simarillion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
simarillion) wrote2009-05-04 11:09 pm
simarillion) wrote2009-05-04 11:09 pm
FIC: "All the King's Horses" (2/?)
All the King’s Horses
By Simarillion
Fandom: Red Dragon/Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal
Universe: Once again the story is a very randomly chosen mixture of movie-verse and book-verse with a dash of my own interpretations. (gah, this is fanfiction after all!)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham (eventually)
Warnings: Violence, bad language, political incorrectness
Summary: There is a new serial killer on the move but who is going to stop him.
Beta: Malakai_Amlug
Disclaimer: None of the herein featured characters are mine and therefore I do not make any money with this story. They rightfully belong to Thomas Harris and DeLaurentis Pictures.
CHAPTER TWO
The kitchen was deathly silent. Compared to her first visit when the whole place had been swarming with police officers, FBI Agents and Forensic, the room had a completely different feel to it. The greyish light from the windows made it difficult to make out details but Clarice wanted to acclimate herself to the room before starting with the study of the crime scene. She needed to centre herself and find a connection to get more in tune with the place and the crime committed.
She crouched down in front of the outline were the body had been. Although the corpse had been removed the bloodstains had remained. The dark almost black blood had started to dry and was turning rusty brown. And there was much blood to look at. Clarice shuddered as she saw something that reminded her suspiciously of brain matter. It was dried and sticking to the kitchen cupboard.
The angle of the body implied that the victim had not fallen to the ground in this position. The intestines had been lying too close to the cupboard wall, the body practically trapped between them and the furniture behind him. She suspected that Livingston had been disembowelled standing upright. The marks of pressure on his throat had revealed that the man had been pressed against the cupboards by an arm against his throat.
Clarice stood up and took a step back. It was strange that there had been no sign of struggle. No sign was not entirely true. The victim’s fingernail on his right hand middle finger had been torn out, the remnants hanging onto the skin. When forensics had tried to find any skin particles or blood from the attacker, the search had come up with nothing. By that it did not mean no skin or tissue samples from the murderer, but it meant that they had not found anything but the victim’s blood.
From the looks of it the killer was not only intelligent, a pick pocket and stealthy but he also knew how to clean up after himself. This one was eerie. He made no mistakes and he was thorough. But everyone made mistakes one time or the other. And once he did Clarice would be there to get him.
The sounds from the traffic and the life outside were muted in the kitchen and Clarice wondered if anyone passing by the restaurant at the time of the murder could have been able to hear what was going on inside. Had Livingston been screaming or shouting or had he been too shocked to make any noise? Had he tried to talk to his attacker; did he know him?
The likelihood that the two, murderer and murdered, had at least known of the other’s existence was there. The killer had planned all of it. He had had everything with him to clean up after the work was done. Who would carry the needed equipment with him for just in case? So how had the two been related? There was something that they had overlooked, some similarity between the good doctor in Boston and the chef in New York.
After her taxing and useless trip to Brigham’s office, Clarice had put the photos from the second crime scene aside and had started to go through the files and photos of the first murder. Dr. Bainbridge had been very different from Livingston. His circle of friends had included only upper class members. Unlike the second victim whose acquaintances had varied from the creative pool to the intellectual, Dr. Martin Bainbridge had been a snobbish person who only allowed high society into his circle of friends.
Mrs. Cecilia Bainbridge, the wife of the late Dr. Bainbridge, had been a distant cousin of the Kennedys, twice removed. Harvard diploma and anorexic looks completed the image of the perfect little wife that a person like the first victim needed. Quite ironic though that the good doctor had lowered himself to converse and interact with the ordinary folk when buying his hustlers to satisfy his dirty little secret.
Clarice had pinned the pictures of both crime scenes on a large pin board. She had first put the pictures of the same crime scene together only to rearrange them again and put the photos of the same details from the different crime scenes next to each other. She had kept looking for the similarities beside the obvious. In both cases the murderer had not forced his way into the house. Unlike the doctor, Livingston had fought the murderer. Apparently Bainbridge had known the murderer or he had not perceived him to be a threat.
The lack of resistance on the doctor’s part had led the police to assume that the attacker had been one of the homosexual contacts of Bainbridge. Why would the victim let a stranger that showed up in his office late in the night get that close to him without some kind of resistance?
These early assumptions had directed all the investigations at that time. With the new victim this assumption was moot though. Livingston had homosexual friends but from what had been found out so far about the second victim he had not had any relationship with a man. Quite the contrary, the mid-twenty year old chef was said to be very much a ladies’ man. His list of ex-lovers was almost as long as the waiting list of the restaurant. Not every one of the victim’s past relationships and affairs had parted in friendly terms but there was no past male lover that might have been a connection between Bainbridge and Livingston.
The biggest problem with these two murders was the apparent lack of connections between them. They lived about 193 miles apart. There was something that made the murderer travel from Maryland to New Jersey to kill the second victim.
Clarice had warily returned to the polaroids on her desk after her visit to the aquarium all the time cursing Brigham for calling Crawford back into service. She wondered if her chief received some perverse kind of pleasure from asking the former head of behavioural science to help out with this case. Considering the past animosity between Brigham and Crawford, Clarice couldn’t think of any other reasoning behind this behaviour.
The polaroids of the first crime scene had not revealed anything new; they made it even worse; the Baltimore police had been not very thorough when taking the photographs. There was not enough information on the details since there were far less polaroids of the Baltimore scene. What had been apparent from the pictures though was that the doctor had been attacked while he was sitting in his office chair. The Baltimore police had been able to find blood on the dark leather chair. There had been even more blood in front and even next to the chair.
It was most likely that the murderer had attacked the man while he was sitting and then pulled him out of the chair and pushed him onto the floor where the victim’s head been smashed. The surprising thing though was that the victim had seemingly not fought back at all. Clarice was sure that the doctor and his victim had known each other. There was no other explanation for it.
After she had pinned the polaroids to the pin board she had once more recalled her own mental pictures of the crime scene. Clarice knew that in her tired state her mental abilities would not be up to their usual standard but she wanted to recall the memories as long as they were fresh. She wanted to burn them into her brain so that she would not forget what she had seen afterward.
It was strange how every crime scene always had a piece of the murderer in its atmosphere. If she would have to explain it she would say that the person’s aura tainted the room. She could still remember the feeling the aura of Jame Gumb had left behind at the places of his crimes. It had been different with Lecter though. Living in a basement prison that was full of insane criminals it had been the doctor’s presence that had overlaid everything else.
The first thing Clarice had noticed when arriving at the scene of crime was that the atmosphere of the place was not like one person had intruded but like a horde of lunatics had camped in there. It frightened her a little bit to think that they were not dealing with one but maybe with two or more people.
There was the slight possibility that two people had committed the crimes separately. One killing Dr. Bainbridge in Baltimore and the other killing Livingston in New York, maybe two people at both scenes? But Clarice very much doubted that a group of strangers would have stayed unnoticed if they had suddenly invaded at the doctor’s office and there was no chance that more than one person would have been able to hide from the restaurant staff that had been on the premises until shortly before Livingston’s murder.
No, although her gut feeling told her there was more than one person involved, rationality reminded her that this was not possible. It was just one murderer and it had been the same one at both scenes.
Clarice had dreaded Crawford’s visit while waiting for him. She was more than disinclined to talk, much less work, with her former boss. She did not really care about the repercussions their meeting would undoubtedly have. Her colleagues might not really care about whether or not Crawford singled her out. More attention on Clarice equalled less attention on them. But the real problem would be Agent Brigham.
The reason for her uneasiness where the former head of behavioural science was concerned stemmed from the past they shared. Clarice knew that Crawford did not actually consider her a friend but their past co-operations made them colleagues, not only in profession but also in shared experiences. She was sure that after Buffalo Bill Crawford had decided to stay away from Clarice for the simple reason that she reminded him of the Lecter fiasco. He had not publicly blamed her for anything but still she was one of the few persons who had gotten the full picture back then. She had known about his part in the investigations.
When things had gotten rough later Crawford had never contacted her. He was surrounded by his faithful and obedient staff, there was no need for a renegade like Clarice had become. She had never thought about contacting him herself. After his dismissal of her earlier she had not seen any reason to turn to her past hero.
Clarice had been very surprised about Crawford’s interference after Mason Verger but she was not interested in questioning his motives. Maybe she should have paid more attention to internal FBI politics and about the more hidden structures and hierarchies of the Bureau. The truth was that she had not cared about much back then; she still didn’t.
When Crawford finally deigned it to be the right time to grace her with his presence, her tiredness and exhaustion had developed so far that she was actually relieved the former special Agent showed up. He heralded the nearing end of the shift and the prospect of some more sleep before returning to work in the afternoon.
A new Styrofoam cup of coffee stood on top of an untidy pile of files and she sat on her desk, looking over the photos once more. She felt a sour burning in her stomach from the large amounts of coffee and she longed for some fortification of the food type. She was not sure anything that went down her throat though would stay there though.
The cube farm had started to empty as the officers slowly trickled out to get some rest before resuming where they left off now. As Clarice had headed for the coffee machine she had passed Jones’ desk. The files he had been looking through earlier were sorted into neat stacks, index post-its and paperclips marking parts of interest. No, she definitely had never been that ambitious and precise. It bordered on anal-retentiveness.
But after sitting down on her desk she had all forgotten about the coffee as she went over the night; the pitch-black beverage cooled and lost the last of its appeal. Not only did it taste disgusting but it was cold as well. There was nothing to be gained by drinking it anymore. Whoever had come up with the saying that cold coffee made you beautiful must have been a raving lunatic. She ought to ask Jones and Bernice irrespective from the other for an explanation how this saying came into existence. It might prove to be very interesting and entertaining.
Crawford entered her office without saying a word to her. His eyes were a little less red but he still had the look of a person who was supposed to be asleep at this time. If it was anybody else Clarice would have felt compassion for the person but Crawford was not able to instil such feelings in her. She shot a short glance at the figure that was now occupying her office chair. As a hand rubbed over his right temple, Crawford eyed the Styrofoam cup on the desk.
“Brigham scheduled the media statement for seven in the morning.” The trim frame of Crawford was slouching on the office chair and looking more comfortable than he had the right to. His eyes were fixed on the white cup in front of him but he did not reach out for it. He avoided looking at Clarice as well.
“Still four more hours to go. They don’t have much to tell yet.” She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling like a sulking child. She hated it that the former head of the behavioural science department made her feel so insecure at times.
“Brigham called right after the call came that there had been a murder similar to Baltimore,” Crawford explained the question that had been hanging in the room without actually being asked.
“He wants to go into politics,” was Clarice’s statement. It seemed somehow out of context but they both knew that this fact could become very important.
“He did not even ask me to come, I offered to help.” There was an edge to Crawford’s voice, she did not like. He sounded as if it was a given that he would work on this case. He made it sound like there was no one else worthy heading the investigations.
Pride always precedes a high fall. And Clarice hoped, no, wished to be there when Crawford fell. It would be a satisfaction to see him brought down, no more of his lofty attitude. She would revel in the moment. It was not how one was supposed to behave towards your fellow man but with Crawford Clarice couldn’t help these feelings.
All her ignoring his presence did not change though that Crawford was sitting in her office chair, ready to once more use her for his purposes. Clarice felt her jaw clench and she actively fought the tension that threatened to take over her muscles.
“We are fine, you didn’t have to get involved. You deserve to enjoy your retirement.” The last sentence was slightly sour with sarcasm.
“I will enjoy myself, helping with the investigation.” Crawford reached out for a file on the desk and flipped the cover open. “One might get the impression that you are not too happy about my getting involved. Why is that, Clarice? Are you so worried about me, that something might happen to me?”
Clarice knew that Jack Crawford was aware of the dislike from her side. She had never been hiding it from him. She could still remember one of the few times they had met after her return to the FBI post-Verger. The way he had talked to her, completely disregarding his treatment of her in the past, she had had a hard time not to be in his face. At her icy reactions towards him he had accused her of being unprofessional and immature.
“I am not too happy with people who think that murder investigations are nothing more than an interesting past time, something to entertain yourself with. There is a killer on the loose who will not stop after the first two victims. This is serious work.”
Her words only earned her a raised eyebrow. She did not have to see it to know that it was happening.
“As far as I remember I used to do this job for a longer time than you have been working for the Bureau so far. I think that I am very much able to decide about the seriousness of the situation.” His fingers were splayed over the top page of the file but his eyes were trained on Clarice’s back.
Clarice closed her eyes to ease the burning that was just beginning. Even at the best of times she was not able to go against Crawford’s machinations, even less so now when she was worn out and tired after a long night.
“I am aware that our past co-operations were not the most enjoyable ones but I like to consider the both of us mature and intelligent enough to be above that and to be able to establish a productive working relationship.”
The words stung. It was true that to other’s their disagreements might look petty but then again they had not been involved, they didn’t know the details and all their implications. “There’s no ship like friendship,” she murmured.
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.” Clarice pushed herself away from the desk and stepped up to the patchwork of polaroids in front of her. “I will not let my personal feelings influence me in this case. I want to catch this fucking prick just as much as you or anybody else.”
“I am glad that we agree on this, Clarice.”
Her eyes scanned the pictures on the pin board. She really hated to agree with Crawford on anything. Clarice wanted to there to be no connecting points, no similarities between them. But of course since both of their lives revolved around hunting criminals their way of thinking had to be similar. It came with the job.
“I will be trying to get a team together that has some experience in this matter and that is also flexible enough to adjust quickly to new situations. I want you to be on this team. I think that it will be a chance for you to get away from Brigham, maybe even a chance for promotion.”
This one word was like a dagger in her side. Promotion. When had been the last time that she had had the chance to get promoted? It was way back after her capture of Jame Gumb. Doors had been standing wide open then. The possibilities had seemed endless. Now there was nothing but the daily routine that at times was reassuring with its familiarity and at other times suffocating with its constrictions. There was no room for things like promotion.
Hearing Crawford trying to goad her with promises of recognition for all her hard work, she wanted to smack her former superior right in the face. How could he dare to talk like this to her? It had been Crawford’s fault as much as anybody else’s that she had had a hard time in the past. His words would have been tempting in the past – the very distant past – but he was too aware of how real life worked. She would not be fooled by nice words.
The office chair groaned slightly as Crawford leaned back. For the first time since the man had entered her office, she turned around took a good, long look at him. It was strange that she would feel more contempt and hatred towards him than to Doctor Lecter. Both of them were manipulative bastards, both of them had used her for their personal uses, but only Crawford had landed on her black list.
She noticed the soft wrinkles around his eyes and the heavy lines on his forehead. It suddenly hit her that Crawford was getting old. No, he had not changed that much since his retirement but in the past she had always had the picture of Crawford in her mind and she had not been able to see through it. But all of a sudden she had really seen what was in front of her.
Clarice wondered what her father would have looked like had he lived and not died that night. She wondered if he would have aged with dignity like Crawford, getting older but still owning the same presence and energy like before. Maybe he would have gotten ill and would have spent the rest of his life in hospital or at home, slowly wasting away.
As hard as she tried Clarice could not picture him one day older than the day when she had last seen him.
“I called Alan and he agreed to come down from Québec. I will talk to Jimmy from Latent. I think that once we got a team together things will start to get done.” Crawford apparently thought his words to be reassuring or maybe even motivating, but Clarice’s mind wasn’t fully registering the small pep speech that had been given to her.
She forced herself to get a grip. The last thing she wanted to do was to zone out on Crawford. She did not want to be vulnerable in front of him.
“I will be back in the afternoon. I need some more sleep and I also need to contact everyone. We need to get the people here as soon as possible. I think that I will try to get Brigham to lend me Bernice Crowley as well. I like her complete disregard of ranks.” There was a fondness in Crawford’s voice at these words.
“I want to take a look at the crime scene once more. I want to get some feeling for the place and the person. When they called us in there was too much noise and distraction to get a good look at things.” Clarice knew that theoretically she did not need Crawford’s permission to investigate the scene further – if there was somebody that would have to give his consent for that it would be Brigham – but it was clear that the moment he had entered the office, Crawford had taken over control. There was no other way.
The permission was given like a king indulging a servant’s folly. A slight nod of his head was all that was necessary for the former head of Behavioural Science to relay his message. This gesture was enough to make the earlier kindness towards Bernice insignificant and to re-establish their relationship. She would have hated to have to re-assess her opinion on Crawford.
Crawford stroked the front of his shirt down, eyeing his clothes critically. He sat up straight and turned fully to Clarice. His eyes scanned over her face as if trying to read what she did not say. She did not know if he had been able to find what he had been looking for or if he had not been looking for anything at all. He got up and once more straightened his suit. God forbid, Crawford’s clothes should not be perfect.
“I will see you in the afternoon then. Good bye, Clarice.”
This time it was her turn to nod as she watched him leave her office. From the back he looked the same as the first time she had met him. It was strange to once more combine forces with Crawford. The difference this time though was that they were on different sides, not investigation wise but concerning their personal opinions and preferences.
Clarice decided there and then that she would head to her apartment as well and get some rest. She could not concentrate properly anymore and she wanted to be awake and aware of her surroundings when she returned to this night’s crime scene.
*
When she felt more acclimated in the kitchen, Clarice stood up and leisurely walked to the back door of the room. The double door led to a back alley that was mainly used the store the garbage and as a personal entrance. The doors had no real handle, only a knob that couldn’t be turned. Right next to the door – on the outside as well as on the inside – there was a small magnetic reader for the ID cards of the employees.
Livingston had invested quite a large sum of his money in the restaurant. Everything from the upholstery of the chairs to the wine served and the electronic systems used was state of the art. Clarice wondered if the restaurant had made any profit at all. From the high expenses on long time assets and the salaries of the employees, she guessed that there had not been much money left.
She switched the light on. It took her some tries before she found the right combination of switches to shed some light onto the area she wanted to take a closer look at. The bright, bluish-white colour of the neon light bulbs made the whole room look like a laboratory. It gave an eerie feel to everything.
Clarice leaned back against the door behind her and took two, three calming breaths. She even went so far as closing her eyes to centre herself. Opening them again she pushed herself away from the door and slowly strode through the room. The workspaces were made of polished aluminium. They were easy to clean but it was also very easy to leave traces on them.
The lack of fingerprints or any other traces gave proof to the murderer’s intelligence and to his caution. Any other person would have at least left some smudge somewhere on one of these many surfaces.
Her steps sounded loud in the silent kitchen, the small and sparse noises that penetrated from the streets outside was not even loud enough to count as a background noise. She had left her high-heels in the car but the rubber soles of her sneakers padded on the tiled floor of the room.
She avoided the area where the body had lain and scouted to whole room out. There were some traces of the black powder forensics used to get prints but besides that the whole room was spotless. Well, unless one considered the stains on the floor where the body had been. Somehow it seemed as if the body had just appeared out of nowhere.
The lack of any evidence was something that had not gone over well with the media. At seven in the morning Brigham had had his minutes in the limelight. The press conference was scheduled so that the morning programs and news reports were able to feature the story in gory details that were true to some part, but far more of it was made up by reporters that were only too eager to scare the people on the streets with tales of the boogieman.
At the same time Brigham had been all over the nation with his statement concerning the murder of Livingston, Clarice had slept deeply, catching up on the sleep she had missed during the night. Not being there live did not mean though that she had to miss her superior’s press conference. When she got up at eleven, the TV stations as well as the radios had featured bits and pieces of the conference, reminding the people hourly of the dangers that lurked everywhere these days.
The public would be hysteric now. Clarice only hoped that they would find the killer before things would get out of hand. People had the tendency to take things into their own hands. A couple of more killings and there would be some community patrol out there that didn’t ask questions before acting.
Clarice passed the blood stains by and headed for the door to the storage area. The door was of a heavy metal, it was designed to keep fire either in or out. She dug into her pockets and fished the magnetic card out she had been given at the office. Holding it in front of the reader she waited for the beep that signalled her that she could enter now.
The door did not only look heavy, it was heavy as well. She braced it open and slipped into the adjoining room. The darkness in here was so complete it was like stepping into a black hole. It seemed as if the blackness was sucking all the light out of everything. Clarice reached out for the light switch on the wall. The plaster was rough and felt dusty; she assumed that the walls had been painted with the white lime paint that was often used in cellars and storage spaces.
And then there was light. With a simple flick of her wrist she flooded the room with the same blue-white neon light as in the kitchen. The dry whiteness clinging to her fingers made her want the wash her hands. Instead she rubbed the fingers together. The white lime dust rolled together in grey strings, dropping to the floor.
The artificial lightning seemed even harsher and more disturbing in the whitened storage area. There were shelves along the walls with rows of shelves in-between. They were stocked with cans and glasses, bottles and tetra packs. As neat and organised the kitchen had been, as messy was the storage space. There was no dirt or anything but the goods were stocked without any apparent order or system. It made her wonder how people found what they were looking for.
The floor was tiled as well. In here complete silence reigned. There was nothing penetrating this room from outside. Not light and not sounds. Clarice slowly inspected the shelves. Except for the strange sorting criteria, there was nothing that caught her attention. She walked down each of the short corridors. There was nothing there to be found.
A sigh escaped her. She felt somewhat trapped in this room. All the concrete and the metal combined with the white walls made it feel like being locked up.
Just imagine walls like these everyday, no escape from the oppressive feeling of being trapped inside thick concrete walls and heavy metal. Even glass to look outside would not make it better. Windows would actually only make it worse. The simple thought of being able to look outside but never being able to venture outside, it must be pure torture.
Clarice could sympathise with ...
No, she could not – she would not, to be more precise. Some people deserved what they got. And even others were better locked away. Just because she did not like being trapped did not justify what Lecter had done to escape his incarceration. Yes, he had been locked up in some basement, behind dura steel walls, looking out at the freedom that was so temptingly flaunted in front of his face. Still he did not deserve pity, at least that’s what she was supposed to feel. Now, if she would only be able to feel it for real.
Her jaw clenched, her teeth grinding together as the tension in her muscles increased. She had to get out. Out of the room and out of the kitchen. There was nothing here in this kitchen but Doctor Hannibal Lecter. But she knew with the same certainty as that it was not her committing the murders that the doctor had not killed Bainbridge and Livingston.
If somebody had asked her how she was so certain that the doctor had nothing to do with it, she would not be able to explain it. She just knew. For one there had been no sighting of Hannibal Lecter since the incident with Mason Verger. Without any difficulties the doctor had once more escaped the grasp of the FBI. She did not know what view he favoured these days but it was certainly better than the one he would have had from his cell.
She pushed the door open, her shoulders pressing against the metal with her whole weight. Leaving the enclosing space, she felt a weight being lifted off her shoulders. Switching the light off, she closed the door behind her on the black hole.
Clarice cast a last look at the rusty dark brown stains on the floor. Why couldn’t this one make any mistakes? The longer this investigation would last, the more difficult it would get for her to keep on fighting her inner Lecter. She was afraid that she might not be strong enough.
And of course there was the matter of Crawford. The return of the big hero of the FBI made a lot of people happy or even hopeful. She was not one of them. She just hoped that Crawford would get the killer and disappear from her life again. It was not a great life but she could make her own decisions without second guessing all the time to what extent the decision had been hers or Crawford’s.
At the personal entrance she switched off the lights of the kitchen. Once more she fished out the magnetic ID card, unlocking the doors and stepping out into the cool afternoon air. She was supposed to be back at the office. Crawford would give his “Welcome, I’m taking over” speech soon.
By Simarillion
Fandom: Red Dragon/Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal
Universe: Once again the story is a very randomly chosen mixture of movie-verse and book-verse with a dash of my own interpretations. (gah, this is fanfiction after all!)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham (eventually)
Warnings: Violence, bad language, political incorrectness
Summary: There is a new serial killer on the move but who is going to stop him.
Beta: Malakai_Amlug
Disclaimer: None of the herein featured characters are mine and therefore I do not make any money with this story. They rightfully belong to Thomas Harris and DeLaurentis Pictures.
CHAPTER TWO
The kitchen was deathly silent. Compared to her first visit when the whole place had been swarming with police officers, FBI Agents and Forensic, the room had a completely different feel to it. The greyish light from the windows made it difficult to make out details but Clarice wanted to acclimate herself to the room before starting with the study of the crime scene. She needed to centre herself and find a connection to get more in tune with the place and the crime committed.
She crouched down in front of the outline were the body had been. Although the corpse had been removed the bloodstains had remained. The dark almost black blood had started to dry and was turning rusty brown. And there was much blood to look at. Clarice shuddered as she saw something that reminded her suspiciously of brain matter. It was dried and sticking to the kitchen cupboard.
The angle of the body implied that the victim had not fallen to the ground in this position. The intestines had been lying too close to the cupboard wall, the body practically trapped between them and the furniture behind him. She suspected that Livingston had been disembowelled standing upright. The marks of pressure on his throat had revealed that the man had been pressed against the cupboards by an arm against his throat.
Clarice stood up and took a step back. It was strange that there had been no sign of struggle. No sign was not entirely true. The victim’s fingernail on his right hand middle finger had been torn out, the remnants hanging onto the skin. When forensics had tried to find any skin particles or blood from the attacker, the search had come up with nothing. By that it did not mean no skin or tissue samples from the murderer, but it meant that they had not found anything but the victim’s blood.
From the looks of it the killer was not only intelligent, a pick pocket and stealthy but he also knew how to clean up after himself. This one was eerie. He made no mistakes and he was thorough. But everyone made mistakes one time or the other. And once he did Clarice would be there to get him.
The sounds from the traffic and the life outside were muted in the kitchen and Clarice wondered if anyone passing by the restaurant at the time of the murder could have been able to hear what was going on inside. Had Livingston been screaming or shouting or had he been too shocked to make any noise? Had he tried to talk to his attacker; did he know him?
The likelihood that the two, murderer and murdered, had at least known of the other’s existence was there. The killer had planned all of it. He had had everything with him to clean up after the work was done. Who would carry the needed equipment with him for just in case? So how had the two been related? There was something that they had overlooked, some similarity between the good doctor in Boston and the chef in New York.
After her taxing and useless trip to Brigham’s office, Clarice had put the photos from the second crime scene aside and had started to go through the files and photos of the first murder. Dr. Bainbridge had been very different from Livingston. His circle of friends had included only upper class members. Unlike the second victim whose acquaintances had varied from the creative pool to the intellectual, Dr. Martin Bainbridge had been a snobbish person who only allowed high society into his circle of friends.
Mrs. Cecilia Bainbridge, the wife of the late Dr. Bainbridge, had been a distant cousin of the Kennedys, twice removed. Harvard diploma and anorexic looks completed the image of the perfect little wife that a person like the first victim needed. Quite ironic though that the good doctor had lowered himself to converse and interact with the ordinary folk when buying his hustlers to satisfy his dirty little secret.
Clarice had pinned the pictures of both crime scenes on a large pin board. She had first put the pictures of the same crime scene together only to rearrange them again and put the photos of the same details from the different crime scenes next to each other. She had kept looking for the similarities beside the obvious. In both cases the murderer had not forced his way into the house. Unlike the doctor, Livingston had fought the murderer. Apparently Bainbridge had known the murderer or he had not perceived him to be a threat.
The lack of resistance on the doctor’s part had led the police to assume that the attacker had been one of the homosexual contacts of Bainbridge. Why would the victim let a stranger that showed up in his office late in the night get that close to him without some kind of resistance?
These early assumptions had directed all the investigations at that time. With the new victim this assumption was moot though. Livingston had homosexual friends but from what had been found out so far about the second victim he had not had any relationship with a man. Quite the contrary, the mid-twenty year old chef was said to be very much a ladies’ man. His list of ex-lovers was almost as long as the waiting list of the restaurant. Not every one of the victim’s past relationships and affairs had parted in friendly terms but there was no past male lover that might have been a connection between Bainbridge and Livingston.
The biggest problem with these two murders was the apparent lack of connections between them. They lived about 193 miles apart. There was something that made the murderer travel from Maryland to New Jersey to kill the second victim.
Clarice had warily returned to the polaroids on her desk after her visit to the aquarium all the time cursing Brigham for calling Crawford back into service. She wondered if her chief received some perverse kind of pleasure from asking the former head of behavioural science to help out with this case. Considering the past animosity between Brigham and Crawford, Clarice couldn’t think of any other reasoning behind this behaviour.
The polaroids of the first crime scene had not revealed anything new; they made it even worse; the Baltimore police had been not very thorough when taking the photographs. There was not enough information on the details since there were far less polaroids of the Baltimore scene. What had been apparent from the pictures though was that the doctor had been attacked while he was sitting in his office chair. The Baltimore police had been able to find blood on the dark leather chair. There had been even more blood in front and even next to the chair.
It was most likely that the murderer had attacked the man while he was sitting and then pulled him out of the chair and pushed him onto the floor where the victim’s head been smashed. The surprising thing though was that the victim had seemingly not fought back at all. Clarice was sure that the doctor and his victim had known each other. There was no other explanation for it.
After she had pinned the polaroids to the pin board she had once more recalled her own mental pictures of the crime scene. Clarice knew that in her tired state her mental abilities would not be up to their usual standard but she wanted to recall the memories as long as they were fresh. She wanted to burn them into her brain so that she would not forget what she had seen afterward.
It was strange how every crime scene always had a piece of the murderer in its atmosphere. If she would have to explain it she would say that the person’s aura tainted the room. She could still remember the feeling the aura of Jame Gumb had left behind at the places of his crimes. It had been different with Lecter though. Living in a basement prison that was full of insane criminals it had been the doctor’s presence that had overlaid everything else.
The first thing Clarice had noticed when arriving at the scene of crime was that the atmosphere of the place was not like one person had intruded but like a horde of lunatics had camped in there. It frightened her a little bit to think that they were not dealing with one but maybe with two or more people.
There was the slight possibility that two people had committed the crimes separately. One killing Dr. Bainbridge in Baltimore and the other killing Livingston in New York, maybe two people at both scenes? But Clarice very much doubted that a group of strangers would have stayed unnoticed if they had suddenly invaded at the doctor’s office and there was no chance that more than one person would have been able to hide from the restaurant staff that had been on the premises until shortly before Livingston’s murder.
No, although her gut feeling told her there was more than one person involved, rationality reminded her that this was not possible. It was just one murderer and it had been the same one at both scenes.
Clarice had dreaded Crawford’s visit while waiting for him. She was more than disinclined to talk, much less work, with her former boss. She did not really care about the repercussions their meeting would undoubtedly have. Her colleagues might not really care about whether or not Crawford singled her out. More attention on Clarice equalled less attention on them. But the real problem would be Agent Brigham.
The reason for her uneasiness where the former head of behavioural science was concerned stemmed from the past they shared. Clarice knew that Crawford did not actually consider her a friend but their past co-operations made them colleagues, not only in profession but also in shared experiences. She was sure that after Buffalo Bill Crawford had decided to stay away from Clarice for the simple reason that she reminded him of the Lecter fiasco. He had not publicly blamed her for anything but still she was one of the few persons who had gotten the full picture back then. She had known about his part in the investigations.
When things had gotten rough later Crawford had never contacted her. He was surrounded by his faithful and obedient staff, there was no need for a renegade like Clarice had become. She had never thought about contacting him herself. After his dismissal of her earlier she had not seen any reason to turn to her past hero.
Clarice had been very surprised about Crawford’s interference after Mason Verger but she was not interested in questioning his motives. Maybe she should have paid more attention to internal FBI politics and about the more hidden structures and hierarchies of the Bureau. The truth was that she had not cared about much back then; she still didn’t.
When Crawford finally deigned it to be the right time to grace her with his presence, her tiredness and exhaustion had developed so far that she was actually relieved the former special Agent showed up. He heralded the nearing end of the shift and the prospect of some more sleep before returning to work in the afternoon.
A new Styrofoam cup of coffee stood on top of an untidy pile of files and she sat on her desk, looking over the photos once more. She felt a sour burning in her stomach from the large amounts of coffee and she longed for some fortification of the food type. She was not sure anything that went down her throat though would stay there though.
The cube farm had started to empty as the officers slowly trickled out to get some rest before resuming where they left off now. As Clarice had headed for the coffee machine she had passed Jones’ desk. The files he had been looking through earlier were sorted into neat stacks, index post-its and paperclips marking parts of interest. No, she definitely had never been that ambitious and precise. It bordered on anal-retentiveness.
But after sitting down on her desk she had all forgotten about the coffee as she went over the night; the pitch-black beverage cooled and lost the last of its appeal. Not only did it taste disgusting but it was cold as well. There was nothing to be gained by drinking it anymore. Whoever had come up with the saying that cold coffee made you beautiful must have been a raving lunatic. She ought to ask Jones and Bernice irrespective from the other for an explanation how this saying came into existence. It might prove to be very interesting and entertaining.
Crawford entered her office without saying a word to her. His eyes were a little less red but he still had the look of a person who was supposed to be asleep at this time. If it was anybody else Clarice would have felt compassion for the person but Crawford was not able to instil such feelings in her. She shot a short glance at the figure that was now occupying her office chair. As a hand rubbed over his right temple, Crawford eyed the Styrofoam cup on the desk.
“Brigham scheduled the media statement for seven in the morning.” The trim frame of Crawford was slouching on the office chair and looking more comfortable than he had the right to. His eyes were fixed on the white cup in front of him but he did not reach out for it. He avoided looking at Clarice as well.
“Still four more hours to go. They don’t have much to tell yet.” She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling like a sulking child. She hated it that the former head of the behavioural science department made her feel so insecure at times.
“Brigham called right after the call came that there had been a murder similar to Baltimore,” Crawford explained the question that had been hanging in the room without actually being asked.
“He wants to go into politics,” was Clarice’s statement. It seemed somehow out of context but they both knew that this fact could become very important.
“He did not even ask me to come, I offered to help.” There was an edge to Crawford’s voice, she did not like. He sounded as if it was a given that he would work on this case. He made it sound like there was no one else worthy heading the investigations.
Pride always precedes a high fall. And Clarice hoped, no, wished to be there when Crawford fell. It would be a satisfaction to see him brought down, no more of his lofty attitude. She would revel in the moment. It was not how one was supposed to behave towards your fellow man but with Crawford Clarice couldn’t help these feelings.
All her ignoring his presence did not change though that Crawford was sitting in her office chair, ready to once more use her for his purposes. Clarice felt her jaw clench and she actively fought the tension that threatened to take over her muscles.
“We are fine, you didn’t have to get involved. You deserve to enjoy your retirement.” The last sentence was slightly sour with sarcasm.
“I will enjoy myself, helping with the investigation.” Crawford reached out for a file on the desk and flipped the cover open. “One might get the impression that you are not too happy about my getting involved. Why is that, Clarice? Are you so worried about me, that something might happen to me?”
Clarice knew that Jack Crawford was aware of the dislike from her side. She had never been hiding it from him. She could still remember one of the few times they had met after her return to the FBI post-Verger. The way he had talked to her, completely disregarding his treatment of her in the past, she had had a hard time not to be in his face. At her icy reactions towards him he had accused her of being unprofessional and immature.
“I am not too happy with people who think that murder investigations are nothing more than an interesting past time, something to entertain yourself with. There is a killer on the loose who will not stop after the first two victims. This is serious work.”
Her words only earned her a raised eyebrow. She did not have to see it to know that it was happening.
“As far as I remember I used to do this job for a longer time than you have been working for the Bureau so far. I think that I am very much able to decide about the seriousness of the situation.” His fingers were splayed over the top page of the file but his eyes were trained on Clarice’s back.
Clarice closed her eyes to ease the burning that was just beginning. Even at the best of times she was not able to go against Crawford’s machinations, even less so now when she was worn out and tired after a long night.
“I am aware that our past co-operations were not the most enjoyable ones but I like to consider the both of us mature and intelligent enough to be above that and to be able to establish a productive working relationship.”
The words stung. It was true that to other’s their disagreements might look petty but then again they had not been involved, they didn’t know the details and all their implications. “There’s no ship like friendship,” she murmured.
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.” Clarice pushed herself away from the desk and stepped up to the patchwork of polaroids in front of her. “I will not let my personal feelings influence me in this case. I want to catch this fucking prick just as much as you or anybody else.”
“I am glad that we agree on this, Clarice.”
Her eyes scanned the pictures on the pin board. She really hated to agree with Crawford on anything. Clarice wanted to there to be no connecting points, no similarities between them. But of course since both of their lives revolved around hunting criminals their way of thinking had to be similar. It came with the job.
“I will be trying to get a team together that has some experience in this matter and that is also flexible enough to adjust quickly to new situations. I want you to be on this team. I think that it will be a chance for you to get away from Brigham, maybe even a chance for promotion.”
This one word was like a dagger in her side. Promotion. When had been the last time that she had had the chance to get promoted? It was way back after her capture of Jame Gumb. Doors had been standing wide open then. The possibilities had seemed endless. Now there was nothing but the daily routine that at times was reassuring with its familiarity and at other times suffocating with its constrictions. There was no room for things like promotion.
Hearing Crawford trying to goad her with promises of recognition for all her hard work, she wanted to smack her former superior right in the face. How could he dare to talk like this to her? It had been Crawford’s fault as much as anybody else’s that she had had a hard time in the past. His words would have been tempting in the past – the very distant past – but he was too aware of how real life worked. She would not be fooled by nice words.
The office chair groaned slightly as Crawford leaned back. For the first time since the man had entered her office, she turned around took a good, long look at him. It was strange that she would feel more contempt and hatred towards him than to Doctor Lecter. Both of them were manipulative bastards, both of them had used her for their personal uses, but only Crawford had landed on her black list.
She noticed the soft wrinkles around his eyes and the heavy lines on his forehead. It suddenly hit her that Crawford was getting old. No, he had not changed that much since his retirement but in the past she had always had the picture of Crawford in her mind and she had not been able to see through it. But all of a sudden she had really seen what was in front of her.
Clarice wondered what her father would have looked like had he lived and not died that night. She wondered if he would have aged with dignity like Crawford, getting older but still owning the same presence and energy like before. Maybe he would have gotten ill and would have spent the rest of his life in hospital or at home, slowly wasting away.
As hard as she tried Clarice could not picture him one day older than the day when she had last seen him.
“I called Alan and he agreed to come down from Québec. I will talk to Jimmy from Latent. I think that once we got a team together things will start to get done.” Crawford apparently thought his words to be reassuring or maybe even motivating, but Clarice’s mind wasn’t fully registering the small pep speech that had been given to her.
She forced herself to get a grip. The last thing she wanted to do was to zone out on Crawford. She did not want to be vulnerable in front of him.
“I will be back in the afternoon. I need some more sleep and I also need to contact everyone. We need to get the people here as soon as possible. I think that I will try to get Brigham to lend me Bernice Crowley as well. I like her complete disregard of ranks.” There was a fondness in Crawford’s voice at these words.
“I want to take a look at the crime scene once more. I want to get some feeling for the place and the person. When they called us in there was too much noise and distraction to get a good look at things.” Clarice knew that theoretically she did not need Crawford’s permission to investigate the scene further – if there was somebody that would have to give his consent for that it would be Brigham – but it was clear that the moment he had entered the office, Crawford had taken over control. There was no other way.
The permission was given like a king indulging a servant’s folly. A slight nod of his head was all that was necessary for the former head of Behavioural Science to relay his message. This gesture was enough to make the earlier kindness towards Bernice insignificant and to re-establish their relationship. She would have hated to have to re-assess her opinion on Crawford.
Crawford stroked the front of his shirt down, eyeing his clothes critically. He sat up straight and turned fully to Clarice. His eyes scanned over her face as if trying to read what she did not say. She did not know if he had been able to find what he had been looking for or if he had not been looking for anything at all. He got up and once more straightened his suit. God forbid, Crawford’s clothes should not be perfect.
“I will see you in the afternoon then. Good bye, Clarice.”
This time it was her turn to nod as she watched him leave her office. From the back he looked the same as the first time she had met him. It was strange to once more combine forces with Crawford. The difference this time though was that they were on different sides, not investigation wise but concerning their personal opinions and preferences.
Clarice decided there and then that she would head to her apartment as well and get some rest. She could not concentrate properly anymore and she wanted to be awake and aware of her surroundings when she returned to this night’s crime scene.
When she felt more acclimated in the kitchen, Clarice stood up and leisurely walked to the back door of the room. The double door led to a back alley that was mainly used the store the garbage and as a personal entrance. The doors had no real handle, only a knob that couldn’t be turned. Right next to the door – on the outside as well as on the inside – there was a small magnetic reader for the ID cards of the employees.
Livingston had invested quite a large sum of his money in the restaurant. Everything from the upholstery of the chairs to the wine served and the electronic systems used was state of the art. Clarice wondered if the restaurant had made any profit at all. From the high expenses on long time assets and the salaries of the employees, she guessed that there had not been much money left.
She switched the light on. It took her some tries before she found the right combination of switches to shed some light onto the area she wanted to take a closer look at. The bright, bluish-white colour of the neon light bulbs made the whole room look like a laboratory. It gave an eerie feel to everything.
Clarice leaned back against the door behind her and took two, three calming breaths. She even went so far as closing her eyes to centre herself. Opening them again she pushed herself away from the door and slowly strode through the room. The workspaces were made of polished aluminium. They were easy to clean but it was also very easy to leave traces on them.
The lack of fingerprints or any other traces gave proof to the murderer’s intelligence and to his caution. Any other person would have at least left some smudge somewhere on one of these many surfaces.
Her steps sounded loud in the silent kitchen, the small and sparse noises that penetrated from the streets outside was not even loud enough to count as a background noise. She had left her high-heels in the car but the rubber soles of her sneakers padded on the tiled floor of the room.
She avoided the area where the body had lain and scouted to whole room out. There were some traces of the black powder forensics used to get prints but besides that the whole room was spotless. Well, unless one considered the stains on the floor where the body had been. Somehow it seemed as if the body had just appeared out of nowhere.
The lack of any evidence was something that had not gone over well with the media. At seven in the morning Brigham had had his minutes in the limelight. The press conference was scheduled so that the morning programs and news reports were able to feature the story in gory details that were true to some part, but far more of it was made up by reporters that were only too eager to scare the people on the streets with tales of the boogieman.
At the same time Brigham had been all over the nation with his statement concerning the murder of Livingston, Clarice had slept deeply, catching up on the sleep she had missed during the night. Not being there live did not mean though that she had to miss her superior’s press conference. When she got up at eleven, the TV stations as well as the radios had featured bits and pieces of the conference, reminding the people hourly of the dangers that lurked everywhere these days.
The public would be hysteric now. Clarice only hoped that they would find the killer before things would get out of hand. People had the tendency to take things into their own hands. A couple of more killings and there would be some community patrol out there that didn’t ask questions before acting.
Clarice passed the blood stains by and headed for the door to the storage area. The door was of a heavy metal, it was designed to keep fire either in or out. She dug into her pockets and fished the magnetic card out she had been given at the office. Holding it in front of the reader she waited for the beep that signalled her that she could enter now.
The door did not only look heavy, it was heavy as well. She braced it open and slipped into the adjoining room. The darkness in here was so complete it was like stepping into a black hole. It seemed as if the blackness was sucking all the light out of everything. Clarice reached out for the light switch on the wall. The plaster was rough and felt dusty; she assumed that the walls had been painted with the white lime paint that was often used in cellars and storage spaces.
And then there was light. With a simple flick of her wrist she flooded the room with the same blue-white neon light as in the kitchen. The dry whiteness clinging to her fingers made her want the wash her hands. Instead she rubbed the fingers together. The white lime dust rolled together in grey strings, dropping to the floor.
The artificial lightning seemed even harsher and more disturbing in the whitened storage area. There were shelves along the walls with rows of shelves in-between. They were stocked with cans and glasses, bottles and tetra packs. As neat and organised the kitchen had been, as messy was the storage space. There was no dirt or anything but the goods were stocked without any apparent order or system. It made her wonder how people found what they were looking for.
The floor was tiled as well. In here complete silence reigned. There was nothing penetrating this room from outside. Not light and not sounds. Clarice slowly inspected the shelves. Except for the strange sorting criteria, there was nothing that caught her attention. She walked down each of the short corridors. There was nothing there to be found.
A sigh escaped her. She felt somewhat trapped in this room. All the concrete and the metal combined with the white walls made it feel like being locked up.
Just imagine walls like these everyday, no escape from the oppressive feeling of being trapped inside thick concrete walls and heavy metal. Even glass to look outside would not make it better. Windows would actually only make it worse. The simple thought of being able to look outside but never being able to venture outside, it must be pure torture.
Clarice could sympathise with ...
No, she could not – she would not, to be more precise. Some people deserved what they got. And even others were better locked away. Just because she did not like being trapped did not justify what Lecter had done to escape his incarceration. Yes, he had been locked up in some basement, behind dura steel walls, looking out at the freedom that was so temptingly flaunted in front of his face. Still he did not deserve pity, at least that’s what she was supposed to feel. Now, if she would only be able to feel it for real.
Her jaw clenched, her teeth grinding together as the tension in her muscles increased. She had to get out. Out of the room and out of the kitchen. There was nothing here in this kitchen but Doctor Hannibal Lecter. But she knew with the same certainty as that it was not her committing the murders that the doctor had not killed Bainbridge and Livingston.
If somebody had asked her how she was so certain that the doctor had nothing to do with it, she would not be able to explain it. She just knew. For one there had been no sighting of Hannibal Lecter since the incident with Mason Verger. Without any difficulties the doctor had once more escaped the grasp of the FBI. She did not know what view he favoured these days but it was certainly better than the one he would have had from his cell.
She pushed the door open, her shoulders pressing against the metal with her whole weight. Leaving the enclosing space, she felt a weight being lifted off her shoulders. Switching the light off, she closed the door behind her on the black hole.
Clarice cast a last look at the rusty dark brown stains on the floor. Why couldn’t this one make any mistakes? The longer this investigation would last, the more difficult it would get for her to keep on fighting her inner Lecter. She was afraid that she might not be strong enough.
And of course there was the matter of Crawford. The return of the big hero of the FBI made a lot of people happy or even hopeful. She was not one of them. She just hoped that Crawford would get the killer and disappear from her life again. It was not a great life but she could make her own decisions without second guessing all the time to what extent the decision had been hers or Crawford’s.
At the personal entrance she switched off the lights of the kitchen. Once more she fished out the magnetic ID card, unlocking the doors and stepping out into the cool afternoon air. She was supposed to be back at the office. Crawford would give his “Welcome, I’m taking over” speech soon.