Chapter Fourteen
Consulting

Fox's POV

The little mailbox on my start screen is opening and closing when I log on. I drop the little gloved hand over it and click. The single message has no subject, and the sender's name is blank. I only know of three people who could manage that. Well, maybe four, if you count Krycek, and he hasn't toyed with me through the net for awhile.

When I open it, it says simply. "The item we discussed is ready." No signature. I get my coat and head for the office of The Lone Gunmen.

When I arrive I salute the camera, and wait for the elaborate security system to be disarmed. It's Breyer who lets me in. He's immaculate, as usual. I feel rumpled just looking at him.

He nods at me as he begins to reset the system. "Fox. Frohike has what you want in the office." He is watching me with more than his usual wariness. "He's running the images through another filter for you right now."

"Thanks." I walk down the hall to the room at the other end. It isn't really quiet here, never totally quiet--there is always the hum and click of electronics. Someone is always on line, gathering or distributing information.

Frohike is sitting at one of the computers, staring intently at the monitors while Langely looks over his shoulder, hands on the back of the chair. I reflect that a Gunman wouldn't allow many people to come up behind him like that. Only each other, and me, and maybe Scully. It's called paranoia, but after what I've seen, it makes sense.

"That was a for crap tape you brought me, Mulder," Frohike says, never taking his eyes off the screen. "How the hell many times had they taped over it? I thought it was going to wear right through in a couple of places. Bastard was at least five years old, and must've been used almost every day of that time."

"I guess they were saving money," I say. "Don't know what they were doing with the extra profits. Sure as hell weren't using them on salaries."

"Or those shitty uniforms," Langely ventures. "Fuck, I've seen subtler outfits at the circus."

"When did you go to the circus?" Breyers joins us.

Langely smirks. "Dated a contortionist."

Frohike casts a frown over his shoulder. "You've been holding out on me."

I sigh. "Guys, much as I hate to interrupt the dating game..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fox, why do you want this? I've been all through that tape with a magnifying glass, and I don't see any suspicious activity." Frohike paused, and all three of the Gunmen looked at me expectantly.

I hesitated. It was just a suspicion, too nebulous to even warrant the name 'hunch', but I wasn't about to start ignoring my gut instincts at this stage of the game. They'd kept me alive too many times, and there might be other things the boys could help with.

I'd been quiet too long. Langely said, "We figure it's something to do with Dana, since she's on the tape, but we haven't been able to decide what it might be. The thing's so damn... bland. I mean, aside from where the clerk has that drunk get nasty about it being after hours, and Dana isn't even there then."

"First off, give me your impression of the clerk."

Frohike taps a few keys, and a close up picture of Free fills the screen. A few more taps, and the fuzzy black and white image clears, coming into focus. The Gunmen study the picture. Frohike shrugs. "I'd fuck her."

Langely snorts. "Big surprise there, Frohike. I dunno, Mulder." He peered closer, the image reflecting in his glasses. "The word 'normal' comes to mind. But then, Jeffery Dahmer looked like the class nerd."

"Breyers?"

He scratches his neat beard thoughtfully. "She has rather a sensitive look. I don't think she's suited for that type of work. She got quite distressed when that drunk tried to bully her, but she stood her ground. I admire that. Is she involved with Dana in some way?"

"Why would you ask that?"

The Gunmen bounce looks off each other, then focus on me. Breyers says patiently, "Aside from the fact that she's on the tape with her? There does seem to be a certain amount of... how shall I put it? They're comfortable together. Like... very good friends."

"He means," Frohike said, "Like they might be sleeping together."

Well, of course, Frohike would think that. But Dana isn't normally a touchy-feely sort of person, and in the tape she puts her hands on Free more than I'd expect.

"Did you get some captures of her when she's going out? That's what I want a good look at."

"Sure." Another burst of keystrokes. Free's picture is replaced by one of Dana standing at the door, her hand on the push bar, looking back into the store. At Free. "You want a zoom in, right?"

"Right."

He works. The section is cropped, enlarged. It's grainy, of course. He opens menus, selects, clicks, studies, repeats. The picture begins to waver, rippling from top to bottom. Each pass makes it a little clearer. Finally the image is clean edged, focused.

I've never seen that look on Dana's face before. It's... greedy, and triumphant. She looks like she just won something, put something over on someone. It's absorbed. She looks as if you'd have to tap her arm to get her attention away from whatever she's looking at, and she's looking at Free.

Frohike leans in closer to the monitor. When he sits back, his eyebrows are climbing toward his thinning hairline. "Somebody's going to get their bones jumped. Well, I guess that would explain why I haven't been able to get Red interested in me."

Langely gives him a disgusted look. "Yeah, since she isn't interested in you, she must be gay. Buuut..." His voice is doubtful, and he shrugs. "I guess I agree about the bones jumping. I wish more women looked at me like that."

"All right, so we agree that Dana seems to be, er, erotically attracted to the young woman in the tape. So? Fox, even if the Bureau could discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, I'd never believe that you'd stoop to snoop for them."

"No, what Dana does is her own business, but I'm concerned. She's been acting weird lately--distracted, distant. She's isolating herself, and she's not just reticent about this room mate--she's secretive. She doesn't even want me calling her at home anymore. I'm worried about the relationship."

"Abusive?" Breyers looked troubled. He's the one with the most romanticized view of women. He'd have been a courtier in another life.

"That's what I'm afraid of," I sigh. "She won't talk. I don't know how to get through to her. I'm afraid if I'm too direct, she'll... I don't want to risk losing her as a partner, or a friend."

Langely gets a pad and pencil. "Give us the particulars on this woman. We'll check around and see what we can dig up."

I give them what I know. I took a look at her application before I left her place of business and got her social security number. The guys can do a lot with that. "This shouldn't take long, unless she's going under aliases." Each of them take a computer, and get on it.

They work with the same intensity they bring to everything else they do. You'd think a bomb would go off, and they wouldn't notice, but actually they're very attuned to what is going on around them. I know that they never lose track of where I am in the room.

The results start coming in quickly. She has a state ID card, no driver's license. "But she did qualify. She's on record as owning a '72 Impala, but she also has a pretty bad traffic accident listed five years ago. Probably totaled the car and couldn't afford another," Langely states.

"Not on the kind of salery she's been getting." Frohike is shaking his head. "I thought they outlawed slave labor?"

"This is really interesting, but I'm looking for anything that might indicate a history of violence or aggression."

"We know that, Fox," Breyers says mildly. "I haven't come up with anything in your Bureau's records, and nothing locally. Just a ticket on that accident, and it reads like it was mostly the other driver's fault, anyway. She's cleaner than my grandmother."

"Huh." They looked at Frohike.

"What?"

"Well, it's probably nothing..."

"Frohike."

"All right. Her librairy record? She's a real steady patron, every week. She..."

"Her librairy record?"

"You can tell a lot by what a person reads. Anyway, she's more regular than Old Faithful. Every week, at least three books, for the past fifteen years. I mean every week. Doesn't the woman ever go away on vacation?"

"Didn't look like it. So?"

"So she hasn't checked anything out for the past three weeks, and what she has are overdue. That's a break in pattern."

"Dana says she's been sick."

"Dana wouldn't have returned the books for her? One of the books was a reserved copy. They've been trying to call her to get her to bring it in. No answer, and it's Dana's number, all right."

"That's not right. She worked nights up until she quit. She'd be there during the day. Unless she just wasn't answering the phone."

I don't say anything for a minute. I'm thinking, hard. It just doesn't add up. Something is off in this situation, but it doesn't really seem to be the room mate now. In fact, it's beginning to look like the room mate may be in some trouble of her own. Could it be something affecting them both? What would make them isolate themselves like that? I know that stalkers usually target single victims, but it isn't unknown for them to target households. But surely Dana would use the resources available to her at work if she found herself in that situation. Could it be that she was protecting her friend?

I left the office with as many, if not more, questions than I'd had when I arrived. I had just about decided that the only way to get to the bottom of this was to try to talk to Free.