"The dead remember." -- Vernon J. Geberth. *Practical Homicide Investigation*, Third Edition. Boca Raton: CRC Press LLC. 1996.

"Because you're a bungling fool!"

The sharp British voice made him flinch. His physical reaction, however, was little more than a startled wince; the sedatives held him tightly under, refusing to yield. He licked his lips in a vain search for moisture. His throat was tight, stuffed with cotton batting, the same thick layers of fluff that blanketed his brain. The discomfort was distant though, and he did not resist the drugs, content within this spell of non-pain, non-thought.

He moved, the trembling of one hand, fingers sliding aimlessly across fresh linen. Then stilled.

Quiet again.

It was good to be here, he decided, wrapped in this cocoon of unconcern. He was dry. Warm. There was the random beeping of omniscient machines; even their alarms were a kind of indecipherable comfort. A slight pinching on the back of his left hand -- just beyond the edge of actual awareness: tape tugging skin -- was a reassurance that he was, indeed, still alive at some level; that there were as yet no dreadful realities waiting to scorch his impenitent soul.

"I did what I thought was best for the project--"

Soft tenor, plaintive, a casual whine. The acrid fragrance of smoke, old cigarettes. The voice and the accompanying scent left Mulder mildly unsettled, overcome with an impending sense of doom revisited, as though his cells recalled events his conscious mind could not. There was something familiar here. Something old and awful at the edge of memory....

"You did nothing but satisfy your own warped curiosity." The Briton again, scolding jealously. The voice was quieter this time, though, little more than a cultured hiss somewhere to Mulder's left. "The very idea that you would put the project at risk for some petty personal--"

"I would have allowed no harm to come to him--"

"No harm?" Frustrated, disgusted growl, a parent weary of pointless argument. "Get out. I'll deal with this myself. Out, I said!"

Footsteps shuffling. Another lungful of acrid smoke that burned with the oxygen being force-fed through Mulder's nostrils. His stomach rolled vainly, stilled as Sauceda's voice echoed in his head: "Need to give those things up, kid. They'll kill you."

He heard the quiet "huff" of a heavy, well-cushioned door. The continual almost subliminal beep above his head and to the right. Another, different, beeping beside him, rhythmic, steady. Hypnotic.

He could feel his own heartbeat. His lungs, inhaling. Exhaling. Deep sighs. The consolation of unyielding darkness.

The whisper of fabrics beside the bed....

This was all just a dream. Right? Another dream. Or maybe the doctors had returned, or the nurse. Hadn't she just been here? The nurse? Mulder could recall her clearly, though he had perceived, not actually seen her: the strong hands, cool on his wrist when she had been here moments ago -- or was it days? It was difficult to be certain. The deceptive nature of dreams and drugs... Time simply did not exist in this room of soft beeps and swirling voices. He'd learned her voice, though, always the same, hopeful, coaxing without condemnation: "Hello, Fox. It's Nurse Owens, again--"

Owens? Or was it Olson? Owens. Olson. Owens--

Well, O-something. She had been inordinately kind to Mulder, and, defenseless, weary, he had allowed it. Her proddings were gentle and discrete, and she had patiently explained her every intent, as though he could comprehend or care. The bandaging, the protesting of alarms as she adjusted this and that...

There was nothing for him to concern himself with, she'd promised. He shouldn't worry. When they were ready, they would wake him, and meanwhile, the important thing was rest. Just... rest. Solid advice any sensible man would take. And Mulder prided himself on being a sensible man.

But, no, this... this was not Nurse O-something. It was the Briton again, reassuring, persistent, speaking softly. He was not fussing now-- not at Mulder, anyway. The odor of stale cigarettes dissipated slowly, fading from Mulder's consciousness, lost to memory in the space of a breath. The Briton's voice remained familiar, however. Familiar without that nameless dread....

No, everything was better, his visitor promised. Everything was well and would be well and there would be no more dreams and no more visions. All a terrible mistake. Talents awakened too early, yes, but there was no permanent harm, Mister Mulder, nothing to concern him. He would not even remember...

No permanent harm. How comforting--

Chilled hand against his neck, cold as death but kind, the sharp prick of a needle--

And the world of beeps and faceless voices disappeared into luxurious darkness.

Saturday, May 21, 1988. 11:48 p.m. Georgetown Medical Center Hospital.

He shut the door behind him quietly, leaned against it, eyes closed, listening.

No footsteps. No one searching for him. Not yet anyway.

Mulder registered the fact with relief but did not move. The room was cold and the door, sheathed in metal, was ice against his temple. The cold radiated, piercing the throbbing pressure in his brain. Pain bled out his ears, oozing, an invisible fire down his neck, leaving him vaguely disoriented.

He'd woke with the headache, a slightly less intense version of the one he had suffered over the past several months. This one seemed to be centered differently, as well: a dull, general throbbing that crept up his spine and slammed fist-like into the base of his brain. His body offered little sympathy, having problems of its own, aches trapped deep inside muscle and bone. His ribcage was bandaged tightly, an excuse not to breath too deeply and set his lungs to screaming. There was an ominously thick padding around his right thigh, but his leg seemed to be in one piece, twinging only when he stepped too quickly right or left.

By concentrating, he could avoid limping, and ignore the sharp pain below the bandages across his ribs. He'd staggered occasionally on the way down from his room, but the disorientation had been intermittent, there one step, gone the next. The halls had been all but deserted in this area of the hospital; the few personnel he had passed had not seemed to notice anything too unusual. Certainly no one had stopped to question him.

His knee shuddered menacingly now, ceased when he opened his eyes. The lights were dim here, blessedly so. His left eye had almost stopped throbbing, nerves relaxing hesitantly, loosening their sympathetic synchrony with his heart. Mulder twisted to face the room, rolling his head against the door as he did so, allowing the back of his skull to seek its share of cooling relief, grateful for this unexpected dispensation. He finally allowed his eyes to focus.

The room was large: chrome cabinets to his left and right, a wall of stainless steel facing him, awash in gloom and reflected colors. Light filtered in through an open door, distant and to his left. There was a hall beyond the door, more rooms. The name plates were invisible to him due to distance and angle, but he knew them. He'd visited here often enough. He could walk the layout in his sleep: labs running to the left of the hall, a break room, a vending machine just before the service elevator. The autopsy bays were to the right. Someone was busy tonight. The third door on the right was open, a gap where light bled across the linoleum. Aretha Franklin's "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" bounced on the com speakers.

Lenny would have approved.

A deep, twisting ache shot through Mulder's abdomen. He refused to bend, however, to bow to the grief. He hadn't the luxury of yielding. Hadn't the right. He'd understood that before he had come here, as soon as the news report had penetrated the residue of drugs -- the television's volume low, a mumble across his room, then names, significant nouns: FBI, Fuche, spokesperson.

Victims.

Sauceda.

He pushed away from the door, swayed, and planted his feet to recover his balance. The room waited, cool and inviting, patient as Fate. And why not? Everyone came here eventually, didn't they? Here, or at least to a room very like it: utilitarian white walls and stainless steel. Standard morgue. This one was better equipped than some he knew, but death seemed to demand the same provisions no matter where he found himself. Gurneys and vials, chemicals, pans and scales, measuring devices, pipettes, cutlery and spoons. Drawers and shelves stood ready, too, filled with more of the same, provisions sufficient for a holocaust.

The Egyptians were right: the dead seemed to require so much more than the living somehow. But who could begrudge them their one final excess?

Mulder approached the wall of drawers, shuffling carefully, paper shoes whispering his progress. Stainless steel reflected his image back at him: stolen scrubs from the tiny lounge beside the nurse's station, physician's coat. The name tag flashed briefly at his collar, the name a smear within the washed chrome reflection, the photo bleary, a dark, East Indian man, smiling.

The pale man in possession of the badge staggered, staring at his own reflected face. Deep blue and purple pooled into little wells below his eyes. A row of tiny surgical Band Aids ran across his right temple, glowing ghostly in the gloom. Stubble ran heavy on his jaw and down his throat. His skin was the color of cigarette ash.

Jeezus. When had he gotten so old? And why had no one told him?

He laid his hand upon the reflection, on that face, steadying his legs, refocusing. The metal reflected blood on the bandage at his wrist. He didn't see.

*There's no time for this. Labels. Read the labels...*

Next to his hand was a white tab of tape, "A-15: Atkins, J." written across it in fine felt-tip marker. Chest-level and to his left: "B-14: McKenzie, P." Mulder stepped back, his hand-print a damp multi-limbed shadow upon the metal, burning away as he read.

"B-12: Doe, Jane." "B-10: Fuche, C."

He paused, swaying again. His tongue sought his lips and he reached out to touch the drawer, fingers barely brushing metal before he caught the hand back, pressing it to his abdomen, cradling it like a thing bitten. His fingertips left two fine rings just at the edge of the drawer. He watched them fade, debating.

No.

No. He had not come for this. He wouldn't look on her face again--

He turned, allowing the walls of drawers to steady him, waiting for his brain to focus on each carefully printed tag. "A-9: Afonse, R." "B-8: Hoffman, C."

"A-7: Sauceda, L."

Mulder's lungs refused to function, muscles frozen. He didn't notice for at least a full minute, insensible to the cool metal rising beneath his hand, the thump as his palm slid and his shoulder hit the wall of drawers, hard and real, chill penetrating the cotton jacket.

The label radiated in the light of the open hall, the drawer itself reflecting blue, neon, a sparkling mirror of indicator lights from the centrifuge across the room. The felt-tip letters of the label stared at Mulder accusingly: "Jeezus, Marty. Just look at this shit. They can't even get the damned label stuck on straight--"

Mulder's lungs drew breath. The resulting pain, the clarity it brought, was as welcome as the voice of an old friend.

"Hey, Lenny."

Silence. He deserved that, he supposed. But... Maybe it was another Sauceda, L. It was possible, right? It had to be possible. The reporter had been confused -- or the drugs had reordered the words as Mulder had struggled to sit up. Lenny was in Memphis. Probably hauling his wife through Graceland--

Still, Mulder's hand refused to obey his brain, fingers fumbling metal, missing the latch on the drawer by several inches. He took as deep a breath as he could tolerate, biting his lip, but his shoulder still refused to reposition his hand.

*Shit--*

His throat refused to voice the word, his tongue managing only a sickly click before clinging to the roof of his mouth.

*Please, God--*

The latch, at last. He paused, disbelieving, metal grainy beneath his fingers, slick at his thumb. A click and the drawer slid free several feet, rolling easily.

Mulder took another struggling breath.

Inside the drawer was a sheet lit in deepest blue, disappearing into the dark recesses of the wall. A folder, pale beige, lay across what was surely a man's chest--

Mulder stepped to the side of the drawer, careful to hold it still partially closed. His fingers sought a desperate hold on the crimped metal edge, but he avoided touching the sheet, eyes focused steadfastly upon the folder. The steel grew hot beneath his hand and he concentrated on simply breathing, ignoring the chemical tinge to the air, and other... things.

*Chart. Read the chart. That's all you need--*

Mulder reached for the folder, paused, resuming the motion after a moment's care. He watched his hand, giving his brain time to process the position of the paper, to coordinate his aim. A great clarity washed over him, a certainty of time and place, of smell, the sensation of air across skin. A moment as memory penetrated soul, merging with his heart, a bitter treasure. Precious. Such are moments that remain in the consciousness of the race, that follow the soul to lives beyond. That create, and recreate the world--

He opened the folder where it lay, using his right hand, his left hand unable to release the drawer. Autopsy notes. Hastily scrawled, preparatory to transcription and official report. The handwriting sprawled across the paper, deeply slanted, foreign and unconcerned, alien, so unlike Lenny's patient, meticulous print. Mulder's eye ran down the sheet, seeking, not finding, finding too much-- "...single gunshot wound... massive hemorrhaging, multiple incisions postmortem, translateral incision to the spleen, colon and kidney...."

Toxicology followed: several sheets of print-outs, information too indistinct in this light, ink pale from overuse of the ribbon. Then a master sheet: doubled columns of chemical names, small boxes checked off to the left of the words, comments or numerals on tiny lines to the right. The list was only partially complete but the histamine results were there.

Mulder stared at the number. Moisture formed on his lashes and he blinked it away, trying to hold the papers still, unable to believe, to hope. But there it was, the number quite clear. Proof. Certainty. Lenny had died quickly. She'd killed him before she'd begun her work, like the early victims. Inexplicably, she hadn't forced the old man suffer.

She'd granted him this much, then, somehow. For some impossible reason, she had given Mulder this much.

There was a breath across Mulder's neck. He blinked at the paper in his hand, waiting. Somewhere above the ceiling, there was a mechanical shudder, a hum: the air conditioner changing its cycle. The breath continued across his shoulders, cooler now.

Simply air.

Mulder returned the paperwork to the folder, careful to maintain order, closed the file. He waited several seconds -- how could he be sweating in a room this cold? -- and pulled the drawer slowly open.

It was Lenny all right. Odd, Mulder realized, how he could distinguish Sauceda's form even beneath the anonymity of a sheet: the lump of shoulders, the barrel of the chest and abdomen....

A corner of the sheet fluttered gently in the down draft. A pause, and Aretha resumed her warbling, forever vibrant and eager while Leonardo Sauceda lay quietly on a slab like those he had so often stood above in life. Lenny lingering among the dead with whom he'd had such a passing acquaintance--

*Hey, kid.*

A shiver jolted through Mulder's body, grabbing his shoulders before tumbling down, quickly down the height, disappearing into the floor, electric, alive, a bolt to wake the dead. Sauceda's voice, however, was only memory and longing, the goose bumps across Mulder's arms simply a response to the blowing of the air vent above.

He rubbed a still trembling hand across his eyes, unable for a moment to accept the truth: there were no ghosts here. Amazingly enough, after so many months, no spirit stood at his elbow. There was no private communication, no request. None that Mulder could perceive, anyway. Nothing beyond the sense that something *should* be here, that someone watched. The tingling in his gut made it difficult to decide whether he was disappointed or grateful. Best not to think about it. What did it change?

Frantic feet ran past the closed door, shoes pounding. They didn't slow, fading past without breaking rhythm. They were looking for him, surely. What other emergency could there be in a morgue, save searching the halls for runaway patients?

*You shouldn't do Purdue like this, kid. He'll kick your ass.*

More memory, but Mulder shrugged anyway. *Maybe I deserve it.*

*'Course you deserve it, kiddo. But that's beside the point.*

Mulder didn't have an argument for that, and this internal dialogue was just a little frightening. He focused deliberately on the wall beyond him, its detail lost in shadow, stainless-steel plumbing glinting here and there, reflecting more indicator lights. He did not notice, eyes unseeing although squinted, the mind focusing on interior landscapes. He waited, soul tense.

And still no one came. No familiar touch upon his shoulder, no desperate sigh upon his forearm.

Mulder's mouth worked in concentration, wondering who could have negotiated this sudden truce, convincing the dead to leave him in peace--

*Lenny?*

There was no response. Sauceda's body waited patiently, admitting nothing, denying less. Mulder blinked down upon the sheet, awaiting permission, at least, a "no" that would not come. He released the gurney, placed one hand to either side of Sauceda's head and carefully, slowly, folded the sheet back, still waiting for that "no."

Sauceda's face was surprisingly calm, reassuring so. Except that the skin lay too loose across his cheeks, a harsh gray re-tinting the once rich brown complexion. The razor burn had cleared considerably, no longer its angry red, simple bumps across the line of the jaw. The brow was smooth, the lips parted only slightly as if in deep sleep--

Mulder let the sheet fall, fingers too numb to feel the cloth any longer. It folded gently down across the body mid-torso.

He willed himself to look down, to focus: Lenny's chest had been sewn shut, a great jagged V-shaped slit that began at the nipples and disappeared, bled white, under the sheet across the pathologist's abdomen.

Sisyphus' calling card, her great "V" of victory and vengeance.

Other incisions had been sealed as well, wounds of autopsy only slightly more professional than Sisyphus' blade, necessary to provide access to the chest. Such terrible damage... Still, the body is a crime scene unto itself, an expert witness, and Lenny would have been the first to insist on telling his tale. The stapling looked hastily done, though, so unlike Sauceda's own usual methodical work. Dark curling hair sought to hide the sacrilege, ashamed. Sauceda's shoulders were slumped, so vulnerable, but they shouldered nothing now.

Mulder felt the weight of thousands across his own neck and shoulders. He could not raise his head, he realized, although the sight of Lenny only made the pressure worse. He shifted beneath the load, widening the distance of his feet, locking his knees. He would not falter here, would not faint and shame himself in this man's presence. Sauceda deserved better. His partner, his sometimes-unwilling friend, deserved the dignity that life had seemed so reluctant to give him. The compassion that Mulder had been too selfish to afford....

Goddam.

Sauceda offered no rebuke, though. Eyes patiently closed. Mouth open in its sleepy half-smile. Mulder gripped the edge of the drawer, fingernails of one hand scraping metal, fingertips twisting cotton sheeting with the other. He felt the words before he spoke them. Felt them gather in his chest with a fury that frightened him. He tried to choke them back. What did words matter now? Too little. Far too late. Impossible that Lenny should hear him--

The plea would not obey, however, swelling, swirling, pushing its way into and through his throat, bursting forth in a painful gasp.

"I'm sorry, Len."

The sentence echoed back at him in the stillness.

Just words, with no one to hear.

But the constriction in his chest eased with their escape, the trembling of his body subsided. The pressure across his shoulders remained, steadying him, a harsh but welcome arm across his upper back. And he knew.

The apology-- beyond all reason-- had been accepted.

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END

Photo, slightly altered, courtesy of Texxas Rose's Fox Mulder Gallery

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