“Aubrey” is episode twelve of season two of The X-Files.
Two detectives are talking in the police headquarters in Aubrey, Missouri, about a new case. One, Lt. Tilman, goes into his office. A female detective follows him, and asks for a moment. He says he’s working a homicide, but agrees. Before they can talk, the coroner interrupts with a call. The woman writes ‘I’m pregnant’ on a piece of paper and hands it to Tilman. A photo on his desk shows that she isn’t his wife. He gives her an address to meet at 10 o’clock to talk.
The woman is at the address, Motel Black, when her visions blurs and she hears voices. She sees the headlights from a vehicle, an old pickup truck. The pickup drives out into the fields, and the driver digs a grave and dumps the body of a man in it. The detective then digs in the same area and uncovers a skeleton. One with an FBI badge.
Mulder is looking at two sets of dental X-rays when Scully enters. He asks if she thinks they are from the same person. She does. The teeth belong to FBI Special Agent Sam Chenny. Scully recognises the name. Mulder says he was a legend. Forty years before profiling violent crimes existed, Chenny and his partner were investigating what were then called ‘stranger killings’ and now serial murders on their own times. They disappeared in 1942 whilst investigating 3 murders in Aubrey. A local detective, BJ Morrow, uncovered Chenny’s body. Mulder is curious as to why Morrow would drive her car into a huge field and manage to dig up bones missing for 50 years.
At the crime scene, Morrow tells Mulder and Scully that she saw a dog digging. Her initial police report stated that she couldn’t explain her actions but she claims she was shocked. She was out at that time because her car suffered engine failure, pointing out where it was. So, she saw a dog digging in a field from 4-500 yards away. At night. Tilman claims she was looking for a phone. No, Mulder doesn’t suspect her. He does ask if she has had any clairvoyant experiences or dreams. She doesn’t reply but seems a little shocked.
Scully is examining the bones and Mulder recounts the cased from the forties. The victims were young woman aged 25-30; the killer disabled them with a blow to the head, carved the word ‘SISTER’ on their chest then painted the same on a wall in their blood. The killer was never found. Chenny’s body has cuts to the ribs that could have come from a razon. She wants to send images to the FBI. Mulder mentions Morrow and what she was doing there; Scully says it’s an ideal meeting place, because it’s obvious she and Tilman are having an affair.
With the images returned from the FBI, they are trying to match the nicks on the bones to those of the original victims. ‘SISTER’ is not a match. Morrow arrives and asks if there’s been any progress. She has a brief vision, then heads to the bathroom. Scully joins her, mentioning interoffice relationships and that Morrow is pregnant. Morrow has been having nightmares. A hose, with a hurt woman and a man reflected in the mirror. There’s a lot of blood.
Mulder is still working with new letters when Scully and Morrow return. Morrow looks at the bones, and suggests the word ‘BROTHER’. Which is a decent match, and logical too. Tilman enters, sees a file and demands to know where they got it, because it’s from a homicide from 3 days ago. He’s told it isn’t; it’s from a case in 1942. Tilman checks the date on the file, and tells them that three days ago, a young woman was killed with the word ‘SISTER’ carved into her chest and painted on a wall in her blood. Then another detective enters and says they have another one. This woman is in a dry swimming pool and, when her face is uncovered, Morrow recognises her from her nightmare.
She talks to Mulder and Scully about the dream. There was a man with a rash on his face and a strange picture on the wall, of something like the Washington Monument with a circle beside it. She draws a crude sketch and Mulder says it could be the Trylon and Perisphere, the symbol of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Later, Morrow is looking through mugshots from the forties and finds the man from her dream.
The man is Harry Cokely, who has recently been released from prison. He was convicted of rape and attempted murder in 1945, when he carved ‘SISTER’ onto his intended victim’s chest. No connection was made at the time to the Aubrey murders. He’s currently their prime suspect for the recent ones, but he’s also 77 and chained to an oxygen tank. Which makes it a bit unlikely he could be doing them. The prime suspect is not promising. Plus, Morrow is having more visions, and worse, happening to her. And why is she having the visions in the first place?