MULDER: So you didn't get a description of who the kid saw?

DET. LAZARD: I'm telling you, there was no one else. Listen. The department is treating this as a suicide, but I gotta tell you. I knew this guy. There's no way he did himself.

SCULLY: Was he depressed or under psychiatric care of any kind?

DET. LAZARD: No. Only time he ever looked at himself was in the mirror. And he always liked what he saw.

MULDER: Plus jumpers tend to open the window before they jump.

MULDER: ... and check for burns or lesions on Barbala's body.

SCULLY: Why?

MULDER: Psychokinesis is usually associated with an electrical charge.

SCULLY: Are you saying Michelle possesses the ability to psychically project her own will?

MULDER: How else could a 60-pound kid throw a 200-pound detective out the window?

DR. BRAUN: I'm afraid Michelle's diagnosis is not quite that simple. You see, my primary challenge has been to discover the source of her extreme rage. In most cases, it's a traumatic event in the patient's past.

MULDER: And in Michelle's case?

DR. BRAUN: Occasionally, I would leave Michelle alone for part of our session - with this doll. Each time a new doll, anatomically intact. And each time, she dismembers and disfigures it in exactly the same way. First I thought she was being abused, but after a number of sessions with her parents, I became convinced that there was something else behind Michelle's anxiety. Something much deeper, much more elusive.

DET. LAZARD: Excuse me. Could I talk to you for a second?

SCULLY: I just started the autopsy.

DET. LAZARD: Yeah. Um, I don't think he's going anywhere.

SCULLY: Looks like a match.

DET. LAZARD: Yeah. Name's Charlie Morris. Officer Charlie Morris. Used to work narcotics out at the two-seven.

SCULLY: Do you know him?

DET. LAZARD: No. Before my time.

SCULLY: Where is he now? Has he been transferred?

DET. LAZARD: You could say that. Agent Scully, this guy's been dead for nine years. Which means that little girl saw... a ghost.

MULDER: Why is it still so hard for you to believe, even when all the evidence suggests extraordinary phenomena?

SCULLY: Because sometimes ...

MULDER: What?

SCULLY: ... looking for extreme possibilities makes you blind to the probable explanation right in front of you.

MULDER: You have the police report describing Morris' death?

SCULLY: Yeah, I have what's been declassified. Why?

MULDER: Does it describe how he was murdered?

SCULLY: Yes, I told you. It was a signature hit.

MULDER: Give me the grisly details.

SCULLY: His arm was severed just below the shoulder, presumably by a chainsaw, and his right eye was gouged out.

MULDER: This is what Michelle did to a dozen dolls in her shrink's office. Hell of a coincidence, wouldn't you say?

DET. FIORE: Best we can figure, it was some kind of payback.

MULDER: For what?

DET. FIORE: Well, around that time, the organized crime division was doing a major sweep in Chinatown.

MULDER: The Triads.

DET. FIORE: Yeah. Some very heavy busts went down against the Woo Shing Woo. A lot of smack never made it to the street. You can bet there were some pretty pissed off people playing mahjong that week.

MULDER: So you think that Charlie Morris was killed as a warning to back off?

DET. FIORE: I think they picked a cop - any cop - and they whacked him.

MULDER: Michelle is eight years old, that means that she was conceived at roughly the same time that Officer Morris was killed.

SCULLY: Do me a favor, Mulder. Let me say it. Reincarnation.

MULDER: Metempsychosis, transmigration, reimbodiment, call it what you will.

SCULLY: All based on the coincidence that Michelle Bishop and Officer Morris both practice the obscure art of paper folding?

MULDER: Well, what about the composite drawing and the dolls and the fact that Michelle was witness to two deaths that can be tied to Charlie Morris?

SCULLY: So what, you think he's back like Peter Proud to avenge his murder?

MULDER: It's not so far-fetched, Scully. Reincarnation is a basic tenet of many major religions.

SCULLY: That still doesn't explain how an eight-year-old girl can kill two grown men.

MULDER: Well, individuals with strong past-life memories often exhibit enhanced psychic abilities - ESP, telekinesis.

SCULLY: So where does that leave us?

MULDER: One short step away from proving the pre-existence of the human soul.

MULDER: All evidence suggests that Michelle Bishop IS Charlie Morris.

SCULLY: Mulder ...

MULDER: Short of her growing a moustache, how much more apparent does it have to become for you to accept it?

SCULLY: OK. Let's just say that, by some small miracle, you manage to convince Michelle's mother, and the next hypno-regression provides you with everything you could possible hope for. No grand jury is gonna listen to that kind of testimony. We still will not have an actionable case.

MULDER: (voice-over) The inconclusive results of Michelle's past life regression do not shake my basic belief in hypnosis as a tool for psychological healing. Whether or not it offers us definitive proof of previous lifetimes is another matter. However, in this particular case, all other explanations seem to be even more wanting.

MULDER: There was a documented case in the early seventies of a man from Porlock, Ohio, who could influence undeveloped film. He could create shapes on the negative from his mind.

SCULLY: Pathologists are paranoid by nature.

SCULLY: Apparently, Charlie Morris did not die as a result of his wounds. Says here there's a frothing of fluid in the respiratory tract. That indicates death by drowning.

MULDER: So you're saying he was drowned first and then mutilated to make it look like a signature execution?

DET. LAZARD: Dr. Yamaguchi said on the phone that there were no signs of submersion such as goose skin or wrinkled flesh except for around the face and head.

SCULLY: Um-hmm. That's right. Suggesting that he was killed in either a bathtub or a toilet. Except ...

MULDER: Except for what?

SCULLY: The marked bradycardia. That indicates a raised plasma sodium level. He was killed in sea water.

MULDER: (voice-over) Closing entry, file number X-40271. Detective Anthony Fiore pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court to charges of first-degree murder after the fact, grand larceny and obstruction of justice. The deaths of Detective Rudy Barbala and former police officer Leon Felder are being ruled as accidental, although their complicity in the murder of Officer Charlie Morris has been definitively established. No charges were brought against Michelle Bishop, who today took her first swimming lesson. She claims no memory of the preceding events and both her mother and Dr. Braun have denied my request for a second past-life regression. End of field journal, April 19, 1994. Agents of record: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Status: unexplained.