“Unruhe” is episode four of season four of The X-Files.
The episode opens in Traverse City, Michigan, and a man and a woman stop outside a drug store. The woman is going in to get a passport photo. The man tells they are on a schedule. A police car drives past, which makes him nervous. He’s going to park around the back and she steps out into the rain.
Inside, she chats to the druggist as someone in a yellow rain slicker enters. He takes a Polaroid photo and tells her it will be a couple of minutes; she’s left her money in the car. She pops out and the other customer leaves too. The person in the clicker barges into the woman and she exclaims in pain. Then starts to stagger. She gets to the car and sees her boyfriend inside, dead, bleeding from his ear. She collapses to the ground and a car pulls up and the person in the clicker gets out. The druggist takes a look at the developed photo and sees the woman screaming and reaching out.
Mulder shows the photograph to Scully. There’s been no contact from the abductor and it’s 3 days since the woman, Mary Lefante, went missing. The boyfriend was killed by a long needle stuck in his ear. Scully assumes the photograph was taken by the person who kidnapped Lefante. Mulder tells her it was taken before the abduction, a passport photo. The druggist was the last person to see her and took the photo as normal. He came forward after the abduction. Scully thinks it’s obvious the druggist was involved.
It’s less obvious when they see him. Scully asks to see where the camera was kept and says the film was out of date. No, it’s not against the law; just an observation. It was also over a heater. Scully agrees that the druggist does not stand out as a suspect. She thinks heat damage made the film’s emulsion melt. Mulder asks if that made it look like she was posing for a passport screaming. Scully has more reasons, none of which truly add up. Mulder isn’t sure he has a theory yet. One of the local police enters and apologises; they may have wasted their time.
At the house of Lefante and her boyfriend, there are lots of police present. And a U.S. Postal Inspector. Lefante worked at the post office and credit cards had been disappearing. She and her boyfriend were committing multiple types of fraud. Lefante wasn’t the focus of the investigation until she went missing. The thought is she has deliberately gone missing.
Mulder is looking for a camera. He finds a Polaroid and tells Scully about a Ted Serios who used to be able to imprint images on undeveloped film with his mind. He takes several photos with the camera, covering the lens each time. Each photo develops, showing the same image as the passport photo. He believes Lefante’s abductor was here. Scully thinks someone doctored the images and planted them. Mulder asks why; a valid question. He believes it could be a peak into the darkest fantasies of the mind.
Out in the country, Lefante climbs onto a road. She is in a nightdress and is has dried blood coming from her tear ducts. Not a good sign. In the hospital, Scully clearly has an idea and wants a PET scan run. Lefante has had a transorbital lobotomy done to her by someone without training. Lefante is attempting to say a word. Meanwhile, there’s been a second abduction. This one wakes to a man speaking German.
At the second abduction site, the woman’s boss is taken away in a body bag. She has no connection to the first. The word that Lefante was saying was ‘unruhe’; ‘unrest’ according to Scully. She notices something with the file from the first abduction site and the current one. Each has a sign for the same construction company. Mulder is heading to Washington to get the photo checked.
At the FBI’s special photographic unit, the analyst says the work on the photo is seamless. There’s also a man’s face, and a shadow of what may be the abductor, looking over Lefante. Scully has spoken to the owner of the construction company and is heading out to speak to a foreman. The foreman is wearing scaffolder’s stilts and Mulder calls her. There’s something about the kidnapper’s legs; they are unusually long and out of proportion. Scully realises why, and the foreman runs off. Though she manages to catch him.
That’s happened too early, so although the foreman seems to be the guilty party, more is going to happen. Mulder is convinced the kidnapper is leaving the photo images behind by accident. The killer himself is, in some ways, unusual.