Subj: Scene XVI

Date: 97-08-16 18:59:59 EDT

From: lisby@earthlink.net

*XVI*

2:34 A.M., Rockville, Maryland

Ice on black asphalt sparked with cold light as headlights slashed across the road. Neil Preftakes shivered in the wake of its passing, hands balled in his coat pockets. At two in the morning on Route 355 it was every man for himself.

Preftakes shivered again and for just a moment longed for a Florida retirement--a dream that had died with his wife. Now his back ached in the cold as he bent to pick up the tire iron. The grazes on his hands stung when he wrapped them around cold steel. If he ever had to flatten a tire again, he'd come better prepared.

The bar clattered in the trunk and the slam was startling. He shivered again, staring at the salt-whitened bumper of his car. The ground crunched underfoot when he walked around to the passenger side, sunk in the icy mud. Rim flat to the dirt, just right. He sighed again and tugged open the passenger-side door. The portable phone, snug between the seats, winked at him with a charged battery's steady light. Preftakes fingers trembled when he pulled the little door open, yanked out the batteries. The two replacements from his pocket took what seemed like forever to stuff into the compartment, but then he had it closed and looking fine. Fine, except the little light no longer winked with a healthy pulse.

Preftakes sagged back in the passenger seat. Long minutes passed, and another car's lights startled up in his rear view mirror. Preftakes stared, mesmerized, until the car was a faint, red blur of tail lights far down the highway. When his shoulders dropped he wasn't sure if his sigh was relief or resignation. In the corner of his eye, the gas station's sign glowed a garish yellow, clashing with the neon blue of the public telephone in front of it.

The doctor put the cell phone down on the empty passenger seat and emerged from the shelter of his car, pulling his coat tighter as he stepped carefully on slick ice. A few dozen steps was all it would take.

The receiver was greasy in his hand and smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and stale beer. Preftakes' fingers trembled slightly as he pulled a slip of paper and a handful of quarters out of his pocket. The coins could have roused the dead as they clattered down the chute to join their like. The phone was ringing and ringing and Preftakes was holding his breath, praying that no one would be home, no one would answer the phone, but his receiver clicked as the other lifted.

"Hello?" The answering voice wasn't sleepy. Wasn't interested. Wasn't anything much at all.

"Carl?"

"Who's this?"

"It's Dr. Preftakes, Carl. Neil Preftakes."

The silence was longer this time. Preftakes listened to breathing. "Carl, is something wrong?"

The laugh was short. "You know the answer to that better than I do, Doc. Wanna tell me why you're calling me at..." rustling "...at two-thirty in the morning? Isn't this kind of thing that hot lines are for?"

"Or Triple A, except I don't have a membership. I'm stranded and I need a ride, and yours was the only number I could remember." Preftakes' teeth chattered.

"And you don't have a local repairman you could call?" Carl's curiosity had a flat, pro-forma sound. "And I thought this kind of thing was a breach of ethics or something."

"What? Picking me up for a flat? I'm sorry, Carl. I just happened to remember you live close to here, that's all. I didn't want to pay fifty extra bucks for a flat. It's not like I'm in private practice, you know. Look, all I need is a ride, but if it's too much trouble I'm sure I can get a cab to come out and--"

"No. No, I don't think the cabs like to pick up this late." Preftakes could hear something going on in the background, found that sweat was rolling down his sides as he listened to the distracted, hollow sound of Carl's voice. "All right, doctor. I'll come out to get you. But I get fifteen extra minutes next time. So, where are you?"

Preftakes head went dizzy and light, but he managed to get the address out. Hung up the phone with a shaking hand and crossed his arms over his belly, feeling the sick twist as he watched another car approach, then blow past, its tires hissing on the pavement. His car would be warmer than out in the wind, but he couldn't sit still.

By the time Carl Handford's old Subaru pulled up, Preftakes knew how many dead geraniums and cabbages were hunched in the tiny plot that decorated DiFazio's Auto Repair. Knew that it took seventy-eight steps to pace the breadth of the property, and that passing cars took one minute and thirty-four seconds from the time their headlights came around the corner to the time their tail lights faded in a malevolent wink behind the curve of the road ahead.

Carl's car crept up, high beams picking out the glitter of broken glass in the grass until they fell on Preftakes, then dimmed. The car growled softly in neutral and a brown-haired man got out. In the headlights of his own car, his cheekbones were gaunt below shadowed eyes. He stepped around, studying Preftakes' car and nodding at the flat.

"Okay, Doc, let's get you home. You can get this replaced tomorrow. The guys across the street'll think the good flat fairy has dropped by."

"Thanks, Carl."

The engine of the Subaru spluttered ominously, and the interior smelled of ancient fast food, but the heater was working like new. Preftakes slammed the door and locked it. Carl pulled into the gas station and turned, glancing at the doctor.

"You may want your seat belt. My--my wife always said I drove like a racer."

Preftakes had been craning, trying to make out the scattered gleam of lightless cars parked under streetlights, and stared at Carl a moment, baffled. "Oh. Oh, sorry. Of course. But it's all right, Carl. I trust your ability."

"One of the few. You'd better buckle up anyway."

Preftakes settled in his seat with an effort, tugging the seat belt over

his body. When he looked up, his driver had the squint that Preftakes long ago characterized as the data analyst's curse. Carl looked like he might have been born with it. What he hadn't been born with was the slump of his shoulders and the gray look of his skin; the still way that he moved, as though his flesh hurt.

"Thank you for getting me. I live at--"

"I know where you live," Carl looked at him a moment, eyes flat. "I know it's nowhere near downtown Rockville. So what's the little game all about?"

"Game...?"

"Game. I haven't talked to you for a month, and out of the blue my shrink calls me up and asks me for a ride. He's got a flat. And no skid marks leading up to his neatly parked, well-maintained car. When I look in, I see the phone is dead, but everything else is tidy as hell. So why doesn't

nice, organized Dr. Preftakes have Triple A? Or do you? I'm betting if I opened your trunk you'd have a spare in there, Doc. Or did you think of that, too?"

Preftakes' lip was sore where his teeth worried it. Carl's profile was as expressionless as his face. "Actually, the spare's got a nail in it."

"Which doubtless has hammer marks but none of the wear and tear of a piece of road trash. So you went to a whole lot of trouble to talk to me away

from your house and your office and everything else. If I were writing it up, I'd say you figured you had bugs everywhere from the attic to the crapper. You didn't call me out just to test my analytical skills, Dr. Preftakes, so what do you want to say to me?

"I....This isn't easy, Carl. It's not what I want to say to you. It's what I'm hoping you'll say to somebody else." That did it. He had Carl's attention now, eyes flickering from the doctor's face to the road to the rearview mirror.

"So, what do you want me to say?"

"The truth, maybe."

"The truth is a whore for sale to the highest bidder, Dr. Preftakes. Which truth are you buying tonight?"

"Cut the crap, Carl. It never worked in therapy and it won't work tonight.

I saw a young woman today. Pretty thing, and she's worried sick."

"So what's that got to do with me, Doctor? I haven't had any pretty women worried about me for a long, long time."

"She's a field agent. Her partner disappeared two days ago. Two men dragged him out of his apartment, cuffed him, blindfolded him, and shoved him into

a car. Stolen plates, no evidence of who they were. All she's got is what

he was working on when he disappeared."

Carl was silent a long time, muscles working along his jaws. When he

finally glanced over at Preftakes, his gray eyes held a worn, watery irritation that was the closest to anger Preftakes had seen in this man in three years. His words should have sounded angry but they were the same flat, emotionless tone Preftakes always heard from his patient. "So," Carl shrugged, "what was this guy working on?"

"He was looking into sexual slavery, Carl. He was researching the organized use of torture and imprisonment to create marketable merchandice. And she didn't tell me about it, but I got the distinct impression that he was looking into something else, as well. From what I know of the man, it seems likely he was looking into something that would make his superiors uncomfortable."

"Uh-huh. So, this guy is another one of your patients?"

"He was for awhile, a long time ago."

"For the same thing I've got?"

"Not at that time. But he very may well be by the time he surfaces again. That's what I wanted to talk to you ab--!" Preftakes broke off as Carl twisted the wheel over. The tires of the Subaru squealed around the turn into a side street. The car braked so fast that empty drink cups rolled out from under the passenger seat.

Carl turned toward Preftakes, voice low and ridiculously monotone. "What

are you playing at, Doc? I've had experts play games with me and I don't like it. I never have. If you're playing with--"

"No. No, Carl," Pretakes shook his head. "I don't like asking you, but it's all I know how to do. I can't tell this woman about you, but she needs to talk to you, she needs what you know!"

Streetlights glittered off the flat, shallow gray of Carl's eyes. The tip

of his tongue ran along his lips. "She needs what I know? What I know is that you want me to stick my neck out for this idiot who got himself in the hole. Tell his partner to give up and walk away, Preftakes. Tell her he's dead."

"But he's not! And if he's like you--"

"If he's like me then he's dead, or will be any minute now. Dead, and his body just hasn't figured it out yet. So, his guy was another trouble maker who didn't know when to butt out? That's real sad, but let this one go, Neil. Tell his partner to put it behind her and move on. That's all she can do. Ask my ex--she'll tell you."

"Carl, we have a chance with this one! Don't walk away from it, please. If she can learn enough, she just might be able to get to him. Don't make her wait until he turns up in his apartment, like...."

"Like me? Why should I care?"

"That's just it. You don't care. You. Don't. Care." Carl was watching him, mouth parted in not-quite startlement. Preftakes felt the flush of anger in his own face, the rare anger that he'd learned to smash so early in his training pushed his voice up an octave. "You go through the motions and put up the act that everyone expects, Carl. You look like you care, but deep down, in the part of you that won't even talk to me, the only thing you

care about is the next time you walk out of the office and disappear for a weekend or a week or however the hell long it takes them to put you back in the hospital and remind you that you're still alive."

"I haven't been alive for a long time, Dr. Preftakes. Like you just said, I don't care. Do your SA a favor and tell her whatever will make her give up and walk away. She can't afford to get pulled into the hole after her partner."

"You've been in the hole for so long, you can't remember a time when you could ever have gotten out. Please don't leave this man there. He's still got a chance."

Carl turned back and put the car back in gear. "He hasn't had a chance

since he started looking."

Preftakes stared at Carl, at the hard, gray face that faded in and out

under the streetlights. Dark houses flickered past, sleeping or empty, it didn't matter. The green numbers on the dashboard ticked over as Carl found the exits he needed in silence. Preftakes turned back and slumped in his seat, studying his hands. Looked up at the long row of lights ahead of them and found his voice again. "You didn't do anything to deserve what they did to you, Carl. The bastards who hurt you are the ones who deserve to suffer. Not you, and not Fox Mulder."

"I don't want to know anything about him, Doctor. I don't want to know his name."

"But you do know his name. And you know what he's like. You used to be a like him, Carl. You had questions you wanted answered. You believed that

the truth makes a difference."

"I told you, the truth's a whor--"

"Fox Mulder's sister disappeared when he was twelve," he didn't have to

yell to drown out Carl's voice. "Just vanished. You hear things in my kind of job. I heard they never found a trace of her. Mulder's still looking,

and he's made a lot of enemies in the process. Whatever happened to his sister, there are a lot of people who don't want anyone to learn about it. Who don't want Mulder to learn about it."

"Will you shut up? I don't give a shit about this paragon of yours, or his pretty chippie."

"She's looking for him, like he's been looking for his sister. She'll keep looking. You never had a chance to have a second child, did you, Carl? And your son thinks he knows what happened to you. He'll never need to ask."

The side of Handford's mouth twitched. "Thank God for small favors. If Mulder'd been smart, you wouldn't be telling me about him in the middle of the night."

Threw his hands up. "Look, all he wanted was to find out what happened to his sister. I'm not sure I could ever think of that as dumb. If your boy disappeared, you'd have looked and looked. Hell, you'd look now. Tell me

the truth, can you blame him?"

"Huh? Blame? You're asking the wrong man."

"I'm asking the only man who's got a chance of helping Mulder right now. Does he really deserve to suffer because he wanted to know what happened to his sister?"

Another little smile. "None of us deserves to suffer, Doc. It happens anyway."

"Yes, but there's a difference Carl. A big difference." Preftakes paused as they pulled into his neighborhood. Glanced behind him with sudden nerves

and was happy to see the empty street. "In all the time I've known you,

I've only seen you reconcile yourself to your damage. As far as I can tell, and as far as you'll tell me, you've been dead inside for three years. But

we don't know that Mulder's dead. It's only been a few days. His partner

could still get there in time."

The car coasted to a stop in front of the sturdy brick rancher. Carl

refused to look at him as Preftakes opened the door. "All Fox Mulder did

was try to find his sister, Carl. He doesn't deserve to suffer for it. Please." The flat eyes just stared back at him and Preftakes felt his heart sink.

As he tried to slide out into the cold a hand landed on his shoulder.

Twosted his head to face Carl's stolid expression and a hovering open palm.

"I don't see how I can talk to her if I can't reach her, Doc. Do you have

the number ready, or do you need a pen?"

Preftakes drew a long, hard breath and stared at him. "Then you'll talk to her? You'll help him?"

"I didn't say that, but I might. I'll think about it. Just write her name

and number here on my hand and I'll think about it."

--Lisby

lisby@earthlink.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------------She's got a full six-pack, but she's missing that little plastic thingy

that holds them all together. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------