Oh, sorry about that. Come on in.
I rode up on the elevator with someone.
Someone from next door, I think.
- Young guy? - Yeah.
- New neighbour. Why? - You met him?
- Briefly, yeah. He's a writer. - What's he write?
He didn't say.
These are, uh... these are my autopsy reports from the second victim.
As you can see, the heart was removed in the same manner as the previous victim.
No incisions, no scope marks, no cutting of any kind.
No indication of how the killer did it?
There are no prints, no DNA material, no hair in fibre.
Yet you still refuse to believe my theory that this is psychic surgery?
Psychic surgery is a man dipping his hand in a bucket of chicken guts,
pretending to remove tumours from the sick and gullible.
Or it's a grossly misunderstood area of alternative medicine.
Medicine as you're referring to it is about keeping people alive.
Absent another theory, how do we account
for the impossible extraction of this man's heart?
I don't know. I have no idea.
We have no evidence, no MO to speak of.
This could be the perfect crime.
A crime is only as perfect as the man or the mind that commits it.
Even if it were, and he made no mistakes, there's still his motive.
You find his motive and you find the murderer.
- That's why I didn't wanna come. - I'm not doing anything.
- You're thinking about it. - The console's between us.
How much can I do? You make it sound like I'm an attacker.
- Well, we talked about this. - I told you I loved you.
Oh, Kevin.
- There you go again. - What?
- That thing you do. You know what I mean. - That's the way I kiss, Maggie.
- Well, I get the message. - Where are you going?
- I can't talk to you. - Maggie...
Maggie?
Maggie!
Maggie?
Maggie, come on!
No! No! No! No! No!
- Scully. - Hey, glad I caught you.
We got a third victim. 16-year-old kid out on lovers' lane.
- Are you sure? - Yeah.
I'm sure many have had their hearts broken out here, but not like this.
I was hoping you'd be here to explain it in medical terms to the local PD.
I'm not sure that I could.
- Did anybody see anybody? - No, nothing.
It's like there's nowhere to start on this case. Nothing to ask, nothing to say.
There's got to be something, Mulder.
Something about his victims. Why he chooses them, a pattern.
So far there's absolutely nothing.
It appears to be just a series of random attacks.
An envelope's been slipped under your door.
- Yeah? From who? - It's unmarked.
It's some kind of a pendant. Like a charm.
Her prompt mind ran through the Golconda of possibilities.
Was this trinket from the killer?
Was there a message contained in its equivocal symbolism?
Was he a religious fanatic who had, in haste, licked the envelope,
leaving the telltale DNA that would begin his unravelling?
She had a condign certainty the killer was a male,
and now, as she held the cold metal,
she imagined him doing the same, trying to picture his face.
It would be a plain face, an average face, a face people would be prone to trust.
She knew this inherently, being naturally trusting herself.
But her image was no better than the useless sketch composites
that littered her files.
Preconsciously, she knew this wasn't her strength as an investigator.
She was a marshal of cold facts, quick to organise, connect, shuffle,
reorder and synthesise the relative hard values into discrete categories.
Imprecision would only invite sexist criticism
that she was soft, malleable, not up to her male counterparts.
Even now, as she pushed an errant strand of Titian hair behind her ear,
she worried her partner would know instinctively what she could only guess.
To be thought of as simply a beautiful woman was bridling, unthinkable.
But she was beautiful.
Fatally, stunningly prepossessing.
Yet the respect she commanded only deepened the yearnings of her heart,
to let it open,
to let someone in.
It's called a milagro. It's a Spanish word for "miracle".
- It's worn as a lucky charm. - It came here for me?
It was dropped off at reception by a man in his late 20s, early 30s.
Average looking, average build. They didn't get a good ID.
There are no fingerprints and no DNA from his saliva.
- I don't think it's the killer, Scully. - Did you see that it's a burning heart?
I see the burning heart, but this is a killer that leaves no clues. This is too heavy-handed.
Maybe it has something to do with his next victim. Maybe he's taunting you.
Maybe it's not me at all. Maybe he sent it to you.
Maybe it's a secret admirer.
- I think I'll check it out. - No, let me.
You've got a 9am with the DC medical examiner.
He's gonna let you autopsy the latest victim.
Thank you for making my schedule, but I think I'll have to be late for that appointment.
I often come here to look at this painting.
It's called "My Divine Heart", after the miracle of St Margaret Mary.
Do you know the story?
The revelation of the Sacred Heart?
Christ came to Margaret Mary, his heart so inflamed with love
that it was no longer able to contain its burning flames of charity.
Margaret Mary, so filled with divine love herself,
asked the Lord to take her heart.
And so he did,
placing it alongside his until it burned with the flames of his passion.
Then he restored it to Margaret Mary,
sealing her wound with a touch of his blessed hand.
Why are you telling me this?
You came here specifically to see this, didn't you?
Yes. How did you know that?
I saw you enter. The way you knew right where it was.
I know you.
You live next to somebody I work with.
- Why are you following me? - I'm not.
I'd only imagined that you'd come here today.
- You imagined it? - Yes.
- Yeah. - I'm a writer.
Imagine how people behave.
I have to admit I've noticed you. I do that. Notice people.
I saw the gold cross around your neck, so I was taking a chance with the painting,
explaining something you may have already known.
I saw Georgetown parking permits on your car dating from 1993
and a government sticker that lets you park where you like.
You don't live in this area, but as a federal employee you have reason to frequent it.
You're fit, with muscular calves, so you must exercise or run.
There's a running route nearby that you might use at lunch or after work.
You'd have noticed this church in passing.
Though parking is always a problem in this part of town,
your special privileges would make it easy to visit.
Not as a place of worship,
but because you have an appreciation for architecture and the arts.
And while the grandeur is what you take away from your visit,
this painting's religious symbolism would have left a subconscious impression,
jogged by the gift you received this morning.
- That was from you? - I have to admit to a secret attraction.
I'm sorry I didn't include a note explaining that, but you didn't know me then.
Yeah, and I don't know you now. And I don't care to.
I see this is making you uncomfortable, and I'm sorry.
It's just that I'm taken with you.
That never happens to me.
We're alike that way.
You weren't jokin' about being late. I was about to start slicin' and dicin' myself.
- I'm sorry. - Where were you?
I was doing some research and learning that I owe you an apology.
- For what? - The milagro charm.
You were right about its insignificance.
I think I was wrong. I think it's very significant.
I think it may be a communication from the killer.
My research shows that most credible practitioners of psychic surgery
believe they're imbued with the Holy Spirit, that their hands are the miracle tools of God.
Mulder, this is nothing more than a tool
used by a lovelorn Romeo who just happens to be your next-door neighbour.
- Who, the writer? - Yes.
My secret admirer, who claims to know the mysteries of my heart.
- You're kidding. - No. I wish I were.
He cornered me today and told me my life story.
It was kind of frightening, actually.
- Is... he our killer? - No.
Frightening, as in too much information and intimate detail.
What kills you is his audacity.
Did you get his name?
No, but that shouldn't be too hard to find out, should it?
- I'm sorry, I forgot your name. - Padgett.
- Phillip Padgett.
You're a writer.
- Anything I'd know? - I don't think so.
You're an FBI agent.
Working on anything interesting?
A murder case.
- Anything I'd know? - Possibly.
The overture in the church urged the beautiful agent's partner
into an act of Hegelian self-justification.
Expeditiously violating the Fourth Amendment against mail theft,
he prepared to impudently infract the First.
But if she'd predictably aroused her sly partner's suspicions,
Special Agent Dana Scully had herself...
become simply aroused.
The stranger's unsought compliments played the dampened strings of her instrument,
until the middle C of consciousness was struck square and resonant.
She was flattered.
His words had presented her a pretty picture of herself,
quite unlike the practised mask of uprightness mirrored back to her
from the medical examiners, the investigators,
and all the lawmen who dared no such utterances.
She felt an involuntary flush
and rebuked herself for the girlish indulgence.
But the images came perforce and she let them play.
Let them flood in like savoury, or more, a sugary confection from her adolescence
when her senses were new and ungoverned by fear and self-denial.
"Ache." "Pang."
"Prick." "Twinge."
How ironic the Victorian vocabulary of behavioural pathology
now so perfectly described the palpations of her own desire.
The stranger had looked her in the eye
and knew her more completely than she knew herself.
She felt wild, feral, guilty as a criminal.
Had the stranger unleashed in her what was already there,
or only helped her discover a landscape she'd by necessity blinded herself to?
What would her partner think of her?
Mr Popularity.
Hi. I, um...
I was going next door and I thought that I'd return this.
Why?
Because I can't return the gesture.
- I can't. - You're curious about me.
You don't have any furniture.
I have what I need.
I write at my desk. I sleep in my bed.
- You don't eat? - I live in my head.
- Writing your books. - Yes.
- Anything I'd know? - No. They're all failures.
Except the one I'm working on now. I think I'm getting it right.
- Why now, all of a sudden? - Best not to question it.
See? You are curious about me.
- Well, you lead a curious life. - It's not so different from yours, I imagine.
Lonely.
Loneliness is a choice.
So how about a cup of coffee?
- My life's not so lonely, Mr, uh... - Padgett.
It's actually anything but.
How is it you think you know me so well, Mr Padgett?
- I'm writing about you. - Right.
- Since when? - Since I first noticed you.
You live in my old neighbourhood.
And you moved into this building by coincidence?
- No. - You moved here because of me.
There wasn't anything available in your building.
And it's not like you spend a lot of time at home.
I should have said something but I couldn't get it all down fast enough.
To really write someone, I have to be in their head.
I have to know them more completely than they know themselves.
- This is all about me? - You're an important part.
- May I read it? - It's not finished.
I can't tell you how helpful it is having you here, being able to talk with you like this.
Would you sit and stay a minute?
You don't have anywhere to sit.
- I'm due next door. - You haven't finished your coffee.
I'm very uncomfortable with this.
Why? You're armed, aren't you?
Imagine that.
I'll get a bulb.
A view only a writer can appreciate.
If you know me so well, why am I standing here when my instincts tell me to go?
Motive is never easy.
Sometimes it occurs to one only later.
Please.
Sit.
Imagine that.
Mulder!
- Scully. - What are you doing?
- You all right? - Yes.
Mulder.
What are you doing?
Putting this man under arrest.
Yes, I've seen this paper.
Yeah. That's how you found your victims. In the personals.
- They all took out personal ads. - They were lovers.
- And you targeted them. - I only write about them.
- No, you targeted... - Mulder.
- Not without his lawyer. - I don't need a lawyer. I'm telling the truth.
And this is your confession?
No, it's my novel.
It's all in there. Every detail, every murder, all laid out.
- How'd you do it, Mr Padgett? - If I sit long enough, it just comes to me.
The murders.
I only knew what was in my mind and wished to express it clearly.
How about "the stranger"? Is that you?
- How about Ken Naciamento? - Self-proclaimed Brazilian psychic surgeon?
- Is that your accomplice? - You could say that.
- He's a central character. - Did you direct him to do it?
Jungians would say the characters choose the writer, not the other way around.
So I guess you could argue he directed me.
Which is the truth?
By their nature, words are imprecise and layered with meaning.
They're signs of things, not the things themselves.
It's difficult to say who's in charge.
- Mulder... - Yeah.
Why, Mr Padgett? Maybe that's a question you can answer.
That's the one question I can't.
Agent Mulder? My book. Did you like it?
Maybe if it were fiction.
- Where are you going? - To find the Brazilian psychic surgeon.
I did that. That's what I've been doing.
Dr Ken Naciamento, São Paulo, Brazil.
- Emigrated here in 1996. - Where is he now?
- He's dead. - He can't be.
Two years dead. I'm having them fax me a certificate of death.
- Padgett couldn't have done this alone. - Well, maybe he didn't do it at all.
It's all on the page. How else would he know it?
Maybe he imagined it, like he said. Like Shakespeare or Freud or Jung.
I mean, maybe... maybe he has some gift
and he has a clear window into human nature.
No one can predict human behaviour or tell you what a person will do.
Isn't that what you do, as a behavioural profiler?
You imagine the killer's mind so well that you know what they'll do next.
If he imagines it, it's a priori, before the fact.
I think that's pretty clear from what he wrote about you.
- You know you're in here, don't you? - I read a chapter.
What does he say?
It ends with you doing the naked pretzel with "the stranger" on a bed
in an unfurnished fourth-floor apartment.
I'm assuming that's a priori, too?
I think you know me better than that, Mulder.
Well...
Well, you might wanna finish it.
The prisoner's written something I think you should see.
- What is it? - He says it's a statement,
but I think he's putting somebody on.
"Grief squeezed at her eggshell heart like it might break into a thousand pieces,
its contents running like broken promises
into the hollow places his love used to fill."
"How could she know this pain would end?"
"That love, unlike matter or energy, was in endless supply in the universe?"
"A germ which grows from nothingness, which cannot be eradicated,
even from the darkest of hearts?"
"If she had known this - and who could say she would believe it? -
she would not have chanced to remain at his sad grave until such an hour,
so that she might not have to learn the second truth before the first,
that to have love was to carry a vessel that could be lost or stolen."
"Or worse, spilled blood-red on the ground."
"And that love was not immutable."
"It could become hate, as day becomes night,
as life becomes death."
She's a no-show, at home or anywhere else she might go.
There's signs of a struggle at the grave,
but the area was so trampled by the funeral that collecting evidence will be impossible.
I think this is a big jerk-off.
Maybe his statement's to prove that he's telling the truth, that he truly just imagined it.
The only thing that he imagined was us out here...
looking like idiots.
Hands where I can see 'em! Don't move until I tell you!
I'm a federal agent.
- Mulder, that's not him. - What? What'd I do?
The truck. Check the truck, Scully.
Mulder, he works here.
How did you know, Mulder, that the body was in the truck?
I imagined it.
There's no evidence that Padgett directed the killer.
Do you need a signed work order? Of course he did.
You are making critical assumptions without any facts.
What about time of death? What... What are you doing?
You're about to argue my usual side, aren't you?
Why couldn't he have imagined it and just be in the killer's head?
You read what he wrote about you. Are you saying he got inside your head?
- That what I read is true? - Of course not.
I don't know how they communicate.
This is the only way I can think to catch him.
Mr Padgett?
You can go. We apologise for our mistake.
You're free to finish your book.
Thank you.
I made a mistake myself.
What's that, Mr Padgett?
In my book I'd written that Agent Scully falls in love, but that's obviously impossible.
Agent Scully is already in love.
What are you doing here?
You seem surprised to see me.
- Yes, completely. - Why? I'm your character.
- What do you want? - I'm here to help you finish.
I... I can't figure out your motive.
You imagine me so perfectly in every way.
So perfectly that you bring me to life.
- Why did you choose me? - I needed a perfect crime.
And she's a doctor. She'd be horrified by what you do.
I'm horrified.
- I just want to know why I do it. - So I could meet her.
That's not a reason.
It's an excuse.
- Anything? - No. He's just sittin' there.
Staring.
- Now, what is this? - A big mistake.
- I misjudged her, her interest in me. - Now we're onto something.
She's trying to get his attention, but doesn't know it.
Mm, the old unconscious at work.
I wanted to love her.
No wonder you can't finish this book, Padgett.
- Why do I want their hearts? - You tell me. Why do you do it?
I'm your character. You tell me.
- My reason is your reason. - I want to feel love.
No. No.
You had it right up to there.
You were a tool of the truth.
And when it finally arrives... when I arrive... you don't want to see it.
But what is the truth?
Man imagines that he, too, can open up his heart
and expose the burning passion, the flames of charity, like the creator himself.
But this is not in his power.
But I have love in my heart.
Yes. As a thief has riches, a usurer, money, you have it.
But man's only power - only true power -
is to destroy it.
Then what's the end of my story?
There can only be one true ending
if it is to be perfect.
She dies?
See? It almost writes itself.
What's he up to now?
He just started typing again.
Now what?
Anything?
Padgett! Freeze.
Step away from the incinerator.
- What do you think you're doin'? - Destroying my book.
Destroying evidence, you mean.
- Let me see what you wrote. - I'll tell you. He kills her.
You came down here to give instructions to your accomplice?
- No, he told me how it ends. - When?
- In my apartment. - You were alone up there.
"A story can have only one true ending."
"Even as the stranger committed his final words to paper,
he did it knowing they must never be read."
"To see the sum of his work was to see inside his own emptiness,
the heart of a destroyer, not a creator."
"And yet, reflected back upon him, at last he could see his own ending."
"And in this final act of destruction,
a chance to give what he could not receive."
Karin Baker
I made this!