2.
Albany, NY
9:30AM
The flight to Albany took little more than an hour from DC. Scully and I grabbed our four-door rental car from the garage and proceeded straight to the scene of the crime. Or maybe crime wasn’t the right word for what we were investigating. Perhaps the word “miracle” would have been a better choice.
Following the GPS device, we entered the Albany city limits, passing by one sleepy suburban neighborhood after another. Although the skyline of the city was visible on the northern horizon, we never actually entered it, as the road we traveled led us down to an unfrozen Hudson River which was occupied at present with a tugboat that was pushing a big black barge upriver. We drove on the highway that ran along the banks of the river until the GPS told us to take the next exit that would lead us to a place called Menands, which, according to the navigation system, was a hamlet of Albany.
“Any idea what distinguishes a hamlet from a town, Scully?” I asked from behind the wheel, popping a sunflower seed in my mouth, sucking the salt off it with my tongue.
She ran a hand through her thick, shoulder-length hair and shifted her focus from the gray/brown snow that banked the road, to me.
“The word ‘hamlet’ is Anglo-Norman in origin, Mulder. It’s defined as a small settlement inside a rural area. It’s usually unincorporated and supports fewer than one thousand people, historically speaking. Nowadays a hamlet can consist of as much as thirty or even forty thousand inhabitants. That answer your question, partner?”
I thumbed the trigger that rolled down the window, spit out the used-up sunflower seeds, thumbed the window back up against the cold March, Upstate New York air.
“How do you this stuff, Scully? You’re like a walking Wikipedia.”
She cocked her head and resumed gazing out the window as the highway exit turned into a narrow suburban street that was lined with tall pines.
“I’m full of useless information, Mulder. You should know that by now. Plus, I have no life. Science is my lover these days, since science can be trusted.”
“You still have your looks. How come you haven’t married some nice banker and settled down to the big house and ten kids?”
“Boring,” she said.
“Boring,” I repeated. “And filling your brain with aforementioned useless information like what distinguishes a hamlet from a town isn’t?”
“Hey, you asked.”
“Very true. I’m a sponge for useless info. And you know why? I have no life either. Perhaps that explains our mutual attraction.” I set my right, free hand, on her left hand, gave it a squeeze. “Which of course, leads me to believe that you haven’t married for other reasons.”
She pulled her hand away, quickly.
“And what would that be?”
I felt myself smiling.
“I think you’re hopelessly in love with me, and no matter how hard you try to resist it, the love only grows stronger.”
She laughed.
“Good to see nothing’s changed with you, Mulder. Still the narcissistic charmer.”
“I’ve smoothed my delivery in my old age, don’t you think?”
“Sure, real smooth. Like sandpaper.”
On the right of us, the pines gave way to a black wrought iron fence and ornate gates that supported a placard that read, The Albany Rural Cemetery, Est. 1862. Across the road from that, on my left-hand side, was a pine-tree-covered property that contained a single-story camp built of logs. Directly beyond it was a small round lake. An almost perfectly round lake, I should say, as if it hadn’t been engineered by Mother Nature but my mortal man. I hooked a left onto a two-laned road that ran perpendicular to the one we were driving. It led to a dirt road that accessed the forest-covered property. Taking a right onto the dirt drive, I came to a stop outside the shuttered and padlocked cabin.
“This must be the place,” I said, killing the engine.
“How strange,” Scully said, opening her door. “I feel like we’re in the mountains, but right up the road, less than five miles from this spot, is the city. And acres and acres of suburban sprawl can be seen just a few miles beyond these pine trees.”
“Guess that’s why they call this a hamlet,” I said. “I’m guessing someone left this place to the city and it’s to be forever wild. Like me.”
I shot her a smile.
“Very funny,” she said.
We both got out and walked to the edge of the still frozen lake.
“That must be where it happened,” I said, pointing to a gaping, square-shaped hole in the ice not far from the lake’s northeastern bank. “Hope you brought your skates, Scully.”
“Don’t need no stinkin’ skates, Mulder.”
My pathologist partner took the lead, trudging down the embankment through the snow. When she came to the lake’s edge, she jumped onto the ice, propelling herself forward in her fashionable black, leather-soled, knee-length boots as if she were Olympic figure skating gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi.
I on the other hand, trekked reluctantly down to the ice, taking a tentative step onto it, and immediately falling onto my ass. Mulder the coordinated.
Scully bent over in a fit of laughter.
“Mulder, that fall deserves a ten,” she said.
“Laugh it up, Doc,” I said, pulling myself back up onto my feet. “I’m entrusting you to carry me out of here should I break something.” Then, shuffling myself over to the hole, “Now, can we get down to business?”
The two of us stood over the hole and stared down onto a newly formed thin coating of blue ice.
“Not much to see at this point,” I observed.
The now serious Scully raised up her head, gazed over one shoulder, then the other. She pointed to the road we had just driven on. A road that also bordered the east end of the lake from about two hundred feet away. The lake gave way not to a gentle incline, but instead to a steep, wooded embankment that rose maybe ten feet above the surface of the lake up to the road.
“You know, it’s conceivable that someone could have pulled up to that bank and dropped the boy down into the water,” she said, her words exiting her mouth along with little puffs of gray/white vapor.
I focused on the spot she was pointing to.
“Makes sense,” I agreed. “The water wasn’t frozen three days ago. But that night and the two nights following it were some of the coldest on record. Or so states the report Kersh gave us.”
“It’s possible that whoever dumped the boy, if in fact that’s what happened, knew that the lake would freeze and the body would simply disappear. At least until the spring thaw when decomposition would take care of it.”
“Stupid strategy,” I said. “Ice preserves and holds off the effects of decomposition.”
“In this case, it also preserved the boy’s life.”
“Yes, but do you really think it could have taken away his cancer?”
She stared back into the hole and the cold blue water beneath the thin layer of ice.
“There’s been some reported cases in medical circles of terminal cancer patients undergoing some kind of shock to the system . . . some kind of metabolic and physiological reversal when they’ve been struck by lightning or when they’ve been accidentally electrocuted.”
“But from what I can see here,” I said, “the kid wasn’t exposed to electricity.”
“Maybe the shock of the cold water had something to do with it. Maybe the introduction of the extreme low temperature caused the cancer cells to immediately fall into remission and, following that, undergo a rapid reversal in their growth. It’s not an impossible scenario. Naturally, the child would have to have been alive when he dropped into the water. I won’t know anything until I’m allowed to examine the boy and speak to his doctors.”
The cold wind picked up, sending a chill throughout my body. DC was only an hour and a half away by air, but so much warmer. By the time March arrived on the scene and the cherry blossoms were beginning to emerge, you no longer saw your breath when you spoke.
“Don’t look now, Mulder,” Scully said, breaking me out of trance. “Looks like we have a visitor.”
I turned, redirecting my focus on the east embankment. A black sedan not much different from our rental car was parked along the soft shoulder of the road. Standing outside the car was a man dressed from head to toe in black. Black jacket, black pants, even a black fedora. He matched the finish on his ride perfectly. The man was staring back at us.
I’m not sure why, but I felt the need to reach under my jacket pocket and unhook the guard on my sidearm holster. As if on cue, I saw Scully do the same thing.
“Can we help you?” she suddenly shouted, her hands cupped over her mouth. “Sir, can we help you?”
Slipping my hand further down my holster, I pulled out my weapon slowly, allowing it to brush up against my thigh. Nonthreatening, but at the ready should this man-in-black try something unexpected.
“Hello!” I yelled out. “You! What do you want!?”
Our voices echoed off the lake. But the man-in-black didn’t say a word in response. He simply turned, climbed back in his sedan, and peeled out.
I shoved the pistol back into the holster.
“What the hell do you think that was about, Scully?” I said.
“God,” she said, looking up toward the heavens. “The good Lord above.”
“You’re full of surprises today, Scully. What’s God supposed to mean?”
“He wasn’t all dressed in black for nothing,” she said. “Take it from a good Catholic girl. Did you notice the thin white collar he was sporting?”
“Not really,” I said. “He seemed like an oddball trying to spy on us. Kind of gave me the creeps, you wanna know the truth.”
“Well, that wasn’t just any oddball trying to eavesdrop on our business,” she said. “That man was a priest.”
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