Disclaimers in Chapter One Residual Effect Chapter Six "Do you trust me?" Dana asked. "No." Abbie stated flatly yet in a joking manner. The two were standing in an alleyway located in the industrialized section of Washington D.C. Abbie looked around, taking in her surroundings. The previous night’s flurries were slowly turning into a winter storm. Abbie clasped her gloved hands together, rubbing them furiously together. "Just believe me when I say that what you are about to see is, well, a little strange. But these guys are good." Abbie cocked a quizzical eyebrow at the last statement. Dana smiled then turned to knock on the metal door. Abbie glanced up reading the name stenciled on a sign - "The Lone Gunmen: Publishers of ‘The Magic Bullet’ Magazine". "Who is it?" A voice called from behind the door. "It’s me." Dana responded. Silence. "Dana Scully." A metal peephole slid open, two bespectacled eyes peeping through. Langly gave the agent a physical once over. "Did you bring pizza?" Langly asked. "Nope, but I have something better." Dana held up the file for him to see. "Military files." "Cool!" The man exclaimed before fiddling with the locks. He opened the door, allowing Scully entrance, finally noticing the tall brunette standing off to the side. "Langly, this is Abbie Carmichael." "The lawyer?" "The one and only." Abbie held out her hand to the man. He shifted uncomfortably in his shoes for a moment before taking her palm in his. "They didn’t screw up our order again, did they?" Frohike barked from somewhere inside the building. "It’s not the delivery guy," Langly called out, closing the door behind the two women as they stomped the snow off their boots. "It’s Scully." Frohike bounded from behind a corner. He was wearing a faux fur vest with matching boots. "Agent Scully." Frohike stopped in his tracks, taking notice of the tall dark-haired women in their foyer. "Hubba hubba." "Frohike." Dana stated to Abbie, an apologetic tone in her voice. She half-pointed to the woman behind her. "Abbie Carmichael." "The lawyer." Langly stated as he walked past them. "And they come bearing gifts." Abbie followed the three into a larger cavernous room. It was filled with rows of shelves, each over burdened with mechanical devices of all shapes and form; computers, radios, phones. All of which were in some form of assembly. A third man greeted the group, Byers, slightly overdressed in a three-piece suit seemingly ignorant of the fact that it was a weekend. He shook Abbie’s hand non-plussed to Abbie’s status as someone with two x chromosome’s, which ran counter to his two colleagues. "Where’s Mulder?" "Doing a re-enactment of ‘Deliverance’ somewhere in Kentucky." She handed the file over to him. He thumbed through the pages as Frohike and Langly looked over his shoulders. "This is for the Esterhart murder isn’t it?" Langly asked. "Yeah," Abbie replied, handing her coat to Dana as she found a stool to sit on, "Someone slid that under my door a couple days ago." "Can you help us with?" Dana chimed in. She stood next to Abbie as she spoke. "I tried the FBI database but.." "This file’s like Swiss cheese," Byers finished her sentence, "A copy of a copy.." "Ad infinitum." Frohike added. "Yeah," Langly continued, "Unless there’s some information they forgot to black out." "Black out? Black out," Scully perked up, "Can you get into the military database?" All three of them stared blankly back at her, as if the question was too stupid to comprehend. Dana pointed at the file. "She has two arrests." Byers perked up. "Of course." He turned towards his computer, typing furiously on his keyboard. Abbie tapped Dana on the shoulder. "What’s going on?" "He’s searching through the MP database, cross referencing between Amarice’s description and the actual crimes." "Do they have clearance to do that?" Dana squirmed slightly at the question. "Not exactly?" "Not exactly!?!" "Listen lady," Frohike piped in, "We ain’t exactly the Boy Scouts." "Dana," Abbie hopped off her stool beginning to pace the floor, "How the Hell is this supposed to help my case? Hacking into the Pentagon with the three Stooges doesn’t exactly gel with my definition of procedure." "Hey!" Three men gasped in unison. Dana grabbed Abbie by the crook of her arm, pulling her around a corner. She lowered her voice down to a whisper, knowing full well that all three men would be listening in on their conversation. "Remember when you said that I was the only person you could trust?" Abbie defiantly crossed her arms across her chest. "Well, I need you to trust me now," Dana continued, "They might not look the part of model citizens but they can help us in ways you couldn’t fathom." She could see Abbie gathering her thoughts, her retort forming on the tip of her tongue. Dana placed a hand on Abbie’s forearm, gently squeezing in her point. "Yes, this is about gathering evidence. But we need to find out who this woman is. Something *they* don’t want us to know. If that means we have to break a few laws to get some answers, so be it. I guarantee you there’s more going on here than *any* of us realize. Finding out who Amarice is, is the tip of the iceberg. So please Abbie, trust me. Let me help you." "Okay, but on one condition," Abbie inhaled deeply. "No more surprises." "Deal." Dana nodded in compliance. She hadn’t meant to be so obtuse in what they were about to do. "I guess I went a little Mulder on you." Abbie snickered at the comment, following Dana back into the main room. The three men turned their heads back to the computer screen. As the two women approached, Frohike removed his glasses wiping a false tear from his eye. "Gee Scully, I never knew you cared." "Don’t let it go to you head." Dana joked as she jabbed Frohike in the ribs with her elbow. ** As the men worked, Abbie busied herself by reading some of the literature lying about. Dana sat down next to the attorney, thumbing through Amarice’s case file. "Busy?" She asked. "No," Abbie sighed, closing the magazine. "Good. Tell me about the pastor. How did he get involved with Amarice?" "Hmm," Abbie stretched a little in the chair, thankful to contribute, "That’ s pretty straightforward. He was doing missionary work in South America." "That’s where he found her?" "Yes. Why?" The wheels seemed to click in Abbie’s mind. "Cross reference known people with their last location." "Exactly." "You’re missing a bigger picture." The tall blonde-headed man piped in. "And that is?" Abbie asked. "You’re assuming that they want her to be found." Langly added, pushing his glasses onto his nose. "Those pages weren’t blacked out for no reason." "Yes," It was Dana’s turn to chime in. "But there’s going to be a paper trail at some point. Airline records, assuming she was on vacation, fingerprints.." "Except she doesn’t have any fingerprints." "What?" Dana reached for the case file, once more. The copy of Amarice’s fingerprints clipped under her picture. Dana had given the page only cursory glances before, now she studied the page closely. She looked for the normal whirls and sworls that are part of every human’s anatomy. But, Abbie was right, Amarice had none. Where there should have been the typical smudged ridges of fingerprints was nothing more than that of fingertip shaped black smudges. Dana looked up from the file quizzically. It’s quite normal for a criminal to sand or burn their fingertips off. Yet, these prints had none of the tell-tale signs that Amarice had mutilated her hands in such a fashion. "If it makes ya feel any better," Abbie added, "It’s the same on her feet." "We got something!" Langly exclaimed. Everyone gathered around the screen as Byers continued typing. "What do you have?" Dana asked. "I did like you said. 1,328 hits." "That’s an awful lot of women beating the crap out of men." "Yeah well, this is the military we’re talking about. Breeding a better soldier and all." "So, I refined my search. Finding anyone with commendations, promotions, etc. Got 27 matches." Byers pulled a page off the printer handing the page to Abbie. Abbie read the names off the page, as if trying to glean some information from the text. She shook her head. "This does nothing for me." "Hold you horses," Frohike added, "We’re just getting started." "Now the real fun begins." "Police records are easy. Things get a bit dicey when we’re talking personnel records." "Not that it won’t be a piece of cake." "Of course." The three men bounced their conversation back and forth, completing each other’s sentences like a well-oiled machine, other times, coming across like teenaged boys trying to impress the girl next door. Byers set a course towards hacking into each of the women’s personnel files, Langly watching eagerly over his shoulder. "Mind if I ask you a question?" Frohike asked Abbie. The attorney barely glanced his way before firing off a dry ‘sure’. "Would it bother you if I asked you out to dinner?" Dana turned towards the man, a look of shock on her face. She groaned inwardly knowing that Abbie didn’t take too kindly to being hit on. "Would it bother you if I told you I was a lesbian?" "What’s to be bothered about?" The man didn’t skip a beat, even as every other jaw in the room hit the floor. "I like women. You like women. I like eating.." "Frohike!" Dana yelled. "I was gonna say seafood." He fired back. "I bet you were." Dana grabbed their coats tossing Abbie’s to her. "Look, it ’s getting pretty bad outside and I don’t think any of us want to get snowed in here. We should all go home and come back tomorrow." The men stared blankly back at the Federal agent. Dana sighed deeply, "Okay, Abbie and I will go home. You guys stay here. If you find anything.." "We’ll call you." Langly finished. "We know the routine." ** Dana turned the ignition as Abbie entered the car. The two had walked in stilted silence as they left the Lone Gunmen to their work. Dana watched as the wiper blades cleared the fresh layer of snow from the front windshield. "Well," Abbie broke the silence between them, "You did say they were strange." "It could have been worse," Dana smiled as she placed the car into gear. "Oh yeah?" "Yeah, I could have brought Mulder." ** Cumberland, Kentucky The winter storm that was currently burying Washington D.C. in a fury of snow was doing the same with the fine old state of Kentucky. Except, Mother Nature saw fit to replace snow with rain. The effects of which Mulder stamped off his boots, mud dropping off into clumps of wet sticky earth on the Cumberland P.D. welcome mat. He waved to the cute secretary sitting behind her desk. She flirtatiously smiled back, her face immediately contorting to a grimace as Deputy Sheriff Marty Gaines made his entrance. Mulder made a mental note as he approached the desk. "Any messages, Lucy?" He asked, tapping his palms on the fake wood paneling. "Expecting something?" The Deputy queried. He stood a couple inches taller than Mulder. So squeaky clean and wet behind the ears Mulder was surprised that he didn’t squeak when he walked. "Yeah, a call from my partner." Both Marty and the Lucy raised an eyebrow at the comment. "Special Agent Dana Scully." He sighed. In the past day, Mulder had called the woman numerous times. Receiving neither an answer from her cell phone, nor picked up on the prodigious number of messages he’d left on her machine. "Nope," Lucy went through the stacks of messages on her desk, "Nothing from Washington." He heard the familiar ring of his cell phone in his pocket. Happy for the diversion, Mulder walked a couple paces before answering. "Mulder." "Go back to Washington." A voice stated in his ear. Tinny and mechanical as if filtered through a computer. "What?" He growled. He’d barely started on his work and already Mulder was receiving threats. He began marching back towards Lucy’s desk. "Your partner is immersing herself in something that does not involve her." Mulder stopped dead in his tracks. The voice continued. "Stop her before we do." "Listen you son of a.." The line disconnected before Mulder could finish his sentence. He could see the worry crossing the Deputy and secretary’s faces as he finally approached the desk. "Agent Mulder?" Deputy Marty’s voice took a deeper tone, professional with just a tinge of rookie nervousness. "What’s the matter?" "I need to go home." End Chapter Six