"I want to bring him into the lab. I'd like for you to examine him more closely, Scully."
She stared at the body, then at Mulder. After a moment she nodded. Together they pushed the gurney out of the freezer, and through the swinging doors that opened onto the pathology lab. Mulder pushed the gurney over to the wall. Scully flipped the lights on, taking in the familiar array of equipment, dis-secting tools, and refrigerators for storing sam-ples, glittering hemostats and neat stacks of freshly laundered sheets, boxes and boxes full of latex gloves, surgical masks, aprons, scrubs— all the tools of her trade. Finally she walked over to where Mulder waited alongside the gur-ney.
"You knew this man didn't die at the bomb site before we got here."
Mulder gave her a noncommittal look. "I'd been told as much."
"You're saying the bombing was a cover-up. Of what?"
"I don't know. But I have a hunch that what you're going to find here isn't anything that can be categorized or easily referenced."
Scully waited to hear if there was going to be more in the way of an explanation—or apology. When there wasn't, she tugged at one latex glove and sighed, shaking her head. "Mulder, this is going to take some time, and somebody's going to figure out soon enough that we're not even sup-posed to be here."
She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and said, "I'm in serious violation of medical ethics."
Mulder pointed at the body on the gurney. "We're being blamed for these deaths, Scully. I want to know what this man died of. Don't you?"
She stared at him, then back down at the body. His words hung in the air between them, something between a challenge and an entreaty. Finally she turned to the tray table set up on the wall behind them, the rows of sterilized scalpels and scissors and tweezers and knives that lay there, waiting. In silence she began gathering what she would need to do her job.
• • •
D-UPONT CIRCLE WASHINGTON, D.C.
Co
It was a typical Dupont Circle apartment. A lot of money bought you a little space and a nice address, and that was about it. An unmade futon bed occupied one corner of the room; a kitchenette still held the remains of breakfast. In the main room several uniformed officers milled about, examining a stack of videotapes in black plastic slipcovers, rifling through desk drawers, peering into the disk drive of a com-puter. A small office had been set up in what was intended to be a bedroom. Here a police detective contemplated stacks of what ap-peared to be OB/GYN journals. He looked up as Mulder's shadow fell across the doorway.
"Is this Dr. Kurtzweil's residence?"
The detective eyed him suspiciously. "You got some kind of business with him?"
"I'm looking for him." Mulder's tone was noncommittal.
"Looking for him for what?"
Mulder pulled out his ID and flashed it at him. The detective glanced at it, then looked up and called to his partners in the next room, "Hey, the Feds are looking for him, too." He turned back to Mulder.
"Real nice business he's got, huh?"
Mulder frowned slightly. "What's that?"
"Selling naked pictures of little kids over his computer."
Mulder nodded, trying not to show his sur-prise. He stepped into the middle of the small office, staring at the bookshelf by the detective. On each lurid dust jacket the same name appeared in big, gold-embossed letters.
DR. ALVIN KURTZWEIL
Mulder slipped alongside the detective and withdrew one of the books. Surprisingly light for such a big volume—five hundred pages, at least—printed on cheap paper that was already yellowing. He flipped through it, then read the cover.
THE FOUR HORSEMAN OF THE GLOBAL DOMI-NATION CONSPIRACY