01 - Goblins Read Online Free PDF

didn’t mean—”
    Barelli waved him silent. “It’s okay, don’t sweat it, you couldn’t have
known.” His smile was bitter. “Not exactly national news, you know?” Then he
inhaled slowly. “The thing is, Mulder, he was stationed at Fort Dix, some kind
of pissant clerical job, even though he thought he should have been something
else. You know, glamorous? Green Berets, something like that. Anyway, he got
himself into a fight at a bar in a nearby town, they call it Marville—”
    “Over a woman, I’ll bet.”
    “Yeah. Something like that. Anyway, he ended up at the base hospital Friday
night, busted up some, and was supposed to stay in bed until Sunday. Frankie
didn’t want to stay in bed, apparently. He was found on a road just south of the
post, on Sunday morning.”
    “How?”
    Barelli swiped at something invisible on his shirtfront. “Somebody cut his
throat.”
    Mulder closed his eyes briefly, both in sympathy and at the image. “Have they
caught the one who did it?”
    “No.”
    “Witnesses?”
    The man snorted. “Oh yeah, right. In the middle of the night out in the
middle of nowhere? Jesus, Mulder, gimme a break.” Then he shrugged. “Yeah.
Actually, there was one. A woman.” He leaned forward, bracing his arms on his
legs. “But Jesus, Mulder, she was hysterical and drunk and maybe doped up. You
know what she said? She said the damn tree grew an arm and killed him.”
     
    Arlen Douglas could have been anywhere from his early forties to early
sixties. His perpetually tanned face was finely lined, his hair an aristocratic
mix of brown and silver, and his figure one of someone who was in close to
perfect shape. He sat behind his desk and took a single swipe at his tie before
closing the manila folder that lay before him on the leather-trim blotter.
    It hadn’t taken him long to make the office his—framed photographs of his
family on the desk, framed photographs of him and three presidents, a handful of
movie stars, and a dozen senators on the walls. An American flag in a brass
stand to the right. Behind him, a large window whose view of the city was cut
off by pale beige blinds.
    When his intercom buzzed, he touched a button, said, “Send him in, Miss
Cort,” and checked his tie again.
    Special Agent Webber opened the door hesitantly, smiled, and stepped across
the threshold.
    Another hesitation before he closed the door and marched to the desk.
    Douglas prayed that the kid wouldn’t salute him.
    “You sent for me, sir?”
    “Indeed I did, Hank.” He tapped the folder. “A fine job your team did on that
Helevito case. A very nice job indeed.”
    Webber beamed. “Thank you, sir. But it wasn’t really my team, it was Agent
Mulder’s.”
    Douglas smiled without showing any teeth. “Of course. But it seems you came
up with a vital piece of the puzzle, and exhibited some very fine investigative
techniques.”
    He waited while the young man did his best to contain his pleasure. This, he
thought, was going to be a piece of cake.
    “Tell me something, Hank, how did you like working with Fox Mulder?”
    “Oh, boy,” Webber said enthusiastically. “It was great. I mean, they teach
you all that stuff at Quantico, but it doesn’t really have anything to do
wit…” He stopped himself and frowned briefly. “What I mean, sir, isn’t that
Quantico doesn’t do its job. Not at all. I mean—”
    “I know what you mean,” Douglas said, still smiling, hands now flat on the
folder. “It doesn’t come alive, does it, until you actually see it all in
action.”
    “Yes, sir. Exactly.”
    Well, of course, it doesn’t, you idiot, he thought. Someone was going to owe him big time for this. Real big time.
    “And you found working with Mulder instructive?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “By the book, everything in its place, nothing for anyone to be ashamed of?”
    He knew the young man would falter, and he did, torn between his liking for
Mulder and his loyalty to the Bureau. Douglas