Veiled Vesta

That is a necessary spoiler for me because I'd like to know what episode to ready myself for in the event of Krycek and Fowley nudity! I may have to get my brother to tape my hands down. (Oh, please don't tell me there's sex involved... *hoping they're naked because of an injury or something like that* )

On to more pleasant things: my second recap of tonight then I should really get to bed. Mulder angst ahoy!

Paper Hearts

(**Personal Note: Some good old fashioned Mulder angst for those who've been itching to poke his buttons a little more. Samantha's actress is making her second appearance in these recaps, though this is the first appearance in the official viewing party of season four. A few pet peeves of mine are in this episode, among them being "paper hearts" when the title should've been "cloth hearts" because they were made of cloth, not paper.)

Looks like Mulder is cozy comfy on his couch. Nice to know that if he ever gets in trouble with the red headed missus in the future, he'd be fine on their couch. He wakes up suddenly, noticing a little red laser pointer on his ceiling. It's actually supposed to be something of a magic red dot of light but we all know it's a laser pointer. The red dot of light travels down, past his wall, and forming the word 'follow' before continuing it's path down the floor. I see nothing suspicious about following a magic red laser pointer. Outside, the red dot of light leads Mulder to white van near a park, and forms the word 'mad hat' on the white van. Into the woodsy park it goes, with Mulder on the red dot of light's heels. It leads him to a dead little girl and turns into the shape of a red light heart over her chest, then the little girl sinks down into the leaves and the magic laser pointer disappears. Mulder wakes up. The little red dot of light was just a dream. This must be one of those 'prophetic dreams' he mentioned in the Bruckman episode. Mulder sighs as he looks around his room, then grabs his phone book to look up the address of the park in his dream. He drives to the park in the middle of the night, and luckily doesn't find any crack dealers or hookers there. He also doesn't find the little girl's body.

The following morning, Mulder has summoned a small excavation team to dig for the body. Scully shows up and wonders why he called for the team so early on a Sunday. Mulder tries to explain the dream he's been having about a little blonde girl and Scully gives him the Skeptibrow with matching skeptical questioning. However, the excavation team use that moment to shut Scully up when they find a skull. Point for Mulder. Now that they found a skull, the excavation team can make a grid of the area and know where to look for the rest of the body. Scully asks for more information on the dream and he explains that he's had it three nights in a row, with the most recent night finally leading him to the girl. Then Mulder asks the excavator to unearth the chest of the body but quickly decides to do it himself when the excavator works to slowly. Scully thinks he might destroy evidence and they won't know what happened to the body but Mulder knows exactly what happened to it: the little girl was strangled with an electrical cord, and the killer cut out a piece of fabric from her clothes in the shape of a heart as a trophy. Did he get that from his dream? No, actually it was from an old case: John Lee Roche who killed thirteen little girls, and when he finally unearths the skeleton's chest area he finds the fourteenth victim.

Opening Credits! How many songs exist with the word 'hearts' in their title? Too many, so you can pick today's honorary episode song. Double points if it's slow and melancholy, triple points if it has the word 'paper', or better yet 'cloth', in the lyrics/title as well. On a different note, it seems that for every episode where Mulder gets on my nerves, there is another episode where he experiences so much angst, he earns my sympathy. This must be what Scully goes through everyday she works with him.

Mulder dressed casually in his basement office? Very nice. He's there to find the file on child killer, John Lee Roche. He explains that the guy already got ten girls before Mulder was brought aboard to try and get into the killer's head. Plus the confused young men at VICAP nicknamed it the "paper hearts" case because of the trophies the killer took. The cloth heart trophies. Yeeaah. Maybe you should buy those guys a dictionary next Christmas, okay Mulder? In any case, Mulder's profile regarding the killer being a traveling salesman, who picked his victims out in the different homes he visited, helped get the punk arrested. What bugged Mulder is that they never found the cloth hearts so he could make sure they added up to the thirteen girls Roche admitted to killing. Scully, wanting to get at least half a point, thinks she can explain his dream: Mulder was so bothered by the case, he had it buried in his subconscious and even managed to solve the case. So this whole time a part of him knew about the location of the fourteenth victim. Scully gets a point for her skeptical/psychological reasoning and for proving she's a good listener by repeating something Mulder said from the episode Aubrey; "A dream is an answer to a question we haven't learned how to ask."

In the autopsy area, Mulder is looking down at the skeleton of the little girl, a piece of her pajama containing a pocket with a dollar sign on it. Richie Rich's sister? Not unless he had a sister named Addie Sparks, as identified by Scully. Mulder is confused at the date reported on her abduction and realizes Roche started his killings way earlier than they initially thought. Time for some depressing news to deliver to the parents of the deceased. Mulder and Scully visit the father of Addie and show him the remains of her clothes, the old widower (yes his wife is dead too, just for that extra gloom factor) quietly explains that Addie's mother sewed that dollar sign pocket on her jammies for the tooth fairy. He wants to make sure the man who killed his little girl is safely in jail, and Mulder assures him he is and won't get out – unless a certain paranoid truth seeker stupidly let's him out. Addie's daddy (heh) wonders if they're the designated FBI bearers of bad news. They say no, thank goodness, and the father says he used to think missing was worse than dead because you never knew what happened but now he realizes, yeah, dead is kind of a huge buzz kill. Mulder and Scully are sympathetic while also looking like they'd rather be facing one of their mutant/monsters of the week. The little girl's father wonders if there are any more victims other than his daughter. Mulder and Scully don't have an answer so I guess they make up a cockamamie excuse and leave the house of sadness. I'll give 'em each a point to cheer them up. Outside, Mulder gets a vision of the white van in his dream and remembers that's the kind of car that Roche drove. Maybe their missing cloth hearts are somewhere in his car which was sold at an auction a while back. Scully thinks the odds are they would've been found since a felon's car would presumably be searched pretty well before being sold. Don't underestimate Mulder's leaps of logic!

They find the car they're looking for, lovingly detailed by it's current teenage owner. Which means he painted flames on the side of it and got rid off the top part that covered it (the camper shell). Maybe he also added some glow in the dark stickers and a pair of fuzzy dice in the shape of women's boobs. You know Mulder would like it. The teen asks all excited if it's true his car used to be owned by a serial killer. Not just a serial killer but an old, balding child molester serial killer. Good luck attracting the chicks with that. Well, the sane ones, anyway. The teen leaves our two FBI agents to search his car and it doesn't take long before Mulder starts slicing up car seats with his pocket knife. There's nothing in the seats, in the top lining of the ceiling, not even on the underside of the car. Then Mulder gets another vision where the magic laser pointer turned into the word 'mad hat'. He realizes the cloth hearts could be in the camper shell which that foolish teen discarded in the woods somewhere. Now I'm not sure how he got 'camper shell' from 'mad hat' on the white car but maybe because the magic laser pointer was sort of on the camper shell part and the top part of the car is like it's "hat"... anyway, he finds something in the lining of the camper shell, rips it off to reveal an Alice in Wonderland book (Mad hat = Mad Hatter), then when he flips through the pages, he finds the cloth hearts in between every few pages or so. There's a total of sixteen hearts. They're still missing two more bodies.

Time to visit the old, balding child molester himself: John Lee Roche. I am a little disappointed to see he's calmly shooting hoops. According to my CSI know-how, other inmates don't take kindly to child molesters. Yes, even prisoners have standards and child molesters are supposedly the lowest of the low. How does Roche not have a bruise on him? Were the 90s really that different? Or is he just putting on a brave face? Maybe it's the second one. Roche recognizes Mulder right off the bat and comments on his new partner, Scully. Mulder tells him the found the fourteenth victim and Scully says they found his sixteen cloth hearts. So why did Roche say he only killed thirteen? Because, apparently thirteen victims sounded cooler. Mulder wants the names of the last two victims but he doesn't see what he gets out of it and makes a seemingly off hand comment about Mulder taking the case very personally. Then he says if Mulder can sink a basket from a fairly long distance, he'll get his answers. Mulder the awesome basketball pro earns his point when he sinks it easily but Roche just scoffs that he would actually believe a child molester. Smug little *mumble*... Roche decides he'll tell them what they want to know if they bring him his cloth hearts.

Mulder's in his basement office looking over the cloth hearts. They're all bagged and tagged except for the last two unknowns. Mulder takes off his glasses looking supremely tired. (Hey, how long has it been since we saw his sexy, geeky glasses? ) He puts his head down for a second and when he lifts his head back up he sees the magic laser pointer! Looks like we're in another Mulder dream. He follows the little red dot of light out of his office but instead of being out in the hall, he finds himself in his living room several years ago; specifically the night when his sister Samantha was taken. Mulder is pretty shocked. It's deja-vu for us regular X-Philes with Samantha talking to Mulder as if everything was normal. He responds more or less exactly as he did back when he was a young, naive Fox, though he sounds like he's still a bit confused and amazed. Blah blah, Samantha wants to change the channel, blah blah the Magician comes on at 9, blah blah, Fox is a buttmunch, (Hah. Still love that!) blah blah, he's in charge and suddenly the lights go. Mulder immediately knows what's going to happen and he yells at Samantha to run. The familiar white light floods the room but it seems a bit different than before. Mulder tries to get his FBI gun but he can't find it so he does like he did back when he was young and grabs his father's gun in the box on the shelf, still using the tried and true method of knocking it over to break it open. Isn't he big enough to smash it open against the wall or some other cool method? Instead of seeing Samantha float away, Mulder points the gun at... Roche and his evil white car, the headlights causing the bright light. Once again he freezes up and watches his sister get taken away while she yells his name. He finally wakes up and yells for her but she's no where to be found. The two cloth hearts in his hand are giving him serious guilt/angst.

Mulder is back at the jail, this time ready to talk to Roche in a prison interrogation room. Roche asks about his cloth hearts but Mulder wants to know what he meant before with his comment about Mulder taking the case personally then asks him where he was in November 27, 1973 (when Samantha was taken). Roche says he sold a vacuum cleaner to Mulder's father that year, giving needless details about the type of vacuum and stuff like that. Mulder wants to know about his sister but Roche won't say anymore without his cloth hearts. Finally Mulder's angsty anger cannot be held back and he sucker punches that child molester! Yeah Mulder! You're now up four points to Scully's two. When a guard walks in, Roche complains that Mulder hit him but the guard pauses before saying he didn't see him. Nice. Send that guard a muffin basket! However, Miss Righteous did see it from behind the glass and she's not happy. Don't make me deduct half a point, Scully. Mulder believes that Roche was the one who abducted Samantha but Scully says it was in his dream that he saw Roche abduct his sister. He repeats his "a dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet figured out how to ask" line and says the thing about Roche being at Martha's Vineyard but Scully thinks that Roche probably found out about Mulder's old family home by searching the net. I don't suppose she can spare the web address so I can find out where Mulder lived. Purely for research purpose, of course. Scully then gets concerned, saying Mulder walked into that room with his heart on his sleeve and Roche took advantage of it. Mulder says his last dream was true and then asks if she ever believed him when he said his sister as kidnapped by aliens. That leaves her at a loss for words and Mulder doesn't know what to believe but he needs to find out the truth. Always trying to find the truth.

One good place to start is his childhood home basement. Mulder's mom comes down to see him, looking pretty good ever since she got healed up in Herrenvolk. He asks her how she's doing then gets down to business as he pulls out the two unidentified cloth hearts (doesn't he ever stop by for a simple social call?) Mrs. Mulder isn't sure what they are or why they should be familiar (which means they might not be from Samantha's pajamas) but then she says her memory hasn't been so great since the stroke and when you consider how "bad" her memory was (she repressed it all), it's no small miracle she remembers her son's name (so they could be from Samantha's pajamas). Well this is going no where fast. Mulder finally gets something when he asks her if his dad ever bought her a vacuum and he did! Mulder pulls out a vacuum from a little storage area, which matches the description Roche gave him.

Time for some angry Skinner. When Mulder wants to know why he's been denied access to Roche, Skinner counters with his question as to why Mulder hit Roche. Mulder gives Scully an accusatory "tattletale" glance but Skinner tells him he was caught on Prisoner Candid Camera. That was a definitely a mistake on Mulder's part. Skinner mentions having Mulder's ass in a sling which gives me a hilarious mental image. Mulder says Roche could tell him about Samantha and Scully backs him up. Skinner doesn't think it's a good idea but Scully once again speaks up for Mulder, saying they still need to identify the last two victims and it's still Mulder's case (point to Scully for her loyalty even when Mulder gave her that "tattletale" stare). Skinner finally concedes as long as Mulder treads lightly and Scully resume her baby sitter detail, and keep a tight leash on him. Heh.

Back to the slammer and Scully is right beside Mulder to keep him in check. Roche doesn't want to be hit again but he doesn't say anything about kicking, scratching, or head butting. I smell a loophole! Mulder opts to be a good agent and takes out the two unidentified cloth hearts that Roche tries to take out of the evidence bag but Mulder won't let him. He wants him to name the victims that belong to those hearts. Roche does his smug mind games, saying Mulder knows one of them but Scully is angry and wants him to prove it. Roche narrates the night Samantha was taken in accurate detail, right down to the game they were playing and what was on television. He says he knew all that because he watched them from the window, then decides to have Mulder pick out his sister's cloth heart and he'll tell them where that victim can be found. Mulder is unsure but he eventually picks a cloth heart, Roche doing a little "are you sure" to rattle Mulder before giving them the directions to the victim belonging to that cloth heart.

So their fifteenth victim was buried by a rock with the word "Mad Hat" carved into it. Subtle. Mulder quickly starts digging and Scully tries to reason that they need an excavation team for that area. This is no time for rationalism, Scully! Mulder is emotional and he wants Scully's help. She can't help but comply with the desperate tone in his voice so she joined him in digging. (Awww) And would you know it, they dug away at the exact spot where the body's chest was, revealing a piece of cloth with a heart shape cut out. At the autopsy area, Mulder walks in to look at the skeletal body of what may be his sister. He looks quite shaken. After he looks at the x-ray of the body, he takes a moment to gather himself then runs his fingers over the shoulder area of the body. Scully pauses by the door, then calls his name softly. Mulder says it's not Samantha, wanting confirmation from Scully. The body can't be his sister because his sister broke her collarbone when she was six and I guess he didn't feel a broken-then-healed collarbone on this corpse. Mulder keeps asking if he's right about the collarbone in a pitiable tone that makes me wanna hug him. Scully confirms that it's not Samantha and Mulder sighs, looking fairly relieved. I think she pats his hand in comfort but I can't really see it.

Roche is explaining that they had a fifty-fifty chance on the guess and Scully wants the name of the fifteenth victim. He identifies her as Karen Ann Philiponte then goes on to give creepy unnecessary details about how he watched her from her window where mint grew. Scully sounds like she's ready to punch him herself when she asks the year he took her. (Give in Scully, give in! The loophole specifies that Mulder can't hit him but you on the other hand...) When they have their info, Mulder pulls out the last cloth heart that Roche identifies as belonging to Mulder's sister. Mulder wants to know where it happened but Roche thinks he wouldn't be satisfied with a simple answer, rather he wants the whole truth explained and after all the years of not knowing, he won't accept anything less than a full-out step-by-step walkthrough of the night it happened. Scully tells him to drop the mind games and I must say for a sicko child molester, he has a keen grasp on Mulder. Geez, is our favorite paranoid believer really that readable? Mulder however, thinks Roche just wants to get out of jail and Roche is quick to agree because contrary to his cavalier attitude earlier, jail isn't all basketball matches and mind games. When Sports Saturdays are followed by Sodomy Sundays, you tend to take any opportunity you can get for relief if only for a day or two. Scully is not sympathetic and wishes him a long, flesh-rotting, ankle-grabbing prison stay. Always love a protective Scully, especially when it's in regard to Mulder. The two leave the cell and Scully asks if he's okay, telling him that he shouldn't give Roche what he wants and there has to be another way to find the truth. Mulder you better listen to her. If you don't, I'm deducting a point from you! ...At his apartment, Mulder thinks for a while then makes a call to someone, giving his FBI information to request a removal order for a federal prisoner. Damnit! Point deducted, and you're lucky I still half-pity you or I'd take away all your points, Mulder! (Now he's even with Scully, as it should be). Roche and Mulder are on a plane, one of them in handcuffs. Roche wants to use the bathroom and Mulder tells him to keep his hands in his lap while Mulder puts a jacket over his cuffed hands. Roche manages to get past a drink cart while Mulder is stuck behind it, and the balding child molester spots a little girl with her mom sitting nearby. Damn it. Mulder keeps trying to get past the cart but the flight attendant is pretty slow in moving her butt. Roche continues to talk to the little girl, asking if she's having fun and Mulder finally gets to Roche, taking him to the bathroom. Too late Mulder. And now, because of you, Scully will get her ass in a verbal sling.

Skinner and Scully are at his office and he's not happy that Mulder checked out Roche. When he asks why she let Mulder out of her sight, Scully just says she left for the day and simply told Mulder to get some sleep. Seriously Skinner, you know how reckless Mulder is, short of handcuffing herself to Mulder, what did you expect Scully to do? (OH! Idea for a fic which I'm sure has been done! Somebody please link any good Mulder/Scully handcuffed together fics. Umm, let me stress PG-13 and under, please.) Scully has an idea as to where Mulder would go with Roche but Skinner refuses to let her go after him. This time Skinner's going after Mulder and she tells him that he'll likely find the two at Martha's Vineyard, still trying to half-heartedly stick up for Mulder. Skinner just chastises her, saying she let him down in baby-sitting detail. Scully is inwardly thinking of all the ways she's going to get Mulder make it up to her, many of those ways involving handcuffs, a riding crop, and sunflower seeds as a reward.

So Mulder and Roche are at Martha's Vineyard, walking around until Roche finally starts telling his tale. He says he watched the house for hours, and didn't intend that night to be the night he would strike but when Mulder's parents went to next door he seized the opportunity to cut the power, open the door, and shine his car lights inside. He mentions Mulder grabbing his father's gun but then freezing up so he just took Samantha away. Mulder makes sure that's exactly how it happened, right in that very room and when Roche says it's all true, Mulder pulls a Beyond the Sea switcheroo! (see: Knicks jersey) They're actually in the wrong house and he calls Roche on his lies. Roche insists he did but Mulder finally brings in the X-Files aspect of the show when he hypothesizes that just like Mulder got inside Roche's head, so did Roche get inside Mulder's, a nexus forming between them and Roche being able to see his memories of Samantha's abduction. Roche tries one last time to convince Mulder he did take Samantha but the jig is up so he just sits down and mocks him for chasing flying saucers. May I point out that there are NO CAMERAS so Mulder could kick him a few times in the crotch and sucker punch his kidneys and claim he fell down some stairs when he returns him to jail. Who's going to believe a child molester over a dumb yet foxy FBI agent?

In his motel room, Mulder is looking over the last cloth heart while Roche sleeps on the bed, handcuffed to a dresser. Suddenly he hears someone call his name. A very familiar voice. He goes to the motel window and sees Roche's white car with Samantha locked inside. I can already tell that this will end badly. Samantha cries out for him to unlock her. That sounds a bit odd to me. I've never heard someone say "unlock me"; maybe "let me out" or "unlock this door, please" but not "unlock me". I'm nitpicky on weird little things like that. Mulder rushes outside just as the car starts up. He tries to open the car door which is indeed locked, but luckily he has the correct car key and he gets her out! Yay! He holds Samantha tightly with this sweet, happy smile and I just want him to really enjoy this moment because in about five seconds he's going to see the magic laser pointer form the word 'bye' and Samantha and the car will disappear. He wakes up to hear Skinner and Scully pounding on his motel door. Mulder is handcuffed and Roche is no where to be found. Get your ass ready for that sling, Mulder! Skinner is really upset that Mulder let Roche go (apparently he did it in his sleep). Skinner sends two men to look for him or find any eye-witnesses and Mulder laments that Roche took the last cloth heart. Idiot. He also took your badge, your phone, and your gun. I'd say that's more cause for concern. Skinner really let's him have it laying all the guilt on him and demanding to know if Mulder has any idea where Roche went. Come to think of it he does. He remembers the little girl on the plane and calls the airline to get a passenger manifest for the flight they were on. He is not happy to discover that someone named Agent Mulder called ten minutes before asking for the same information.

They get there to late as a day care lady is giving a statement to the cops, describing an FBI agent who took the little girl, Caitlin, claiming her mother was in an accident. The day care lady describes the agent who went by Mulder then sobs that it's her fault but Mulder replies it was not her fault, it was actually his. We all know that; you need to go redeem yourself, buddy. Mulder apologizes and says Scully was right about Roche playing him like a fiddle. Point for Scully being right. It doesn't matter if he thinks Roche took Samantha or not, what matters is finding little Caitlin. Mulder profiles, saying Roche is probably still in the Boston area because he knows they would catch him if he tried to get out of the city. Scully's got Roche's old address when he lived in Boston: he lives on Alice Road and that strikes a bell with Mulder: Alice in Wonderland with Roche as the Mad Hatter.

Mulder busts down Roche's room with half a dozen cops behind him but it's empty. Looks like Roche didn't bring the girl to his place. Mulder sees a railway/bus yard outside his apartment building and runs out to investigate. He climbs the fence and sees he's got several dozen empty junkyard buses that Roche could hide in. Time to start looking. He has a spare gun in his ankle holster that Roche didn't steal so he's well-armed when he hears a scream and follows the voice. It stops and he slows down, trying to find the right bus. He picks one and with true Mulder luck it turns out to be the correct bus. He sees Roche sitting in the back with Caitlin sitting one seat ahead of him. Roche starts to think that Maybe they do share a nexus since Mulder always seems to find him. Mulder edges forward and asks if Caitlin is okay. She nods, looking scared. He says he's Fox and he's going to take her home. Roche also calls him Fox and says he's got his gun. Mulder asks Caitlin if she can close her eyes and count to twenty in a loud, slow voice. She does so. Mulder is finally in front of Roche and points his gun at his head. Roche has Mulder's other gun right behind Caitlin's seat and he threatens to shoot. Mulder doesn't want the situation to end badly and here come Mulder and Scully to pretty much guarantee the situation will end badly. Someone is going to have to shoot Roche, and Skinner yells at Roche to put the gun down. All the while Caitlin is still counting (she's up to ten). Roche takes out the last cloth heart asking Mulder how sure he is that it's not Samantha and how will he find her without his help? Caitlin i sup to nineteen when Mulder finally redeems himself and shoots Roche's point blank, splattering his blood on the window behind him. Caitlin screams and runs to Scully. Only when Roche keels over does Mulder slowly puts his gun down, breathing heavily and looking sort of disgusted.

Last scene: my favorite moment of the episode coming up. Mulder is sitting at his desk in the basement office, looking melancholy. Scully knocks before walking in and the two stare at each other in silence for a moment (her face all concern, his face somewhat tired confusion and sadness). Then Scully gives him some lab results concerning the analysis of the last cloth heart. It was determined that the dye on the fabric was manufactured between 1969 and 1974 so deductive reasoning would say it's to early for it have been Samantha. She says they'll find that last little victim, whoever she may be and Mulder asks how. Scully doesn't know that but she does know Mulder, and right now he needs sleep. Mulder finally smiles and even laughs a bit, possibly out of sheer exhaustion. Scully smiles back and Mulder leans over to grab Scully around her waist and rest his head on her stomach. She looks sad and strokes his hair before pulling away and leaving him alone once again. Ten points to each of them for making me “aww” both in shippy glee and in sadness for the two. I don't know what their final point tally is but I do know that Mulder still isn't over the last cloth heart; his smile disappears when Scully leaves and even though he puts the cloth heart into a desk drawer, he has a haunted look on his face that gets me right in the angsty mood for the next episode recap: Memento Mori...