“Squeeze” is episode three of season one of The X-Files.
The episode opens in Baltimore, Maryland, and a man leaves a restaurant. Human eyes watch him, through a nearby sewer grate. The man enters a car and drives to a building. There, he uses the lift to go to an office suite. After he has left, the lift doors open, revealing no lift but the cables are shaking. In his office, the man makes a phone call, leaving a message that he is going to be there for a while. He heads to get a coffee. The screws in an air vent, one far too small for anything human to be behind it, start unscrewing. Then a human hand reaches out of the now-open vent. The man returns to his office and the door slams behind him. There is a struggle, and he is left, dead. The vent shuts again and the screws are fastened again from the inside.
In Washington, Scully is having a mean with a former classmate from the academy, Tom Colton. Colton makes a remark about Mulder; she tells him that he’s a great agent. Colton has a case that’s a bit out there, Baltimore PD called them in on a serial killer. Several victims over the past few weeks. Nothing to connect the victims by type. The pattern is the point of entry, or, rather, the lack of one. A college girl in a cinderblock dorm room which the windows locked and door chained from the inside. The last was a man in a high security office building. Nothing out of the ordinary was seen or heard. Scully asks about suicide. Each victim had their liver ripped out, and not using any cutting tools. Colton would like Scully to go over the case histories. Sure, she can ask Mulder, but only if he knows he’s being done a favour and it’s Colton’s case.
At the office of the dead man, George Usher, Mulder asks why they didn’t speak to him directly. Because they are Scully’s friends from the academy and Mulder makes people uncomfortable. Because of his reputation. Mulder asks if he has a reputation.
Colton makes a remark about little green men. Mulder corrects him; the Reticulian skin tone is grey. They are notorious for their extraction of human livers, due to iron depletion in the Reticulum galaxy. Colton asks Mulder if he is serious. Mulder responds with a comment about the price of liver and onions on Reticulum. So, probably not serious. Mulder finds a metal shaving, which leads him to the air vent. Which Colton states is far too small. Mulder still finds a fingerprint on it.
Mulder, back at the office, tells her that there are other cases in the X-Files, ten murders in the Baltimore area with an undetermined point of entry and each victim had a liver removed. Colton was probably unaware the cases even existed, because they were in the 1930s and 1960s. With one case dating back to 1903. Scully suggests a copycat, but Mulder reminds her that each fingerprint is unique, and those in the files match the one Mulder just took. No, Mulder doesn’t think it’s aliens. As Colton doesn’t really want Mulder involved, he suggests running separate investigations.
Scully gives a presentation to Colton’s people. She suggests that the liver is taken from an obsessive-compulsive need, and that the killer may return to the site of a previous murder. The decision is made to stake out the locations and Scully gets Usher’s office building. She hears a noise, which turns out to be Mulder, who tells her that the killer isn’t coming back. Then she hears a noise from the air vents and calls for backup. A man is got to climb out of the vents, and Mulder tells Scully she was right.
The man, Eugene Victor Tooms, is given a polygraph, which he passes with flying colours. Except for a couple of questions Mulder had thrown in about older cases. Mulder says it is the guy; no-one else believes him. Colton tells Scully that Mulder isn’t out there; he’s insane. Mulder tells Scully that sometimes he just likes messing with people’s heads. She thinks he has more. Indeed, he does. If Tooms’ prints are distorted, they match the one from the office and the old cases.
Another murder is committed, and Colton is getting increasingly annoyed with Mulder’s presence, and with Scully for backing him up, asking whose side she’s on. The victims. Tooms is the killer, and he’s able to distort his body somehow, his eyes changing colour when he does. Mulder and Scully meet a former member of law enforcement, who also believes Tooms is not what he seems. He has evidence to back this up. Scully suggests that perhaps it’s a family of serial killers, passing the method down from father to son. Mulder does not.