“Unusual Suspects” is episode three of season five of The X-Files.
The episode opens at night at Fells Point Industrial Park in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1989. SWAT arrive and the leader gets briefed by the police on the scene. There was at least a dozen shots and the door to the warehouse has been jimmied. No alarm and no-one has come out. Inside, there’s blood but no bodies and a moan can be heard coming from beneath some cardboard. Under is what looks like a naked man muttering ‘They’re here.’ Three people try fleeing the scene – the Lone Gunmen. The man under the cardboard is Mulder.
The Lone Gunmen are in a cell in the Homicide Unit of Baltimore P.D. They’re been fingerprinted and Frohicke and Langley are arguing with each other. They blame Byers for them being in the cell. Byers is called first and he is questioned by a Detective Munsch – apparently from Homicide: Life on the Street. Byers asks if they found her. His mystery woman? No, they didn’t. Byers says the FBI agent saw her, but apparently Mulder is under five-point restraint and babbling. According to Munsch, the warehouse was broken into but nothing was stolen, there was a shootout but no guns, a body but no blood. And an FBI agent who decided to take off all his clothes and talk about space aliens.
Byers explains he works for the government – that explains why he always seemed more straitlaced than the other two – as a PR officer for the FRVV. He was attending a computer and electronics show in Baltimore – and seemingly was none too popular there, given people kept calling him a narc – when he saw her. A woman. Byers followed her.
Frohicke accosted the woman as she passed, trying to sell her a device to get bootleg cable. Langley was in the next booth and tried doing the same. She walks off whilst they are arguing and Byers bumps into her. He picks up a photo of a young girl she has dropped and they end up at a table. According to the woman, the photo is her daughter and her father, her former boyfriend, kidnapped her. She spent several months with the father, as he was dark and mysterious, but after she became pregnant, he took off. Then returned six months ago and kidnapped their daughter. The woman tried PIs and the police and didn’t get much. Her ex is in the Baltimore area, but now he knows she’s looking for him and that makes him more dangerous. She has another lead, ‘arpanet/whtcorps’, and Byers explains what it is. He offers to go online to find out. He asks her name. Holly. Like the sugar? Which is on the table. Yes; just like the sugar. Perhaps an accurate statement.
Byers returns to his Booth and gets rid of the other person there. The clue leads to a DoD data network that needs a password. ‘Holly’ asks if Byers can hack in. No… well, technically, yes, but that’s the sort of thing the FCC tries to stop. Holly starts to leave and Byers agrees to do it. She wants him to look up a Susanne Modeski – her ‘daughter’ – which brings up an encrypted file. Byers prints it out, then Holly says they need to hide as her ex is here. The psychotic must have tracked her. The ‘psychotic’ is Mulder.
Byers takes Holly to Frohicke’s booth to enlist his help in decrypting the file. Frohicke suggests kicking the ex’s ass instead. beat the daughter’s location out of him. Holly insists that’s a bad idea as he’s very dangerous. Frohicke suggests following Mulder, and he and Byers do so, even though Holly asks them not to. Mulder passes a booth announcing ‘They’re here’ about the presence of aliens. They follow him into a corridor and he confronts them. He asks if Byers is with the FCC; he thinks they share the same credit union. He’s with the FBI. He has a picture of Holly and asks if they’ve seen her. They say no.
When Frohicke and Byers return, Holly is gone. And Byers’s fellow FCC employee is being taken away by the military for hacking. Byers would have intervened but Frohicke stops him. He says something big is going on and Holly is the centre of it all. If the FBI are looking for her, they need to hack into the FBI mainframe. Byers is appalled. But agrees. However, they need help. Langley. Who is currently trying to get5 people to bet on… a game of D&D.
They find Mulder’s background – he’s currently with the VCU – and details on Susanne Modeski. Or, as they know her, Holly. She’s described as being a fugitive government scientist, a killer who’s armed and very dangerous. None of the three are as paranoid as they later become and there’s no Scully, as this is well before the X-Files being opened never mind her joining them. An origins episode about how the Lone Gunmen formed and met Mulder.