*Nine*
I slept fine after that. I wasn't going to kid myself. Mulder is a remarkably passionate if slightly distorted person, and sometimes, when I see him so consumed by his work, when I know that it's blazing through his mind night and day, that he burns for it ... I wonder what it would be like. To know the fire inside the man. Pitch everything out the window. Burst into flames. Heh heh heh.
I slept fine after that. I was warm.
The next morning I went to the lab to perform autopsies on the two dead bodies, and found trace amounts of a Rohypnol, the date-rape sedative. In a moment of clarity, I put two and twelve together and realised I really should run a tox scan on my own blood to see if that was why Mulder and I had such limited memory of the previous night. However, when I ran the test on my blood, I found nothing.
Mulder and I met with Fort Dodge Sheriff Byron Carrie to go over our evidence. All we had were the bodies, and six interviews with local residents who had all implied that they believed Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones were responsible for the deaths but curiously, not one of the interviewees felt the Savages' should be prosecuted. I told Mulder and Sheriff Carrie about my findings from the autopsies, but we still had no justifiable cause to take the Savages into custody all we had was this feeling, this looming suspicion that was impossible to shake.
Mulder paced back and forth in Sheriff Carrie's office. "Sheriff," he began, "do you believe in vampires?"
The Sheriff stroked his beard and looked from Mulder to me, and then back to Mulder. He took a deep breath, and then sighed. "I've lived here all my life, Agent Mulder. I was raised in an environment that just accepted its circumstances."
"Is that a yes?"
Carrie sighed and sounded sort of dusty. "I think, Agents, if you're looking for an explanation, one will be provided. One always is."
"I don't just want an explanation, I want the truth!" Mulder exclaimed predictably.
Just then a man knocked on the office door and entered, holding a cup of coffee. He motioned for Carrie to join him in the hall. "Somebody's come forward regarding the murder of the vacationers."
Mulder and I followed Carrie into the interrogation room.
woo, suspense ...