Agent of Chaos (The X-Files: Origins #1)(12)

Mulder looked around. The guy in the black suit had taken off with his family, and half the reporters had followed them, while the other half were still giving Laurel and Hardy the third degree. Everyone was preoccupied.

It’s now or never.

He slid into one of the narrow spaces and waited for what felt like an hour, though it was probably closer to ten minutes.

The coroner finally knocked on the door of the van and his team got out to unload a gurney from the back of the vehicle and follow the coroner into the small mausoleum. The crypt wasn’t gigantic, like the one with the warrior angel statues on the roof. The brick structure was probably designed to hold two people or three people, tops. They managed to get most of the gurney inside, but the bottom third stuck out.

The reporters rushed toward the van. Between the crime scene tape and the strategic parking job, they couldn’t see anything. But Mulder had the perfect view. A black body bag was strapped to the gurney, the ends sagging because the body inside was too small to fill it.

A female detective with her badge hooked on the waistband of her jeans ducked under the tape and approached the coroner. “I’m Detective Perez with the Special Operations Division. Mind if I take a look?” she asked.

“Do you have kids?” the coroner asked. “If you do, you might not want to see this.”

She pointed at the bag with the phantom of a child’s shape inside. “Not every woman has kids. Open it.”

Mulder scooted forward until he was standing at the mouth of the narrow space. The coroner walked around to the other side of the gurney, shielding the top of the bag with his body. Detective Perez moved closer, blocking Mulder’s line of sight.

The coroner leaned over the body bag and unzipped it halfway.

Detective Perez cursed under her breath and lowered her voice. “Is that Billy Christian? The boy who disappeared nine days ago? Is that a bird on his chest?”

A bird?

“Yes to both questions,” the coroner confirmed. “But I can’t go on record without a formal ID.”

Mulder pressed himself against the stone, attempting to get a better angle.

“I’ve seen lots of twisted crap, but nothing like this,” Detective Perez said. The slight change in her stance allowed Mulder to catch a glimpse over her shoulder.

A little boy lay in the bag. His skin had a gray cast that was unnatural and terrifying. In movies, dead people looked like they were sleeping, with a little fake blood splattered around for effect. This kid did not look asleep. The ashen color of his skin and the stillness of his body gave Mulder goose bumps.

“You think we’re dealing with a satanic cult?” The coroner sounded concerned.

“Most likely,” Detective Perez said. “But it’s hard to know until we figure out if this bird, and whatever they did to it, means anything.”

A black-and-white bird, no bigger than a soda can, rested on the boy’s chest, as dead as the child.

Something was sticking out of the bird’s body.

When Mulder realized what he was looking at, he pressed his mouth against the inside of his elbow to keep from heaving. Arrows protruded from the bird’s body—fanning out around it, the way little kids draw the rays of the sun.

Two.

Four.

Six.

Eight. Or was it nine? Mulder counted the points again. Eight.

But the bird wasn’t the worst part, not by a long shot.

The little boy was dressed in white pajamas, with gray elephants marching across his fleece-covered arms and chest. Gray-and-white elephant pajamas—exactly like the ones Sarah Lowe had been wearing when she was kidnapped.

Mulder swallowed, his heart galloping in his chest. The team who brought over the gurney lifted the boy slightly and tilted him in Mulder’s direction. As they raised the body withered white flower petals fluttered to the ground. His eyes went straight to the top of the zipper on the child’s pajamas.

Gray elephants. And one brown hippo.

The stain was there, in the exact same spot where Mulder had seen it on Sarah Lowe’s pajamas, on the newscast.

Shouting erupted behind the coroner. The reporters and the cops were at it again.

“Zip it up,” Detective Perez said. “We can’t afford to let the press see the body.” She stood up straight, obscuring Mulder’s view again.

He heard the zipper close, but his heartbeat didn’t return to normal. If anything, it pounded faster. The little boy was wearing the missing girl’s pajamas, which meant that whoever killed the boy and left him in an old lady’s crypt, holding a dead bird, was the same person who had taken Sarah Lowe.

He sidestepped toward the back of the gap between the mausoleums and came out at the other end, behind them. Bile rose in his throat. He couldn’t get the photo of Sarah Lowe’s dimpled smile and her elephant pajamas out of his head. Or the image of Billy Christian in a plastic body bag, wearing those same pajamas.

Mulder bolted through the grass, dodging avenging angels carved from stone and trees with thin limbs that reminded him of arrows. He didn’t need anyone to confirm that both children had been kidnapped by the same person. Mulder knew it. His memory recorded details the way a camera captured an image—with precision and accuracy—exactly as they appeared in that moment.

One thought replayed over and over as he ran.

There are no coincidences.