episode by Glen Morgan and James Wong
summary by Pellinor
Internal dating: This episode starts shortly after Christmas, as Scully's father asks her if she's intending to keep the Christmas tree up all year. This tends to suggest that it's some time since Christmas - long enough for him to think she should have taken the decorations down by now. There are no signs of Chistmas anywhere else in the episode.
Just after Christmas, Scully's parents are about to leave after visiting her. "Good sailing, Ahab," she says, saluting her father. He calls her Starbuck and hugs her, exchanging a look with Scully's mother, Maggie, as he does so. "How's work? Good?" he asks. "Good," she says, smiling.
Late that night, Scully is dozing on the couch when she sees her father sitting in the chair mouthing silently at her. Then the phone rings. It's her mother, saying her father's dead of a heart attack.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, a young couple in a car are attacked by someone pretending to be a police officer.
Scully arrives at the office to find Mulder poring over a file. She tries to joke, saying "last time I saw you that engrossed you were reading Adult Video News," but he's serious. "How are you, Dana?" he asks. She says she's fine, and asks about the case.
He tells her about the kidnapped couple, and how the same time last year the same happened, and one week later they were both found dead. He also tells her about Luther Lee Boggs, due to be executed in a week. Boggs claims to have information on the students' whereabouts, and wants to have his sentence commuted in return for helping, using his psychic skills. "Mulder, do I detect a hint of scepticism?" Mulder says that his profile helped get Boggs the death sentence. He was nearly executed once before but it was stopped right at the last minute. He claims that this experience gave him psychic powers. Mulder believes Boggs is manipulating the whole thing from prison. "Boggs kills because he likes it," he says. Boggs has read Mulder's profile and wants to see him, saying he's the only one who understands him.
Scully says she'll go with him, after her father's funeral at noon. "I think you should take some time," Mulder says. "I need to work," she replies. He touches her face, then leaves. She goes to the filing cabinet and takes out the X-File on visions of the dad, then puts it away unread.
Scully's father has a simple burial, his ashes sprinkled in the sea. "Beyond the Sea," the song played as he stepped off ship returning from the Cuban blockade, when he proposed to Maggie. Scully says she knows he was disappointed in her career choice but she needs to know if he was proud of her. "He was your father," Maggie says.
In Raleigh, Mulder and Scully visit Boggs in prison. He has "Kiss" and "Kill" tattooed on his hands. "Dead, living - all souls are connected," he says. "From here we can return to the past, we can see the present, we can know the future." Mulder asks him where he is, where "here" is, but he says he needs a deal first. Mulder says he has to prove himself first, and gives him a piece of cloth in an evidence bag. "Don't get me wrong, Luther. I want to believe," he says. Boggs takes the cloth and gets really emotional, talking of pain and torture. The students are being beaten with coathangers, he says, then he describes a condemned warehouse, with a stone angel and a waterfall that isn't water. When he finishes his performance, Mulder tells him the cloth was from his New York Knicks T-shirt and turns to go.
As Scully prepares to follow, Boggs starts singing "Beyond the Sea" and for a moment has the face of her father. "Did you get my message, Starbuck?" he asks. Scully hurries from the room, but doesn't tell Mulder what has happened, saying just that she's still upset about her father. He suggests she go back to the hotel, saying they've exposed him as fraud and there's no need to stay. Mulder looks anxiously after Scully as she leaves.
As Scully drives home she sees a waterfall in lights at Hotel Niagara and a stone angel, and follows them to a deserted warehouse. Inside she finds a still-burning candle, coathangers on the floor and a charm bracelet.
At the hotel, Scully sits staring at an empty chair, briefly seeing her father sitting there. Mulder knocks at the door, and she puts the chair away as he comes in. Mulder says he's been with Boggs for 5 hours, but Scully then interrupts to tell him she lied to the police about how she found the warehouse. She'd told them it was because of suspicious activity, but actually it was because it was where Boggs said it would be. Mulder's angry, saying Boggs could have been setting her up and she could have been killed. He's also angry that she lied. "You didn't want to go on record admitting that you believed in Boggs," he says. "The Bureau would expect something like that from Spooky Mulder, but not Dana Scully." "I thought that you'd be pleased that I'd opened myself to extreme possibilities," she says. "Why now, after all we've seen?" he asks. "Why Boggs?" She's silent. He sits down, not looking angry any more, and asks if it's something to do with her father. Although she shakes her head, he says that he knows her father opposed her going into the FBI. "If being on a job now makes you feel guilty, or uncomfortable, or uneasy, I think you should back away, because it's clouding your judgement. You're putting yourself in danger." "I love this job," she says. "You love your father," he says, quietly, and her eyes fill with tears. Mulder moves as if to comfort her, but she turns her back. "Dana," he says. "Open yourself up to extreme possibilities only when they're the truth."
Mulder then says Boggs is working with someone on the outside and is 5 steps ahead of them and they have to be very clever to catch him. Scully is therefore surprised the next day when Mulder shows her a newspaper reporting that the missing students have been found, but he says it's a trick to try to catch Boggs. They hope that when he reads it he will call his accomplice to ask what has happened.
As Boggs gets his weekly phonecall, they watch him on camera, but it's Mulder that Boggs calls. "How come you don't believe me?" Boggs asks. "Agent Scully does. She believes me." Scully says that even if he is setting them up they have to follow him as he's their only link to the missing students. "We have to deal," she says.
Boggs describes the kidnapper, as the camera shows him beating his prisoners. He tells them he's in a boathouse by the dock. As they leave, he tells Mulder not to go near the white cross. "We see you down, and your blood spills on the white cross," he says, Mulder doesn't look too worried, but Scully looks anxious.
An FBI team raid the boathouse and find only the girl. As Scully tends to her, the others sweep the dock. Mulder sees movement in a covered boat and shouts at it, but is felled by a single gunshot. Scully rushes over the look after him, then looks up and sees his blood splattered on a cross made by two white wooden dock supports.
Mulder is rushed to hospital. He's been shot in the thigh, and seems to have trouble breathing and requires urgent attention. Scully stands by anxiously, shutting her eyes.
Liz Hawley, the kidnapped girl, identifies her kidnapper as Lucas Henry. His mother and high-school sweetheart were killed in a car accident, which he witnessed, and he's now killing people on the exact anniversary of that event. He's also almost certainly Boggs' accomplice on Boggs' last murders.
Scully storms into Boggs' cell. "You set us up," she tells him, her voice rising throughout her speech. "You're in one this with Lucas Henry. This was a trap for Mulder because he helped put you away. Well, I came here to tell you that if he dies because of what you've done, four days from now no-body will stop me being the one that will throw the switch and gas you out of this life for good, you son of a bitch!" Boggs then seems to have Mulder's face. "You're the one that believed me," he says. She covers her ears. "No! I do not believe you!" she shouts, close to tears. He then relates one of her own memories, of sneaking down at night and smoking, being really excited about doing something she wasn't supposed to do. She says it could be a moment from anyone's life. He says he knows who she wants to talk to. "Why don't you go ahead and ask me?" he says. "I'll believe you," she says, crying. "If you let me... talk to him." "Starbuck," he says, then refuses to say any more till he gets a deal.
Boggs then tells her about going to the gas chamber the first time, as the camera shows what he describes. He saw his family, who he killed, watching him as he was about to die. He felt himself leave his body and saw a cold dark place. "Mulder's looking in on it right now," he says. "It may be a cold dark place for you," she says, "but it's not for Mulder, and it's not for my father." "I'm sure he'd like to tell you himself," he says, "but I'm not going to let him. Nobody speaks until you get me a deal." She says she doesn't believe him, but he says he knows she does. Unless she does what he wants, "that boy goes to that cold dark place."
Scully talks to the prison governor and is told that there will be no deal.
Scully visits Mulder in intensive care, and tells him they're running out of time. He urges her not to make a deal. The whole thing was to get at him for writing the profile, and she'd be the next best thing. "I never thought I'd say this, but what if there's another explanation?" she says, but he repeats that she mustn't deal.
Scully tells Boggs there is a deal and he tells her the boy's in the Blue Devil Brewery and will be killed soon. "Luther, if you really were psychic," Scully begins. "I know you lied. There never was a deal. But I know you tried," he says. He warns her not to follow past the devil.
The FBI raid the brewery and rescue the boy. Lucas Henry runs away and Scully chases him, but when he runs past a painted devil on the wall she stops, remembering Boggs' warning, and watches as he falls through the floor and is killed.
Scully visits Boggs one last time and says simply, "I believe." She thanks him for saving her as well as they boy. He says he'll tell her her father's message if she comes to watch his execution.
Boggs sees again the visions of his family, and is taken to the gas chamber and executed. Scully isn't there.
In the hospital, Scully is trying to convince herself that it's not true - that Boggs found out everything about her by research before she even got there, and that most naval couples would have "Beyond the Sea" as their special song. "Dana," Mulder asks. "After all you've seen - after all the evidence - why can't you believe?" "I'm afraid," she admits. "I'm afraid to believe." He then asks why she couldn't face that fear, even if it meant finding out her father's message. She says she already knows what the message was, because "he was my father."