This snippet first appeared in the print zine Media Rare, published in 1985. It's not so much a missing scene as an interpretation of what happened during a scene from the episode "Trapdoors", written by Philip DeGuere. Isn't it amazing how a simple gesture or a look during an episode will trigger a response from a writer?

Simon and Simon:
Big Brother
-- by Linda S. Maclaren

"Hey, what do you think you're doing?"

I tried not to look guilty as I glanced up from the private papers I'd found under Scully's bar. The speaker's tone wasn't aggressive, but it didn't have to be. He filled the open doorway, and there wasn't an ounce of fat to suggest softness on his barrel-chested body.

"What does it look like we're doin?" Rick retorted belligerently, sauntering across the room and stopping between the newcomer and me.

Inwardly, I sighed. Here was big brother looking out for the younger once again.

"Searchin' the place." Rick answered his own query as if it should have been obvious even to a moron.

It wasn't an attitude to endear him to Scully's neighbor. After all, the man had come only to investigate the sound of our less-than-subtle break-in. We were lucky he hadn't called the police. Then again, he didn't look as if he needed the police.

"At four in the morning?" he asked suspiciously. "What are you guys, cops or something?"

I wondered if we could take him. Maybe...with the Charger defensive line to back us up.

But Rick wasn't going to be bullied. "Yeah, right," he returned easily. Sometimes, he didn't seem to have a nerve in his body. If I'd learned anything from him, it was that a confident bluff was more effective than a thousand lengthy explanations. Scully was holding young Terry McDaniels hostage someplace, and precious time was running out. Rick was angry, and loath to waste a moment. Maybe he felt a big brother protectiveness toward Terry as well. "You know where Scully is?"

The neighbor shrugged. "Probably at his girl friend's."

Rick glanced at me. "The girl in the car," he said quietly.

"Do you know her name?" I asked politely of our uninvited guest. Rick's aggressiveness might have discouraged any open hostility, but I hoped my friendliness would foster the neighbor's cooperation. It was our variation on the good cop/bad cop routine, and we adapted it as the situation warranted.

"Doris," came the somewhat reluctant reply.

"Doris," Rick echoed, thumbing through the personal phone directory he'd found in Scully's desk. "Doris." Then, triumphantly, "Doris, got it." All thought brushed aside save the urgency of finding Paul Scully, he put down the directory and headed out the door.

"Thank you," I said as I slipped past the neighbor and hastened after Rick. In the hallway, I smiled to myself and wondered if Rick had been consciously aware of moving between me and the potential threat posed by the neighbor.

Probably not.

Probably, big brothers just have different instincts from the rest of us.

THE END