the lights of
one large apartment building after another as they flashed by.
Most people would be home now, she supposed, getting supper
ready. "She must be a very interesting woman. It can't have
been easy, back then. My mother never worked."

"Neither did mine."

She hesitated, then added, "I always wondered if mine wanted
to, but she seemed to be happy with the kids and the house,
making it nice for my father when he was home. It wasn't like
The Falls, but it was still..."

"An ideal life?" There was a hint of worry under his question.

"Hardly, Mulder. Can you picture me-- Well, let's just say
that for some women that is an ideal life and for others it's
not. At least these days we have a choice. In Mrs. Bahnsen's
day, especially if she was ambitious enough to want to work
cases, it must have been stifling."

"It can't have been easy for Dales either."

"Oh Mulder, please. A man can always do anything he wants to
do."

"Oh, sure he can," he muttered, then smirked over at her. "I
could give you a whole treatise on the circumscribed roles of
the 1950s male, Scully, not to mention what us poor slobs of
the 1990s have to deal with, but I'll wait for a time when
you're not armed." She gave him the eye-roll she assumed he
was looking for, and let him continue. "No," he said, "I
meant, a clerk wouldn't have had any training, or have learned
how to handle a weapon If they worked together, he would've
had to protect her. And if it were all a secret, he would've
had to protect her secretly, too. It must've been a
nightmare."

"Do you really think she went out in the field with him?"

He shrugged.

"Mulder..." She looked down at her lap, absently pleating the
material of her skirt. "Do you ever worry-- I mean when we're
in the field together and you need me to back you--"

"No." He looked over at her, his gaze open and direct.
"Never."

She flexed her fingers, surprised at the need to release the
tension in them. These conversations were always more
stressful than arguing a case ever would be.

He turned around to check the lane next to them as he guided
the van toward the right lane, getting ready to exit. "Think
about what Dales must have known, Scully. He was there at the
beginning, when the consortium was getting started. We fight
them now, and while people may not believe us, they're still
suspicious of government -- Vietnam and Watergate accomplished
that much. But back then he must have been all alone."

"There were protesters then who objected to what the
government was doing."

"Yeah, but you can bet they didn't work for the FBI. There's
no way in Hoover's day he could have been on the far left
politically and been an agent at the same time. Then again,
considering what he knew, he probably wasn't a gung-ho Cold
Warrior either, which would have at least protected him. That
middle ground was dangerous. Even Oppenheimer, the scientist
who invented the bomb, was stripped of his security clearance.
Things were nuts back then." He pulled at his bottom lip.
"Something happened to Dales, too, that made him have to leave
the Bureau. I never got that part of the story out of him."

"At least he had Dorothy."

"Did he? I couldn't get a fix on what exactly went on there.
Maybe he couldn't make her believe him. It must have been a
tough thing to do, explain to someone that their government
was harboring conspirators."

"You managed it," she said dryly.

He looked over at her quickly. It almost seemed he was about
to say something else before he replied, "That's different,
Scully. You're an agent." At her nod, he returned his
attention to the road. "She was a clerk, which is a pretty
mundane job. To be an agent you need someone tough and
worldly. He might have told her about it, but I can also see
why he might not have."

She felt a faint tickle of surprise. Was that the way Mulder
thought of her? Tough and worldly? That sounded more like
Diana Fowley.

Mulder eased the van off the freeway. "I don't know, Scully,
maybe you can figure it out. Mrs. Bahnsen asked us to dinner
tomorrow night."

"What about our flight?"

At the end of the Fifth Street off ramp, he stopped the van at
the light and turned to face her. "Do you really want to leave
now?"

She got the distinct impression he was asking about more than
just her immediate travel plans. "No, Mulder." Her words were
sure and determined. "I want to solve this case." She gave him
a slight smile and a brief touch of her hand on his arm. "You
can stay and work it with me if you want."

"I thought you'd never ask."

As they navigated the busy streets of Santa Monica, Scully
decided Mulder must have memorized a map beforehand, since he
seemed to know exactly where he was going. They turned onto
the aptly named Ocean Avenue, which ran along a high bluff
overlooking the Pacific. The water was a featureless gray
plain stretching to the west, the horizon a smudged charcoal
shadow separating it from the dark steel of the sky. In the
distance she could see a twinkling rainbow of colored lights
where a Ferris wheel seemed to hover in the thick evening air.
Mulder stopped the van in front of a large building painted an
incongruous robin's egg blue.

"Roll down your window, Scully," he said with a happy,
self-satisfied smile.

She complied, and took a deep breath. The heavy mist shining
in the streetlights carried the welcome scent of the sea.

* * *
End Chapter 5
* * *
Chapter 6