Episode Summary

When a convict makes an impossible escape from a prison, Mulder and Scully must discover his secret before they can find him.

Episode Details

Cast

Guest Cast

Quotes

Captain Fellowes: Messed up old Whaley, did he?

Guard: Messed him up good.

Captain Fellowes: Now what'd you go and do that for?

Pinker Rawls: Man pissed me off, Boss.

Captain Fellowes: Who the hell doesn't? [to guards] Box him.

Pinker Rawls: You can't put me in that box, Boss. The storm's coming.

Captain Fellowes: Should have thought of that before you messed up old Whaley.

Pinker Rawls: Well, to hell with Whaley. You can't put me in that box! Boss! You can't put me in there! You can't put me in that box! You can't do it! You're going to kill me, Boss! Boss! [The guards drag Pinker Rawls from the room]

Guard: You know they're saying tornado touchdowns all over the county.

Captain Fellowes: I can't be responsible for acts of god.


[Scully examines the two halves of Captain Fellowes body]

Scully: Should we arrest David Copperfield?

Mulder: Yes, we should... but not for this. Now this is, uh, Raybert Fellowes, superintendent of Road Farm Six, Mississippi Department of Corrections. One of his guards found him in his office. Not a drop of blood in the place.

Scully: Well, maybe he was killed elsewhere.

Mulder: No, I don't think so. Whoever did it took 40 minutes to do it in the middle of a tornado. What do you make of that?

Scully: I don't know. It's, uh... it's not a simple bisection. There's a considerable amount of his abdomen missing. I mean, it almost looks like a burning but it's too localised. Maybe an industrial acid.

Mulder: There's, uh... no acid found in his office.

Scully: Hmm... Spontaneous human combustion.

Mulder: Scully...!

Scully: Well, isn't that where you're going with this?

Mulder: Dear Diary: Today my heart leapt when Agent Scully suggested spontaneous human combustion.

Scully: Mulder, there are one or two somewhat well-documented cases. Mulder, shut up. Okay. What do you make of this?

Mulder: I don't have a theory. But I know of someone who does.


Guard: Hell, yes, Pinker Rawls who did it. Though you got me as to how.

Scully: And who is Pinker Rawls?

Mulder: An inmate.

Guard: Mean son of a bitch.

Mulder: Rawls was the prisoner who supposedly died in the tornado that preceded superintendent Fellowes' murder.

Scully: So you're saying that a ghost did this?

Guard: I'm not putting the word to it. That's up to y'all. All I know is that Rawls hated the Captain. Captain locked him in the box when the storm hit and Rawls didn't want to be locked in the box and when we found the box biggest piece was about yay big... [Indicating about 200mm long] ...three miles from here. Now, this whole place was locked and boarded up tight. No man got in here. That's all I'm saying. [He leaves the room]

Scully: So we're looking for a dead man?

Mulder: I disagree. I think this Pinker Rawls is still very much alive. You know, they never found his body.

Scully: Okay. Well, at the risk of further ridicule, Mulder, what if this wasn't a murder? I mean as I understand it, current theory on spontaneous human combustion is that climatic conditions play a large part. So, possibly a tornado may fit the bill. We've got lightning, um, static electricity at a high potential.

Mulder: I can't argue with that. But I do think it's murder.

Scully: Well, then how did Rawls or whoever do this? How did he get in and out of a locked office and prop a body up against the inside of a door?

[Mulder taps on the office wall — it sounds hollow — then he easily breaks a large hole in the brittle substance]

Mulder: Termites?


Guard: This is all he had in his bunk area.

Scully: Wilson Pinker Rawls, age 34. Eight years into 30 for robbing a wire office in Bay Saint Louis. The $90,000 he stole was never recovered.

Mulder: Well, it's not in here. Hey. Look at this. [Holding up a long package of condoms] Ouch.


Mulder: Is that the guy?

Bobby: Yeah, could be. I guess. It was pretty dark.

Mulder: How'd he get away?

Scully: Whoever he was.

Bobby: You got me. The guy's like Houdini. Turned my back and he was gone. I had him right here.

Mulder: You had him handcuffed... here. Can I see your handcuffs? [Mulder taps the handcuffs against the pole, then easily snaps them] We have a last known address for Pinker Rawls?


Bo Merkle: Hey, hello? Rawls?

Pinker Rawls: What's up?

Bo Merkle: You're on the news, man. They're saying you got killed.

Pinker Rawls: Where is she?

Bo Merkle: June? She's gone. Long gone, man. She left me, like, four years ago. You mad 'cause her and me shacked up? I'm sorry, buddy.

Pinker Rawls: Bo, I want what's mine.

Bo Merkle: I might have her address. [He casually goes to a desk drawer and looks at the gun inside]

Pinker Rawls: You got nothing in there but your nine.

Bo Merkle: Get the hell out of my house. [Pulling the gun on Pinker Rawls]

Pinker Rawls: Bo, you're going to shoot me? Boo! Blah! You going to do something? Ha!

[Bo Merkle empties the gun into Pinker Rawls' chest, but Rawls keeps walking towards him]

Bo Merkle: No! No!


[Bo Merkle's head has been hollowed out with only the back of the skull remaining]

Mulder: Ugh! Ugh. Gesundheit.

Scully: Oh, my God. Pistol in his hand, slide locked open, shell casings everywhere. I don't see any bullet holes anywhere, Mulder.

Mulder: Don't recognise him from his driver's license, do you?

Scully: Bo Merkle. This is his house.

Mulder: Yeah, but Rawls used to live here and he's come back looking for something.

Scully: $90,000. The wire office robbery eight years ago. The money hasn't been recovered.

Mulder: I don't think he spent that in prison.

Scully: I don't think Mr Merkle did either, judging by the decor.


Scully: Got a name to go with the face. June Gurwitch. There's no current address, though and, uh, no record of her since 1996.

Mulder: Maybe she changed her name. Maybe she was afraid she'd end up like that. [Looking over at Bo Merkle's body being removed from the house]

Scully: State police have put out an APB on Rawls.

Mulder: You might warn them not to shoot to kill. He seems to find that annoying.

Scully: Look, Mulder, even if those were bullets...

Mulder: They are. It's just that their composition has been changed just like the handcuffs and just like the prison wall.

Scully: Even if these were bullets, there is no way that they could pass through Rawls in the way that you're describing, not without leaving him sprawled dead on the ground for us to find.

Mulder: I think they just went right through him, — sssht — like his wrist went through the handcuffs and like he walked right through that prison wall.

Scully: He walks through solid objects?

Mulder: Changing their composition fundamentally — making steel brittle, turning lead bullets into powder.

Scully: And flesh into carbon.

Mulder: I don't know how else to explain what happened to that prison superintendent or to poor Mr Merkle over there, who's got no face any more.

Scully: But where's the science in all of this, Mulder? You're talking alchemy.

Mulder: I'm not saying that it can't be explained scientifically. Maybe it's the tornado. You suggested it yourself. Unusual climatic conditions... high electrical potential...

Scully: I'm sorry I even brought it up.

Mulder: Okay, we both agree on who he's looking for?

Scully: June Gurwitch.

Mulder: And do we have any idea of how to find June Gurwitch?

Scully: She has a sister named Jackie, and I have the address.


[The words I WANT WHAT'S MINE have been burned into Jackie Gurwitch's bedroom door]

Mulder: Where'd he go?

Jackie Gurwitch: He left.


Scully: Her son's spending the night at a friend's house and she's going to meet them there. She said that she didn't tell Rawls where her sister was. Mulder, she said that he walked right through the wall.

Mulder: Bo Merkle's car is parked down the street. That's how he got here. I don't know how he left.

Scully: Maybe he left on foot or he stole another car.

Mulder: Why would he leave without getting the information he wanted?

Scully: Well, maybe he's still in the neighbourhood. I think the, uh, local PD can search, but we have to get going.

Mulder: Where to?

Scully: To Meridian. That's where June Gurwitch lives... or June Burdett as she's now called.


June Gurwitch: Jackie? She and her son...?

Scully: They're fine.

Mulder: Who is Rawls to you?

June Gurwitch: A mistake. The biggest one of many. We lived together. Are you sure you know who you're looking for? I remember one time this guy cuts Pinker off on the highway. I mean, just cut him off — you know, kind of thing that happens to everybody every day. He followed this guy for 62 miles right over the state line — 62 miles — me pleading with him the whole way to stop. Follows the guy up to his house. The guy gets out of his car, smiling. I mean he doesn't know what's coming to him. Pinker pulls a picket off a white picket fence and cracks that guy's skull open with it. He's not going to stop.

Mulder: What does Rawls want? The money? $90,000 from the Bay Saint Louis robbery?

June Gurwitch: I didn't even know about that 'til they came to the door to arrest him, okay? I mean, Pinker was already in prison before I found that money. By accident.

Scully: So you took it.

June Gurwitch: Eventually, yeah. I thought about it for about a week or two.

Mulder: And where's the money now?

June Gurwitch: Put a down payment on this place. Bought a couple of sofas... chintz curtains... PC for Robert. [Robert Werther walks away angrily] I just wanted another chance.


Scully: Rawls was in the trunk?

Mulder: Yeah. And we took him right where he wanted to go.


Scully: Mulder?

[The words I WANT WHAT'S MINE are burned into the wall. The last word is slightly cut off where the E enters a mirror hanging on the wall]

Mulder: You think he's trying to tell us something?


Mulder: Scully, look at this. I'm assuming Rawls wrote this with his finger just like the other one. But look here.

Scully: He stopped at the mirror.

Mulder: Or the mirror stopped him. What makes an object solid, Scully? I mean, what, what prevents one solid object from passing through another solid object, usually?

Scully: Electrostatic repulsion. Individual electrons repelling one another like magnets.

Mulder: Electrons. What if Rawls's ability somehow has to do electricity? What would preclude it or contain it?

Scully: Resistance against electrical current. A good insulator like rubber, like glass.

Mulder: Exactly. Rawls couldn't pass through this.

Scully: Say... say that your theory is correct — that he can walk through walls. Why go through all this effort over an old robbery score? It's $90,000 — he could get that anywhere, right?

Mulder: It's not about the money. It's never been about the money.

Scully: Yet he turned this place upside down which means he was looking for something. And I think it has to do with this. It's a lien, on unpaid hospital bills dating back to 1992 and the patient name is June Gurwitch. And this is an IC D-9 number — a hospital diagnostic code. This particular one means...

Mulder: Pregnancy.

Scully: Right. Specifically, c-section.

Mulder: This is seven years ago. That's just a few months after Rawls was sent to a prison farm.

Scully: Uh-huh. I want what's mine. This man is looking for his child, Mulder.


June Gurwitch: Pinker, I apologise. Look, I'm really scared right now, okay? Talk to me. Please... please say something. Anything. Look, I'm sorry about the money — your money. I shouldn't have taken it. It was wrong. I was wrong. Pinker, I can pay you back.

Pinker Rawls: What was it? What'd you have? You dumb bitch. You don't even know what I'm talking about. What'd you have? Was it a boy or a girl?

June Gurwitch: A boy... a boy.

Pinker Rawls: A boy... a boy... a boy. What's his name? You know his name, don't you?

June Gurwitch: Trevor Andrew.

Pinker Rawls: Trevor what?

June Gurwitch: Trevor Andrew.

Pinker Rawls: Trevor Andrew... Rawls. You never were going to tell me. I'd have gone to my grave never knowing. But years later, a million-to-one shot, I hear on the Farm from a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy. You know what that means? That means God wanted me to know. He fixed it so I'd hear... and then he fixed it so as I'd have passage. And I'm here. God's will.

June Gurwitch: What do you want with the boy?

Pinker Rawls: He's my son. Now you're going to take me to him.


Mulder: It's a boy. That's all I got.

Scully: Sealed files?

Mulder: No official files. No adoption records, no records of foster care in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, nothing.

Scully: Well, maybe she didn't go through official channels. Maybe the kid's with a friend or a relative somewhere.


[June Gurwitch hits Pinker Rawls with her car. He passes through the bonnet and engine, but the windscreen connects solidly and kills him]

June Gurwitch: I had to do it. He would have hurt Trevor. He would... God only knows what he was thinking. What did he want?

Mulder: Maybe another chance.

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