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Alberta's box

Alberta's box is the carton of documents and tapes that Alberta Wilmarth leaves with Andrew Howard when she asks him to force an exhumation of her dead mother, and which sets The Walkers in Skin in motion.
Type Item (evidence)
Aliases VHS; obituary
Holder Andrew Howard
First appearance Walkers 01

Description

Alberta arrives at Andrew's apartment in Washington, D.C. holding a big box of documents and tapes, having eaten nothing but corn nuts for three days on the road. She shows him her mother Shelly Wilmarth's yearbook photo, a family photo from a big reunion five or six years earlier, an obituary clipping, and a VHS copy of local news footage of a protest about the community center (Walkers 01).

Properties

The box is evidence rather than anything paranormal in itself. The obituary says Shelly died in the winter of 1990, and Alberta says she died two years earlier, of a heart attack while out with the cattle on the family ranch. Yet the tape, paused just before a cut, seems to show her alive. Alberta also says the tenant of the ranch (the "space guy", later identified as Robert Bigelow) has seen Shelly walking around the edges of the property at night. In her pitch Andre (as Alberta) insists that "she's not a ghost" and "She's just alive again." (Walkers 01)

History

The pitch. Rita (as Andrew) rules out a secret twin, since Alberta has only brothers, and says doppelgangers copy children rather than older women; then, hearing that Shelly died alone, he puts "doppelganger" back on the list and delivers a long lecture. Alberta describes the ranch as plagued by boiled cattle, missing pets, UFO lights and Navy radiation investigators, and leaves (Walkers 01). Andrew heats her some leftover chicken and noodles.

Follow-up. Big Bill tells Andrew the task force is welcome to look into it and that the FBI will pay for the plane tickets, and the team flies to Utah. In a recap for the Biz's player, Walkers 03 restates that the client said her mother had died on the ranch and then showed up in TV coverage of a protest in town. The team's goal becomes the exhumation. In Walkers 05 Rita asks when Shelly died, and Andre answers about two months ago, which makes the TV appearance a few weeks old and possibly part of an escalation. That disagrees with Alberta's two years in Walkers 01.

Where the footage matters. The tape shows the protest outside the community center, the same project that Maggie later says was built on bulldozed Pueblo ruins despite a protest (Walkers 03).

Appearances