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The boy's startling blue eyes seemed to take up most of his face, and Mulder wondered if this had always been so, or if the boy's eyes had grown as his face had hollowed and shrunk, exposing cheekbones and eye sockets with its gauntness.
"Casey," he said again, quietly, gently, and the boy blinked slowly, his eyes still focused on some blank point of the wall. Or perhaps at something only Casey could see.
Violent, the psychiatrist had said, and prone to self-mutilation. His chart was full of notes about delusions and paranoia.
It was never lost on Mulder, in these situations, that a psychiatric work-up on him might very well end with the same diagnosis.
"Casey, I’m Agent Mulder with the FBI," Mulder said. "I'd like to talk to you about Marybeth, about Zeke and the others. Do you think you can talk to me about that?"
The boy didn't respond, but his hands, restrained by the wrists to the bed siderails, twitched a little. Mulder took it as an encouraging sign.
"Casey, I know a lot of people have asked you about what happened at Herrington, and they probably haven't believed you, but I want you to know that there's nothing you can say to me that will surprise me, or that I'm not open to considering."
The white, silent room absorbed Mulder's words and left him alone with Casey's steady breathing. He sighed, and looked again at the chart in his hands. He ran his fingers down the list of medications and frowned.
Mulder had not felt compelled to mention to the treating psychiatrist that he, himself, had a Ph.D. in psychology. From Oxford, no less, not from whatever half-assed state medical college that woman had attended. He was a long way away from his clinical work, but not so far that he knew that not all the medications on that list jived with the working diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.
"Treatments change, Mulder," he heard Scully say in his head, because he carried her everywhere with him, even when she ditched him for weekend plans with her mother, even when she squawked about investigating a case they weren't assigned to. "I mean, how long has it been since you read up on psychiatric pharmaceutical advancements? Just because you wouldn't have recommended some of these medications 15 years ago doesn't mean there is some dark government conspiracy to undo this boy's mind."
"Then it's not going to hurt anything to check it out," he silently answered her. "Humor me, Scully, just this once."
In his head, Scully rolled her eyes, and he grinned at her. In the white, silent room, Mulder flipped through page after page of the chart, filing the details away in his mind before turning to leave.
He was at the door when the boy spoke.
"You wouldn't have liked it here, anyway, Marybeth," he said clearly. Mulder let the door shut again, and returned to the side of the bed.
"Why's that, Casey?" he asked. "What wouldn't Marybeth have liked? Where would she have liked it better?"
Casey's right fingers, closest to Mulder, twitched and clutched at the blanket, but his eyes never wandered from that one blank spot on the wall.
"I'd rather be afraid," the boy whispered. "So now I get to have it my way."
Try as he would, Mulder couldn't get anything else out of him.
_____
"Scully," she answered.
"Hey, Scully, it's me," Mulder said, going for cheer and enthusiasm.
"Can I call you back, Mulder?" Scully answered. "Like, on Monday? When normal people work."
"Haha, that's funny, Scully," he shot back. "Look, I think I'm going to need you to come out here to Ohio. Today."
"Of course you do," she sighed, then said with just a hint of a whine in her voice, "Mulder, I'm with my mom. We've got this whole thing planned, and it's Saturday, Mulder."
Mulder cringed. "Yeah, I know. I checked on flights for you and if you leave now, you can be here by this afternoon. I'll pick you up at the airport?"
There was a moment of silence from the other end of the phone, and then, "All right, all right. I'll see you then."
"Thanks, Scully, I owe you one," he said, and pretended he couldn't hear her muttering, "One? You owe me one, Mulder?"
_____
"Treatments change, Mulder," Scully said, and Mulder mentally handed himself 20 dollars as he followed her clicking heels down the hospital hallway. "Everything isn't a dark government conspiracy. Sometimes people who think everyone is out to get them and that they have slain the queen alien are labeled paranoid schizophrenic for a good reason. We've got no evidence that this boy's doctors and family don't have his best interests in mind here."
"Just take a look at the chart, Scully, that's all I'm asking," he said.
Once she had the chart in hand, Scully snapped it open with aggression and began quickly flipping pages. With each page, she slowed down, until she got to the end. Then she went back to the first page and read it through slowly.
Mulder decided to give himself a whole hundred mental dollars when she looked up with her Damn it, he's right again face on.
"I want to see this patient, and speak with his doctor," she told the station nurse, who nodded and scurried away.
"Mulder, what is this?" she asked him in a low voice. "What are they doing to this kid?"
"I don't know," he murmured. "I spoke to one of the other kids involved, Zeke Tyler, the one doing time, but he's not talking. I got my hands on his school records, and you should check them out -- genius-level IQ, but failed his senior year by ditching his final exams. Refused to make them up even when several of his teachers convinced the principal to let him do so. Failed his junior year exams, too, because he wrote all his answers in Latin. Principal moved him up a year anyway; she must have been desperate to get him out of the system."
Scully huffed and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "I'll say. What's a student like that doing at a public high school?"
"He was booted from a variety of prep schools in his early teens, usually within a month or two," Mulder said. "The parents seemed to have given up after that."
Scully was about to answer, but a young man in scrubs with the unmistakable, exhausted look of a resident approached them just then.
"You're here to see Casey Connor?" he asked.
"Yes, and we need to speak to his doctor," Scully said, and they both flashed their badges.
"I'm sorry, but Casey's been transferred," the resident said, and Mulder interrupted before he could continue.
"I saw him this morning," he said. "Not three hours ago. And his chart is still here," he pointed to it, still atop the nurses' station.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what to tell you," the resident said. "His parents have indicated that we're not at liberty to disclose his whereabouts, and that there are to be no more interviews without their express consent."
"We're going to need to speak to his doctor," Scully said. "Now."
"She left for a conference earlier today," the resident said. "I don't expect her back for about six weeks. You're welcome to leave a message for her."
"Where is this conference?" Mulder asked.
"Japan," was the short answer.
They left their cards with the resident.
_____
"Mr. Conner, I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder, and this is my partner, Dana Scully," Mulder said when the man answered the door.
"We just want our son to get better," the man said. "We just want all you people to leave our boy alone."
"That's understandable, Mr. Connor," Scully said, "but we have some concerns about Casey's well-being. Are you aware that your son was transferred today?"
The man gestured with his hand, palm down. It trembled slightly. "Casey is very sick," he said, and his voice caught. "Please, just leave us alone."
And he shut the door.
_____
No one answered the door at the Mitchell house, so they made one last stop, at the Rosado household. A teenaged girl answered the door and hollered, "Mom! There are more cops here!" when they flashed their badges.
"Yes?" Mrs. Rosado answered anxiously when she came to the door, then added to the girl behind her, "Cathy, go finish your homework. I’m not going to tell you again."
"We're sorry to bother you, Mrs. Rosado," Mulder said. "We're just trying to clarify a few things about the incident at the high school and wondered if we could speak to Stan."
"He's not home," she said. "He's got a weekend job now. Is this really necessary? He's spoken to so many people."
"I know this must be a difficult time, Mrs. Rosado," Scully said, "but it would be very helpful if we could talk to Stan."
"Well," the woman hedged. "He won't be home for several hours, and we'll need to check with our lawyer first."
Lawyer was the magic word. Mulder held out his card. "Why don't you have Stan give us a call?" he asked. "When he's up for it."
"Yes, yes, that's much better," Mrs. Rosado said in relief. "I'll do that. Thank you, Agents."
As they walked back to their car, a station wagon pulled in the drive and parked. A boy and a teenaged girl got out of the passenger side, both of them hesitating when they saw Mulder and Scully. A man got out from behind the driver's seat.
"Can I help you?" he asked the agents, but Mulder was looking at the girl.
"Stokely?" he asked. "Stokely Mitchell?"
"Yeah," she said, cautiously.
"Stokely, I'm Agent Mulder, and this is my partner, Agent Scully," Mulder said, walking toward her. "We'd like to ask you about --"
The man had come around the car quickly and now put himself in between Mulder and Stokely. "Stokely, Matthew, go inside right now," he said, and the boy ran to obey. Stokely hesitated, looking uncertainly at Mulder.
"It's OK, sweetheart, just go inside," the man reassured her. "Everything's all right."
Walking slowly and looking over her shoulder, Stokely followed the boy into the house.
"Mr. Rosado?" Scully asked once the front door had shut.
"These kids have been through enough," he answered without preamble. "Please, they're both doing well, they're cleaned up, they're doing their best at school. They need to get on with their lives. They don't need you people coming around and stirring this all up for them again."
"Stokely is living with you, Mr. Rosado?" Scully asked.
"She's a good kid," he said. "She doesn't deserve what she's been through, what her parents put her through. Please, we just want to see them come out all right in the end."
The three of them regarded each other in silence for a moment, and Mulder could see the earnest pleading on Mr. Rosado's face.
"Thank you, Mr. Rosado, for your time," he said. "We left our cards with your wife, if Stan or Stokely decide they'd like to speak to us."
The man nodded, and watched from the driveway as they pulled out.
Through the front window, Mulder could see Stokely, watching them as they drove away, and he wondered what she could have told them.