<o><o><o><o><o><o><o><o><o><o>

Prologue

RANSOM COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS, LISBON, NORTH DAKOTA 

AUGUST 2, 1998 9:25 AM

The sun had been up for hours, but the fairground was just beginning to stir, bleary as a drunk after a three-day bender.

Hunks of midway littered the concrete lot like a spilled box of toys. Trucks and campers had been pulling in from Billings all night - now there were scattered shouts, isolated crashes. Some of the larger rides were already coming off the trucks.

"Hey, Brenda." Tim Frye paused by a row of freshly unloaded bumper cars. "Before you go up to the office - you got your real name on your I.D.?"

"Sure." Scully shrugged, trying to get the shirt she'd borrowed from Mulder to stop bunching around her shoulders. "Why?"

"There's a warrant check, okay?"

"Warrant check?" Scully shrugged the shirt into place again, noticing a strong smell in the air around her. It was a bad smell, like the inside of a gym bag, or maybe a wet dog, or...

Oh.

It was her.

Vaguely mortified, Scully stepped to one side, putting a little extra space between herself and Frye. Getting dirty in the line of duty was, obviously, nothing new, but this particular undercover assignment was pushing the limits of her tolerance. Alien goo was one thing; carnival dirt, she'd discovered, was really another.

Perching on the end of a bumper car, Frye reached out and gave her hand a friendly tug. "You can use a fake name, you know, if you're worried about that asshole husband coming after you. You wouldn't be the first - just say you don't have a license. They're hip to that."

Scully took another whiff of herself, frowned. Her head was starting to itch. "No, it's okay. I'll use my real name. Screw him."

He gave her a lazy smile. "Fair enough."

Scully couldn't help smiling back. Oddly, Timothy Lee Frye had turned out to be one of the nicest guys she'd ever met. There were times when she almost forgot he was a potential suspect.

Frye smoothed his handlebar mustache with a square, grease-stained hand. According to the file, he was 44 years old, but he seemed so weathered she really had to wonder. His features were deeply lined and brown as shoe leather and his hair, while showing no signs of thinning, had been faded by age and sun to an odd shade of brownish-gray. "That's the office over there. Tell the old man it was me that sent you. If nobody's there, just hang around 'til somebody shows up."

"Tim-bo! You ready, man?" An old guy with an impressive beer gut approached them, waving a wrench. He stopped, leered at Scully. "Baby needs milk, right, big guy?"

Frye rolled his eyes. "Gotta go to work. Look me up later, okay?"

"Okay." Scully hefted her purse, a cheap, faded thing she'd picked up in a thrift store. "Thanks."

She watched him follow the fat guy up the midway, coffee in hand, gait unhurried. Tim hadn't been a hard man to locate - everyone who worked for Peake Amusements seemed to count him as a friend. She'd found him the very first night of the assignment, flirted with him over the counter at a baseball- throwing game where he'd been filling in for a buddy. He'd bought her story about being a battered wife hook, line, and sinker, taken her enthusiastically under his brawny wing. She'd been hanging out with him for the last two days.

Scully started toward the carnival office. Someone had started grilling something, somewhere nearby - souvlaki or bacon or Polish sausage or some other species of mystery meat. Her stomach responded to the smell with a weird, growling lurch. Was she hungry, she wondered, or was she finally succumbing to salmonella poisoning?

In four weeks, when her posting was over, she was going to OD on tofu and brown rice. Sighing, she marched dutifully toward the carnival office.

<o><o><o><o><o><o><o><o><o><o>

The side of the office trailer was painted with a herd of clowns so colorful they made her eyes hurt. The door was closed. No one answered her knock.

"Great." She sat down on the steps and dropped her head into her hands. 'If only this case were more cut-and-dried,' she thought. Then they could just round up the short list of suspects and be done with it. After all, the carnival's management had been fairly cooperative, handing over their payroll records with a minimum of fuss. Unfortunately, things were rarely simple when it came to domestic terrorism cases.

Still, she supposed she should be thankful. This assignment was a step up in the world, right? At least this week she wasn't investigating dung heaps.

There had been five explosions in the last eight weeks - two near Eugene, Oregon, one in Boise, Idaho, two near Tacoma, Washington. In each case, the bomber's M.O. had been identical; a pipe bomb dropped into a public mailbox and accompanied by a mysterious message in a plain legal-sized envelope. Thus far, two mail carriers had been seriously wounded and a pedestrian maimed. The incidents had garnered more than their share of media coverage, and, unsurprisingly, this had led A.D. Kersh to pull all available agents in on the case.

Her orders were uncomplicated: get in, get friendly, get answers. Pronto.

Simple as that, she thought, stifling an enormous yawn.

It wasn't enough that Peake Amusements had been operating in the vicinity of each of the targeted mailboxes, or that several workable suspects had been identified within the ranks of its staff. Lead investigators believed the bombings had been the work of some kind of conspiracy: the messages left at the scenes had contained a strange circular symbol that suggested, to some, a cult or some other kind of organized militant group.

Scully wound her fingers around the strap of her bag, thought about Mulder. Right now he was probably just arriving at the Hoover Building, showered and well- rested and ready to shoot the breeze with the other members of the task force. She hoped he was enjoying himself. It was nice to think one of them was.

"What you doin' on my steps, little girl?"

"Excuse me?" Scully looked up and found herself staring at a grizzly black snout and a row of sharp, yellow teeth. "Oh my god!"

Dropping her bag, she leaped up and stumbled backwards. Straining on its leash, the Rottweiler sniffed the abandoned purse and growled.

"Easy, Mike. Good boy."

If it hadn't been for his neat clothing and expensive jewelry, Scully would have thought the dog's owner was one of those homeless men who begs for money at traffic intersections. His skin was sallow, his front teeth stuck out, and what little hair he had left was the color of dishwater and badly cut. He had a proprietary air, though, that told her he was the man in charge: Shelby Parker Peake, owner and general manager of Peake Amusements.

The old man took a step toward her. "If talking's your thing, get busy."

Scully took a deep breath, wondering how, exactly, one went about asking for a job at a carnival. Keeping one eye on the dog, she gave what she hoped was a shy, hesitant smile. "Tim Frye - um, you know, he runs the Thunder Bolt - he said this is where I get an application."

"Frye's a good man. Been with me eighteen years." When Shelby Peake smiled, his buckteeth protruded even further, upper lip disappearing under the tip of his bulbous nose. His shocking blue eyes glinted. "You an agent?"

Scully's stomach twisted into a hard knot. "Um..." Was the old guy psychic? Could he tell just by looking?

His smile hardened. "So, if you're not an agent, what do you do?"

"Do?" She hadn't imagined she'd need to *do* anything to get this job. "I don't..." she stuttered, as her mind stubbornly insisted on showing her what she'd look like as a bearded lady. "I mean, I haven't got any talent..."

He gave a contemptuous snort. "Talent?

She felt herself flush. "I mean, I don't know how to..."

"Little girl, you're green as grass. Come back when you can make me an offer." Whistling to the dog, the old man started up the steps. The Rottweiler, however, refused to budge. "Mike." He pulled the leash. The dog ogled Scully, licked its chops, whined. As if in response, the old man immediately wet his upper lip. Then he grimaced as if he'd just had some kind of intense gastro-intestinal pang.

"Well, what's your name?"

"Brenda Kelly." The lie slipped out smoothly. She'd had plenty of practice over the last two days.

"You a townie?"

"No, Tim Frye gave me a ride from Billings."

Peake peered at her, nodded. "Yeah, I bet he did." Then he sighed, passing his gloved hand across his forehead. In the space of a moment, he seemed to have lost all his energy. "Got a driver's license?"

She nodded.

He tilted his head toward the door of the trailer. "Might as well come on in then. Let's see what we've got for you."

<o><o><o><o><o><o><o><o><o><o>

The inside of the trailer smelled like cigarette smoke. Scully followed the old man through a tiny kitchenette and into a room that was so crammed with desks and other furniture that there was barely any space to walk.

"Lay down, boy." Peake released the dog from its leash and turned toward one of the desks. Instead of following orders, the dog parked itself about two feet from Scully, craning its thick neck and sniffing the air around her suspiciously. She turned to one side, shielding her body with her purse. It probably wasn't thick enough to fend off a mauling, but it was all she had.

A woman - wiry frame, thirties, glasses - hunched over another desk, cell phone clapped to her right ear, index finger stuck firmly in her left.

"What do you mean you can't get anybody here this morning? We have a standing contract with you people. It's not like this is a surprise." She paused. "Yes, I'll hold."

She lowered the phone, extracting her finger from her ear and jabbing it at the enormous color television blaring in one corner of the room. "Shelby, since when are we running a daycare in here?"

Turning in her chair, the woman glared at the sofa by the front wall. A young blonde in very short shorts and a pink tanktop shirt sat there, deeply engrossed in the act of painting her toenails.

The old man frowned. "Honey, you know April likes to watch Jerry in the morning."

"I've still got the books from Saturday to finish and the phone company says they can't get here 'til tomorrow. I mean, *maybe* that's what they said. I can barely hear myself think over that noise."

Peake lifted a heap of papers off the desk. His hands quivered noticeably as he set it aside. "April, baby," he said wearily, raising his voice over the television, "can you turn that down a little?"

The young woman aimed the remote, set it back down. Scully noticed no change in the television's volume.

The woman at the desk had opened a file and was busy digging through it. "Yes, three months ago," she snapped into the cell. "I've got the confirmation in front of me - August 29, right here in black and white. Check your calendar."

"Mandy's the real boss around here," Peake told Scully. He opened a desk drawer, rummaged through it. "Right, Mandy?"

The woman at the desk ignored him. "No! You're not hearing me. Let me say it again. The fair opens Wednesday night. We have a set-up to do and we must have a phone on site. We put an order in for three lines three months ago and you *will* produce a technician *this morning* or we *will* sue you."

"Mandy."

"What?!"

"I got a little girl here who needs an application."

The woman barely glanced Scully's way. "She an agent?"

"She don't know."

The woman crammed her finger back in her ear and returned to her conversation. "Hello? Listen, let me talk to your supervisor."

The old man sat down heavily in his chair. "April, get me my Pepto, baby."

On the television, the studio audience jeered and hooted. Setting her nail polish on an end table, the young woman on the sofa hoisted herself and tottered, toes-up, into the kitchenette.

Peake closed the drawer, opened another. "Where's them damned applications? Hey there, you know anything about filing?"

Scully took a step toward the desk. The dog shadowed her movement, edging closer. "A little," she answered, trying not to sound nervous. If only someone would get Mike a Milk Bone, she thought. If only Jerry Springer would shut the hell up. "Um, I used to -"

"I'm sick to death of this goddamned mess," Peake muttered, still rummaging in the desk. "Can't get no decent help - we been shorthanded in here all season. And my damned ulcer kicking up again - hang on."

Mandy had shifted tactics and was plastering a pleasant expression on her face. "Hi. What's your name, sir? Paul? Okay, Paul, this is Mandy Zin calling from Peake Amusements at the Ransom County Fairgrounds..." The woman turned her back to the room, pressing the phone against her ear as if trying to become one with it.

April returned with an economy-sized bottle of Pepto Bismol and a plastic cup. After opening the bottle for the old man, she flopped back onto the sofa, propped her feet up on a cushion and wriggled around in an effort to make herself comfortable. Pouring himself a hefty dose of medicine, the old man gave April an appreciative leer. "You know," he said, pausing to drain the cup and wipe the pink off his upper lip, "I oughta charge admission when she paints them toes."

April rolled her eyes. "Pervert."

The old man's wrinkled face flushed, but he didn't seem very displeased by April's comment. "That little girl needs to learn some respect for her elders. What do you think, um...what'd you say your name was again?"

"Brenda," Scully murmured. She was starting to feel distinctly nauseous.

"Wendy?"

"No, *Brenda.*"

"Linda?"

"BREN-DA!"

The old man stared out the front window. "April, where's Rob?"

"How should I know? You don't pay me to keep nobody's schedule." She winked at him. "I'm just in charge of your blow jobs, baby, ain't that right?"

He chuckled.

Scully suppressed the urge to whimper and sink to the floor. "You know," she said, taking a step towards the door, "you seem to be really busy this morning..."

The dog followed her, still sniffing intently.

"... so maybe I should come back later."

"Cool your jets, honey." Peake opened another drawer. "I know I got some applications around here somewhere."

The office door opened and an athletic-looking guy, probably in his mid-twenties, bounded through it, heading for the small refrigerator without so much as a glance into the office.

"Rob, where's them damned applications?"

The young man came to the office door with a bottle of orange juice in his hand. "There aren't any, remember? Copier died." He took a long drink, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His gaze strayed toward Scully, lingered for a moment.

Scully looked away, focused shyly on the floor.

'Ah yes,' she thought, 'Rob, aka Robert Aaron Peake.' She recognized him from his mug shot. The information she'd read hadn't detailed his relationship to the old man, but he must be a grandson, maybe a nephew. The younger Peake didn't have the old man's bucked teeth or sallow skin, but his eyes were the same unnerving shade of blue.

"Take a look at this little girl," Shelby Peake snapped. "She's green as all get-out, but she's got a helluva face. You know if Buck's got anything entry-level open?"

Scully looked up. She had opened her mouth to say hello and comment about her qualifications, but instead Mike stuck his nose in her crotch and she had to clamp her legs together and twist to get away.

Rob Peake smiled. "Maybe," he said. "We'll see what we can do."

End Prologue (1/12)