XXXVII

9:45 P.M., Hightops Sports Pub Ramada Inn, Annapolis, 
Maryland

It wasn't like Scully to go to the bar. Hotel bars were 
smarmy and, anyway, Mulder was ready company in his 
adjoining room. But tonight Scully was alone, and whenever 
she was, it seemed the cause was Mulder's gullibility and 
desperation. So many times she'd tried to put herself in 
his place, to weigh the risks she'd be willing to take to 
find Charlie, Bill, or Melissa. It troubled her to realize 
that no matter how much she loved her siblings, she 
wouldn't do the things Mulder did for Samantha. Well, 
perhaps if some necromancer offered to bring Missy back. 
But she'd never have to act on that. There was no such 
thing as necromancers and the dead didn't return. Missy 
would stay put in the ground, exactly where they'd left 
her. But because Samantha Mulder had no grave and her 
brother had no closure, he had given himself to a 
torturer.

Scully shivered as she imagined the contents of Skinner's 
tape. She should have forced the AD to show it to her 
but...but she really wasn't sure she could bear it. And 
she didn't know if Mulder could either-- if their 
relationship would survive it. It was vital to them both 
to appear strong, even if ligatures, wounds, petechia, and 
contusions proved vulnerability indeed existed. When she 
got Mulder back, as long as that premise of strength 
remained unchallenged he would let her care for him, let 
her perform even the most intimate ministrations, with a 
tacit agreement between them that he could cloak his shame 
in sarcasm.

Scully swirled the liquor in her small glass, frowned, 
then took a sip. The sweet drambuie burned a trail down 
her throat, as the scotch must have burned Skinner's as he 
watched Mulder suffer.

She heard soft footsteps behind her. Carl Handford? 
Probably. He'd been shadowing her all day as she'd moved 
around Annapolis. She'd let him think he'd gone unnoticed, 
and let him linger incognito in the rear of the bar, 
tucked away in a dark booth, looking at her back.

Yes, it was indeed Carl at her side, clearing his throat. 
Maybe it was time for a little of Mulder's sarcasm. 
"Friend or foe?" she asked, turning head and lifting her 
face to him. He was smirking and now that she could see 
his kind, if careworn features in better light, she felt 
herself warm to him. "Well?" She crooked an orange 
eyebrow.

"Gee. Friend and foe, I guess. I'm the one watching you 
for Them. Works out kinda nice this way, doesn't it?"

"Yeah." She felt herself grin in return.

Handford slipped into a seat beside her and placed the 
drink he'd carried with him beside hers on a soggy napkin. 
Scully shifted in her chair and stared at the tabletop. 
"Do you know any--?" she began, but then cut herself off, 
letting her shoulders droop with the precognition of 
futility.

"No, I don't know anything new about Agent Mulder." Carl 
Hanford shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Scully took a deep breath, "What about this cast of 
characters here in Annapolis?"

"Like I said, I'm your shadow. I don't understand how all 
these businesses fit together any more than you do."

"But you're a paper chaser."

"Who doesn't chase the pages he's not supposed to."

Scully sat up straight again. "So, you've never 
investigated here? Never tracked down the documents at the 
Anne Arundel Court House that tie the Things Remembered 
Antique Shops on Duke of Gloucester Street to its 
operating partner Andrzej Popinski and its owner DT 
Enterprises? Or Popinski to criminal prosecution that led 
to the court terminating his rights as a parent?"

Hanford held up his open palms and protested softly and 
urgently, "Stop. I don't want to know anymore, Agent 
Scully."

"Why? Because it's going to put all the pieces together in 
your mind and add up to the real identity of the people 
who keep hurting you?"

"I said stop. I don't want to know. I can't!" his whisper 
was a hiss, a bite, a reflex from fear.

"But you do want to know, don't you? You WANT to know. 
That's why you ended up in this mess to begin with. You're 
just like Mulder. You need the truth."

Handford muttered, "Yeah, maybe...but I don't like how 
much the truth hurts." 

"It might help free you, Carl," she insisted quietly.

"Or it might get me killed."

"But you contacted me. You did it because...why?"

Handford seemed to look inside himself a moment, then he 
smiled wryly for Scully and the world outside. "I 
dunno.... Maybe because I want to die."

Scully drew a short breath, wondering if Mulder wanted to 
die, too. She leaned toward Carl, seeing him as her 
partner and wanting to grab him-- to hold him back from 
his leap into the abyss. Instead, she lightly touched the 
Carl's shirt cuff where it peeked from beneath his jacket 
sleeve. "Could it also be because you want to live?"

He regarded Scully for a long moment, blinked and looked 
away. When his eyes met hers again, the pain and the hope 
she saw made her brows knit and her teeth gnaw her lip. 
"Okay." In Scully's mind, his words were a hand reaching 
out of black water. "Clue me in." She released a breath 
she hadn't known she'd been holding.

In an undertone that seemed intimate to the bar's 
clientele, Scully reviewed what she'd learnt that day from 
documents, forms, and microfiche. Yes, she had cased the 
antique shop-- fingered Fiesta Ware in the booth by the 
shop's office as she'd eavesdropped on Andrzej Popinski-- 
but what real goods she'd gotten had been scored without a 
spoken word. The living might not talk and the dead never 
give up their secrets, but records and red tape had the 
gift of gab.

Popinski, a Polish immigrant, listed as an electrician on 
court documents, was also a belligerent drunk who had 
killed his mother by repeatedly slamming her head into a 
porcelain sink. He had also so regularly abused his young 
son, James, that the stack of Social Services records was 
literally a foot tall. James Popinski was made a ward of 
the court when his father was sent to the state pen at 
Jessup. Scully had found records of his 1977 adoption by a 
family who lived on the Eastern Shore. She'd also found a 
death certificate for the boy in 1979. James Popinski had 
apparently drowned. The father had been released from 
prison in 1988 and almost immediately become a part owner 
of Things Remembered.

DT Enterprises' associated company, Linganore Limited, 
also operated a nearby antique mall. This one was in 
Crownsville, a small suburb of Annapolis. The operating 
partner was one Franklin B. Gath. Scully had taken a wild-
ass leap-- one Mulder would be proud of. She looked for 
criminal records for Gath, and knew she'd find them and 
where they would eventually lead her. Gath's rap sheet was 
a big one, including armed robbery, assault, rape, and 
domestic violence. Frank Gath had wracked up a total of 25 
years in state and federal pens. He'd also fathered 
children by a string of down-and-out women. One of these 
kids, a boy named William, was made a ward of the state 
after his crackhead mother had been stripped of parental 
rights. In 1984, William Gath had been adopted by a family 
on the Eastern Shore. Vital records provided a death 
certificate for the boy in 1985.

"Drowned?" Carl asked, and when Scully nodded his eyes 
widened in what seemed genuine surprise. "God damn. So 
that's where those two came from!"

Scully had been tracing shapes on the wet side of her 
glass as she spoke. Now she looked up at Handford. "What?"

He was breathing raggedly, and quickly scanned the ceiling 
then the floor then the bar as if none of it was real or 
as if he saw it for the first time. "It's the same man-- 
the one who broke me and whoever is behind this. God!" His 
fists clenched. "Jesus-- those kids with the death records 
are Jim and Bill!"

"Carl--" Scully began.

He cut her off, not needing to hear the question. "His 
flunkies. His boys. They're my Master's boys!"

Scully tried to lock eyes with the agitated man. "He has 
James Popinksi and William Gath? They're not dead?"

"Hell no," Handford sounded on the verge of laughter.

"They're his slaves?"

"No. They-- they're like his sons!"

"And they help him torture and rape you when you go to 
him? They're his accomplices? He's illegally taken little 
boys and turned them into accomplices and rewarded their 
fathers to keep quiet?"

"Looks like it, doesn't it? Yes."

Scully blew out a breath of air and leaned back in her 
chair. "Fuck," she whispered. Her thoughts momentarily 
randomized. When they became solid again she told 
Handford, "Carl, I think we've got a nuclear card."

"Huh?"

"The one you wanted me to find for Mulder. If we play this 
right, you're free. And if we're lucky enough that this 
man is also the one who has Mulder, then your Master's 
last name is Taylor, and he lives somewhere in the 
vicinity of White's Ferry, Virginia."

"Taylor? How do you know?"

"They sent a video tape of Mulder," she omitted 'being 
tortured' to keep her voice even. "Someone called Mulder's 
captor 'Dr. Taylor' on it."

"So...so we know enough to find him."

Scully nodded. "And Mulder, I hope."

Someone had coined up the jukebox. The song was loud and 
fast and matched the beat of her heart. "Carl, I've got to 
head back to D.C. Can you lose me somehow?"

"I lost you earlier, actually. I haven't seen you for 
several hours." Handford grinned small and quirky. Scully 
smiled wide and genuinely in return. He caught her hand as 
she rose. "If this works.... I.... Thank you, Agent 
Scully."

She gave his hand a light squeeze and headed in the 
direction of her partner.