Because he's helpful like that, Shifty drives Doggett over to Paul and Marie Hangemuhl's place. In the time-honored way of vague law enforcement officers everywhere, Doggett announces that he'd like to ask Paul and Marie "some questions." Paul gets all shirty, and calls Marie over. She looks -- to put it bluntly -- like shit. Doggett outlines the Mulder/Hangemuhl case, just in case the Hangemuhls forgot what happened that one time the guy from the FBI visited them and shot something in their living room. "This again?" Paul's peeved that this case hasn't been dropped yet, but simmers down when Shifty explains that Doggett's far more interested in Mulder than he is in their little paranormal problems. Paul's like, never mind, then. Doggett settles in for a nice, long interrogation, and wonders what Paul and Mulder talked about.

We whoosh into flashback mode, which is primarily marked by a lighting change -- everything looks a little more golden. Because these memories? They're golden. They light the corners of my mind. Perched on the same sofa that Doggett currently occupies, Mulder rubs his temples vigorously -- because, you know, his brain is falling out, or something. "You told your sister you were going to disappear, Mrs. Hangemuhl. Tonight." He looks up wearily and squints. Because his brain hurts. "'Leave,' not 'disappear,'" Paul corrects him. "I'm talking to your wife!" Mulder reminds him. "It's what he said," Marie mutters, following party line. She fabricates some half-assed explanation as to why she said anything to her sister at all. "There's no crime here," Paul huffily interrupts. Mulder ignores him, and hypothesizes that Marie wasn't going anywhere, but that someone was coming to get her. "And still is," he concludes. Tight close-up on Paul. "We had a fight. We patched things up. That was the end of it," he spits.

They patched something up, Doggett seems to be thinking, as he spies what look like bullet holes in the Hangemuhls' living room wall. He barks that Mulder visited them on Saturday, May 6th. Marie and her stringy hair and under-eye circles guesses so. Marie, concealer is your friend. "Did you see Mooooolder again?" Doggett wonders. The Hangemuhls exchange guilty looks, and swiftly whoosh to a flashback of the gunshots. "No," Paul lies, "he never came back." Doggett informs Paul and Marie that Mulder's cell records prove otherwise. They look at their toes. Noting a dialysis machine in the corner of the room, Doggett butts into the Hangemuhs' personal physical problems, and asks about it. Paul solemnly informs him that Marie is in end-stage renal failure and a very sick woman. She looks away, as Doggett nods sympathetically. He asks her about the "thing" that Mulder thought was coming after her. "I just told my sister I was afraid of the stories. I didn't mean --" Paul interrupts his wife to ask Doggett whether Mulder was "sick in the head." Doggett looks grim, no doubt thinking about Mulder's rotting brain, and the fact that he was, in fact, literally sick in the head. Allegedly. Ah, irony. "What stories?" Doggett wonders. "An Indian folk legend about a creature that lives in the woods," Paul explains. Oh, that one. Paul informs Doggett that Marie talked herself into thinking that that the creature was going to eat her. "Eat her?" Doggett furrows his brow. "Alive," Paul elaborates calmly.