Washington D.C.
December 4, 1953
5:12 p.m.

Dales left a five on a $4.50 check and walked out of the diner. The bell
clinked cheerily against the door as it closed behind him. He stopped to light
a cigarette, then set out for the warehouse. He didn't mind the walk. It was a
chance to slow down, try to get some stuff worked out in his head, and
besides, he had plenty of time. Night had fallen while he'd eaten but it was
still early, and on this unseasonably warm December night parents stood on the
stoops talking while their kids raced up and down the sidewalk, hoping to
outrun bedtime. People here were pleasant enough; they smiled and nodded at
him, but warily, and he knew his whiteness set him apart. Dales knew he was
especially noticeable at this time of day, too late for business and too early
for pleasure. The brick apartment buildings got progressively shabbier until
he left them behind altogether. Now it was just warehouses and empty streets,
and the silence made him miss the Negro families with the easy drawls they’d
carried from the Deep South.

Coming upon the warehouse, he admired a two-tone Pontiac coupe parked on the
street. A new one, with whitewall tires gleaming in the streetlight that had
just flickered on. Dales looked up and down the street but didn't see anything
other than the brick buildings, shuttered fronts, and industrial-sized garbage
cans. No other cars, not even a cop car to watch over the crime scene. Had
they already cleared this one off the books?

He felt under his coat to reassure himself that his flashlight and gun were
still there. Dales hoped he wouldn't need the gun, since he'd have a hard time
explaining to the Bureau what he was doing out here, and alone. As he walked
down the alley on one side of the warehouse, noting the painted-over windows,
he wondered what his latest officially-assigned partner would be doing now.
Probably sitting in his living room with his fat wife, laughing at Lucy and
Desi on the television. Not that the guy would be much help even if he were
here. He'd be too busy bitching about rules and the chain of command and
missing his wife's pork roast.

Dales dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk and stepped on it as he turned to
walk back, past the car and into the alley on the other side. Above his head,
an iron fire escape clung to the side of the building, clambering up to the
dark windows on the second floor and the roof beyond. A rat skittered across
his foot and he jumped and swore at it. A quick look around assured him that
no one had been alerted, and he was still alone. He finished his circuit but
everything looked okay, closed up for the night. Just down the block from the
warehouse and the car, he lit another cigarette and leaned against a dark
building, cupping the cigarette with his hand to hide the glowing end.  He
studied the empty car. Waited. Smoked. Waited some more. The cigarette burned
down almost to his fingers. He flicked it into the gutter and headed for the
door of the warehouse.

Once through the unlocked door, Dales drew out his flashlight.  The beam
skimmed across the concrete floor and up along the boxes stacked high on
pallets, to the grimy, paint-encrusted windows. Nothing stirred. He stood
there for ten minutes, waiting, breathing the stench that still lingered from
yesterday's burned bodies. Then he walked over to the switch panel by the
door. The lights flickered on slowly with a grumpy hum, like a hive of bees
that had been jostled. The front half of the enormous room was two stories
high, the back half one-story with pillars at regular intervals to hold up a
second floor of offices. Yellow lights dangled every ten feet from beams in
the roof, casting geometric shadows between the stacked pallets. Dales put his
flashlight back in his pocket, and set out to investigate the room.

Someone had moved things around since the day before. He had trouble finding
the spot where the bodies had been, even though the smell was almost
overpowering, and was considering lighting a cigarette simply to cover the
stench when he realized he'd found the right place. Scorch marks reached out
like dark fingers from under a pile of boxes. He looked up, gauging the weight
of the stack. Not a chance. He wasn't even sure why he wanted to move the pine
pallets. Nothing to see now. He stood and headed for the stairs. That's what
he'd come for after all, to take another look at the second floor, especially
the rooms he'd missed last time.

Halfway up the stairs Dales paused and thought about shutting the lights off
behind him, then reconsidered. Wouldn't matter; if there were anybody
upstairs, they'd have already heard him coming. He stopped again to listen at
the top of the stairs. Nothing but a fire siren somewhere in the distance. The
smell of scorched bodies was only a faint memory up here.

The first office was just as he'd left it. Whoever'd searched the file
cabinets after him had left drawers open, and a quick look assured him they
were still empty. The second and third offices were the same and just as
empty, stripped. He waited in the hall for a minute but still couldn't hear
anything except his own breathing.

The fourth door opened onto a bigger room, three times the length of any of
the offices. A quick look revealed that someone had used nails and tape to
secure a grey-green wool blanket over the room's only window. He shut the door
behind him and flicked on the light, then stood there blinking like a mole
until his pupils adjusted. Not that it helped make any more sense of what he
was seeing.

What looked like an Army-issue cot stood against the wall to his right, its
bare mattress half-spilling off the metal frame. Scratches along the wall at
about the same height and smaller circular scratches at regular intervals
along the linoleum suggested there had once been more cots. His footsteps
echoed in the empty room as he paced it off to count the scratches. Six beds
by the look of it. He tried to imagine why an electronics warehouse would
possess what looked like a rest area but he couldn't work it out. This room
was cleaner than the others. Then he took a closer look at the wall on his
left, where he could see burn marks underneath a coat of cheap paint that must
have been scraped off by the metal frame of a cot. He didn't smell paint
fumes, so whatever had happened, it had been cleaned up a while ago. Retracing
his steps, he found two other spots where it looked like the wall had been
seared, each at about the same height as a cot.

Dales took a last look around the room, walked over to the door, turned off
the light and once more stood in the hallway, listening. A slight rustle and
then nothing. He drew his gun, knowing every warehouse had rats, but that some
rats were bigger than others -- and armed. His gun gripped with both hands, he
descended the staircase into the lighted room. Nothing.

Just past a pillar, the sound of a leather sole on concrete made him spin, but
not fast enough, and someone's fist crashed into his temple. Dales bounced off
a stack of boxes and was tackled from the side before he could get his gun up,
which flew from his grasp when his wrist slammed off a pallet's sharp corner.
He struck out, one hand scrambling for his attacker's jacket, the other
jabbing up at the guy's face. Dales drew his arm back to strike again but
someone else wrenched it even farther back and threw a chokehold around his
neck, hauling him backwards.

The guy he'd been wrestling twisted free, swiped at his bleeding nose with the
back of his hand and charged, pounding Dales in the head, gut and chest. Dales
felt the hold on his throat loosen. A hard punch to the kidneys sent him
sprawling on the concrete. His half-digested dinner spewed out of his mouth,
and he struggled to breathe without inhaling vomit.  He could hear the two men
panting heavily above him, the one whose nose he'd maybe broken cursing in a
language he didn't recognize.

"Hey, tough guy." Dales felt a foot prodding the back of his thigh. "You still
with us?"

Dales rolled onto his back and winced at the light shining above his head.
Through narrowed eyes he sized up the one talking to him. Greek, maybe, with
thick black hair and a moustache to match, leaning in, pinning Dales with
dark, unblinking eyes.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Dales gasped.

"Shut up." This from behind him.  Dales rolled back to look at the other guy.
A wave of nausea followed him and he folded into himself until it passed.
When it did, he found himself looking at a stockier man, not as tall as the
Greek, but thicker, with blond hair shorn to military length and a flat face.

"I don't…" Dales tried to catch his breath. "I don't understand. What are you
doing here?" The blond man sighed in irritation and swung his foot back, the
better to land a devastating kick to Dales' knee. Dales screamed. The noise
echoed in the room but not enough to drown out a third voice.

"Enough.  Leave him alone."

Dales had the vague idea in his jelly brain that he knew the voice. He pried
his eyes open to watch the third man approach.

"Dales, Dales, Dales," the man said, shaking his head and staring down
sorrowfully.

Hensler. Jesus Christ, what was he doing here?

"I tried to warn you," said Hensler.  "I told you that you were being watched.
 You should have listened to me. I thought you were an all-right guy but now I
find out you're just another idiot."

"You bastard, are you working for Cohn? Is that who you're working for? Did
you kill those people?"

"Shut up, Dales. Forget about those women.  I'm trying to help you. Get outta
here. Go back to your shit-hole apartment and forget you even went out
tonight. You ain't Gary Cooper and this ain't High Noon and you sure as hell
ain't gonna ride in and save the day. Go back to your day job and your
jerk-off partner and your pretty redhead and stay away from things that don’t
concern you. Or else."

What the hell was going on? Dales didn't have much time to think about it,
because with a final kick to the back of his head, they were gone. It was a
relief when they shut the lights off behind them, though afterimages of the
overhead bulb still flashed on the back of his squeezed-shut eyelids.

* * *

Los Angeles County Coroner's Office
1104 N. Mission Rd.
Boyle Heights
February 28, 1999
11:13 a.m.

"What on earth happened?" Scully stood in shock before the open refrigerator,
staring at the shattered remains of specimen bottles, overturned racks of test
tubes, and empty, up-ended alcohol and formalin containers. "You told me the
tissue samples were stolen, Dr. Browning. You didn't mention that the
perpetrators ransacked the whole refrigerator."

"Well, they weren't subtle, I'll agree." Browning stood beside her, gloved
hands thrust into his lab coat pockets. He gestured with his chin. "The cops
came this morning and dusted for prints." Black, powdery smudges covered the
refrigerator door and many of the containers inside. "They got nothing, of
course. Everyone here wears gloves to handle the samples, and it looks like
the thieves did the same."

"Was the lock tampered with?" She peered at the round keyhole built into the
refrigerator door.

"Nope."

"Who has access to the keys?"

He gave her a sheepish look and pulled open a drawer under the bench next to
the refrigerator. It was filled with small white boxes, each labeled with a
refrigerator or freezer number, and each containing a pair of keys.

"So that means anybody."

"Well, the door is always locked at night," Browning protested mildly. "That
lock wasn't forced, either."

She shook her head. "The only things missing are the Jane Doe tissue samples?"

"As far as we can tell. Though once they're out of the marked sample
containers...." Browning indicated the multiple red, brown, and yellow bits of
human tissue littering the floor of the refrigerator, along with shards of
plastic from smashed tubes. "Who could tell? The tubes that were holding the
Jane Doe samples are the only ones missing, that we do know."

"The ones we prepared yesterday for sectioning?"

"Correct. The larger pieces -- what's left of the remains -- are still in the
freezer over there." He gestured to the far end of the lab. "And the DNA that
was extracted last week is still safe at the sheriff's crime lab. We, uh...
well, hopefully we'll get the results from the PCR analysis on that soon, like
I told you yesterday."

For some strange reason, Scully thought, Browning was having a hard time
meeting her eyes as he told her this seemingly positive news.

"So why only the fixed samples?" Scully murmured. "Who has access to the lab
at night, Dr. Browning?"

Browning raised his head and stared over her shoulder, thinking. "At night?
Well there's always someone here, of course, in receiving. That's at the other
end of the building, as you know. Most of the bays and labs are vacant though,
unless someone's working late."

"Is the building patrolled?"

"Yes, but..." Browning's gaze flicked back to her. "Between you and me, I'm
not sure how often those guys make rounds. They're supposed to check every
room every hour, but I've been here in the middle of the night for hours at a
time without seeing a single one of them. However, even if you make allowances
for human error, this place is under constant camera surveillance at the
entrances. Kumar and Hernandez reviewed the tapes this morning. Every one of
the people going in and out had a legitimate reason for doing so."

"So we're left with an inside job?" Scully asked, careful not to turn the
question into an accusation.

Browning sighed. "We're having a full staff meeting at three o'clock, and
they're calling in the night shift. I'm not anticipating a pleasant
get-together, let's put it that way."

Scully sent a surreptitious glance toward the doorway of the lab, which led to
the bays and offices. "So, Dr. Browning..." She tried to make the question
casual. "Is Detective Hernandez still here?"

"No, but don't despair, Dr. Scully. He may turn up again later."

She wanted to wipe the knowing smile off Browning's face. Sorry, Doctor, he's
not my type. My type is... well, you've met my type, and he made the same
impression on you he does on everyone who meets him. He's got the manners of a
gentleman, he's blunt to a fault, he's totally exasperating and he's smart as
hell. He's gentle with victims and as tough an adversary in an argument as
I've ever known.  He's a trouble magnet and a dangerous temptation, and if he
can take the truth as well as he dishes it out, he just might speak to me
again.

"Hernandez left this morning with O'Connell, the arson investigator." Browning
was saying. "Said something about a meeting at Parker Center. That's the
downtown police building."

Scully's shoulders relaxed. "Well, there doesn't seem to be much we can do as
far as the stolen samples are concerned. I suggest we fix some more tissue and
prepare for sectioning again."

"That's just what Kumar, um, suggested," Browning agreed. "I put it off till
you got here. Thought you might like to kibbitz."

"I'll help, if you want."

"Fine by me."

While Scully donned gloves and a protective paper gown, Browning retrieved
some small plastic bags from one of the lab's industrial-sized freezers. Even
from a distance, the contents were unmistakable. Each bag contained a toe,
charred at one end and intact at the other. She could see that the nails on
three of the five toes were painted, two in bright scarlet, one a shimmering
purple. She spared a brief, sad thought for the victims of this bizarre case,
then took the bags from Browning, and set to work.

Yesterday, they had cut pieces off these same tissues in order to soak them in
paraformaldehyde overnight, in preparation for sectioning into slices five
microns thick. She'd been hoping to examine the slices under a microscope
today, so that the cellular structure of the tissue could be visualized. With
those samples lost, and feeling pressed for time, Scully suggested that they
use a different solution, one that would allow them to cut the tissue while
still frozen and to view it much sooner, within the next hour. Browning
agreed.

All the bags were partially buried under ice in a styrofoam bucket. He pulled
a toe from its bag and snipped off a small section of tissue. The piece was
placed in one of five glass containers resting on the ice. Scully followed
him, pouring a small volume of the cryogenic preservative solution over each
tiny fragment as the process was repeated for each toe.

Browning returned the remains to the freezer, and then he and Scully took
turns swirling the tissue in the preservative, waiting for the chemical to
seep into the samples.

"I hope they get better PCR results this time." Browning broke their
companionable silence as she took her turn with the samples.

"What do you mean? I thought the samples hadn't been tested yet."

He set his shoulders and seemed to reach a decision. "Well, Dr. Scully, to
tell you the truth, it was something like the accelerant tests. They got such
anomalous results the first time, they decided to repeat the whole thing."

"Why didn't you tell me that yesterday?"

Browning's expression soured. "Kumar told me not to."

Scully nodded, silently letting Browning know that she would keep his
confidence. "What were the anomalies?"

"Huge spikes in some of the genes they use for lineage testing. If we find a
maternal relative, those are the ones they'll try to match for identification
purposes."

"Yes, I know." Scully moved to the side of the ice bath as Browning began to
agitate each glass vial in turn. "What do you mean huge spikes?"

"They were overamplified by the PCR. The bands on the film came out so wide
and dark, they couldn't get an accurate pattern. Too much template DNA from
the tissue samples loaded into the PCR reaction, probably, even though the
technician swore she measured it correctly."

"What's going on here?"

Scully and Browning turned away from the ice bath in concert to find Kumar
standing in the doorway, arms crossed, a puzzled frown on his face.

"Just repeating the tissue preparation for sectioning, as ordered, Steven,"
Browning held up the vial in his hand and swirled it for his boss's benefit.

Kumar ignored Browning, and turned a full-force scowl on Scully. "I thought
you had a plane to catch, Agent Scully."

"My plans have changed," Scully answered, lifting her chin.

"Odd, that's not what Detective Hernandez told me this morning."

"Odd indeed. I should think that you and Detective Hernandez would have more
important things to worry about than my travel arrangements. Like figuring out
how these women died."

"Right," Kumar barked, striding towards her. "Here's how things work around
here, Agent Dr. Scully. My staff and I are fully capable of determining--"

"Oh, God!"

Scully and Kumar both jumped at the loud exclamation from Browning. They
turned just in time to see the older man's hands, which were wrapped around
the glass sample vial, begin to shake. He gaped at them in alarm.

"Dr. Browning? What's wrong?" Suspecting some sort of seizure, Scully reached
out one hand to check Browning's carotid pulse and the other toward the vial,
afraid that he would drop it.

"Look here, Frank--" Kumar approached, sounding more annoyed than worried as
the violent tremors started moving from Browning's hands up his arms.

Scully reached out again as the shaking man's bewildered gaze turned to
sudden, horrified certainty. He stared down at his hands, then up at Scully.
"Stay back." Browning's voice was agitated, tremulous. He pulled away from her
grasp, but not before she managed to pry the vial out of his hands. "No!"

"Oh my God," she whispered. The heat coming off the vial was almost
unbearable, and it shook violently in her hand. Browning and Kumar were gazing
at her in alarm, backing away. She glanced wildly around the room. "Get out!"
she shouted. "Get out now!"

Browning and Kumar exchanged startled looks as Scully heaved the glass vial as
hard as she could toward the far end of the room. She turned to push both men
toward the door. "Hurry, get out," she screamed. Before they could take a
single step, the vial exploded in mid-air.

* * *
End Chapter 8
* * *

Chapter 9.