"Invocation" (3 of 3) AS8X04 Originally written by: David Amann Rewritten by: Jo (johhanne@johhanne.screaming.net) Rating: PG-13 Classification: X Archive: Ephemeral and Gossamer only. All others, please check with the AS8 webmaster at as8@surfacing.com Spoilers: Season 8 "Invocation" Keywords: MSR assumed, though not necessarily described. Summary: A missing child case brings out very different reactions from Scully and Doggett. THIS IS A RE-WRITE OF THE TELEVISED EPISODE FOR THE PURPOSE OF CORRECTING WHAT MOST FANS FOUND TO BE THE MAJOR FLAWS OF BROADCAST SEASON 8. For more information, please refer to the "About AS8" section of the AS8 website, http://www.surfacing.com/as8/ NOTE: The person posting this episode is not necessarily the person who wrote it. **PLEASE DO NOT HIT 'REPLY'!** Kindly send all feedback to as8@surfacing.com The Purnell Trailer 3.48 p.m. As Ronnie comes out of the woods and heads back to the car, he sees his stepfather, Cal Jeppy, standing outside the trailer, beer bottle in hand. The man is not a pleasant sight to look at, obese, greasy hair, and an obnoxious attitude that seems to permeate his soul, if he even has one. Ronnie gives him one glance then ignores him as he climbs into the vehicle and tries to start the engine. Cal won't let him leave quite that easily. He wanders over to the driver's side window. Ronnie can smell his foul, alcoholic breath. "Where are you going in such a big hurry? Hmm? What's the matter? Got something in your ears?" Cal sticks his filthy finger through the window and into Ronnie's ear. Ronnie flinches but still avoids looking at him. "Don't .. don't touch me, Cal." "Oh, listen to him. No wonder he wears them baggy britches. Our Ronnie's a big man now." The man takes a swig of beer. "Your old lady said the cops came and talked to you. Hmm?" In the blink of an eye, Cal is in a rage. He smashes his beer bottle against the side of the car, holding the edge of the broken neck against Ronnie's head. "I am talking to you, not the side of your head. Better mind your Ps and Qs, Jones. Or I'm going to tell them what you did to that little boy. I'm going to tell them what you got buried out there in the woods. " Ronnie slowly turns to look at him, but Cal is impatient and stabs him with the bottle right behind his left ear. The younger man gasps in pain and puts his hand to his head as his mother, Marcia, looks out the front door. "What's going on with you two?" she calls out. "Talking about cars." Mocking affection, Cal slaps the hood of the car and Ronnie's shoulder, then walks back to the house as Ronnie finally gets the car started and drives away quickly, tires spinning in the dirt. The Underwood Residence 3.54 p.m. An ambulance pulls out of the driveway and disappears down the street, sirens wailing. Without a word, Lisa leads Billy back into the house as Scully joins Doggett in their car. She slides behind the wheel and looks at Doggett. "Well, they've got her stabilized, and it looks like she's going to be okay... if you're at all curious about her condition." "I'd be more curious if I believed it." For a moment, Scully can't believe what she is hearing. But she considers the source, and finds that she isn't surprised that he has doubts about Ms. Pearl. "You think that was an act?" "It's pretty standard fare, isn't it? Float a few choice revelations, as if they came from on high, then roll around on the floor." The smallest hint of a smile, the first in weeks, crosses her lips, as she recognizes the words that would have come from her own mouth barely months before. But now she knows better. "You did see the symbol appear on her forehead," she points out, almost gently. "It's a damn good trick. Don't ask me how she does it." Scully takes these words as a challenge now, as Mulder must have done all those years with her. Slowly, deliberately, she turns up the volume on the dictaphone she had used to record the 'session', so that she and Doggett can hear it. The sound of Sharon speaking gibberish fills the car. "Agent Scully, please." Doggett says. He's had just about all he can take for one day. "No. I think you'll want to hear this." She lets it run for a moment. "Now listen to it backwards." Pressing rewind on the player, another voice fills the car. "When you wake, you shall have all the pretty horses..." "It's a child singing," she states unnecessarily. Doggett looks at her in bewilderment. "What the hell... and how on earth did you know to play it backwards?" "A little trick Mulder used," she admits with a small smile. Then her tone becomes more serious. "Agent Doggett... I need to know what Sharon Pearl meant in there. If you have a personal connection to this case that's hindering your objectivity..." "Personal connection? Objectivity? Those are fine words coming from you," he says bitterly. "I haven't seen you use much objectivity lately. And by all reports, Agent Mulder used the FBI to grind his own personal axe as well." Scully doesn't bother to refute the statements -- in truth, she really can't refute them. But something tells her to persist. "Unless you can assure me that there is nothing, Agent Doggett... I will have to request that you be removed from this case." The words are almost gentle, but nonetheless determined. She sees a look of anger cross his face, but she is completely unprepared for what he is about to say. "My little boy, Luke, was kidnapped and murdered by a lowlife. Purely out of revenge. I shot his girlfriend while they were indulging in a little bank robbery." He spits the words out. "He was seven years old." True, he had considered telling her anyway, but at the moment, he is angry that she forced his hand. He turns to face her, and lashes out. "So you'll excuse me if I don't have much patience for 'aliens' and 'abductions.' In my experience, the truth is far simpler. And when you go chasing after a fantasy, you give some scum that much more of a chance to get away." Scully says nothing. There is nothing she can say. Her eyes close with the weight of her regret, that she forced him into sharing something he obviously wasn't ready to share. She looks back over at Doggett, who is staring straight ahead at a fixed point in the distance. She reaches over and places her hand gently on his arm. Lying in a hospital bed, holding Emily, knowing there was nothing she could do but wait for the little girl to die in her arms. The tension in the car is unbearable. Scully removes her hand from Doggett's arm and begins to turn the key to get them both out of there, but Doggett stops her as he looks out of the window and sees Ronnie Purnell's car pulling up. "What's he doing here?" Doggett asks. Ronnie is suddenly stopped, paralyzed by fright, as Billy appears beside him in the passenger seat, seemingly out of thin air, touching his shoulder. He goes ashen. "Get away from me!" he pleads. "I tried to help you. I didn't want you to be hurt. Please. Leave me alone." He sees Doggett running towards him. "Ronnie, open up the car!" Doggett calls, but, terrified, the younger man starts the car and drives away. Doggett gives chase on foot, not caring about the futility of it. "Agent Scully," he yells back, "He's got Billy!" Scully leaps back into the car, attempting to circle the block to cut Ronnie off onto a side street. The younger man sees her in his rear view mirror, but realizes the trap too late, and is forced to a stop. Scully jumps back out of the car and trains her gun on Ronnie. "Get out of the car! Now!" This time, Ronnie follows the order. He slowly climbs out of the car and raises his hands above his head. Doggett catches up and turns him around, pushing his stomach and chest against the car. There is a look of relief on Ronnie's face. It is finally over. "Don't move, Ronnie. Where's Billy?" Doggett asks. Scully glances into Ronnie's car, but there is no sign of the child. "I thought you said Billy was in there?" she says, confused. "Where's Billy?" he demands again of Ronnie. Ronnie still doesn't answer. 5:02 p.m. The van is almost on empty. Doug stops at a gas station. He fills the tank, and after replacing the pump, he leans into the car to speak to his son. "I'm going to go pay. You want anything?" he asks. Josh shakes his head silently. His father is concerned. "Josh, are you okay, buddy?" He receives a nod, but doesn't believe it for a moment. There isn't anything he can do. There's nothing any of them can do. As his dad goes into the station, Josh sits up eagerly as he sees a man leading a saddled pony to a horse trailer next to another pump. He calls out "Dad, can I...?" but his father is already in the store. A moment of indecision crosses his face, but in the end, Josh doesn't have the patience to wait. He gets out of the van and runs to look through the slats in the trailer. "Pony, hey, pony. Hey, there you are. Is it okay if I pet you? Come here, pony. Come here, boy. I'm just going to pet you, okay? Come on." Then a sixth sense of unease grips him, and he starts to turn, heading back to the safety of the van. It is too late. Josh feels himself pulled up against the side of the trailer as his arms are grasped from within. The pickup truck pulls the trailer away. The little boy, stuck on the outside of the trailer, screams for his father. The sheriff's office 5:36 p.m. Doggett paces as Sanchez books Ronnie. "Count to ten, Agent Doggett." Scully advises dryly. "He took Billy," her partner returns flatly. "He couldn't have," she says. She meets his eyes, her gaze sympathetic. "Agent Doggett, I know this must be hard for you, but..." With a wave of his hand Doggett dismisses her concern. He's not willing to go into personal feelings. Not here. Not now. He returns to the subject at hand. "How are you going to back that up with Billy now missing from his home?" Scully accepts the change of subject. "By the certain knowledge that not five minutes earlier, I saw him enter his home with his mother." "I saw him!" Doggett insists. "I saw Billy riding in the car with Ronnie. Why else would Ronnie take off like he did?" "It's impossible, Agent Doggett, like everything else about this case. Like how Billy can be in his home one minute and then in Ronnie's car the next. Everything about this case is impossible," she says, making it clear that Doggett is not alone in his frustration. Scully finally admits to herself that, as much as she pretended otherwise, she was hoping against hope for a lead in her search for Mulder. But she knows there won't be one here, and now she just wants to go home. But she can't walk away from Billy yet... her conscience won't let her. "This kid Ronnie is the key, Agent Scully. I've been saying that from the beginning and I'll say it now." Sanchez opens the door and rejoins them. "Agent Doggett, Agent Scully, I got bad news on top of worse. Josh, the Underwoods' other little boy, has disappeared." The sheriff shakes his head at their stares of disbelief. "I'm not joking, not even close. I got the parents out here now. Come on." Scully follows Sanchez into another room where the Underwoods are waiting, barely holding themselves together. Doggett, however, decides to play his hunch. Doggett walks into the detention center and follows the guard's directions to a small interview room where Ronnie is waiting for him. Ronnie looks up as Doggett enters, and doesn't bother giving the agent a chance to speak. "I know what you're going to ask... but I got no answer." Doggett decides not to mess around with this kid. "Well, there can be only one answer, right? I mean, why else did you go to the house? You went there for Billy, to get him back." "No." "You had him in your car." It is a statement, not a question. "I don't know how he got there." "Then why go to the house at all?" "Because I didn't believe you," Ronnie says flatly. "You didn't believe me? When? What did I say that you didn't believe?" "You said I could talk to him." Doggett is beginning to sense that perhaps Ronnie is not the end of the line as far as Billy is concerned. But he doesn't let up quite yet. "You needed to talk to him. After all those years, you couldn't live without him. You wanted him back. All those years, Ronnie. All those years. Where'd you keep him?" he asks, his voice raising. Ronnie's voice begins to tremble. "Man, you don't understand." "You were sorry you let him go." Doggett is relentless. "No, I... I couldn't let him go." "Who else knew about him? Your mom?" "No." "Where'd you keep him?" "I didn't." Doggett knows he is close. "What did you do to him?" Ronnie looks at him. "I didn't do anything. I took care of him. I-I sang to him... you know, so he wouldn't be afraid." Doggett lets this sink in. His instincts were right; Ronnie was -- and is -- being manipulated by someone else. His voice softens. "Afraid of who? Who was he afraid of, Ronnie? Somebody else involved? Somebody else make you do it? He take that other kid, too? Billy's brother? He take him? You're afraid of him, too, aren't you? You're a victim, just like those other kids. Is that right?" Doggett leans in close, his voice barely above a whisper. "You and me, Billy. This is our chance, man. What's his name?" Ronnie begins to cry. Purnell Trailer 10:13 p.m. The trailer yard is suddenly a hive of sirens and blinking blue lights, overrun by police cars. Doggett and Scully get out of their car and run to the barn door. Doggett pulls his gun. "FBI! Cal Jeppy! Come out!" There is no response. They enter the barn cautiously, looking around. At first the barn seems empty... until Scully hears a faint whimper from beneath her and glances down at a gap in the floorboards. Josh is bound and gagged under them, his eyes wide with fear. Doggett drops to his knees, pulling at the boards in a feverish effort to free the boy. "All right. It's okay, Josh. You're okay. We're not going to hurt you. We'll have you back home before you know it." But first, they'll have to catch the perpetrator. While Doggett continues his efforts, Scully glances out through the slatted side of the barn and sees Cal Jeppy running toward the woods. "Agent Doggett... He's on the run," she shouts a warning, and turns to give chase. But Doggett leaps up from the floor and is out the door before her, so she stays behind to comfort the boy while she does what she can to free him. Racing after Cal, Doggett can't wait for backup. He yells his commands to the rest of team. "He's in the woods! Watch your fire! There may be another boy!" By this time, Cal is red-faced and panting; he is not made for this kind of pursuit. After just a few moments, Doggett catches him. "Down on your knees!" Doggett orders, and Cal has no choice but to obey. "Hands in the air! Where's the kid?" "He's in the trailer." Cal says with an air of defeat. "The other kid!" Doggett snaps. "There's no other kid." "Billy Underwood!" Cal is terrified now, and confused. His voice goes high as he repeats, "There's no other kid." But when Doggett turns and looks behind him, Billy is standing there, just a few feet away. He turns to the other agents who had converged on the scene seconds after him. "Get this man in cuffs! Read him his rights! The kid's over here..." Doggett turns back, but the child is gone. Slowly, Doggett walks over to the spot where he had seen Billy just seconds before. He stops behind the half- exposed skull. November 16th 9:48 a.m. The chaos of the night before has calmed, and the woods are almost eerily quiet, taped off with crime scene tape. Lisa and Doug cling to each other as they look at the small, crude grave. Doggett watches them for a moment, then walks over to join his partner a few yards away. "I hate to sound like a broken record, Agent Scully, but... I don't believe it." "Well, we have the clothes, the age and condition of the bones, the location of the grave. It's not easy for me to say this, but there is no doubt that Billy Underwood's skeleton is in that grave." "We spent time with this boy. Doctors took Billy's blood. He had his backpack with him that he had the day he disappeared. You examined him yourself. Now, I can't accept it." Doggett regards the parents with sympathy. "And I can't believe we're asking them to." "I spoke to the hospital. The vials they stored his blood samples in are empty. The sheet he colored on is gone. The DNA test results are blank. The knife in Josh's bed was found in Jeppy's trailer, even though we both saw it bagged and taken to the police evidence room. There are no hair or skin cells in his bed or on the pajamas he wore, or on the brush his mother used on his hair. All physical traces of his presence over the last four days are completely gone." Scully takes a breath. She doesn't know how to explain to Doggett that despite her recent willingness to look beyond the realm of science, there are times when retreating back to its safety is just as difficult. "Whether we want to believe it or not, whether our eyes confirm it or not, the initial forensic evidence leads to no other possible conclusion except that Billy Underwood was murdered ten years ago. And that this is his body." "Well, what then, Agent Scully? What we do? We move on, let it go, case closed? What happened to your 'alien abduction' theory?" She swallows hard, biting back the residual feeling of disappointment that this case hadn't led her to Mulder. "I think, in this case, the 'monsters' are very much of this world. Look, I know where you are with this. I have been there. I know what you're feeling -- that you've failed, and now you have to explain this, somehow. But maybe you can't." "Not if that's Billy's body, I can't." "Maybe that's explanation enough. That's not Billy's brother lying in that grave, too. That man who did this is never going to be able to do it again. Isn't that what you wanted, Agent Doggett?" Doggett turns to face her. "Don't ask me to believe that this is some kind of justice from beyond the grave." "I have seen stranger things in my time on the X-Files. Maybe it was justice from beyond the grave. Justice for Billy." Scully holds his gaze while she carefully chooses her words. "Maybe... Maybe it was justice for Luke, too. Maybe it was protection for Josh, that it isn't him lying dead as well. And maybe we succeeded... whether you're willing to admit that or not." Quietly, she walks away, leaving Doggett alone with his thoughts. And in his mind's eye, Doggett can see his son. Alive. Happy. Swinging a baseball bat at his father's pitches. THE END Tune in tomorrow for AS8 "Medusa."