"Likely?"

He smiled back. "Don't push it. I'm still work-ing on possible."

She started to speak, changed her mind, then changed her mind again. "But what about Paulie Deven?

Don't you think it's stretching things a lit-tle to a.s.sume he saw something, too? Which he would have had to do, if you're going to keep him with the Constellas."

"Which means?""Mulder, it means there's no connection between the victims and the ceremony. A horrible coincidence, nothing more."

"And the ..." He stumbled several times, mak-ing her smile, before he managed, "Sangre Viento?"

He winced when he heard himself; his Spanish was still lousy.

The waiter brought their meal, and he stared at the strips of meat, the vegetables, the salsa in the side dish, practically feeling the heat of the spices without even getting close. He knew he would regret this later, and after his first taste, knew he would have to stock up on a supply of heavy-duty antacids if he wanted to get any sleep. The trouble was, it was so good, there was no way he wouldn't eat it.

Scully, on the other hand, popped a small jalapeno into her mouth, plucked the stem from between her teeth, and said, "Not bad, not bad."

The Sangre Viento aside for the moment, he was pleased to hear that her reaction to Sparrow was the same as his. Yet neither could think of a good reason for the act, nor could they believe the man actually thought he was fooling anyone with it. It was too broad, too born of bad movies and worse television.

That led them to wonder-ing, his feelings for Annie aside, if he was some-how involved, or just a lousy cop trying to cover his a.s.s, make them feel sorry for him so who-ever he had to answer to wouldn't take his badge.

"A little farfetched," she judged when the table had been cleared and coffee served. "Not that we haven't seen it before."

"This isn't it. I don't know what it is, but this isn't it."

''Neither is that blood wind thing."

He opened his mouth, closed it, picked up a spoon and tapped it lightly against his thigh. "How can you be so sure?" He propped his elbows on the arms of his chair and clasped his hands in front of his mouth. "There are any num-ber of recorded so-called unusual phenomena a.s.sociated with meetings, especially religious, where the emotional intensity and concentration are abnormally high."

"All of them recorded by the people who were there, not by outside observers."

"They, these priests, were in a kiva. An under-ground chamber whose only exit and entrance, and source of air, is a single hole in the roof. There may have been herbal drugs, peyote maybe, something like that. Six days and six nights, Scully, and they all focus on a single thing-the man they're invest-ing with their knowledge. Their history. With their power over the people they have to live with." He rocked forward, hands dropping to the table. "Can you imagine what it must be like? Day in and day out? All that energy building up there?"

Scully didn't answer him for a long time. She sipped her coffee, stared out the window, glanced around the otherwise empty room. She was about to reply when a woman appeared in the archway entrance.

Short, stocky, in a severe summer-weight suit; her graying black hair pulled back into a bun. Her left hand held a purse tight to her side.

Mulder watched her hesitate, then march across the room toward them, no nonsense, all business.

When she reached the table, she nod-ded a greeting.

"You are the agents from Washington?"

"Yes," Mulder answered. "And you are... ?"

"Dr. Rios. Helen Rios. I performed the autop-sies on those poor people."

He stood immediately and offered her a chair while introducing her to Scully. When they were all seated again, he told her he was pleased to see her. Garson wouldn't have to make the appoint-ment after all "He wouldn't have made it," the woman said.

"I... what?"

"You read my report?" she asked Scully.

"I did. To be honest, there weren't a lot of-"

"It's wrong."

Scully looked at the table, then back to Dr. Rios. "Excuse me?"The woman opened her purse and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. "This is what I wrote first. What you read before is what I was told to write."

Mulder couldn't believe it.

Nor could he believe it when Scully opened the paper, skimmed it, and said, "Oh my G.o.d."

After signing for the meal, Mulder moved them immediately to his room, a precaution against eyes and ears he couldn't control. The women sat at a small round table set by the window, covered now by dark green drapes. Mulder sat on the edge of the king-size bed.

There were four lights in the room; every one of them was on.

Dr. Rios wasted no words, or time. "New Mexico," she said, "has been trying to upgrade its image for years; decades. People still ask if you need a pa.s.sport to come here. Easterners still look for cowboys and Indians bat-tling it out in the foothills. What the politicians and businessmen do not want most of all are the hints, the stories, the urban legend-style fables that mark the state as a place where UFOs and weird cults are not only welcome, they're encour-aged. Leave that kind of nonsense," Rios said, "to Arizona, and good riddance."

Then a case like this falls into their laps.

She tapped the paper she'd taken back from Scully. "Agent Mulder, it's bad enough that these poor people died the way they did. I could tell right away how it really happened, any first-year intern could have figured it out. But for the sake of appearances, because my superiors knew it was bound to hit the papers, I was asked to file a second report. The one the public would know."

It was cool in the room, but she took a handker-chief from her purse and dabbed at her forehead.

Mulder understood the chance she had taken, and the pressure she felt. He, of all people, was no stranger to either.

"I did. For the basest of reasons-I want to keep my job." She smiled grimly across the table at Scully. "I am a woman, a Hispanic woman, in a state where the Anglos and outsiders call the tunes. 1 am not proud of what I've done, but I make no apologies for it."

Scully kept her expression neutral, and the doc-tor wiped her brow again. "The official version, Agent Mulder, is that those people were flayed. They weren't."

Mulder lifted an eyebrow. "Skinned?"

"Scoured."

He choked back a laugh of disbelief. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand."

The woman checked her watch. "I have no time. Particles of dirt, pebbles, other debris were found deeply embedded not only in the muscle tissue, but also in their mouths and the back of their throats.

Other indications, such as circular striation of the exposed muscles and bone and the cauterization ofmost of the blood vessels, point to only one conclusion."

"Scoured."

She nodded, and stood. "Like being held up against a high-speed spinning drum covered with coa.r.s.e sandpaper, Agent Mulder. Or inside a cylinder lined with the same. The only thing I can't explain is the dirt." Another grim smile, another glance at her watch. "Thank you for lis-tening. Please don't tell anyone I have seen you. If you come to my office, if Agent Garson insists we meet all you will hear is what you've already read in the official report." She tucked the purse under her arm. "By the way, Agent Garson knows the truth, too."

Mulder rose as she left without looking back, and stayed on his feet.

A high-speed drum covered with coa.r.s.e sand-paper.

"Scully-"

"Don't say it."

"But you saw-"

"I saw the pictures, yes. I read the report, yes. But given the time frame we're working with, unless Paulie's father and sister are incredibly off-base with their sense of timing, there's no way it could happen like that."

He looked down at her, pale under the table light. "It happened, Scully. It happened."

She leaned toward him, arms resting on the table. "Then explain it to me. Explain how some-one could a.s.semble an apparatus of that size, bring it down to the river without being seen, put the boy in it, kill him, take him out, and get away Again, without anybody seeing a thing."

"The girl-"

"Saw nothing we can substantiate. Ghosts, Mulder. She said she saw ghosts."

"And whispers," he reminded her. "She also said she heard whispers."

Scully slumped back and shook her head. "What does it mean? I don't get it."

"I don't either." He yanked open the drapes, turned off the lights, and dropped into the chair opposite her. "But so far, everyone who's talked to us has-" He stopped, dosed his eyes briefly, then moved to the bed and stared for a moment at the telephone on the night table.

"Mulder?"

"Konochine," he said, and picked up the receiver "Why do we keep b.u.mping into the Konochine?"

"While you're at it," she said. "Give Garson a call and find out why he's so reluctant to tell us the truth."

Donna looked helplessly at the two dozen car-tons stacked in her spare room. They were all ready for shipping, or for hand delivery to area shops. A permanent cold seemed to have attached itself to her spine, to her stomach. She couldn't stop shaking. She had denied cheating anyone, of course, and had even shown him the ledger to prove it. But it had been close. There had been no apology, only a lingering warning look before he left, slamming the door as he went.

She had to get out.

All the potential money in this room wasn't going to do her any good if she wasn't around to spend it.

She looked at her watch. If she hurried, she could clean out out the bank account, be packed, and be out of this G.o.dforsaken state before mid-night. Leave everything behind. It didn't matter. The house, her clothes . . . none of it mattered. Just take the money and get out.

But first she would have to make a phone call. She couldn't leave without saying goodbye.

Garson wasn't in his office, and no one there knew where he could be found. The secretary thought he might be at the ME's office.

The second call was to information.

When the third was finished, Mulder replaced the receiver and began to wonder.

"What?" Scully asked.

"According to his sister, Paulie picked up a piece of jewelry from one of the local shops. A sil-ver pendant of some kind." Mulder looked up. "She thinks it was Konochine.""And?"

"And I don't remember seeing it as being with his effects."

"Such as they were," she reminded him.

"Whatever. It wasn't there." He rose, and paced until Scully's warning groan put him back in his chair.

"That woman, the one who handles the crafts."

She flipped open a notebook, paged through it, and said, "Falkner."

"You want to take a ride?"

"Mulder-"

"The connection, Scully. You can't deny we have a connection."

The rental car had been delivered, and the clerk at the front desk gave him a map and directions to the address he had found in the telephone book. The parking lot was on the north side of the Inn, through a gated entry in the side wall. As he slipped behind the wheel, Mulder noted that the car seemed to have every gadget known to Detroit, except perhaps an orbital trajectory track-ing system.

It took him a few seconds to get oriented, and a few seconds more before he convinced himself that he wasn't charging headlong into foolishness. The how of the murders was still beyond him, in spite of Dr. Rios's description. Concentrate on the who and the why, however, and the how would come wagging its tail behind them.

He hoped.

As he pulled out onto the street and headed north, Scully inhaled quickly.

"What?"

They pa.s.sed a series of four small stores in a common one-story building. A man stood in front of one of them, not bothering to conceal his inter-est in the car.

"Last night," she said. "I didn't see him clearly, but there was a man at the gate, watching me."

He checked the rearview mirror.

The man, face hidden by the bill of his cap, still watched.

There was no flip of a mental coin. Mulder swung the wheel around, made a U-turn, made another to pull alongside the stores.

The man hadn't moved.

Scully lowered her window. "Do you want something?" she asked calmly.

Leon Ciola swaggered over and leaned down. "You the feds?"

With one hand still on the wheel, Mulder leaned over, curious about the fine scars that swept across the man's face. "Special Agent Mulder, Special Agent Scully. Who are you?"

"Leon Ciola."

"You've been watching us. Why?"

Ciola spread his arms wide in a mocking bow, smiling impudently. "Always like to know who's in town, amigos, that's all. It's very dull around here, you know? Not much to do. The sun's too hot. Not much work for a man like me."

"What is a man like you?" Scully said.