The X-Files : Squeeeze by Ellen Steiber 1/37 Contents Chapter One: Working Late.........................................................................3 Chapter Two: The Fingerprint..................................................................... 5 Chapter Three: A Profile of the Killer......................................................... 8 Chapter Four: The Lie-Detector Test.........................................................11 Chapter Five: Another Victim....................................................................14 Chapter Six: The Nest................................................................................ 20 Chapter Seven: Scully in Danger............................................................... 25 Chapter Eight: The Hunt............................................................................ 29 Chapter Nine: The Fight.............................................................................32 Chapter Ten: Squeeze................................................................................ 36 2/37 Chapter One: Working Late At seven thirty p.m. the Baltimore sky was striped with a bloodred sunset. Hundreds of workers crowded the streets, hurrying to get home. On the contrary George Usher, a middle-aged businessman, was returning to his office for a long evening of work. When Usher left the elevator on the fifteenth floor of his office building, he looked at the long, silent hallways, lit with Exit signs that shone in the dark. The office felt different at night. Usher reminded himself, Nobody can get in unless they work here. He walked into his office, turned on the light, and dialled a number on his phone. An answering machine clicked on and his wife's voice asked callers to leave a message after the beep. "Hello, darling," he said. "It's about seven thirty and it looks like. I'll be here for a while. Call me back. I love you. Bye." After hanging up, Usher looked at the dark hallway outside his office. Suddenly he felt an odd tremor: it was fear! He thought that a cup of coffee would help him, so he headed for① the coffee machine. A tiny noise broke the silence the moment he left his office. High on the wall, the cover of an air vent② began to move slowly. The two screws ③holding the vent in place started to turn. First the right. Then the left. Then, ① headed for：朝着...走去。 ② air vent：通气口。 ③ screws：螺丝钉。 3/37 very slowly, long, skinny① fingertips② came out from inside the vent, pushing the cover to one side. When Usher came back with his coffee, he stopped outside his office door; he was sure that he'd left the light on inside. He went in and tried to switch on the lamp on his desk. Then, all of a sudden, the door slammed shut with an unearthly③ force. And Usher suddenly realised that he wasn't alone. Frantically④ he reached for the door. He got hold of the knob⑤ and tried to open it. But someone or something had hold of him. Usher fought in the stranger's grasp and slipped free⑥. He rolled across the desk only to feel powerful hands lock around his throat. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't make a sound as his body was raised into the air with inhuman strength. For a moment the hands left his throat and his desperate scream rang through the office as his body slammed into the door with enough force to splinter⑦ it. And then there was only silence. An hour later Usher's office was a mess⑧ and the carpet was drenched⑨ with blood. Directly above Usher's body, one of the screws in the cover of the air vent began to turn. Something inside the vent was screwing the cover back into the wall. Slowly. Victoriously. ① skinny：很瘦的。 ② fingertips：指尖。 ③ unearthly：可怕的。 ④ frantically：狂乱的。 ⑤ knob：圆形把手。 ⑥ slipped free：挣脱。 ⑦ splinter: 使裂成碎片。 ⑧ a mess：一片混乱。 ⑨ drenched：浸透。 4/37 Chapter Two: The Fingerprint Scully was having lunch with Tom Colton, an old friend from the F.B.I. training academy, who worked for the Violent Crimes Section. He was telling her about a strange case: three murders over the last six weeks victims varying in age, gender① andrace,andnoknownconnectionsto each other. The only thing in common was the lack of entry. "One victim," Colton said, "was a college girl. She was killed in her room and when she was found, the windows wore locked and the door was chained② from the inside. The last incident was two days ago in a high- security office building. It was evening and everybody had gone home. The guy parked in the garage and took the elevator to the fifteenth floor. No one else came into the building. The guy never came out." "Could they be suicides?" asked Scully. Colton shook his head and handed Scully a photograph. "All the victims' livers have been removed - without tools." "This sounds like an X-file," said Scully. An "X-file" was what the F.B.I. called a case that involved strange happenings and unexplained phenomena. "Well, I don't know about that but I'd like you to look at the case histories and see the crime scene." When Scully went to Usher's office, Mulder was already there. The office was a mess and blood was splattered③ everywhere. "Morning," Mulder said to Scully. Fox Mulder looked incredibly young for an agent with so much ① gender：性别。 ② chained：用链子拴住。 ③ splattered：泼溅。 5/37 experience. He was a tall, thin man who wore his hair unusually long for an F.B.I. agent. Scully thought there was something a little deceptive① about Mulder's appearance. He appeared so innocent, almost boyish, until you looked into his clear hazel② eyes. That was when you realised that Fox Mulder had seen more than most people. And it had cost him. Mulder was concentrating on something shining on the carpet: he recognised some tiny metal filings③. Using tweezers④, Mulder lifted a filing and thought for a second, then looked up. High above on the wall was the metal grille⑤ that covered the office's air vent. He stood up and went to his forensic kit⑥. He took the fingerprint powder⑦, tape and brush. Then he began to powder the area surrounding the vent. A long, thin print was emerging, bit by bit. It had some of the qualities of a human fingerprint, but it was certainly not human. Mulder was sure that he'd seen those prints before. Some time later, in the basement of F.B.I. headquarters, Scully focused her attention on some slides⑧ that Mulder was showing her. There were six and each of them showed an elongated⑨ fingerprint. The prints were too longandthintobehuman. Mulder pointed to one of the slides. "This is the print I took yesterday ① deceptive：靠不住。 ② hazel：黄褐色。 ③ filings：挫屑。 ④ tweezers：镊子。 ⑤ grille：铁栅。 ⑥ forensic kit：（用以搜集犯罪证据的）整套法医工具。 ⑦ fingerprint powder：指纹粉。 ⑧ slides：幻灯片。 ⑨ elongated：拉长的。 6/37 from Usher's office," he said. "All the others are from the X-files." "How many murders are we talking about?" Scully asked. "Eleven, counting Usher," Mulder replied. "Ten murders before him. All in the Baltimore area. No point of entrance in any of them. Each victim was murdered the same way. These prints are from five of those other ten crime scenes." "Ten other murders?" Scully still couldn't believe it. Then Mulder pointed to three of the slides. "These three prints were lifted in 1963, and these two were taken in 1933." Scully's eyes widened①. "You're saying the same murderer was fit' work thirty years ago and sixty years ago?" "And ninety," Mulder said. "Unfortunately, we don't have prints for that one. Fingerprinting wasn't too common in 1903. And police records weren't very complete. But there was at least one similar murder at that time." "Of course," Scully said sarcastically②. She thought, If you leave it to Mulder, he'll come up with an absolutely unbelievable case history. Mulder ignored her tone and added: "Five murders, every thirty years. Thatmeanshe'sgottwomoretogothisyear." Scully stood up and turned away from her partner. There must be a more rational explanation, she told herself. She was a scientist, a doctor. There was no way she could believe I his. ① widened：睁大。 ② sarcastically：嘲讽的。 7/37 Chapter Three: A Profile of the Killer At 10:00 p.m. Scully was in her apartment with her eyes fixed on the computer screen. Her notes from the case were on her desk. She'd read through Mulder's X-files and now she was writing a profile of the killer. Once again she carefully thought about Mulder's theory. And then she went ahead with her own. "After a careful review of the violent nature of these murders," she wrote, "I believe the killer to be a male, twenty-five to thirty¬ five years old. He has above-average intelligence. His method of entry has so far been undetermined. This may be due to his great knowledge of the internal structure of buildings and ducts①." Scully studied the slide of the elongated fingerprint. Then she put it down, feeling puzzled②.She couldn't explain the odd print; instead, she dealt with anotheraspectofthemurder. "The removal of the liver is the most important detail of these crimes. The liver possesses restorative ③qualities. It purifies④ the blood." The next morning Scully presented her report to Colton and other agents at the Violent Crimes Section. "The taking of the liver may allow the killer to believe he's cleaning himself of his own impurities," she said. "I think he's acting under the classic form of obsessive-compulsive⑤ behavior." "since the victims are unrelated," she continued, "we can't predict who ① ducts：管道。 ② puzzled：困惑。 ③ restorative：起恢复作用的。 ④ purifies：净化。 ⑤ obsessive-compulsive：强迫性神经症的。 8/37 will be next. But we can use the fact that when serial killers don't succeed in finding a victim, they sometimes return to the site of the previous murder to recapture the emotional high①. So I think we should target② those sites where he's already killed." The stakeouts③ of the murder sites began that night.