The thunderstorm provided all the cover he needed.
Or so it seemed to him. With all that electricity arcing through the sky, striking the world in bolt after bolt, whatever power it was the red-haired woman had (if that was even real, if he hadn’t just imagined it, he imagined things sometimes)—surely it couldn’t compare to that. This stormy night, the rain, the torrents of water that gushed over the curbs and into the drains: They were his invitation to seize the moment.
So he let the raindrops patter down on his vinyl poncho and soak his shoes. It was worth it to be able to peer up at the red-haired woman’s window, to watch her pacing back and forth as she spoke to someone on the telephone. Maybe the man she lived in sin with, who hadn’t come through the door at all that evening. This might be one of his best chances to catch her alone.
He had asked himself whether he shouldn’t just pick out someone else. Someone easier. But this one was wicked, sinful, bad. If he killed her, he wouldn’t be doing anything wrong. He would be removing evil from the world. It was a good thing, really, if you looked at it that way.
“Someone must have coached her,” Scully said, leaning against the kitchen wall. “Or this Cherish Craddock had dealings with Cancer Man before, and we’d just never made the connection.”
Even through the phone, she could hear Mulder’s weariness. “If that was a performance, it was method acting at its finest. The body language, even the way she held the cigarette—”
“Mulder,” she said firmly. “There is no such thing as channeling. We’ve seen convincing frauds before, but they were frauds.”
“Most of them were frauds. Not all. And this one—Scully, you didn’t hear what she said, or how she said it. She didn’t just know about my history. She knew about my dreams. And her voice and movements were just like him in every detail, except that somehow it was all coming from this hot blond.”
Scully raised an eyebrow. “Exactly how hot was this blond?”
A soft laugh came through the phone. “She was channeling Cancer Man, Scully. There’s not enough hotness in the world to get past that.”
She put her hand to her temple, willing back the headache. “Again, she wasn’t channeling anyone, because channeling is impossible.”
As she had expected, Mulder didn’t even seem to hear her. “One good thing about the channeling—at least we know Cancer Man’s actually dead.”
“We don’t know that,” she insisted. “For all we know, this woman’s giving a great performance because Carl Busch personally coached her. Or he could have somehow convinced her that she’s channeling the dead when really he’s interfering with her brain function in some insidious way. We can’t afford to discount those possibilities, Mulder.”
“I’m not discounting them,” Mulder said. “But I’m not discounting Cherish Craddock either.”
“What’s most important right now is that Craddock admits to being connected to Robin Vane, and that she appears to be familiar with the Inheritors. That makes her and her facility the most significant lead we have regarding the Shadow Killer.”
“It also suggests that Avatar was onto something,” he said. “As soon as I’m back, I intend to signal her for a meet.”
“Are you catching the late flight?”
“It’s been canceled. First plane out is now at five a.m. I’ll be on it.”
Damned airlines. “Got it,” Scully said. “As for me, I’ve been pulling records on people who volunteered to take Red Cross courses in infant first aid. My goal for tomorrow is to cross-reference those names versus those for employees in NICU wards, ideally someone let go for over-involvement with the patients. This guy isn’t a doctor or nurse—his curiosity about the human body implies ignorance of it that couldn’t survive med school. But he could have done something clerical or custodial in a medical facility. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth trying.”
“And if that doesn’t turn anything up—”
“I have some thoughts about other avenues of inquiry, but for tonight, I’ve stared at screens too long.” She sighed. “I’m probably going to order pizza and go to bed.”
“Save me a slice, huh? I can have it when I get home tomorrow morning. Breakfast of champions.”
“You got it.”
They never said that they loved each other when they hung up. Yet Scully nearly said it this time, without knowing why.
Speaking of phone habits, she could probably stand to change the one that involved the pizza delivery app—but not tonight.
Scully put in her order and started settling in for the evening. Her favorite flannel pajamas still fit, more or less; her fuzzy slippers weren’t really necessary—it was a warmer night, rainstorm be damned—but she liked how cozy they felt. A quick survey of their streaming services turned up a prestige period drama she’d been interested in, one Mulder probably wouldn’t have watched even if she paid him.
A knock came at the townhouse door. Scully frowned, because the delivery guys from the pizzeria usually called when they were a few minutes out. Maybe they’d just been especially quick this time.
Scully called out, “That was fast!”
That was the pizza delivery person’s cue to call out the name of the pizzeria, or say that they’d rushed over, hinting for a bigger tip. But not a word was spoken.
Three options, Scully thought. One, that’s Bright Eyes, here to attack me in my own home. Two, it’s a criminal who, although not Bright Eyes, nonetheless intends to attack me in my home. Three, it’s my pizza.
In the first two options, it would help to have her gun at the ready. In the third, Scully was prepared to tip extremely well.
She grabbed her service weapon, tucked it beneath the waistband of her pajama bottoms. Her heartbeat quickened, and she felt a brief, piercing vulnerability regarding the child she carried deep within. But calling the police would take too much time, and it would warn the person on the other side of the door that her suspicions were raised. Besides—she could handle this. She took a deep breath and positioned herself carefully. Only then did she open the door.
The figure lurched in—like the man she’d seen at the maternity store, she thought—rain poncho still dripping wet, some kind of rag in his hand as he came at her. Scully smelled the acrid scent of chloroform. He’d come prepared.
But Scully, the doctor, understood something her attacker didn’t: Chloroform didn’t work the way it was shown in the movies. It wasn’t as strong, nor as immediately effective. Any hope of knocking someone out relied upon applying a massive dose while cutting off all other air supply. Bright Eyes couldn’t do either.
Scully shoved him back, her splayed hands against his rain-slick poncho, and sent him sprawling. She came at him as he nearly fell, but he recovered, kicking at her legs, still clutching his useless rag. Although she didn’t lose her footing, she stumbled hard against the wall. One of the pictures she’d recently hung slid to the ground with a thump.
Bright Eyes clearly thought he had her now, proving he wasn’t actually very bright at all. As he held up the rag again, her hand closed around the grip of her gun. Scully pulled it, pointed it at him, and shouted, “FBI! You are under arrest!”
He lunged at her—then stopped himself when confronted with the barrel of her weapon. “Don’t—” His voice was surprisingly low, and very shaky. “Don’t shoot.”
“Stand perfectly still. Don’t move. One move, and I fire.” Scully took her phone into one hand and dialed 911 without looking. “In case you were wondering, it is possible to fire a gun with one hand. And at this range, I won’t miss.”
“Please,” he said. “I just wanted to—to know.”
His victims had only wanted to live. This selfish, babyish monster had thought his curiosity outweighed the value of other people’s existence. Already she wanted to scrub the floor where he had stood.
The 911 operator picked up. Scully gave her credentials and requested immediate assistance. Bright Eyes’s shoulders slumped. It was over.
Half an hour later, one of the officers on the scene showed Scully their perpetrator’s wallet. “The guy’s name is Rich Eastminster. Lives in Greenbelt. Works as a custodian, mostly—about six months back, he got fired from the neonatology ward at Inova L. J. Murphy in Falls Church for getting too chatty with the patients.”
Scully couldn’t help taking some satisfaction in the fact that she would have turned up his name soon regardless. “We’ll need to get DNA samples to definitively link him to the crime scenes, but he’s all but admitted that he’s the man responsible for the deaths of multiple pregnant women in the DC area over the past few weeks.”
“Scumbag,” the cop said. They stood on the townhouse stoop; Scully had found a moment to throw her bathrobe on over her pajamas and step back into her slippers. Rain pattered down around them, so they remained close together under the protective awning. “You all right?” he asked her. “You sure you don’t want the paramedics over here just to check you out?”
Scully had suffered no injury worse than her shoulder thumping against the wall, and she wasn’t even sure that was going to bruise. “I’m fine.”
The sullen Rich Eastminster was led through the rain to the back seat of the patrol car. It occurred to Scully that no electrical phenomena had accompanied his attack. Why hadn’t Eastminster used that power? Maybe it was involuntary—beyond his control—and for whatever reason, he hadn’t been able to summon it tonight. At least this disproved Mulder’s theory—that the power was in fact hers, and that its effects accompanied severe emotional turmoil. She’d sailed through an attack by a serial killer without a single flickering bulb.
Then again, at no point during Eastminster’s assault had Scully felt out of control. Regardless, their appliances had survived intact.
She would explain all this to Mulder, who she predicted would be highly disturbed by this encounter, even given its brief duration and successful conclusion.
As she stood there debating whether to call or text him, the patrol car took off, and another car pulled up to the curb. It occurred to Scully, belatedly, that she still had a pizza coming. Even though the pizza was, by this point, fairly late, she felt an extremely celebratory tip coming on.
A black umbrella unfolded, covering the man as he hurried to the door. Scully said, “Good thing you’re finally—”
Her voice broke off as he reached her, tipping back the umbrella to reveal the face of Robin Vane.
“I’m armed,” she said.
“I should hope so.” His English accent was cool, posh, refined. His smile might have been genuine. “I’d be disappointed in you otherwise.”
She took a step away and pulled her weapon for the second time that night. “Stand back.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Vane said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Why should I believe that?” Scully demanded.
In reply, he swiftly turned to one side—expertly shifting himself out of her weapon’s line of fire—and placed one hand on her arm. Before she could jerk away, the world shifted, shaded, tilted in every direction at once, and vanished as though it had turned to smoke.
Though, really, she had.