Chapter Text
The air is perfumed with the stink of anxiety. Of low self-esteem. Frankyln Froidveux is not a puzzle that’s difficult to solve, at least not in the simplicities of establishing a diagnosis. Treating that diagnosis is a different matter. Hannibal watches him as his emotions spill over as messy tears, quickly mopped away by tissues from the box held between his knees. It is not an uncommon sight during their sessions. He is aware of feeling a faint disgust, but discards this as unworthy of him. Franklyn is certainly not to blame for his problems, and as with all his patients he has a genuine desire to help him get past them.
There is a vast gulf that separates one person from another. A veil of flesh and bone that masks thought, emotion, one’s inner life; it renders others down into an enigma, a code cracked by knowledge, solutions becoming manifest in body language or spoken words of lies or truths. In his youth it was difficult to conceive of the independent existence of other humans, that they were people like himself, with their own minds and desires, but he has since learned better, with time and experience. He is capable of seeing them, at least in the abstract.
Others might see Franklyn as pitiable. Hannibal has little patience for this. He did not want pity in the orphanage as a child, and pity would not afford any help to Franklyn now. It is not an emotion he believes in, and thus he has never made the time to learn to mimic it. It is better to simply acknowledge the difficulties his patient has with daily life and work to find ways to remedy this. It is better that emotion does not come into it.
Having finished his consultations for the day, Hannibal bids Franklyn a congenial goodbye, moving to escort him out. He is aware of the way the man leans into his touch, his hesitance at the door. Attachment to one’s therapist is hardly uncommon, as he himself would know, but Franklyn takes it to unhealthy extremes. It has been the cause of many referrals in the past, but since he will not admit the problem it has been impossible to resolve. Still, finally he departs, and Hannibal is left in peace.
He returns to his desk to complete the notes for his sessions today. His memory is such that he would have little need for such things outside the necessities of medico-legal practise, but to find a place for them in the mansion of his thoughts would merely create a clutter of sheer banality, and the idea is simply abhorrent.
Perhaps half an hour passes before a knock at the entrance interrupts him. Hannibal sets down his pen, considering. There are a limited number of people it could be, but given the latest headlines on Tattlecrime.com, he has his suspicions. His hobby, as he likes to think of it, of consulting for Agent Jack Crawford of the FBI, was initiated several years prior by his protégée Alana Bloom, whom he remains rather fond of. He suspects if he were other than he is these feelings would manifest more strongly, but for him the mere existence of such things has always been theoretical, with what would otherwise be entirely overblown reactions of the general mob of humanity his only evidence of his difference from them. Still, when Alana had put the possibility of consulting to him it had been intriguing, raising memories of old, long-past ambitions, and he has little desire to refuse her any reasonable request. Because of this connection, and because he finds Agent Crawford himself somewhat blunt and unpolished, most of his requests come through her.
Indeed, his suspicions prove correct. Alana is waiting for him, a file folder tucked under her arm and a winning smile on her face. “Hannibal, good to see you,” she greets him, coming inside at his invitation.
“It has been too long,” he demures. “My stock of beer is quite piling up.”
“So I should really make a date to come over and drink it?” she replies, eyes twinkling.
“Nothing would please me more.”
“Well for now I have something for you that’s a little less pleasant.” Hannibal accepts the folder she hands him, opening it to find the collection of photographs, reports, and various conjectures that he was expecting. “Another girl was reported missing this morning,” she says, her eyes crinkling in that way that speaks of empathic pain, felt with emotion rather than logic. “Elise Nichols. She’s the eighth.”
“Jack has had no luck thus far,” Hannibal remarks, spreading portraits out across his desk.
“It took some time for someone to even establish there was a pattern and pass it on to the FBI,” Alana sighs. “No bodies, no evidence, just missing person reports from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Reported generally on Mondays, but last contact anyone can find was the Friday before.”
“Taking his time covering his tracks. A careful hunter.”
“And that’s why we need your psychiatric expertise,” Alana says, smiling. “Without a profile we might never narrow things down enough to find the evidence we need.”
“I am always happy to help the Bureau, of course,” Hannibal says. “I will look this over tonight and come to Quantico tomorrow. Though there is one thing that I can say, which no doubt will already have occurred to Jack; this is about one girl in particular. An archetype of whom these are reflections. Perhaps she was the first, or perhaps he is working up to her. Perhaps she is unobtainable. I will be able to tell you more in the morning.”
“Thank you Hannibal,” Alana says. “Hopefully with your help, we won’t make it to number nine.”
----
Agent Jack Crawford’s office is his war room, his place of power. His rational, organised, straight-line way of thinking is reflected in the careful arrangement of case evidence in clear view; maps, timelines, a conglomeration of what is known. And unfortunately for all concerned, what is known is very little. Hannibal arrives feeling somewhat apologetic. He has not been able to piece together as much as he would like, other than perhaps more details along the lines of his earlier comments to Alana. Without seeing what is actually done to the victims it is exceedingly difficult to come to any conclusions on the psychology of their killer. It is a blow to his pride and Alana’s faith in him that he is not able to give Jack any better news.
“We’re grasping at loose ends here Dr Lecter,” Jack tells him. “I’ve even tried again to get Will Graham out of the classroom, but nothing I say can budge him.”
“You have mentioned Mr Graham before,” Hannibal says. An interesting person, from what he has heard. Alana knows him, but has been reticent to speak of him, in an attempt to separate her personal feelings from her professional curiosities. Indeed, he had been an FBI Special Investigator for a time some three or four years ago, for another Homicide team, but found it inconducive to his mental health. Hannibal can hardly fault him his priorities, and it is somewhat gauche of Jack to keep pushing him as he does, for all the help he might theoretically be.
“We’re visiting the Nichols household in two days,” Jack says. “I know your schedule doesn’t leave much time for fieldwork, but I would appreciate your input.”
“I would like to attend,” Hannibal replies. “Given that I have been little use to you thus far, I would hope to remedy that. I am sure I can rearrange my diary to suit.”
“Thank you Doctor.” Jack sighs, rubs a hand across his mouth. “The team is flying out in the FBI jet. I’ll forward the flight details to you when they’ve been finalised.”
----
Immediately upon entering the house Hannibal is aware that something is wrong. It is not possible at first to identify what that is, which irritates him. He listens to Jack interview the girl’s parents whilst attempting to isolate whatever sensory input he is putting together as animal instinct, the product of hind-brain and sub-conscious processing data more efficiently than his super-ego. Their words, filtered through extreme emotional distress, are helpful only for their daughter’s psychology.
A scent, he thinks. Something very faint in the air, only just detectable even by his particularly exquisite nose. He follows it subtly to the foot of the stairs before it is recognised, sliding into place as a gaseous corpse surfacing from a river’s depths. It is the smell of death.
“Agent Crawford,” he says quietly. “A word, if you please.”
It is unfortunate for the mental health of the parents that further investigation indeed reveals Elise Nichol’s body in her own bed, once taken and now returned, laid down to tender sleep. It contains a curious calm, Hannibal considers, viewing the scene dispassionately. Were it not for her pallor and the faint scent that perfumes the air, the very earliest trace of decomposition and trickles of shed blood, she might almost be sleeping, trite as that statement might be. This is no show. She is not displayed. There is no message here, merely an attempt to remedy her death for reasons that perhaps time and further investigation will make clear.
Jack Crawford calls for the trio of crime scene analysts, who have come all this way despite the hope of not being needed. The wait for them allows Hannibal further consideration of the scene.
There is a slight, sharp tang of urea from the bed-sheets, which means she was killed here, the animal functions of her body taking over at the point of death. It would have been quick. There is no cruelty here. Minimal signs of a fight, since even a careful murderer would have found difficulty concealing them all in the time he had, and there had been no sign when local police had examined the house earlier in the day. Hannibal does not think them quite so incompetent. Therefore he was gentle, therefore it is not the act in itself that drives this man, but the meaning behind it. A beautiful thing – and a victim is always a thing, are they not? – escapes his grasp until death crystallises it in a single perfect moment.
Little wonder the bodies have never been found. He will keep them to himself, in one way or another.
But there is something about this young woman that marred his plan, his needs, his pattern. Quite what Hannibal cannot yet see. Perhaps she is his archetype, and yet he thinks not. He goes closer, inhales deeply. Another layer, beneath floral perfume, soap, shampoo, dried fear-sweat. It is another death, one he has smelled many times before, as a young man and then during his internship at Johns Hopkins. Cancer. A waste, in one so young. Perfection marred? Yes, but also… He frowns. The thought and conclusion retreats just out of reach as though his own mind shies away from it.
Beverly Katz, Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller are not long in arriving, and the scene is soon taken over by them before he can force whatever the sub-conscious truth out into the light. He is content in the moment to watch them work. Ms Katz has a brash manner, but is very intelligent, and oddly charming. Hannibal often finds her refreshing. James Price is competent and dull and beneath his notice. Brian Zeller on the other hand is prickly, rude and unpleasant. Unfortunately Hannibal has yet to think of a subtle way of ensuring he is fired without it being traced back to him. Really, he reminds himself as consolation, it is beneath him to consider it. Bedelia would not be pleased with him.
“Nice to see you out and about, Dr Lecter,” Beverly greets him, letting Zeller take his photographs before flipping back the sheets. The blood-scent becomes stronger. Six wounds are revealed, marking Elise Nichol’s nightgown like roses in bloom. Post-mortem. The wounds are round, and placed with care. No wild knife-stabs of mutilation. Perhaps there had been a display, a personal one.
“Something in there,” Beverly says, frowning, reaching forward with tweezers and an evidence bag held at the ready. “What... is that antler velvet?”
“It is,” Hannibal agrees, stepping forward to look at it more closely. “Traditionally antler velvet is believed to have healing properties in Chinese medicine. Likely our killer placed it there himself.” Another method through which an apology is made. “Bruising around the throat,” he gestures. “It is likely that strangulation was the cause of death.”
“We’ll sweep the room for prints, hair and fibre etcetera,” Beverly tells him, “then get a body-bag up here to transfer her back to the Bureau. You need to look at anything else before we start to move things around?”
“Although first impressions are important, I do not believe we will come to a valid conclusion before all the evidence is in hand.”
“You riding home with us?” she asks. “Only we’ll be a few more hours yet, and it’s getting late enough that Jack might just have us hole up somewhere for the night with Elise in the local coroner’s office.”
“I was intending to,” Hannibal admits, with a slight creep of irritation starting to buzz under his skin. He prefers things to be planned out in advance, although where control can be maintained, spontaneity can also have its perks. “However I have responsibilities to my practise in Baltimore. It seems I must arrange my own flight tonight.”
“Just feel free to charge it to the FBI’s dollar,” Beverly says, grinning. He returns the expression with a slight tilt of his lips for the sake of politeness. This trip has turned out to be more inconvenient than anticipated, for everyone concerned.
----
As much as correspondence, shopping and the other daily necessities of life must be dealt with, Hannibal makes time to attend the autopsy-debrief of Elise Nichols. He has been considering their killer, in the short span since leaving Minnesota. He has curious motivations. He is not driven by hate or bitterness or rage. He takes because he is consumed by a poisonous form of love. And why not? When battered by the storms of such powerful emotions the weakness of the soul, the mind, is uncovered by simple erosion. Deeps and darkness and buried things are thrown up into harsh light, and made manifest through actions that create the mirror of their ugliness in the world. Humans are very ugly creatures, for the most part. Hannibal likes to think that in his various vocations he has done something to excise that ugliness, or remould it, or have it locked away with others of its kind to fester as rotten things do.
He has begun to compose his written report for Jack, but it will not be complete until the secrets that Elise Nichol’s body might hold have been uncovered.
Laid out bare on the cold steel table, it is difficult to see Ms Nichols as anything more than the meat she has now become. The animating force has flown with the last of her breath, and a murderer has transformed her into whatever talisman or symbol eased the fires of his heart. Now her wounds have been measured and probed, her ribs split, her organs assessed, weighed and measured as though in judgement at the gates of the underworld, and he merely waits to hear the result of it. Once, a very long time ago, a process such as this had uncomfortable associations. It made him uneasy and fascinated all at once, a stranger in his own skin. Familiarity had settled his bones and belly, in the end. He had become able to bear the chill of the morgue.
James Price reports the lack of any useful prints, which is much as Hannibal suspected. Their killer is both meticulous and cautious. Their only clue is thus that which Beverly found; the small shaving of metal on the nightdress. Plumbers, steamfitters, tool-workers, blue-collar men with a certain aesthetic. A hunter in more than metaphor. The wounds are spaced in the pattern of antlers, not just tended by them.
“It is likely she was mounted in order to drain the blood,” he suggests, when Beverly raises the question.
“Her liver was removed,” Brian says. “He took it out, and then, yeah, he put it back in.”
How does a hunter honour his prey? How does he cherish and respect it? Hannibal already knows the answer to this question. His conscious mind can no longer ignore what the sub-conscious has known for all too long. Suddenly it is very cold. From very far away his pulse bounds and rushes like foaming cataracts. His arm aches where it was once broken and set too late. He has never had the full range of supination. His mouth is dry and yet he tastes faintly the most delicate meat that ever passed his lips. His stomach churns.
“Why would he cut it out if he was just going to sew it back in again?” Price wonders.
“Please, excuse me,” Hannibal says, turns on his heel and flees for the restroom.
----
When he is in control of himself once again Hannibal gathers his strength enough to rise from the cold tile floor, brush dust and dirt from his trousers with a sigh of distaste, and leave the cubicle to rinse his mouth out at the sink until the sour taste has left it. The scent lingers, bitter. He inspects his hands. They are steady. Pale white lines of old scars mark them, but they are his hands, adult hands, not those of the freezing child starving to death in the woods. The ghosts have retreated, returning to oubliettes where they should have rotted, becoming only old worn bone without animus or power.
In the mirror his reflection is paler than he’d like. His hair has fallen a little out of place, but it is easily enough fixed. Unwelcome emotion churns feebly beneath his ribs. He has no wish to analyse it, not in the present moment. Bedelia will carve it into logic for him so it can be digested. Although it has a wild strength which he is utterly unaccustomed to, manifesting in physical reaction, it does not master him, nor will it ever.
He has apologies to make. Excuses. The idea is distasteful. Revealing this vulnerability he’d thought long since scoured clean... but although a direct lie would be rude, he might still mislead around the truth.
Hannibal is just about to exit the restroom when someone else comes in, very nearly colliding with his shoulder before side-stepping away. He apologises, sounding distracted. They are around equal height, although the stranger seems smaller than he ought due to the manner in which he holds himself. He is wearing a dove grey suit jacket, not tailored, but not ill-fitting. He does not make eye contact, avoidant with ducked head and thick-rimmed glasses, letting his gaze fall somewhere around Hannibal’s chest. Then he pauses, cocks his head very slightly like a hound hearing a sound in the undergrowth.
“Dr Hannibal Lecter,” the man says, reading from the visitors badge clipped to his lapel. “You’re one of Alana’s friends, aren’t you?”
“I am,” Hannibal replies. “But I am not quite sure which of Alana’s many friends you might be.”
“She probably hasn’t mentioned me.” A rueful twist of a smile, one with sharp edges. “But then again, I’ve heard one of her colleagues has been working with Jack, so if that’s you then I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours.”
“Then you must be Will Graham,” Hannibal says, now quite sufficiently distracted. He has been very curious about this man. Despite the temptation of sitting in on one of his lectures, without an invitation it would be rather the breach of etiquette. He is aware of the gossip. They say that Will Graham is not quite sane; that he is brilliant, that he is capable of placing himself into the mindset of a killer so completely that he understands them in ways no moral person could. This is foolishness. The motives of most murderers are utterly banal; jealousy, greed, hate, petty sadism. Will Graham has a gift of empathy and perception, that much must be the case. If what he sees so clearly others do not, it is only because they do not look.
If Will Graham is unstable, then surely this only speaks to his convictions of right and wrong. If these petty passions disturb him, then it is because he has codified the moral laws that society makes so very strongly into his sense of self. Hannibal has heard enough, yes, and has sifted what he is sure is the truth from the dross of the unenlightened. This man is a singular individual, and he would very much like to see if his conclusions are borne out by the truth of him.
“I am,” Graham says, maintaining that knife’s-wound of a smile. “Alana’s talked about you. She says you’re very good at what you do.”
“I merely hope to be some help to the FBI,” Hannibal demurs. Will Graham looks momentarily thoughtful, but returns quickly to discomfort. It seems he is not comfortable with small-talk. With socialisation in general, it is likely. Too many sharp-toothed shadows clustered inside the bone arena of his skull, casting themselves over everything he touches.
“Sorry, I’ve kept you from... whatever it was you had to get back to,” he says.
“Nothing to apologise for. It was a pleasure to meet you.”
Will Graham laughs. “Now you’re just being polite.”
“Not at all.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket for a business card. “If you ever want to become better acquainted. God forbid two of Alana’s friends become friendly.” The other man takes it. His gaze flicks first to the word psychiatrist printed beneath Hannibal’s name. “In a purely personal capacity of course,” Hannibal adds.
For the first time in their conversation Will Graham looks him in the eyes. “Perhaps I might.”