"Sorry about that." "Come on in." "I, uh..." "I rode up on the elevator with someone." " Someone from next door, I think." " Young guy?" " Yeah." " New neighbor." "Why?" "You met him?" "Uh, briefly, yeah." "He's a writer." " What does 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?" "No." "There's no prints, no D.N.A. material, no hair and fiber." "And yet you still refuse to believe my theory... that what this is is psychic surgery?" "Psychic surgery is some man dipping his hand in a bucket of chicken guts... and pretending to remove tumors from the sick and gullible." "Or... it's a grossly misunderstood area of alternative medicine." "Well, medicine, as you're referring to it, is about keeping people alive." "Absent another theory, how else do we account for the impossible extraction of this man's heart?" "I don't know." "I have no idea." "I mean, we have no evidence, no M.O. to speak of." "This could be the perfect crime." "Well, crime is only as perfect as the man or the mind that commits it." "Even if it were perfect, even if he made not one mistake, there's still his motive." "You find his motive and you find the murderer." "That's why I didn't wanna come here, Kevin." " I'm not even doing anything." " Well, you're thinking about it." "There's a console 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 that you do." "You know what." " That's the way I kiss, Maggie." " Well, I get the message." " Where you going?" " I can't talk to you." "Maggie!" "Maggie?" "Maggie!" "Maggie!" "Maggie, come on!" "No!" "No!" "No!" "No!" " Scully." " Glad I caught you." "We got a third victim." "A 16-year-old kid out on Lover's Lane." " Are you sure?" " Yeah." "I'm sure many a person's had their heart broken out here, but not quite like this." "I was hoping you'd be here to explain it in medical terms to the local P.D." "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." " Well, 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 fervid haste... licked the envelope, leaving the telltale D.N.A. that would begin his unraveling?" "She had a condign certainty the killer was a male, and now as she held the cold metal at her fingertips... 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 the image she conjured up 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 organize, connect, shuffle, reorder and synthesize their relative hard values into discreet 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 compensatory respect she commanded... only deepened the yearnings of her heart... to let it open... to let someone in." "It's called a milagro." "That's the Spanish word for "miracle. \x22" " It's worn as a lucky charm." " It came here for me?" "It was dropped off at a reception by a man in his late 20s, early 30s, average looking, average build." "They weren't able to get a good I.D. There are no fingerprints... and no D.N.A. from his saliva." "I don't think it's the killer, Scully." " Did you see that it's a burning heart?" " I see it has a burning heart." "We're dealing with a killer that leaves no clues." "Why would he do something as heavy-handed as this?" "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." " Actually, let me." "You've got a 9:00 a.m. with the D.C. medical examiner." "He's gonna let you autopsy the latest victim." "Thank you for making my schedule, but I think I'm gonna have to be late for that." "I often come here to look at this painting." "It's called \x22My Divine Heart\x22 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 the touch of his blessed hand." "Why are you telling me this?" "You came here specifically to see this painting, 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." " Oh, you imagined it." " Yes." "Yeah." "I'm a writer." "That's what I do... imagine how people behave." "I have to admit I've noticed you." "I do that... notice people." "I saw that you wear a 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 exempt sticker that lets you park anywhere 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 popular running route right nearby that you might use at lunch or after work." "You'd have noticed this church in passing, and 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." "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 joking about being late." "I was about to start slicing and dicing 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." "It may be a communication from the killer." "Most of my research shows that most credible practitioners with psychic surgery... believe themselves to be imbued with the Holy Spirit... that their hands become 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 neighbor." " Who, the writer?" " Yes." "My secret admirer... who claims to know the mysteries of my heart." " You're kidding." " 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." "\x22Frightening\x22 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." " Padgett." " Phillip Padgett." " You're a writer." " Anything I'd know?" " I don't think so." "You're an F.B.I. agent." "Working on anything interesting?" "A murder case." "Anything I'd know?" "Possibly." "The overture in the church had 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." "All morning the stranger's unsolicited compliments... had played on the dampened strings of her instrument... until the middle "C\x22of consciousness was struck square and resonant." "She was flattered." "His words had presented her a pretty picture of herself, quite unlike the practiced mask of uprightness... that mirrored back to her from the medical examiners and 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 savory... 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 behavioral 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 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, Mister, 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 neighborhood." "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 spent a lot of time at home." "I should have said something, but I just 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, then 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, that'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 \x22stranger\x22?" "Is that you?" " How about Ken Naciamento?" " The self-proclaimed Brazilian psychic surgeon?" " Is that your accomplice?" " I guess you could say that." " He's a central character." " Did you direct him to do it?" "Jungians say it's the characters who 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." "The signs of things, not the things themselves." "It's difficult to say who's in charge." " Mulder." " Okay." "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." " Mulder, where are you going?" " To find his accomplice, the Brazilian psychic surgeon." "I did that." "That's what I've been doing." "Dr. Ken Naciamento, Sao Paulo, Brazil." "Emigrated here in 1996." " Where is he now?" " He's dead." " Can't be." " Two years dead." "I'm having them fax a certificate of death." " Padgett couldn't have done this alone." " Maybe he didn't do it at all." "Scully, it's all on the page." "How else would he know it?" "Maybe he imagined it, like he said." "Like Shakespeare or Freud orJung." "I mean, maybe..." "maybe he has some gift... and he has a clear window into human nature." "No one can tell you what another person's gonna do." "No one can predict human behavior." "Isn't that what you do, Mulder, as a behavioral profiler?" "You imagine the killer's mind so well you know what they're gonna 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?" "Yeah." "I read a chapter." "What does he say?" "Well, let's just say it ends with you doing the naked pretzel with the \x22stranger\x22... 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." "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 an 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. \x22" "She's a no-show at home or anywhere else she might go." "No signs of a possible struggle at the grave site, but the area's been so trammeled by the funeral that collecting evidence is gonna be impossible." "I think this is a big jerk off." "Maybe his statement's to prove 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'd I do?" " Mulder!" " Check the truck, Scully." " Mulder, he works here." "How did you know, Mulder, that the body was in the truck?" "I imagined it." "It's still no evidence that Padgett directed the killer." "What do you need, a signed work order?" "Of course he directed him." "Mulder, you are making critical assumptions without any facts." "What about time of death?" "What about..." "What are you doing?" "You're about to argue my usual side, aren't you?" "Why couldn't he have imagined it?" "Why couldn't he be in the killer's head?" "You read what he wrote about you." "Are you trying to tell me he got inside your head?" " That what I read is true?" " Mulder, 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 apologize 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 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 sitting there." "Staring." "Now what is this?" "A big mistake." "I misjudged her character, her interest in me." "Now we're on to something." "She's only trying to get his attention, but doesn't know it." "Mm-hmm." "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." "Mmm..." "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 doing?" " 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 these 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 felt compelled to commit 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." "I made this!" "I made this!"