OUTSIDE THE ALLEY
THURSDAY, 10:01PM
Emergency vehicles surround the alley now. Van Buren, while waiting to be taken to the hospital, gives a statement to Briscoe and Logan. Agent Scully listens in as she watches Agent Mulder being carried off to an ambulance.
"It was like this thing had... had super strength or something. Nothing I did seemed to hurt it. It caught me completely by surprise. I heard something to my left but this, this thing jumped me from the right. It was like it was playing games with my mind or something. Making me see and hear thins that really weren't there so it could get to me."
She stops to take a breath and then sighs, "I know this all sounds crazy."
"After all the stuff that has happened with this case, this actually sounds normal, Lieutenant," Logan replies with a reassuring smile.
"The fact that McCoy actually collared this guy makes me believe anything is possible now," chuckles Briscoe.
"The thing seemed to have all it's energy, it's whole being centered on me- all that hate and evil aimed at me. When Jack came outta nowhere like he did, I guess the thing's concentration was destroyed. It wasn't invincible any more. That's the only way I've been able to figure that Jack got it."
"I doubt anything is ever gonna make sense in this case," comments Logan.
An EMT interrupts, "We need to take her now."
"Don't worry, L-T, we'll straighten things out here," promises Briscoe and Logan nods his agreement.
"Thanks guys."
Van Buren is taken to the nearest ambulance, leaving Briscoe and Logan to figure out some explanation for the evening's events. They head for the only other living witness to the power and fury of the thing- McCoy. The detectives find the A.D.A. being questioned by a young uniformed officer.
"And how far were you from the assailant?"
"For the third time, I don't know how far I was from them! Ya know, if it wasn't for the fact that it was beating a police lieutenant to a bloody pulp I probably would've whipped out my tape ruler and taken exact measurements for you so you wouldn't have to go to all this trouble of asking me the same question over and over again!"
Briscoe and Logan exchange grins and Briscoe walks up to the officer, "Hey, what's your name?"
"Officer Neal, Sir."
"Officer Neal, you've done a great job. Detective Logan and myself are going to take over from here, okay?"
"Ah, okay, but I should warn you that he is extremely uncooperative."
"I appreciated the warning, Officer Neal. Thank you."
The young Officer Neal leaves.
"Did you hear that, McCoy? You're extremely uncooperative."
"As if that's anything new," remarks Logan.
"Har, har," grumbles McCoy.
"So what did happen out there, McCoy?" questions Briscoe.
"Some freaky shit, that's what."
"That comment is open to wide interpretation. By ‘freaky shit' you mean exactly what?"
"I mean that this thing we've been tracking had Van Buren pinned. No one can pin her, you both know that. She's about as tough as they come but this thing had her down and was gonna kill her. I did the only thing I could think of- I tried to help and I ended up taking it out. How I was able to beat it and Van Buren wasn't... Its just not logical... Its some freaky shit, just like I said before."
"I wonder if we can put ‘freaky shit' in our report," muses Logan.
Briscoe chuckles and McCoy rolls his eyes.
It is at this time that Scully jumps into the conversation, "Are you okay, Mr. McCoy?"
"I guess I'm doing okay considering everything that has happened. How is Detective Cooper?"
"He was loaded into a wagon before anyone else. He looks pretty rough, but they think he'll make it," answers Briscoe.
"Good. And our suspect?"
"You mean the poor gal whose head you played baseball with? They're not sure about them yet. Its gonna be a wait and see thing," replies Briscoe once more.
"What about Agent Mulder? Is he going to be alright?"
"He's gonna be fine. He's such a baby. I mean, he got the equivalence of a paper-cut compared to the what the rest went through and yet he acts like he's dying," Scully, disgustedly, reports.
"Hooray for the F.B.I.. We got any idea who our mystery woman is yet?"
"None what so ever. We're going to have to wait for the swelling to go down and for her to heal up before we can even see her face," Logan puts in.
"Well, try her finger prints."
"Already on it."
"Good. Well, besides the fact that this turned into the farce of the century, I think all went quite well tonight."
Just then a cell phone rings- it is Briscoe's.
"Yeah? Oh, hey, how are you? Good, good. Yeah, he's here. Hang on," Briscoe hands McCoy the phone.
McCoy looks slightly confused as he takes the phone from Briscoe but answers the call any ways, "Hello?"
"Hey Jack!"
"Jamie! How are you?"
"Doin' a lot better. How's your night been?"
OFFICE OF EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY JACK McCOY
Monday, 9:05am
John James McCoy sits down at his desk and prepares to start another week at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
"A new week," he thinks to himself, "Good thing. All I want to do is forget that last week even happened."
Jamie walks in. She ended up taking Friday off and this is the first time that Jack has seen the new addition to her wardrobe.
"Nice cast."
"If you like that you should see the lovely brace they got me wearing for my collar bone. I can barely raise my left arm above shoulder height."
"Gravity is a great thing, huh?"
"I never did like science."
They lapse into silence.
Jack clears his throat, "How is Katie?"
"She's doing good. She feels a little guilty for talking me into going for that bike ride, though."
Jack chuckles softly.
"So...I heard you got the third degree over that incident in the alley."
"Yeah, they had me tied up with questioning all day Friday."
"They cleared you, didn't they?"
"Yup. Ruled it self-defense. They're still not sure if our murderer is going to survive and she still is a Jane Doe. Briscoe said their was a back up at the lab to have the finger prints taken and looked at. Hope to have that done sometime today."
"Good. And those Agents?"
"They packed up and left town after they finished being questioned and Agent Mulder was released from the hospital. Agent Scully promised to send us a copy of their report for our records."
"Better yet. I imagine that Briscoe and Logan were happy to get rid of them."
"You have no idea. I heard that Logan started dancing on his desk when he heard that they were booked on the next flight back to D.C.."
Jamie smiles, "While we're talking about the police- I talked to Van Buren yesterday."
"I've been meaning to call her- how is she?"
"Doing a lot better. She still can't believe that she was saved by a lawyer. She says she'll never live it down."
"Hey, it beats being dead."
"True. Well, Jack McCoy, you've rid the world of a crazed serial killer. What are you going to do now?"
"I'm going to Disney World."
Later that same day Jack sat alone in his office listening to the rain pour down outside. The hooker/ murderer case file sat on his desk, open. He hadn't gotten much done in the past few days, and the pile of paperwork was making a return appearance. He couldn't concentrate on anything else besides the events of that Thursday night. Something was bothering him. He couldn't put his finger on it but there was a nagging sense in the back of his head that he was over-looking something. Much of his work as a prosecutor was about going with his gut- trusting his intuition. No matter how hard he tried to put the thoughts behind him he couldn't.
Jack wasn't used to the unexplained. He had never been one to accept something on face value. He didn't believe in aliens or supernatural abilities or miracles. He had fallen away from faith and belief of almost any kind. He believed in justice for the weak and punishment for the guilty but not much else. The faith and wonder that is born into all of humans, the faith in goodness and the wonder in the mysterious, was something he had lost long ago. He had always thought himself wise and above others because he did not believe in such foolish things, but now, having come face to face with something of this magnitude, he wondered if his past choices had actually been mistakes.
Some had called his view of the world cynical. He preferred to call it self-preservation- expect the worst from people and you wouldn't be disappointed. Any belief in goodness and fairness had been beaten out of him many years before. The world to him was nothing but a festering cesspool full of slugs and leeches that would slit your throat for a nickel. Only the strongest survived- dominate or be dominated. So he was not surprised by much when it came to the evil of the human race but this case had managed to shock him.
"Maybe that's why this is bothering me so much...," he thought as he watched lightening eliminate up the Manhattan skyline, "I can't fathom an evil so..."
As Jack pondered, the DJ on the radio, that sat on a shelf near his desk, announced that the time was 4:00pm and that the current outside conditions were rainy with a temperature of 72 degrees.
"Like I need you to tell me its raining...," he grumbled at the DJ's cheerful voice.
A song came on. The DJ mentioned the song's name but Jack didn't hear it.
"I don't feel a thing and I stopped remembering
The days are just like moments turned to hours
Mother used to say, "If you want, you'll find a way."
But Mother never danced through fire's shadow."
Jack had drifted off sleep in his chair as the song played softly in the background.
"I don't hear a sound
Silent faces in the ground
Quiet screams, but I refuse to listen
If there is a Hell, I'm sure this is how it smells
This is where a dream goes..."
RIIINNNNGGGG!!!
Jack about falls out of his chair, "WHAT?! WHA- Oh."
He frantically searches for his phone- its under a pile of paper. On the seventh ring he finds it.
"McCoy."
There was a nervous silence- when the caller finally speaks it is the unmistakable voice of Lennie Briscoe, "Jack, we got a problem."
Jack lets out an exasperated sigh, "I'm really not in the mood for any more of your surprises, Detective."
"Believe me, I hate having to be the one to tell you this stuff-,"
"You lost the coin toss?"
"Yeah...I'm starting to wonder if Mike uses a double-sided coin. Any ways, here's the problem- you know that girl you played ‘batter up' with?"
"Yes. Why?"
"We've identified her."
"Who is she?"
Briscoe stalls-
"I'm not getting paid by the minute here, Lennie."
"Laura Andrews."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me, Jack. The girl is Laura Andrews."
"That isn't possible."
"You think I don't know that. But we just rolled her prints and that is who we came up with as a positive match. We had'em on file from her busts for prostitution."
"I'll be over there as soon as I can."
Jack hung up and then just stared at the phone. This was one nightmare too many but somehow he managed to haul himself up out of his chair; grabbed his extra large bottle of aspirin and his helmet; put on his coat; and sulked out of the office.
As the office door slammed behind the disgruntled district attorney, the DJ continued to cheerfully chatter from the forgotten radio, "Hope you all are having a great evening, folks!"
Manhattan General Hospital
Monday, 7:43pm
The rain continued to pour outside as Agents Scully and Mulder walk briskly down the corridor leading to Laura Andrews' room. Mulder wears a smug grin while Scully seems ready to kill someone. She had just finished unpacking from their last excursion to New York when the news came from Skinner that they had to go back. Apparently the suspect was someone that it couldn't be so the case had landed squarely back in their laps.
Mulder was over-joyed, though, by the changing of the tide. He had whistled all the way from La Guardia because now he had the chance to show-off his knowledge of weird and useless crap. Scully had been suppressing the over-whelming need to strangle him since Skinner had first talked to them that afternoon.
Logan was walking back to Laura Andrews' with a cup of coffee room when he saw the two agents round the corner, "Back so soon?"
"Believe me, Detective, if I had things my way I wouldn't step foot in New York again if my life depended on it. Unfortunately, my job does depend on it so...," Scully spat.
"I welcome the chance to show all of you that I'm not crazy and be able to prove all of you wrong," Mulder proudly proclaimed.
"And I'm just the unlucky stiff that happened to not be in the can when this case came in," dead panned Logan.
"I don't even understand why we're back here," complained Scully, "Isn't possible that Mr. McCoy clobbered the wrong girl?"
"You'll have to take that one up with McCoy. He insists that he hit the right one, its just not the one we have now."
"Then maybe we made a mistake on the description and it was her all along."
"Agent Scully, you saw that girl as well as we did. You know what she looked like."
"I'm admitting that I may have made a mistake. If you're so sure that its not possible that the person that you have in that hospital room is the murderer, then you explain the fact that she's here in the first place."
"I don't have to explain it- that's your department."
Scully is caught off guard by this response and lapses into a defiant silence.
All this time Mulder has been amusing himself by counting dots on the ceiling, "11...15...20..."
Scully hears Mulder's counting and knows what he is doing, "Will you cut that out?!"
"Just waiting for you two to finish your lovers' spat. You tend to get bored easily when you know you're right about something," Mulder replies, evenly.
Logan had, had it with this idiot- he hauls off and belts Mulder across the face. Mulder, not expecting the attack (and even if he had, he was too much of a weakling when it came to fighting to do anything about it) is toppled over by the force of the blow and lands squarely on his butt.
"I feel much better now," Logan mumbles.
Mulder glares up from his ‘new seating position' with the look of a whiny, stubborn little kid, "You saw that Scully- he assaulted me!"
"Oh shut up, Mulder."
"What the heck is going on?" Briscoe is now on the scene.
"Someone needed his ego deflated," Logan explains, nodding to Mulder, who is still sitting on the floor.
Briscoe rolls his eyes, "The circus back in town so soon?" he remarks under his breath.
"This whole thing is a circus," Scully puts in, "I thought I had heard the end of this when that D.A. McCoy took down the girl in the alley."
"So did I," Briscoe concurs.
"When can we talk to this Laura Andrews?" Mulder asks as he finally picks himself back up.
"Not sure," Briscoe answers again, "She's still unconscious."
"Perfect. Just perfect. We come down here for no reason because its kinda hard to question a person that can't even comprehend what you're asking, let alone actually be able to answer!" Scully's patience is gone.
"There is nothing more we can do here today. You agents might as well check in to a hotel and call it a day," Briscoe soothes. He understands Scully's frustration but sees no point in having a coronary over the recent developments.
"Is anyone staying with the young woman?" Mulder inquires- the first sensible question he's asked in this conversation.
Briscoe nods, "Profaci is staying with her for now. Someone will relieve him around midnight."
"Good. Come on, Scully. Lets get something to eat."
And for another first that night, Scully had no problem agreeing with Mulder.
MR. WONG CHUNG'S CHINESE RESTAURANT AND TAKE OUT
MONDAY, 8:29pm
Mulder and Scully entered the small restaurant that evening with more than a few reservations- the people hanging around that area at that time of night were not the most up-standing of citizens. It was the only place that seemed to be open in the area though and they were hungry so they had to make do. They take a seat at a table near the rear of the dinning area and are handed menus by the same young Chinese man that had waited on Jack and Jamie only a few days before.
"You to order now or later?" the young waiter asks with a thick Chinese accent.
"Give us a few minutes, please," Mulder answers. The waiter hurries away.
"Mulder, what do you think of all of this?"
"I think I'm gonna have the sushi."
"That's not what I'm talking about and you know it!"
"Do I think that D.A. got the wrong girl?"
"Yeah."
"No. I think he got the right one- I just think we saw something that was never real. The blond never existed."
"But Mulder, I saw this girl, too. She was just like McCoy and the others described her."
"Maybe you only saw what you were meant to see."
"Huh?"
"Think about it, Scully. Eleven murders spanning over three decades. What's the connection besides the manner of death?"
"They were all killed supposedly by working girls."
"Right. But we know that not all the murders could have been committed by Laura Andrews. She wasn't even born yet when the first murder took place- I checked."
"So maybe she read about the cases and was pulling a copycat."
"Not likely, given the fact that she has nothing to gain from this and everything to lose."
"So how do you connect all the dots? You think a group of girls conspired on this?"
"Something like that. But the way I see it is that the their involvement in the conspiracy wasn't voluntary."
"Mind control?"
"Not exactly. Scully, what if there was something out there- something that fed on the anger and rage in these young women over being in a life they didn't want to be in. What if something materialized from that anger- a presence."
"You mean, it would be the product of their feelings of lacking propose?"
"Yeah. Isn't it possible that they projected their repressed rage onto those that they felt held them back? And what if after years of building up these repressed feelings the feelings took on a life all their own- moving from one girl to the next, like a ghost only the spirit never lived in the real world, only in the minds of the working girls whose emotions it feeds off of."
"That's one Hell of a theory, Mulder."
"I know. And that's all it is right now- a theory. But it does explain how people who have nothing in common end up being caught for these murders."
"But there could dozens of reasons for that."
"Normally I would agree with you, Scully."
"You know more than you're telling."
"Perhaps."
"What is it, Mulder?"
"When I found out that this girl had ended up ‘changing appearances' I had the Lone Gunmen check it out. Turns out that the original arrest reports have been ‘edited'."
"The other cases had form changing, too?"
"Yup. I guess ‘Big Brother' didn't want anyone to find out just how similar these cases really are. And all the women that were arrested in the cases are long since dead or have disappeared."
"So this...this thing is passed from working girl to working girl...How does it make the transfer?"
"That's the only thing I haven't been able to figure out yet."
The waiter returns, "You ready to order?"
"Yeah, I'll have the Sushi Special- Scully?"
"Egg rolls, please."
"Anything to drink?"
"Iced tea, please," Mulder requests.
"Make that two," adds Scully.
"Okay," the waiter leaves.
"Have you told those detectives about your theory?"
"You think I'm that stupid?"
"Well..."
"Ahem. Thanks for the support, Scully."
"Want me to lie to you?"
"I just wish you'd be a little more open-minded sometimes, that's all."
"I'm not sure if I can be that open-minded, Mulder."
Manhattan General Hospital
Monday, 8:45pm
Somewhere in the hospital an alarm sounds causing nurses to go scurrying in every direction. One such nurse rounds a corner with an arm full of towels and runs right into Jack McCoy.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" the frazzled young nurse exclaims.
"Its okay. No harm done," Jack reassures as he helps the nurse pick up the dropped towels.
"Thank you," the nurse, with towels in hand once more, continues on her way.
Jack watches her hurry down the hall with a smile. The smile fades, though, as he reminds himself why he is here. Reluctantly, he turns in the other direction and scans the hallway for the elusive room number. Finally, he finds it.
The room has two people in it- Harold Willis and Laura Andrews. It is plain in decor. The only thing in the room that shows signs of excess are two 20-inch color televisions- one for each room mate. Laura's is off but Harold's is blaring. Jack looks slightly annoyed by Harold's TV viewing but there is not much to be done about it. He takes a seat beside Laura's bed and just stares at her.
"This isn't the girl I hit," he thinks to himself, "It can't be."
It was hard to see the timid young hooker he had only a few days ago felt sorry for as a cold-blooded killer. It just didn't seem possible that they were one in the same. She had reported witnessing the murder of Richard Cummings, not confessed to it. Had he misjudged her?
It is at this point that Harold notices that Laura has a visitor, "Hey there!"
Jack tries to pretend that he doesn't hear the man.
"Hey you! I'm talkn' to ya! What's your name? Mine's Harold Willis."
"Hi."
"She's not too talkative."
"Well, the fact that she's unconscious might have something to do with that," Jack replied dryly.
"Yeah- it might."
An awkward silence follows.
"So what's your name?"
Jack looks down at the young girl that no one had ever wanted- the girl no one had ever loved, "It doesn't matter."
Jack wordlessly exits the room with Harold still yelling after him.