SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

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Back at the park, Mulder explains how his dreams led him right to the little girl's body. The team's still digging, and still not fast enough for Mulder, who snaps on the latex and impatiently scrapes the dirt away from the child's chest. He knows the killer's M.O.: "She was strangled. He used an eight-gauge electrical cord. He took something from the body post-mortem, a trophy: a piece of fabric cut from her clothes in the shape of a heart….John Lee Roche. He killed 13 eight-to-ten-year-old girls." In the mud we can see the cutout, now. "This makes fourteen," Mulder says grimly.

LBO. Mulder presents Roche's file to Scully and coughs up a truly humongous wad of exposition on Roche's case: ten victims found by 1990, the earliest from 1979, all abducted from their homes. Scully flips through the sad, sad, snapshots and dorky-sweet school photos of the little girls. Mulder explains that Reggie Purdue (aww, Reggie!) brought him into the case to profile Roche—a vacuum cleaner salesman who traveled the East coast, pitching his wares and simultaneously staking out his victims in their own living rooms. "VICAP named the case 'Paper Hearts' because of the trophies the killer took," Mulder says. Which…I don't get, actually. There's no paper involved! I suppose "Flame-Retardant Poly-Blend Fabric Hearts" doesn't roll as nicely off the tongue. Whatever. It's also not like we can call Reggie and ask him, Mulder. No, no, sorry…you 're feeling bad enough already.

They got Roche to confess to 13 murders, but they'd never found his trophies, the hearts. It's bothered Mulder since—did they really add up to 13? "I guess they didn't," he notes sadly. Scully has a theory, namely that Mulder's kept this case in his head for so long that he sorted out the fourteenth victim in his sleep. "You said it yourself once…that a dream is an answer to a question we haven't learned how to ask. You did good work, Mulder. Let's identify this girl so we can put her to rest." Mulder's not comforted.

Autopsy bay. Mulder suffers mutely, sitting next to the tiny, tiny skeleton on the table. The little girl's filthy pajamas lie beside her bones; stitched to the front is a handmade pocket embroidered with a dollar sign. Scully enters with the I.D.: Addie Sparks, missing from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania in June, 1975. Mulder knows that's not good: Roche started way before they thought he did. With trepidation, Scully wonders if Mulder's up to verifying the child's identity with her folks. He thinks so, yes.

Norristown, Pennsylvania. Nice neighborhood, beautiful day; we can hear kids playing, out of sight. Mulder and Scully knock, and one Frank Sparks opens the door. Scully identifies herself and her partner, and Mr. Sparks freezes: he knows why they're there.

Inside, he takes the dirty scrap of fabric from an evidence bag. "This was for the Tooth Fairy," he says of the little pocket, fighting back tears. This actor does a tremendous job, here—this man is plainly still shattered, twenty-odd years later. Addie's mother has passed away, never knowing the fate of her little girl. "You do this full time, telling people this kind of news?" Mr. Sparks asks. No, Scully tries to assure him. "It's not a good job," Mulder notes. We all know he's talking to himself. Bad dog, no biscuit.

"I used to think…that missing was worse than dead because…you never knew what happened," Mr. Sparks chokes out. "But now that I know…I'm glad my wife's not here. She got luckier." The camera closes in, slowly, tight on Mulder's miserable face. "How many more people like me are you going to visit today?" Mr. Sparks knife-twists. "Were there other victims you didn't know about?"