Kinesthesia

by Amy

PART SEVEN

 

10:28 AM

Mike stood looking toward the old man's office, ears pricked, tail-stub twitching. The argument had been grinding along for at least twenty minutes without a pause.

"You tell me where you were at," Shelby Peake would wheedle.

"Fuck you, you don't own me," April would answer.

"You better pipe up if you know what's good for you," he'd counter.

"Why should I?" she'd snarl.

"You tell me," he'd bark. "Tell me right now!"

"It's none of your damn business!" she'd sneer.

Then they would start the routine all over again, with the old man adding random accusations of ingratitude and freeloading to the mix, and April taking every opportunity to insult the old man's intelligence and virility. The dog huffed, whined, trotted back to his bed.

Slipping behind Mandy's desk, Scully opened the top drawer of a filing cabinet. The drawer contained a forbidding row of labeled folders - invoices, service contracts - nothing promising. In the next drawer, though, she found current income tax records for the corporation. With a quick glance at the office door, she pulled the paperwork for the second quarter and tried to digest the neatly typed numbers. She was no accountant, but it looked like the show was well in the black. Hardly surprising, given the amount of money she saw changing hands every night. Even with a high overhead, the profit margin must be pretty big.

She'd just shut the file drawer when Mike started whining again and the door of the old man's office burst open. Scully stepped back to her desk and tried to look busy.

April was sobbing. The old man would have looked comical - hair standing on end, white face, bright red patch on each cheek - if his expression hadn't been so full of wrath. "Shut up, Mike," he snapped. "Mandy!"

He didn't seem to notice that Scully was in the room. "They went out," she ventured. "They told me to tell you - "

"They?"

"Mandy and Rob, they went to - "

"Goddammit!" He stalked toward her. "You - what's your name again?"

"Brenda."

"Linda?"

"BRENDA."

He scowled, rubbed his forehead. "Well listen, I gotta go." He crammed his hand into his pocket. Producing a set of keys, he dangled them in her direction.

She wasn't sure what he wanted. "I'm sorry, Mr. Peake, I don't - "

He thrust the keys toward her. "Take 'em, go on."

Scully realized that the thin leather gloves the old man usually wore were missing. There was an odd, pinkish appendage sticking out by his right thumb, just above the dangling key ring. Resisting the urge to lean closer and peer, she took the keys. The old man stepped back into the hallway. "Let's go, woman!" He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Now!"

"No!"

"The hell you say!" Peake punched the flimsy wall for emphasis. This seemed to throw him off balance - he reeled for a moment, looking green. "Get out here!"

There was a shuffling sound as April came down the hall.

Scully tried again to deliver the message about the wedding. "Mr. Peake, Mandy said - "

He ignored her. "Hurry up!" April appeared. "Pack your bag and be ready to go in five minutes!" Tearstained, she pushed past him and headed for the office door.

When April had gone, the elder Peake stood for a moment, breathing so heavily Scully was afraid he was having some kind of attack. "Get me my Pepto, little girl," he choked. "That bitch has got my ulcer burning something fierce."

Shaking her head, Scully went into the kitchenette and rummaged through cabinets stuffed with ticket rolls, paper towels, plastic cups, spray cleaner, ant traps, rat baits, stacks of flyers, office supplies: everything, it seemed, except the medicine. After a minute or two, she found the Pepto Bismol bottle shoved behind a jug of wine in the refrigerator. The old man snatched it without a word of thanks and turned to go.

Scully cleared her throat. "Um, Mr. Peake - "

His head snapped toward her. "What?"

His expression was nothing short of psychotic. Scully took a step back and showed him the key ring. "What should I do with these?"

"Oh." He fell silent.

"Sir? Are you all right?"

He shook his head slowly, as if trying to clear a fog. "You're a good little girl, ain't you. Yeah, yeah. You are. Listen, drive the Country Coach to Pueblo for me. Dog food's under the kitchen sink."

He walked unsteadily toward the door, smoothing his hair and adjusting his rumpled clothing as he went. "Me, I'm going to Vegas. Gotta take this chippy back and get me a new one."

The dog sprang to his heels. He reached down and patted its massive head. "No, Mike. Daddy's gotta go. You stay with Wendy, there."

Then he left the office, slamming the door behind him.

"What the hell?" Scully muttered. She took a deep breath. There was something very worrying about the old man's behavior - making mountains out of molehills, threatening an off-the-cuff trip across state lines. It was possible, she supposed, that he might be in the first stages of Alzheimer's, or some other form of senile dementia - he certainly seemed confused and forgetful enough. Maybe this kind of thing happened all the time - surely someone would stop him before he left the fairgrounds. At any rate, she'd better call it in, along with the news about Rob's wedding, just to be safe.

She looked down at the ring of keys in her hand. Before she called Capocelli, she'd have a quick look in the old man's office.

The room was no different from the rest of the trailer - faded paneling, shabby carpet, office furniture that looked like it had been salvaged from a third-world government. Besides the desk and chair, there were a filing cabinet and a credenza with half the veneer peeled away. Two rifles were racked on the wall behind the desk, and the wall opposite was covered top to bottom with photographs and newspaper clippings in various states of decay.

She quickly checked the credenza and each of the desk drawers, saw nothing that made her immediately suspicious. The first drawer of the file cabinet was a musty, dog-eared catastrophe. She was just starting to close it when she spied the name 'Robert,' written in blue ink on a thick folder that looked newer than the ones around it.

Pulling the file free, she laid it out on top of the drawer. There were all sorts of things inside it: birth certificate, immunization records, letters from social workers and school counselors. At the top of the stack were five or six notices on US government letterhead, none of which had been in the 'official' files that had come from the FBI. Someone had obviously pulled a lot of strings - and probably paid a lot of money - to have these excised from the official record.

"Wow," she muttered, flipping through them. "Oh, wow."

Finally, a real lead.

She looked around for a notepad or a scrap of paper, anything so she could jot down some of the names on the letters in the file. She would call and report this ASAP; hopefully they'd have the full details before the show left town.

Carrying one of the letters to the old man's desk, she grabbed a yellow legal pad and a pencil and started making some notes. Within moments, though, she paused, staring at what she had written with a puzzled frown.

The pencil was dull. Her letters were pale gray and fuzzy, and they revealed some heavy indentations on the page. It looked like someone had been drawing something on the previous page, a page that was now torn away.

So she turned the pencil. Swept the side of the lead over the page, one pass, then two, then more. Mouth dropping, she stared.

A wheel. Eight spokes. Three petals.

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

11:05 AM

Mulder leaned against the trailer that served as PA's company store. Feigning boredom, he squinted in the sunlight, sipped the dregs of his Pepsi. A woman was leaving the store with a quart of milk, and he gave her a friendly nod.

He'd taken a spin through the inside of the place, noted with interest that orange juice was for sale in the same brand, same 16-ounce bottle the bomber favored. There was only one brand of nine-volt battery available. That was the bomber's favorite brand, too.

Mulder checked his watch. 11:05 - exactly five minutes later than the last time he'd checked.

He shifted his weight off the leg that was going to sleep and on to the one that was only slightly stiff. Tim Frye's tiny camper was about sixty feet away, and he'd found if he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned just so, it was possible to keep an inconspicuous eye on its side door while still paying attention to the women who kept trying to chat with him.

Thus far, the camper door had seen no action. Gwen hadn't made an appearance, and Frye was either asleep, as Solera had predicted, or he wasn't home.

Then Mulder straightened. "What the - ?"

Scully was walking by, head down. For a moment, Mulder thought she might be headed to Frye's place, but she passed by it without giving it a second glance. Mulder checked the area for obvious spectators. Seeing no one, he tossed his Pepsi can in the trash and ran to catch up with her.

"Yo, Brenda," he called, coming up behind her. "How's it going?"

She stopped and turned toward him, eyes darting from side to side. "Oh, hi. Duke, wasn't it?"

"That's what they call me." He moved in close and gave the gravel a little kick. "I don't think anyone's watching," he murmured. "Where are you going?"

"Come on." She turned her back abruptly and started walking again.

Mulder threw his arms out and shrugged, hoping to give the appearance of a man who'd been rudely rebuffed and wondering if, in fact, that was actually what had just happened. When Scully had gotten a comfortable distance away, he took a deep breath and followed her.

"Hey, Brenda, come on. . ."

After a minute, she turned down a lane and disappeared from view. Mulder increased his pace, turned where she had turned, and found himself skirting the edge of the trailer park, where motor homes and campers hugged the fence at odd intervals.

"Hey, Brenda."

For a moment, he couldn't figure out where Scully had gone, but then he saw her, standing with her back to him on the steps of the most far-flung travel trailer of all. As he hurried to join her, she produced a ring of keys, tried one in the lock, then another. After a moment she managed to unlock the door and disappeared inside.

Mulder turned as he walked, checking, once more, for possible onlookers. His line of sight was clear in all directions. The curtains at the nearest trailers were still - no one appeared to be watching. As he approached the door of the trailer, Scully reappeared and waved him in.

"Hurry," she said, in a low voice. "We shouldn't stay more than a couple of minutes."

The door shut behind him. Mulder noted, with a twinge of anxiety, that she was incredibly pale. "Scully, what the hell are we doing?"

"You'll never guess what I found. Rob Peake, the maintenance supervisor? He's isn't Shelby Peake's nephew. He's his *son*."

Mulder frowned. "That wasn't in the file."

"No it wasn't. A lot of stuff wasn't." She held out a key ring. "This is Rob Peake's place. Guess what? He's getting married this morning, to Mandy Zin, the operations manager." She shoved the ring in her left-hand pocket, then pulled a pair of latex gloves from the other and offered a glove to Mulder.

"Really?" He snapped the glove on.

"Really. Also, I'm pretty sure Peake Senior is losing his mind. Senile dementia, maybe. And you know how he's always wearing gloves? I found out why. Polydactyly." She opened a kitchen cabinet, glanced through it. "He's got six fingers on his right hand."

Mulder grinned. "So the circus owner is also a circus freak?"

"So it would appear. Rob has a scar in the same spot. I saw it last night. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but I bet he had an extra finger, too, and it was removed." She paused for a breath, opened another cabinet. "Look for four-penny nails, Mulder."

"Right." He opened a drawer, poked through its contents. "What makes you think the old man is losing his mind?"

"I don't know what he was like before, but since I've been here he's been getting more disoriented every day. This morning he had a very loud fight with his girlfriend - said he was taking her to Las Vegas, threatened to trade her in like a used car."

Mulder opened another drawer. "Interesting."

"He tossed me his keys, ordered me to drive his motor home to Pueblo, and told me to take care of his dog." She turned, went up a couple of steps and into a bedroom. Mulder followed.

"You mean, that big-ass dog?"

"Yup. Someone in Washington owes me a big- ass bonus." She opened a drawer and started rummaging through it. "I called it in, along with some other things I just found out."

An unmade bed occupied most of the center of the room. Mulder glanced down at the twisted bedclothes, trying not to notice the pungent aroma of sex rising from them. Suddenly nervous, he picked up a pillow. "What else did you find?"

Scully closed the drawer, opened another one. "The message, Mulder, the Ferris wheel shape the bomber leaves at the scene. I made a rubbing on a legal pad I found in the office and there it was. I had my hands all over it, unfortunately, but they might be able to get some prints."

Mulder flashed on Gwen's tattoo. "Gwen."

"Who?"

"The girl I met last night - she has a tattoo in that shape."

"Gwen Frye?" Scully frowned, then continued, seeming to address the inside of the drawer she was rifling. "In the old man's files I found letters from Military Police in Seoul."

"Saying?"

"Rob went AWOL while on leave in Hong Kong."

"Right. That was in the file."

"Well, nearly a year after he disappeared, he was arrested in a remote village near the Tibetan border. In a monastery."

"Whoa."

"Yeah. Apparently some local official had to go to the monastery on business and was concerned when he spotted an 'unregistered western monk'. The officer who wrote Rob's father suspected some kind of brainwashing; said Rob chanted mantras every time they tried to question him. You said you thought the symbol on the note was Buddhist, right? There may be a connection here."

Mulder threw the pillow back and stepped away from the bed. For some reason, his palms were starting to sweat. "Probably."

She slammed the drawer and, kicking off her sneakers, climbed onto the bed, headed for a row of cupboards set into the wall above it. "I know I said I didn't think the old man could be involved, but the legal pad I found was sitting on his desk. The two of them could be working together. I wonder if there's anyone else in on it."

"Like Gwen, for instance?" He scanned a bookshelf on his side of the room. Maybe he'd get lucky and find Peake's secret copy of 'The Anarchist's Cookbook.'

"Oh my god."

Mulder turned. "Scully?"

"Look."

Inside one of the cupboards, a shelf had been made into a shrine. Sitting in the midst of candles, dried flowers, and other religious bric-a-brac was a grinning human skull. Hammered metal had been affixed to the rounded bone, the gleaming surfaces ornately carved. Red stones filled the empty eye- sockets, staring like they were made of flesh, not stone. It looked very, very old.

"Wow." Mulder skirted the end of the bed and stood on tiptoe, trying to see. "Looks authentic, too."

Scully took a step back. "What is it?"

"It's a kapala."

"A what?"

"A tantric skull."

"A tantric what?" Scully shut the cupboard and sat down on the bed, pulling on her shoes.

"Tibetan tantrics use human bone for all kinds of ritual items. That would be used as a ceremonial vessel, or sometimes as a medium for prophecy."

"Prophecy?" Scully tied her laces. "I thought tantra was all about delaying orgasm as a way of achieving enlightenment."

Orgasm. Right. Mulder took a deep breath. "That's a western misconception, Scully." Suddenly all the depth had gone out of his voice. "In, um, esoteric Buddhism, tantrism is more than just a sexual form of meditation."

"Uh-huh." Scully folded her arms and stared at him from the rumpled bed, lips parted, face unreadable.

God, she looked gorgeous.

A bead of sweat rolled down his back. "It's really about opening the kundalini chakra. Some texts recommend sexual rituals, but not all of them."

Scully suddenly became very interested in a bump on one of her gloves. "Fascinating."

Then her eyes went wide. A key was rattling in the door. "Shit!"

Mulder's heart went into his throat. They'd let down their guard, forgotten themselves. What the hell had they been thinking?

He slid the closet door to one side. "Scully, here." Stumbling over a pair of boots, he crammed himself into the narrow space and pulled her in after him. She slid the door closed, falling against him just as the outer door burst open.

"God, that was such a kick." It was a woman's voice. Mandy Zin, Mulder assumed.

They came into the bedroom. Peake was laughing. "Shit, did you see their faces?"

"'Shocked' doesn't really cover it, does it?"

There was the sound of heavy breathing; slurping noises; the dull thump of bodies bumping into some piece of furniture. Mulder pulled Scully close; she looped her arms around him. She was trembling.

"Fuck me, baby."

Mulder felt himself jerk, but Christ, it was Mandy who'd said it. Where the hell was his head?

"We're already late for work - " Peake was practically growling in anticipation. There were thumps as someone kicked off their shoes, one by one.

"Fuck work," Mandy said. "After what we just did? I'll be creaming my panties all day."

There was a low thud, as if someone had just dropped to his or her knees. "Come here, baby," Peake murmured. "Let me taste that."

Oh god, the guy wasn't about to...

There was a long silence.

"Do that again, yeah, mmmmmmmmm..."

Okay, yes, he was. He really was.

Mulder felt Scully's heart beat faster.

Mandy let out a series of sounds, first a choke, then a gasp, then what sounded like a laugh, followed by a sigh. There were guttural moans, feral sucking noises.

Scully's breath started coming in little silent hiccups. Mulder tightened his arms around her. God, it was hot. Scully was hot, so hot, and so close to him.

"Baby, now," Mandy grunted. There was a burst of noise, some kind of violent snuffling sound, and what the hell, Mulder thought, are they trying to inhale each other?

Stop, he told his body, but it didn't do any good.

"The socks, mister." Mandy's voice was commanding. "Not sexy."

"Yes, ma'am."

After that, time seemed to stand still.

The profound silence outside the closet door made even the most shallow breath seem deafening. Mulder tried to breathe with Scully, thinking if he matched his inhalations to hers, it wouldn't be so noisy...

In, out.

In, out.

"Goddess," Peake murmured.

Scully stirred. Christ, had she moaned?

You're nuts, Mulder told himself. The tension is making you hallucinate. He knew he should come up with a plan, decide what he would do if they were discovered, but all he could think about was the hot flesh in his arms: Scully's flesh, her breath, her trembling.

In, out.

In, out.

Scully's face was hidden against his chest, her body rigid as molded plastic. She had to know what was happening to him. There was no way to hide it.

Peake began whispering, chanting words in a foreign language. The bed started to creak, just a little, at first, then harder as the lovers moaned in rhythm. English epithets began creeping into the chant.

With each squeak Scully's body grew ever more rigid, and little by little she began to pull away from Mulder. The motion was subtle but deliberate. Mulder grimaced, suppressing a moan of mortification.

Peake cried out - "Oh baby...yeah, yeah..." - then Mandy's voice went up like a rocket, squealing more noisily than any porn queen. This went on for several minutes, then everything got quiet again.

After a long moment filled with lots of slurping, Peake spoke. "That was incredible."

"Mmmmmmm," Mandy answered. "Yeah."

"Damn, girl, I could do you all day."

She laughed. "I know you could, stud. When the jump's over I'm gonna lock you in here and fuck you 'til you drop."

"Flat store, baby. Bet you twenty you go down first."

Someone got out of bed. Mulder shut his eyes and prayed they didn't need anything from the closet and would hurry up and go the hell back to work. He was afraid he and Scully were going to suffocate.

A drawer opened and closed. "You seen my brush? Damn, it was here this morning."

Go, Mulder thought. Just go, please, go...

She answered from somewhere on the other side of the room. "Oh. On the floor over there."

"Okay - that's weird. I left it right here."

"Stoner Bob," she teased.

He laughed. "No shit. Think Sealy called?"

"Who knows. I mean, I had my cell off during the service, but hopefully our girl Brenda passed the message along."

Peake laughed. "Our girl Brenda."

"She's cute, isn't she?"

"She's green."

"Green is sexy."

Someone sat on the bed. "You got a thing for suckers now?"

"Don't be mean. She's a natural, not a sucker." Mandy laughed again. "But Timothy Frye is *not* her type."

Peake snorted. "And you are?"

"Shit. That girl is begging for it. Trust me."

They seemed to be heading for the door. "Okay," Peake said, "I'll give you that. She definitely needs to get laid."

There was a pause, more heavy breathing. "I know," Mandy murmured. "Why don't *you* bag her?"

"Huh?"

"She was giving you the eye last night. Go ahead. You'll share, right?"

"Don't I always?"

The door closed behind them.

"Dammit!"

Scully let go, shoved the closet door to one side, practically fell out. She circled the bed, heading for the window.

"What the hell was she - ?" Mulder was still trying to catch his breath. "I mean - " He wondered if he would ever be able to bring himself to come out of this closet.

"I don't want to talk about it." Scully didn't sound like herself at all. "They're turning the corner. It's safe. Let's get out of here."

Safe. What a laugh.

Jesus Christ, he just wanted to die.

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

Scully gripped the windowsill. What the hell had just happened?

The 'wood' under her fingertips was, of course, plastic. She gripped harder, imagined herself steaming, liquefying, taking the sill with her. "We can't be seen leaving together," she managed to say.

Mulder's answer was muffled.

She turned. He was still in the closet.

"Mulder?"

"What?"

"We should go."

"Yeah."

She waited. He finally stepped out, quickly turning his back on her and pushing the closet door closed. After a long moment he faced her again, and then she understood, or, rather, *saw* just why he'd been so reluctant to come out into the open.

She quickly turned away, looking back out the window.

"You'll need to lock up," Mulder rasped. "I'll leave first."

"Okay," she tried to say, but the word came out as a kind of squeak.

Neither of them moved. Scully realized that her extremities were...well, 'tingling all over' wasn't just some meaningless cliche, was it? It was a struggle, but she turned, forced herself to meet his gaze.

"We better get out of here." He pushed past her and went into the kitchen.

She followed. "Mulder, I - "

Cracking the door, he gave the area outside it a quick check. "Give me a couple of minutes to get out of sight before you leave," he said, gruffly.

"But Mulder, what about - "

"I'll find you later." Without waiting for her to answer, he hurried down the steps and out of her view.

"Mulder!" She hissed his name, but he either didn't hear her or was pretending he couldn't. Within seconds he'd dashed around a corner and out of her sight.

Sighing, Scully stepped out into the bright sunshine and turned to lock the door. She could hear music and voices drifting up from the midway, the tinny sound of one of her fellow weight-guessers haranguing a mark. She wasn't sure why, but that sound gave her an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. Just your average garden-variety dread, she supposed. She really didn't want to do this anymore.

Turning, she looked around her. No one in sight. She started walking. After a few moments, though, she slowed. She thought she'd heard a light jingle behind her, and the sound of footsteps crunching along on the gravel.

She stopped, glanced back, saw no one.

Within a few moments of resuming her pace she heard the footsteps again. Not wanting to seem overly paranoid, she did not turn again. Instead she walked a little faster, turned down a lane near the company store. The jingle got louder, kept pace.

Someone had seen her leave Peake's trailer. Damn it.

Turning right, she broke into a kind of half-jog, heading toward the office on a narrow path that ran between some of the campers. As she walked, she pulled the old man's key ring from her pocket, let it fall, stopped short, turned abruptly around.

At the head of the path was a teenage girl in baggy jeans and a tool belt. Caught, she took two steps back and fled, but not before Scully noted wild black hair, black-rimmed eyes, pale, skinny arms.

Gwen Frye.

The knot of dread in her stomach began to blossom. Scully plucked the keys from the gravel and hurried back to work.

End 07/12

 

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