“I’ll be there in a minute!” Gimble screamed so loud that someone flipped on a light in the house next door. Then he turned back to his friends. “I can’t go to the police station with you. The Major will be up all night adding junk to his stupid map and manning the telescope in case of an alien invasion.”
“It’s okay. You have to take care of your dad, and I have Phoebe to help me.” Mulder felt sorry for his friend. The Major seemed like a lot of responsibility.
“Come by if you find out anything. I won’t get any sleep tonight.” Gimble tapped on the roof of the orange car. “Good luck.”
Mulder pulled away from the curb. “We’re going to need a lot more than luck.”
*
Phoebe stopped Mulder outside the precinct door. “Forget diversion. We both go in there and say that we think we saw something the night Billy disappeared. Hopefully, one of us will get a chance to look at the case file or some notes.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Mulder said as they walked in. There was a reason he always went along with Phoebe’s ideas. If she took one of those career tests that told you what kind of job you would be good at, Phoebe would get criminal mastermind.
Inside, the precinct was less intimidating than it had been the night before. Fewer people were cuffed to the desks, and nobody was standing on top of them, breaking their wrists to get out of handcuffs. Most of the cops were dressed in street clothes, with their badges hanging around their necks or clipped to their belts.
“This is way more real than I expected,” Phoebe whispered.
“Are you chickening out?”
She punched him in the arm. “No. Are you?”
A cop in uniform with gray sideburns approached them. “You need some help?”
Phoebe stepped forward without hesitating. “We’re here about Billy Christian, the boy whose body was found at Rock Creek Cemetery. We were both in the neighborhood the night he disappeared.”
“Did you see something?” The cop glanced back and forth between them.
Mulder took over. “We think so.”
“The detectives in charge of the case are off duty. Let me see who else is here.” The cop looked around and spotted a young guy with brown feathered hair, wearing jeans and a Battlestar Galactica T-shirt. “Racca, I need you to take a statement,” the cop called out to him. “These two might have information related to the Christian case.”
“I’m on my way out.” Racca sounded annoyed.
“This will just take a minute,” the older police officer said, waving him over.
“He doesn’t look old enough to be a cop,” Phoebe whispered.
Mulder was thinking the same thing.
Then Phoebe noticed the guy’s T-shirt and gritted her teeth. “Traitor.”
Mulder tried not to laugh. “Some people like both Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.”
“It’s an either-or situation,” she said.
Officer Racca approached the other cop and gestured toward the door. “Wish I could help. But, like I said, I was just leaving.”
“No, Derek. You were leaving.” The older cop handed Racca a pencil. “And now you’re staying. See how that works?”
Ouch.
Mulder felt bad for the guy.
Satisfied that he’d made his point, the older cop walked away, leaving Mulder and Phoebe with the awkward task of deciding whether they should make small talk.
“Come on back,” Officer Racca said before Mulder thought of anything to say. He led them toward a cluster of desks on the opposite side of the room. He grabbed a stray chair and dragged it over to a desk piled high with crooked stacks of files. He flipped the chair around and slid it next to another one in front of the desk, and gestured at the empty chairs. “Sit.”
Phoebe sat down next to Mulder, toying with the hair sticking out of her buns.
Officer Racca took a seat behind his desk, and the plastic hula dancer next to his phone jiggled. Pushing aside the mountain of manila folders, he reached for a white notepad and flipped to a new page. “So what have you got to tell me?”
“We saw a man hanging around in Blue Hill the night Billy Christian was kidnapped,” Phoebe explained.
“Do you two live over there?”
“Yes, sir,” Mulder said, watching him scribble something on the pad.
“What time?” the cop asked.
“About eight thirty.” Phoebe didn’t sound the least bit nervous.
He wrote down the information. “Let me get your names.”
“Ellen Presley and Will Kirk,” she said, without even a twitch of a smile. It was probably her only shot at sharing Elvis’s last name.
But Will Kirk? Phoebe was putting a lot of faith in her either-or theory about Star Trek versus Battlestar Galactica. Mulder hoped Officer Racca wasn’t a Trekkie.
“The man you saw … Can you describe him?” The cop didn’t look up from the pad.
Mulder scanned the room. He noticed a hallway on the left side. Maybe the cops kept files and evidence down there?
Phoebe followed his gaze. “Actually, I got a better look at the man,” she said. “He was your height, or a little taller.”
“Excuse me, Officer Racca, but can I use the restroom?” Mulder asked.
Racca pointed with the end of his pencil. “Straight down that hallway. You can’t miss it.”