A Little Knowledge (4/7) *************************** by Patti Murphy Scully struggled to keep her eyes open for most of the drive, despite the fact that Mulder had brought her a large steaming cup of coffee when he arrived to pick her up at six twenty-five. She dozed fitfully, jerking awake occasionally with the motion of the car. Mulder watched her for a while, then reached into the back seat for his trenchcoat. "Here," he said, as he handed it to her, "use this, so you won't get a sore neck." She mumbled her thanks, stuck the coat between her head and the door, and promptly went back to sleep. He kept an eye on her as he drove, wondered if she was still angry with him. She had been quiet since he'd picked her up, but then, she was pretty tired. She still looked pale and Mulder noticed that she was frowning slightly in her sleep. He smiled to himself. She must be dreaming about him. Later, when he pulled up in front of the Inglis residence, a big, tudor style home with manicured hedges, he had to gently shake her shoulder to rouse her. She yawned and sat up, then ran her hand through her hair, trying to repair the damage. Mulder got out, stretched and surveyed the house while he waited for her. A moment later, she joined him on the sidewalk and handed him his trenchcoat. "It's a little wrinkled," she said. "Sorry." Mulder examined the coat. It was deeply creased, like a piece of paper that had been crumpled and then unfolded. "It's too warm for it, anyway," he said and tossed it in the back seat. "I knew he was dead the moment I saw him," the tiny woman said. She sat opposite Mulder and Scully, in a wingback chair, which threatened to swallow up her frail form. Her hands lay lifelessly in her lap and her shoulders slumped slightly, as if some great weight was pushing down on them. Nearby, a grandfather clock kept vigil, steadily counting off the passing seconds. "When the paramedics arrived, they said there was nothing they could do, but I'd known that from the moment I stepped into the garden and saw him lying on the grass." Her eyes drifted away from Mulder and Scully to gaze sightlessly into space, but her expression told them that she was reliving the scene. Scully waited for a few seconds and when she spoke, her voice was soft and soothing. "Mrs. Inglis, what sort of reaction did your husband usually have to bee stings?" "He would have difficulty breathing and then his throat would become swollen, but once he took his needle, he'd be fine in a few minutes." "So he'd been stung before?" Mulder asked. "Oh, heavens, yes!" the woman said. "Bill loved to garden and he was particularly fond of roses, so the back garden is full of them. Most days if you stood still out there, you could hear the buzz from the back door." She smiled wistfully and one hand fluttered up from her lap to touch the lace doily on the arm of her chair. "He was always getting stung, but he didn't seem to mind. He'd just take his needle and rest for a little while, then he'd be right back at it." The smile on her face slowly faded and tears began to seep into her pale eyes. She fought to compose herself. Mulder noticed that this woman bore a passing resemblance to his own mother and silently wished himself out of this living room. No one spoke for a few moments while she drew herself back together and blinked the bothersome tears away. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's still difficult." She smoothed her skirt, then folded her hands on her lap again. "Now, you said something on the phone about Leslie." "Yes," Mulder said. "I don't know if you are aware that a missing person report has been filed on Dr. Hamilton." The woman looked stricken. "Leslie? Dear God, what happened to her?" "There's no reason to believe that anything has happened to Dr. Hamilton," Scully cut in, with a cursory glance at Mulder. "Some friends of hers in Texas are concerned because she hasn't been in contact with them. At the moment, no one seems to know where she is, and so it's routine to file a report." "I see," Mrs. Inglis said. She pondered this information and the colour slowly returned to her face. "Well, I'm afraid we haven't heard from her since, oh, it must be last summer." "Your husband and Dr. Hamilton have known each other since medical school, is that right, Mrs. Inglis?" Mulder asked. She nodded. "Yes, they were classmates at Yale. In fact, she and her husband Vince were married two weeks after Bill and I, right after graduation. It was a lovely wedding." She paused, the wistful smile returning briefly. "Did they ever work on any projects together?" Mulder asked. "Oh yes. When we were in New Mexico. But that was a long time ago." Mulder sat up a little straighter. "Do you remember exactly when that was?" She sighed. "Let's see...Bob, my youngest, was in junior high then, I remember because we had an awful time finding a school that would take him mid-semester. So, it must have been the winter of '67 that we moved there." "What sort of project were they working on?" "Oh, heavens. I'm afraid I don't really know. It had to do with viruses, of course, since that's Bill's field, you know, and it was a government grant of some sort, but beyond that I can't help you. I was busy raising the boys and Bill didn't like to discuss his work much." "And Dr. Hamilton was working on the same project?" Mulder asked. "Yes, but as I say, they never really talked much about it." "You said you'd heard from Dr. Hamilton last summer," Scully said. "I assume you've kept in touch over the years." "Mostly Christmas cards and the occasional letter. She and Bill conferred with each other for work I know, because he would mention from time to time that he'd gotten a call from her." She shook her head. "Poor Leslie. I hope nothing has happened to her." Mulder leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Mrs. Inglis, do you have any idea where Dr. Hamilton might go if she wanted to get away for a while? Does she have relatives that you know of? Anybody she spoke about?" The tiny woman frowned. "I don't think I ever heard her speak of relatives, and of course, she and Vince never had children." She thought for a moment. "I do remember them stopping by once, oh, it must be twenty years ago, while they were on vacation. It sticks in my mind because we so rarely saw them. As I recall, they were going to spend a month at this little cabin that Vince had inherited somewhere in the Allegheny mountains. It was quite remote and they were beginning to make enquiries about the possibility of getting electricity." "Do you have any idea where it might be?" Mulder asked. He was leaned so far forward that Scully thought he might tumble out of his chair at any moment. "I'm just trying to remember," the woman said. "There was an animal in it somewhere..." She tapped a dainty finger on her lips and frowned as she thought. "It wasn't bears....what was it? It was something Crossing. No, something Junction. That's it. Some animal Junction." She pursed her lips and frowned. "It was so long ago, you know. I'm not sure that I..." She stopped speaking suddenly and her face brightened. "Wolf Junction," she said. "The closest little village was Wolf Junction, West Virginia. I think it's just across the state line, actually." Scully saw Mulder's body relax, as if he'd just started breathing again. The woman beamed a little at her accomplishment, then smoothed a few more invisible wrinkles out of her skirt. "That's the only time she ever mentioned it. She may not even own it anymore. As I say, it was a long time ago." "Well, it's worth looking into," Scully said. "Mrs. Inglis, is there any way we could look through some of your husband's correspondence?" Mulder asked. "There's a possibility that Dr. Hamilton may have mentioned something that could help us to locate her." She hesitated and cast a furtive glance towards the staircase in the hall. "I suppose that would be all right," she said. "The last couple of years, he worked mostly at home, in his study. I ..." She choked on her words, one slender, pale hand flying to her mouth, in an effort to hold back a sob. Mulder and Scully waited, eyes downcast, while she struggled to find her voice. "I wonder if you would mind if I didn't help you?" she said, at last. Her hands darted about in tiny birdlike movements, fingering the buttons on her sweater, touching the fabric of the chair. "I haven't been able to bring myself to go in that room, yet. It's silly, I know, but..." She let the sentence trail off unfinished and regarded Mulder and Scully with a beseeching look. Scully glanced over at Mulder in time to see his expression soften into a tender smile. "It's not silly at all, Mrs. Inglis. I understand perfectly," he said. He got to his feet. "Why don't you just tell us which room it is and we'll look on our own." They found William Inglis's study on the second floor. It was a small room, made all the more cramped by the number of books, journals and files that were piled on every flat surface. A sturdy desk and chair were pushed up against the wall by the window. Two wooden filing cabinets stood beside it, and there was a worn, sagging arm chair in the corner. "I'll start with the filing cabinets," Mulder said. Scully looked around the room, took in the clutter on the desk and decided to begin there. She sat down in the desk chair and surveyed the files, scraps of paper and stacks of bills and correspondence. She methodically worked her way from one side of the desk to the other, discovering along the way scribbled references to scientific articles, phone numbers, a few issues of the journal of virology, a grocery list and a heap of seed catalogues. The slightest sense of guilt dogged her as she sorted through the paper and books. There was something disturbingly intimate about sitting at someone else's desk, going through their things, as if their entire life and all its secrets were tucked away in the drawers. She wondered, as she sifted through a handful of receipts, who had cleaned out her desk in their basement office when she had been missing last year. Probably Mulder. Had he felt guilty, intrusive, as she did now? Or was he grateful for the chance to sit in her chair and maybe somehow be near her in the process? She honestly didn't know, and she certainly wasn't going to ask him. Her gaze fell on the Macintosh computer that occupied a quadrant of the desk. She studied it, thinking for a few seconds, then reached around the back of the computer and ran her hand across the ports, switches and cables. At the far right edge, her fingers touched a phone line. Mulder looked up from the filing cabinet when he heard the computer hum to life with a perky chirp. Scully was tapping keys and peering at the screen. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Following a hunch," she said. Mulder entertained several witty replies, then remembered the look on her face when he had left her apartment early this morning. He decided to keep them to himself, and returned to the filing cabinet. Scully scrolled through directories looking for something that wasn't password protected. She was about to give up and start searching the desk for anything that looked like a password, when she came across the directories for an internet service provider. There was no security software on them. A few keystrokes and she found herself with a list of e-mails that William Inglis had sent, which had been automatically filed in the computer's memory. She started reading. A few minutes later, she said, "Mulder, I think I've got something." Mulder came to the desk and looked at the screen. "What?" Scully clicked the mouse a few times, and the text of a letter appeared on the screen. He leaned closer to read it. Leslie, I heard about Richard today, but I think you're over- reacting. The stupid old fool fell down the stairs is all. I never liked him, as you know, but I can't help but feel sorry. Listen -- about your recent e-mail. I don't know what to tell you. I have no idea if you've done the right thing or not, but what's done is done. It will probably all blow over in a few days. You're getting paranoid in your old age, Leslie. It was 25 years ago. No one cares anymore. Regards, Bill. Mulder looked at Scully. "She blew the whistle on the project," he said, "and when they started coming after them, she tried to warn Inglis." Scully leaned back in the chair and it squeaked loudly. "O.K., but why now? And what proof does she have?" "If we can find her, we can ask her ourselves," Mulder said. "Is there an address?" "Yeah, but it's just an e-mail address through a commercial service provider. It's going to take a lot of paperwork and a couple of days to get a proper address," Scully said. "But we do know that wherever she is, she has access to a computer." "And a phone line." They regarded each other for a moment. "Hey, Scully, how many new phone lines do you think have been installed around Wolf's Butt, West Virginia in the last month?" Scully allowed a hint of a smile. "Hopefully not too many." Mulder looked into his rear view mirror and watched Scully's reflection stride across the rental car lot. He knew it made sense for her to head back to Washington to meet her virologist friend at Georgetown while he continued westward to Wolf Junction, but for some reason he couldn't fully articulate, even to himself, it made him uneasy. He'd held back while they'd discussed the plan of action, not able to come up with a good reason why they should stick together, and in the end, he'd driven her to the nearest AVIS office to rent a car for the return trip to D.C., with a promise to call one another as soon as anything turned up. But he didn't like it. He signalled, then eased the car onto the highway, glancing back over his shoulder at the lot before he accelerated. She was nowhere to be seen. He pulled his cellular out of his pocket then punched in the familiar number. "Danny?" he said. "I've got an urgent one for you, and I don't care who you have to pull off the golf course for it. I need information about new phone lines installed in a place in West Virginia in the last five or six weeks." Scully consulted the directory in the lobby of the deserted biological sciences building, running a finger down the list of names of professors and researchers until she found Dr. E. Przednowek, Rm. 612. She went off in search of the elevators, her heels clicking loudly against the floor tiles and echoing in the empty halls. The door of room 612 was decorated with stickers from Greenpeace and a half-dozen other whale and tree saving organizations. Scully smiled as she knocked. Beth would never change. The door was opened by a tall, lithe woman in a t-shirt, jeans and Birkenstocks. Her long, blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she had wide, chestnut coloured eyes. She didn't return Scully's smile. "Jesus Christ, Dana! Where did you get this?" the woman said, when she spotted Scully. Scully, who had been about to step through the door, stopped dead. "Why?" "Do you realize what you have here?" she asked, waving a handful of pages in the air. Scully looked quickly up and down the hall. "Can we discuss this in there?" she asked, pointing into the office. Beth's expression softened and she nodded. "Sure, sure. I'm sorry! Come on in." She stepped aside and let Scully enter the tiny, windowless room. She pushed some text books and computer printouts off the only chair and motioned for Scully to sit down. She sat on the edge of her desk. "I'm sorry, it's just that I've been reading this stuff you dropped off for the past two hours and it's really freaking me out." "What did you find?" Scully asked. "Well, you were right, it's a retrovirus, but this data...." She shook her head. "This is bioengineering on a level I've never seen before." "Really?" Beth nodded and her pony tail bobbed in rhythm. "And that's not the best part. This data records elaborate manipulations of a retrovirus that, as far as I know, doesn't exist." "Do you mean that it's one that hasn't been identified?" "Well, it's either that or somebody created this thing to play around with." "How, exactly?" Beth flipped through the pages. "It's not entirely clear and there's a lot here that's over my head. But from some of these experiments, I'd say they were trying to make it more virulent. They were damn successful, too. They managed to speed up the cell death on some of these trials by 40%." She lowered the pages and stared at Scully. "And you're not answering my question, Dana. Where did you get this?" "We're not entirely sure yet," Scully replied. Beth cocked her head and studied Scully's expression. "Agent Scully, are you being straight with me? Or is that Bureau talk for `keep 'em in the dark'?" Scully sighed. "Look, Beth, there's a lot we don't know about this yet." "All right, all right," Beth said, "it's not that I don't believe you. It's just that there is some pretty revolutionary stuff in here. Not to mention a Nobel prize or two." "Can you tell me how it works?" Scully asked. "It's hard to say, but there are some structural similarities to HIV, so I'd guess that it targets the immune system." "Which means that the host would die from opportunistic infections like pneumonias, and fungal infections, right?" Scully said. Beth nodded. "It's possible." "How infectious is it?" "From what I read, not very. You'd need fairly direct contact with body fluids." Scully sank back in the chair, her mind racing. Beth watched her for a few seconds, then said, "Is this some new sort of Ebola thing that lives in African bat shit or something? I mean, should I unpack my biocontainment suit?" Scully met her gaze and chuckled. "Washington isn't about to become the next Zaire, if that's what you're asking," she said. "Maybe not," Beth said. "But you've just shown me research that is so far beyond cutting edge that I can't make heads or tails out of some of it." She looked directly at Scully, her dark eyes intense. "Somebody, somewhere has this technology and they're not sharing. Doesn't that scare you?" Scully looked at her friend for a long time, then nodded. cont.